Lieberman: I prefer rightist coalition
Jerusalem Post, February 11, 2009

Israel Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman refused to endorse either Kadima leader Tzipi Livni or Likud head Binyamin Netanyahu on Tuesday night, saying rather that his party would be open to hearing from all factions involved in forming the next coalition, but that his party would never give up its core principles.

“We truly hope that one of the dramatic changes in the next government will be a change in the electoral system,” Lieberman said following the exit polls. “We will be open to hearing what others say on this topic.”

“We’ve turned into a significant party, the third largest in Israel,” Lieberman said. “It’s true that Tzipi Livni won a surprise victory. But what is more important is that the right-wing camp won a clear majority… We want a right-wing government. That’s our wish and we don’t hide it.”

“The main argument today is not only over borders, but rather over the character of the State of Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state,” he continued. “These three things must be intertwined.”

“We have a way and principles, and we don’t plan to give them up,” Lieberman said, adding that the most important thing on his agenda was that the new government be decisive in its actions against terror.

In what may prove a twist for coalition talks as ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas move into an advanced stage, Lieberman firmly stated that his party would never join a government which permitted Hamas to rule the Gaza Strip.

“We will not agree either directly or indirectly to [Hamas staying] in power,” the Israel Beiteinu leader said. “It doesn’t matter which government is established.”

“Our first goal is clear, to destroy Hamas, to take it down,” he stated. [continued…]

Success of rightist bloc may propel Netanyahu into PM’s chair
Haaretz, February 11, 2009

With a clear advantage to the rightist bloc in Israel’s national elections Tuesday, Benjamin Netanyahu could well end up as the next prime minister, regardless of whether his Likud party won the most votes or came second to centrist Kadima and Tzipi Livni. [continued…]

Israel’s age of fragmentation
By Carlo Strenger, The Guardian, February 11, 2009

These elections have proven that even though Israel is a hi-tech powerhouse with a strong army and a functioning democracy, it no longer has the ability to think strategically, act morally and truly manage its own fate. Given that the Palestinians have lost any cohesiveness and have no functioning leadership, the region is likely to deteriorate into chaos and violence. Continue reading →

Avi Shlaim: ‘Israel needs Turkey more than Turkey needs Israel’
Avi Shlaim interviewed by Selcuk Gultasli, Today’s Zaman, February 7, 2009

Professor Avi Shlaim became one of the best-known names worldwide during the recent Israeli offensive in Gaza, which killed more than 1,300 people — almost half of them civilians.

His popularity skyrocketed after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was interrupted while trying to refer to his now famous article, published in The Guardian on Jan. 7, strongly condemning the Israeli operation.

An Oxford professor, Professor Shlaim is not an ordinary Jewish academic. He is an insider, in a way, as he served as a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in the mid-1960s.

In an exclusive interview with Today’s Zaman, Professor Shlaim strongly argued that Erdoğan was right in his reaction in Davos, roundly lambasting Israeli military actions and the behavior of Israeli President Shimon Peres. Stressing that the perception of Erdoğan’s reaction in Davos was generally favorable in the West, Professor Shlaim said the Turkish head of government is seen as someone who stood up against the Israeli aggression. [continued…]

Be careful what you wish for
By Michael Barizon, Ynet, February 7, 2009

There is something blissful about the growing support for Avigdor Lieberman’s party, Yisrael Beiteinu. There is something appropriate about it. Something right. Something we deserve. Because we can no longer deny that Lieberman is the State of Israel’s most accurate depiction.

This is exactly what Israel looks like. These are its values, its voice, and its hopes.

A Lieberman state does not deserve to have a well-groomed, polite, coherent and false face. It needs to get the face it deserves. To look just the way it is. Just the way we are. Because evil, just like justice, must be seen, not only be done.

Nonetheless, here is a small note to cool the excitement. Many Lieberman supporters seriously take their leader’s foolish words about “loyalty,” “citizenship,” and “enlistment.” They poke each other slyly and are certain that if only they demand that the Arabs pledge allegiance to the State and join the army, the Arabs will blatantly refuse, thereby enabling us to kick them out of here. [continued…]

Nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan is freed from house arrest
By Joby Warrick, Washington Post, February 7, 2009

Early yesterday, the Pakistani scientist at the center of one of history’s worst nuclear scandals walked out of his Islamabad villa to declare his vindication after five years of house arrest. “The judgment, by the grace of God, is good,” a smiling Abdul Qadeer Khan told a throng of reporters and TV crews.

