The whole world celebrated your election as the first African-American president of the US. I did not. Neither did the inhabitants of the concentration camp where I live. Your sympathetic visit to Sderot—an Israeli town which was the Palestinian village of Najd until 1948 when its people were ethnically cleansed—three years after your first visit to a Kibbutz in northern Israel in support of its residents, and after your pledge to be committed to the security of the State of Israel and its “right” to retain unified Jerusalem as the capital city of the Jewish people—to give but few examples—were all clear indications of where your heart lies.
Another reason for the writing of this letter is shock at the indifference and arrogance with which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dismissed Palestinian concerns about Israel’s illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank. Only a few weeks ago you made the admirable statement that all Jewish settlement must halt, and you made it clear that this included expansion of existing settlements as well as the construction of new settlements. However, when Netanyahu let it be known that he had no intention of stopping settlements, you missed an historic opportunity to draw a line: no more billions and no more weapons for Israel unless and until this condition is met. Now Clinton has the Herculean task of pretending that your position on Jewish settlements has not changed, although it is clear you have chosen not to use the very real power at your disposal to bring Israeli policy into line. [continued…] (h/t Rob Browne)
He may have promised to change Washington, but President Barack Obama is continuing one of its most renowned patronage traditions: bestowing prized ambassadorships on big donors.
Of the nearly 80 ambassadorship nominations or confirmations since Obama’s Inauguration, 56 percent were given to political appointees and 44 percent have gone to career diplomats, according to records kept by the American Foreign Service Association.
The latest nomination came this week, when Beatrice Wilkinson Welters was nominated to serve as ambassador to the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean.
Welters, a longtime advocate for underprivileged children, and her husband, Anthony, an executive with UnitedHealth Group, generated between $200,000 and $500,000 in donations to Obama’s presidential campaign and an additional $100,000 for his Inauguration, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks political giving. [continued…]
Though none of these comments had a tangible impact on U.S. foreign policy, the same can’t be said about two episodes in which Clinton veered away from the White House’s message on the Middle East peace process. The first came in May, when Clinton revealed at a press conference that Obama’s call for an Israeli settlement freeze included any “natural growth” within existing settlements. The circumstances remain murky, but two sources with detailed knowledge of the U.S.-Israeli relationship say that the Obama team was not yet prepared to make public this departure from Bush-era policy. Rather than leave his secretary of state twisting in the wind, says one of the sources, Obama wound up repeating her formulation a few days later, touching off months of tension with the Israelis. [continued…]
After Israeli officials flatly refused a US request to block the approval for the construction of 900 new housing units in occupied East Jerusalem, the Obama administration “lashed out” (CBS) with “anger” (New York Times) and “sharply criticized” (Wall Street Journal) Israel’s decision.
The White House unleashed a shocking display of… “dismay.”
We are dismayed at the Jerusalem Planning Committee’s decision to move forward on the approval process for the expansion of Gilo in Jerusalem.
Thankfully, AP’s Matt Lee wasn’t as obliging as some of his colleagues in their efforts to pump vigor into a pathetic statement.
Challenging State Department spokesman Ian Kelly, Lee asked:
You can’t come up with anything stronger than “dismaying”? I mean, this flies in the face of everything you’ve been talking about for months and months and months.
Kelly: It’s dismaying.
Lee: Yeah, you can’t offer a condemnation of it or anything like that? (Laughter.) I mean, who is in charge of the language here?
On the other side of the Atlantic, Britain’s Foreign Office was a tad more forthright if not quite fiery: “this decision is wrong and we oppose it.”
That kind of language is apparently too strong for this White House. In fact, having originally put out a statement referring to planned “Settlement Expansion in Jerusalem”, the mamby pamdys in charge of language in the most powerful executive office in the world decided to retract “settlement expansion” and simply titled it a statement “on Jerusalem”.
So, the Obama administration is “dismayed” by Israel’s behavior.
It may well be that the word was chosen with exquisite care. It’s etymology is all too appropriate:
Middle English dismaien, from Anglo-Norman *desmaiier : probably de-, intensive pref.; see de- + Old French esmaier, to frighten (from Vulgar Latin *exmagāre, to deprive of power : Latin ex-, ex- + Germanic *magan, to be able to).
The White House could have said:
Prime Minister Netanyahu. You have exposed our impotence. Alas, we have no power.
Should anyone be dismayed at the White House’s language?
Only if you’ve been ignoring the news for the last few months and still imagine that Obama’s speech in Cairo was genuinely a highlight of his presidency.
The plan, if implemented, will allow the construction of 844 units, and these units won’t be inside the existing footprint of the settlement. Rather, they will be on the settlement’s southwestern flank, expanding Gilo in the direction of the Palestinian village of Wallajeh (a village in which a large number of the homes are fighting Israeli demolition orders). This new Gilo plan clearly dovetails with another plan to build a new settlement, called Givat Yael, which would straddle the Jerusalem border and significantly extend Israeli Jerusalem to the south, further sealing the city off from the Bethlehem area and the West Bank (and connecting it to the Etzion settlement bloc). That plan, it was reported yesterday, also appears to be suddenly gaining steam. (for a map showing both the Gilo plan and Givat Yael, click here.)
