Category Archives: Palestinian Territories

IDF training Israeli settlers ahead of ‘mass disorder’ expected in September

Haaretz reports:

The IDF has conducted detailed work to determine a “red line” for each settlement in the West Bank, which will determine when soldiers will be ordered to shoot at the feet of Palestinian protesters if the line is crossed. It is also planning to provide settlers with tear gas and stun grenades as part of the defense operation.

The IDF is currently in the process of finalizing its preparations for Operation Summer Seeds, whose purpose is to ready the army for September and the possibility of confrontations with Palestinians following the expected vote in favor of Palestinian statehood at the UN General Assembly.

According to a document acquired by Haaretz, the main working assumption of the defense establishment is that a Palestinian declaration of independence will cause a public uprising “which will mainly include mass disorder.”

The document states the disorder will include “marches toward main junctions, Israeli communities, and education centers; efforts at damaging symbols of [Israeli] government.

Also, there may be more extreme cases like shooting from within the demonstrations or even terrorist incidents. In all the scenarios, there is readiness to deal with incidents near the fences and the borders of the State of Israel.”

As part of its preparations, the IDF is investing a great deal of effort in preparing the settlers for the incidents, with the main concern being confrontations between Israeli settlers and the Palestinians.

Yesterday the army held training sessions for the chief security officers of settlements at a military installation near Shiloh. In recent weeks the IDF has been training the readiness squads of settlements at the Lachish base, which is used as a command training center ahead of September.

The main message the army is issuing is that the demonstrations will be controlled and that the army has sufficient forces in order to deal with every disturbance. In order to be sure, there is also a decision, in principle, to equip the chief security officers of settlements with the means for dispersing demonstrations. These would include tear gas and stun grenades, although that would create a logistical problem as there’s a shortage of means for firing that type of ammunition.

Moreover, as part of the preparations, staff work was performed in which the commander of the platoon responsible for defending each settlement patrolled the area with the chief security officer of the settlement, in order to identify weak points.

The army is establishing two virtual lines for each of the settlements that are near a Palestinian village. The first line, if crossed by Palestinian demonstrators, will be met with tear gas and other means for dispersing crowds.

The second line is a “red line,” and if this one is crossed, the soldiers will be allowed to open fire at the legs of the demonstrators, as is also standard practice if the northern border is crossed.

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Egypt mulls buffer zone on Gaza border

Al-Masry Al-Youm reports:

Egypt is currently considering a plan to set up a 5-kilometer wide buffer zone on its border with the Gaza Strip, senior security sources told Al-Masry Al-Youm on Saturday.

They said that security forces are finalizing a plan to destroy smuggling tunnels, adding that heavy digging equipment was recently transferred to border town of Rafah. The machinery, which uses modern vibration techniques, is meant to destroy the tunnels at a depth of 20 meters below the surface of the earth.

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Israel agrees to joint investigation with Egypt on Eilat attacks

An Israel Army Radio report said that Israel’s domestic intelligence service, Shin Bet, recommended a preemptive attack against members of the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza, prior to the attacks by gunmen near Eilat in southern Israel last week. The report said that the request was turned down by senior defense officials and political leaders.

In response, the IDF Spokesman’s Office said that “the report suffers from substantive factual inaccuracies, and due to operational and intelligence reasons we cannot elaborate on the matter.”

The Shin Bet declined to comment on the report.

Meanwhile, Haaretz reports:

[T]wo days after telling Army Radio that Israeli and Egyptian officers would not carry out a joint investigation into the attack in the south [near Eilat last week], National Security Adviser Ya’akov Amidror has changed his stance. In a special announcement Thursday afternoon, he said a joint investigation would indeed take place.

The reason for the change probably stems from the anger that his statements to Army Radio have stirred in Egypt’s Supreme Military Council. During the Tuesday morning interview, Amidror said no joint probe involving Israeli and Egyptian officers would take place into the incident near Eilat. But he said the two sides would carry out separate investigations and then compare their findings.

Amidror made the statement even though Barak had announced on Saturday that Israel sought to hold a joint investigation with Egypt into the incident. Earlier this week, the head of the Planning Directorate at the Israel Defense Forces, Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel, traveled to Cairo to discuss with the Egyptians ways of carrying out the joint probe.