Moments earlier, a Pakistani court had ordered the release of the metallurgist who had famously admitted selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Through years of legal limbo, Khan, 72, had never been charged, and now he never will be. “The so-called A.Q. Khan affair is a closed chapter,” a Pakistani government spokesman said.

In Washington, the news sparked criticism but little surprise. It was a jarring denouement to what had been one of the most celebrated successes against nuclear weapons trafficking in decades — a victory that has been increasingly tarnished by government failures in the aftermath of the ring’s breakup. [continued…]

Iran did not lose the provincial elections
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment, February 5, 2009

It is being alleged by US pundits that the outcome of the provincial elections in Iraq, as far as it is known, indicates a defeat for the religious parties and for Iran.

This allegation is not true. In the Shiite provinces, the coalition of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the Islamic Mission Party (Da’wa) will continue to rule. Both parties are close to Tehran, and leaders of both spent time in exile in Iran. Da’wa appears to have become more popular than ISCI. But Da’wa was founded in the late 1950s to work for an Islamic republic in Iraq, and current leader Nuri al-Maliki has excellent relations with the Iranian leadership.

Da’wa is more “lay” in the composition of its leadership, which is made up of lawyers, physicians and other white collar types. ISCI has more clerics at the top, though it also comprises technocrats such as VP Adil Abdul Mahdi. But Da’wa will need Iranian economic and development aid just as much as previous governments did. [continued…]

Hardline populist Lieberman could be surprise kingmaker in Israeli election
By Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, February 5, 2009

The home town of Avigdor Lieberman, the surprise star of Israel’s election campaign, sits on a hilltop deep in the Judean desert looking out over the occupied West Bank. One of Israel’s smaller settlements – home to about 700 Israelis – Nokdim was built in 1982 near the Palestinian city of Bethlehem. Beyond are smaller caravan outposts of even more hardline settlers, the frontline in their increasingly successful project of territorial expansion.

From here, Lieberman, 50, has engineered an extraordinary rise in Israeli politics, his hardline, populist rhetoric catching the public mood and elevating his party, Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home), to third position in opinion polls ahead of next Tuesday’s election.

Lieberman – a former nightclub bouncer born in Moldova who arrived as an immigrant to Israel 31 years ago – is likely to secure a major cabinet position in what will probably be a rightwing dominated government. Benjamin Netanyahu, the head of the opposition Likud, is projected to become the next prime minister.

Lieberman’s broadening appeal stretches from the Russian immigrant community through the secular end of the settler movement to mainstream Jewish Israelis who are attracted to his tough manner at a time when the country feels itself under grave threat and in need of a strongman. Last month’s war in Gaza only helped deepen his support. [continued…]

Netanyahu: Lieberman will be pivotal minister in my government
By Barak Ravid and Ora Koren, Haaretz, February 5, 2009

A week before general elections, the front-runner in the polls Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that he plans to appoint Yisrael Beitenu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman to a pivotal ministerial position in the government that he will establish once elected. [continued…]

Israeli Arab election boycott gathers speed
By Jack Khoury, Haaretz, February 6, 2009

The debate in the Israeli Arab community on the question of boycotting the elections is growing in intensity. As of this week, all public debates between the two Arab and one Arab-Jewish party now include another participant arguing for a boycott. [continued…]

Where empires go to die
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch, February 5, 2009

It is now a commonplace — as a lead article in the New York Times’s Week in Review pointed out recently — that Afghanistan is “the graveyard of empires.” Given Barack Obama’s call for a greater focus on the Afghan War (“we took our eye off the ball when we invaded Iraq…”), and given indications that a “surge” of U.S. troops is about to get underway there, Afghanistan’s dangers have been much in the news lately. Some of the writing on this subject, including recent essays by Juan Cole at Salon.com, Robert Dreyfuss at the Nation, and John Robertson at the War in Context website, has been incisive on just how the new administration’s policy initiatives might transform Afghanistan and the increasingly unhinged Pakistani tribal borderlands into “Obama’s War.”