The Gilo plan is thus extremely provocative on several levels. It represents a clear and public statement from the Netanyahu government that it is neither “freezing” nor acting with “restraint” in East Jerusalem. It compels the Palestinians to respond, just as it compels other regional actors to respond. Finally, it has important strategic implications, since the plan, implemented, would impact on border options for Jerusalem under a future peace agreement.
Today’s crisis was by no means inevitable. Nobody (except for those of us who obsessively follow Jerusalem at its most minute level) had any idea this Gilo plan was on the agenda for today. This means that Bibi could easily have responded positively to US concerns and quietly quashed or delayed the project, without any political cost. Alternatively, he could have offered another (deceptively) constructive course, like allowing it to be deposited for public review but promising to find other ways to hold it up later. Or he could simply have refused to intervene, but kept quiet about it – letting today’s technical approval process run it course and only react publicly, after the fact.
Bibi had a number of conventional options; he chose to go nuclear.
If this feels familiar, it should. This is basically what happened earlier this year with the Shepherds Hotel settlement in Sheikh Jarrah. The plan was on the agenda, Washington weighed in firmly but quietly, hoping for firm but quiet action by Netanyahu – and instead they got a story leaked to the Israeli media (in fact, to the same journalist who broke today’s Gilo story), turning it into an opportunity for Netanyahu to burnish his Jerusalem credentials, at the expense of the prospects for peace. [continued…]
Palestinians have formally asked the European Union to urge the UN security council to recognise a fully independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in response to the current impasse in peace negotiations with Israel.
Saeb Erakat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, confirmed that the request to the EU was made on Monday as Israeli ministers repeated warnings that any unilateral moves would trigger counter-measures that could include the annexation of more of the occupied West Bank.
Erakat, speaking in Ramallah, said Israel had for 18 years continued to “impose facts on the ground by stealing Palestinian lands and building settlements and barriers aiming to finish off the two-state project”. He added: “We will seek the support of all members of the international community.” [continued…]
While Palestinian officials continued to threaten Sunday to unilaterally declare independence, one senior Israeli defense official summed up the growing assessment in the defense establishment by saying, “Just let them try.”
Behind the dare is a belief in the IDF and Defense Ministry that even though the past year has seen an unprecedented improvement in the performance of Palestinian security forces and civilian institutions – largely due to increased cooperation with Israel – the Palestinian Authority is still far from being able to hold it together on its own.
One official gave the water situation in the West Bank as an example. While Israel has recently come under growing international criticism for allegedly denying Palestinians adequate access to water, according to Israeli officials the situation would be far worse without Israeli assistance.
“The Palestinian Water Authority wouldn’t last a day on its own,” an IDF source said. “We allocated them a piece of land on the coast to build a desalination plant and they have decided not to build it.”
Another example focuses on security cooperation, which has significantly increased over the past two years, since Hamas violently took control of the Gaza Strip. Next month, the fifth Palestinian battalion trained by US Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton in Jordan will return to the West Bank for deployment. Another one will then depart for four months of training in Jordan.
Despite the deployment of these forces – which IDF officers openly admit are doing a good job cracking down on Hamas infrastructure in the West Bank – whenever PA President Mahmoud Abbas travels outside of Ramallah to another Palestinian city, the IDF, Shin Bet and Civil Administration are all involved to coordinate and ensure his safety.
“When Abbas travels it is like a military operation,” one officer explained. “Everyone is involved since the PA forces cannot yet completely ensure his security.” [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — This has to be the definition adding insult to injury: Mahmoud Abbas cannot travel safely around the West Bank without Israeli protection.
A question one hears frequently among Palestinians these days is why the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), a group some view with suspicion and others with sympathy, has become nearly invisible in the West Bank. Certainly Hamas has suffered a series of security blows in the last few years. Israel arrested roughly one thousand of Hamas members, included elected delegates of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), following the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in June 2006. And since Hamas took control of Gaza in June 2007 following a bloody conflict with Fatah, Palestinian security forces have carried out campaigns against the group in the West Bank. Hamas claims to have suffered 30,000 incidents of questioning, arrest, closure of organizations, or confiscation of financial assets. As of now, 600 of its members are detained in Palestinian Authority (PA) prisons and 150 of its affiliated organizations are closed.
Hamas, however, is more than simply a militant organization or a social welfare service provider. It is a broad network of members and followers, which garnered 444,000 votes in the 2006 legislative elections, with an ideological and political agenda. It has a large popular following, especially among Palestinians opposed to the Oslo agreement and disenchanted with corruption in the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). So where have Hamas and its supporters in the West Bank gone?
Sources inside Hamas say that the movement has frozen its activities, in line with a 1989 strategy delineating how the movement should handle crises. Hamas followed this course in 1992, for example, when Israel exiled 416 activists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad to southern Lebanon following the kidnapping and murder of Israeli border patrol soldier Nassim Tolidano. Hamas is not ready, according to one of its leaders, to mobilize supporters behind a coherent course of action for fear of exposing them to arrest by the PA or Israel. Hamas also is reluctant to cause its followers to lose their jobs, given that 1200 of them have already been laid off from government jobs in the West Bank. [continued…]
On March 9, I wrote: “In Sharm el-Sheikh a week ago, world leaders delivered empty promises. Today, Viva Palestina delivered the goods!”