The statements by the national security adviser were followed by a report Wednesday in the Egyptian daily Al-Masri Al-Yaum, which was highly critical.

“The Israeli side has not responded so far to our demand for a joint investigation and did not announce a timetable for the completion of the investigation,” the daily quoted a senior Egyptian government official as saying.

“If there is no joint investigation we will recall our ambassador from Tel Aviv.”

Thursday afternoon the Prime Minister’s Bureau issued an unusual statement in Amidror’s name. The national security adviser stressed that “Israel agrees to hold a joint investigation with Egypt on the events of the terrorist incident on the way to Eilat that took place last week.”

Amidror added that the details would be determined between the militaries of the two countries.

Explaining the reason for the two versions, the Prime Minister’s Bureau said that only during the past 24 hours had a final decision been made on a joint investigation.

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Israel’s security strategy — when in doubt, hit Gaza

Three days after the attacks by gunmen outside Eilat in southern Israel, what do we know about the identities of the gunmen? Almost nothing.

In the mainstream media they are blithely referred to as “Palestinian gunmen” yet so far the only basis for this description is the unsubstantiated word of Israeli officials. Those officials have provided no real evidence to back up their claims.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to assign responsibility for the attacks with the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees yet both they and Hamas denied any involvement.

Generally speaking, Palestinian militant groups are not shy about claiming responsibility for attacks against Israelis — especially those that can be described as military operations where Israeli soldiers are killed or injured. Indeed, the problem is more often that too many groups — not too few — want to claim the honor.

This suggests a rather obvious explanation about why no Palestinian group announced that it directed the attacks: it wasn’t a Palestinian operation.

The Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson refused to endorse Netanyahu’s assertion about the PRC role and the only “proof” of Palestinian involvement the IDF presented was the use of Kalashnikovs — as though 100 million Kalashnikovs, 20% of the firearms available on the planet, are now stockpiled in Gaza!

What other evidence is there about the gunmen? They were wearing Egyptian military uniforms.

Just before the Eilat attacks, Egyptian security forces declared Operation Eagle — an effort to bring security to the lawless Sinai — a success.

Deputy Interior Minister Ahmad Gamal Eddin said at a press conference last week that the campaign has so far managed to arrest members of al-Takfeer wal-Hijra and to collect arms and illegally acquired military uniforms.

Militant Salafists based in the Sinai are believed to have been periodically blowing up the Egypt-Israel gas pipeline this year. They are well-armed and possess Egyptian military uniforms. Were they behind the Eilat attacks? It seems a bit more plausible than the IDF’s Kalashnikov-based analysis.

Meanwhile, Hamas has once again agreed to take the lead in enforcing a ceasefire with Israel.

A Hamas official in Gaza says that all of Gaza’s militant groups have agreed to a cease-fire aimed at ending a three-day round of violence with Israel.

The official says Egypt helped broker the cease-fire, which will go into effect this evening. He says Egypt told the groups that Israel would halt its airstrikes only if the Palestinian groups stopped shooting first, and that Hamas security personnel would enforce the agreement.

He spoke on condition of anonymity Sunday because the agreement had not officially been made public.

Earlier on Sunday, AP reported that Israeli officials arrived in Cairo. Moreover, Israeli sources confirmed that the reduced IDF strikes on Gaza in the last 24 hours was an intentional move aimed at allowing Egypt to mediate a cease-fire, as well as out of fear for the defense and diplomatic relationship with Egypt.

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Ehud Barak issued a harsh warning to those responsible for the latest rocket fire on southern Israel, saying those who act against Israel “will have their heads separated from their bodies.”

Thus speaks Israel’s own Salafist military commander.

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Israeli army hasn’t the faintest idea who launched the Eilat attacks

The Real News Network‘s Lia Tarachansky asked IDF Spokesperson Lt. Colonel Avital Leibovitz how the IDF reached their conclusions about who was responsible for Thursday’s attacks near Eilat in southern Israel.

Tarachansky: On what are you basing your conclusion that this group [the Popular Resistance Committees] is responsible for the terror attacks?

