Category Archives: One-State Solution

A Palestinian state has become impossible

A Palestinian state has become impossible
Sari Nusseibeh: Interview With Le Figaro, January 6, 2010

For the pacifist Palestinian Sari Nusseibeh, Israel will soon have no choice but to integrate its Arab population. Sari Nusseibeh, Dean of al-Quds University in Jerusalem and committed Palestinian intellectual, was the author in 2002 of a peace plan co-written with Ami Ayalon, former head of Shin Bet, the Israeli security service.

LE FIGARO – Doesn’t the issue of Jerusalem, which resurfaced in 2009, complicate the resumption of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians?

SARI NUSSEIBEH – Everyone kept putting off the issue of Jerusalem. Suddenly they rediscovered that it is undoubtedly the main problem. And also that the parameters of this problem are no longer the same. While the negotiators were working in their bubble towards a peaceful solution, the city was fundamentally changing: the 1967 state of affairs no longer exists today, and sharing it has become much more difficult.

What are these changes?

Geographically, the area of Jerusalem and its suburbs has grown from 20 sq km to 50 sq km: in the eastern part of this Greater Jerusalem, the Israelis have built 13 new neighborhoods, where 250 000 Jews now live, linked together by freeways. They encircle the Arab areas of East Jerusalem and separate them from one another. The Israelis have also invented the concept of the “holy basin”, which includes the Muslim Quarter of the Old City and the surrounding areas, which form the core of Arab Jerusalem. They are carrying out an active policy of expulsions, destruction and expropriation, making an eventual partition of Jerusalem much more difficult.

And yet the two-state solution is supported by the whole world?

In 1967, one of the first advocates of the two-state solution was Uri Avnery (historic figure on the Israeli pacifist left). He had no support at that time. Four decades later, his ideas have been immensely successful, as they are shared today by the entire world, even Bush. But in the meantime, the possibility of creating two states has faded away. Even if I do not rule out the possibility of a miracle, I do not personally believe anymore that the prospect is achievable. [continued…]
(H/t to Mondoweiss)

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Likud MK: Annex West Bank, consider citizenship for Palestinians

Likud MK: Annex West Bank, consider citizenship for Palestinians
By Attila Somfalvi, Ynet, December 20, 2009

Knesset Member Tzipi Hotovely, one of the leading dissenting voices in the Likud faction opposing the policy adopted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Sunday that the territories should be annexed to Israel.

“Israeli law should be applied on the Judea and Samaria region,” Hotovely said during a conference in the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and stated she did not rule out granting citizenship to Palestinians.

The MK explained that “Judea and Samaria are a part of the land of Israel,” and blamed the Palestinians for the failure of the political process. “We strongly wish to get a divorce, but the other side doesn’t want to separate.”

Hotovely told Ynet later in the evening, “It’s unthinkable that Jews in Judea and Samaria would live under occupation and under a military regime. The distorted policy, which states that every construction permit must be approved by the defense minister harms the most basic rights.

“It’s time to lift the question mark over Judea and Samaria and view the people living there as citizens with an equal status. Thinking ahead, strategically, we should consider granting gradual citizenship to Palestinians based on loyalty tests.” [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — Tzipi Hotovely, at 31 the youngest member of the Knesset, is younger than the occupation. Small wonder that she regards Israel’s control of the West Bank as irreversible. Her proposal to consider granting Palestinians citizenship if they pass a “loyalty test” obviously bears no relationship to the one-state solution that many anti-Zionists favor. Indeed, the Jewish claim to Greater Israel she is expressing has embedded in it a hubris that goes beyond that of the average Zionist — she seems to be implying that Jews could still exercise control over a Jewish state even if they were in a minority. Old hands in the conflict will no doubt dismiss her views as naive, but I have to wonder whether or not she is simply saying what a majority of her generation of Jewish Israelis already think.

Israel continues its assault on Palestinian nonviolent leaders
By Adam Horowitz, Mondoweiss, December 20, 2009

Israel’s campaign against Palestinian nonviolent grassroots activists is continuing. The latest leader to be arrested is Jamal Juma’. Juma’ has been the coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign since 2002. His arrests follows those of Mohammad Othman, who had been promoting BDS in Europe, and Abdallah Abu Rahmah a leader of the weekly nonviolent protests against the wall in Bil’in. [continued…]

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Viva Palestina convoy arriving in Turkey

Viva Palestina convoy arriving in Turkey
December 19, 2009

The Gaza I know
By Nancy Murray, The Nation, December 18, 2009

For most Americans, the Gaza Strip is, at best, unknown territory. At worst, it is a hostile land whose “terrorist infrastructure” must be dismantled, no matter what the cost to its million and a half residents.

