Category Archives: Israeli occupation

On deaf ears: Obama’s message to Israel

Robert Grenier writes:

Late May’s extraordinary sequence of speeches and meetings involving US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu – and the commentary surrounding it from official circles in both countries – did not make for an edifying interlude. The week beginning May 19 will not be remembered for displays of farsighted statecraft, or high moral courage. What we saw instead was brash, unapologetic chauvinism from Netanyahu, an outright refusal of moral leadership from Obama, and acts of political cowardice and opportunism from the US Congress outrageous even by the low standards of that frequently ignominious body.

But that is not to say that the week’s display was not useful. On the contrary, much of importance was accomplished. Now, more clearly than ever, we can see the future. For if there were any questions remaining about the current nature and direction of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, May’s events have put an end to them. Zionism is far from dead, and will surely survive, at least in altered form. But a fundamental change in the nature of the Israeli state has become inevitable.

To understand why, we should start with President Obama. It may seem mystifying in one so intelligent and insightful, but when, at the beginning of his administration, Obama set about to solve the Arab-Israeli dispute once and for all, he really had no idea what he was getting into. To this most logical, detached, and rational of men, the solution to the dispute must have seemed obvious. The salient issues had been reviewed endlessly for decades by all the parties. The key components of an agreement were well known. All he needed to do to get the negotiating process properly underway, he believed, was to address one key impediment: Israeli settlement policy.

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The no-longer temporary occupation

Joseph Dana writes:

One particular success of Israel’s 44-year control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has been the government’s ability to convince the Israeli population of the temporary nature of the occupation. Every sector of Israeli society, except religious settlers and the military establishment, understand the occupation to be an ephemeral security measure necessary only in the absence of a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Ask any Israeli on the streets of Tel Aviv whether they think that Israel will permanently control the Occupied Territories and the immediate answer will be no, it is all about immediate security. This charade is exploited by successive Israeli governments as they proclaim a desire for peace while simultaneously creating permanent facts on ground like Jewish settler roads, checkpoints for Palestinians and new settlements.

Despite the proximity of the Occupied Territories to major Israeli population centers, few Israelis other than soldiers and settlers visit the Territories. Since the creation of Israel’s controversial separation barrier and the denial of thousands of Palestinian work permits to Israel, Israeli society has all but disengaged from Palestinian society. This allows the occupation to feel distant and outside the everyday lives of Israelis. Palestinians, of course, are still confronted with the daily presence of Israeli military power and mechanisms of control.

Some Israeli scholars, such as Bar Ilan University lecturer Ariella Azoulay, and Tel Aviv University professor Adi Ophir, have proposed that without this perceived temporariness and external character of the occupation, Israel would have a hard time maintaining its mandatory military conscription. A greater number of citizens would question the long- term objectives.

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The Israeli public is shielded from the realities of West Bank life

Gershom Gorenberg writes:

The settlement’s security man did not like us. He did not like the cameraman with his bulky gear, or the two documentary film producers who’d brought Dror Etkes and me to the outpost of Derekh Ha’avot south of Bethlehem, and he certainly didn’t like Etkes, an Israeli activist known for expertise on land ownership and for his legal challenges to West Bank settlement. The security coordinator wore civvies but bounced a bit on the balls of his feet in the spring-coiled posture of junior combat officers, or recently discharged officers.

“You can’t film in the neighborhood,” he told us. Neighborhood is a euphemism for an outpost, a mini-setttlement ostensibly established in defiance of the Israeli government but actually enjoying state support. Derekh Ha’avot — the name means “Forefathers’ Road” — is next to the veteran settlement of Elazar but outside its municipal boundaries. The security man worked for Elazar. Filming would be “a security risk. I don’t know a lot about security, but I know a little,” he sneered, meaning, I know a whole lot.

That security argument, I can say with very little risk, was a bluff. Derekh Ha’avot, home to three dozen families, stands on privately owned Palestinian land, as military authorities confirmed in an October 2007 letter to another activist, Hagit Ofran (in Hebrew). But last year, in a ploy to evade a Supreme Court order to demolish the outpost, the Defense Ministry announced it was reexamining the land’s status to see whether it was actually state property.

The man facing us at the outpost who wanted nothing filmed was making his small contribution to keeping the occupation’s realities out of the sight of the majority of the Israeli public. For that, he deserves thanks from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Comfortable public ignorance of West Bank realities is essential to the Netanyahu’s domestic efforts to paint a fictional picture of the West Bank and of Israel’s deteriorating diplomatic situation.

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Rightwing Jewish protesters in East Jerusalem chant, “Butcher the Arabs” and “Death to Leftists.”

Ynet reports:

Dozens of right-wing activists marching through Jerusalem Wednesday were filmed chanting inflammatory messages and singing provocative songs in the capital, including “Muhammad is dead,” “May your village burn,” “Death to leftists,” and “Butcher the Arabs.”

