March 9, 2010

How many Mossad agents... by Khalil Bendib

EDITOR: Some sane signs amidst the media glitz and medness

For Haaretz to publish a call for Israel to speak with Hamas, at the very moment of preapring another war on Gaza while talking ‘peace’ with the US, however mild the article may be, is not a usual practice in country where the mere name of Hamas is used to frighten the public into docile submission. Let us hope some more sane voices may follow.

Israel must talk to Hamas before it’s too late: Haaretz

By David Zonsheine
Israel must talk to Hamas. Not secretly. Not indirectly. Not for a politician to rehabilitate himself on the way to taking over the leadership of a party, as Kadima’s Shaul Mofaz tried to do, but openly and seriously. Just as the United States regularly talks to the Israeli opposition, Israel should maintain a dialogue with the Palestinian opposition. The dialogue should cover all core issues including a final settlement.

It’s not a simple matter, of course. There is agreement across the political spectrum to reduce the debate to a demonization of Hamas, dwelling on the organization’s external attributes as perceived by Israel – religious, extremist and desiring all the territory between the river and the sea. This debate does not focus on the Israeli interest. We should be asking ourselves the following questions: Is it worthwhile to speak with Hamas? What are our reasons for not talking to them? Is boycotting them linked to an erroneous preconception?
Israel rigorously insists that Hamas is not a partner and that our partner is Fatah, headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. But negotiations with Fatah have been going on for nearly two decades, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration that he accepts the principle of two states for two peoples looks like just another trick to postpone the demise of the current negotiation process.

In 2004, the Israeli government decided that Yasser Arafat was not relevant. Abbas, Israel’s leaders have said, is weak. At the same time, Israel has for years been doing all it can to weaken the Palestinian Authority. That way, it will be possible to prove yet again that although “we have to talk, there’s no one you can close a deal with.” Even if an agreement is signed under American pressure, the PA will not be able to implement it because more than half the Palestinians don’t accept its authority. This is why the refusal to speak with Hamas is pointless. It is no more than a continuation of avoiding talking to the Palestinians by other means.

Hamas’ rule in Gaza is the outcome of despair with the Fatah leadership. The deterioration of the situation in Gaza after the ongoing failure of negotiations and the total dependence on Israel for receiving basic needs intensify the despair and extremism. (And no one is talking about the right to free movement, to go abroad to study.) Even today, there are groups resisting Hamas that resemble Al-Qaida. We can drag things out as much as we want, but we have to admit that the notion that time is on our side is baseless. The people who led Abbas to consider resigning and who refuse to talk to Hamas will find themselves in five years with a partner who reports to Osama bin Laden.
Nothing is possible without Gilad Shalit. People may say that the fate of a country cannot be dependent on what happens to one abducted soldier. There is no greater mistake. The abandonment of Shalit is symptomatic of Zionism’s failure, the elevation of pride over wisdom and tactics over strategy. It’s the denial of the sanctity of life and redeeming prisoners, values that are at the heart and soul of the nation.

Precisely here, the soft underbelly of public opinion, it would be possible to makes progress on the delicate matter of contacts with Hamas. More than 7,000 Palestinians are being held prisoner in Israel. There is one Israeli prisoner in Palestine. The suffering of both sides, and with it the tremendous joy that a prisoner exchange would produce, can and should be the lever for a stepped-up conciliation process.
For years Israel and its citizens have been paying the price of choosing solutions that were appropriate for the last war. Hiding our head in the sand at such a critical stage is dangerous. We have to declare our readiness to speak with the Palestinian opposition, immediately.

The writer is a joint founder of an initiative seeking direct and open talks with Hamas.

Banksy December 5, 2007, Betlehem

Possibilities of war: Iran: Al Ahram Weekly

Despite how alarming the prospect of a nuclear Iran might be to Washington, enhancing sanctions or authorising pre-emptive strikes could lead to an all-out war the US might lose, writes Azmi Bishara
The Obama administration’s reappointment of the Bush administration’s secretary of defence, Robert Gates, reflects the growing involvement of the US military establishment in decision-making processes on matters of war and peace, and hence in US foreign policy in general. The primary catalyst in this development has been the dismal results of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan leading to attempts to reform the military establishment’s modus operandi, which isn’t directly affected by elections, a couple of years before the end of Bush’s tenure. The new programming was scripted to a considerable extent in the Baker- Hamilton Report, submitted to Bush in December 2006. The most important recommendations of this report were, first, its call for a dialogue with countries neighbouring Iraq, including Syria and Iran, in order to persuade them to help promote stability in order to extricate the US from the Iraqi quagmire it created after having invaded that country and demolished its existing governing infrastructures, and second its call to renew efforts towards a political solution to the Palestinian cause, which is to say to revive the so-called “peace process”.

