Tzipi Livni: "...Moderate Arab states sharing common goals with Israel.."

Tzipi Livni: "...Moderate Arab states sharing common goals with Israel.."

At CFR, here

A Conversation with Tzipi Livni (Video)

Speaker:
Tzipi Livni, Member of Knesset and Head of Opposition; Chair of the Kadima Party; Former Minister of Foreign Affairs

Presider:
Jacob Weisberg, Editor, Slate Magazine

May 5, 2009, New York, NY
General Meeting: A Conversation with Tzipi Livni

The video below is of Israeli Kadima Party leader Tzipi Livni addressing an audience at CFR on May 5, 2009.

In her speech, Livni says that while the Middle East is increasingly divided between moderate and extremist actors, she sees growing opportunity to foster regional stability. Iran's belligerent rhetoric and pursuit of nuclear technology has caused parts of the Arab world to conclude that "Israel is not the enemy anymore, but Iran is the enemy," Livni says. With moderate Arab states sharing common goals with Israel, Livni perceives an opportunity to foster greater regional stability by neutralizing the threat posed by Iran as well as achieving progress on the Israeli-Palestinian question.

Livni emphasizes her view that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is primarily guided by questions of nationalism and that ending the conflict will not end extremist Islamic sentiment within groups like Hamas or states like Iran. Yet resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is vital to the interests of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, Livni says. She says the best way to preserve Israel's status as both a Jewish state and a democracy is to create a separate Palestinian state. This, she says, can only be achieved with pragmatic Palestinian leaders who value national aspirations over extreme religious ideology: "This is not a national conflict with Hamas," she says. "This is a religious conflict, and this is not solvable."

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Security forces arrest two more suspected spies for Israel

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BEIRUT: Lebanese security forces have arrested two more people suspected of spying for Israel, bringing the total number of suspected collaborators detained since the beginning of the year to 16. A police statement published late on Monday said Lebanese policeman Haissam al-Sahmarani and his wife were arrested during a raid on their house in Beirut's Bourj al-Barajneh neighborhood on Sunday evening.

Sahmarani confessed to police that he and his wife had been working for Mossad, Israel's secret service organization, for the last five years, collecting information on the activities of Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and other senior officials. The policeman also said he made frequent trips to "nearby countries" to hand over information, the statement said.

Three unidentified suspects were also detained Sunday, AFP reported, quoting a security official. They were arrested in the village of Habboush in Southern Lebanon, and according to the security official, "initial indications show that they were spying for Israel."

The arrests are the latest in a concerted, high-profile campaign launched by Lebanon's security forces to break up spy cells monitoring Hizbullah operations on behalf of Mossad. The suspects, identified in media reports as "hostess" Elizabeth H., Ali A. and Hussein K., were allegedly captured while traveling in the same car.

According to security officials quoted in Al-Hayat newspaper, the three individuals are being held by Hizbullah, who will turn them over to national security officials after preliminary interrogations.

On April 25, two Lebanese and a Palestinian arrested on suspicion of espionage were connected to a retired security officer arrested on similar charges earlier that month.

Brigadier General Adib al-Alam was charged along with his wife Hayat Saloumi and nephew Joseph, a sergeant in General Security, with espionage. Alam is said to have been in possession of sophisticated espionage equipment, including one device that was disguised as a mini-bar in his home. He is also accused of helping his nephew acquire a key posting at the Israeli-Lebanon border crossing in Nabatiyeh for intelligence activities, and of using his office, offering the services of migrant domestic workers, as a front for covert operations.

The Palestinian, Mohammad Awad, used his car dealership in South Lebanon to spy on Hizbullah activities. Curiously, Awad is said to be the cousin of Abu Mohammad Awad, the fugitive head of Islamist group Fatah al-Islam. The group, which based itself at the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, engaged the Lebanese Armed Forces in three months of deadly fighting in 2007 that reduced the camp to rubble. Awad was the second car dealer in the area to be detained after Marwan Fakih was arrested in February for supplying Hizbullah members with cars equipped with tracking devices being monitored by Mossad.

In a letter on Monday to head of the Internal Security Forces, Colonel Wissam al-Hassan, Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud praised Lebanon's intelligence services, saying the spy-ring bust had shown their high level of professionalism.

Some media reports have shown more skepticism, however, with some suggesting the news of the spy rings was timed to offset political fallout from Egyptian accusations that Hizbullah members were planning attacks in the Sinai Delta, which first emerged in April.

Israeli officials have not yet remarked on the arrests. Although hostilities have subsided since the summer 2006 war, Lebanon and Israel technically remain at war, and Lebanon forbids its citizens from any contact with Israelis. Those convicted of espionage can be handed down the death penalty.

Source

Posted by JNOUBIYEH at 12:36 PM

Labels: Israeli spies

IOF soldiers kill Palestinian near Ibrahimi Mosque

IOF soldiers kill Palestinian near Ibrahimi Mosque

[ 07/05/2009 - 08:27 AM ]

AL-KHALIL, (PIC)-- Israeli occupation forces shot and killed a Palestinian young man near the entrance to the Ibrahimi Mosque in Al-Khalil city on Wednesday evening, local sources said.

Eyewitnesses offering prayers inside the Mosque said they saw the body of a youth on the stairs leading to the Mosque while IOF soldiers were asking worshipers to leave the place after declaring it a closed military zone.

The IOF command claimed that the soldiers exchanged heated words with the youth after refusing to show them a "sharp tool" that was in his possession, and added that a soldier fired at the young man seriously wounding him before he succumbed to his wounds and a nearby soldier was hit with shrapnel.

The identity of the youth was not known yet.

Meanwhile, the IOF command said that a soldier was killed early Thursday during an operation near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

A Hebrew press report said, "While the exact circumstances of the death are still unclear, the army is investigating whether it was caused by friendly fire."