The disturbing utterances were made during the traditional “Flag Dance” on the occasion of Jerusalem Day, which drew tens of thousands of Israelis to the capital to celebrate its unification following the 1967 Six-Day War.

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‘Land swaps’: is there enough land to swap?

Nathan Jeffay reports:

It is the magic formula that could end the occupation while letting the majority of settlers stay put. But how would an Israeli-Palestinian land swap, the basis of President Obama’s Middle East vision, outlined on May 19, actually work?

The main practical problem of an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank is the fact that some 300,000 Israeli settlers live there. Not only would a full evacuation be hazardous for any Israeli government on the domestic political front, but it also would be logistically difficult and exceedingly costly.

The solution Obama talked about, one that is “based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps,” means that Israel would hold on to some settled areas that it captured in 1967 and compensate the Palestinians with land that currently falls under Israeli sovereignty.

Even if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorses the principle, a problem remains. Every Israeli leader insists on retaining the large settlement blocs — usually defined at a minimum as the Etzion Bloc, Modi’in Illit, Ma’ale Adumim, and Givat Ze’ev and its surroundings — and the national consensus in support of this position is strong. But in Israel, many experts say there simply isn’t enough free land under Israeli sovereignty to exchange for them.

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The surreal state solution

Sandy Tolan writes:

It’s always bizarre to watch the cheering throng of US congressmen, their pockets lined with AIPAC contributions, fawn over a visiting Israeli leader as if he were a conquering war hero of their own.

But seen on YouTube from the West Bank, Binyamin Netanyahu’s fanciful walk through Middle East diplomacy, and his disingenuous endorsement of peace and democracy – accompanied by an estimated 55 standing ovations – was truly surreal.

If a member of Congress were to actually bother to travel through the West Bank, he or she could be forgiven for wondering what the Israeli prime minister was talking about when he promised to make “painful compromises”.

Huge and expanding settlement blocs cut ever deeper into Palestinian lands, each day making the establishment of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state more difficult to imagine. One settler city of 20,000 – Ariel – sits nearly halfway to Jordan from the Mediterranean. Maale Adumim, population 34,000, lies well east of Jerusalem, on the way to the Jordan Valley.

In support of this settlement project, Israeli military jeeps and armored trucks crisscross the would-be future Palestine. This week, on a three and a half hour round trip drive between Ramallah and Jenin, I saw a dozen such patrols.

Near Nablus, a Palestinian vehicle was pulled over to the side of the road, with a soldier pointing his M-16 at the driver. Further on, an Israeli bulldozer scraped the land, uprooting an olive tree – the heart of Palestinian rural culture and economy.

Now Netanyahu is trying to cement Israeli policy of endless land seizures with a diversionary tactic – insisting that Palestinians acknowledge Israel as the national state of the Jewish people.

Yet he well knows that in the Oslo agreement of 1993, Palestinians formally accepted Israel’s existence and agreed to their own painful compromise: giving up 78 per cent of historic Palestine in exchange for establishing a state on the remaining land in the West Bank and Gaza.

By making a new demand, Netanyahu has moved the goal posts – insisting that a nation where one in every five people is Arab be formally recognised as a state for Jews only. This may make sense for a delusional congress, but why would any Palestinian leader agree to that?

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Day after Netanyahu addresses Congress, his ministers inaugurate East Jerusalem settlement

Haaretz reports:

One day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Jerusalem will not be divided, the speaker of the Knesset and several other government ministers attended a dedication ceremony for the new Jewish settlement of Ma’aleh Zeitim, in East Jerusalem’s Ras al-Amud neighborhood.

Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barakat, Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan, Interior Minister Eli Yishai, and Information Minister Daniel Hershkovitz all participated in the ceremony – this despite the fact that the Jewish neighborhood has already been inhabited for several years.

A group of tens of left-wing activists gathered outside the site of the ceremony, shouting “Jews and Arabs against Ma’aleh Zeitim” and “There is no shame in the holy city.”

Rivlin delivered a speech at the ceremony, where he made a warning based on the recent Mideast policy speech laid out by United States President Barack Obama.

“Until today, despite a difference of opinions, there were relations between Israel and the U.S. based on mutual interests, shared democratic values, and recognition of the right of the Jewish people in their country,” Rivlin said.

“But this time, I hear another note from the U.S. president…. That Israel doesn’t need to be strict on the conditions that will protect her existence, that the U.S. will be responsible for [Israel’s] security and existence. And what happens if one day there is a president that thinks that Israel’s existence contradicts Americans’ interests?”

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The Zionist US Congress


(H/t Glenn Greenwald)

If anyone was in any doubt that Capitol Hill is Israeli occupied territory, the adulation Benjamin Netanyahu received from Republicans and Democrats in Congress today makes it obvious where the loyalties of most of our so-called representatives lie.

“In Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers,” Netanyahu declared as members of Congress stood, clapped and cheered.

Well, if that’s what Washington really believes then it’s time to toss the two-state solution out of the window.

ABC News reports:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before a joint meeting of Congress today had all trappings of a state of the union address by a U.S. president with sky-high approval ratings.

