Category Archives: Israel-Palestinian conflict

Speculation dismounts on Obama Middle East peace plan

I claim no special knowledge of the inside workings of the Obama administration — merely an ear that notes the difference between substance and flatulence and to my ear what sounded like a farting contest started on April 7 with a column by David Ignatius: “Obama weighs new peace plan for the Middle East.”

According to Ignatius — which is to say, according to the nameless officials he had been talking to — Obama was “seriously considering” proposing a peace plan. Chatter, chatter, chatter.

Even as late as Thursday, Ignatius wasn’t ready to completely pull the plug on the story he’d started. After all, one of the primary reasons it had been taken so seriously was because it came from such an august columnist. A Middle East peace plan is on Obama’s foreign policy checklist and he’s “still working on it,” Ignatius wrote last week.

Even yesterday, Agence France Press reported: “Washington’s foreign policy echo chamber is reverberating with speculation that President Barack Obama could try to blow open the deadlock between Israelis and Palestinians with his own peace plan.”

Enough. The man has now spoken — Rahm Emanuel, that is.

The Jewish Telegraph Agency reports:

The time is not ripe for a U.S.-promoted Middle East peace plan, President Obama’s chief of staff said.

“A number of people have advocated that,” Rahm Emanuel said Monday on the Charlie Rose show on Bloomberg Television.

“That time is not now,” Emanuel said. The “time now is to get back to the proximity talks, have those conversations that eventually will lead to direct negotiations…”

I guess George Mitchell can carry on snoozing in the back of his limo as he waits to start shuttling between Jerusalem and Ramallah.

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UC Berkeley divestment vote — it isn’t over yet

Cecilie Surasky, Deputy Director of Jewish Voice for Peace, reports on the coalition effort to pass a divestment bill at Berkeley. If passed, the bill would call on the University of California to withdraw its investments in companies that support the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

After a ten-hour meeting, an earlier veto of the bill by the Senate president was not overturned but at this point this looks like a bump in the road rather than an effective roadblock. Support for divestment is overwhelming.

For anyone who was there last night and until 7:30 this morning when the forum ended, it was clear what the future looks like.

For one, the smart money is on the members of UC Berkeley’s Students for Justice with Palestine (SJP), the group leading this effort. They are a remarkable multi-ethnic group that seemingly includes every race, religion and ethnicity including Muslims and Jews, and Israelis and Palestinians. They are just brilliant thinkers and organizers and driven by a clear sense of justice and empathy. They spent a year researching and writing the divestment bill, and I can’t express how much I love and respect them and how much hope they make me feel. And there are students just like them on every other campus in the world.

Second, the feeling on campus and in the room was electric. We filled an enormous room that fits 900. Most stayed through the entire night. If you can imagine, the evening started with remarkable statements by divestment supporters Judith Butler, Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, Richard Falk, Hatem Bazian and George Bisharat. And then the extraordinary parade of students and community members who spoke on both sides of the issue until it was past sunrise.

And though the final vote still hangs in the balance, the fact remains that the vast majority of the Senate voted to divest. The bill garnered the support of some of the most famous moral voices in the world, a good chunk of the Israeli left (9 groups and counting), nearly 40 campus groups (almost all student of color groups and one queer organization) plus another 40 US off-campus groups.

In addition, the room was filled with Jewish divestment supporters of every age including grandmothers and aunts and uncles and students. Our staff, activist members, and Advisory Board members like Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Daniel Boyarin, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb and Noam Chomsky each played critical roles in the effort. And of course, all of you who generated over 5,000 letters of support.

So much has changed since Gaza. Just 2 years ago we secured only 4 pages of Jewish endorsement letters for a similar selective divestment effort. This time, we put together 29 pages of major Jewish endorsement statements (which you can download here), and the list continues to grow by the day. We also made 400 bright green stickers that said “Another (fill in the blank) for human rights. Divest from the Israeli occupation” and gave every single last one away.

As attorney Reem Salahi said to me, “When I was a student here in law school 2 years ago, no one spoke about divestment. Now everyone is talking about it.”

For those of us there, it was clear–the room was with divestment. The senators were with divestment. And given the endorsements that kept pouring in up to the last second, from Nobel prize winners, from Israeli peace groups, from leading academics and activists–it seemed like the whole world was with divestment.

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Is the Star of David the new swastika?

Salon‘s headline (which I also used) is unusually daring for a popular publication. The article’s author, Judy Mandelbaum, draws attention to a phenomenon otherwise ignored by the American media: the use of the Star of David as an expression of Jewish hatred.

Time was when Nazis used to slather swastikas on synagogues and Jewish businesses to prepare the local population for expulsion or much worse. It’s sad that this sort of behavior persists around the world, as a new study by Tel Aviv University shows. But it’s even sadder to see Israelis regularly defacing Palestinian property with Stars of David with equal glee and with what appears to be the same brain-dead mindset.

