Israel's best-friend.......... in the Netherlands
Israel's implant........ in the Netherlands Islam came to us about 1400 years ago and some were happy with it and other less happy.. But , it is until 60 years ago , only , that somebody started calling Islam : "intolerant" While Islam brought and taught tolerance to people and to places that never have experienced it . Only since the birth of Israel and since the establishment of Zionism on the world scene , did we hear intolerance and Islam in one sentence. How come Indonesia never used the word "intolerant " ?? neither did Spain !! nor Malaysia..... nor even the Christians of the Middle-East.( my grand-parents) And when the whole Muslim world (except Turkey) was ruled by Christian Nations and Christian Kingdoms......... nobody said "intolerant " to Islam nor to Muslims . How come that it is mostly the friends of Israel who use this adjective .....?? Raja Chemayel a tolerant-pheonician on the river Amstel.... |
Posted by Tlaxcala at 11:01 PM
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
 Those who invested again in the so-called peace process apparently believed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was ready for historic decisions, and that US President Barack Obama's support for the talks represented a unique and serious opportunity. Netanyahu allowed Israel's mostly fictitious 10-month "settlement freeze" to expire on September 26, setting off a desperate scramble among peace process sponsors to find a formula to "save the peace talks" - as if simply having such talks is the ultimate prize. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, US envoy George Mitchell and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton all rushed in not with the goal of stopping Israel's criminal settlement expansion but to find a formula for Israel to continue building settlements while pretending it is not. This allows Israel to feed its insatiable appetite for Palestinian land undisturbed, and provides cover for Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas to continue the talks that virtually all Palestinians oppose. As Netanyahu showed he was true to his word and would not extend the "freeze", the Americans became desperate. The Obama administration apparently offered Israel unprecedented promises and guarantees in exchange for virtually nothing. The Americans reinforced their promises to support Israel in its adamant opposition to guaranteeing Palestinians rights; supported Israel's desire to occupy and effectively annex the Jordan Valley indefinitely even after a Palestinian "state" is declared; and more military go?dies, money and diplomatic cover. Obama's offer included a series of guarantees to prevent the smuggling of weapons and missiles into a Palestinian state and a comprehensive regional defence pact, for protection from Iran, to follow the establishment of this state. All Israel would have to do is extend the freeze by just 60 days, with a guarantee that this would be the last time ever that the Americans would ask Israel to stop settlements. After that, Israel could presumably build without even the pretense of American opposition. It is as if Obama delivered a second Balfour Declaration. The White House denied that the said offers were included in a letter from Obama to Netanyahu, but there were no denials that the offers were made. Apparently the alleged letter, or the draft that was meant to be presented to Netanyahu to agree, was leaked to pro-Israel activist David Makovsky by one of its two authors, Dennis Ross, Obama's chief adviser on the Middle East and a lifetime operative of the Israeli lobby, and Israeli chief negotiator Yitzhak Molcho, as reported by Barak Ravid in Israeli Haare?z newspaper (September 30). Makovsky published the article on the website of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, most likely to embarrass Netanyahu for rejecting so much for so little. The offered terms were described as unprecedented and so critical to Israel's strategic security needs that Netanyahu himself has been demanding them for years. Other reports spoke of additional offers, such as the recognition of Israel as a state for the "Jewish nation", the abolition of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and speedy normalisation by Arab states.