Speaking to a packed House chamber with Speaker of the House John Boehner and Vice President Joe Biden over his shoulders, Netanyahu was interrupted at least 53 times by applause, including at least 29 standing ovations.

To put those numbers in perspective, 29 standing ovations eclipse the total that President Obama received at the State of the Union this year. Obama, in a speech that lasted much longer than Netanyahu’s, garnered 79 applause interruptions, but his remarks were met by only 25 standing ovations.

One of Netanyahu’s biggest applause lines was aimed directly at President Obama.

“Israel will not return to the indefensible boundaries of 1967,” Netanyahu said, prompting a big standing ovation.

Later the prime minister added: “Israel under 1967 lines would be only nine miles wide. So much for strategic depth. So it’s therefore vital — absolutely vital — that a Palestinian state be fully demilitarized, and it’s vital — absolutely vital — that Israel maintain a long-term military presence along the Jordan River.”

As Netanyahu himself pointed out, the President has not called on Israel to return to the exact 1967 borders. The President has said that a peace agreement should be “based on 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”

Nevertheless, Netanyahu speech – and the thunderous bi-partisan response – was a clear challenge to the idea of using the 1967 boundaries – with or without “swaps” — as a basis for a peace deal.

Netanyahu also got big ovations with hard-line statements on two other perennial sticking points to Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements: No right of return for Palestinian refugees, and “Jerusalem will never again be divided. Israel must remain the united Capital of Israel.”

Netanyahu arguably got a warmer reception than President Obama received during his last state of the union and certainly a warmer reception than he’d receive at the Knesset. When the speech was over, he lingered for a while at the podium as it seemed he didn’t want to leave.

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Exposing Netanyahu

Paul Pillar writes:

Probably the most significant take-away from the past few days of U.S.-Israeli dialog is to shed light on the true intentions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding peace with the Palestinians. Although Netanyahu finally allowed the phrase “Palestinian state” to pass his lips for the first time almost two years ago, this past week in Washington provided further confirmation of what had been apparent all along: that whatever conception Netanyahu may have of such a “state,” it is not a formula having any chance of becoming the basis for—to use Netanyahu’s own words from his joint appearance with President Obama on Friday—“a peace that will be genuine, that will hold, that will endure,” or probably even what most of the rest of the world would consider a state. Netanyahu is smart enough to realize this, which is to say he is content to let the status quo endure indefinitely. Israel will maintain that status quo through brute force—military force within the territories, and political force in Washington.

The drop-the-veil moment during this past week was the importunate lobbying by Netanyahu’s government before President Obama delivered his Middle East speech on Thursday at the State Department (and doesn’t that say something right there—where else would one see a foreign government get in the last lobbying licks on a president’s speech, even at the expense of delaying the speech?) to omit any mention of the 1967 borders as the basis for negotiating land swaps and an eventual territorial settlement. The president mentioned that anyway, and in the joint appearance on Friday Netanyahu said nothing about land swaps, instead denouncing the 1967 borders as not being a suitable basis for anything. As Mr. Obama correctly noted in his address to AIPAC on Sunday, there was nothing new in his mention of 1967-borders-with-swaps. It has long been recognized as the only formula that has any hope of being the basis for a successful negotiation. It has been the basis for several official proposals, including one by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008. It also has been at the center of several unofficial proposals, including ones from people whose concern for Israel cannot be doubted (such as a plan offered by David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy).

So for Netanyahu, not only is the land allotted to the Jewish state in the UN partition plan of the 1940s not enough, and not only is the larger territory that became the State of Israel with what we call the 1967 borders not enough. Even with land swaps that would extend Israel farther into the West Bank and include the large majority of the settlements Israel has constructed on land seized in the 1967 war, that would still not be enough for him. How much would be enough? One can speculate on what crumbs of land would be left to the Palestinians, but speculation is not required to have an idea based on Netanyahu’s own statements of what such a “state” would entail: Israeli control of the airspace, no military of its own, and, as the prime minister mentioned on Friday, a “long-term” Israeli military presence along the Jordan River. It sounds like a bantustan that would make Bophuthatswana look like a paragon of sovereignty. But trying to envision the details of such an entity is pointless because it is a non-starter very likely intended to be rejected.

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A Palestinian awakening and an Israeli nightmare

A refugee crisis that has lasted for 63 years following the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.

Peter Beinart writes:

Why did thousands of Palestinians yesterday converge upon Israel’s borders? Partly because Syria’s war-criminal leader, Bashar al-Assad, and his ally, Hezbollah, wanted them to. But there’s more to it than that. Palestinians also marched from Jordan and Egypt, whose governments did their best to stop the protests. In fact, they marched from every corner of the Palestinian world, in a tech-savvy, coordinated campaign. What hit Israel yesterday was the Palestinian version of the Arab spring.