Your local paper might not have covered it, but in the wee hours of Wednesday morning a gang of Israeli settlers attacked the West Bank village of Hawara. “Palestinians reported two torched cars on the village’s central road early yesterday,” Haaretz writes. “A small village mosque, used only on the weekend, had the word ‘Muhammad’ sprayed in Hebrew and a Star of David. Haaretz also found graffiti with the Jewish prayer ‘Praise be onto him for not making me a gentile.'” The attackers also took the opportunity to destroy some three hundred olive trees, a major source of local income.

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Obama ain’t no Spock

A US resolution to the Middle East conflict has become a national imperative and a logical necessity. Therefore it will happen.

At least it would if we lived in a world governed by logic…

I confess I don’t pay unswerving attention to everything that’s happening in Washington, so when I saw a headline in today’s New York Times, Obama Speech Signals a U.S. Shift on Middle East, my first reaction was: Huh. Obama gave a speech on the Middle East and I never even heard it was scheduled. How about that?

Then I read the article to find out when and where he gave this speech but it wasn’t mentioned. Then I read the headline again. Aha! Caught again by those cunning New York Times headline writers – Obama speech, not Obama’s speech.

Why does the so-called newspaper of record have to be parsed as carefully as the Soviet Izvestia?

OK. So the speech in question turns out to be a phrase: “vital national security interest.” That being, the vital national security interest that will be served to the United States by a resolution to the Middle East conflict.

This does indeed mark an important shift in perspective. But here’s the real question: Will that shift in perspective lead to a significant shift in policy?

Generally speaking, to call something out as a “vital national security interest” should demand a bold course of action. You can’t point to a vital national security interest and then do little to address it, can you?

In the minds of many observers, the shift Obama has signaled, will almost inevitably lead to a US peace plan. “It increases the likelihood that Mr. Obama, frustrated by the inability of the Israelis and the Palestinians to come to terms, will offer his own proposed parameters for an eventual Palestinian state,” the Times reported.

But did anything else Obama said at the same juncture indicate that he’s ready to act decisively? No.

Progress will be halting, Obama said. Indeed.

Moreover, and this might have been the most telling remark he made: “we can’t want it more than they do.”

So, if resolving the Middle East conflict is a vital national security interest of the United States, the US will nevertheless be held hostage by the willingness of the Israelis and Palestinians to resolve the conflict.

We must, but we can’t…

I guess it won’t become a campaign slogan.

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Obama: Middle East peace “is a very hard thing to do”

Amid swirling rumors and grand propositions, President Obama spoke yesterday on the so-called peace process and among peace-process professionals his words will be duly noted as an effort to “manage expectations”.

But for those of us who do not have an investment in the idea that the show must go on, what he said can be boiled down to this: Obama doesn’t see the necessary desire among the antagonists for the conflict to be resolved any time soon or under any amount of American pressure. No imposed US peace plan. No big speech in Jerusalem.

I think that the need for peace between Israelis and Palestinians and the Arab states remains as critical as ever.

It is a very hard thing to do. And I know that even if we are applying all of our political capital to that issue, the Israeli people through their government, and the Palestinian people through the Palestinian Authority, as well as other Arab states, may say to themselves, we are not prepared to resolve this — these issues — no matter how much pressure the United States brings to bear.

And the truth is, in some of these conflicts the United States can’t impose solutions unless the participants in these conflicts are willing to break out of old patterns of antagonism. I think it was former Secretary of State Jim Baker who said, in the context of Middle East peace, we can’t want it more than they do.

But what we can make sure of is, is that we are constantly present, constantly engaged, and setting out very clearly to both sides our belief that not only is it in the interests of each party to resolve these conflicts but it’s also in the interest of the United States. It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.

So I’m going to keep on at it. But I think on all these issues — nuclear disarmament, nuclear proliferation, Middle East peace — progress is going to be measured not in days, not in weeks. It’s going to take time. And progress will be halting. And sometimes we’ll take one step forward and two steps back, and there will be frustrations. And so it’s not going to run on the typical cable news 24/7 news cycle. But if we’re persistent, and we’ve got the right approach, then over time, I think that we can make progress.

And who will be most reassured by this message of persistent hope on the long and winding road to Middle East peace? Why, the Israelis of course. Surprise, surprise.

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Yes we can… No you can’t

Zbigniew Brzezinski and Stephen Solarz write in the Washington Post:

More than three decades ago, Israeli statesman Moshe Dayan, speaking about an Egyptian town that controlled Israel’s only outlet to the Red Sea, declared that he would rather have Sharm el-Sheikh without peace than peace without Sharm el-Sheikh. Had his views prevailed, Israel and Egypt would still be in a state of war. Today, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, with his pronouncements about the eternal and undivided capital of Israel, is conveying an updated version of Dayan’s credo — that he would rather have all of Jerusalem without peace than peace without all of Jerusalem.