Washington's response to Netanyahu's disruptiveness is truly shocking. Why should he, once faced with such appeasement, ever mind Washington's advice? Not only is Israel never punished, but every time it impertinently disobeys its American sponsors, it gets generously rewarded. The offers, even if they are a fraction of what is reported, are so dangerous for the shaky Middle East situation that their harm far outweighs the meagre benefit they were set to achieve. It is outrageous for Palestinian national rights to be offered away so cheaply to apparently serve such petty causes as improving Obama's Democratic Party's chances in the upcoming American elections. Because there is so little reality in the discussion, let us remind ourselves of what is really happening. Even under the just expired "freeze", building never stopped. Villagers from Beit Nattif, near Hebron in the West Bank, told the BBC that during the freeze they witnessed new construction rising every day. "The story can be called many things but 'freeze' is certainly not one of them," Dror Etkes, a noted settlement monitor, wrote in Haaretz on September 28. Quoting official Israeli government statistics in detail, Etkes calculated that what actually occurred was "in the best case scenario, not more than a negligible decrease in the number of housing units that were built in settlements". Roughly 2,500 units had been under construction during the "freeze", representing a drop of a mere 16 per cent of the comparable previous period. Etkes added: "The truth is that the settlers know better than anyone else that not only did construction in settlements continue over the last 10 months, and vigorously, but also that a relatively large part of the houses were built on settlements that lie east of the separation fence [Israel's illegal West Bank apartheid wall], such as Bracha, Itamar, Eli, Shilo, Maaleh Mikhmas, Maon, Carmel, Beit Haggai, Kiryat Arba, Mitzpeh Yeriho and others." Most certainly, the PA leadership was aware of this too. But it was convenient for it to close its eyes to this reality and pretend reality was something different, just like everyone else involved in the peace process charade. Israel may or may not now extend the freeze, but even if it does, it will be as fake as the earlier one, and a total victory for its intransigence. One can expect Washington to continue its directionless, unwise and unrealistic policies. The antics involved in the "peace process" would be comical if the consequences were not so dangerous and tragic. As I write, Mitchell continues to tour the region searching for the magic wand. If not found, there is always the fallback position: back to indirect talks. That is not a silly joke. He said that both sides asked him to continue with his efforts shuttling between them. The "historic" PLO decision last Saturday was not to end the talks, now that settlement building will continue unchecked. It was only to refrain from engaging in "direct talks" if settlement building resumed. Indirect talks are therefore exc?uded from the ban. Actually what is happening on the ground is more than direct talks, with close security cooperation between Israel and the PA at its best. Do the PA security forces not protect the settlers from their helpless Palestinian victims? Did the PA forces intervene to prevent the settlers from burning mosques and holy Korans, as they did in their latest raid, two days ago, on the Mosque of Prophets in the village of Beit Fajjar, south of Bethlehem? But that is not why the PA forces were created for to start with,? Dayton made clear repeatedly. They are created to curb Palestinian "terror" against the occupation and the colonisation of their land, of which the building of Jewish settlements is an integral part. Abbas himself boasted proudly in the US how his security forces instantly tracked down and arrested the Palestinians who attacked settlers in the Hebron area a month ago. I have argued repeatedly - and at the risk of sounding immodest, with unfailing accuracy - that such policies promise no hope. The whole approach is futile, catastrophic and without principle.
6 October 2010 River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
 [ 07/10/2010 - 10:52 AM ]
ISTANBUL, (PIC)-- Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country will not remain quiet over Israeli injustice or turn its back on Gaza and its children.
This came during the opening of the 14th International Business Forum staged by MUSIAD, the Independent Industrialists & Businessmen's Association on Wednesday in Istanbul.
The event was attended by more than 25 ministers from different countries, 5,000 businessmen from 65 countries, 150,000 visitors, and 550 exhibitors from Turkey and other countries.
Erdogan said his country has been open to all cultures, beliefs, and Islamic investments since Mehmed took control in 1453. He noted that Turkey is becoming one of the world’s best economies.
On his part, MUSIAD president Omer Cihat Vardan called on Islamic countries to cooperate to increase trade between themselves to boost the rate of development between each other and become independent of other countries.
The association chose the slogan this year “The importance of technology in developing Islamic countries” in an effort to urge Islamic nations to better economies by placing more focus on the technology industry.
“Money does not buy technology. We must have it so as not to be slaves to others,” said Vardan.
MUSIAD is an Istanbul-based non-profit organization that aims to revitalize economic and trade cooperation between the 57 Islamic countries. It currently has more than 3,500 members, with more than 15,000 companies, 30 branches in Turkey, and a number of liaison offices in 40 countries.
"... The Obama administration protested Turkey's military cooperation with Iran after it was reported that the Chinese fighter planes were sent to Turkey via Pakistan and Iran.
The developing ties among Turkey, Iran and China are also reflected in weapons deals, with Iran buying from China mainly missile technology.