Something fundamental has changed. I grew up believing that we—Americans and Jews—were the shapers of history in the Middle East. We created reality; others watched, baffled, paralyzed, afraid. In 1989, Americans gloated as the Soviet Union, our former rival for Middle Eastern supremacy, retreated ignominiously from the region. When Saddam Hussein tried to challenge us from within, we thrashed him in the Gulf War. Throughout the 1990s, we sent our economists, law professors and investment bankers to try to teach the Arabs globalization, which back then meant copying us. In a thousand ways, sometimes gently, sometimes brutally, we sent the message: We make the rules; you play by them.

For Jews, this sense of being history’s masters was even more intoxicating. For millennia, we had been acted upon. Mere decades earlier, American Jews had watched, trembling and inarticulate, as European Jews were destroyed. But it was that very impotence that made possible the triumph of Zionism, a movement aimed at snatching history’s reins from gentiles, and perhaps even God. Beginning in the early 20th century, Zionists created facts on the ground. Sometimes the great powers applauded; sometimes they condemned, but acre by acre, Jews seized control of their fate. As David Ben-Gurion liked to say, “Our future does not depend on what gentiles say but on what Jews do.” The Arabs reacted with fury, occasional violence, and in Palestine, a national movement of their own. But they could rarely compete, either politically or militarily. We went from strength to strength; they never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

That world is gone. America and Israel are no longer driving history in the Middle East; for the first time in a long time, Arabs are. In Tahrir Square, Egypt’s young made a revolution. President Obama bowed to reality and helped show Hosni Mubarak the door; Benjamin Netanyahu stood athwart history, impotently yelling stop. Now Egypt’s leaders are doing its people’s will, bringing Hamas and Fatah together in preparation for elections. Hamas and Fatah are complying because they fear their own Tahrir Square. They sense that in Palestine too, a populist uprising stirs; that’s part of what yesterday’s marches were about. For American and Israeli leaders accustomed to Palestinian autocrats and Palestinian terrorists, this is something new. Netanyahu and his American backers are demanding that Obama rewind the clock, but he can’t. The Palestinians no longer listen to functionaries like George Mitchell. They have lost faith in American promises, and they no longer fear American threats. Instead, they are putting aside their internal divisions and creating facts on the ground.

Al Jazeera reports:

At least 353 people were injured, one of them critically, when Egyptian security forces attacked a pro-Palestine demonstration outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo on Sunday night, according to witnesses and the Health Ministry.

Activists told Al Jazeera that army and internal security troops used tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition to disperse thousands of protesters who had gathered to mark the 63rd anniversary of the “Nakba” or “catastrophe” – the day in 1948 that Israel declared its independence and thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled form their homes.

At least two protesters were shot by live ammunition, while others were hospitalised after inhaling tear gas or being hit by rubber-coated steel bullets, some of which penetrated the skin, witnesses said.

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Palestinians killed in Nakba clashes

Israeli soldiers stand at the border fence between Israel and Syria as demonstrators approach the village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights

Al Jazeera reports:

Several people have been killed and scores of others wounded in the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, Ras Maroun in Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as Palestinians mark the “Nakba”, or day of “catastrophe”.

The “Nakba” is how Palestinians refer to the 1948 founding of the state of Israel, when an estimated 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled following Israel’s declaration of statehood.

At least one Palestinian was killed and up to 80 others wounded in northern Gaza as Israeli troops opened fire on a march of at least 1,000 people heading towards the Erez crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel.

A group of Palestinians, including children, marching to mark the “Nakba” were shot by the Israeli army after crossing a Hamas checkpoint and entering what Israel calls a “buffer zone” – an empty area between checkpoints where Israeli soldiers generally shoot trespassers, Al Jazeera’s Nicole Johnston reported from Gaza City on Sunday.

Hasan Abu Nimah writes:

Sixty years ago in Battir, my small hillside village near Jerusalem, I witnessed the chaotic collapse of the British Mandate administration in Palestine and the beginning of the Nakba.

The previous months had been decisive ones for the fate of Palestine, although we did not yet know it. The Jews, fed up with British procrastination in fulfilling Balfour’s promise of letting them transform our homeland into their “national home,” launched a bloody campaign of terror both against the British and the Arabs. The Jewish militias targeted the British to speed up their departure from Palestine, and hit the Arabs to quell the rising resistance to Zionist colonization. Violence broke out in early 1947, after the British announced that they would leave Palestine by 15 May 1948. When the United Nations passed its partition resolution on 29 November 1947, the violence began to lurch into full-scale war.

Battir’s 1,200 inhabitants were wracked by uncertainty. There were hopes that things would turn out all right, but fear dominated as the atmosphere became bleaker by the day.

I vividly remember the stories of horror which haunted the people of Battir, such as the attack on the railway station in Jerusalem on 21 October 1946. The train was their lifeline to the city where they marketed their produce and bought their supplies. People also walked to Jerusalem and often traveled by car on the unpaved road that ran parallel to the railway line, though that was much harder. A few months earlier a Jewish bomb attack on Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, which served as the British headquarters, killed 91 people and injured dozens. Later, after the partition vote, when the Zionist forces began their armed campaign to seize Palestine, fighting erupted between Arabs and Jews in the land they both claimed.