In other words, “the graveyard” has been getting its due. Far less attention has been paid to the “empire” part of the equation. And there’s a good reason for that — at least in Washington. Despite escalating worries about the deteriorating situation, no one in our nation’s capital is ready to believe that Afghanistan could actually be the “graveyard” for the American role as the dominant hegemon on this planet.

In truth, to give “empire” its due you would have to start with a reassessment of how the Cold War ended. In 1989, which now seems centuries ago, the Berlin Wall came down; in 1991, to the amazement of the U.S. intelligence community, influential pundits, inside-the-Beltway think-tankers, and Washington’s politicians, the Soviet Union, that “evil empire,” that colossus of repression, that mortal enemy through nearly half a century of threatened nuclear MADness — as in “mutually assured destruction” — simply evaporated, almost without violence. (Soviet troops, camped out in the relatively cushy outposts of Eastern Europe, especially the former East Germany, were in no more hurry to come home to the economic misery of a collapsed empire than U.S. troops stationed in Okinawa, Japan, are likely to be in the future.) [continued…]

The strange tale of Iran and Israel
By Alastair Crooke, Le Monde Diplomatique, February, 2009

“We had very deep relations with Iran, cutting deep into the fabric of the two peoples,” said a high-ranking official at the Israeli foreign ministry just after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Israeli (and US) officials then saw it as madness to view Iran as anything other than a natural interlocutor. Thirty years later, western policy-makers, and particularly Israelis, see Iran as a growing threat. Could this fear be based on a misreading of Iran’s revolution?

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, did not see Israel as part of the Middle East, but as part of Europe. From 1952, Ben-Gurion repeated that although Israelis were sitting in the Middle East, this was a geographical accident, for they were a European people. “We have no connection with the Arabs,” he said. “Our regime, our culture, our relations, is not the fruit of this region. There is no political affinity between us, or international solidarity.”

Ben-Gurion called for a concerted effort to persuade the United States that Israel could be a strategic asset in the Middle East. But President Dwight Eisenhower (1953-61) repeatedly declined Israel’s entreaties, believing that the US was better placed to manage US interests independently of Israeli assistance.

As a result of these rebuffs, Ben-Gurion evolved the concept of the “alliance of the periphery” which aimed to balance the vicinity of hostile Arab states by forming alliances with Iran, Turkey and Ethiopia. It was an attempt to strengthen Israeli deterrence, reduce Israel’s isolation and add to its appeal as an “asset” to the US. [continued…]

George Mitchell and the end of the two-state solution
By Sandy Tolan, Christian Science Monitor, February 4, 2009

On the surface, the most daunting task facing US envoy George Mitchell in his trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories is strengthening the Gaza cease-fire, and helping Gazans rise from the rubble.

But actually, the super diplomat’s biggest challenge, as he wraps up his first trip and lays plans for future journeys, lies in coming to terms with a grim and unavoidable fact: The two-state solution is on its deathbed.

Since the Six-Day War of June 1967, the two-state solution, based on the concept of “land for peace,” has been the central focus of almost all diplomatic efforts to resolve this tragedy. But because of Israel’s unrelenting occupation and settlement project in the West Bank, the long-fought-for two-state solution has finally, tragically, become unworkable. [continued…]

Gaza must be helped out of “hell” — EU envoy
By Adam Entous, Reuters, February 3, 2009

Israel must lift its ban on materials to rebuild Gaza after its offensive in a territory resembling “hell” where children have to sleep outside shattered homes, the European Union’s Middle East envoy said on Tuesday.

“What encouragement to terrorism would it be to rebuild the sewage system, have clean water, have kids going to school, have clinics that work, have mothers delivering their babies in safe conditions?” Marc Otte asked following Israel’s devastating 22-day assault in the Hamas-ruled territory.

While Israel has opened Gaza’s border crossings to larger amounts of food and medicine, it has so far balked at letting in construction materials, including glass, steel and cement, needed to rebuild the thousands of Palestinian homes, roads and buildings destroyed or damaged during the war. [continued…]

The Middle East: what next?
Robert Malley interviewed by Hugh Eakin, New York Review of Books, January 24, 2009

H.E.: Should the US have contact with Hamas?

R.M.: I’ve never advocated direct engagement with Hamas, because we know the political realities here. My argument is different. What I say is that we have to start from a factual realization that the policies of the last two years have not only failed to achieve their objectives. They often produced the precise opposite of what we sought to promote.