Criminalizing Criticism of Israel

Link

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
The End of Free Speech?
On October 16, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Israel Lobby’s bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. This legislation requires the US Department of State to monitor anti-semitism world wide.
To monitor anti-semitism, it has to be defined. What is the definition? Basically, as defined by the Israel Lobby and Abe Foxman, it boils down to any criticism of Israel or Jews.
Rahm Israel Emanuel hasn’t been mopping floors at the White House.
As soon as he gets the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 passed, it will become a crime for any American to tell the truth about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and theft of their lands.
It will be a crime for Christians to acknowledge the New Testament’s account of Jews demanding the crucifixion of Jesus.
It will be a crime to report the extraordinary influence of the Israel Lobby on the White House and Congress, such as the AIPAC-written resolutions praising Israel for its war crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza that were endorsed by 100 per cent of the US Senate and 99 per cent of the House of Representatives, while the rest of the world condemned Israel for its barbarity.
It will be a crime to doubt the Holocaust.
It will become a crime to note the disproportionate representation of Jews in the media, finance, and foreign policy.
In other words, it means the end of free speech, free inquiry, and the First Amendment to the Constitution. Any facts or truths that cast aspersion upon Israel will simply be banned.
Given the hubris of the US government, which leads Washington to apply US law to every country and organization, what will happen to the International Red Cross, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and the various human rights organizations that have demanded investigations of Israel’s military assault on Gaza’s civilian population? Will they all be arrested for the hate crime of “excessive” criticism of Israel?
This is a serious question.
A recent UN report, which is yet to be released in its entirety, blames Israel for the deaths and injuries that occurred within the United Nations premises in Gaza. The Israeli government has responded by charging that the UN report is “tendentious, patently biased,” which puts the UN report into the State Department’s category of excessive criticism and strong anti-Israel sentiment.
Israel is getting away with its blatant use of the American government to silence its critics despite the fact that the Israeli press and Israeli soldiers have exposed the Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the premeditated murder of women and children urged upon the Israeli invaders by rabbis. These acts are clearly war crimes.
It was the Israeli press that published the pictures of the Israeli soldiers’ T-shirts that indicate that the willful murder of women and children is now the culture of the Israeli army. The T-shirts are horrific expressions of barbarity. For example, one shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a crosshairs over her stomach and the slogan, “One shot, two kills.” These T-shirts are an indication that Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians is one of extermination.
It has been true for years that the most potent criticism of Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians comes from the Israeli press and Israeli peace groups. For example, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Jeff Halper of ICAHD have shown a moral conscience that apparently does not exist in the Western democracies where Israel’s crimes are covered up and even praised.
Will the American hate crime bill be applied to Haaretz and Jeff Halper? Will American commentators who say nothing themselves but simply report what Haaretz and Halper have said be arrested for “spreading hatred of Israel, an anti-semitic act”?
Many Americans have been brainwashed by the propaganda that Palestinians are terrorists who threaten innocent Israel. These Americans will see the censorship as merely part of the necessary war on terror. They will accept the demonization of fellow citizens who report unpalatable facts about Israel and agree that such people should be punished for aiding and abetting terrorists.
A massive push is underway to criminalize criticism of Israel. American university professors have fallen victim to the well organized attempt to eliminate all criticism of Israel. Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at a Catholic university because of the power of the Israel Lobby. Now the Israel Lobby is after University of California (at Santa Barbara,) professor Wiliam Robinson. Robinson’s crime: his course on global affairs included some reading assignments critical of Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
The Israel Lobby apparently succeeded in convincing the Obama Justice (sic) Department that it is anti-semitic to accuse two Jewish AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, of spying. The Israel Lobby succeeded in getting their trial delayed for four years, and now Attorney General Eric Holder has dropped charges. Yet, Larry Franklin, the DOD official accused of giving secret material to Rosen and Weissman, is serving 12 years and 7 months in prison.
The absurdity is extraordinary. The two Israeli agents are not guilty of receiving secrets, but the American official is guilty of giving secrets to them! If there is no spy in the story, how was Franklin convicted of giving secrets to a spy?
Criminalizing criticism of Israel destroys any hope of America having an independent foreign policy in the Middle East that serves American rather than Israeli interests. It eliminates any prospect of Americans escaping from their enculturation with Israeli propaganda.
To keep American minds captive, the Lobby is working to ban as anti-semitic any truth or disagreeable fact that pertains to Israel. It is permissible to criticize every other country in the world, but it is anti-semitic to criticize Israel, and anti-semitism will soon be a universal hate-crime in the Western world.
Most of Europe has already criminalized doubting the Holocaust. It is a crime even to confirm that it happened but to conclude that less than 6 million Jews were murdered.
Why is the Holocaust a subject that is off limits to examination? How could a case buttressed by hard facts possibly be endangered by kooks and anti-semitics? Surely the case doesn’t need to be protected by thought control.
Imprisoning people for doubts is the antithesis of modernity.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Using the Holocaust to justify Israeli attrocities to Palestinians

Using the Holocaust to justify Israeli attrocities to Palestinians:

"VA Rep. Eric Cantor asks the question 'At what moment did it become to late to save the Jews' during the holocaust. I ask, at what point does it become to late to save the Palestinians. Israel uses what happened to them to justify what they are now doing to others, and AIPAC is their SS."



Palestine Video - A Palestine Vlog

Rights orgs: Donor aid shouldn't underwrite Israeli crimes

Rights orgs: Donor aid shouldn't underwrite Israeli crimes
Press release, Various undersigned, 7 May 2009

On 2 March 2009, major international donors convened in Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt to collectively respond to the destruction caused by Israel's 23 day military offensive on the Gaza Strip. During the conference, a total of $4.5 billion was pledged in reconstruction funds for Gaza. In light of the extensive destruction across the Gaza Strip, especially the destruction of civilian homes and infrastructure, reconstruction is urgent.

However, as Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations, we must note that by agreeing to reconstruction without specific, binding assurances from the State of Israel, international donors are effectively underwriting Israel's illegal actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). International law -- including international human rights law, international humanitarian law (IHL), and the law of state responsibility for wrongful acts -- places specific, binding obligations on the State of Israel (based, inter alia, on its duties as an Occupying Power) with respect to the maintenance and development of normal life in occupied territory. By repeatedly restricting their action to providing aid, without holding Israel accountable for its specific obligations, international donors are relieving Israel of its legally binding responsibilities.

Individual donor states -- as High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions -- are under an obligation to ensure respect for the conventions at all times. They are also bound by international law which prohibits complicity in internationally wrongful acts. By repeatedly covering the cost of the occupation, without demanding accountability from Israel, the international community is implicitly encouraging violations of international law perpetrated by Israeli forces in occupied territory: individual donor states may thus be acting contrary to their own legal obligations.

We are concerned that such action negatively impacts upon respect for the rule of law, and is in violation of states' legal obligations. Ultimately, the continuation of this policy may reduce the protections afforded to civilian populations, further exposing them to violations of the laws of war.

The legal and contextual situation relating to this issue has been outlined in a joint fact sheet, "Human Rights Organizations Call for an End to International Donor Complicity in Israeli Violations of International Law," released on 6 May.

As human rights organizations we are calling for international donors to demand specific, concrete assurances from the State of Israel. These assurances, and the political will necessary to ensure their compliance, must form an integral part of international assistance to the Palestinian people. As the responsible party, Israel must accept the consequences of its actions. As illustrated in the fact sheet, the State of Israel is subject to explicit legal obligations: it bears the responsibility for reconstructing and maintaining the Gaza Strip. Bank-rolling the occupation without demanding an end to its violations is equivalent to tacit complicity on the part of the international community.

Reconstruction aid must be accompanied by strict conditions and assurances from the State of Israel. Otherwise, the taxpayers of the international community will continue to support an endless cycle of aid-destruction-aid-reconstruction. The Palestinian people will continue to suffer at the hands of a brutal and illegal occupation.

International assistance is most appropriate at the political level. It has become increasingly evident that international aid alone cannot resolve the conflict. In order to facilitate long-term development and recovery, political will and political action are required. All potential avenues that accord with humanitarian and human rights law must be pursued in order to ensure the State of Israel's compliance with international law. We call on the taxpayers of the international community to exert pressure on their governments, to lobby on behalf of the rights of the Palestinian people, and to ensure that their money is no longer wasted by governments willing to fund a school but not willing to take action in response to that school's destruction, or to ensure that the cement necessarily for its reconstruction is permitted to enter Gaza.

Undersigned organizations
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR)
Al-Dameer Association for Human Rights
Al-Haq
Al Mezan
BADIL Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights
Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP)
Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)
ITTIJAH - Union of Arab Community Based Organisations
Physicians for Human Rights - Israel (PHR)
Public Committee against Torture in Israel (PCATI)
Women's Affairs Centre (WAC)

Palestine the world's largest open air prison

Palestine the world's largest open air prison:

"Pictures from MachsomWatch, an organization of peace activist Israeli women, that every morning and afternoon, go out to some 30 checkpoints within the West Bank and on the seam-line between Israel and Palestine, to monitor and document IDF and Border Police conduct, and safeguard Palestinian human rights.