Electronic Intifada has created an interactive map showing the Palestine villages destroyed in Nakba.

Noam Sheizaf writes:

I never heard the word Nakba before the nineties. It was simply not present in the Israeli language, or in the popular culture. Naturally, we knew that some Arabs left Israel in 1948, but it was all very vague. While we were asked to cite numbers and dates of the Jewish waves of immigration to Israel, details on the Palestinian parts of the story were sketchy: How many Palestinians left Israel? What were the circumstances under which they left? Why didn’t they return after the war? All these questions were irrelevant, having almost nothing to do with our history—that’s what we were made to think.

Occasionally, we were told that the Arabs had left under their own will, and it seemed that they chose not to come back, at least in the beginning. Years later, I was shocked to read that most of the notorious “infiltrates” from the early fifties were actually people trying to come back to their homes, even crossing the border to collect the crops from their fields at tremendous risk to their life – as IDF units didn’t hesitate to open fire.

We were made to think they were terrorists…

It’s hard to explain the mechanism which makes some parts of history “important” or some elements of the landscape “interesting.” I can only say that looking back, I understand how selective the knowledge we received was. But there is more to this. I think we all chose not to think about those issues. Even after the New Historians of the nineties made the term Nakba a part of modern Hebrew and proved that in many cases, Israel expelled Palestinians from territories it conquered in ‘48, we were engaged in the wrong kind of questions, such as the debate on whether more Palestinian were expelled or fled. The important thing is that they weren’t allowed to come back, and that they had their property and land seized by Israel immediately after the war (as some Jews had by Jordan and Syria, but not in substantial numbers). Leaving a place doesn’t make someone a refugee. It’s forbidding him or her from coming back that does it.

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Israel is America’s obnoxious drunk friend

Adbusters asks:

What do you do when your friend is blind drunk, slurring, staggering and boisterous as they fumble for their car keys? Do you cheer them on, slap them on their back and hand them another shot of whiskey? Of course not, no matter how much they may protest. And when it comes to America’s friendship with Israel, what is true for the ethics of bars holds true for international politics as well.

Israel is America’s obnoxious drunk friend. And for over half a century, America has been Israel’s bartender and enabler: each year dumping billions of dollars in military aid that is used to oppress Palestinians, handing out bribe money to Arab tyrants in exchange for the suppression of their people’s outrage and, most importantly, protecting Israel from the UN Security Council despite repeated, flagrant violations of international law. On Friday, America did it again by vetoing a Security Council resolution that would have declared Israel’s settlements illegal… all other members of the council, longstanding friends of Israel included, had voted in favor of the reprimand.

In the last thirty days, the power dynamics of the Middle East have changed irrevocably. Israel’s biggest ally in the region has been toppled, popular movements are sweeping neighboring countries and a new mood of self-governance has captured the imagination of the world’s citizens. It is time for Israel to sober up and face the reality that their aggressive militarism won’t work any more. Only America has the power to grab Israel’s car keys.

The Guardian reports:

Palestinians are planning a “day of rage” on Friday in response to the US wielding its veto against a UN security council resolution condemning Israeli settlements.

The US decision to use its veto has sparked a furious reaction in the West Bank and Gaza.

Anti-US rallies took place in the West Bank towns of Bethlehem, Tulkarem and Jenin this weekend after the 14-1 vote on the resolution, in which the US stood alone against the rest of the security council, including Britain, Germany and France. It voted in contradiction of its own policy.

In Gaza, Hamas described the US position as outrageous and said Washington was “completely biased” towards Israel.

Ibrahim Sarsour, an Israeli-Arab member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, said it was time to tell the US president, Barack Obama, to “go to hell”.

“Obama cannot be trusted,” he wrote in an open letter to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. “We knew his promises were lies. The time has come to spit in the face of the Americans.”

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U.N. resolution on Israeli settlements puts Obama in a diplomatic bind

Tony Karon writes:

It was always going to be a struggle for the U.S. to dissuade its Arab allies from going ahead with a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. But last week’s “people power” rebellion in Tunisia has made Washington’s effort to lobby against the plan more difficult. Tunisia has given the autocratic leaders of countries such as Egypt and Jordan more reason to fear their own people. For those regimes, symbolically challenging unconditional U.S. support for Israel is a low-cost gesture that will play well on restive streets.

Going ahead with the resolution, which was discussed on Wednesday at the Security Council and demands an immediate halt to all Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, is, of course, a vote of no-confidence in U.S. peacemaking efforts. And it creates a headache for the Obama Administration over whether to invoke the U.S. veto — as Washington has traditionally done on Council resolutions critical of Israel. The twist this time: the substance of the resolution largely echoes the Administration’s own stated positions.

