Monthly Archives: September 2011

Syria: The revolution will be weaponised

Nir Rosen reports for Al Jazeera:

AJ Editor’s note: Al Jazeera special correspondent Nir Rosen spent seven weeks traveling throughout Syria with unique access to all sides. He visited Daraa, Damascus, Homs, Hama, Latakia and Aleppo to explore the uprising and growing internal conflict. In the first article of his series he meets with leaders of the armed opposition in Homs. Names of some of the individuals quoted have been changed to protect their identities.

Homs – On August 31, I met up with a trusted acquaintance called Abu Omar (not his real name). I had been waiting for this meeting with anticipation, as the people involved were extremely hard to reach. They were constantly evading the regime.

Abu Omar called the night before to let me know it was going to happen. The next morning I awoke excited. Adding to my nervous energy, the mobile network in town was shut off. Unable to call Abu Omar, I decided to go to the café near where we had last met, hoping he would find me.

Concurrently, he was sitting in the car near where he had last dropped me off, hoping I would find him. Two hours after the pre-arranged time, he pulled up to the café. He asked me what devices I had and instructed me to remove the batteries from my mobile phone.

We drove north to Rastan, a city with a strong opposition presence. The last time I was there, several weeks earlier, I had counted 50 tanks along the perimeter of the town. As we drove toward the town, the scene was wholly different, not a single tank in sight. Rastan felt liberated.

Abu Omar was a senior coordinator in the country’s six-month-old uprising and was involved in opposition activities since 2007. He lamented that to date, the revolution had only succeeded in costing the lives of three thousand people.

“After Libya, many people said it was a mistake to have a peaceful revolution and if they had done it like the Libyans they would be free by now,” he said.

As I spent more time in Syria, I could see a clear theme developing in the discourse of the opposition: A call for an organised armed response to the government crackdown, mainly from the opposition within Syria. Demonstrators had hoped the holy month of Ramadan would be the turning point in their revolution, but as it came to an end – six months into the Syrian uprising – many realised the regime was too powerful to be overthrown peacefully.

Previously, on August 25, I met with a senior opposition leader in Damascus’ large suburb of Harasta, an anti-regime stronghold. The government had cracked down harshly on demonstrations there, though the armed opposition had been able to kill many members of the security forces.

“In the end we cannot be free without weapons,” the leader said. “It’s necessary, but not by the people, by the army; we need defections.” [Continue reading…]

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New evidence of Syria brutality emerges as woman’s mutilated body is found

Fresh evidence of the extreme brutality being meted out to Syrian protesters and their families has been revealed today by Amnesty International.

The mutilated body of 18-year-old Zainab al-Hosni of Homs, the first woman known to have died in custody during Syria’s recent unrest, was discovered by her family in horrific circumstances on 13 September.

The family was visiting a morgue to identify the body of Zainab’s activist brother Mohammad, who was also arrested and apparently tortured and killed in detention. Zainab had been decapitated, her arms cut off, and skin removed.

“If it is confirmed that Zainab was in custody when she died, this would be one of the most disturbing cases of a death in detention we have seen so far,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“We have documented other cases of protesters whose bodies were returned to their families in a mutilated state during recent months, but this is particularly shocking.”

The killings of Zainab and Mohammad bring Amnesty International’s records of reported deaths in custody to 103 cases since mass protests in Syria began in March this year.

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Obama sold Israel bunker-buster bombs

The Daily Beast reports:

While publicly pressuring Israel to make deeper concessions to the Palestinians, President Obama has secretly authorized significant new aid to the Israeli military that includes the sale of 55 deep-penetrating bombs known as bunker busters, Newsweek has learned.

In an exclusive story to be published Monday on growing military cooperation between the two allies, U.S. and Israeli officials tell Newsweek that the GBU-28 Hard Target Penetrators—potentially useful in any future military strike against Iranian nuclear sites—were delivered to Israel in 2009, just several months after Obama took office.

The military sale was arranged behind the scenes as Obama’s demands for Israel to stop building settlements in disputed territories were fraying political relations between the two countries in public.