The Gaza I have been visiting for the past twenty-one years bears little relation to the dehumanizing imagery to which it has been reduced by the mainstream media. The Gaza I know is home to friends and strangers who are as welcoming and humane as they are resilient and determined to achieve their freedom. They have maintained their humanity despite enduring a brutal forty-two-year-old Israeli occupation that has cost them the destruction of their homes, land, economy and future and the loss of more than 4,000 lives since the dawn of the twenty-first century.

For the past two and a half years, this spit of sand–just twenty-five miles long and a few miles wide–has been virtually a closed prison. Since June 2007 Israel’s blockade has prevented the entry of all but a handful of basic items, and the exit of patients who urgently need medical treatment and students with scholarships to study abroad. Then, a year ago, came the “shock and awe” of Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead,” intended as a knockout blow not just to the crude rockets fired from Gaza but to its life-sustaining infrastructure and the will of its people to resist. [continued…]

One Palestinian family’s story illustrates the absurdity, and intention, of Israeli policy
By Mohammad Alsaafin, Mondoweiss, December 19, 2009

I am a Palestinian refugee, from the village of Fallujah which lies between Gaza, Hebron and Asqalan. I’ve never been allowed to visit Fallujah; my grandparents were exiled from there in 1949 (a year after the founding of Israel) and took refuge in the Gaza Strip. My father and I were both born in the Khan Younis refugee camp-he a few years before Gaza was occupied by Israel, and I in 1988, a month after the outbreak of the first intifada. My dad married a woman from the West Bank-they had met and fallen in love while they were both studying at Birzeit University, and when I was two years old we emigrated to the UK where he received his Phd.

Fourteen years later, in 2004, we all returned to Palestine to live in Ramallah. Now British citizens, my parents were determined that my three siblings and I would forge a stronger connection to our homeland than we ever could living abroad. At first, the transition was made easier by the fact that our foreign passports gave us the freedom of movement that was denied to other Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. For me, this reality was shattered when in late 2005 I attempted to cross the River Jordan from the West Bank to visit my aunt in Amman. The Israeli border agents told me that I could not pass, because I had an Israeli issued Gaza ID. Under Israeli military rules, this meant that I could not ‘legally’ be present in the West Bank because the Israeli occupation had mandated that Palestinians from Gaza could not enter the West Bank, and Palestinians from the West Bank could not enter Gaza. This policy had been in force since the early 1990’s, but was applied with increasing severity after the outbreak of the second intifada.

I lived the next four years under constant fear of arrest by the Israeli military, because that would have resulted in almost certain deportation to Gaza, and isolation from my family. For those four years, I never left the confines of Ramallah, so as to avoid the Israeli checkpoints on every one of the town’s entrances-but even this couldn’t give me a sense of security because I had to commute daily to Birzeit University, on a route frequently patrolled by Israeli forces from the nearby settlement of Bet El. [continued…]

Steps to create an Israel-Palestine
By Jonathan Kuttab, Los Angeles Times, December 20, 2009

In recent years the idea of a one-state solution has been anathema to Israelis and their supporters worldwide. This has been fueled by the fear of the “demographic threat” posed by the high Palestinian birthrate. Indeed, many Israeli supporters of a two-state solution came to that position out of fear of this demographic threat rather than sympathy with Palestinian national aspirations.

At the root of their fear was the belief that despite Israel’s best efforts to push Palestinians from land and property and to import Jewish settlers in their stead, the Arab population would keep climbing. And that, when the Arabs reached the 51% mark, the state of Israel would collapse, its Jewish character would disappear and its population would dwindle into obscurity.

Yet that scenario is not necessarily the inevitable result of either demography or democracy. Religious and ethnic minorities have successfully thrived in many countries and managed to retain their distinctive culture and identity, and succeeded in being effective and sometimes even dominant influences in those countries. Those who believe in coexistence must begin to seriously think of the legal and constitutional mechanisms needed to safeguard the rights of a Jewish minority in Israel-Palestine. [continued…]

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When will it be our time?

When will it be our time?
By Mustafa Barghouti, New York Times, December 16, 2009

I have lived my entire adult life under occupation, with Israelis holding ultimate control over my movement and daily life.

When young Israeli police officers force me to sit on the cold ground and soldiers beat me during a peaceful protest, I smolder. No human being should be compelled to sit on the ground while exercising rights taken for granted throughout the West.