This is unfortunate, because a comprehensive peace agreement is in the interest of all parties. It is in the U.S. national interest because the occupation of the West Bank and the enforced isolation of the Gaza Strip increases Muslim resentment toward the United States, making it harder for the Obama administration to pursue its diplomatic and military objectives in the region. Peace is in the interest of Israel; its own defense minister, Ehud Barak, recently said that the absence of a two-state solution is the greatest threat to Israel’s future, greater even than an Iranian bomb. And an agreement is in the interest of the Palestinians, who deserve to live in peace and with the dignity of statehood.

However, a routine unveiling of a U.S. peace proposal, as is reportedly under consideration, will not suffice. Only a bold and dramatic gesture in a historically significant setting can generate the political and psychological momentum needed for a major breakthrough. Anwar Sadat’s courageous journey to Jerusalem three decades ago accomplished just that, paving the way for the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt.

Similarly, President Obama should travel to the Knesset in Jerusalem and the Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah to call upon both sides to negotiate a final status agreement based on a specific framework for peace. He should do so in the company of Arab leaders and members of the Quartet, the diplomatic grouping of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations that is involved in the peace process. A subsequent speech by Obama in Jerusalem’s Old City, addressed to all the people in the region and evocative of his Cairo speech to the Muslim world in June 2009, could be the culminating event in this journey for peace.

Meanwhile, Aaron David Miller thinks the Obama administration seems intent on pushing Netanyahu out of the way.

There’s a widespread view — almost a conviction in Washington these days — that Netanyahu just isn’t capable of reaching a deal, and that the Palestinians and Arabs will never trust him. So why expend months of effort starting a process with Netanyahu that you can’t possibly conclude with him?

The remedy, if regime change is the goal, is to hang tough on settlements, create conditions for starting negotiations that are reasonable but that Netanyahu’s coalition can’t accept, and not-so-subtly suggest that Netanyahu can’t be a real partner in a peace process. The administration’s recent leak that it’s considering putting out its own peace plan will only further undermine any chance of partnership.

Sooner or later, the thinking goes, it would become clear in Israel that the prime minister can’t manage the nation’s most important relationship, and that he is putting settlements above Israeli security at a time when the Iranian threat looms large and close ties with the U.S. are more important than ever. The American hope would be that public and political pressure would mount, forcing Netanyahu to broaden his government or even impelling a change at the top.

The only problem with this line of thinking is that the odds of success are slim to none.

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Respect — the currency of infinite value

A Jewish settler tosses wine at a Palestinian woman on Shuhada Street in Hebron, the West Bank.

Four years ago, Rory Stewart wrote:

A great many of the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq arise from a single problem: the American-led coalitions’ lack of trust in local politicians. Repeatedly the Western powers, irritated by a lack of progress, have overruled local leaders, rejected compromises and tried to force through their own strategies. But the Westerners’ capacity is limited: they have little understanding of Afghan or Iraqi politics and rely too heavily on troops and money to solve what are fundamentally political and religious problems.

The coalitions cannot achieve political change in the absence of strong local support. And when they try to do so, they undermine their local allies. Iraqi and Afghan national and regional leaders have a far better understanding of the limits and possibilities of the local political scenes; they are more flexible and creative in finding compromises; and unlike the coalition officials, they are elected. They must be given real power and authority. This may seem an obvious prescription — but in fact the coalitions are not allowing it to happen.

Underneath the lack of trust that Stewart correctly identified, is a more fundamental issue: the hubris of power.

We have the guns, the cash, and represent the most powerful nation on Earth. You need to respect us but we really don’t need to respect you. Respect is something we expect but will also on occasions dish out if or when it seems expedient.

Americans, shaped by a culture that tends to place a higher value on power than anything else, are inclined to view respect as simply an element in a power equation. In one situation respect might seem essential, in another merely useful, and in yet another it can be dispensed with. Rarely is it held up as the most vital component in all human relationships.

After President Obama showed up in Kabul just over a week ago, President Karzai showed his uninvited guest and paymaster the courtesy of inviting him to dinner. Obama, the New York Times tells us, returned the courtesy with a thank-you note. “It was a respectful letter,” General James Jones, Obama’s national security adviser told reporters.

The significance of this incident, supposedly, is that it signals an overdue change in tone as the administration registers that its repeated admonitions of the Afghan president have proved counterproductive.

Ironically, an American president whose arrival in office was supposed to herald an historic shift in America’s approach to the world — one which would reinstate the value of soft power — has been a surprisingly clumsy diplomat.

So, if the White House now understands that it must not underestimate the value of respectfulness, that’s a good thing — but let’s not pretend a thank-you note is all it takes.

* * *

Respect is one of those words we use so often we rarely pause to consider its meaning. It describes an attitude, yet its latin root, specere, to look, indicates that this is really a form of attention.

To be respectful is to attentively incline oneself towards the other in recognition of their autonomy and integrity.

There is no one we can respect and simultaneously try to change. When we coerce or manipulate someone, we cannot respect them because our attention is focused not on them but on what we want.