The Israelis first requested the bunker busters in 2005, only to be rebuffed by the Bush administration. At the time, the Pentagon had frozen almost all U.S.-Israeli joint defense projects out of concern that Israel was transferring advanced military technology to China.

In 2007, Bush informed Ehud Olmert, then prime minister, that he would order the bunker busters for delivery in 2009 or 2010. The Israelis wanted them in 2007. Obama finally released the weapons in 2009, according to officials familiar with the still-secret decision.

James Cartwright, the Marine Corps general who served until August as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Newsweek the military chiefs had no objections to the sale. Rather, Cartwright said, there was a concern about “how the Iranians would perceive it,” and “how the Israelis might perceive it.” In other words, would the sale be seen as a green light for Israel to attack Iran’s secret nuclear sites one day?

Meanwhile, Reuters reports:

The United States will not “sit idly by” while its forces are harmed by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, the top U.S. military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, said on Thursday.

Mullen and U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told a Senate committee that while such attacks by groups linked to Iran had declined since the summer, the United States would not ignore it the attacks recurred.

“They (the Iranians) have been warned about continuing it … that if they keep killing our troops, that will not be something we will sit idly by and watch,” Mullen told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Iran needs to understand that we’re going to be around awhile here, making very clear to them that we’re not — we’re not simply going to ignore what Iran is doing in — in Iraq,” Panetta said.

Fourteen U.S. services members were killed in hostile incidents in Iraq in June. Most of the deaths were attributed by U.S. officials to rocket attacks by Shi’ite militias armed by Iran.

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September 23, 2011: A historic day for Israel-Palestine?

Daniel Levy writes:

Cynicism and skepticism always have their place, but today might just go down as an historic day on the Israeli-Palestinian front. No, there is no direct or quick fix move from the Palestinian application for U.N. membership to the actual realization of a Palestinian state (and certainly not when one factors in the Israeli response) but the Palestinian U.N. move does represent the most definitive break yet with the failed and structurally flawed strategies for advancing peace of many a year. Many Palestinians and others are now suggesting that the PLO leadership progress from the symbolism of September 23rd to a concerted struggle for their freedom centered on nonviolent resistance, diplomacy, and international legality, believing that this would finally deliver a breakthrough.

In its theatrics, today was rather predictable — other than the Quartet statement of the afternoon, on which more in a moment. The speeches of Abbas and Netanyahu held few, if any, surprises. Abbas played to the Palestinian community at home and around the world, and to the rest of the international community.

Abbas spoke to the refugee experience, including his own, while leaving wiggle room for a future solution and embracing the Arab Peace Initiative on this score. He clarified that the PLO would continue to represent all Palestinians until all issues are definitively resolved, urged that this not become a religious struggle (pushing back on Netanyahu’s attempt to make this about a Jewish state), and linked the Palestinian struggle for rights to the so-called Arab Spring, albeit something that will have to be born out in reality beyond the made-for-TV pictures from Ramallah’s town square.

Abbas could also not have been more explicit on this being a Palestine alongside Israel, on the 67 lines, on only 22% of Mandatory Palestine — and thus calling the lie on Netanyahu’s claim that Abbas wants to have a state that would come at Israel’s expense, replacing Israel.

Netanyahu was playing to the Israeli public and to the American and Jewish right. His speech represented a doubling down of the porcupine strategy that guides his government’s policy. He told the world body that its Security Council was being presided over by terrorists and posed as the champion of the “Clash of Civilizations” narrative. In reminding his audience of the sacrifices entailed by Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza six years ago, he somehow overlooked the fact that this was a withdrawal that he himself vociferously opposed. In referring several times to Israel’s peace with Egypt, Netanyahu may have left some reminiscing that in that agreement Israel withdrew to the last centimeter of the 67 lines, removed every settler and IDF position, and entrusted security to an international force — the MFO.

In response to their respective speeches, Abbas received overwhelming applause from the delegates in the GA hall while Netanyahu’s support came only from his own delegation and from the peanut gallery — perhaps that was filled with a U.S. congressional delegation on a daytrip to the U.N.!