It is with deepening concern that I recognize the Obama administration is not yet capable of standing up to Israel and the pro-Israel lobby. Our dream of freedom is being crushed under the weight of immovable and constantly expanding Israeli settlements.

Days ago, the State Department spokesman, Ian Kelly, managed only to term such illegal building “dismaying.” The Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, stands up and walks out on the U.S. envoy, George Mitchell, every time the American envoy mentions East Jerusalem.

And Javier Solana, just prior to completing his stint as European Union foreign policy chief, claimed Palestinian moves toward statehood “have to be done with time, with calm, in an appropriate moment.” He adds: “I don’t think today is the moment to talk about that.”

When, precisely, is a good time for Palestinian freedom? I call on Mr. Solana’s replacement, Catherine Ashton, to take concrete actions to press for Palestinian freedom rather than postpone it.

If Israel insists on hewing to antiquated notions of determining the date of another people’s freedom then it is incumbent on Palestinians to organize ourselves and highlight the moral repugnance of such an outlook.

Through decades of occupation and dispossession, 90 percent of the Palestinian struggle has been nonviolent, with the vast majority of Palestinians supporting this method of struggle. Today, growing numbers of Palestinians are participating in organized nonviolent resistance.

In the face of European and American inaction, it is crucial that we continue to revive our culture of collective activism by vigorously and nonviolently resisting Israel’s domination over us. [continued…]

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The interview Ha’aretz doesn’t want you to see

The interview Ha’aretz doesn’t want you to see
Pulse, December 6, 2009

Rehaviya Berman conducted an interview with Ali Abunimah, for Ha’aretz, a few weeks ago. The Interview was never published. Berman decided to publish it on his blog [Hebrew] and I decided to translate it, for your reading pleasure:

Exclusive: One On One with the Leader of the Electronic Intifada
Rehaviya Berman

Meet Ali Abunimah, the son of a Jordanian diplomat, a Palestinian activist, and the man who brings the hottest news of the struggle to thousands of people. His message: Forget two states, one will be tough enough to get it right. [continued…]

Inside story – the battle for Jerusalem

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Israeli Jews and the one-state solution

Israeli Jews and the one-state solution
By Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada, November 10, 2009

Ultimately, as we now know, the combination of internal resistance and international isolation did force whites to abandon political apartheid and accept majority rule. However, it is important to note that the combined strength of the anti-apartheid movement never seriously threatened the physical integrity of the white regime.

Even after the massive township uprisings of 1985-86, the South African regime was secure. “So far there is no real physical threat to white power,” The Economist noted, “so far there is little threat to white lives. … The white state is mighty, and well-equipped. It has the capacity to repress the township revolts far more bloodily. The blacks have virtually no urban or rural guerrilla capacity, practically no guns, few safe havens within South Africa or without.”

This balance never changed, and a similar equation could be written today about the relative power of a massively-armed — and much more ruthless — Israeli state, and lightly armed Palestinian resistance factions.

What did change for South Africa, and what all the weapons in the world were not able to prevent, was the complete loss of legitimacy of the apartheid regime and its practices. Once this legitimacy was gone, whites lost the will to maintain a system that relied on repression and violence and rendered them international pariahs; they negotiated a way out and lived to tell the tale. It all happened much more quickly and with considerably less violence than even the most optimistic predictions of the time. But this outcome could not have been predicted based on what whites said they were willing to accept, and it would not have occurred had the ANC been guided by opinion polls rather than the democratic principles of the Freedom Charter.

Zionism — as many Israelis openly worry — is suffering a similar, terminal loss of legitimacy as Israel is ever more isolated as a result of its actions. Israel’s self-image as a liberal “Jewish and democratic state” is proving impossible to maintain against the reality of a militarized, ultra-nationalist Jewish sectarian settler-colony that must carry out frequent and escalating massacres of “enemy” civilians (Lebanon and Gaza 2006, Gaza 2009) in a losing effort to check the resistance of the region’s indigenous people. Zionism cannot bomb, kidnap, assassinate, expel, demolish, settle and lie its way to legitimacy and acceptance. [continued…]

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Palestinians may need to pursue “one-state solution”

Palestinians may need to pursue “one-state solution”
By Mohammed Assadi, Reuters, November 4, 2009

Palestinians may have to abandon the goal of an independent state if Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements and the United States does not stop it, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Wednesday. It may be time for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to “tell his people the truth, that with the continuation of settlement activities, the two-state solution is no longer an option”, Erekat told a news conference.