If one views respect as a resource, nowhere is it generally more scarce than among the powerful.

The conceit of power is that power elicits respect, when in truth the tokens of respect bestowed on the powerful are rarely more than expressions of fear, envy or duty. (Hence an underlying paranoia haunts the powerful: they know they are the beneficiaries of a social investment that could, if things turn sour, be swiftly withdrawn.)

Respect is not the fruit of power, but on the contrary, it is a self-propagating virtue that becomes mirrored through its own expression.

Meanwhile, behind what might sound like an overly abstract reflection on respect, another topic floating in the background is Israel, since if one drills to the core of the Middle East conflict, it cannot be reduced to land or religion. It’s about respect.

Can Jews who claimed their “birthright” by dispossessing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, somehow make peace with those people and their descendants without also acknowledging the Palestinians’ rights to dignity and respect? Yet can such respect be conferred without also calling into question the legitimacy of the Jewish state?

Where is the actual ground for mutual respect when the affirmation of one people’s rights has for six decades depended on the denial of another’s?

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Michel Warschawski – On the border

Michel Warschawski is a writer and journalist and founder of The Alternative Information Center, an internationally oriented, progressive, joint Palestinian-Israeli activist organization.

Parts one and two of this fascinating interview by Real News Network senior editor Paul Jay, can be viewed here.

Part Three: Racist rhetoric, measures now Israeli mainstream

Part Four: The Israeli separation wall a symbol of ethnic purity

Part Five: Jerusalem without Palestinians?

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Why Bibi won’t budge

Ever since David Ignatius revealed that President Obama is “seriously considering” proposing an American peace plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Washington’s Middle East hands have been ruminating on the significance of this report. Obama dropped in on a meeting of former national security advisers in the White House a couple of weeks ago, but if the people whose job it is to keep the dream of a peace process alive are to be believed, who was there was more significant than the president’s casual entry.

Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Sandy Berger, Colin Powell, Frank Carlucci and Robert C. McFarlane — these are the heavyweights who can push Obama in the right direction. Right? Not unless Benjamin Netanyahu also gets pushed out of the way.

Larry Derfner lays out the reasons Bibi presents an immovable obstacle.

Which way will Bibi go? This seems to be the big question – whether Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will bow to American pressure, exchange his right-wing/religious government for a “peace coalition” and start taking down the occupation, or whether he will dig in.

I don’t think there’s any doubt about it – he’s going to dig in. This is not the prime minister who’s going to divide the land with the Palestinians.

To begin with, of the 69 MKs in an imagined Likud-Kadima-Labor-Meretz coalition, the great majority are totally opposed to paying the well-known price for peace – removing 100,000 settlers from the West Bank’s interior and relinquishing Arab Jerusalem to the Palestinians for their capital. No Likudnik sees this as anything less than treason, and all but a few Kadima members would agree. The peace coalition actually numbers no more than about 20 MKs, and even with the outside support of the Arab parties, they’re a hopeless minority, for now anyway.

Still, could a prime minister who has the president of the United States and the rest of the world bearing down on him convince the majority to do the deal? Could a prime minister with unusual powers of persuasion persuade the country to do what the democratic world has been asking it to do since 1967, on pain of losing its place in that world?

Maybe. If such a prime minister really believed Israel’s future depended on its ending the occupation. And Netanyahu doesn’t believe that for a minute. He’s spent his whole career preaching the opposite – that giving up the land conquered in the Six Day War would be the death of this country. This isn’t a talking point for him, it’s the worldview he was raised on, one he’s never abandoned regardless of the empty phrases he utters now and then to stroke the Obama administration. Netanyahu has opposed every peace process he’s ever been around. His view of the Palestinians is simple, clear and consistent – either we keep them down or they wipe us out.

And just in case anyone imagines that there is any other Israeli leader who could do what Netanyahu finds impossible, Derfner is clear: “No there isn’t. Not now, anyway.” Instead, it’s up to Israel’s friends “to make the status quo here intolerable.”

That’s a big leap from simply observing that the status quo is unsustainable.

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Michel Warschawski interview

Michel Warschawski is a writer and journalist and founder of The Alternative Information Center, an internationally oriented, progressive, joint Palestinian-Israeli activist organization.

At the end of the war on Gaza, Warschawski wrote this:

Absolutely Not! Not in Their Name, Not in Ours

Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni, Gabi Ashkenazi and Ehud Olmert–don’t you dare show your faces at any memorial ceremony for the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto, Lublin, Vilna or Kishinev. And you too, leaders of Peace Now, for whom peace means a pacification of the Palestinian resistance by any means, including the destruction of a people. Whenever I will be there, I shall personally do my best to expel each of you from these events, for your very presence would be an immense sacrilege.

Not in Their Names

You have no right to speak in the name of the martyrs of our people. You are not Anne Frank of the Bergen Belsen concentration camp but Hans Frank, the German general who acted to starve and destroy the Jews of Poland.