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As Netanyahu blasts the U.N. General Assembly the U.S. bullies members of the Security Council

Comparing Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the UN today with Nikita Khrushchev’s boorish conduct in 1960, The Guardian‘s Julian Borger tweeted: “He didn’t take his shoe off and thump the lectern but Bibi just delivered one of the more combative speeches in UN history.”

Netanyahu proceeded to insult the UN which he called “the theater of the absurd”, while he compared the Palestinians to the Nazis.

Here in the UN automatic majorities can decide anything. They can decide that the sun sets in the West — or rises in the West. I think the first has already been preordained. They can also decide — they have decided — that the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest place, is occupied Palestinian territory.

And yet, even here, in the General Assembly, the truth can sometimes break through.

In 1984, when I was appointed as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, I visited the great rabbi of Lubavitch. He said to me — and ladies and gentlemen, I don’t want any of you to be offended because from personal experience of serving here, I know there are many honorable men and women, capable and decent people serving their nations here — but here’s what the rabbi said to me. He said to me: “You’ll be serving in a house of many lies.” And then he said: “Remember, that even in the darkest place, the light of a single candle can be seen far and wide.”

Today I hope that the light of truth will shine, if only for a few minutes, in a hall that for too long has been a place of darkness for my country. So as Israel’s prime minister, I didn’t come here to win applause. I came here to speak the truth.

Maybe Netanyahu’s truth-telling will have helped tip some undecided votes in the Security Council in Palestine’s favor but the odds don’t look good.

The Guardian reports:

[Palestinian president Abbas] privately retreated from his pledge to seek an immediate security council vote in part because he is no longer sure of winning the necessary majority, which would have given the Palestinians a moral victory even if the US used its veto. Palestinian sources say they believe Washington has bullied several security council members into withdrawing their support for the Palestinian move, including Portugal, by threatening to withhold support for its stricken economy, and Bosnia, over its opposition to Kosovo being admitted to the UN. Palestinian officials also believe Nigeria is no longer certain to vote in their favour. There are also questions about the position of Gabon and Colombia.

One senior Palestinian official described the Americans as “playing a really nasty game”.

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The world — except for Israel and the US — welcomes the rebirth of Palestine

“Palestine is being reborn. This is my message. May all the people of the world stand with the people of Palestine as it marches steadfastly to its appointment with history toward its freedom and independence.” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addressing the UN General Assembly today. (Full text of speech – PDF)

“susan rice, israeli delegation sit stone silent as the Gen Assembly offer rousing applause for Abbas” — Colum Lynch

The Palestinian bid for UN membership will be “quickly” handled and sent to the UN Security Council, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

Speaking after Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas met UN leader Ban Ki-moon, Nesirky said: “The appropriate procedural reviews will be quickly undertaken in the secretariat and afterwards will be transmitted to the president of the Security Council and the president of the General Assembly”. (Al Jazeera)

Al Jazeera reports:

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has handed over a historic request to UN chief Ban Ki-moon asking the United Nations to admit the state of Palestine as a full member.

The Palestinian leader won huge applause and a standing ovation on Friday from some of the assembly as he entered the hall before beginning his speech.

Abbas said he was ready to return to the negotiations, saying he did not want to isolate or delegitimize Israel.

“Here I declare that the Palestine Liberation Organization is ready to return immediately to the negotiating table on the basis of the adopted terms of reference … and a complete cessation of settlement activities,” he told the UN General Assembly.

But he maintained previous peace talks were “smashed against the rocks of the positions of the Israeli government, which quickly dashed the hopes raised by the launch of negotiations last September”.

Palestinians across the West Bank celebrated the formal submission of their bid to become a United Nations member state, despite opposition from the United States and Israel.

In city centres, giant television screens were set up so residents could watch Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, deliver a historic address to the 193 member states of the UN General Assembly.