Israel has rejected the idea of a de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank, incorporating the Palestinians as citizens, as “demographic timebomb” that would make Jews the minority. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — The problem with the expression “one-state solution” is that it treats “one-state” as a proposition about something that might or might not exist in the future and then considers who would or would not consent to its creation.

The question is, can Israel dismantle what it has already created?

Gaza would seem to prove that the answer is no, since even when Israel showed it could withdraw its troops and a few thousand settlers, it couldn’t relinquish military and economic control over the territory. Gaza also serves as the most compelling reason why most Israelis won’t seriously entertain the idea of ending the occupation of the West Bank.

More than anything else, the two-state solution has functioned as a mirage that distracts attention away from the present one-state reality.

The task at hand seems to have more to do with destroying an illusion and unmasking a reality than it does with constructing a vision of a better future.

Once it dawns on the majority of Israelis that without having a consensus about what they were doing, they have indeed created a single state in which half the population is Palestinian, a decades-long process of political reform can begin.

Settlers force Palestinians out of East Jerusalem home
By Nir Hasson, Haaretz, November 5, 2009

Rioting settlers forced a Palestinian family out of their home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah yesterday, after the district court denied the residents’ appeal to remain on the premises.

Shortly after the verdict was passed dozens of settlers stormed into the house with hired security guards, demanding that the family vacate immediately. A violent riot erupted between the Jewish settlers and the neighborhood’s Palestinian residents. Police were called in to disperse the protesters.

A legal battle has raged for some 30 years over the ownership of 28 houses in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The specific house in question, built 10 years ago by the al-Kurd family, was unoccupied and locked up for eight years by court order pending the settlement of a land-ownership dispute. [continued…]

35% of East Jerusalem expropriated – study
By Hani Hazaimeh, Jordan Times, November 4, 2009

Irael has expropriated some 35 per cent of East Jerusalem’s territory, over 24,000 dunums of land, from its Palestinian owners despite the fact that in 20 years the majority of Jerusalem’s population will be Palestinians, a study said.

According to the study, compiled by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Palestinians currently make up 35 per cent of the city’s population compared with 25.5 per cent in 1967, adding that “in the absence of a political agreement on the borders of the city and the status of its Palestinian residents, Jerusalem is approaching a bi-national urban reality”.

The study by the Germany-based organisation examined the building policies in Jerusalem intended to change the facts on the ground and ensure a solid Jewish majority in the city, said a statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times yesterday. [continued…]

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Two-State Solution: The Broadway Musical

Two-State Solution: The Broadway Musical
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, November 1, 2009

Remember a mere five months ago when Hillary Clinton, with all the toughness she had displayed during her primary campaign, said bluntly: “[Obama] wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not ‘natural growth’ exceptions”?

The whole administration — presumably with expert coaching by Rahm Emanuel — was sending a strong message to Israel: We know your games and we’re not going to take any crap.

Freezing settlements — this was the litmus test for Benjamin Netanyahu to demonstrate his ability to engage in the so-called peace process.

Within a few weeks the administration’s Iran policy was in disarray — in the aftermath of the disputed presidential election — and terrified of the charge that he was being tough on Israel while soft on Iran, Obama’s resolve withered. Netanyahu bounced back and he has been riding high ever since.

Back in June, Netanyahu was admonished for not doing his homework. Now he’s thrown it in the trash and gets praise for offering “restraint on the policy of settlements” — even as Israel demolishes Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and Palestinian citizens of Israel protest against the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, as Netanyahu mocks the idea that Washington has the capacity or will to apply pressure on an Israeli government, J Street, “the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement,” after launching itself onto the stage of mainstream American politics through its first national conference last week, must somehow strive to keep the two-state-solution dream alive.

The two-state solution is indeed the stuff of dreams — at least the dreams of Zionists who find the idea of equality between Jews and non-Jews abhorrent, or as J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami puts it, “a nightmare for the Jewish people.”

Perhaps Washington is not the best place for dream believers. Maybe it’s time for a glitzy Two-State Solution on Broadway.

Oh look!

Bibi and Hillary are already auditioning.

J Street: Do we really need another Jewish-only road?
By Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Mondoweiss, October 30, 2009

If you’re Palestinian, you know about checkpoints. There are over 600 checkpoints in the West Bank alone. They block, obstruct, frustrate and kill. Women die in childbirth at checkpoints, students are kept from attending school, parents from visiting their children, laborers from going to work. No one can swim in the sea. Israeli Jews are waved through checkpoints. They can swim in the sea. No problem. Jews travel freely on a complex system of Jewish-only roads and live on the Jewish side of the Separation Barriers along hundreds of miles of walls and fortified fences that keep Palestinians out. Palestinians live in an open air prison. Sometimes there is a moment of spring and the guards open the gates. But spring never lasts long. Blockades, nightly incursions, full-scale invasions, imprisonment, collective punishment, land theft, water theft, denial of education, health care, an economic future, frequent beatings and no freedom of movement is the daily bread of Palestinians. You can’t travel more than three miles without encountering a check point. Talk about stress.