IDF Spokesperson: We did not say that this group was responsible for the terror attack. We based this on intelligence information as well as some facts that [we] actually presented an hour ago to some wires and journalists. Some of the findings that were from the bodies of the terrorists, and they are using for example Kalashnikov bullets and Kalashnikov rifles are very common in Gaza —

Tarachansky: Many terrorist groups use Kalashnikovs —

IDF Spokesperson: No, not many terror groups. I’m not saying — I’m referring to the terrorists that came from Gaza.

Tarachansky: Prime Minister Netanyahu said today that the group that was responsible for the terror attack was the one that was eliminated [in Gaza] and you’re saying that’s not the case?

IDF Spokesperson: I don’t know what he said [when speaking on Israeli national television] — I’m not Prime Minister Netanyahu. I’m saying that the group came from Gaza and I’m giving you proof why it came from Gaza — how we know it came from Gaza. This is all I’m saying.

The Kalashnikov is the most widely available weapon on the planet. According to Jane’s Infantry Weapons 2009/2010 this rifle is in use in over 70 countries. An estimated 20% of all firearms available worldwide are of the Kalashnikov family.

So, the IDF says it “knows” the gunmen came from Gaza because they were using Kalashnikovs. That’s about as logical as saying they know they came from Gaza because they appeared to be Arabs.

Why then is Israel now bombing Gaza? Simply because it bombs Gaza every chance it gets. It bombs Gaza knowing that Washington will never object. It bombs Gaza because whenever Jews are killed the easiest form of revenge is to kill Palestinians — even when those particular Palestinians most likely have nothing whatsoever to do with the deaths that triggered this particular cycle of violence.

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While Gaza is being bombed by Israel, Hamas armed wing decides a unilateral ceasefire is worthless

Ma’an News Agency reports:

The military wing of Hamas, the Al-Qassam Brigades, has called off a ceasefire with Israel and will allow factions in Gaza to respond to Israeli attacks, Al-Aqsa Radio reported late Friday.

“There can be no truce with the Israeli occupation while it commits massacres against the Palestinian people without justification,” a representative of the militant group was quoted as saying.

Al-Qassam “calls on all factions to respond to the Israeli occupation’s crimes.”

Air attacks have killed at least 13 Palestinians in 24 hours, after Israeli leaders threatened to respond harshly to an operation Thursday near Eilat that left eight Israeli citizens dead.

Al Jazeera adds:

Israeli officials have blamed a Gaza-based militant group called the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) for Thursday’s attacks, although the faction has denied any involvement. The PRC is not affiliated with the Hamas movement that governs Gaza.

Three Palestinians including a 5-year-old boy were killed and 3 passersby were injured in an attack on a vehicle in central Gazas City. Al Jazeera’s Safwat Al Kahlout reported.

Previously, the latest air strike on the Gaza Strip hit Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza late Friday night, killing two men.

The Al-Quds Brigade, the armed wing of the militant Islamic Jihad, confirmed that one of the men, Emad Abu Abda, was their member. The other man’s identity and possible affiliations were not immediately known.

This was the Israeli air forces’ sixth operation since beginning their raids in retaliation for Thursday’s incidents.

Hours earlier, the Israeli air force targeted rocket launchers, “two weapons manufacturing sites in central Gaza” and “terrorist activity in the north and the south” of the strip”, the Israeli military told Al Jazeera.

Five members of the PRC, including its leader, were killed in Thursday’s overnight air strike in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah and another killed on Friday, Al Kahlout reported from Gaza.

Abu Mujahid, a PRC spokesman, has said the group vows to take revenge “against everything and everyone” for its members’ deaths.

Medical sources said at least three civilians have also been killed, including two boys aged three and 13 who died early on Friday.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports:

As Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants continued to clash Friday, Egypt expressed anger over the deaths of three of its soldiers apparently killed by Israeli helicopters pursuing militants across the Israel-Egyptian border a day earlier.

The incident threatened to destabilize relations between Israel and Egypt, already tense in the wake of the overthrow in February of Hosni Mubarak as Egyptian president.