Against this backdrop, the appointment of Gates as secretary of defence, instead of Rumsfeld, was a manifestation of the military establishment’s rejection of the latter and of the neoconservatives’ adventurism. Gates is now the military establishment’s man in the White House and his influence has increased under Obama. He epitomises that conjunction between the refusal to allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons and the desire to avert an all-out war with Iran. This is the current position of the establishment in the West, regardless of the Tony Blair-like histrionics that only a handful of Arab officials buy.

Washington’s refusal of a nuclear Iran has its roots in its relations with Tehran since the Islamic Revolution. Its position is based on both rational and irrational reasons, even from the American perspective, and these are precisely the reasons that compel a regime that feels itself under perpetual threat from the US, which has not recognised it until today, to contemplate possessing a nuclear weapon for deterrent purposes. The mutual antagonism between Washington and Tehran is fed by the former’s declared and applied intent to overthrow the Iranian regime and by the latter’s refusal to accept US hegemony and its consequences in the Middle East. However, the more immediate cause for hostility is the Israeli attitude towards Iran, even in the reformist era, versus the Iranian attitude towards Israel.

It is this factor that accounts for why the tenor of Iranian-US relations has remained unchanged even after much has changed in both countries. It is what fuels that dynamo that whirs tirelessly in the international domain to impose sanctions and to keep the Iranian question a top priority on the global agenda. Israel is the most active country in this dynamo. It is the party that most clearly and persistently urges the use of all means to prevent Iran from attaining the ability to produce its own nuclear weapon, and it is the most adamant about keeping the military option open, if only in theory, in the game of tug-of-war with Iran. The Israeli lobby in Congress and the White House is steering the campaign against Iran. Its success in this regard was crowned with the appointment of Dennis Ross as the White House’s advisor and special envoy on matters pertaining to Iran. Western leaders, in general, can come up with no other justification for their opposition to the Iranian nuclear programme than their anxiety over “its potential threat to Israel’s security and existence”.

While European officials were discussing the question of tougher sanctions on Iran, Israel marked the 61st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz with even louder than the previous year’s commemorations. In the process, teams of Israeli officials were deployed in every European capital to mount podiums, wag their fingers and deliver lectures on the relationship between the Nazi Holocaust and the Iranian position on the existence of Israel. Needless to say, the wiles and ruses of political exploitation know no bounds. Few are the arenas that have not come under pressure from Israel and the US to prevent Iran from arming itself and to tighten sanctions. The campaign extends across the whole of Europe, Russia, China, India, the Arab world and even Africa. No field of industry, banking and even the media has escaped being turned into a means for weakening and surrounding Iran. Even the Lebanese/Syrian front, from the Israeli perspective, has been subordinated to calculations pertaining to the primary front against Tehran. The existential threat comes from there, according to the current Israeli thinking, and the chief strategic threat is Iran’s missiles with regard to which Israelis are keeping very close watch on range, accuracy, the type of warhead they can carry, and their destructive power.

In the distant past, the Arab nationalist regimes of the 1960s constituted the real threat. They were existentially antithetical to Israel and applied their energies against it on all fronts. Today, the visible danger resides in a hostile regime that is ideologically opposed to Israel, that has given no hint of an inclination to reach an understanding, and that possesses advanced missilery. The Arabs, of course, remain the existential antithesis in the long run, but they are unorganised and they are not collectively represented by a sovereign state or even several separate states.

Binyamin Netanyahu has taken this thinking so far as to dub Iran the “new Amalek” ( Haaretz, 18 February 2010). The reference is to the Biblical Amalekites who occasioned the first divinely ordained genocide in history when the Old Testament Yahweh commanded the Israelites to destroy them totally, sparing no one, including women, children and even their livestock. Of course, such a thing is not possible in our modern day and age. However, apparently it is possible for a secular prime minister of a “democratic” state to hurl an allusion to this blood-steeped legacy at his contemporary political enemies without raising the eyebrows of the civilised world, where the current bent of literature, arts and dialogue conferences of every sorts is to heap scorn and derision on Ahmadinejad, and without stirring The New York Times into devoting even a small editorial to this dangerous and provocative indulgence in religious imagery.