J Street was a place where Jews talked to Jews about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Few Palestinians were present. Apparently they didn’t make it through the checkpoint. The narrative of J Street, like most Jewish narratives about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reflects the nature of the conflict as seen through a Jewish lens: Palestinians are physically absent. A Jew who seeks to express her activism in solidarity with Palestinians is in danger of loosing her ‘I love Israel’ card at a mainstream Jewish checkpoint. There were checkpoints at J Street. Some people were allowed in but not officially asked to participate, some were dis-invited, and some were not considered to be part of the conversation in the first place. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — As Ahmed Moor eloquently puts it:

A purely Jewish focus on a more-than-Jewish problem causes many leftist Jews to take a paternalistic view of Palestinians. Rather than equals whose inalienable rights form the crux of the case against Zionism, the Palestinians are the clay of Jewish humanism, waiting to be fully actualized by thoughtful and reflective Jewish hands.

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Palestinian equal rights joins the progressive agenda on ‘The Daily Show’

Palestinian equal rights joins the progressive agenda on ‘The Daily Show’
By Adam Horowitiz, Mondoweiss, October 29, 2009

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive – Anna Baltzer & Mustafa Barghouti Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Health Care Crisis
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive – Anna Baltzer & Mustafa Barghouti Extended Interview Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Throughout the day I had been hearing on the grapevine that The Daily Show was having second thoughts about doing the show as they had been getting pressure to cancel it. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — During a week in which J Street — an organization that is attempting to break AIPAC’s stranglehold on the issue of US-Israeli relations — held its first national conference in Washington DC, it’s interesting that Jon Stewart took the opportunity to turn to the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict not by inviting J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami onto the show but instead, as Adam Horowitz notes, “a Palestinian leader demanding equal rights and an anti-Zionist Jew calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel towards peace.”

One of the disappointing features of the way the interview got edited for broadcast was that by cutting out much of the applause, the editors took out one of the most significant messages: the Palestinian issue, framed as one of freedom and human rights, resonated well with Jon Stewart’s audience.

While Stewart himself tended to stick to the well-worn tracks that this is a seemingly intractable conflict, that the Palestinians need to stop anti-Semitic incitement, that the Arabs need to do their bit, Barghouti’s constant refrain was that the core issue here is freedom.

That’s a message the J Street and its mainstream two-state-solution supporters really don’t want to see placed at the center of the conversation. They seem to view the conflict not in terms primarily of human rights but in terms of the need to preserve the Jewish state — a state in relation to which Palestinians pose a “demographic threat”. The urgency of implementing a two-state solution is that unless it can be done fast, Palestinians will demand equal rights in a single state — a state in which (thanks to the Greater Israel project that has been in motion for the last 42 years) Jews will be in a minority. That possibility is in the eyes of some, “horrific“.

Squaring the circle and erasing the margins
By Adam Horowitz, Mondoweiss, October 28, 2009

The mission to move US policy through reforming the Jewish community’s debate over Israel/Palestine has clear political implications. Ben-Ami ended the opening evening by saying the movement J Street is a part of is a “movement rooted in love of Israel,” and while all are welcomed to join J Street in its work, “the heart of this movement has to be in the Jewish community.” From this perspective, it was telling that Gaza was not mentioned once the entire evening (except by Rabbi Andy Bachman who said it was no longer occupied). There was only one panel during the entire conference dedicated to “Palestinian perspectives,” and even the closing panel called “Why Two States? Why Now?” only included speakers to explain Israeli interests and American interests in promoting two states. Two of the most moving parts of the conference for me was hearing Laila El-Haddad, from the Gaza Mom blog, describe life in still occupied Gaza on the unofficial blogger’s panel. She told a story about how her family was almost unable to leave Gaza to visit her in the US and she is totally unable to enter her homeland. Later, Bassim Khoury, the ex-Minister of National Economy for the Palestinian Authority who recently quit in protest to their reaction to the Goldstone report, demonstrated “Israeli apartheid” in Jerusalem through a power point presentation outlining the gross discrepancies in municipal funding between Jews and Palestinians in the city. Both presentation injected an intense dose of reality into a proceeding that seems to be chugging along more on vision and hope.