If we start from that, then we have to think about how we should deal with Hamas and Gaza differently. And that doesn’t necessarily mean for the US to start treating Hamas the way it treats Fatah. But it does mean that it’s going to be very hard to have a political agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, or genuine stability, if they are not somehow part of that political equation.

Now maybe it means for the US to take a less interventionist approach toward domestic Palestinian politics; maybe it means for the US to take a less obstructionist approach, when other third parties—whether it’s the Europeans or the Arabs—seek to reconcile the Palestinians, and in doing so, engage with Hamas. Maybe it means for the US to take a less hostile view toward the emergence of a potential, putative new unity government among Palestinians, and say, as the Europeans now are hinting, that they would judge it by what it does, rather than by the ideological position of its membership. I think those are steps that the Obama administration should consider. [continued…]

Time to talk
By Richard Howitt, The Guardian, February 4, 2009

Working as an official EU election monitor, I saw with my own eyes Hamas freely and fairly elected. Although there can never be an excuse for terrorism, I have been persuaded that Europe’s boycott, just as much as the Israeli blockade, has helped, not harmed Hamas. Britain talked to the IRA, America to the Taliban and it is now time – through proxies at first – for Europe to talk to Hamas. UN endorsement for Egypt’s talks with Hamas paves the way for a change of heart in Brussels. Others such as Jeremy Greenstock have argued for the inclusion of Hamas in the process. In my view, EU contacts with Hamas are now a moral imperative.

I believe an updated European border mission could help get the border re-opened for Gaza, and that Europe has the political will to do it. But it cannot be achieved without a working arrangement with Hamas – and perhaps this provides the justification to move. [continued…]

Taliban destroys a key bridge in Pakistan
By Candace Rondeaux, Washington Post, February 4, 2009

Hundreds of trucks bearing NATO supplies idled at terminals near the city of Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday after Taliban fighters blew up an iron bridge about 15 miles away. The explosion, the latest in a spate of attacks, cut off the main supply route for U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, complicating plans to substantially increase the Western military presence there and roll back recent gains by Taliban forces.

For a quick look at the state of the war on terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan, one need travel only as far as Peshawar’s Karkhano Market. Set at the edge of the sprawling city of 3 million in a dusty warren of ramshackle kiosks, the 24-year-old market has long been known as a key smuggling hub for the hundreds of traders who regularly cross the mountainous no man’s land that lies between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Business has been especially brisk in recent months, in the wake of more than a dozen major Taliban attacks on NATO supply routes and the creeping encroachment of insurgents in northwest Pakistan, according to Karkhano shopkeepers. Goods pilfered from raids on NATO supply trucks have become a mainstay for shopkeepers like Noor Mohammed. [continued…]

Ahmadinejad predecessor planning presidential bid
By Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post, February 4, 2009

Former president Mohammad Khatami, who for two terms led failed attempts to give Iranians more legal freedoms and end Iran’s international isolation, has decided to run in upcoming elections, aides, political allies and family members said Tuesday.

The move will pit Khatami against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in an electoral battle whose outcome could alter the country’s domestic and foreign agendas.

“He has agreed to become a candidate,” Mohammad Reza Khatami, the former president’s younger brother, told The Washington Post. “He sees the difficulties ahead, but the pressure from several groups for him to run was too big for him to decline.” [continued…]

Runaway Wall Street
By Robert Scheer, Truthdig, February 4, 2009

It is instructional that only one of the three tax-challenged Obama appointees has survived public scorn to retain a high position in the new administration. Oddly enough, it is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the man who will collect our taxes, whose career has not been stunted by his failure to pay them.

What makes Geithner so special? The answer, provided by everyone from the president to the media pundits, is that his services are indispensable because he has the expertise in regulating markets needed to preside over the most massive government intervention in the economy. Are they kidding?