The shoot inside the video has been filmed by Daphne Banai and Milat Shamir at the Huwwara checkpoint on 10thSeptember 2007 - Machsom Watch activists observed that a particular checkpoint commander has a habit of beating up Palestinians in the detention cell. After one of the activists insisted on filming the checkpoint commander as he was entering the detention cell, the soldiers turned their violence towards her.

Images by : Dalia Kaveh, Elat Benda, Judith Spitzer, Magdalena Hefetz, Meged Gozani, Merav Amir, Micky Fisher, Mika Ginsburg, Naama Morag, Nava Elyashar, Neta Efroni, Noa Perelson, Noam Dan, Nurit Wagner, Ofra Ben Porat, Raya Zenter, Ruti Tuval, Shula Bar, Tamar Fleishman, Yudit Levine."



Palestine Video - A Palestine Vlog

Secret U.S.-Israel nuclear accord in jeopardy

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Eli Lake, in the Wash-Times, here

"...President Obama's efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons threaten to expose and derail a 40-year-old secret U.S. agreement to shield Israel's nuclear weapons from international scrutiny, former and current U.S. and Israeli officials and nuclear specialists say.

Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, speaking Tuesday at a U.N. meeting on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), said Israel should join the treaty, which would require Israel to declare and relinquish its nuclear arsenal. "Universal adherence to the NPT itself, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea, ... remains a fundamental objective of the United States," Ms. Gottemoeller told the meeting, according to Reuters. She declined to say, however, whether the Obama administration would press Israel to join the treaty. ...

Iranian leaders have long complained about being subjected to a double standard that allows non-NPT members India and Pakistan, as well as Israel, to maintain and even increase their nuclear arsenals but sanctions Tehran, an NPT member, for not cooperating fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog. ..."What the Israelis sense, rightly, is that Obama wants to do something new on Iran and this may very well involve doing something new about Israel's program," said Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a Washington think tank.

Bruce Riedel, a former senior director for the Middle East and South Asia on the White House National Security Council, said, "If you're really serious about a deal with Iran, Israel has to come out of the closet. A policy based on fiction and double standards is bound to fail sooner or later. What's remarkable is that it's lasted so long." Mr. Riedel headed the Obama administration's review of strategy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan but does not hold a permanent administration position and has returned to private life as a scholar at the Brookings Institution.

Elliott Abrams, deputy national security adviser for the George W. Bush administration, said that administration resisted international efforts to pressure Israel on the nuclear front. "We did not want to accept any operational language that would put Israel at a disadvantage and raise the question of whether Israel was a nuclear power," he said. "That was not a discussion that we thought was helpful. We allowed very general statements about the goal of a nuclear-free Middle East as long that language was hortatory." ....

Mr. Netanyahu, whose meeting with Mr. Obama on May 18 will be the first since both took office, raised the issue of the nuclear understanding during a previous tenure as prime minister. Israeli journalists and officials said Mr. Netanyahu asked for a reaffirmation and clarification of the Nixon-Meir understanding in 1998 at Wye River, where the U.S. mediated an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Mr. Netanyahu wanted a personal commitment from President Clinton because of concerns about a treaty that Mr. Clinton supported to bar production of fissile materials that can be used to make weapons. ....The Bush administration largely dropped the treaty in its first term and reopened negotiations in its second term with a proposal that did not include verification.

The Obama agenda

Mr. Obama has made nuclear disarmament a bigger priority in part to undercut Iran's and North Korea's rationale for proliferation. His administration has begun negotiations with Russia on a new treaty to reduce U.S. and Russian arsenals. ......David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington think tank, said such a treaty would be the first step toward limiting the Israeli nuclear program. "The question is how much of a priority is
this for the Obama administration?" he said. John R. Bolton, a former U.N. ambassador and undersecretary of state, said Israel was right to be concerned. "If I were the Israeli government, I would be very worried about the Obama administration's attitude on their nuclear deterrent," he said. "You can barely raise the subject of nuclear weapons in the Middle East without someone saying: 'What about Israel?' If Israel's opponents put it on the table, it is entirely possible Obama will pick it up."

Posted by G, Z, & or B at 6:44 PM

Israel's arsenal

Wed, 05/06/2009 - 7:31pm

Andrew Sullivan wonders “why can’t Israel just declare that it’s a nuclear power?" Good question. I’ve never had much problem with Israel having a nuclear arsenal myself -- if I were Israeli, I’d want one too. Nor am I surprised that they don’t want their neighbors to follow suit, because that’s basically been our position too. The United States would clearly prefer to be the only country with nuclear weapons; the problem is that it’s difficult-to-impossible to maintain a nuclear monopoly in perpetuity without fighting a lot of preventive wars. And the same goes for Israel too.

As for Israel’s policy of nuclear ambiguity -- “we will not be first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East, but we will not be second” -- it was probably an effective ploy for awhile. It was easier for some Arab governments to live with the asymmetry if Israel wasn’t bragging about it, and it allowed the U.S. and the Europeans to turn a blind eye to the problem in various non-proliferation forums. See Sullivan's follow up here. But this polite fiction lost its hexing power some time ago, and now it just looks disingenuous. More importantly, refusing to come clean isn’t affecting anyone’s calculations today, and certainly not in the places that matter most (like Tehran).

There is a substantial literature addressing Sullivan’s original question, and a good place to start is Shai Feldman’s Israeli Nuclear Deterrence (Columbia University Press, 1981). Its core argument was straightforward:

1) nuclear deterrence works, especially for the protection of a state’s core territory;

2) other governments in the region understand this, and there’s every reason to believe deterrence would work in the Middle East;

3) Israel should openly declare its nuclear capability and adopt an explicit policy of deterrence; and

4) relying more heavily on deterrence would reduce the importance of strategic depth and facilitate Israel’s withdrawal from the Occupied Territories as part of a regional peace agreement.

Note that Feldman was writing back when Iraq and Syria were still Soviet client states, when there was no peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, and when Israel’s economy was much smaller. Of course, that was also before there were half a million Israelis living outside the 1967 borders.

Today, one could argue that the Israeli government could reassure its citizens about a possible “existential” threat from Iran by advertising its own far more impressive nuclear capability and reminding its that any Iranian attack on Israel would be an act of national suicide. The problem, of course, is that calling attention to Israel’s existing arsenal weakens the case for opposing Iran’s nuclear programs. And that might be part of the answer to Sullivan’s query: Israel can’t declare that it is a nuclear weapons state when it’s trying to convince the rest of the world that it's totally illegitimate for Iran to become one too.

For a history of Israel’s nuclear program, check out Avner Cohen’s Israel and the Bomb. And for a qualified defense of Israel’s policy of ambiguity, see Ze’ev Maoz, “The Mixed Blessing of Israel’s Nuclear Policy,” in the Fall 2003 issue of International Security.

Stephen M. Walt Permalink

Disabled Palestinians stage sit-in at the Rafah border crossing

Disabled Palestinians stage sit-in at the Rafah border crossing
[ 07/05/2009 - 11:23 AM ]

RAFAH, (PIC)-- The government committee against siege has called for the opening of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and to allow entry of electric wheelchairs and other medical equipment to aid those who became disabled in the latest Israeli war on Gaza Strip.