You are not representing any continuity with the Warsaw Ghetto, because today the Warsaw Ghetto is right in front of you, targeted by your own tanks and artillery, and its name is Gaza. Gaza that you have decided to eliminate from the map, as General Frank intended to eliminate the Ghetto. But, unlike the Ghettos of Poland and Belorussia, in which the Jews were left almost alone, Gaza will not be eliminated because millions of men and women from the four corners of our world are building a powerful human shield carrying two words: Never Again!

Not in Our Name!

Together with tens of thousands of other Jews, from Canada to Great Britain, from Australia to Germany, we are warning you: don’t dare to speak in our names, because we will run after you, even, if needed, to the hell of war-criminals, and stuff your words down your throat until you ask for forgiveness for having mixed us up with your crimes. We, and not you, are the children of Mala Zimetbaum and Marek Edelman, of Mordechai Anilevicz and Stephane Hessel, and we are conveying their message to humankind for custody in the hands of the Gaza resistance fighters: “We are fighting for our freedom and yours, for our pride and yours, for our human, social and national dignity and yours.” (Appeal of the Ghetto to the world, Passover 1943)

But for you, the leaders of Israel, “freedom” is a dirty word. You have no pride and you do not understand the meaning of human dignity.

We are not “another Jewish voice,” but the sole Jewish voice able to speak in the names of the tortured saints of the Jewish people. Your voice is nothing other than the old bestial vociferations of the killers of our ancestors.

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Palestinian aspirations are clear, but what does Israel want?

Gideon Levy writes:

Does anybody know what Benjamin Netanyahu wants? Has anybody ever understood what his predecessors wanted? Where are they headed? And where are they leading us? One after another, Israeli politicians have been asked these questions, only to reply with the standard rejoinders: “You don’t expect me to answer this question” or “Let’s leave this for the negotiations.” Vague answers, obfuscations, evasive and noncommittal cliches – promises, promises. There was one clear, unequivocal answer – none. There is no other country whose citizens, friends and enemies have not the slightest clue about which direction it is facing. For our enemies not to know is understandable, but don’t we deserve to know more? Don’t we at least deserve to know the ultimate goal?

While the Arabs have always declared their aspirations – and did so with clarity, precision, sharpness and at times extremism, the Israelis have donned masks. While the goals of warring parties in international conflicts are known to all, and while everyone knows what the Palestinians are after in the Middle East – the ’67 lines, a state, a solution to the refugee problem, the right of return – nobody knows what the Israelis want. Do they wish to annex the territories? Come on. Do they want to evacuate them? Not now. If not now, when? It remains unclear. How much of the territories? Nobody knows.

A few days ago, journalists broached the question of a construction freeze in Jerusalem to a few ministers. Almost all of them refused to give a response. Why should they? This is nothing less than a scandal. A minister who is not ready to state his position on an issue is derelict in his duties. When a prime minister refrains from doing so, it is 10 times as grave. While Swedish law obligates the publication of every letter sent from the office of a minister, we cannot even extract a response from our top officials over critical issues.

The blame, as usual in these instances, is shared by us all. Through the years we have implicitly agreed that our leaders would guide us on the basis of fraud, or at the very least distortion. The mantra of there’s-no-need-to-say-it-aloud has become a matter of consensus, almost an axiom.

The conventional thinking whereby striving for peace is likened to market bartering and late-night horse-trading, as if it were verboten to clearly specify a final price, has become official policy. What might work for the illusory world of advertising and marketing, or the avarice of the consumer culture, has become a philosophical cornerstone in this country. Vagueness is the message. Perhaps this country has no goal, or a way to get to a goal, and the vagueness is meant to obfuscate this disgrace.

Is the prime minister of Israel ready to withdraw from the Golan Heights in exchange for peace with Syria? Yes or no? Don’t we deserve to know? Which parts of the West Bank, if any, is he ready to evacuate? And what, for heaven’s sake, does our defense minister want? What are his policy goals? Does anybody know? And why is it that if we were to know the answer, this would weaken our position and not strengthen it? Is vagueness tantamount to strength? Is trickery a modus operandi?

Our amateur merchants, as is their wont, will never reveal their opinions. No wonder their wholesale marketing strategy has proved to be a resounding failure. Israel’s global standing is at an all-time low due to, among other things, ambiguity and a loss of direction. Even the all-knowing president of the United States has no idea what his ally wants. Now at least he is trying to get an answer by saying, “Tell me what it is you people want.” It is doubtful whether he will get the answer he is looking for.

Forty-three years after the start of the occupation, no one, either here in Israel or anywhere in the world, knows what we really want and in which direction we are heading. Thus, we have not only become the only country in the world without clearly defined borders, we are also the only country without clearly defined national goals.

In William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” Shylock forces Antonio to agree to a loan on highly unfavorable terms. Yet the Jew provides us with one of the most memorable monologues ever written: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” The monologue given by the merchants of Jerusalem, on the other hand, is far more wretched. “If they give, then they’ll receive,” or something like that.