The Egyptian government submitted a formal protest to Israel and called for an urgent probe into the deaths of the soldiers, the Egyptian state news agency MENA said. Egypt also closed until further notice the Al Awja crossing between Egypt and Israel, used for the passage of trade and exports, MENA said.

Egyptian voices outside the government also condemned the Israeli action.

“The Zionist attacks that killed three Egyptian soldiers on Thursday need a different response than the pre-Jan. 25 revolution period,” said Saad el Katatni, General Secretary of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, referring to the popular protests that brought down Mubarak. “Zionists should realize that Egyptian blood now has a price, and it’s a very high price after the success of our blessed revolution.”

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Israel expels 39 pro-Palestinian activists over weekend, holds 81 more in jail

DPA reports:

A standoff between Israel and dozens of detained European pro-Palestinian activists continued Monday, with some of them refusing to be put on return flights.

More than 81 were still being held in an Israeli jail early Monday, three days after being refused entry on landing at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion International Airport.

“Some of them refuse to be returned while with others, it is only a matter of finding a vacant seat on a flight,” said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor. “The only delay is a vacancy on a free flight,” he added.

Some 39 had been expelled by Monday, including 10 Germans who landed in Frankfurt late Sunday. Among the expelled was an 82-year-old German, who complained that despite his advanced age, he was kept on a transportation vehicle for hours, then brought to Beer Sheva prison with the other activists. He said he had only told Israeli security at Ben-Gurion that he wished to “visit friends in Israel and Palestine.” Palmor said he had no information of the specific case, which outraged many.

The spokesman said Israel had denied entry to anyone who was on a list published by the Welcome to Palestine campaign, as soon as the coalition of Palestinian groups announced the activists would participate in unauthorized protests against the Israeli occupation.

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Israel’s campaign of violence against non-violent political opposition

Israel is now a nation governed by its reptilian brain. In response to the slightest challenge, it lashes out as though in each and every moment, its life were under threat.

Israel now only has one way of responding to criticism: to accuse its critics of being violent. By claiming critics are by their nature violent, violence then becomes the state’s necessary and unavoidable form of defense.

Israel has no political answers to its political critics — only the use of force, tear gas, detention, deportation and the occasional bullet in the head.

Having presented the arrival of a few hundred European tourists as a violent threat, Israeli paranoia thereafter needed some form of ‘proof’ for justifying its fears, thus today the Israeli press if filled with headlines like this:

Foreign pro-Palestinian activists clash with IDF in West Bank

Joseph Dana questions whether their is any basis for the reports. And in the video below showing “clashes” yesterday between non-violent protesters and the IDF, it’s clear that objective and accurate reporting would describe such events with very different language and headlines like this:

IDF attacks unarmed protesters in the West Bank

Dana writes:

According to media reports carried by all major news outlets in Israel, four ‘air flotilla’ passengers were arrested/detained Saturday in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh during an unarmed demonstration this morning. Haaretz, in its headline story, is citing reports by Channel 10 (Heb), that four ‘air flotilla’ activists have been taken for questioning after they had been arrested in the demonstration. The Jerusalem Post, citing unnamed ‘organizers’, claims that air flotilla passengers are clashing with security forces in Nabi Saleh. The paper does not cite the name of the organizations that the ‘organizers’ are representatives of. Ynet is reporting that activists might be involved in demonstrations in Nabi Saleh and Qalandiya but they provide nothing to substantiate their claims. None of these reports seem to based on facts on the ground in Nabi Saleh.

Kobi Snitz, an Israeli activist with the Anarchists Against the Wall, told me by telephone from Nabi Saleh that he has not seen any ‘air flotilla’ passenger in the course of the day. He told me that four people were indeed arrested, but they were all Israeli Jews from Tel Aviv. In fact, the Israeli activists are being charged with assaulting soldiers despite clear video footage to the contrary according to Snitz. Snitz did comment that there were international activists present in the demonstration but ‘they were definitively not arrested or taken in by Israeli forces.” Other villagers in Nabi Saleh told to me that they were unaware that ‘air flotilla’ passengers were present in their demonstration today. I have not been able to reach anyone present at the Qalandiya demonstration at the time of this writing.