The first Viva Palestina convoy had just completed its arduous drive through Europe and across North Africa, traveling 5,000 miles to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.
At the time it looked like a terrific display of human spirit, even if it amounted to only a small fraction of the relief just one government could provide. Nine months later, after a second convoy reached Gaza in July and as a third “mega convoy” gears up for departure on December 5 [PDF], Viva Palestina has not only been an inspiring mobilization of people power — it has been of real practical effect at at time that the Blairs, Mitchells, Clintons, Milibands and Obamas of this world have shown themselves to be pathetic examples of all-words-and-no-actions.
Among the participants in the new convoy are a contingent from Bradford for whom I have a special affection.
With their keffiyehs, beards and traditional Pakistani dress, to many Americans some of these guys will look like jihadists from Waziristan, but to me they’re fellow Yorkshiremen.
As they are getting ready to go, they’ve put together a short video — after the intro titles, fast-forward to minute three (unless you have a particular interest in what ambulances look like) to hear the Bradford brothers speak for themselves:
For information on making donations to Viva Palestinago here.
To make donations to the Bradford convoy contact Sid 0797-066-6656 or Shaf 0796-693-0587 (when dialing from outside the UK, dial your international access code then +44, then drop the “0”, eg from the US 011 +44 797-066-6656). Sid is the tire-fitter who appears in the video above wearing an olive-green keffiyeh. See the Bradford Group’s flyer [PDF]. The Bradford group has already raised $335,000 (200,000 pounds) in donations from the local community.
Al Jazeera English recently aired a short documentary on the conditions facing the residents of the Gaza Strip. Munzer al-Dayyeh is a 40-year-old mechanic living in Gaza. And while the effects of war and ongoing siege may be good for his business, he can’t manage to secure medical treatment for his disabled children. An insight into an ordinary Gazan man struggling to make a living and to find a solution for his family in the difficulties of the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian officials said Sunday they are preparing to ask the United Nations to endorse an independent state without Israel’s consent because they are losing faith in the peace talks.
The idea appeared to be largely symbolic. The U.S., Israel’s closest ally, would likely veto any initiative at the United Nations, and Israel controls the areas where the Palestinians want to establish their homeland. Nonetheless, the move reflected growing Palestinian frustration with the deadlock in peace efforts. [continued…]
When people ask why Obama has capitulated to the prime minister of a tiny state– Bibi Netanyahu– various theories are offered about Health care first, or the economy, or Afghanistan, or oil. Few say directly: Netanyahu feels invulnerable because of the Israel lobby in the U.S. As readers of this site know, I am a bull on this issue: I think the lobby has a tremendous amount of power. And all efforts to poohpooh its influence strike me as foolish until such time as the media address it openly and vigorously, as they do, say, the gun lobby. Once there’s information and sunshine, we can argue about its magnitude.
The difficulty is that you cannot be plain about this matter without addressing the idea of Jewish influence. Israelis are often more plain about this. Anshel Pfeffer wrote in Haaretz the other day, “the most significant joint endeavor of America’s Jews [is] six decades of unswerving support for the Israeli government of the day.” I.e., a hammerlock on U.S. policy. And last year at the NYPL, former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg described “two structures” built by Jews, one being Israel, the other “the semi-autonomous American Jewry, which was not here 150 years ago– powerful influence, access to the corridors of power, impact on the culture, and civilization… plus the infrastructure of the community of solidarity and fraternity and support system and education etc.” [continued…]
America’s leading human rights organisation has accused Israel and its supporters of an “organised campaign” of false allegations and misinformation, including “extremely personal attacks” on its staff, in an attempt to discredit the group over its reports of war crimes in Gaza.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) ties the campaign – which has included accusations that the group’s reports on the Jewish state are written by “anti-Israel ideologues” and that it has sought funds from Saudi Arabia – to a statement by a senior official in the Israeli prime minister’s office in June pledging to “dedicate time and manpower to combating” human rights organisations. [continued…]
In a few words, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was able to encapsulate the political situation in Israel: “There is no more peace camp.” New survey numbers appear to prove him right.
Nine months after the elections, the left has evaporated and the right has only grown stronger, probably stronger than ever. The Labor Party and its leadership continue to sink lower and lower, but the general public is actually exhibiting intellectual flexibility and political moderation: the majority, including most of the Likud voters, support negotiations with Hamas, if it relinquishes terrorism and recognizes Israel.
These are the main conclusion for a special survey carried out during the past days on behalf of Haaretz and Dialog, under the guidance of Professor Camil Fuchs of the Department of Statistics at Tel Aviv University.
The survey shows the impressive rising strength of the right and a serious shrinking of the center and the left. The balance in the current Knesset stands at 65 seats for the right and 55 for the center and the left parties, but if elections were held today , the current survey suggests that the right would garner 72 seats to 48 for the center and left.