The C-802 antiship missile fired by Hezbollah in the Second Lebanon War at the Israel Navy's Hanit missile boat was manufactured in Iran with Chinese technology.
China has also developed a surface-to-surface rocket-launching system together with Turkey. China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is due to visit Ankara this month and to sign several bilateral cooperation agreements.
Turkey and China are also involved in projects to build oil pipelines from Iran...."
07/10/2010 Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit described Iran as an influential power in the Muslim world, saying Cairo seeks improved relations with Tehran.
"Turkey and Iran both are influential powers in the Arab world, and since Egypt is the center of Arab World's activities, it strives to keep the best of relations with these two countries," Aboul Gheit said on Thursday.
Some Egyptians have escaped to Iran and we ask the Iranian government to return these people to Egypt or expel them from Iran to improve understanding between Tehran and Cairo, Aboul Gheit was quoted by Fars news agency as saying.
Egypt and Iran have agreed to resume direct flights between their capitals for the first time after three decades. The agreement provides for 28 flights between Cairo and Tehran per week, but does not specify when the flights will begin.
Tehran and Cairo broke off diplomatic relations in the wake of Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979 after then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat granted refuge to the deposed Shah of Iran, Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi.
 
After 30-year pro-USrael stand – Egypt is making moves towards economic rapprochement and cooperation with the Islamic Republic.
On October 5, 2010, an Iranian delegation was received by the Minister of Aviation Ahmad Shafique who will discuss possibilities of cooperation between private aviation companies in both countries.
The two countries are exchanging delegations to discuss means to take business and economic ties forward. An Iranian delegation headed by the vice Iranian president and head of the tourism association Hamid Baghaei arrived in Egypt yesterday to talk cooperation.
The close Islamic bonds between people of Iran and Egypt go back for centuries. The Fatimid Shia Dynasty ruled Egypt from 969-1171 CE. They built the Cairo city and the famous Al-Azhar University.
In the early stages of the Islamic Revolution, Dr. Ali Shari’ati translated several of Sayyid Qutb’as writings from Arabic to Persian and were used as enlightening Islamic resistance spirit among the young Iranian revolutionaries. This earned Dr. Ali Shariati the nickname “Shia Sayyid Qutb”.
Dr. Zahra Rahnavard (wife of the defeated Iranian Presidential candidate Mir Mousavi) in 1987 interview she gave to famous Egyptian journalist Safynaz Kazem – had asked: “Do you have the likes of Sayid Qutb still around?”
King Reza Shah Pahlavi (1919-1980) married Egyptian princess Fawzia Fuad (born 1921) in 1941- making her the first Queen of Persia. They were divorced in 1948.
During the 1980s, Egypt lead anti-Islamic Revolution in the Arab world. Egypt also supported Saddam Hussein during his 8-year war against the Islamic Republic. When Anwar Sadat (1918-1981) was assassinated by Khlaid al-Istambuli for recognizing the illegal Zionist state – Tehran honored Khlaid al-Istambuli by naming a Tehran street after him.
 07/10/2010 The Israeli intelligence Website “Debkafile” quoted “military and intelligence sources” as saying that PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Ehud Barak have decided to release the minutes of the deliberations on an air blitz against Damascus - held in Jerusalem before and during the 1973 war – “as a strong warning to Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“Then, a decision to take out Damascus to halt the Syrian offensive was overruled. This time could be different: Bashar Assad regime's own centers of power could be at risk if Syria and Hizballah go through with their plan to overpower Beirut and topple Saad Hariri's sovereign government,” the sources told Debkafile.
The Website said that in the hours leading up to Oct. 6, 1973, Lt. Gen. David Elazar told PM Golda Meir that the Israeli forces can wipe out the entire Syrian air force by noon that day, and that they need another 30 hours to destroy Syrian missiles.
“Then, if they go on the offensive at 5 pm., our air force will be free to strike the Syrian army. To me, this is operational option is attractive. Three days later, on Oct. 9, catastrophe stared Israel in the face: The IDF was in a bad way and taking casualties in the realm of hundreds dead and thousands injured; their defense lines in Sinai and the Golan had fallen and there was nothing in the way of the Syrian army going all the way to the Sea of Galilee and Tiberias.