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Palestine doesn’t need Israel’s permission to exist

James Verini writes:

In 1988, Abba Eban, perhaps the finest diplomat and one of the sharpest minds Israel has ever produced, got up before a distinguished crowd in London to give an address with the predictable and yet absurd title, “Prospects for Peace in the Middle East.” Predictable not just in itself, but because Eban and other Israeli leaders had delivered countless such addresses in the 40 unpeaceful years since the country’s creation; absurd because his remarks, which concerned Palestine, came a year into the First Intifada.

But Eban, who served as Israel’s deputy prime minister, its foreign minister, and its ambassador to the United States, laid the case bare for his surprised listeners. He lamented “the paradox of the West Bank and Gaza as an area in which a man’s rights are defined not by how he behaves, but who he is.” He said of the Israeli occupation, “The need to rule one-and-a-half million people of specific and recognized national particularity against their will weakens our economy, distorts our image, complicates our regional and international relations,” and “prevents any prospect of peace.” Weighing the Palestinian stone-throwers in the streets against Israel’s indisputable — no, laughable — military supremacy over its neighbors, he concluded, “We come up against the immense gap between the reality of our power and the psychology of our vulnerability.”

“The immense gap between the reality of our power and the psychology of our vulnerability” — nicely put, and Israel’s existential dilemma crystallized. It’s a phrase worth bearing in mind this week as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Barack Obama, and even certain European leaders try to persuade Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to not seek full statehood at the United Nations.

But there’s another phrase in Eban’s remarks that demands as much attention. Note that he referred to Palestinians as a “people of specific and recognized national particularity” — as a nation, in other words, or at least a population deserving one. Eban, who died in 2002, saw his fears borne out. He outlived the First Intifada only to catch the start of the second one, by which time the Palestinians were well-armed enough to inflict real damage, and to watch the eclipse in Gaza of Yasir Arafat’s Fatah party by the more militant Islamist party Hamas. Still, his epigones in Israel and the United States refute him as a matter of course. Get into a discussion with even a well-informed Israeli or defender of Israeli policy on the prospect of Palestinian nationhood, and the outdated and circular line of argument that Palestinians never comprised a state, and thus do not require one now, presents itself inside of a minute. If that doesn’t work, they’ll tell you that, anyway, Hamas has made a Palestinian state untenable.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, for instance, justified his criticisms of what he says are Obama’s too weak efforts by saying, “America should not be ambivalent between the terrorist tactics of Hamas and the security tactics of the legitimate and free state of Israel.” Whether Perry knows that Abbas has risked life and limb defying Hamas he didn’t mention.

The first argument, too, still finds voice in the government offices of West Jerusalem, but it’s not the one Netanyahu and his colleagues, including the prime minister’s critics, are marshaling now. No, they say that recognition of a Palestinian state would subvert the principle of direct negotiation that has been the ideal since the Oslo process; that it would indeed embolden Hamas or inspire Palestine to rash actions such as seeking redress in international courts; or that it would — the psychology of vulnerability again, enhanced by the Arab Spring and the new anti-Israel flare-ups in Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey — compromise Israeli security. Obama, who has spent months trying to head off the vote, purports to agree at least with the first point and has promised to veto any resolution that makes it to the Security Council. But his U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, was saying more than she knew when she asked, rhetorically, “What will change in the re­al world for the Pales­tini­an people?”

What neither government mentions — but what Eban, who also served as head of the Israeli mission to the United Nations, knew — is that Palestine already is essentially a nation in the eyes of the international body. As set forth in a decades-long procession of decisions in not just the Palestine-obsessed General Assembly, but also the U.S.-dominated Security Council, the West Bank and Gaza possess the same rights of self-determination as any nation. Palestine — and it is known officially as “Palestine” at the U.N. — participates in General Assembly and Security Council debates and enjoys a permanent mission. Merely making this formal, as Abbas wants, would change little at Turtle Bay — and, if history is any indication, less on the ground. [Continue reading…]

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Israel will soon be another South Africa

Carlo Strenger writes:

Research by the Foreign Ministry has shown years ago that the global creative class’s attitudes are critical for Israel’s standing in the world, as it comprises most of the world’s opinion leaders: most serious international journalists, commentators and filmmakers; most academics in the social sciences and humanities, and the majority of Liberals in the Free World including the majority of liberal Jews, for whom insistence on the sacredness of human rights is the main lesson from the Holocaust.