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Gideon Levy interview

In an interview for Electronic Intifada, David Cronin spoke to Gideon Levy — a columnist for Haaretz who can reasonably be described as the conscience of Israeli journalism:

David Cronin: Have you completely rejected Zionism?

Gideon Levy: Zionism has many meanings. For sure, the common concept of Zionism includes the occupation, includes the perception that Jews have more rights in Palestine than anyone else, that the Jewish people are the chosen people, that there can’t be equality between Jews and Arabs, Jews and Palestinians. All those beliefs which are very basic in current Zionism, I can’t share them. In this sense, I can define myself as an anti-Zionist.

On the other hand, the belief about the Jewish people having the right to live in Palestine side by side with the Palestinians, doing anything possible to compensate the Palestinians for the terrible tragedy that they went through in 1948, this can also be called the Zionist belief. In this case, I share those views.

DC: If somebody was to call you a moderate Zionist would you have any objections?

GL: The moderate Zionists are like the Zionist left in Israel, which I can’t stand. Meretz and Peace Now, who are not ready, for example, to open the “1948 file” and to understand that until we solve this, nothing will be solved. Those are the moderate Zionists. In this case, I prefer the right-wingers.

DC: The right-wingers are more honest?

GL: Exactly.

The intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is generally attributed to what seem to be irreconcilable desires from each side, yet a much more fundamental problem seems to me to be a lack of honesty not only on the part of successive Israeli governments and the defenders of those governments but among a large swath of Israel’s liberal American critics.

Criticism can only go so far until it reaches an unstated limit at which point the constraining factor appears to less to do with the issues than it does with the individual’s fear of alienation. If I question the idea of “Jewish democracy” (or any other untouchable presupposition), do I run the risk of being ostracized by my community? Might I be marginalized in foreign policy circles? Could I jeopardize my career opportunities? Will I ruin my chances of getting tenure?

When fears define the parameters of discourse, it has no grounding in truth. More power is yielded to what is left unstated than is invested in what is said.

Where there is honesty, there can be compromises, but without honesty there is no foundation for peace or even negotiation. Honesty must come first.

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One-state realism

Dmitry Reider reviews sociologist Yehouda Shenhav’s book The Time of the Green Line.

That the notion of a one-state solution may be gaining some traction among diverse Israeli groups will be disturbing news for two-state solution dead-enders like J Street, though in this particular instance, Shenhav’s own vision may itself not garner wide appeal: a single state that looks like… Lebanon?

Still, as Reider notes, Shenhav’s book is “a conversation starter; it asks many more questions than it gives answers.” This is indeed a conversation worth engaging.

Rather than pinning his hopes for an equitable solution on the Israeli left, Shenhav actually looks to a coalition of Palestinians, non-Zionist leftists, and, most surprisingly, a few dissident settlers for a solution to the dispute. Unlike the Israeli left — bogged down in nostalgia for a mythically pure pre-1967 Israel — he argues that an increasing number of settlers are more in sync with the Palestinian timeline of 1948 and are opting to share sovereignty rather than give up their homes. Moreover, some appear to be more aware than “mainland” Israelis of the realities of occupation; Shenhav quotes a settler journal slamming the checkpoints and curfews, as well as a prominent settler educator saying that the military regime’s ongoing wrongs are “like Sabra and Shatila multiplied by a million,” in reference to the infamous 1982 massacre of Palestinians in the Lebanese refugee camps, perpetrated by a Christian militia allied with Israel. Shenhav also quotes poet Eliaz Cohen, resident of Gush Etzion, as saying: “Just as I have a right of return to Kfar Etzion, there’s no reason that Palestinians from Nablus shouldn’t have a right of return to Jaffa.”

Shenhav claims that the transition to one-state thinking will redraw the Israeli political map, currently defined by the right’s and the left’s positions toward Israel’s future role in the Palestinian territories. Although it’s far too early to speak of a movement, both left and right have begun realigning themselves: Leftists are beginning to use the racist jargon of demographics, while a new settler group calls for a one-state solution — with the right of return to boot. Quite apart from them, firebrand Likud Knesset member Tzipi Hotovely calls for the phased admission of West Bank Palestinians as Israeli citizens.

Curiously for a decidedly left-wing manifesto, Shenhav rejects out of hand the “one man, one vote,” “state of all its citizens” model as an alternative to a two-state solution.

This model, he says, “presumes the existence of a homogenous population motivated by individual interests and ignores the fact that most people in the contested space are religious nationalists with tremendous differences within both the Israeli and Palestinian communities.” He opts instead for a consociational democracy: a system in which religious, cultural, national, and economic considerations will be balanced by mutual agreement, within a power-sharing government.