During the nine months since the elections, the equivalent of seven seats in the Knesset have moved to the right from the left-center. Kadima is retaining its strength, but Labor is crashing and it is on its way to disappearing from the political scene. Continue reading →
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…]
Two eminent mainstream journalists — Tom Friedman and Joe Klein — recently called for United States to disengage from the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, on the grounds that Palestinians were too divided to make a deal and the Israelis were not interested in one. Friedman couldn’t bring himself to draw the logical conclusion — if the United States [is] truly going to “disengage,” that also means cutting off its economic and military assistance — but Klein did.
I have a certain sympathy for this position (and even wrote similar things myself before I wised up), but there are two problems with this specific idea. The first is that it is a meaningless prescription: There’s no way to cut the aid package (or even put a hold on it, which is what Klein recommends) so long as Congress is in hock to AIPAC and the other groups in the status quo lobby. And unless I’ve missed something, I doubt groups like J Street would support it either.
Friedman and Klein’s statements do convey how discourse in the United States is changing, but the specific recommendation they offer here is a non-starter. Remember: we are dealing with a Congress that just voted to condemn the Goldstone Report by a vote of 344-24. The aid package may be indirectly subsidizing the settlements and threatening Israel’s future as a Jewish majority state, but a supine House and Senate will still sign the annual check. [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — The perennial debate on whether the US will ever find the will to cut off aid to Israel invariably misses what is ultimately probably the most important sticking point: a lion’s share of the money that Congress allocates as foreign military aid ends up going back into the US economy. Members of Congress face pressure not only from the Israel lobby but also the defense industry lobby and in many cases their own constituents to keep on doling out the cash.
The Israeli government is currently in the process of negotiating its largest military purchase ever: 25 F-35 fighters at a cost of $3.25 billion, paid to Lockheed-Martin who will start delivery in 2014. Interestingly, Israel has the ability to allocate funds coming from US taxpayers that will appear in US budgets that have yet to be passed or even drafted by Congress!
So, if the White House is not about to call on Congress to cut back on aid to Israel, the one lever over which it retains absolute control is the way the US casts votes in the UN Security Council. I’m not holding my breath waiting for any surprises there.
Perhaps more significant than anything happening (or not happening) in Washington, is the process unfolding around the globe through which Israel is inexorably losing its legitimacy.
When Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the US, warns about the delegitimization of Israel he is giving voice to a real fear among Israelis. That fear is given form when people such as the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner says Israel does not want peace:
“What really hurts me, and this shocks us, is that before there used to be a great peace movement in Israel. There was a left that made itself heard and a real desire for peace,” Kouchner said on France Inter radio.
“It seems to me, and I hope that I am completely wrong, that this desire has completely vanished, as though people no longer believe in it,” he added.
Israel clings to a tenuous claim to being a peace-loving nation. Once the world completely loses faith in that notion, the path to pariah status will be hard to avoid.
A book published this week by a radical Jewish rabbi from the Israeli-occupied West Bank and endorsed by prominent religious right-wing figures suggests killing any non-Jew, including children and babies, who pose a threat to Israel.
The book’s publication, just days after the arrest of Jewish settler Jack Teitel, who is charged with a string of killings, including two Palestinians, reflects a growing antipathy towards Palestinians among Jews living in the occupied territory.
Michael Warschawski, the founder of the Jerusalem-based Alternative Information Centre, said the book went public with a concept that was already being promoted in a quieter way by dozens of settler rabbis in internal community newspapers and speeches. [continued…]
Opposition MK Shaul Mofaz is planning to meet with senior Hamas officials, the Channel 10 website reported late Monday.
On Sunday, Mofaz presented his peace plan, which calls for the establishment within a year of a Palestinian state with provisional boundaries on 60 percent of the West Bank. He urged dialogue with Hamas as a means of achieving peace with the Palestinians.
Mofaz portrayed his proposal as a challenge not only to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but also to his own party’s leader, Tzipi Livni.
The plan sparked severe criticism, both from the Palestinians as well as within Israel. In response, Mofaz said Monday that “I will talk to the devil himself if that’s what will bring peace,” Israel Radio reported.
In recent years, Mofaz has vehemently rejected any contact with the Islamist Hamas, who violently seized control over the Gaza Strip in a bloody coup in 2007. In a complete turnaround, Mofaz told Israel Radio Monday that if Hamas is voted to power in the upcoming elections – scheduled for January – he is willing to negotiate with them. [continued…]
Something is stirring within the Hamas body politic, a moderating trend that, if nourished and engaged, could transform Palestinian politics and the Arab-Israeli peace process. There are unmistakable signs that the religiously based radical movement has subtly changed its uncompromising posture on Israel.
For example, in the last few months top Hamas officials have publicly stressed that they want to be part of the solution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, not part of the problem. What is happening inside Hamas’ mosques and social base shows a concerted effort on the part of its leadership to re-educate its rank and file about co-existence with the Jewish state and in so doing mentally prepare them for a permanent settlement in the future.
In Gazan mosques, pro-Hamas clerics have begun to cite the example of Salah al-Din al-Ayubi, a famed Muslim military commander and statesman, who, after liberating Jerusalem from the Western Crusaders, allowed them to retain a coastal state of their own. The moral lesson of the story is that if the famed leader could tolerate the warring, bloodthirsty Crusaders, then today’s Palestinians should be willing to live peacefully with a Jewish state in their midst. [continued…]
The possible collapse of the Palestinian Authority, Israel’s negotiating partner, loomed Monday, as several aides to its president, Mahmoud Abbas, said that he intended to resign and forecast that others would follow.