Washington had hoped that signaling its intention to veto such a resolution would force the Palestinians and their Arab backers to hold it back. But they went ahead and placed it on the Council’s agenda (a vote is unlikely for a few more weeks), putting the U.S. on the spot. After all, the Obama Administration has demanded that Israel end settlement construction to allow peace talks to go forward. After a 10-month partial moratorium expired last September, Israel resumed vigorous construction, and has resisted pressure from Washington for any further freeze. U.S. Deputy U.N. Ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo said on Wednesday that the U.S. opposed bringing the settlement issue to the Council “because such action moves us no closer to a goal of a negotiated final settlement” and could even undermine progress toward it. But that argument is unlikely to convince most of the international community, given the obvious stalemate in the peace process — there are no negotiations under way, and the Palestinians have refused to restart them until Israel halts its settlement construction. Initial responses at the Security Council reflect unanimous international support for the demand that Israel stop building settlements. If a vote were held today, the U.S. would be the only possible nay.

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Israel’s public relations policy: never apologise, always confuse

Jesse Rosenfeld and Joseph Dana write:

Never believe the Israeli army killed an unarmed civilian until it’s officially denied. This paraphrasing of Mark Twain’s “never believe anything until it has officially been denied,” should become a mantra for journalists operating in the Middle East.

It is a point reinforced recently by the death of a West Bank Palestinian resident, Jawaher abu Rahmah, who died from tear gas exposure during the recent demonstration against Israel’s separation wall and land annexation in the village of Bil’in.

It has become an almost predictable pattern: a Palestinian civilian is killed during a demonstration or Israeli military incursion and the evidence and witness testimony clearly demonstrates Israeli culpability. Then, military sources give farfetched and contradictory statements that become the central focus in Israeli and American media reports.

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Why the destruction of the Shepherd Hotel in East Jerusalem could be a good thing for democracy

Joseph Dana writes that the destruction of the Shepherd Hotel in East Jerusalem confirms that the two-state solution is finished and that it is time to start fighting for democratic rights for all of the residents of the land under Israeli military rule.

Israel and Palestine are under full Israeli military control. Everything going in and out of the Palestinian areas, West Bank and Gaza, passes through Israeli control. Every baby born in Gaza is registered in an Israeli controlled census. Instead of thinking about what would be in the future perhaps we should start from what is in the present. We live in one state.

So what does this state look like? It is a state in which eighty percent of the population, the Jewish population, enjoys full democratic, civil and human rights. The remaining residents of Israel within the 1948 green line borders are the Palestinian citizens of Israel who live in a system of institutionalized discrimination much like the Jim Crow South of the 1950′s.

In the occupied West Bank, Palestinians live in an apartheid-like system where the term ‘separate and unequal’ reaches its full potential. Different infrastructure, different and unequal court systems, unequal access to resources such as water and lack of freedom of movement constitute their lifestyle. That leaves us with Gaza, which is basically an open air prison, fenced in and controlled by Israel. These are the current parameters of the one state which is known as ‘Israel and Palestine’ or ‘Israel and its occupied territories’.

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Israel’s effort to squash the popular struggle movement in the West Bank continues in military court

The Popular Struggle Coordination Committee in the West Bank just released a statement saying:

After ordering to keep Abdallah Abu Rahmah in detention past his release date on the 18th of November, the Military Court of appeals will deliver its verdict on the prosecution’s appeal demanding to aggravate the one-year sentence imposed on Abu Rahmah. The prosecution is asking the court to harshen the sentence so that it exceeds two years imprisonment.

Despite international outrage over the mishandling of Abu Rahmah, the prosecution openly argues that the sentence should be extended for political reasons, namely “to serve as a deterrence not only to [Abu Rahmah] himself, but also to others who may follow in his footsteps.” Abdallah Abu Rahmah served as the coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, until his arrest last year. Such arguments by the prosecution expose the real motivation behind the countless arrests of anti-Wall organizers and activists recently which is to squash the popular struggle movement in the West Bank.

On October 11th, Abu Rahmah was sentenced to twelve months imprisonment for his prominent role in his village’s successful campaign against the construction of Israel’s Separation Barrier on its lands. Abu Rahmah was convicted of two Freedom of Expression charges – incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations, but was cleared of all charges connecting him with direct violence.

Abu Rahmah was to be released from prison on November 18th, when the prison term he was sentenced to ended, but was kept in jail on the order of the Military Court of Appeals. The controversial decision directly conflicts with the jurisprudence of the Israeli Hight Court on the issue, instructing that a prisoner should only be kept under arrest after his term was over in the most extenuating of circumstances.

Abu Rahmah was declared a human rights defender by the European Union, and his conviction and sentence generated international outrage, and was denounced by human rights organizations and the international community alike, including EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton.

Background
Abu Rahmah, the coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, was arrested last year by soldiers who raided his home at the middle of the night and was subsequently indicted before an Israeli military court on unsubstantiated charges that included stone-throwing and arms possession. Abu Rahmah was cleared of both the stone-throwing and arms possession charges, but convicted of organizing illegal demonstrations and incitement.