Turning to the other half of Washington’s dilemma, its reluctance to start a full-fledged war against Iran resides in its anxieties over the fallout from such a war on the rest of the region, inclusive of Iraq, all the more so given that the repercussions are impossible to predict with any degree of accuracy. It also has to do with doubts over whether the US and its allies could sustain the costs of a war, and with the lack of any volunteers to side with the US in such a war in spite of the many parties prodding and plotting for a military showdown. To further aggravate this factor, the US remains mired in Iraq and Afghanistan, where resistance movements remain strong, and it is doubtful whether it could stretch its forces to other fronts.

It should be mentioned here that Arab countries could be certain of preventing a war, for there could not be a war without their approval, whereas their approval alone is not sufficient to make a war. Evidently, they have opted for the less certain path. This is also the place to register a reminder that if the Arabs had systematically opposed the American invasion of Iraq they would have prevented that war.

Of course, the Obama administration has political considerations for avoiding combat against Iran. Obama was elected largely on the basis of his pledge to put an end to wars begun by his predecessor. He was not elected to start new wars. If he has yet to score any major inroads towards the fulfilment of that pledge, imagine the political risks he would incur if he plunged his country into another war, especially one that would be so unpredictable.

There are, nonetheless, the seeds of a different approach to the Iranian question, but they are unlikely to find fertile ground in view of the hold the Israeli perspective has over US strategy for the region. The alternative viewpoint is to learn to cope with the idea of Iranian nuclear capacity; it would not be the end of the world. Iran is better organised and more institutionalised than Pakistan. Of course, there would have to be comprehensive understandings, but these are reachable with a state that is developing a nationalist pragmatism that seeks to translate economic, political and strategic advantages into regional and international status. No one has anything to gain if this power is built under boycott, and certainly those who violate the boycott do not do so free of charge: some receive payment in material goods or cash (Russia), others in reduced oil prices (China), and others in commercial, financial and real estate returns (Dubai). So, according to this point of view, what’s wrong with containing Iran within a framework that acknowledges its standing? In return, Iran would accept conditions that not only meet the approval of the US but also of a large segment of Iranian public opinion that wants the Iranian government to give priority to the needs of its citizens and the country (a policy of “Iran first” one might say).

In fact, Iran has come a long way in this direction. The development is particularly apparent in its relations with neighbouring Arab countries in which it is constantly trying to turn local sectarian affiliation into political affiliation to Tehran (“Iran first”). However, the Shia Islamist ideology on which the Iranian regime is founded restricts the tendency towards state pragmatism, for not only does it highlight what separates Iran from its surroundings it also underscores what it has in common with it, namely Islam and antagonism towards Israel. Still, in the absence of the abovementioned alternative, the US position remains caught between its rejection of a nuclear Iran and its desire to avoid an all-out war.

Within this framework, both sides have a margin of manoeuvrability. The US-Israeli margin ranges from pressing for harsher sanctions (covering economic, commercial and financial activities, as well as transportation and communications) to calculated raids on specific targets (along the lines of the Israeli bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor or its “pre-emptive” strike against Deir Al-Zor). Somewhere in the middle lie intelligence operations, such as supporting armed insurgents in Iranian border regions, and — more recently on the American agenda — supporting the new Iranian opposition. In the not so distant past, US intelligence efforts focussed on backing the conventional opposition made up of members and supporters of the ancien régime. However, the US could not pass up the window of opportunity presented by the front that rallied behind the rejection of the Ahmadinejad approach and the results of last June’s presidential elections. This opposition is deeper, broader and morally weightier than the conventional opposition, for which reason it will obtain unconventional assistance, both directly and indirectly.

The Iranian margin of manoeuvrability covers warding off harsher sanctions for as long as possible, announcing conciliatory initiatives — especially at times when it makes another breakthrough in uranium enrichment — and sustaining good relations with countries that are more concerned about promoting their economic interests than about pleasing the US, such as China and Russia. Even a country such as India, which has entered the US-Israeli alliance (largely because of the Arabs and Pakistan) and has more reasons than China to value this alliance, has strategic reasons for not jeopardising its relationship with Iran. In addition to such concerns as a shared position towards Afghanistan, for example, India refines some 40 per cent of the gasoline that is imported into Iran. Turning off the taps to refined gas is the furthest the US is contemplating on going in terms of “effective sanctions” and this step it would save for last. At that point Washington would not only have to pressure China, it would have twist India’s arm too. However, its ability to do so has gradually dwindled with respect to India because of the US’s declining fortunes in its war against the Taliban which, in my opinion, it will ultimately lose, and with respect to China because of the repercussions of the global financial crisis.