In a closed meeting with Golda Meir, the iconic defense minister Moshe Dayan asked for permission to bomb Damascus. "Inside the city?" she asked. "Inside the city and its environs," he replied. "We have to break the Syrians," Dayan explained that he proposed to strike the Syrian General Command and infrastructure in Damascus. "We've done enough going around the fields (a reference to targets outside the Syrian capital). There are no more key targets left. Damascus is the only one. We can't promise the population won't be hurt,” Debkafile reported. It added that “Golda's permission was withheld.”
The Israeli military and intelligence sources told Debkafile that the decision to release the documents and the section relating to Syria was taken in Jerusalem “after the Obama administration failed to prevent the two-day state visit to Lebanon by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad taking place on Oct. 13.”
According to the Israeli site, the message “goes beyond uncovering secret operational and intelligence decision-making and is unusually wide-ranging.”
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
Thanassis Cambanis in the NYTimes: "...Hezbollah officials and supporters said they were now sending a pointed message to Israel through their efforts to rebuild, repopulate and rearm the south.
“We are not sleeping,” said Ali Fayyad, a Hezbollah official and member of Parliament. “We are working.” He receives visitors every weekend in a family home in Taibe, the site of a deadly tank battle in 2006..... It seems to be calculating either that an aggressive military posture might deter another war, as its own officials and Lebanese analysts say, or that a conflict, should it come, would on balance fortify its domestic political standing... There are other reasons that Hezbollah officials say they are feeling emboldened. Hezbollah’s patrons in Iran appear to have regained control after a year of internal challenges since the disputed June 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Officials say Hezbollah proved to its constituents that it could quickly rebuild from the last war, completing a lavish reconstruction project with hundreds of millions of dollars in financing from Iran and donors in the Persian Gulf. Polished 10-story apartment blocks, completed this year, line the center of Haret Hreik, the Beirut suburb almost uniformly reduced to rubble because it housed many of Hezbollah’s top institutions and leaders. New asphalt roads, designed and paid for by Iran, connect the interior and border villages of southern Lebanon — all Hezbollah areas — to the main coastal highway. And perhaps most importantly, Lebanese analysts said, Hezbollah’s role in the government has paved the way for tighter cooperation with Lebanese intelligence units, and Lebanese officials have reportedly arrested more than 100 people suspected of being Israeli spies in the past two years. The renaissance in southern Lebanon is on full display in Aita al Shaab. Almost destroyed in 2006, it has been ostentatiously rebuilt, and its population has increased by about 30 percent from its prewar level, to 12,000 inhabitants. Party supporters have constructed dozens of enormous houses along the strategic hills that face the Israeli border, in areas that used to be mostly farmland. The houses, Hezbollah officials say, will complicate a future Israeli advance and could give Hezbollah fighters cover during ground combat. United Nations peacekeepers and the Lebanese Army now patrol the hilly, wooded border, and under the terms of the United Nations resolution that ended the war, Hezbollah was supposed to demilitarize the area between the Israeli border and the Litani River, a distance of about 18 miles....... Hezbollah appears to have done just the opposite. Its operatives roam strategic towns, interrogating foreigners and outsiders. New residents have been recruited to the border, and Hezbollah officials say they have recruited scores of new fighters, by their own estimates either doubling or tripling their ranks.... Several independent Lebanese military analysts, who do not support Hezbollah, say they have seen evidence that Hezbollah has armed, trained and expanded its forces substantially enough to pose a major challenge to an invading Israeli force.... In addition to fortifying its ranks and replenishing its missile capacity, he said in an interview, Hezbollah has adopted a self-described policy of “strategic ambiguity” about whether it has acquired anti-aircraft capacity, advanced Scud missiles or other military equipment that could change the balance of forces with Israel. Elaborating on themes that Hezbollah’s leader has repeatedly outlined in speeches, Mr. Komati said that the group wanted to maintain a deterrent balance with Israel. Hezbollah, he added, does not want to start the next war, only to burnish its capacity to retaliate.“Today we are living the balance of fear,” Mr. Komati said. “This balance blocks war.”... Along the border, a mixture of fatalism and bravado prevails. Just up the hill from the Israeli hamlets of Avivim and Yir’on, an Iranian flag flutters on the ledge of the newly opened Iran Park in Marun al Ras, the Lebanese border village where Israel fought one of its first and most bruising battles in 2006.A photograph of Iran’s president, Mr. Ahmadinejad, greets visitors to the terraced playgrounds and picnic gazebos...." Cambanis has done good reporting in the past, but there are major errors in today's piece on Hizbullah.