This global class takes human rights paradigm very seriously indeed, and sees it as a moral vision in which individual rights are truly sacred, meant to prevent national sovereignty from being used as cover to kill and torture citizens. Ideally the global human rights regime should, in the future, be able to prevent genocide and human rights abuse worldwide, even though we are far away from this ideal, as the international community’s lackluster response to Assad’s carnage in Syria shows.

Israeli politicians aware of the importance of this class’s attitude towards Israel often ask me what PR trick could get Israel out of the negative spotlight of the international media because of my research on the global creative class. They tell me things like “Brazil’s image is good, despite its terrible social conditions and high crime rates; why can’t we get them to talk about our beaches instead?”

My answer is best summarized in the words of Joseph Nye, a Harvard political scientist who coined the term “soft power” referring to a country’s the ability to get what it wants without its military and economic power: “Even the best advertising cannot sell an unpopular product. Policies that appear as narrowly self-serving or arrogantly presented are likely to prohibit rather than produce soft power.”

The Netanyahu government has depleted Israel’s ability to influence world opinion to an absolute low. Nye’s description of soft power makes it easy to understand why: “The soft power of a country rests primarily on three resources: its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign policies (when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority).”

Israel’s foreign policies, particularly the occupation of the West Bank and the siege on Gaza, are seen neither as legitimate nor as having moral authority, and its political values are seen as chauvinist. As simple as it sounds, this is something that the current government seems incapable of understanding. As a result they behave with arrogance, assuming that the world is too stupid to realize how right they are: Netanyahu’s lectures Obama; Lieberman’s offends foreign diplomats and politicians, and Amidror’s pontificates to foreign Ambassadors.

Israel does have an attractive culture with artists respected worldwide like Amos Oz, David Grossman, Daniel Barenboim and Idan Reichel. But none of this increases Israel’s soft power, because these artists represent the politically disenfranchised minority of Israeli liberals that is diametrically opposed to the Netanyahu government’s policies.

The price of this government’s myopia in terms of Israel’s credibility, standing and popularity is phenomenal. Whatever the exact result of the Palestinian’s UN bid will be, we must not let Netanyahu’s spin, that Israel scores a moral victory if some major European countries will vote against it or abstain, confuse us; Israel’s loss of soft power is no less than a catastrophe. The day when global public opinion will consider Israel as another South Africa and push for sanctions against the country is drawing ever closer.

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Palestinians vent anger at U.S. over statehood issue

McClatchy reports:

Palestinian protesters burned effigies of President Barack Obama and stomped on U.S. flags Thursday in one of the largest recent displays of anti-American sentiment here, sparked by the United States’ pledge to veto any request for U.N. membership for a Palestinian state.

Gathered outside the residence of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who’s expected to address the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Friday, the protesters denounced Obama, whom they accused of siding with Israel in the lengthy impasse over peace negotiations.

“Obama betrayed the Palestinian people. He sided with Israel against us, and showed what kind of leader he is and what America truly thinks of Palestine,” said Mahmoud Abouta, 17, who carried a sign with Obama’s name crossed out.

Abbas is expected to appeal for U.N. membership during his speech Friday and has said he’ll submit a formal application to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that will propose a state that would comprise the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Ban then would pass that application to the Security Council for consideration. As one of five permanent members, the United States has the power to veto anything that comes before the Security Council.

Israel has opposed the bid, and the United States has echoed its position, calling the proposed application a unilateral step that hurts peace negotiations between the countries. “Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the U.N,,” Obama told the General Assembly on Wednesday, “If it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now.”

But a U.S. veto of the Palestinians’ application for U.N. membership is certain to stoke anti-American ferment to new heights here, and also is likely to affect the United States’ diminishing status in the Middle East, where the Arab Spring toppled what had been a staunchly pro-American regime in Egypt.