In calculating the limits of military confrontation in that space between the desire to avoid comprehensive engagement and the rejection of a nuclear Iran it is best to exclude actions that could lead to a full-scale war, even if that is not their initial nature or intent. For example, tactical raids are theoretically possible as an upper threshold of engagement, yet one side or the other could take such an action as an act of war and respond accordingly, on the basis of the reasoning that that is what war is. Thus, attacks against certain locations in Iran could escalate into a full-scale war, but the same might apply to a cut-off of imports of refined gas. Much would depend on the Iranian reaction. If Tehran saw this as grounds for retaliatory skirmishes in the Straits of Hormuz, would the US not respond to the challenge? In other words, might not the imposition of certain types of sanctions feasibly degenerate into all-out war?

While the US, now, seems to be treading these waters with care, it will still continue its gradual push no notch up sanctions in a way that will guarantee a favourable response from the countries that count. It will simultaneously build on the development of the Iranian opposition. This is now Iran’s fundamental problem and it should compel Tehran to deal more seriously with the dialectic of citizenship and the official ideology of the state. The Soviet Union, the countries of Eastern Europe and China have passed through such a phase. This is not the place to elaborate on those battles. However, the civil rights camp, as rightful as its demands are, continues to regard foreign policy and ideology as the cause of its tragedies, although there is not necessarily a connection between the two, apart from the regime’s attempts to use ideology and the banner of solidarity with the oppressed as a pretext for abusing the rights of citizens, restricting freedoms, and nurturing and protecting corruption among the ruling classes. I stress “as a pretext”. The oppressed and those who side with them, wherever they might be in the world, are not to blame for the mismanagement of the kolkhozy, domestic repression or the failure of five-year plans. In addition to people’s tendency to blame an ideology that had become totally devoid of substance at the time of the state’s collapse, and hence an easy target, the opposing camp, too, plays on ideology in its propaganda campaigns against its adversary and in marketing itself. Some self-appointed spokesmen for the oppressed do this in the course of their praise for domestic policies in totalitarian states. Iran faces a dialectic of this sort. It will have to come to terms with it in order to strengthen its resilience against outside pressures.