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The growing challenge to Israel

Scott McConnell writes:

[T]wo streams of anti-settlement, pro-peace-process discourse have begun to merge and reinforce one another. The realist argument about Israel—which can be traced from President Truman’s secretary of state George Marshall through Kennedy and Johnson aide George Ball to Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer—now appears to have the patronage of American’s most respected military commander [Gen David Petraeus]. The pretense that America’s and Israel’s interests in the Middle East coincide completely is being challenged at the highest level and may never recover.

At the same time, the humanitarian argument, rooted in observation of Israeli oppression and Palestinian suffering, is disseminated more widely than ever. It reaches Americans through the Internet, through congressional visits, through the work of Israeli peace and human-rights monitoring groups, through the burgeoning communities of international solidarity workers, through church groups, through Richard Goldstone. Expressions of unconditional solidarity with Israel—such as Joseph Lieberman’s claim that we must not quarrel in public because Israel is “family”—are of course as common as ever. But they often give off the musty scent of Soviet bloc boilerplate in the 1970s and ’80s—words that many recite ritualistically but fewer and fewer say with conviction.

A gap in the line has been opened, but no one yet knows whether Obama will push through it. Chas Freeman, the veteran diplomat whose appointment to chair the National Intelligence Council was scuttled by objections from Israel lobbyists, says, “The president gets it”—that his appreciation of the centrality of these issues was manifest in his Ankara and Cairo speeches. Freeman views the showdown as an historic juncture: “the first time anything resembling an assault on an entrenched interest that many have recognized is contrary to American interests” has taken place. The moment has the potential to unite “Obama as the commander in chief with the visionary who spoke in Cairo.” But Obama’s track record is not reassuring, Freeman admits. He notes that the president has a “pattern of laying out a sensible strategic doctrine followed by delegating its implementation to people who may work to subvert it or who have their own agendas.”

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The world is sick of Israel

A commentary in Haaretz by Akiva Eldar opts for a Biblical theme with the headline: “The plague of darkness has struck modern Israelites.” But the observation in my headline comes directly from the text as Eldar bemoans the fact that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “simply refuses to see that the world is sick of us.”

A report from the BBC says US officials indicate the Obama administration would “seriously consider abstaining” if the issue of Israeli settlements was put to the vote in the UN Security Council.

This is one of the few threats Obama can make without needing Congressional support. And although this administration has not hesitated in making demands on the Israelis, it has thus far refrained from issuing threats. This could be a significant shift.

Eldar writes:

[T]he myopic Jewish state … has gone and collided head-on with the ally that offers existential support. Israel has become an environmental hazard and its own greatest threat. For 43 years, Israel has been ruled by people who have refused to see reality. They speak of “united Jerusalem,” knowing that no other country has recognized the annexation of the eastern part of the city. They sent 300,000 people to settle land they know does not belong to them. As early as September 1967, Theodor Meron, then the legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, said there was a categorical prohibition against civilian settlement in occupied territories, under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Meron – who would become the president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and is now a member of the Appeals Chamber for both that court and a similar one for Rwanda – wrote to prime minister Levi Eshkol in a top-secret memorandum: “I fear there is great sensitivity in the world today about the whole question of Jewish settlement in the occupied territories, and any legal arguments that we try to find will not remove the heavy international pressure, from friendly states as well.”

It is true that for many years, we have managed to grope our way through the dark and keep the pressure at bay. We did so with the assistance of our neighbors, who were afflicted with the same shortsightedness.

On Sunday, however, the Arab League marked the eighth anniversary of its peace proposals, which offer Israel normalization in exchange for an end to the occupation and an agreed solution to the refugee problem, in accordance with UN Resolution 194. But Israel behaves as if it had never heard of this historic initiative. For the last year, it was too busy realizing its dubious right to establish an illegal settlement in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, turning a blind eye to reality, has tried to persuade the world that what applies to Tel Aviv also applies to Sheikh Jarrah. He simply refuses to see that the world is sick of us. It’s easier for him to focus on his similarly nearsighted followers in AIPAC. Tonight they’ll all swear “Next year in rebuilt Jerusalem” – including the construction in Ramat Shlomo, of course.

Hillary Clinton is not Jewish, but it was she who had to remind the AIPAC Jews what demography will do to their favorite Jewish democracy in the Middle East. A few days earlier, she had come back from Moscow, where she took part in one of the Quartet’s most important meetings. Israeli politicians and media were too busy with the cold reception awaiting Netanyahu at the White House. They never gave any thought to the decision by the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations to turn Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s state-building plan from a unilateral initiative into an international project.

The Quartet declared that it was backing the plan, proposed in August 2009, to establish a Palestinian state within 24 months. This was an expression of the Palestinians’ serious commitment that the state have a just and proper government and be a responsible neighbor. This means Israel has less than a year and a half to come to an agreement with the Palestinians on the permanent borders, Jerusalem and the refugees. If the Palestinians stick to Fayyad’s path, in August 2011, the international community, led by the United States, can be expected to recognize the West Bank and East Jerusalem as an independent country occupied by a foreign power. Will Netanyahu still be trying to explain that Jerusalem isn’t a settlement?