“I think he is realizing that he came all this way with the peace process in order to create a Palestinian state, but he sees no state coming,” Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, said in an interview. “So he really doesn’t think there is a need to be president or to have an Authority. This is not about who is going to replace him. This is about our leaving our posts. You think anybody will stay after he leaves?”
Mr. Abbas warned last week that he would not participate in Palestinian elections he called for, to take place in January. But he has threatened several times before to resign, and many viewed this latest step as a ploy by a Hamlet-like leader upset over Israeli and American policy. Many also noted that the vote might not actually be held, given the Palestinian political fracture and the unwillingness of Hamas, which controls Gaza, to participate.
In the days since, however, his colleagues have come to believe that he is not bluffing. If that is the case, they say, the Palestinian Authority could be endangered. [continued…]
More than 40 years of Israeli military occupation have had a devastating impact on Palestinians in Gaza. Air strikes, artillery shelling, ground invasions, jet flybys and other acts of violence have all led to an epidemic of suffering among Gaza’s most vulnerable inhabitants. The most recent studies indicate that the vast majority of Gaza’s children exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Soon after the Israeli winter assault, a group of scholars at the University of Washington discussed different aspects of the situation in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Dr. Evan Kanter, a UW School of Medicine professor and the current president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, delivered a somber talk describing the mental health situation among Gaza’s population. The numbers he cited described a staggering level of psychological trauma.
Dr. Kanter described studies that revealed 62 percent of Gaza’s inhabitants reported having a family member injured or killed, 67 percent saw injured or dead strangers and 83 percent had witnessed shootings. [continued…]
In the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Western leaders are full of self-congratulation. But their paeans to universal freedom ring hollow, when they bear large responsibility for another wall constricting human freedom: the apartheid wall dividing the Palestinian West Bank.
Israeli authorities refer to it as a “separation barrier,” but that’s misleading. The wall doesn’t separate pre-1967 Israel from the West Bank. If that’s all it did, it would be an entirely different political object. Instead, the wall cuts deep into the Palestinian West Bank, separating Palestinians from each other and from their land, and signaling to the Palestinians that Israel intends to annex territory that Palestinians want for an independent Palestinian state. The fact that Western countries that support the Israeli government – above all the United States – say nothing about the West Bank wall signals to Palestinians that Western support for Palestinian statehood is merely rhetorical.
Today, AFP reports, Palestinians tore down a chunk of the wall near Ramallah. [continued…]
Let’s just get out of the picture. Let all these leaders stand in front of their own people and tell them the truth: “My fellow citizens: Nothing is happening; nothing is going to happen. It’s just you and me and the problem we own.”
Indeed, it’s time for us to dust off James Baker’s line: “When you’re serious, give us a call: 202-456-1414. Ask for Barack. Otherwise, stay out of our lives. We have our own country to fix.” …
If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it. I just don’t want to subsidize it or anesthetize it anymore. We need to fix America. If and when they get serious, they’ll find us.
The only specific course of action Friedman explicitly advocates to fulfill those principles is that the U.S. cease its efforts to forge a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and stop trying to pressure them into concessions, instead leaving each side to stew in the status quo — in other words, do exactly that which the Netanyahu government would like most. That would be a perfectly fine suggestion if not for the fact that the U.S. is heavily invested in the outcome of that process and its interests substantially and directly impacted by what happens. That’s because we single-handedly enable Israeli behavior with our massive amounts of military aid, diplomatic protection, and weapons supplying, which means Israeli behavior is rationally perceived by much of the Muslim world as being one and the same as American behavior. Muslim anger towards Israel will inevitably translate into Muslim anger towards the U.S. for as long as we continue to flood Israel with aid and cover. [continued…]
Regardless of whether there is a Democrat or a Republican in the White House, the United States became a distinctly pro-Israel world power after the 1967 war. It has no intention of being a “balanced mediator” when it comes to the conflict with the Palestinians.
Barack Obama’s public relations moves in the Arab world have frightened many average Israelis. But Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, allies of the final takeover of the West Bank, know very well that U.S. policy has not changed. It doesn’t take a genius to read the working papers of past prime ministers.
The prevailing attitude of all U.S. administrations was drafted by Henry Morgenthau, and was later updated by Kenneth Waltz. One line guided all of them – Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, George Mitchell – essentially, that any possible settlement must match the positions of the stronger party. [continued…]
‘Who lost China?” was the battle cry of a witch-hunt conducted in the US State Department following the 1949 victory of Mao Zedong’s communists. The department’s “China hands”, critics charged, had been woefully ignorant of the dynamics at work on the ground in China after the Second World War, and undermined the US ally Chiang Kai-shek. While the purge that followed is unlikely to be repeated, Washington may soon be asking itself, albeit quietly, “Who lost Fatah?”
Last week’s announcement by the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas that he would not seek re-election next January was a warning to the Obama administration, which had put Mr Abbas in an untenable position. Having retreated from its own demand that Israel halt all construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Washington expected Mr Abbas to open talks with the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu without conditions.