Jonathan Cook: Israel Set to Join Club of Richest Nations: IOA

An exclusive club of the world’s most developed countries is poised to admit Israel as a member even though, a confidential internal document indicates, doing so will amount to endorsing Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territories.
Israel has been told that its accession to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is all but assured when the 30 member states meet in May.
But a draft OECD report concedes that Israel has breached one of the organization’s key requirements on providing accurate and transparent data on its economic activity.
The information supplied by Israel, the report notes, includes not only the economic activity of its citizens inside its recognized borders but also Jewish settlers who live in the occupied territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan in violation of international law.
Israel’s accession to the OECD on such terms threatens to severely embarrass many of the organization’s member states, especially those in the European Union that are publicly committed to avoiding collusion with the occupation.
The OECD report proposes that these legal difficulties may be circumvented by asking Israel to produce new statistics within a year of its accession excluding the settler population — even though, an OECD official has admitted, Israel would have the power to veto such a demand after it becomes a member.
“The OECD seems to be so determined to get Israel through its door that it is prepared to cover up the crimes of the occupation,” said Shir Hever, a Jerusalem-based economist.
Israel has been lobbying for nearly 20 years to be admitted to the OECD, founded in 1961 for wealthy industrialized democracies to meet and coordinate economic and social policies.  It includes the United States and most of Europe.
“The financial privileges are relatively modest, but there is great prestige to being accepted,” Mr. Hever said.  “Israel has worked so hard to gain admission because it believes accession will confer international legitimacy on its occupation.”
Several countries with a lower development level than Israel have already been accepted, including Turkey, Mexico, and the Czech Republic.
Israel’s past rejections, it is widely assumed, were because many states were uncomfortable about admitting Israel while it was occupying the Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank and the Syrian-owned Golan Heights.
However, Israel was formally invited to begin discussions about membership in 2007 after intense lobbying by Stanley Fischer, the governor of the Bank of Israel.  Membership is expected to bring financial stability to Israel’s economy, attract investment, and reduce the country’s risk premium.
The OECD’s secretary general, Angel Gurria, visited in January, after a review of Israel’s economy, and suggested that admission this year was a certainty.
However, a leaked draft report by the OECD’s committee on statistics, produced last month after the review, shows there are major problems with the data presented by Israel.
According to its rules, the OECD takes account of economic activity outside a candidate state’s recognized borders in very limited circumstances, such as remittances from migrant workers.
But given that this status does not apply to the illegal settlers living in the occupied territories, the OECD committee argues that either the settlers be excluded from the data or everyone living in the territories — including Palestinians — should be factored in.
“Israel has been caught out because it has always refused, even in its own internal data, to differentiate between Israel and the occupied territories,” Mr. Hever said.  Both East Jerusalem and the Golan have been annexed by Israel in violation of international law.
“The OECD is treating Israel as though it has seven million citizens when, in reality, it has 11 million subjects, of whom four million are Palestinians living under occupation,” Mr. Hever said.  “If they were included in the figures submitted to the OECD, Israel would have to be refused accession because of the enormous disparities in wealth.”
Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, noted recently that there was a 20:1 ratio in the difference in gross domestic product per capita between an Israeli and a Palestinian living in Gaza.
But rather than conclude that Israel has failed to meet the organization’s entry criteria, the committee proposes a workaround: Israel can be accepted to the organization and given a year to submit new data excluding the settlers.
Tim Davis, an OECD official with the statistics committee in Paris, said he could not comment on the report because its contents were confidential but agreed that there was nothing to stop Israel reneging on such a commitment in the future.  “In a case like that, nothing could be done in practice.  We work on the basis of co-operation, not pressure.”
Israel is reported to have failed other entry conditions, including on corruption and copyright violations.
The OECD has required member states to crack down on corrupt practices since it approved a convention against bribery in 1997.  Israel, however, was ranked in 32nd place in a major index on corruption last year, with much of it relating to the country’s $6 billion arms industry.
European and US defense firms have threatened to derail Israel’s OECD bid if it does not clean up its act.
Israel is also believed to be violating intellectual property rights, again in breach of OECD rules.  US and Swiss firms have accused Israel of failing to regulate the international marketing of drugs produced by its largest pharmaceuticals company, Teva.
Israel’s bid for OECD membership has been opposed by the leaders of its Arab minority, one-fifth of the population.  Last month the Higher Follow-Up Committee, the minority’s main political body, petitioned the OECD to reject Israel.
It has pointed out that half of Israel’s Arab citizens are living below the poverty line, a rate three times higher than among Israeli Jews, and that on average Arab citizens earn salaries that are one-third less than Jews.  Mohammed Zeidan, head of the committee, blamed the disparities in wealth on what he called Israel’s “racist and discriminatory polices.”
Another OECD report, published in January, showed that, even on the basis of Israel’s figures excluding the Palestinians, Israel would still have the widest social gaps of any member state if it were accepted.

EDITOR: Some unexpected support for the BDS campaign…

Banks urge Americans to close Israeli accounts: Haaretz

Obedient to intensifying U.S. government pressure to crack down on offshore tax evaders, in January Israeli banks began ordering clients they identify as “Americans” or “U.S. tax residents” to close investment accounts they hold in Israel. It is apparently an anticipatory measure, ahead of changes in U.S. law. Local banks are apparently responding to changes in American regulations as their legal counsels interpret them.
The Bank of Israel hasn’t handed down instructions to the banks on the matter, which doesn’t fall under its purview.

In February, for instance, Bank Mizrahi-Tefahot informed clients that as a “result of current U.S. regulations” it can no longer provide “securities services to U.S. persons,” and explained the termination procedure. “You are receiving this letter because you are identified in our records as a customer who may be a U.S. person, within the meaning of the applicable regulations,” Mizrahi wrote. The letter said that clients who fall into this category have until April 7 to tell the bank how to dispose of their holdings, adding that the bank will continue to provide “banking and non-securities services, including deposit accounts and CDs as well as foreign currency, checking and credit card services”.

“If we do not receive your instructions by March 16, 2010, we may liquidate the securities in your account,” Mizrahi warned.
Local finance professionals agree that the situation is likely will evolve as the Americans develop and implement new banking guidelines, but differ in their assessment of the possible consequences for U.S. citizens living in Israel.
“Theoretically, any American who has an account here could be affected by the changes,” Aaron Katsman, a Jerusalem-based financial consultant who specializes in English-speaking clients, said. “They won’t be able to hold stocks. They could have deposits here, but that’s about it.”