News outlets often make mistakes and +972 is no exception. However, it is strange for a story that is based almost entirely on unsubstantiated reports to become the headline of every major newspaper website in Israel. When rumors of arrests of air flotilla passengers began this morning, Yossi Gurvitz contacted the IDF spokesman for a confirmation of the story. He was given a categorical rejection of claims that air flotilla passengers were targeted for arrest in the West Bank. No comment was given about air flotilla activists involved in demonstrations in Nabi Saleh.

Shir Hever notes:

The hundreds of activists being deported from Israel’s airport, or denied the right to board the planes to begin with, are mostly European citizens, who have the same right which every Israeli enjoys when visiting Europe. As an Israeli citizen, I can take a plane to any European country without worrying about being denied entry. I don’t need to lie at the airport. Tens of thousands of demonstrators who fly to G8 meetings to protest them are also not denied entry. Still, European citizens visiting Israel and even more so if they are visiting the OPT, are interrogated, placed under surveillance and political controls.

The European Union has a reciprocity policy regarding countries whose citizens enjoy a free visa, and expects these countries to offer the same treatment to European citizens that Europe awards their citizens. So far, European governments (as well as the Canadian and US governments) do not concern themselves too much with the rights of their own citizens in Israel.

A proper response by France, Germany and the UK to the current mass deportations would be to suspend the visa agreement with Israel and demand that every Israeli citizen apply for a visa (like citizens of most countries in Africa and Asia), until Israel gives its reasons for expelling each and every activist who wishes to visit the OPT. Such a response is sure to remind the Israeli public that control over the Palestinian population in the OPT also carries responsibilities, and abusing those responsibilities carries consequences.

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Want to visit the Palestinian prison camp (the West Bank)? Israel says you can’t — it’s a provocation.

Haaretz reports:

Security forces detained 30 pro-Palestinian activists attempting to enter Israel on board easyJet and Alitalia flights on Friday as part of an attempt to stymie an influx of activists into the country.

Ten of the activists were on board the easyJet flight, while the remaining 20 were flying with Italian airline Alitalia. Earlier in the day, police arrested six Israelis who arrived at the airport with signs reading “Free Gaza”.

The flights landed at Ben-Gurion International Airport Friday afternoon, however when it became clear that there were activists on board the planes were diverted to a runway further away from the airport and the activists were detained by police.

Israel has thus far been successful in preventing the entry of 200 passengers wishing to come to Israel as part of the Welcome to Palestine campaign, which had organized a “fly-in” to the Middle East this weekend for solidarity visits in the Palestinian territories.

The 200 activists were on a list of 342 blacklisted passengers scheduled to arrive in Israel later Thursday and early Friday, submitted by the Transportation Ministry to foreign airlines on Thursday.

Earlier Friday, two American citizens planning to take part in the pro-Palestinian “fly-in”, were refused entrance to Israel after landing at Ben-Gurion Airport, and were sent on an outbound flight back to Greece.

The women, wearing “fly-in” T-shirts, flew in from Athens and were stopped by the Israeli police, who decided to decrease security presence at the airport on Thursday evening, saying it no longer expects mass fly-in activists, because most of them had been already stopped abroad.

The women were questioned and after stating the reason for their visit, Israel Police sent them on an outbound flight due to their intention to create provocations and disrupt the peace.

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Juliano ship heads for Gaza

Ynet reports:

The Gaza-bound Juliano ship left Greece Wednesday afternoon, after suffering huge delays due in part to a ban set by Athens on the departure of flotilla ships from its ports.

On board the ship are 20 activists. Last week flotilla organizers claimed that Israel had sabotaged the ship in an attempt to prevent it from sailing.

“We are at sea,” former Israeli Dror Feiler, one of the organizers, told Ynet. “All roads lead to Gaza. It will be a small but high-quality flotilla.”

Greta Berlin, a spokeswoman for the Free Gaza movement, told Ynet that the Juliano will rendezvous, in international waters, with a French boat already at sea before heading towards the Strip. She gave no details on the location of the meeting.