For the Palestinians, however, the settlement-freeze demand was a test of Mr Obama’s willingness to pressure the Israelis into taking steps they won’t take by choice. Mr Abbas knows that Mr Netanyahu, if it were up to him, would not yield to a viable, independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. If the US is not prepared to pressure Israel, negotiations would not only be fruitless, they would actually help sustain a reality that is relatively comfortable for the Israelis but intolerable for the Palestinians. [continued…]
The head of a U.N. investigation that accused Israel of war crimes in Gaza, Richard Goldstone, has said he is disappointed there has been such a “lukewarm” reaction to his findings in the United States.
The report by Goldstone, a South African jurist, lambasted both sides in the December-January war, which killed up to 1,387 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, but was harsher toward Israel.
It gave Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants six months to mount credible investigations or face possible prosecution in The Hague. Both Israel and Hamas denied committing war crimes. [continued…]
The announcement by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that he will not run for reelection is the exclamation point on the utter collapse of the Obama adminstration’s Middle East policy. Launched to great expectations — the appointment of George Mitchell, Obama’s Cairo declaration that the plight of the Palestinians is intolerable — it is now in complete disarray. It is, without doubt, the first major defeat for Obama’s hope-and-change foreign policy.
Here’s how it unraveled. First, Obama began a test of strength with Israel over that country’s policy of illegal settlements, an expansion of its occupation of the West Bank driven by extremist, right-wing settlers who are fanatical, Bible-believing cultists who think that Israel has some God-given right to that territory. The settler-kooks — indeed, one of their past leaders was named Rabbi Kook — are supported by ultra-hardliners in Israel’s security establishment, who see the West Bank as strategic depth in Israel’s defense posture. What happened after Obama told Israel it had to stop settlements? Nothing. Score: Netanyahu 1, Obama 0. [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — In his somewhat hagiographic report on Clinton’s tour of the region, Joe Klein suggests that the Secretary of State’s “recklessness” in Jerusalem might coincide with her emergence as a single strong voice on foreign policy as the administration’s diplomatic efforts are increasingly in disarray.
“In the course of the trip, there were the first stray wisps of a hint that Clinton wanted to begin asserting her independence, as the Administration, facing roadblocks across the world, struggled for a firmer foreign policy tone after an opening nine months that might be called the Rodney King — ‘Can’t we all just get along?’ — phase,” Klein wrote.
Another way of putting this might be to say that in an administration that lacks leadership, there are likely to be an increasing number of freelancers as a power vacuum creates openings for political opportunists. The current trend is heading from bad to worse.
“It’s time for you to find another donkey.” With those words, according to Palestinian sources, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas told the Palestine Liberation Organziation (PLO) executive committee that he would not seek re-election in January. The 74-year-old leader, on whom U.S. peace efforts in the Middle East are heavily dependent, reiterated that message later on Thursday in a televised address from his home in Ramallah. “This decision does not at all amount to bargaining or political maneuvering. While I appreciate the views expressed by brothers [in the PLO, who rejected his move], I hope they will understand my wish.”
The prime audience for Abbas’ statement, of course, was not the PLO leadership but the Obama Administration. According to Palestinian sources who attended the meeting, Abbas told his PLO comrades that the U.S. had “cheated” him by retreating from its insistence that Israel end settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. “We welcomed it, and were optimistic when President Obama announced the need for a complete halt to settlements, including natural growth,” Abbas said. “We were surprised by his support for the Israeli position.” [continued…]
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.
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…]
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…]
A US native from this isolated settlement was arrested by Israeli security services nearly a month ago amid allegations that he killed two Palestinians more than a decade ago and attempted to murder two others more recently. The local media are calling it the latest case of Jewish terrorism.
The accusations against Yaakov Teitel, the son of a US Navy dentist, is fanning concern in Israel that nationalist vigilantes in Israel still have the ability to carry out attacks aimed at sabotaging peace negotiations and expected land concessions.
The case is even more loaded because security services publicized it Sunday – just days before the Nov. 4 anniversary of the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by Jewish extremist Yigal Amir, which derailed the peace process for years. [continued…]
When a murderer like Yaakov Teitel walks around freely for 12 years, carries out attacks, trains, creates an explosives lab, and builds up a weapons depot with no interruption, this means there is no deterrence.
In other words, the Shin Bet security service and police are not there. And when there is no deterrence, there is high likelihood that the next “patriotic” murderer is already walking amongst us.
And what does the next murderer think to himself, the person who dreams – like Yaakov Teitel – of being the nation’s savior and guardian of our race? How simple it is, he must be telling himself. You can murder, plant explosives, and create provocations freely and nobody will snitch on you or capture you.
After all, Yaakov Teitel did not hide in a large city like Tel Aviv. He lived in a very small community, Shvut Rachel. It’s impossible that he raised no suspicions for such a long time. But the fact is, nobody informed authorities. Even when he was held up for questioning, he was released for lack of evidence.