“The U.S. has shown its true colors, as a puppet of Israel. If they use that veto, that is it. We will never forget,” Abouta said, expressing a sentiment heard here frequently Thursday.

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PLO official: Rick Perry is a ‘racist’

Foreign Policy reports:

A top Palestine Liberation Organization official responded to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s scathing criticisms of the PLO on Tuesday by telling The Cable that Perry’s comments were “discriminatory and racist.”

Perry hosted a pro-Israel rally in New York on Tuesday morning, during which he repeatedly accused President Barack Obama of “appeasement” of the Palestinians and of bungling three years of Middle East diplomacy. He also called for the closing of the PLO mission in Washington, and the cutting off of U.S. aid to the Palestinian leadership as punishment for their drive to seek member-state status at the United Nations.

But the part of Perry’s remarks that really angered the PLO’s Washington representative, Maen Rashid Areikat, was when Perry said, “The Obama policy of moral equivalency, which gives equal standing to the grievances of Israelis and Palestinians, including the orchestrators of terrorism, is a very dangerous insult.”

“I was appalled by what he said about ‘moral equivalence,’ that there shouldn’t be moral equivalence between Israelis and Palestinians. This amounts to taking a discriminatory and racist position,” Areikat said in a Tuesday interview with The Cable.

“I thought the fundamental principles of the United States were to support people who are seeking freedom and liberty and justice and the Palestinian people are doing exactly that,” Areikat continued.

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Palestinians declare independence from the U.S.

“Israel and the US are one and the same: the US is Israel, and Israel is the US. Israel doesn’t want to give the Palestinians anything and Obama can’t do anything without Israel because Congress is pro-Israel.”

That’s how Marwan Jubeh, a shop owner in Ramallah, neatly sums up the situation.

If there was an honest element in President Obama’s speech at the UN General Assembly yesterday, it was implicit rather than directly spelled out: it was in effect a declaration of impotence.

And as Obama shifts into gear in his campaign for re-election, he will be grateful for the kosher seal of approval he just got from Israel’s political leaders which he can deploy as often as necessary over the next twelve months to signal that for both Democrats and Republicans, Israel and the US are one and indivisible — even when the president’s middle name is Hussein.

“I think it’s in our national interest, and Israel’s national interest, that we have a strong partnership and that the president is perceived as a friend and ally of Israel. While he does that, everybody should be happy.” So says Bob Turner who — even though he just rode to victory in New York’s 9th Congressional district through a campaign that presented Obama as no friend of Israel — now says that he does not see Israel as a wedge issue.

So now that Obama has once again burnished his credentials as a stalwart friend of Israel, he will be only too happy to set aside any expectation that the US, under his leadership, has a constructive role to play in ending the conflict.

Meanwhile, as Obama insists that the current Palestinian bid for statehood will make no difference, as Henry Siegman argues, it may actually completely change the power dynamics as the Palestinians begin to assert their right of self-determination.

The outpouring of commentary on the request that Palestinians intend to submit to the United Nations to affirm their right to statehood within the pre-1967 borders has fallen into two categories. The first supports the Israeli and American view that sees the Palestinian initiative as endangering the Oslo Accords and prospects for a two-state solution. As described by President Obama, it is a “distraction” from the serious business at hand. The second view supports the Palestinian right to apply for UN membership, or for non-member-state observer status, and rejects the notion that this would set back the peace process.

However, both approaches believe that UN action will not result in any practical changes on the ground and that Palestinians will have to return to the U.S.-orchestrated “peace process” to achieve a two-state solution. And both have in common a profound misreading of the significance of the Palestinian initiative, which is likely to be transformative, changing the rules of the game for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

According to the prevailing rules, every aspect of the Palestinians’ existence depends on Israel. Whether Palestinians can travel from town to town within the areas to which they are restricted, open a new business venture, see their homes demolished by an Israeli bulldozer—indeed whether they will live or die—are Israeli decisions, often made by armed Israeli eighteen-year-olds just out of high school.