Feiler also refused to provide details on the progress planned for the boats. “At this point I can only say that after a lengthy battle we finally succeeded in departing. The Greeks gave us a lot of trouble, but we met all of their conditions and they couldn’t hold us any longer,” he said. “It was like David versus Goliath.”

The former Israeli also lamented the fact that a Greek company had reneged on a deal to provide cement for the people of Gaza.

“They gave us our money back, said they had been pressured and that they could not hold up their end of the deal,” he said, adding that the flotilla organizers plan to sue the company.

The Juliano had previously attempted to set sail on Tuesday, but the Greek coast guard surrounded the ship and quashed the attempt. Now, Feiler believes, the only thing standing between them and Gaza is the IDF.

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The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians along Greater Israel’s eastern frontier

The Washington Post reports:

The Israeli troops and bulldozers arrived in the early morning and quickly got to work, tearing down shelters made of plastic netting and poles that had served as homes for about 100 people in this impoverished Bedouin community in the parched Jordan Valley.

The aftermath of the sweep last month against what Israeli authorities said were illegally built structures was still visible on a recent afternoon. Battered appliances, broken furniture, tattered clothing and other belongings that residents said they were prevented from removing were strewn in the dirt piled on the collapsed dwellings.

People took cover from the baking sun in makeshift tents constructed from the remains of their former homes and in others supplied by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. Mobile tanks and electricity cables temporarily strung across the ground were the only sources of water and power.

“We have nowhere else to go,” said Talib Abayat, sitting in the shade of a lone tree.

The desolate scene reflected the state of the neglected Palestinian communities of the Jordan Valley, an area that amounts to more than a quarter of the West Bank but remains largely under Israeli control, with wide gaps between the resources allocated to Palestinians and Israeli settlers.

Running along the West Bank’s border with Jordan, the Jordan Valley has long been considered an area of strategic importance by Israel, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has demanded a long-term military presence there as part of any future peace deal with the Palestinians.

Israeli settlements housing about 9,400 people line the road through the valley, scattered among ramshackle villages and encampments where about 80,000 Palestinians live. Nowhere in the West Bank is the contrast more stark between the settlements, with their intensively irrigated farmland, red-roofed homes and streets shaded by shrubs and trees, and the dusty Palestinian communities and their fields, dependent on limited water supplies.

A series of demolition operations last month underlined Israel’s claim to the area, which a recent poll showed most Israelis believe is part of Israel, not occupied territory, and populated mostly by Israelis. The poll was commissioned by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has asserted that there can be no Palestinian state without the Jordan Valley, which he called the Palestinian breadbasket. Yet with more than 70 percent of the area under Israeli control — designated as state land, military firing zones or nature reserves — the Palestinian Authority has little influence over the region’s development and the use of its resources.

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Egypt to Gaza: The road begins here

An editorial in Egypt’s Al-Masry Al-Youm says:

Egypt owes its unique history prior Mubarak to its pro-activeness in the region. A revolutionary Egypt must now reclaim its former prominence.

Perhaps the re-opening of Rafah border crossing and the success of the Palestinian reconciliation in Cairo are living proof that the Arab World’s national dignity following Egypt’s freedom from the grasp of the former regime, which succeeded in ripping the people of their sense of solidarity and responsibility for regional causes.

These positive changes come on the heels of years of the Egyptian state sponsoring the Gaza blockade under the Mubarak regime.

Today, the international community is tested – yet again – on its stance toward the Palestinian cause. The Freedom Flotilla II, a convoy of ships aiming to bring supplies and express support to the besieged people of Gaza, is now stuck in Greek waters following Israel’s pressure on Greece to prevent flotilla vessels from departing the port.

Following discovery that propeller shafts of two ships have been damaged, there are speculations that the Mossad may have sabotaged the boats.

Arab governments remain silent in the face of vehement international criticism of Israeli policy vis-à-vis the Palestinian people. Once more, we revert back to people – to our people – for only they can initiate an act of resistance.

As part of Egypt’s conscience and its rising revolutionary fabric, we at Al-Masry Al-Youm call for a public campaign to invite the Freedom Flotilla II to sail to the Gaza Strip from one of Egypt’s ports.