Americans in Israel are left with “with very few options,” added Philip Braude, CEO of Beit Shemesh-based financial planning company Anglo Capital Limited. His suggestion: “Take the money back to America. If you’re an American you should be investing in America.” He agrees that the current situation is murky, with Israeli banks aiming to avoid conflict with U.S. authorities.
“The bank aims to comply with legal and regulatory requirements and constantly reviews the services offered to its clients to adapt them to the changing regulatory environment,” Bank Hapoalim spokeswoman Ofra Preuss told TheMarker. She declined to elaborate.
Bank Leumi spokesman Aviram Cohen said that while he could not discuss the bank’s customer relations policies, its business decisions are “based on legal standards.”

What is not under contention is that American citizens must file annual tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service even if they live abroad, hold dual or multiple citizenships and pay taxes to another country.
While the U.S. has not instructed Israeli banks to close accounts held by American nationals, the IRS is widely expected to ask foreign banks to disclose information about U.S. account holders at some point.

The IRS “does not comment on pending legislation,” agency spokesman Bruce Friedland told TheMarker. He said that U.S. citizens may bank in Israel “so long as they appropriately report the existence of accounts, report the income from the accounts and pay the tax on the income generated from the accounts.”
Braude, of Anglo Capital Limited, points out that even if the bank is not specifically aware that a particular customer hold U.S. citizenship, that fact would not help them in a court of law. The bank could not argue that it did not know the client was American, he said: Israeli identity cards indicate place of birth, and banks obtain a copy of the document when opening an account.

The problems Americans face in Israel are part of the fallout from a tax evasion scandal involving Switzerland’s biggest bank, UBS. In 2008 the U.S. accused the Zurich-based bank of helping wealthy Americans to evade taxes. In response, UBS announced it would stop providing cross-border private banking services to American clients. Last month the Swiss bank UBS agreed to pay $780 million to avoid being prosecuted by the American authorities. It also disclosed the names of some account holders.
It’s perfectly legal for U.S. citizens to own stocks outside the U.S., Jerusalem wealth manager Katsman explained. However, he added, many people open accounts abroad for the express purpose of dodging tax payments. “Since the U.S. is desperate to get any kind of revenue possible, because things are tough there and they’re running huge deficits, this is one of their ways: to make American citizens either pay huge fines or repatriate the money back to America.”

America has a weapon: It could withdraw the licenses of U.S. branches of foreign banks if it suspects collusion in tax evasion.
“Israeli banks have branches in the U.S. and they know [the U.S.] would make it very hard for them to operate if they don’t give them the same information that UBS gave them,” Nir Amikam, head of research at Wareham Investment Bank, told TheMarker. “I don’t know if it makes economic sense, I guess it depends on how much money [Americans have in Israeli banks],” he added. “The banks are probably thinking that it’s not as much as they themselves are making by having branches in the U.S.”

Finance professionals estimate that U.S. residents hold several billion dollars in Israeli investment accounts.
“The banks here in Israel, and all around the world, just took a business decision: They’re not going to deal with Americans having stocks and bonds portfolios here because they don’t want to take any risks,” an investment advisor in one Israel’s leading banks told TheMarker. However, she added, she believes that at present only U.S. residents are directly affected by the banks’ decision. Americans living in Israel would not be asked to liquidate their stocks and bonds portfolios, in her opinion.

“We definitely think that in the next two or three years, there’s going to come a point when America will stop and declare: OK, we’re happy now,” said Dylan Shub, principal of Tel-Aviv-based Fortress Capital Management. At that point we’ll be able to understand exactly what has to happen and what we need to do.”
Since the American authorities have not yet clarified what guidelines they might implement in the future, it is likely that Israeli banks will take further preemptive measures to avoid any conflicts with the U.S. authorities, several finance professionals agreed.

EDITOR: Some negotiations…

So Mitchell shuttles from side to side, trying to make sense of nonsense. In the meantime, Israel is making sure that he and the Palestinians get the clear message, as if it was clear enough over the last 43 years. So it seems the message has indeed got through.

Palestinians: East Jerusalem build plan ends Mideast peace talks: Haaretz

Israel’s decision to approve new East Jerusalem houses effectively prevents any peace negotiations from taking place, the Palestinian Authority said on Tuesday, following an Interior Ministry statement released earlier authorizing 1,600 new housing units.
Earlier Tuesday, the Interior Ministry approved the building of 1,600 new housing units in Ramat Shlomo, with a ministry official saying the plan will expand the ultra-Orthodox East Jerusalem neighborhood to the east and to the south.
The statement, released by the Interior Ministry’s Jerusalem district planning committee, headed by Ruth Yosef, said that at least 30 percent of the units will be allocated to young couples.