The Oslo Accords, requiring as they do that Israel withdraw its occupation in stages from the West Bank, were intended to change that reality. But Oslo was quickly undermined by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who declared—“unilaterally”—that the dates established in the accords for the withdrawals are not “holy” and can be ignored by Israel. Furthermore, as noted by Uri Savir, who headed Israel’s Foreign Ministry at the time, Rabin had no intention of returning the Jordan Valley or of sharing Jerusalem. (He might well have changed his views on these issues, as he did on some others, had he not been assassinated by a settler.)

Although the Oslo Accords did not mention a Palestinian state, statehood was the goal implicit in the agreement’s terms and the permanent-status issues slated for negotiations between the parties. But the peace process overseen by the United States was based on an unstated principle that fatally undermined the achievement of a Palestinian state: that any change in the Palestinians’ status as a people under Israel’s occupation depended entirely on Israel’s consent. This effectively excluded everyone other than the occupiers from a role in deciding the Palestinians’ fate. The UN, which was established to assure compliance with international law and to facilitate the self-determination of peoples living under colonial domination, was shunted aside. Above all, this principle excluded the Palestinian people themselves.

To be sure, President Obama recently proposed that negotiations begin at the 1967 lines, with territorial swaps. What he failed to say is that if the parties cannot reach agreement on the swaps, the lines will be drawn by the Security Council. Indeed, he said the opposite—that peace terms cannot be imposed on Israel. His proposal therefore changed nothing. Netanyahu can continue to make demands he knows no Palestinian leader can accept, and the occupation persists.

The real meaning of the Palestinians’ decision to defy the United States is that they will no longer accept their occupier’s role in their quest for statehood. They demand national self-determination as a right—indeed, as a “peremptory norm” that in international law takes precedence over all other considerations—and not as an act of charity by their occupiers.

The American insistence on aborting the Palestinians’ initiative and returning them to a peace process in which their fate remains dependent on Israel is shameful. It stains America’s honor. It will not succeed, for the Palestinian decision to defy the American demand is itself a declaration of independence; that genie cannot be returned to the bottle.

On the ground, little will be changed by a UN affirmation of Palestinian statehood. But nothing will be the same again in the Palestinians’ dealings with Israel and the United States. The notion that Israel will decide where negotiations begin and what parts of Palestine it will keep is history. It is sad that America, of all nations, has failed to understand this simple truth, even in the wake of the Arab Spring. Sadder still is Israel’s continuing blindness not only to the injustice but also to the impossibility of its colonial dream. That dream may now turn into a nightmare as the international community increasingly sees Israel as a rogue state and treats it accordingly.

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A secret license to kill

David Cole writes:

On Friday, a front-page New York Times story reported that a rift has emerged within the Obama Administration over whether it has authority to kill “rank-and-file” Islamist militants in foreign countries in which there is not an internationally recognized “armed conflict.” The implications of this debate are not trivial: Imagine that Russia started killing individuals living in the United States with remote-controlled drone missiles, and argued that it was justified in doing so because it had determined, in secret, that they posed a threat to Russia’s security, and that the United States was unwilling to turn them over. Would we calmly pronounce such actions compliant with the rule of law? Not too likely.

And yet that is precisely the argument that the Obama Administration is now using in regard to American’s own actions in places like Yemen and Somalia—and by extension anywhere else it deems militant anti-US groups may be taking refuge. On the same day the Times article appeared, John Brennan, President Obama’s senior advisor on homeland security and counterterrorism, gave a speech at Harvard Law School in which he defended the United States’ use of drones to kill terrorists who are far from any “hot battlefield.” Brennan argued that the United States is justified in killing members of violent Islamist groups far from Afghanistan if they pose a threat to the United States, even if the threat is not “imminent” as that term has traditionally been understood. (As if to underscore the point, The Washington Post reports that the US has “significantly increased” its drone attacks in Yemen in recent months, out of fears that the government may collapse.)