An exemplary case of mal-use of the Israeli military legal system in the West Bank for the purpose of silencing legitimate political dissent, Abu Rahmah’s conviction was subject to harsh international criticism. The EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, expressed her deep concern “that the possible imprisonment of Mr Abu Rahma is intended to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest[…]”, after EU diplomats attended all hearings in Abu Rahmah’s case. Ashton’s statement was followed by one from the Spanish Parliament.

Renowned South African human right activist, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, called on Israel to overturn Abu Rahmah’s conviction on behalf of the Elders, a group of international public figures noted as elder statesmen, peace activists, and human rights advocates, brought together by Nelson Mandela. Members of the Elders, including Tutu, have met with Abu Rahmah on their visit to Bil’in prior to his arrest.

International human rights organization Amnesty International condemned Abu Rahmah’s conviction as an assault on the right to freedom of expression. Human Rights Watch denounced the conviction, pronouncing the whole process “an unfair trial”.

Israeli organizations also distributed statements against the conviction – including a statement by B’Tselem which raises the issue of questionable testimonies by minors used to convict Abu Rahme, and The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) which highlights the impossibility of organizing legal demonstrations for Palestinians in the West Bank.

Legal Background
Abu Rahmah, the coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, was acquitted of two out of the four charges brought against him in the indictment – stone-throwing and a ridiculous and vindictive arms possession charge. According to the indictment, Abu Rahmah collected used tear-gas projectiles and bullet casings shot at demonstrators, with the intention of exhibiting them to show the violence used against demonstrators. This absurd charge is a clear example of how eager the military prosecution is to use legal procedures as a tool to silence and smear unarmed dissent.

The court did, however, find Abu Rahmah guilty of two of the most draconian anti-free speech articles in military legislation: incitement, and organizing and participating in illegal demonstrations. It did so based only on testimonies of minors who were arrested in the middle of the night and denied their right to legal counsel, and despite acknowledging significant ills in their questioning.

The court was also undeterred by the fact that the prosecution failed to provide any concrete evidence implicating Abu Rahmah in any way, despite the fact that all demonstrations in Bil’in are systematically filmed by the army.

Under military law, incitement is defined as “The attempt, verbally or otherwise, to influence public opinion in the Area in a way that may disturb the public peace or public order” (section 7(a) of the Order Concerning Prohibition of Activities of Incitement and Hostile Propaganda (no.101), 1967), and carries a 10 years maximal sentence.

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The Israeli-Palestinian alliance that worries the Israeli government

In an analysis on the political fallout from the killing of Jawaher Abu Rahmah, a Palestinian women who died after inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli troops in the West Bank on Friday, Tony Karon writes:

[T]he news of Abu Rahmah’s death has highlighted a new alliance emerging between a small number of Israeli leftists and Palestinians engaged in unarmed mass protest action. Scores of Israeli activists had actually joined Friday’s demonstration, and they challenged the IDF claim that tear gas was fired only after stones were thrown by protesters. The news that Abu Rahmah had died brought hundreds of Israeli Jews to a protest in Tel Aviv on Saturday night outside Israel’s Defense Ministry, where a handful were arrested. More were held later by the police after 25 protesters converged on the residence of the U.S. ambassador to Israel and allegedly threw some of the U.S.-made tear-gas canisters collected in Bil’in onto his lawn.

The self-described leftists and anarchists engaged in direct action in concert with unarmed Palestinian protests are a negligible presence on an Israeli political spectrum whose median has moved steadily to the right over the past decade. But their actions may be directed less at the Israeli political mainstream than at international civil society. The Israeli protesters often use English rather than Hebrew in placards and slogans, and explicitly connect Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories with South Africa’s apartheid system. That’s intended as a signal to international civil society, which helped end the apartheid regime through its support for boycotts and economic sanctions in the 1980s. Joseph Dana, an Israeli activist and the media coordinator for the Palestinian Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, says these Israeli leftists are “seeking to use the privileged access their voice carries in North America and Europe to add power to the voice of the Palestinians they struggle alongside, sidestepping engagement with [an Israeli] society that is unwilling to listen.”

Their numbers may be relatively small, but the activists are certainly making their presence felt. Weekly demonstrations against Israeli settlement activity in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem regularly draw scores of Israelis, who have also ventured out to demonstrations elsewhere in the West Bank. Just last week, Israeli anarchist Jonathan Pollak was sentenced to three months in an Israeli prison for his role in a bicycle protest against the Gaza blockade three years ago. In court for his sentencing, an unrepentant Pollak wore a T-shirt bearing the face of slain South African antiapartheid activist Steve Biko.

As much as it irks Israel’s liberal supporters in the West, the apartheid comparison with Israel’s occupation is being drawn more and more frequently, even by current Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Barak, of course, was using it to warn his countrymen of the danger of failing to achieve a two-state solution, which leaves Palestinians effectively ruled by a state that denies them citizenship. But its function for Tel Aviv leftists is to spur the international community to action — hoping that the fact that it comes from Jewish Israelis will counter any hesitation based on sensitivity to charges of anti-Semitism in the West.