For 43 years, the Israeli public – schoolchildren, TV viewers, Knesset members and Supreme Court judges – have been living in the darkness of the occupation, which some call liberation. The school system and its textbooks, the army and its maps, the language and the “heritage” have all been mobilized to help keep Israelis blind to the truth. Luckily, the Gentiles clearly see the connection between the menace of Iranian control spreading across the Middle East and the curse of Israeli control over Islamic holy places.

Monday night, when we read the Passover Haggadah, we should note the plague that follows darkness. That may open our eyes.

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Dennis Ross ‘peddling the same snake oil’

If one man can be said to epitomize the failure of the peace process more than any other American official, it’s probably Dennis Ross. Why then, one might then ask, would he have such a central role in getting this “derailed” process “back on track”?

According to this report from Laura Rozen, Ross is provoking some blistering criticism from inside the administration, with one official quoted posing this exact question in the bluntest terms: “why, since [Ross’s] approach in the Oslo years was such an abysmal failure, is he back, peddling the same snake oil?”

Ross’s line is the Israel lobby’s line: American and Israeli interests are indistinguishable. The funny thing about that line is that if it was really true, then Washington would only need to take care of US interests – Israel’s would inevitably be served.

In truth, the only reason the drum of “indivisible interests” needs to be beat upon so loudly is because it’s so obvious that American and Israeli interests diverge.

Since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tense visit to the White House last week, an intense debate inside the Obama administration about how to proceed with Netanyahu to advance the Middle East peace process has grown more heated, even as Israeli officials are expected to announce they have reached some sort of agreement with Washington as soon as tonight.

Sources say within the inter-agency process, White House Middle East strategist Dennis Ross is staking out a position that Washington needs to be sensitive to Netanyahu’s domestic political constraints including over the issue of building in East Jerusalem in order to not raise new Arab demands, while other officials including some aligned with Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell are arguing Washington needs to hold firm in pressing Netanyahu for written commitments to avoid provocations that imperil Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and to preserve the Obama administration’s credibility.

POLITICO spoke with several officials who confirmed the debate and its intensity. Ross did not respond to a query, nor did a spokesman for George Mitchell.

“He [Ross] seems to be far more sensitive to Netanyahu’s coalition politics than to U.S. interests,” one U.S. official told POLITICO Saturday. “And he doesn’t seem to understand that this has become bigger than Jerusalem but is rather about the credibility of this Administration.”

What some saw as the suggestion of dual loyalties shows how heated the debate has become.

Last week, during U.S.-Israeli negotiations during Netanyahu’s visit and subsequent internal U.S. government meetings, the official said, Ross “was always saying about how far Bibi could go and not go. So by his logic, our objectives and interests were less important than pre-emptive capitulation to what he described as Bibi’s coalition’s red lines.”

When the U.S. and Israel are seen to publicly diverge on an issue such as East Jerusalem construction, the official characterized Ross’s argument as: “the Arabs increase their demands … therefore we must rush to close gaps … no matter what the cost to our broader credibility.”

A second official confirmed the broad outlines of the current debate within the administration. Obviously at every stage of the process, the Obama Middle East team faces tactical decisions about what to push for, who to push, how hard to push, he described.

As to which argument best reflects the wishes of the President, the first official said, “As for POTUS, what happens in practice is that POTUS, rightly, gives broad direction. He doesn’t, and shouldn’t, get bogged down in minutiae. But Dennis uses the minutiae to blur the big picture … And no one asks the question: why, since his approach in the Oslo years was such an abysmal failure, is he back, peddling the same snake oil?”

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No peace without equality

(h/t to Adam Horowitz at Mondoweiss.)

When Israel defines itself as a “Jewish State,” it not only sees itself as the state of Jews worldwide. It also sees Arab identity in this homeland as a threat to that definition. That’s why the state sees discrimination against Arabs as part of its “job description.” — Hassan Jabareen, Founder and General Director of Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

One of the most insidious deceptions embedded in the concept of a two-state solution is the implication that once a peaceful Palestinian state comes into existence alongside a secure Israel, then the Jewish state will finally have established its international legitimacy. Israel will no longer be a state that disregards the political rights and aspirations of the Palestinian population. It will be vindicated in its claim to be a Jewish democracy.

The deception in that picture is that it glosses over the fact that even if against all expectations a Palestinian state was established in two years, those Palestinians who are also Israeli citizens and who make up a quarter of Israel’s population would remain as they are today: second class citizens. Indeed, in the event that a Palestinian state is created, it seems quite likely that the Palestinian citizens of Israel would come under pressure to leave Israel for the Jews and to move to “their own state”. In such an event, the two-state solution far from being the panacea that it is portrayed to be could well be the forerunner of another catastrophe.

If Israeli Jews cannot embrace the idea that non-Jews deserve equal rights, then there is no formula — two-state or otherwise — that will lead to a just resolution of the Middle East conflict.

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