J Street represents a very important rupture and opportunity in the supposed American Jewish consensus over Israel/Palestine which should be celebrated. Pushing this wedge into the heart of the community could only be a good thing. But, the tenor and message of the J Street conference would seem to indicate that the struggle to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be lead by Jews, after we conquer our own internal issues to reform our community, and on our agenda. Meanwhile, Palestinians will have to continue to catch the brunt of the Israel everyone loves so much. [continued…]

Elie Wiesel’s shocking stage appearance with mad preacher and anti-Semite John Hagee
By Max Blumenthal, AlterNet, October 29, 2009

On October 25, while an overflow crowd of 1,500 poured into the first convention of the progressive-leaning Israel-oriented lobbying organization J Street, Elie Wiesel addressed a crowd of 6,000 Christian Zionists at Pastor John Hagee’s “Night To Honor Israel.” According to the San Antonio Express News, while Wiesel sat by his side, Hagee trashed President Barack Obama, baselessly accusing him of “being tougher on Israel than on Russia, Iran, China and North Korea.”

Meanwhile, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, who appeared at Hagee’s Christians United for Israel summit earlier this year, rejected J Street’s request to speak at their convention, instead dispatching a low-level embassy official to “observe” the event. Oren then accused J Street of “impair[ing] Israel’s interests.”

In blessing Hagee while damning J Street, Wiesel and Oren chose an anti-Semitic group led by a far-right End Times theology preacher over a fledgling progressive organization that bills itself as “pro-Israel, pro-peace.” And both Wiesel and Oren seem to be embroiled in yet another controversy over involvement with the extremist preacher. [continued…]

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The point of no return

The point of no return
By Sever Plocker, Ynet, September 9, 2009

Let’s just ask ourselves what would have happened in Israel itself without what is known as the “settlement enterprise.” Where would another half a million women, children, and men live within the 1967 borders? How many new towns, neighborhoods, and communities would have to be built? What kind of infrastructure would have to be built? How many additional roads would we need to pave, instead of the ones paved in the West Bank, some of them for Israelis only? And what would have happened to the population density in central Israel and in western Jerusalem?

The evacuation of 8,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and their absorption in Israel cost taxpayers NIS 10 billion. Those interested in turning back time and evacuating Israelis from the areas beyond the 1967 borders would have to invest NIS 600 billion [$160 billion] for that end. An unreal figure.

Without the Palestinians grasping the process, and without most of Israeli citizens giving it some thought, the areas beyond the 1967 borders have become the main absorption area for new Israeli citizens: New immigrants from the former Soviet Union, young Jerusalemites, haredim facing economic distress, etc. The “territories” served as Israel’s territorial backbone, and played this role with great success.

Israel’s Leftist camp believes that it has the upper hand, referring as ultimate proof to Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau’s declaration in favor of a Palestinian state, albeit with some conditions. Yet the Left is wrong: While it was engaged in the futile “diplomatic process,” the active Rightist camp, with the backing and assistance of all of Israel’s governments with the exception of one, engaged in developing Jewish settlements in the territories.

Half a million Jews beyond the Green Line constitute the point of no return. The talk about a “construction freeze” or “construction suspicion” at certain settlements are a joke and an insurance policy for the leaders – in Israel, in Palestine, and in the world – who know deep in their hearts that the decision had been made.

What we have here is two peoples that cannot be divided: A mixture of Jews and Palestinians that cannot be separated. It’s too late. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — When Benjamin Netanyahu uttered the phrase, “Palestinian state”, it should have been taken as a signal that the two-state solution was well and truly dead.

Shimon Peres now says Salam Fayyad is a “Palestinian Ben-Gurion”. A Ben-Gurion or a Pétain?

The state Fayyad envisions may indeed provide the means for the effective pacification of the majority of Palestinians. And as a Haaretz commenter put it, the Palestinians may end up being able “to elect their own dog catchers, … issue Palestinian stamps and sing their own anthem and even have an Olympic ping-pong team.” What they will not gain is sovereignty.

As a Jewish 36-year-old mother of five told The National recently when asked whether her Palestinian neighbors had any right to their shared water supply:

“We should take care of the foreigners here, and give them running water and help them survive and live the proper way,” she says firmly, like a schoolmarm. “But we should do this only after they understand we are the rulers of this country. Until they deserve it, they can’t have the best conditions.”

Cap in hand, the Palestinians must ask their masters if they can be given a state — a little patchwork one without any real power.

Maybe they’d be better off simply asking for a vote.