" According to Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s leader, Hezbollah has increased its missile stocks to 40,000..." I mean, this is a major mistake because Nasrallah is known to repeatedly make the point in many speeches, that he would never ever confirm or deny a certain figure regarding the missile capability of Hizbullah. So Nasrallah certainly never gave any figures and I wonder how can one make such an allegation when the record is straight here.
And then this: "Its operatives roam strategic towns..." I like the word "operatives."
Who are those operatives?
Those operatives are in fact residents of the those villages themselves. Western media use the same language about Hizbullah in South Lebanon that they had used before about the PLO forgetting that Hizbullah members and fighters are part of the population landscape and not some "alien" force (of course, i never regard it PLO in Lebanon as an alien force and gave them the right to roam and operate as they wished notwithstanding my fierce opposition to the thuggery and criminality that characterized the behavior of some PLO organizations, namely As-Sa`iqah, Fath, Arab Liberation Front, etc).
To be fair the point is made by someone later in the article.
And then this: "Several independent Lebanese military analysts, who do not support Hezbollah, say they have seen evidence that Hezbollah has armed, trained and expanded..."
Anyone who says that they have seen "evidence" are lying; Hizbullah is way too secretive to show the "evidence." And this one is pure invention or fabrication: "Now, however, Hezbollah leaders have declared that they will find it difficult to stand aside if Israel or the United States bombs Iran’s nuclear facilities." This is outright false and some party leaders have in fat said that they would not be party to such a conflict.
MP Zaboun slams PA's unconcern over settlers' attacks on W. Bank mosques
[ 07/10/2010 - 10:28 AM ]
BETHLEHEM, (PIC)-- Hamas lawmaker Anwar Al-Zaboun strongly denounced the arson attack, which was waged by Israeli settlers on Al-Anbiya mosque in Beit Fajar town, south of Bethlehem city, last Sunday and criticized the Palestinian Authority (PA) for its passivity towards such a crime.
"Attacking houses of God is an assault on every Muslim. This is the Zionist occupation's approach and policy for years, but unfortunately it is active in these days in conjunction with the frivolous negotiations and what is called the security coordination [between the PA and Israel]," Zaboun said in a press statement to the Palestinian information center (PIC).
"The occupation does not have on its agenda something called negotiations leading to solutions. It is a matter of wasting time. [The Israeli negotiator] reflects what Sharon once said, 'I will keep negotiating Palestinians for hundred years and then they will get nothing,'" the Hamas lawmaker stated.
"If this attack (the settlers' attack on Al-Anbiya mosque) was waged by Palestinians on a Jewish synagogue in the occupied territories, I wonder what the position of the Zionist negotiator would be then," he added.
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
Rami Almeghari writing from occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 6 October 2010
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| Majid Rabah (Rami Almeghari) |
Majid Rabah, age 11, had a broad smile on his face as he relaxed at his family's apartment in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City on Monday, 4 October. He had just heard the news that the two Israeli soldiers who had used him as a human shield had been convicted of their crime in an Israeli military court.
The incident took place on 14 January 2009, in the midst of Israel's 22-day long invasion and bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which killed 1,400 Palestinians -- half of them women and children -- and injured thousands of others.
Effaf Rabah, Majid's mother, recalled that on that day, as the Israeli bombardment of Tel al-Hawa intensified, "I took Majid and his two sisters down to our building's basement to find a safe shelter from the Israeli tank shells and missiles." Many other families had taken shelter in the basement and many had bags or suitcases with milk and food for their children, Effaf Rabah recalled.
"Several Israeli soldiers broke into the basement, took the men away and rounded up the women and children." Effaf Rabah remembered the terrifying moment when the two soldiers approached: "they took Majid from among us, put him in front of them and headed toward the bathrooms."