While we believe the Freedom Flotilla II is better off sailing from Egypt for logistical reasons, we also think the decision gives a strong political message. This is the political message of enacting popular solidarity with the Palestinian cause and challenging the incumbent naval blockade. This is also our chance to rewrite a shameful political history of Egypt sponsoring the blockade, especially during Israel’s war on the strip during the 2009 Cast Lead operation, when over 1000 Palestinians – mostly civilians – lost their lives.

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Sabotaging Flotilla II: waging war against civil society

International law and international relations scholar, Richard Falk, writes:

The reports that two of the foreign flagged ships planning to be part of the ten vessel Freedom Flotilla II experienced similar forms of disabling sabotage creates strong circumstantial evidence of Israeli responsibility. It stretches the imagination to suppose that a sophisticated cutting of the propeller shafts of both ships is a coincidence with no involvement by Israel’s Mossad, long infamous for its overseas criminal acts in support of contested Israeli national interests. Recalling the lethal encounter in international waters with Freedom Flotilla I that took place on 31 May 2010, and the frantic diplomatic campaign by Tel Aviv to prevent this second challenge to the Gaza blockade by peace activists and humanitarian aid workers, such conduct by a state against this latest civil society initiative, if further validated by incriminating evidence, should be formally condemned as a form of ‘state terrorism’ or even as an act of war by a state against global civil society.

The Israeli Government has so far done little to deny its culpability. Its highest officials speak of the allegations in self-righteous language that is typically diversionary, asserting an irrelevant right of self-defense, which supposedly comes mysteriously into play whenever civil society acts nonviolently to break the siege of Gaza that has persisted for more than four years. From the perspective of the obligations to uphold international law it is the Flotilla participants who are acting legally and morally, certainly well within their rights, and it is Israel and their friends that are resorting to a variety of legally and morally dubious tactics to insulate this cruel and unlawful blockade from what is essentially a symbolic challenge. The behavior of the Greek Government, surely a reflection of its precarious financial and political situation, also violates the law of the sea: foreign flagged vessels can be detained in port only if they are acting in violation of national law or are proven to be unseaworthy and dangerous to international navigation. Otherwise, interference by detention or by seizing while en route within Greek territorial waters is an unlawful interference with the right of innocent passage. Greece would be very vulnerable to defeat and damages if the Freedom Flotilla victims of these encroachment on rights were to have recourse to the Hamburg International Tribunal for Law of the Sea.

The most relevant precedent for such government-sponsored sabotage is the Rainbow Warrior incident of 1985. There French agents detonated explosives on a Greenpeace (an environmental NGO) fishing trawler docked in the Auckland, New Zealand harbor prior to proactively challenging the French plans to conduct underwater nuclear tests off the shore of the nearby Pacific atoll, Moruroa. Fernando Pereira , Greenpeace photographer for the mission, was killed by the explosions, although the devices were detonated at night when no one from Greenpeace was expected to be on board the vessel. At first, the French government completely denied involvement, later as incriminating evidence mounted, Paris officially claimed that its agents who were identified as being near the scene were only spying on Greenpeace activities and had nothing to do with the explosives, and later still, as the evidence of French culpability became undeniable, officials in France finally admitted government responsibility for this violent undertaking to eliminate activist opposition to their nuclear test, even acknowledging that the operation had been given the bizarre, although self-incriminating, code-name of Operation Satanique.

After some further months of controversy the French Prime Minister, Laurent Fabius cleared the air by issuing a contrite statement: “The truth is cruel. Agents of the French secret service sank the boat. They were acting on orders.” (the decision to destroy the Rainbow Warrior were later confirmed to have come from France’s supreme leader at the time, the president of the Republic, Francois Mitterand) The French agents who had by then been arrested by the New Zealand police, charged with arson, willful damage, and murder, but due to pressure from the French government that included a threatened European economic embargo on New Zealand exports, the charges were reduced. The French defendants were allowed to enter a guilty plea to lesser charges of manslaughter that was accepted by the Auckland court, resulting in a ten-year prison sentence, and later supplemented by an inter-governmental deal that virtually eliminated the punishment. The French paid New Zealand $6.5 million and issued an apology, while the convicted agents were transferred to a French military base on Hao atoll, and were later wrongly released only two years after being genteelly confined in comfortable quarters provided by the base.