EU sources: Terms set for renewal of Israel-PA talks
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, September 14, 2009

Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians will resume next month on the basis of an understanding that the establishment of a Palestinian state will be officially announced in two years.

Palestinian and European Union sources told Haaretz that talks will initially focus on determining the permanent border between Israel and the West Bank.

Due to the Palestinians’ reservations over establishing a state with temporary borders, as was proposed during the second stage of the road map, this step will probably be defined as “early recognition” of Palestine. [continued…]

Borders first?
By Marc Lynch, Foreign Policy, September 13, 2009

The most immediate issue raised by ‘borders first’ is whether it will deal with the Greater Jerusalem border. The issue here is not the Old City, the central focus of so much emotion and identity. It is the large central area of the West Bank, an area far beyond the old municipal boundaries of the city which extends deep into the central West Bank. Israel has developed huge settlements and a massive infrastructure which now almost surrounds East Jerusalem and which all but prevents any meaningful connection between the north and the south, and between the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Will the negotiated border between the West Bank and Israel deal with the Jerusalem area? If the negotiated borders ratify the Israeli settlements and infrastructure as currently configured and proposed (including the controversial E-1 area), then the supposed Palestinian state would be essentially non-viable. It’s hard to imagine a government led by Netanyahu agreeing to remove existing settlements around the Greater Jerusalem area. But no Palestinian leader is likely to be able to sell a deal which ignores or ratifies the Greater Jerusalem settlement areas to his people, even if pressured to accept. If the negotiated borders ignore or defer the Jerusalem area – an idea I’ve heard in circulation – then the outcome would be meaningless and counter-productive. [continued…]

Dividing war spoils: Israel’s robbery of Palestinian property
By Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, Palestine Chronicle, September 13, 2009

While the news headlines were occupied with the freeze or suspension of Jewish settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories or with the competition for positions in the sixth Fateh conference in Bethlehem, Israel is putting into effect the most devastating operation since the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in al Nakba of 1948. This new operation aims to eliminate irrevocably Palestinian rights and historical roots in Palestine.

Ironically, Arab and Palestinian leaderships remain oblivious to these cataclysmic developments. In particular, the Palestinian leadership, whose main duty is to defend Palestinian rights, is bogged down with the assignment of internal political posts and fighting what it sees as its primary enemy, Hamas.

The Zionist leadership in Israel felt bold enough to transform the ideological slogan of ‘Jewish Israel’ into a reality on the ground. The Knesset, the Israel Parliament, passed a law on August 3rd, 2009, after its second and third readings, which allowed the sale of “Absentees” Palestinian refugees’ land to Jewish individuals and Jewish institutions exclusively anywhere in the world. Thus, the legal right of the original Palestinian owner to his land would be severed through creating a barrier between the owner and his property. The passing of the new law represents an audacious initiative by the current Israeli government that no previous Israeli government dared contemplate or venture into. [continued…]

Wobbly stools
By Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom, September 12, 2009

There no question anymore that the only recipe for healing the Israeli-Palestinian wound is the termination of the occupation and the establishment of peace between the State of Israel and the new State of Palestine beside it. This demands meaningful and intense negotiations, within a fixed time span. That is impossible if at the same time settlements continue to expand. As the Palestinian lawyer Michael Tarasi aptly put it: ‘We are negotiating about the division of a pizza and in the meantime Israel is eating the pizza.’

That’s why Obama has presented the Israeli government with an unequivocal demand: an immediate stop to all building in the settlements, including East Jerusalem. A clear and logical demand. But while pressuring Netanyahu, he himself is exposed to heavy pressure at home over the health insurance system and the Afghan war…

The Americans recognise, of course, that our government is trying to deceive them. If they allow the building of just another 500 houses in the settlement blocks, and the completion of just another 2500 houses whose construction has already begun, and just a few more in East Jerusalem, in practice the building will go on unchecked.

The settlers know perfectly well that their whole enterprise has been based on deceit and trickery, house after house and neighbourhood after neighbourhood, and they are happy to allow Netanyahu to continue with this method. For the time being, they do not cry out, they are not worried, the more so as no large Israeli public movement has yet arisen in support of Obama’s peace efforts. [continued…]

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Dismantling the matrix of control