Majid, still smiling, remembers the moment: "They grabbed me and I wet myself." Then the soldiers ordered Majid to inspect a bag that they suspected of being booby-trapped. "They ordered me to open the bag, but I didn't understand them," Majid said. "Then a soldier slapped me in the face and opened fire on the bag."
Prompted by family members and friends, Effaf Rabah pursued Majid's case with the non-governmental organization Defence for Children International - Palestine Section. In November 2009, Effaf was summoned along with Majid to the Israeli side of Erez border crossing where they both met with an Israeli army officer to discuss their case.
Then on 3 May this year, Effaf was summoned again to Erez where she, Majid and their lawyer met with an Israeli prosecutor. The next day the three were taken to Beer al-Sabe in southern Israel where they gave testimony at the first ever trial for a human rights violation during the Israeli attack.
"I didn't expect my son would be so courageous to speak out and so fluently about what happened to him in the basement. Now we are all relieved that justice has prevailed as we have heard the two soldiers were convicted by the court," Effaf said.
The soldier could face up to three years in prison.
While a moment of justice is sweet for the Rabah family, it is exceedingly rare. What happened to the Rabah family and its neighbors on that day was happening all over Gaza, as Israel's war machine terrorized and traumatized the entire population of 1.5 million with round-the-clock bombardments and deafening overflights from warplanes, and ground incursions which devastated entire neighborhoods displacing tens of thousands.
According to investigations by numerous human rights groups and the UN-commissioned Goldstone report, Israeli soldiers carried out cold-blooded killings of unarmed civilians, used civilians as human shields, harassed others and even stole cash and credit cards from a number of Gaza families. Many of the alleged crimes amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity, the Goldstone report concluded.
A UN Human Rights Council follow-up committee last week found that Israeli authorities had not conducted credible investigations into allegations and evidence documented in the Goldstone report.
The use of human shields by Israel's army has been a repeated occurrence during various Israeli invasions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In 2005, the Israeli high court ruled the practice illegal. There have been more than 150 complaints about soldiers' conduct during the most recent attack on Gaza, including 36 for alleged war crimes. According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, only 47 have been investigated and most of those were closed with no action taken (" The IDF can't play the victim on its actions in Gaza," 5 October 2010).
Majid, now almost 12, says he is glad for the court ruling. Asked if he expects that Israeli soldiers might harass him again in the future, Majid expressed hope that they would not. "If there is peace, I, the children of Palestine and the children of Israel will enjoy peace, rather than suffer more wars," he said.
Rami Almeghari is a journalist and university lecturer based in the Gaza Strip.
"... The Iranian president would be transported along with Sleiman by helicopter and would kick off the tour by visiting the village of Qana.
He will then move on to Maroun al-Ras, Bint Jbeil and Kfarkala, where he is expected to inaugurate an Iranian funded garden near the Fatima Gate. The president will also have lunch with Sleiman and dinner with Speaker Nabih Berri. He might also visit the Beaufort castle, the Resistance museum in Mlita and a number of Resistance martyrs memorials.
The source added that the tour would be accompanied by intensified security measures from the parts of the Lebanese Army, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, Hizbullah, and Ahmadinejad’s own security team.
“Iranian security and media teams arrived to South Lebanon and they coordinated the details of the visit with the Army and Hizbullah,” the source said, stressing that only a few places would be visited due to security reasons. ..."
Via Redress
By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth
7 October 2010
Jonathan Cook argues that Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, as demanded by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, would destroy the campaign by Israel’s Arab citizens to reform Israel into a true democracy and would mean that Netanyahu will have Palestinian backing to label the reformers a fifth column and expel them to bantustans in the West Bank.
Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, has insisted from the launch of the current peace talks that the Palestinians set no preconditions, while making his own precondition the centrepiece of negotiations. Netanyahu has said talks are futile unless the Palestinians and their leader, Mahmoud Abbas, first recognize Israel as a Jewish state. “I recognized the Palestinians' right to self-definition, so they must do the same for the Jewish people,” he told American Jewish leaders recently.