Tens of disabled Palestinians young and old took part in the sit-in on Wednesday and hoisted Palestinian flags and placards demanding the opening of the crossing and denouncing the Arab and international silence toward the siege.

Hamdy Shaat, the chairman of the committee, said that the sit-in was a protest against the "oppressive siege" and to "voice our pain in face of the cruelest oppression in history of mankind".

It is no longer a secret that the criminal siege was political in nature and aimed at achieving political goals through starving an entire people, breaking its steadfastness and depriving it of its right to self-determination, he elaborated.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that Egypt allowed the entry of two members of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, into Egypt for treatment through the Rafah crossing.
It quoted sources at the crossing as saying that the terminal was exceptionally opened for the two brothers Sharif and Ashraf Mohamemd Farwana.

Both were injured in the Israeli war on Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009 but no word was out on the nature of their injuries.

In another development, the armed wing announced the death of one of its cadres while on a "special Jihad mission", the nature of which was not disclosed.

It said in a statement on Thursday that Talat Afifi, 32, from Beit Hanun in northern Gaza had died Wednesday night.

Factsheet on Egyptian role in the siege of Gaza

May 6, 2009

From Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME):

While Israel has imposed a cripping blockade on Gaza since 2007, Egypt has also played a crucial role in maintaining the siege by closing its own border with Gaza. This crossing – the Rafah crossing – is the only entry point Gaza shares with a state other than Israel.” - More here.

U.S. Media and Israel

U.S. Media and Israel

Censored by the New York Times: The Story Behind a Political Cartoon that the Publisher didn’t want you to see

Here is the backstory to the political cartoon above:

In the summer of 2003, the world watched as land, water, and dignity were stolen from the Palestinian people — all with the silent complicity of the US media. To express my growing outrage, I drew this cartoon at my kitchen table in Maine.

After realizing that no newspaper would accept it, I decided to publish the cartoon as an advertisement in the NY Times. I focused on the quarter-page space in the Op-Ed section reserved for opinion ads. Contacting the Times, I learned that pro-Israel organizations had reserved the space for 30 of the next 52 Sundays. I took the first available date.

My cartoon was scheduled to appear on September 21, 2003.

The Times required several changes to the cartoon so that it conformed to the acceptability standards of the newspaper. These changes were made. The Times production staff then asked for and was sent the camera-ready copy.

I paid the cost of the ad in full.

On Friday, September 19 I received notification that the cartoon’s publication was cancelled by order of the Times’ publisher. I recall simply shaking my head at the news - wryly noting that this action by the Times was validating the very point of the cartoon.

I next submitted the cartoon to USAToday, where it was accepted. The morning that the cartoon appeared, I received a call at 8:45am from a USAToday vice president.

He said that in all his years at the paper, he had never had a response like what was happening as a result of the cartoon’s publication. Apparently, American pro-Israel groups are geared up for such "emergencies" and inundated USAToday offices nationwide with telephone calls and emails. But of course it was too late.

Two postscripts:

1. I received more hate mail/ threats than I did accolades.

2. A year later, senior management at USAToday was replaced.

http://usmediaandisrael.com/?p=23

Posted @ 19:08

OBAMA MUST BE DOING SOMETHING RIGHT IF THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT DISLIKES HIM

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May 6, 2009 at 1:09 pm (Barack Obama, Israel, zionism)

Obama’s Low Rating with Netanyahu’s New Government
By Reuven Kaminer
A Letter

Universally respected, even loved in many quarters, and still the embodiment of hope for many of the simple folk and the downtrodden, Barak Obama is not doing very well with the new government of Israel. Obama sounds well intentioned when he talks of peace in the area. But Obama, as shrewd a gentleman as he is supposed to be, is in no way prepared to handle the weird mix of arrogance and insult originating from Netanyahu and Lieberman and flooding the Israeli media.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, ignores the hints by many of the pundits that he may be embarrassing his boss, Bibi Netanyahu. Thriving on media attention, Lieberman keeps up a barrage of inanities like his statement in an interview to a Russian publication to the effect that the US will do what we tell it to do. Despite his appearance as a thug and a buffoon, Lieberman has a broad geo-political agenda and even presumes to explain to Obama that Pakistan and Afghanistan and not Iran are the chief problem. Lieberman is working on his very own contribution to world security by pushing the idea of a USA-Russia alliance against the Islamic world (civilization) to be brokered by you guessed it Israel and its foreign minister. There are people out there who take the clash of civilizations seriously. Just what we need a Judeo-Christian alliance for the preservation of Western values.

Lieberman is no genius but he can pick up on a racist strain in US-European thinking. Bibi is a bit more elegant, but he is following the very same scenario as his buddy. This policy must be characterized as the right wing-extremist line of the more aggressive and adventurous elements in the US administration. These forces dislike Obama’s moderate style even when it is seen purely as a matter of form. They know the hard facts of imperial power and will exploit every element to wear down Obama, who has hitherto been simply unable to elaborate a coherent alternative to traditional hegemonic thinking.

Israel sees itself a pioneer in the war of civilizations. From its forward position it looks back at Obama and reminds him that, in the light of the conceptual continuity of US foreign policy, respect and consideration are due to the pioneers watching the fort.

Obama and the U.S. are in a particularly sensitive situation in the ME. Netanyahu has effectively scuttled the peace process, as faint and unconvincing as it was. Iran is exerting greater influence in the ME where the moderate Arab regimes are reduced to depending on Israel muscle to protect themselves from the fall out resulting from their collaborationist betrayal of the Palestinians. Odds and increasing signs on the ground indicate that the departure and the redeployment of US troops will have a destabilizing effect in Iraq. There are increasing signs that the present leadership in Baghdad might take a hike to Teheran. The US leadership has figured out it needs some secular horses in the Iraqi race and is busy trying to resurrect Sadaam Hussein’s old party. You see, this is the Middle East.

Meanwhile, for the last few weeks, Bibi Netanyahu has been working overtime to kill off any chance whatsoever for any solution to the Israeli-Palestinian and the Israeli-Arab conflict. He has already demonstrated clearly and unequivocally that, when and if he deigns to be so kind to his US buddy as to agree to go back to the negotiating table, he will talk only exclusively to a waterboarded Palestinian delegation that will kiss the whip after being thoroughly inundated by a flood of new unconditional demands.

Israel now demands that the Palestinians must not only recognize Israel and undertake peaceful coexistence with it, the Palestinians must recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. This recognition is to be interpreted by Israel, inter alia, as a clear renunciation of the demands for the rights of the Palestinian refugees. You see, Israel seeks closure.

The plain fact of the matter is that while Obama’s advisers limit him to bland generalities such as Let’s have two states, and Everybody should behave well, Lieberman and Netanyahu are hard at work. They are ostensibly reviewing their policy options, but really making sure that by issuing a slew of new demands, one more outrageous than the other, there will not be a Palestinian in sight who will dare to sit down to discuss Two-states.

Washington is stupefied and fails to react. Netanyahu says that Israel has just as much right to build in the occupied territories as the Palestinians and that the status of the land in the territories is disputed land. Washington is stupefied and fails to react. Netanyahu wants it clear right now that Palestine will never have any sort of army, and accept all kinds of limitations regarding water and elctro-magnetic fields on its truncated sovereignty. Washington is stupefied and fails to act.