So what does the next murderer conclude about the Shin Bet’s ability to cover and penetrate such small communities? There is nobody to fear. Law enforcement authorities don’t reach these places. [continued…]
Congressman Brian Baird (D-WA) told Al Jazeera: “The resolution [HR867] itself, I don’t think accurately characterizes the Goldstone report itself. It certainly doesn’t accurately characterize, nor does it really attempt to characterize, the reality on the ground and the devastation and death that occured there. And nor does it speak at all to the suffering of the Palestinian people or what needs to happen to try to move this situation forward. And I am concerned not only about that but about the general issue of what we can do proactively to get more relief to the people in Gaza in need immediately and what we can do to try to move the peace process forward, and that includes in my judgment, cessation of settlement expansion and moving towards real progress on the ground — tangible progress.”
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) made the following statement on the House Floor about H. Res 867, which condemns the ‘Goldstone Report’ or the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict:
“Today we journey from Operation Cast Lead to Operation Cast Doubt. Almost as serious as committing war crimes is covering up war crimes, pretending that war crimes were never committed and did not exist.
“Because behind every such deception is the nullification of humanity, the destruction of human dignity, the annihilation of the human spirit, the triumph of Orwellian thinking, the eternal prison of the dark heart of the totalitarian.
“The resolution before us today, which would reject all attempts of the Goldstone Report to fix responsibility of all parties to war crimes, including both Hamas and Israel, may as well be called the “Down is Up, Night is Day, Wrong is Right” resolution.
“Because if this Congress votes to condemn a report it has not read, concerning events it has totally ignored, about violations of law of which it is unaware, it will have brought shame to this great institution.
“How can we ever expect there to be peace in the Middle East if we tacitly approve of violations of international law and international human rights, if we look the other way, or if we close our eyes to the heartbreak of people on both sides by white-washing a legitimate investigation?
“How can we protect the people of Israel from existential threats if we hold no concern for the protection of the Palestinians, for their physical security, their right to land, their right to their own homes, their right to water, their right to sustenance, their right to freedom of movement, their right to the human security of jobs, education and health care?
“We will have peace only when the plight of both Palestinians and Israelis is brought before this House and given equal consideration in recognition of that principle that all people on this planet have a right to survive and thrive, and it is our responsibility, our duty to see that no individual, no group, no people are barred from this humble human claim.”
Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, director of Military Intelligence, announced Tuesday that Hamas launched a rocket some 60 kilometers into the sea, apparently as an experiment. Such a rocket, if fired from the northernmost point of the Gaza Strip, could strike the southern cities of the Gush Dan area – including Rishon Letzion, Holon and Bat Yam – and possibly reach as far as Tel Aviv itself.
Although Yadlin didn’t specify the type of the weapon used, it appears to be a standard, foreign-made rocket smuggled into Gaza. Yadlin told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Hamas has accumulated an arsenal of rockets slightly larger than the arsenal it possessed before last winter’s Operation Cast Lead.
The experiment hardly caught Israeli intelligence by surprise, as it had assumed Hamas had acquired a similar type of rocket several months ago. However, the importance of Yadlin’s report should not be underestimated as this is the first tangible piece of evidence that Hamas holds a weapon capable of striking Gush Dan. It would seem Hamas has used the lull in fighting with Israel to not only restore, but improve its capabilities. Still, and similar to Hezbollah, restoring the arsenal hardly testifies to restoring motivation to confront Israel militarily. [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — How can you tell when an Israeli official is lying? You can see his lips moving.
I know, an old joke, but really: are we supposed to believe this?
Then there’s the dubious concept of missile testing in this context. One would assume that missiles constructed in Iran have undergone very thorough testing in Iran. “Testing” them in Gaza would simply mean depleting the inventory.
Haaretz says: “Israel believes Hamas considers the new rocket a strategic asset, a ‘doomsday weapon’ of sorts, and therefore avoided publicizing the experimental launch, in the hope of using the weapon as a surprise during some later confrontation.”
Wouldn’t a more effective way of maintaining the element of surprise be to skip the “test”?
Before the war on Gaza, Israeli hawks kept on saying that Hamas could not be trusted to maintain a truce and that it was building up its stockpile of longer-range missiles. Then Israel attacked and the long-range missile threat never materialized.
If Hamas really had such an arsenal, why didn’t it use it?
Were they afraid that Israel would abandon its “restraint”? Were they afraid that Israel might use disproportionate force?
The Obama administration is scaling back its ambitions for the Arab-Israeli peace process, focusing on maintaining some degree of low-level dialogue in the face of big divisions between the two sides.
U.S. officials began outlining Washington’s diminished expectations as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton completes a one-week tour of the Middle East on Wednesday. She had tried to kick-start a new round of talks during stops in Israel and Arab capitals, but the divisions proved too wide to bridge.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused U.S. calls for a complete freeze of settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the Palestinians have ruled out resuming negotiations without the freeze.
Mrs. Clinton subsequently pressed Arab leaders to agree to support talks with just a partial Israeli freeze. But barring that, U.S. officials said all sides might be forced to accept a lower level of engagement in the talks to guard against a new round of violence in the Palestinian territories.
There is a fear that militant groups, such as Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon, could use a political vacuum to spark renewed violence.