Dismantling the matrix of control
By Jeff Halper, MERIP, September 11, 2009

Many Palestinian, Israeli and international proponents of a just peace took heart in Obama’s early gestures. Beginning with the appointment of former Sen. George Mitchell as special envoy and continuing through the president’s June 4 speech in Cairo, these proponents allowed themselves, after years of disappointment and struggle, a cautious hopefulness. Some of the speech’s formulations, like the nods to the “pain of dislocation” felt by Palestinians and the “daily humiliations” of occupation, had been heard before. But one sentence had not been: Obama said that a two-state solution “is in Israel’s interest, Palestine’s interest, America’s interest and the world’s interest.” Obama seemed to “get it,” that is, he seemed to understand that the US is isolated politically by its unquestioning backing of Israel, which is seen as obstructing a solution to the conflict. And, for the first time, a US president actually said that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in the vital national interest, not just a nice thing to do. These words significantly raise the bar. Framing the conflict in this way makes it easier for the administration to win Congressional support for tougher demands upon Israel while undermining the ability of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to mount an effective resistance, given American Jewish sensibilities about suspicions of dual loyalty.

Since the Cairo speech, however, fundamental doubts about US efforts have resurfaced. The only demand made by Obama upon Israel has been for a settlement “freeze,” a welcome symbolic gesture, to be sure, yet irrelevant to any peace process. Israel has enough settlement-cities in strategic “blocs” that it could in fact freeze all construction without compromising its control over the West Bank and “greater” Jerusalem, the Arab areas to the north, south and east of the city where Israel has planted its flag. Focusing on this one issue — which, months later, is still being haggled over — has provided Israel with a smokescreen behind which it can actively and freely pursue more significant and urgent construction that, when completed, will truly render the occupation irreversible. It is rushing to complete the separation barrier, which is already being presented as the new border, replacing the “Green Line,” the pre-June 1967 boundary to which Israel is supposed to withdraw, by the terms of UN Security Council resolutions, but on which even the most ardent two-staters have long since given up. Israel is demolishing homes, expelling Palestinian residents and permitting Jewish settlement throughout East Jerusalem, measurably advancing the “judaization” of the city. It is confiscating vast tracts of land in the West Bank and “greater” Jerusalem and pouring bypass road asphalt at a feverish pace so as to permanently redraw the map. It is laying track on Palestinian land for a light-rail line connecting the West Bank settlement-city of Pisgat Ze’ev to Israel. It is drying up the main agricultural areas of the West Bank, forcing thousands of people off their lands, while instituting visa restrictions that either keep visiting Palestinians and internationals out of the country altogether, or limit their movement to the truncated Palestinian enclaves of the West Bank.

“Quiet,” behind-the-scenes diplomacy is surely taking place, but the few details that have emerged are far from reassuring. The State Department has mocked as “fiction” a ten-point document given to the Arab press by Fatah figure Hasan Khreisheh that promises an “international presence” in parts of the West Bank and US backing for a Palestinian state by 2011. The component of this alleged plan that seems more likely is that the US wants a partial freeze on settlement activity from Israel in exchange for a pledge from Washington to push for more stringent sanctions upon Iran for its nuclear research. On August 25, the Guardian quoted “an official close to the negotiations” saying: “The message is: Iran is an existential threat to Israel; settlements are not.” By all indications, if the Obama administration does present a regional peace plan, which it is expected by many to do around the time of the UN General Assembly meeting on September 20, it will be nothing more than a “rough draft.” It is no exaggeration to say a two-state solution will rise or fall on the outlines of this draft — and may perhaps fall forever if no concrete plan is presented at all, which is also possible. Although the two-state solution has been eulogized many times in the past, Obama represents a best-case scenario. If he presents, in the end, a disappointing peace plan that offers no genuine breakthrough, then the shift to a one-state solution on the part of the Palestinian people and their international supporters will be inescapable. [continued…]

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Israeli settlement expansion may bring one-state solution closer

Israeli settlement expansion may bring one-state solution closer
By Paul Woodward, The National, September 8, 2009

As Israel announced plans to expand settlements in the West Bank in anticipation of a settlement “freeze”, the former US president, Jimmy Carter, who recently returned from a trip to the Holy Land, suggested that the implementation of a two-state solution is becoming increasingly unlikely.

“A more likely alternative to the present debacle is one state, which is obviously the goal of Israeli leaders who insist on colonising the West Bank and East Jerusalem. A majority of the Palestinian leaders with whom we met are seriously considering acceptance of one state, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. By renouncing the dream of an independent Palestine, they would become fellow citizens with their Jewish neighbours and then demand equal rights within a democracy. In this nonviolent civil rights struggle, their examples would be Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela.”

Mr Carter belongs to a group of veteran world leaders, known as the Elders, who recently visited Israel and the West Bank. Another member of the group, former Irish president and UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson told The Jerusalem Post last month that if Israel does not freeze settlement construction, a two-state solution may no longer be possible. [continued…]

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