Some wise guy pundit here called this new list of demands, Netanyahu’s shopping list for Obama. Obama has scheduled a full and frank discussion with Netanyahu for the 18th this month. Hilary Clinton is looking forward to hear about new developments in Israeli policy and hopes to explain to Netanyahu the danger of alienating the moderate Arab regimes. But Netanyahu is smart enough to exploit any opening given him in D.C. to present a new agenda of unlimited complications. Obama and Clinton may want to play dumb but if they allow Netanyahu to participate in shaping the agenda, they are selling the Palestinian down the river again.

Netanyahu is not without friends and connections in D.C. within the present administration which is still in the grips of the political ideas and anti-Iran hysteria of its predecessor.
Making War for Peace or Making Peace for War.

Everybody watching Bibi here knows how he is preparing himself for the coming meeting with Obama. The war on terror he says trumps peacemaking in the region. With Ahmadinajad on the loose, how could you conceivably talk to us about concessions affecting our vital rights. First lets take out Iran and then I will have time and patience to talk with you about Palestine. The hawkish, militarist, chauvinist boss here is telling Obama, no peace with Palestine without war on Iran.

Hilary Clinton was unable to understand that she was trailing far behind the discussion when she suggested that Netanyahu should desist from alienating the moderate Arab by making peace with the Palestinians. Despite the rumors that Lieberman is spitting in the soup, the Israeli-Egyptian love fest is on again. The Israeli government and the head of Egyptian intelligence, meet personally on a regular basis to work out the details of the siege and isolation of Gaza. When he has a chance, Bibi will explain to Hilary Clinton that he has the moderate Arab regimes in the palms of his hands. The moderates fear, more than anything else, political confrontation with Arabs and Muslims who have their very own ideas as to the disposition of their own oil. They, the moderates, are simply too busy defending their own privileges to be bothered by the fate of Palestine.

Even so, Obama and Hilary will tell Netanyahu that progress in the Palestinian talks is absolutely necessary to isolate Iran either for heavy sanctions or eventually a full sale attack. We must have peace they will explain before we can make war. Netanyahu, if it appears that he cannot really get his war (with Iran) for promising peace (with the Palestinians) will make the ultimate concession and agree to renew talks with the Palestinians. Obama will fake a victory, the moderate Arab countries will marvel at US diplomatic and the US will proceed on its mission to Teheran. The US will ostensibly have moved in the direction of dialogue but will brandish the Israeli sword in the face of the recalcitrant Iranians to keep them up to speed. With all this jockeying hither and thither very few bright people will be fooled into forgetting the name of the game. This region is oil country and it is the United States and it alone which wants it hands on the spigot. Iran with its reactionary regime and crude and clumsy leadership has the weird idea that it should decide how to dispose of its own oil, a crime punishable by death and invasion in the US playbook.

Barak Obama Really Seems Like a Nice Guy
I wish to avoid the full scale debate on the significance of the Obama presidency. Suffice it to say that even the most enthusiastic of Obama’s admirers on the left understand that he is the man responsible for tending store for the US empire and its interests. He himself has chosen to surround himself especially in foreign affairs by circles that represent continuity while he must rely on a state apparatus which honors the virtues of continuity above all else. Meanwhile, the US is in full retreat in the Middle East, where Iran and its allies enjoy a spurt of prestige for their support for the forsaken Palestinians. And now South Asia is falling apart. It is worth believing that the nuclear warehouse in Pakistan is in safe hands, but nothing else is safe and no where else is the area secure. Iraq is evermore inherently unstable, and the latest news is that the US is trying to resurrect Saadam Hussein’s party in order to balance the Shi’ite predilection for friendship in Teheran. Unless it is ready to radically increase its military activity, directly or by proxy, in these regions, the US must come up with a serious shift in policy and the cosmetic stuff is just not enough. In short, the US must demonstrate a serious willingness to recognize Iran’s legitimate interests and get rid of the axis of evil baggage.

And now back to Bibi and his plans for war. As long as the hard line Israeli policy and the softer line US policy are supposed to advance the same goal of thwarting and obstructing Iranian influence, as long as Washington buys the Israeli propaganda that Israel is in danger of a new Auschwitz and Ahmadinajad is a new Hitler (like Nasser and Arafat figured in previous Israeli narratives), there is a danger that Israel will attack. Equivocation in DC can easily translate to Israeli provocation in Boshir.

Our condemnation of the US-Israeli alliance in the ME does not mean that we have any sympathy whatsoever for the reactionary Islamic Republic and its leadership. Ahmadinajad seems totally unable to understand that his sloppy loose and crude formulations regarding Jewry and Israel are just what Bibi and Lieberman ordered. However, recent experience has shown that US intervention, direct or sponsored, will only strengthen a vicious regime, while spreading untold death and destruction among the people of Iran.

"...if for example, two top Iranian nuclear scientists, would disappear, the whole problem would disappear .."

Link

Via Mondoweiss, here

"....Israeli Brigadier General Eival Gilady appeared with Rep. Eliot Engel of New York on a panel called, “Israel Today—A Safe and Secure Israel: "If you ask what would happen if Iranians were to achieve nuclear capability, I wish I could say to you, they will never achieve it. But I must say there are many things we haven’t discussed. I may not be authorized to discuss in public all of what is being done, and I know that many people are expecting the kind of nuclear strike that Israel would repeat, in 1981 the Osirak strike [on Iran]. "So let me say the following, A, It is not the first priority to do. It is a very costly decision. I won’t exclude it. But there are many things you can do before. I analyzed this in the past. I called it the Iranian challenge to Israel, and presented it to the Israeli cabinet and all of those. I must tell you I was trying to find in all these links that you can cut the chain and hopefully prevent them from achieving nuclear capability. "I will give you an example or two. I know it’s only the two of us, no one hears us. [laughter] By giving this example I don’t mean to say that we do it or not. I’ll ask you, if for example, tomorrow, two top nuclear scientists, Iranian nuclear scientists, would disappear, the whole problem would disappear for five, six years, would you do that? [wide applause] I would say yes. You know, I cant go in public in all of what can be done. There are many things that can be done, are being done, and I hope will be effective enough…"

Gilady continued by saying he respected the idea of negotiations but doubted their effectiveness."What is going to be achieved? What does it mean to settle the nuclear program? Can they renew any time in the future? In what time frame? It's a lot more complicated than we’ve seen on the surface. And I think it's going to be very hard to have productive negotiations with them, if you really want what I believe is necessary-- to have Ahmadinejad never being able-- to exclude the military option... If you want this option, if you want it to be reliable on the table, you have to invest a lot.... refueling, intelligence, satellite, training... And we do. Let’s make it very clear. I hope we don’t get there.

"So if you ask me, can we see a nuclear Iran, and Hamas over the West Bank, and any kind of very bad scenario, What would happen? I’ll tell you, We’ll fight. Don’t underestimate the Israeli capability to fight. [big applause] Don’t underestimate. We will do whatever we can to achieve peace, but if we have to fight, we will win. How much? As long as needed, and we will win, I promise you."