It is useful to compare the Flotilla II unfolding experience with the Rainbow Warrior incident. At the time, the French nuclear tests in the Pacific were considered legal, although intensely contested, while the blockade of Israel is widely viewed as a prolonged instance of collective punishment in violation of international humanitarian law, specifically Article 33 of the 4th Geneva Convention. Although Israel could argue that it had a right to monitor ships suspected of carrying arms to occupied Gaza, the Freedom Flotilla II ships made themselves available for inspection, and there was no sufficient security justification for the blockade as the investigation by the UN Human Rights Council of the 2010 flotilla incident made clear. The overriding role of the blockade is to inflict punitive damage on the people of Gaza. Even before the blockade was imposed in 2007 all shipments at the Gaza crossing points were painstakingly monitored by Israel for smuggled weapons.

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Canadian flotilla ship intercepted by Greek coast guards

Al Jazeera reports:

A Canadian ship taking part in a planned aid flotilla to Gaza has been forced to return to harbour in Crete after an attempt to reach international waters was thwarted by coast guards, according to onboard activists.

Most of the vessels which hoped to sail to Gaza in an effort to break Israel’s blockade of the Palestinian territory have been stuck in Greek ports after being refused permission to embark on the journey by Greek authorities.

The Tahrir sailed 15 minutes out of harbour before it was intercepted by coastguards, activists told Al Jazeera on Monday.

The boat, carrying activists from Canada, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and Turkey, was forced to turn back to Aghios Nikolaos port in Crete.

“We are just being pulled into docks as we speak right now … [the coast guards] are in complete control of the boat,” Jesse Rosenfeld, a reporter with Toronto’s Now Magazine, who was on board the Tahrir when it set sail, told Al Jazeera.

Rosenfeld explained how the vessel managed to leave port: “In a matter of minutes, the people on the boat turned on the engines while two of the activists kayaked, trying to block the coast guard in port. At that point, the Tahrir made an open break through the port, shooting for international waters.”

The coast guard ship pursued the Tahrir, using water cannons and eventually boarding the ship, Rosenfeld said.

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Tahrir’s journey to Palestine

Helena Cobban writes:

The moment that Hosni Mubarak stood down from the Egyptian presidency and it was apparent that his hastily appointed vice-president, the long-time intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, would not be succeeding him, it was clear that much would be changing in Middle Eastern politics — including for Palestinians.

Easily the most populous Arab state, and one with a central location abutting Israel/Palestine, Egypt has always had the potential to play a huge role on the Palestinian issue. That role was lessened after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat split with the PLO leaders after the 1978 Camp David accords. But in recent years, Mubarak had become a linchpin in U.S. and Israeli efforts to steer Palestinian politics in a direction amenable to them.

Mubarak and Suleiman had two major ways to exert direct influence over Palestinian politics. First, Egypt has the only land border with the Gaza Strip other than the Strip’s much longer border with Israel. The sole legal crossing point on that border, at Rafah, years ago became the only way that most Gaza Palestinians could ever hope to travel between the Strip and the outside world. (Goods, by contrast, are not allowed through Rafah. Under the 1994 Paris Agreement between Israel and the PLO, all goods going into or out of Gaza must go through crossings that go to Israel.) Cairo’s control over Rafah has given it a huge ability to put pressure on Gaza’s 1.6 million people and the elected Hamas mini-government that administers the Strip.

In addition, in recent years, Egypt got the full backing of the United States and Israel to play the role of primary interlocutor in all efforts to heal the rift between Hamas and its main rivals in Mahmoud Abbas’s Fateh. But as Suleiman and Mubarak had long been firmly in Abbas’s camp, it surprised no one to see the reconciliation efforts that Suleiman periodically launched come to nothing — and Fateh and Hamas remained deeply divided.

So the departure of Mubarak and Suleiman from power in Cairo was huge for the Palestinians — especially those trapped for many years inside Gaza, which has been described by many as an open-air prison.

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