In international law, where reciprocity governs, what is lawful for the goose is lawful for the gander. And when the goose is the United States, it sets a precedent that other countries may well feel warranted in following. Indeed, exploiting the international mandate to fight terrorism that has emerged since the September 11 attacks, Russia has already expanded its definition of terrorists to include those who promote “terrorist ideas”—for example, by distributing information that might encourage terrorist activity— and to authorize the Russian government to target “international terrorists” in other countries. It may seem fanciful that Russia would have the nerve to use such an authority within the United States—though in the case of Alexsander Litvinenko it appears to have had few qualms about taking extreme measures to kill an individual who had taken refuge in the United Kingdom. But it is not at all fanciful that once the US proclaims such tactics legitimate, other nations might seek to use them against their less powerful neighbors.

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Saudi Arabia executes man convicted of ‘sorcery’

Saudi Arabia’s government should establish an immediate moratorium on executions in the kingdom, Amnesty International said today after a Sudanese man convicted of “sorcery” was put to death.

Abdul Hamid bin Hussain bin Moustafa al-Fakki was beheaded in Madina on Monday. Saudi Arabia has now executed 44 people this year. Eleven were foreign nationals.

“Abdul Hamid’s execution is appalling as is Saudi Arabia’s continuing use of this most cruel and extreme penalty,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“That he should have been executed without having committed anything that would appear to constitute a crime is yet another deeply upsetting example of why the Saudi Arabian government should immediately cease executions and take steps to abolish the death penalty.”

The crime of “sorcery” is not defined in Saudi Arabian law but it has been used to punish people for the legitimate exercise of their human rights, including their right to freedom of expression.

Abdul Hamid bin Hussain bin Moustafa al-Fakki was arrested in 2005 after he was entrapped by a man working for the Mutawa’een (religious police) who asked him to produce a spell that would lead to the man’s father leaving his second wife.

It was alleged that Abdul Hamid said he would do this in exchange for 6,000 Saudi Arabian riyals (approximately US$1,600).

Reportedly beaten after his arrest, Abdul Hamid is believed to have been coerced to confess to carrying out acts of sorcery.

He was sentenced to death by the General Court in Madina in March 2007. Few details are available about his trial but he is reported to have been tried behind closed doors and without legal representation.

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U.S. assembling secret drone bases in Africa, Arabian Peninsula, officials say

The Washington Post reports:

The Obama administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of a newly aggressive campaign to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, U.S. officials said.

One of the installations is being established in Ethi­o­pia, a U.S. ally in the fight against al-Shabab, the Somali militant group that controls much of that country. Another base is in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, where a small fleet of “hunter-killer” drones resumed operations this month after an experimental mission demonstrated that the unmanned aircraft could effectively patrol Somalia from there.

The U.S. military also has flown drones over Somalia and Yemen from bases in Djibouti, a tiny African nation at the junction of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In addition, the CIA is building a secret airstrip in the Arabian Peninsula so it can deploy armed drones over Yemen.

The rapid expansion of the undeclared drone wars is a reflection of the growing alarm with which U.S. officials view the activities of al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Somalia, even as al-Qaeda’s core leadership in Pakistan has been weakened by U.S. counterterrorism operations.

The U.S. government is known to have used drones to carry out lethal attacks in at least six countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The negotiations that preceded the establishment of the base in the Republic of Seychelles illustrate the efforts the United States is making to broaden the range of its drone weapons.

The island nation of 85,000 people has hosted a small fleet of MQ-9 Reaper drones operated by the U.S. Navy and Air Force since September 2009. U.S. and Seychellois officials have previously acknowledged the drones’ presence but have said that their primary mission was to track pirates in regional waters. But classified U.S. diplomatic cables show that the unmanned aircraft have also conducted counterterrorism missions over Somalia, about 800 miles to the northwest.

The cables, obtained by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, reveal that U.S. officials asked leaders in the Seychelles to keep the counterterrorism missions secret. The Reapers are described by the military as “hunter-killer” drones because they can be equipped with Hellfire missiles and satellite-guided bombs.

To allay concerns among islanders, U.S. officials said they had no plans to arm the Reapers when the mission was announced two years ago. The cables show, however, that U.S. officials were thinking about weaponizing the drones.

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