Posted by G, Z, & or B at 5:00 PM

Hamdan calls for withdrawing the Arab initiative

Hamdan calls for withdrawing the Arab initiative

[ 07/05/2009 - 12:36 PM ]

BEIRUT, (PIC)-- Osama Hamdan, the representative of the Hamas Movement in Lebanon, has asked the Arab countries to drop the Arab peace initiative rather than drop the Palestinian refugees' right of return as demanded by Israel and the American administration.

He told Al-Quds TV satellite channel on Thursday that the Arab countries should rather support resistance that could lead to changing the Israeli occupation authority's' stands.

Hamdan said that Hamas absolutely rejects any tampering with the right of return, which, he said, is a matter involving millions of Palestinians within and outside Palestine.

He expressed surprise at the Arab insistence on the peace initiative despite the Israeli rejection of it, noting that the new Israeli coalition government is based on refusing negotiations on Jerusalem and continuation of the settlement and building of the separation wall.

If the Arabs agreed to drop the right of return Israel would ask for dropping more Palestinian rights and find legal formulas to market them, the Hamas leader underlined.

Shifting to another issue, Hamdan highlighted that his Movement was ready to deal positively with the national dialog talks but would not bow to foreign conditions, adding that Hamas had its alternatives in the event the dialog failed to end the siege on Gaza.

Larsen: Hezbollah Must be Disarmed

Larsen: Hezbollah Must be Disarmed
Readers Number : 10

07/05/2009 UN special envoy to implement UNSCR 1559 Terej Roed Larsen said that appointing two Ambassadors between Beirut and Damscus and the opening of two embassies in both countries were positive steps towards delineating the border between Lebanon and Syria.

Larsen who presented his latest report to the Security Council in New York said that Israel was breaching resolution 1559 by carrying out overflights in Lebanese airspace. He pointed that there was no progress on the issue of disarming Hezbollah which possesses large quantities of weapons to a terrifying degree. Larsen added that Hezbollah was the only party that possesses weapons and that it should be disarmed.

FOXMAN: SWINE FLU RESPONSIBLE FOR GROWTH IN ANTI SEMITISM

Link

May 6, 2009 at 4:24 pm

(ADL Hatemongering, Ignorance, Israel, zionist harassment)

A cartoon published in the Qatari newspaper, Al-Watan, on April 27, 2009. The title reads: “The World Health Organization is Warning from a World Epidemic – the Swine Flu”.

The Muslim and Arab media are manipulating the swine flu epidemic to demonize Israel and its leaders, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) charged on Monday.

An Al Watan cartoon cited by the ADL had a caption saying: “The World Health Organization is warning about a world-wide epidemic - the swine flu,” and showed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu with a pig snout.

“One theme of the anti-Israel cartoons related to the swine flu is ironically picturing Israeli leaders with faces of pigs, reflecting the disdain for the pig in Islamic culture,” the ADL said in a press release issued Monday.

The rest of this jibberish from the Jerusalem Post can be read HERE

CARING IS NOW ILLEGAL IN ISRAEL

link

May 7, 2009 at 6:26 am (Activism, Home Demolitions, Human Rights, Israel, Occupied West Bank, Peace)

(Ben Heine © Cartoons)
Israeli activist to be jailed for caring

By Neve Gordon

Ezra Nawi was ridiculed and arrested for trying to protect people’s homes. Only international attention can help him now

Without international intervention, Israeli human rights activist Ezra Nawi will most likely be sent to jail.

Nawi is not a typical rights activist. A member of Ta’ayush Arab-Jewish Partnership he is a Jewish Israeli of Iraqi descent who speaks fluent Arabic. He is a gay man in his fifties and a plumber by trade. Perhaps because he himself comes from the margins, he empathises with others who have been marginalised – often violently.

His “crime” was trying to stop a military bulldozer from destroying the homes of Palestinian Bedouins from Um El Hir in the South Hebron region. These Palestinians have been under Israeli occupation for almost 42 years; they still live without electricity, running water and other basic services and are continuously harassed by Jewish settlers and the military – two groups that have united to expropriate Palestinian land and that clearly have received the government’s blessing to do so.

As chance would have it, the demolition and the resistance to it were captured on film and broadcast on Israel’s Channel 1. The three-minute film (above) – a must see – shows Nawi, the man dressed in a green jacket, not only courageously protesting against the demolition but, after the bulldozer destroys the buildings, also telling the border policemen what he thinks of their actions. Sitting handcuffed in a military vehicle following his arrest, he exclaims: “Yes, I was also a soldier, but I did not demolish houses … The only thing that will be left here is hatred.”

The film then shows the police laughing at Nawi. But in dealing with his audacity, they were not content with mere ridicule and decided also to accuse him of assaulting a policeman. Notwithstanding the very clear evidence (captured on film), an Israeli court recently found Nawi guilty of assault in connection with the incident, which happened in 2007, and this coming July he will be sent to prison. Unless, perhaps, there is a public outcry.

Nawi’s case is not only about Nawi. It is also about Israel and Israeli society, if only because one can learn a great deal about a country from the way it treats its human rights and pro-democracy activists.

Most people are not really surprised when they read that human rights activists are routinely arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned and harassed in Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and several other Middle Eastern countries. Indeed, it has become common knowledge that the authoritarian nature of these regimes renders it dangerous for their citizens to actively fight for human rights.

In this sense, Israel is different from most of its neighbours. Unlike their counterparts in Egypt and Syria, Israeli rights activists, particularly Jewish ones, have been able to criticise the policies of their rights-abusive government without fear of incarceration. Up until now, the undemocratic tendencies of Israeli society manifested themselves, for the most part, in the state’s relation to its Palestinian citizens, the occupied Palestinian inhabitants and a small group of Jewish conscientious objectors.

People might assume that Nawi’s impending imprisonment as well as other alarming developments (like the recent arrest of New Profile and Target 21 activists, who are suspected of abetting draft-dodgers) are due to the establishment of an extreme rightwing government in Israel. If truth be told, however, the rise of the extreme right merely reflects the growing presence of proto-fascist elements in Israeli society, elements that have been gaining ground and legitimacy for many years now.

Nawi’s case, for what it symbolises on both an individual and societal level, encapsulates the current reality in Israel. His friends have launched a campaign, and are asking people to write letters to Israeli embassies around the world. At this point, only international attention and intervention can make a difference.
Source

The Two-State Solution: the Pacifier Slogan

The Two-State Solution: the Pacifier Slogan

'Two-state solution has different meanings for different parties.'

By Hasan Afif El-Hasan

The 'two-state solution' phrase was first coined in the 1947 UN General Assembly Resolution 181 to create two independent states in historical Palestine.

Israel has been created and recognized within undefined borders and the phrase today implies whether and how to create the second state. The “two-state” solution has different meanings for the different parties involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

For the Palestinians, it means a sovereign state in all the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem and the refugees right of return to their homes in Israel proper; for the Israelis, it means a slightly different version of the status quo in the occupied lands, a self-rule over disconnected enclaves or “Bantustans” that have the façade of a state with a president, ministers, legislative council, Judiciary, ambassadors and security forces that control the population and guarantee Israel’s security, but no control over Jerusalem, the borders, water resources, shore and airspace. The recognized state of Israel on 78 percent of Palestine has not fulfilled the ambitions of the Zionists who have been striving to have all of Palestine. The Israeli peace activist Jeff Halper wrote on November 28, 2007 that Israel plans to create a Palestinian state that consists of “tiny Bantustan on four or five cantons, all encircled by Israeli settlements. Israeli control of the entire land, whether for religious, national or security reasons, is a given”. And for the US, the “two-state” solution has been used mainly as a public relations slogan to manage the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and pacify the Palestinians and their supporters.