More on Mideast Peace Talks
“There’s value in having the process” in itself, said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley on Tuesday. In a sign of the administration’s changing focus, Mr. Crowley added: “If this particular path, we think, can’t get us there, we’ll look for others.” [continued…]
Police suspect that Yaakov (Jack) Teitel, who has confessed to murdering two Palestinians and carrying out a long list of other, less deadly, terror attacks, also murdered two traffic policemen in the Jordan Valley eight months ago – a crime originally attributed to Palestinian terrorists.
Haaretz reported on Tuesday that police suspected Teitel of other murders in addition to those of the two Palestinians, but at the time, a gag order was still in place that prevented specifying which murders.
The policemen, Warrant Officer David Rabinowitz and Senior Warrant Officer Yehezkel Ramzarkar, were shot while sitting in their patrol vehicle near Moshav Massua. The subsequent investigation indicated that the assailant had lain in wait at the turn-off from the main road to Massua and did something to make them stop and roll down their window. He then shot them from point-blank range. No damage was done to the vehicle, and nothing was taken from it.
Teitel denied responsibility for these murders, and it not clear what evidence the police have against him. But a police source said yesterday that Teitel’s modus operandi in the crimes he has admitted to “precisely matches” that of the policemen’s murder.
The police and the Shin Bet security service have long assumed that the policemen’s killer acted alone, and not as part of an organization, making it difficult to get information about the crime. And while the police considered the possibility that the murder was criminal rather than the work of terrorists, three different lines of inquiry had drawn blanks, leaving investigators utterly in the dark. [continued…]
From the great Congressman Brian Baird, the clinical psychologist who represents Rachel Corrie’s district in Washington, and who has been to Gaza, warning his fellows about the vote today on a resolution to condemn the Goldstone report:
Before House Members vote on H.Res. 867, regarding the U.N. Goldstone report on the Gaza conflict, there are a few questions worth asking.
First, why are we bringing this resolution to the floor without ever giving former South African Constitutional Court Justice Richard Goldstone a hearing to explain his findings? Have those who will vote on H.Res. 867 actually read the resolution? Have they read the Goldstone report? Are they aware that Justice Goldstone has issued a paragraph-by-paragraph response, available on my Web site at baird.house.gov, to H.Res. 867 pointing out that many of its assertions are factually inaccurate or deeply misleading?
Since scarcely a dozen House Members have actually been to Gaza , what actual firsthand knowledge do the rest of the Members of Congress possess on which to base their judgment of the merits of H.Res. 867 or the Goldstone report? [continued…]
The Obama Administration’s bid to relaunch an Israeli-Palestinian peace process is falling apart faster than you can say settlement freeze — in no small part because President Obama began his effort by saying settlement freeze. On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found herself struggling to persuade skeptical Arab foreign ministers to see the silver lining in Israel’s “No, but …” answer to the U.S. demand that Israel halt all construction in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. At least Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was offering to restrain settlement activity, Clinton argued, but Arab leaders, whom Obama had hoped would make reciprocal gestures towards normalization of ties with Israel, were not buying. For Arab League secretary Amr Moussa, Clinton’s message offered a grim outlook for the Administration’s peace efforts: “I still wait until we have our meetings and decide what we are going to do,” Moussa reportedly said Monday in Morocco, where Clinton was meeting with Arab leaders. “But failure is in the atmosphere all over.”
Asking the Arab states to accept Israel’s offer to simply slow down construction in the West Bank and its refusal to stop building and demolishing Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem — after President Obama publicly and repeatedly demanded it — has battered the Administration’s credibility in Arab capitals. And Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reiterated on Monday his refusal to heed Washington’s call to begin negotiating with Netanyahu in the absence of a settlement freeze. Abbas has promised his public and his own Fatah movement, which is deeply skeptical of the prospects for dealing with Israel’s current hawkish government, that he won’t return to the table until Netanyahu has signaled his bona fides by halting all construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. [continued…]
The two-state solution was on life-support when Obama took office, and at first it appeared he might make a serious effort to nurse it back to health and make it a reality. At least, that’s what he said he was going to do. Instead, he and his Secretary of State are in the process of pulling out the plug. But what will they do when “two states for two peoples” isn’t an option and everybody finally admits it, and the Palestinians begin to demand equal rights in “greater Israel?” Will the United States support their claims for equality, democracy, and individual rights, or will it continue to defend and subsidize what will then be an apartheid state? Well, if it’s up to our courageous reps in Congress, you know what the answer will be. [continued…]
In the usually wonky world of non-profit issue-advocacy organizations, a decidedly political campaign has been waged against foreign policy institutions that promote diplomacy over militarism.
Two relatively new organizations — each covering distinctly opposite ends on the spectrum of Middle Eastern affairs — have been the target of withering public relations attacks in recent weeks and months.
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC), an organization that promotes diplomatic engagement between the U.S. and Iran, sprung to prominence recently for its active media presence in the aftermath of Iran’s disputed elections though its influence in the nation’s capital had been felt long before then. But as NIAC’s voice grew louder in foreign policy circles, so too did the vehemence of its critics. [continued…]
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n March 9, 
pposition MK Shaul Mofaz is planning to meet with senior Hamas officials, the Channel 10 website reported late Monday.