Both in his years in the Clinton treasury and as chair of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Geithner has been paving the way for a runaway Wall Street. Nor has he changed his ways, as was evidenced once again last week with his appointment of Mark Peterson, a Goldman Sachs vice president and lobbyist, to be his top aide. Peterson had lobbied strenuously for precisely the deregulation that the Obama administration now concedes needs reversing. It was confirmation that Goldman Sachs runs the Treasury Department—no matter which party is in power. [continued…]

Dozens of secret Bush surveillance, executive power memos found; could be made public
By John Byrne, Raw Story, February 3, 2009

Details about more than three dozen secret memoranda written by Bush Administration officials now sit atop a chart created by a public interest reporting group. The memos track new details about dozens of secret Bush Administration legal positions on torture, detention and warrantless wiretapping.

Meanwhile, Obama’s freshly-confirmed Attorney General Eric Holder told senators that he was open to declassifying White House legal memos if no support for their original classification could be found, signaling a likely showdown with former President George W. Bush over executive privilege.

“The Bush administration’s controversial policies on detentions, interrogations and warrantless wiretapping were underpinned by legal memoranda,” Pro Publica’s Dan Nguyen and Christopher Weaver write. “While some of those memos have been released (primarily as a result of ACLU lawsuits), the former administration kept far more memos secret than has been previously understood. At least three dozen by our count.” [continued…]

Israeli troops used Palestinians as human shields in Gaza
By Dion Nissenbaum, McClatchy, February 2, 2009

The Israeli soldiers outside Majdi Abed Rabbo’s home were after the three Hamas fighters holed up next door, and they wanted Abed Rabbo to be their point man.

For the next 24 hours, Abed Rabbo said, the soldiers repeatedly forced him to walk through the battle zone to see whether the militants were dead or alive.

Abed Rabbo wasn’t alone. Eight other residents in this northern Gaza Strip neighborhood told McClatchy in separate interviews that Israeli soldiers had conscripted them to check homes for booby traps, to smash holes in the walls of houses so that soldiers could use them as escape routes or to try to pull dead Palestinian militants from the rubble.

Conscripting Palestinians during the recent fighting in Gaza would appear to violate not only international law, but also Israel’s court-imposed ban on using civilians as human shields. [continued…]

Avigdor Lieberman said to be ex-member of banned radical Kach movement
By Lily Galili, Haaretz, February 3, 2009

Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman was once a member of the outlawed far-right party Kach, the movement’s former secretary general revealed on Tuesday.

Yossi Dayan said he issued Lieberman, a prime ministerial candidate whose current electoral campaign against Israeli Arabs has provoked outrage, with a party membership card when he was still a new immigrant to Israel.

“I don’t recall to what extent he was active in the movement, but if he denies [this], I am ready to testify in any forum that Lieberman was indeed a member for a short amount of time,” said Dayan.

Kach was banned from running for the Knesset in 1988 for inciting to racism. [continued…]

From Gaza to Jerusalem: the impact of war on the Israeli election
By Peter Beaumont, The Guardian, February 3, 2009

Out of Gaza and across the border to the sound of rocket fire.

A handful of hours later I am at the Hebrew University for a lecture by Gershon Baskin, one of Israel’s most prominent peace activists, who is describing his attempts to open a channel of communication between Israel’s leaders and Hamas. Continue reading →

Israel may not be able to escape the reach of international law
By Paul Woodward, The National, February 2, 2009

Although in 2002 Israel withdrew its signature from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and as a consequence the court has no jurisdiction over possible war crimes committed on Israeli territory, the ICC is considering a request by the Palestinian Authority to investigate allegations of war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip, a senior court official told The New York Times.

Following Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, the PA assumed sovereign control of the territory and last month provided the ICC with an official letter confirming its jurisdiction there.

“If the court’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, and judges were to rule that the Palestinians do indeed have sovereignty in Gaza – a tricky legal issue given that Israel still controls Gaza’s water and land borders – they could then theoretically try Israeli officials for any war crimes committed there.

” ‘This is potentially huge,’ said the ICC official, who declined to be identified because the investigation has barely begun. ‘It’s a Damocles sword hanging over Israel and some of its most senior figures.’ [continued…]

Americans fighting for Israel in Gaza
Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces, January 6, 2009

The black flag is waving
By Uri Avnery, Antiwar.com, February 2, 2009

A Spanish judge has instituted a judicial inquiry against seven Israeli political and military personalities on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The case: the 2002 dropping of a one-ton bomb on the home of Hamas leader Salah Shehade. Apart from the intended victim, 14 people, most of them children, were killed. Continue reading →