On March 12, 2002, while the US was massing troops and war machines in the Arab Gulf states preparing for the invasion of Iraq, a member of the Arab League; and the Israeli military was embarking on far reaching measures against the Palestinians under occupation including assassinations, detentions and demolitions, the US submitted the so called “the Bush vision of two-state solution” proposal to the UN Security Council. All Council members (Syria abstained) adopted Resolution 1397 that affirmed Bush vision. The Resolution that was welcomed by most Arab states especially Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Morocco also called for immediate cessation of all acts of violence.

The so called “Bush vision” was adopted by the policy makers of the “Quartet”, a formulation that had been created by the US, Russia, the EU and the UN to help reach a peaceful resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Quartet launched a “Roadmap” plan to end the hostilities and establish a new basis for communications between the Israelis and the Palestinians based on the US “Two-State” vision. The Roadmap provides a plan for the progression toward peace in three phases on the basis of performance, and like Oslo agreements, it deferred the permanent status issues to the final phase.

The government of Israel noted that the Roadmap would be implemented subject to fourteen political and security reservations including that neither the Saudi initiative nor the Arab initiative serve as a basis for the political process and the Palestinians should publicly declare their “renunciation of the right of return” and accept Israel’s right “to exist as a Jewish state”. Israel has practically rejected the Roadmap basic premises with its unacceptable caveats and prerequisites. But Bush Administration promised to take into account Israel’s reservations at the implementation stage. While the US was supporting and defending Israel’s policies that rendered the Palestinian version of the “two-state solution” impossible to implement, the “two-state solution” became mainly a slogan phrase used by President Bush and his Secretary of State to pacify the Palestinians and the US Arab allies.

A month after the adoption of the UN Security Council 1397 Resolution, the Arab League summit in Beirut adopted a Saudi Arabian proposal that has been referred to as the “pan-Arab peace initiative”. It calls on Israel to withdraw to the 4th of June 1967 lines, the establishment of an independent sovereign Palestinian state and a just resolution of refugee problem, in exchange for full recognition and blanket normalization with Israel by all Arab states. The summit was followed by then Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah address to the Israeli people reminiscent of President Sadat address on his historic visit to the Knesset.

The Arab initiative that was only a common statement of principle for a political settlement and the appeal by the Saudi leader were meant to send a message mostly to the US that the Arab regimes were for peace and true partners in the campaign against extremism. But the Israeli government under Sharon roundly dismissed the initiative and the Saudi public statement. Israel spurned the opportunity to seriously discuss the ideas put forth by the Arab leaders, and instead, activated its superior military power against the Palestinian insurgency (Second Intifada) by imposing collective punishment and inflicting daily injuries on innocent Palestinians.

By rejecting the Roadmap and the pan-Arab peace initiative, Israel was the real rejectionist in the conflict. Faith of the Palestinians in Israel’s intentions to accept a just “two-state solution” by peaceful means was eroded. Professor Ze’ev Maoz, a critic of Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians wrote in 2006 that “Israel’s history of peacemaking has been largely reactive, risk avoidance,… that stands in contrast to its proactive and trigger happy strategic doctrine”. Since the creation of Israel, its leaders assert that all Palestine belongs exclusively to the Jews; and a two-state solution where the indigenous Palestinians would have a sovereign state in the center of their land will be a constant threat to the state of Israel.

David Ben-Gurion summarized Israel’s position regarding peace with the Arabs in 1949 when, according to the historian Benny Morris, Ben-Gurion told his minister of foreign affairs, Moshe Sharett that “Israel will not discuss a peace involving the concession of any piece of territory”. In his book, “An Israeli in Palestine”, Professor Jeff Halper writes that many Arab leaders including Husni Zaim of Syria, King Abdullah the First of Jordan, Adib Shishakli of Syria, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Abdel Hakim Amer of Egypt, Anwar Sadat of Egypt and West Bank Palestinian leaders offered to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but the Israeli leaders steadfastly refused to reciprocate. Another Israeli historian, Avi Shlaim wrote in his 2001 book that there was “evidence of Arab peace feelers and Arab readiness to negotiate with Israel from September 1948 on”.

Immediately after the 1967 war, King Hussein of Jordan was willing to enter into peace talk only if Israel withdraws from the occupied lands. And the Palestinians of the West Bank were ready to discuss peace if that meant an independent Palestinian state. Israel’s response to King Hussein and the West Bank Palestinians was annexation of East Jerusalem and a program for confiscating Palestinian lands and building settlements.

President Sadat proposed in 1971 to the UN Jarring Commission, Egypt’s willingness to enter into a peace agreement with Israel, but Prime Minister Golda Meir dismissed Sadat overture, thus forcing Egypt to wage the 1973 war to liberate Sinai. And Sadat attempted to resolve the Palestinian issue in 1978, but Israel refused to consider offering anything for the Palestinians more than limited autonomy.

In their 1988 declaration of independence, the PLO leadership recognized Israel within the Green Line, but Israel refused the gesture. And in the 1993 Oslo peace agreements, the PLO submitted in writing their recognition of Israel as a legitimate state, but Rabin was only willing to recognize the PLO as a negotiation partner.

President Clinton’s 2000 permanent status initiative for solving the conflict curtailed the territorial integrity and sovereignty of a proposed Palestinian state, and granted Israel’s security the highest priority, but the initiative drew criticism from members of Israel’s military and the Knesset. Senior Israeli military columnist Ze’ev Schiff wrote in Haaretz that “the Chief of General Staff Shaul Mofaz had said the US proposals posed a threat to the state”. Makor Rishon daily newspaper quoted the Israeli Knesset Member Rehavam Ze’evi on December 29, 2000 asking Prime Minister Ehud Barak to reject President Clinton initiative because “there is a law in Israel which rules that anyone acting to transfer territory from the state to the enemy is to be deemed a traitor, which is punishable by death”.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated on many occasions his support to the two-state solution, but under his watch the newly built settler units in the West Bank increased by 69 percent in 2008 compared to 2007, and the settler population in the West Bank grew by 25,000. The figures do not include the more than 250,000 settlers living in East Jerusalem, according to Peace Now group. Olmert accepted the 2007 Annapolis conference decision to enter into negotiations with the Palestinians for reaching the two-state solution by the end of 2008. But the two-state solution offer made by Olmert after 12 months of negotiations was disconnected enclaves in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. His military carried out the barbarous massacres of the starved and besieged refugees in Gaza.

Professor Halper attributes the Israelis’ intransigence prior to 1967 war to their success in negotiating the armistice agreements that left Israel in a politically, territorially and militarily superior position. Ben Gurion was quoted telling a visiting American journalist saying in 1949, “I am not in a hurry and I can wait ten years”. If Israel was confident after the 1948 war and the signing of the armistice agreements, it should be even more confident and less concerned about the Arab military threat after the 1967 war, the signing of the Egyptian and Jordanian peace treaties, the signing of the Oslo agreements and the end of the Iraqi belligerent regime.