The growing assertiveness of Israel’s leftists has the authorities worried.

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Substantial evidence contradicts the Israeli army’s version of the events surrounding the death of Jawaher Abu Rahmah

The Popular Struggle Coordination Committee just released the following statement:

Since yesterday, the army has been promoting in the Israeli media a mendacious version regarding the events that led to the death of Jawaher Abu Rahmah of Bil’in on Friday, 31 December 2010. According to the army’s version, Jawaher was not injured by tear gas and was possibly not even present at the demonstration. The army spokesperson did not see fit to publish an official statement on the matter, instead passing the information to the media in the name of anonymous “army sources.”

The facts of the matter, which are supported by the testimony of eyewitness who were present at the demonstration, as well as by the ambulance driver who evacuated her to the hospital, contradict completely the army’s version:

Soubhiya Abu Rahmah, mother of Jawaher: “I was standing beside Jawaher on the hill that is near the place where the demonstration took place, when we were injured by a cloud of tear gas. Jawaher began to feel unwell from inhaling the gas and started to move back from the place; soon after that she vomited and collapsed. We took her to the nearest road, and from there she was evacuated by ambulance to the hospital, where she remained until her death. She was not sick with cancer, nor did she have any other illness; and she was not asthmatic.”

Ilham Fathi: I was on the roof of my house, which is located a few meters from where Jawaher stood. When the cloud of tear gas moved in our direction, I went downstairs in order to close the windows. While I was closing one of the windows, I saw her lose consciousness from the gas and ran over to her, together with Islam Abu Rahmah, in order to pull her away. We picked her up together and carried her to my garden. We called for help and she began to vomit and foam at the mouth. Phone: 059-5127887

Islam Abu Rahmah: “I was standing with Jawaher, her mother and my grandmother in order to watch the confrontation that was going on just in front of us, in the area of the fence. The wind moved the gas in our direction, making our eyes itch and tear up. After that she (Jawaher) began to cough and foam at the mouth. Soon after that she became weak and lay down on the ground. I succeeded in carrying her as far as the Abu Khamis home, about 40 meters in the direction of her house, but then she became terribly weak, vomited violently and foamed at the mouth. She was having difficult breathing and lost her sense of direction. We got a few women to help her by waving a paper fan over her face in order to provide some oxygen. After that she was taken to the hospital.”

Saher Bisharat, the ambulance who evacuated Jawaher: “We received Jawaher near the entrance that is parallel to the fence, which is where the demonstration was taking place. She was still partially conscious, answered questions, and said that she had choked on gas. I took her straight to the hospital.” (Click here to view the Red Crescent report). Phone: 059-9374348

The army has also claimed that the reports about Abu Rahmeh’s injuries started to arrive only several hours after the incident, in the evening. That claim is contradicted by a tweet sent by the NGO Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP), which reports the injury of Jawaher, including her name, in real time (click here to view). The tweet was sent at 2:36 pm (4:36 am on the West Coast of the United States). Wafa, the Palestinian news service, published a report that includes the injury of Jawaher Abu Rahmah shortly after the event (click here to view).

Also according to “army sources,” which remain anonymous, Jawaher Abu Rahmah suffered from a serious illness, possibly leukemia; the “sources” postulate that she died from a pre-existing condition rather than tear gas inhalation. Several sources reject that claim.

Dr. Uday Abu Nahlah: “Jawaher Abu Rahmah was employed in my home on a regular basis. On Thursday she was at work as usual, healthy, only one day before her death.” Phone: 059-9796827 (English and Arabic).

Jawaher had an inner ear infection, which affected her balance, for which she was recently given a CT scan. The radiologist who performed the CT scan, Dr. Hamis Al Sahfi’i, confirmed that the brain scan was normal (for the CT scan results click here). Jawaher had a minor health issue involving fluids in her inner ear. Her physicians insist that she did not suffer from any illness or from any symptoms that might, if combined with tear gas, lead to her death.

There is not, nor could there be, any indication that Abu Rahmah had cancer; in fact, she was in good health. The director of the hospital refutes the claim that she died from a pre-existing condition:

Mohammed Aida, director of the Ramallah health center where Abu Rahmah received her care: “Jawaher Abu Rahmah died from lung failure that was caused by tear gas inhalation, leading to a heart attack. She arrived at the hospital only partly conscious, and then lost consciousness completely.” Click here for the hospital’s official medical report.

Mohammed Khatib, a member of Bil’in’s Popular Coordinating Committee: “The army is trying to evade its responsibility for Jawaher’s death with lies and invented narratives that have no basis. They are spreading these lies and invented narratives via the media, which is not bothering to do basic fact checking. Our version is supported by named sources and with medical documents. In a properly functioning society, the army’s version, which has been spread by anonymous sources, would not be considered worthy of publication.”

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