Public facilities and spaces which were, the statement said, lacking in the existing parts of the neighborhood, are also to be added as part of the new plan, including a new central park.
Meir Margalit, Meretz’s representative to the Jerusalem city council, claimed that the statement was meant to disrupt a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, saying that he had “no doubt that the timing isn’t coincidental,” calling the announcement Interior Minister “Eli Yishai’s answer to Netanyahu’s willingness to renew indirect peace talks with the Palestinians.”
“The fact that Eli Yishai couldn’t restrain himself for another two-three days until Biden left Israel means his intention was to slap the U.S. administration in the face,” Margalit said, adding that the announcement was “a provocation to the U.S. and to the prime minister.”

Minister Yishai failed to comment over the statement, although sources in the Interior Ministry have said that the timing of the statement was purely coincidental.
In 2008, the ministry had announced 1,300 new homes in Ramat Shlomo, approved by the regional planning board as part of Jerusalem’s housing master plan.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called the announcement part of “a systematic policy to destroy the peace process,” urging then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to make the issue her top priority

EDITOR: The face of Palestinian dangerous criminal

A further report, detailed and comprehensive, on the terrible child master criminal which was at last apprehended by the IOF… You could not make it up!

Amir, ten years old, abducted by Israeli soldiers from his bed: The Electronic Intifada

Nora Barrows-Friedman writing from Hebron, occupied West Bank, Live from Palestine, 8 March 2010

Amir and his mother just hours before he was abducted by Israeli soldiers. (Nora Barrows-Friedman)

Amir al-Mohtaseb smiled tenderly when I asked him to tell me his favorite color. Sitting in his family’s living room last Thursday afternoon, 4 March, in the Old City of Hebron, the ten-year-old boy with freckles and long eyelashes softly replied, “green.” He then went on to describe in painful detail his arrest and detention — and the jailing of his 12-year-old brother Hasan by Israeli occupation soldiers on Sunday, 28 February.
Hours after our interview, at 2am, Israeli soldiers would break into the house, snatch Amir from his bed, threaten his parents with death by gunfire if they tried to protect him, and take him downstairs under the stairwell. They would beat him so badly that he would bleed internally into his abdomen, necessitating overnight hospitalization. In complete shock and distress, Amir would not open his mouth to speak for another day and a half.

In our interview that afternoon before the brutal assault, Amir said that on the 28th, he was playing in the street near the Ibrahimi Mosque, on his way with Hasan to see their aunt.
“Two of the soldiers stopped us and handcuffed us,” Amir said. “They brought us to two separate jeeps. They took me to the settlement and put me in a corner. I still had handcuffs on. They put a dog next to me. I said that I wanted to go home. They said no, and told me I would stay here forever. They refused to let me use the bathroom. They wouldn’t let me call my mother. They blindfolded me and I stayed there like that until my father was able to come and get me late at night.”

Amir’s detention inside the settlement lasted nearly ten hours. “The only thing that I thought about was how afraid I was, especially with the dog beside me. I wanted to run away and go back to my house,” he said.
Amir and Hasan’s mother, Mukarrem, told me that Amir immediately displayed signs of trauma when he returned home. “He was trying to tell me a joke, and trying to laugh. But it was not normal laughter. He was happy and terrified at the same time,” she said. “He wet himself at some point during the detention. He was extremely afraid.”

Amir revealed that he hadn’t been able to sleep in the nights following his detention, worried sick about his brother in jail and extremely afraid that the soldiers would come back (which, eventually, they did). Today, approximately 350 children are languishing inside Israeli prisons and detention camps, enduring interrogation, torture and indefinite sentences, sometimes without charge. The number fluctuates constantly, but thousands of Palestinian children between the ages of 12 and 16 have moved through the Israeli military judicial system over the past decade since the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada. Israel designates 18 as the age of adulthood for its own citizens, but through a military order, and against international law, Israel mandates 16 as the age of adulthood for Palestinians. Additionally, Israel has special military orders (#1644 and #132) to be able to arrest and judge Palestinian children — termed “juvenile delinquents” — as young as 12 years old.

“This way, they have a ‘legal’ cover for what they are doing, even though this is against international laws,” said Abed Jamal, a researcher at Defence for Children International-Palestine Section’s (DCI-PS) Hebron office. “However, in Amir’s case, they broke even their own laws by arresting and detaining him as a ten-year-old boy. These laws are obviously changeable according to Israel’s whim. We have yet to see a prosecution for crimes such as these.”
I asked Amir and Hasan’s father, Fadel, to describe how one is able to parent effectively under this kind of constant siege.