President Barack Obama has reaffirmed the US commitment to the two-state solution, but on the matters that count, he has continued the Bush administration failing policies. He promised to listen but his envoy, George Mitchell, did not take the time to visit and listen to the latest victims of the Israeli aggression on Gaza even after three tours to the region. Neither Obama nor Mitchell condemned the attacks on Gaza that resulted in the death of 1,300 Palestinians including women and children. Obama is following Bush administration’s policy of dividing the Palestinians into moderates and extremists and talking only to those Bush called moderates. President Obama caved to the pro-Israel lobby in Washington by withdrawing the nomination of his choice as head of the NSC, Charles Freeman, because he does not support the Israeli right wing extremists’ agenda. The US under Obama continues to use the “two-state” solution phrase only as a pacifier slogan for the Palestinians and their supporters.

The irony is that, despite the fact that it was Israel that destroyed the Palestinian society, colonized and confiscated their land then refused to consider the Palestinians and Arab peace overtures, the Israeli governments and their supporters in the US succeeded over the years in presenting the Arabs and the Palestinians as intractable enemies, warmongers, hell-bent on Israel’s destruction.

-Born in Nablus, Palestine, Hasan Afif El-Hasan, Ph.D, is a political analyst. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

THE INTERNET IS THE GREATEST THREAT FACING AMERICA TODAY

Link

May 7, 2009 at 10:07 am (Conspiracy Theories, Ignorance, Internet, Internet Security, Videos)

Jay Rockefeller: Internet should have never existed….. all because of ’some kid in Latvia’.

Source

Shrinking space - Urban contraction and rural fragmentation in the Bethlehem governorate

Link

OCHA OPT special focus: Shrinking space - Urban contraction and rural fragmentation in the Bethlehem governorate

Source: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

Date: 06 May 2009

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/MUMA-7RT93Z?OpenDocument&rc=3&emid=ACOS-635PFR
Key Findings:

- Only 13% of Bethlehem land is available for Palestinian use out of 660 sq. kilometers and much of it is fragmented.

- The historic, religious, economic and cultural connection between Bethlehem and East Jerusalem has been weakened by Israeli measures, in particular, the Barrier and the closure.

- 66% of the Bethlehem governorate is designated Area C, where Israel retains security control and jurisdiction over building and planning.

- The Barrier route in the Bethlehem governorate reaches 10 km into the West Bank. If completed, it will cut off from the urban centre, approximately 64 sq. km. of some of the most fertile cultivated land in the governorate as well as 21,000 Palestinians residing in villages west of the planned route.

- There are approximately 175,000 Palestinians living in the Bethlehem governorate. Since 1967, some 86,000 Israelis have been settled in the Bethlehem governorate and they live in 19 settlements and 16 settlement outposts.

The Way forward:

Steps can be taken to prevent further deterioration and restore some of the lost space to the governorate.

These include:

- Halting construction of the Barrier inside the West Bank,

- Opening closed military areas and nature reserves for sustainable Palestinian development,

- Freezing settlement construction, including related actions like 'state land' declarations

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report is part of a series by OCHA examining the impact of Israeli measures, such as the Barrier, settlements and closures, on Palestinians in the West Bank.(1) It will focus on the Bethlehem governorate, examining both the contraction of its central-urban core and the fragmentation of its eastern and western parts.

The Bethlehem governorate comprises approximately 660 km(2). After four decades of Israeli occupation only approximately 13 percent of the Bethlehem governorate's land is available for Palestinian use, much of it fragmented. Furthermore, access to East Jerusalem has been severely reduced. Israeli measures have led to this reduction in Palestinian access and space. These measures include the continued expansion of Israeli settlements and settlement outposts, construction of the Barrier, and the zoning of the majority of the Bethlehem governorate as Area C, where Israel retains security control and jurisdiction over planning and construction. The physical and administrative restrictions allocate most of Bethlehem's remaining land reserves for Israeli military and settler use, effectively reducing the space available to the Palestinian inhabitants of Bethlehem.

As a result, Bethlehem's potential for residential and industrial expansion and development has been reduced as well as its access to natural resources. The traditional mainstays of the Bethlehem governorate economy, such as work in Israel, tourism, agriculture, herding and the private sector have been undermined. Continuation of these Israeli measures compromises the future economic and social development of the Bethlehem governorate.

Major factors behind this reality include the following:

1. Annexation of approximately 10 km2 to Jerusalem:

In 1967, the Israeli government annexed approximately 10 km2 of the northern Bethlehem governorate to Israel, including these lands within the newly expanded Jerusalem municipal boundary. This annexation is not recognized by the international community.

2. Construction of Israeli settlements and related infrastructure:

Israeli settlements were constructed in the section of Bethlehem annexed into Jerusalem (Har Homa, parts of Gilo) and more are planned.2 Additional settlements were constructed in the remaining parts of the governorate, including the Gush Etzion bloc in the west,(3) Teqoa, Noqedim, Ma'ale Amos in the east, and Mizpe Shalem in the Dead Sea area. Today, there are approximately 86,000 Israelis living in 19 settlements in the Bethlehem governorate and in 16 settlement outposts.(4) The Palestinian population constitutes approximately 175,000 persons.(5)

3. Restrictions on entry into East Jerusalem:

Beginning in the 1990's, new Israeli measures further fragmented the Bethlehem governorate and constrained the movement of its Palestinian inhabitants. Since the 1993 imposition of a general closure on the West Bank, residents of Bethlehem require Israeli-issued permits to enter East Jerusalem and Israel. These permits are valid for limited periods and do not allow the passage of vehicles. The application process has become more restrictive since the beginning of the second intifada in 2000.

4. Construction of the Bethlehem bypass road:

During the 1990's, the Israeli government altered the existing Jerusalem-Bethlehem-Hebron transport axis, Road 60, to facilitate Israeli settler movement. The new construction consists of a major bypass road, two tunnels and a bridge. Part of the constructed Barrier route runs along the new Road 60.The tunnels checkpoint, subsequently constructed on this road, controls entry into Jerusalem from the south-western West Bank.

5. Designation of 66% of the Bethlehem governorate as Area C:

Under the Oslo Accords, the West Bank was demarcated into three administrative zones A, B and C.(6) Approximately 66 percent of the Bethlehem governorate was designated Area C, where Israel retains security control and jurisdiction over planning and construction. Until today, permits for Palestinian construction are rarely granted. Area C includes large tracts of land in the eastern Bethlehem governorate, which have been designated as military areas/fire zones and nature reserves where Palestinian entry and usage is restricted or forbidden. These administrative restrictions effectively limit Bethlehem's residential and industrial expansion to the east and south-east. In addition, the majority of the obstacles to Palestinian movement, roadblocks, earth-mounds, etc., put in place by the IDF since September 2000, are also located in Area C.

6. Construction of the Barrier in 2002:

In summer 2002, following a campaign of suicide bombings by Palestinian militants, the Government of Israel approved construction of a Barrier with the stated purpose of preventing such attacks. The Barrier has compounded the territorial restrictions in the northern and western parts of Bethlehem. The completed section of the Barrier in the north, not only seals the separation of Bethlehem from East Jerusalem, but prevents the urban growth of Bethlehem northwards. The western section of the Barrier, if completed, will further devastate the governorate. Approximately 64 km2, including some of the most fertile land in the governorate and nine Palestinian communities with approximately 21,000 residents, will be isolated; the latter will face reduced access to Bethlehem City, the major services centre for health, education, markets and trade.

Full_Repor (pdf* format - 1.9 Mbytes)

posted by annie at 6:25 AM