Netanyahu, of the right-wing Likud party, is not the first Israeli leader to make such a requirement of the Palestinians. His predecessor Tzipi Livni, leader of the centrist opposition, wanted the same recognition. Ehud Barak, the defence minister and head of the supposedly left-wing Labour party, also supports this position.
The consensus on this matter, however, masks a reluctance by Israeli politicians to clarify what exactly is being expected of the Palestinians and why recognition is so important.
Netanyahu clearly does not simply want the fact of Israel's existence acknowledged. That is in no doubt and, anyway, the Israeli state has been recognized by the Palestinian leadership since the late 1980s. It is recognition of the state's Jewishness, not its existence, that matters.
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Debate on this subject focuses on Israel's desire to stifle the threat of a right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees. Though doubtless a consideration, that explanation hardly suffices. It is clear to everyone that the refugees are one of the main issues to be settled in the negotiations. In the unlikely circumstances that all other obstacles to Palestinian statehood were removed, it can be assumed that the international community would work to make that particular mountain a molehill.
The demand for recognition is directed chiefly at another party: the fifth of Israel's population who are Palestinian – the remnants of the Palestinian people who stayed on their land during the great dispossession of 1948, the Nakba, and eventually gained Israeli citizenship.
They are only nominally represented at the talks by their state, Israel. Instead, Netanyahu hopes to use the promise of statehood to induce Abbas to sacrifice the interests of Israel's Palestinian citizens. The Palestinian minority's leaders, who have been lobbying Abbas hard in the run-up to the talks, understand what Netanyahu's demand for recognition entails.
During the early years of the Oslo peace process, when a concession on Palestinian statehood appeared to be drawing nearer, the positions of Israel's Palestinian and Jewish leaders polarized. The assumption of Israeli politicians was that Palestinian citizens would soon either declare loyalty to a Jewish state – effectively become Zionists – or be "transferred" to the coming Palestinian state.
Faced with this challenge, Israel's Palestinian leaders encouraged a civil rights movement, demanding equality and an end to Jewish privilege. Their campaign, under the slogan “a state of all its citizens”, implied the end of Israel as a Jewish state and its transformation into a liberal democracy.
Over the past decade, during the years of the second intifada, relations between the two communities deteriorated further, with the Palestinian minority now routinely accused of being traitors.
Netanyahu's latest demand should, therefore, be understood as a cynical move to bypass his own Palestinian constituency and persuade Abbas to negotiate away the rights of Israel's Palestinian citizens on his behalf.
If the Palestinian president does recognize Israel as a Jewish state, the campaign by Israel's Palestinian citizens to reform their country into a true democracy will be over. Netanyahu will have Palestinian backing to label the reformers a fifth column and expel them to the slivers of West Bank territory he may one day deign to call a Palestinian state.
In the meantime, he will also have Palestinian permission to institute a loyalty drive of the kind already being advanced through the Israeli parliament. Loyalty tests for individual Palestinian citizens, and the dismantlement of the Palestinian parties in the parliament unless they sign up as Zionists, would be the first measures. Rounds of expulsions could be expected later.
If all this sounds familiar, it is because much the same programme was laid out by Israel's foreign minister last week during his controversial speech at the United Nations General Assembly. Avigdor Lieberman's plan for an “exchange of populations” would initially require border changes to force hundreds of thousands of Palestinian citizens into a Palestinian “interim state” in return for the inclusion of West Bank settlements, some deep in Palestinian territory, in the newly expanded Jewish state.
There is one flaw in Lieberman's scheme. Many Palestinian citizens, such as those in the Galilee, are not near the West Bank and could not be exchanged through land swaps. His election slogan – “No loyalty, no citizenship” – tells the rest of a plan he has revealed to Israelis but not directly to the international community.
Although American Jewish leaders decried Lieberman's use of the UN platform to reveal a proposal that officially counters his own government's policy, Netanyahu baffled observers by remaining demure. His officials publicly distanced him from the scheme, but then privately told the Israeli media that the prime minister did not think the plan illegitimate and that he would not "chastise" Lieberman.
Netanyahu's silence should not surprise us. His foreign minister may be speaking more bluntly than other Israeli politicians, but he speaks for them nonetheless.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi. The version here is published by permission of Jonathan Cook.
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
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