“It’s not safe for the children to go outside because we’ve faced constant attacks by the settlers and the soldiers,” he explained. “This by itself is unimaginable for us. And now, we have one son in jail and another traumatized … they’re so young.”

On Sunday, 7 March, exactly a week after Hasan’s arrest and Amir’s detention, the family and members of the local media made an early-morning journey to Ofer prison where Hasan had been held since his initial arrest. After a lengthy process in which the Israeli military judge admitted that the boy was too young to stay in prison, Hasan was released on the condition that he would come back to the court to finish the trial at a later date. This trial followed the initial hearing last Wednesday at Ofer, where Maan News Agency reported that the judge insisted that Fadel pay the court 2,000 shekels ($530) for Hasan’s bail. According to Maan, Fadel then publicly asked the court, “What law allows a child to be tried in court and then asks his father to pay a fine? I will not pay the fine, and you have to release my child … This is the law of Israel’s occupation.”

Consumed by their sons’ situations, Mukarrem and Fadel say they are trying to do the best for their family under attack. “What can we do?” asked Fadel. “We lock the doors. We lock the windows. We have nothing with which to protect our family and our neighbors from the soldiers or the settlers. If a Palestinian kidnapped and beat and jailed an Israeli child, the whole world would be up in arms about it. It would be all over the media. But the Israelis, they come into our communities with jeeps and tanks and bulldozers, they take our children and throw them into prison, and no one cares.”

DCI-PS’s Jamal reiterates the point that international laws made to protect children under military occupation have been ignored by Israel since the occupation began in 1967. “Most of the time, we try to do our best to use the law, the Geneva Conventions, the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child as weapons against this brutality,” said Jamal. “All of these laws exist, but Israel uses their own military laws as excuses to defy international law. As Palestinians, we have to work together to create solidarity against this brutality. Through our work, we try to tell the international community what’s going on with Palestinian children to create a wide berth of support against this situation. We believe that the only way this will stop is through the support of the international community.”

Amir slowly began speaking again 36 hours after the beating by Israeli soldiers. Zahira Meshaal, a Bethlehem-based social worker specializing in the effects of trauma in children, said that Amir’s “elective mutism,” a symptom of extreme psychological shock caused by his beating and detention, is a common response, but that it is a good sign that he began talking again. “This is a reaction of fear on many levels. Amir’s house and his family are his only source of security,” said Meshaal. “This was taken away from him the moment the soldiers invaded his home. It’s easy to attend to the immediate trauma, but the long-term effects will undoubtedly be difficult to address. He’ll need a lot of mental health services from now on.”

Meshaal comments on the nature of this attack in the context of the unraveling situation inside Hebron. “We are talking about a place that is on the front lines of trauma,” she said. “This is an ongoing and growing injury to the entire community. Parents have to be a center of security for their children, but that’s being taken away from them. Especially in Hebron, the Israeli settlers and soldiers know this, and use this tactic to force people to leave the area. It’s a war of psychology. This is a deliberate act to make the children afraid and force people to leave so that their children can feel safer.”

At the end of our interview last Thursday, Amir sent a message to American children. “We are kids, just like you. We have the right to play, to move freely. I want to tell the world that there are so many kids inside the Israeli jails. We just want to have freedom of movement, the freedom to play.” Amir said that he wants to be a heart surgeon when he grows up. His mother and father told me that they hope Amir’s own heart — and theirs — heals from last week’s repetitive and cumulative trauma at the hands of the interminable Israeli occupation.

Nora Barrows-Friedman is the co-host and Senior Producer of Flashpoints, a daily investigative newsmagazine on Pacifica Radio. She is also a correspondent for Inter Press Service. She regularly reports from Palestine, where she also runs media workshops for youth in the Dheisheh refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

“Palestinian cinema is a cause”: an interview with Hany Abu-Assad: The Electronic Intifada

Sabah Haider,  8 March 2010

A scene from Rana's Wedding
A scene from Rana's Wedding

Nazareth-born filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad is best known internationally for his 2005 film Paradise Now about two young, attractive Palestinian men from Nablus in the occupied West Bank who are drawn into a suicide bombing mission in Tel Aviv. It was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

A Dutch-educated filmmaker, Abu-Assad’s filmmaking career began in the early 1990s when he decided to shift from being an airplane engineer to a TV and film producer. A series of documentaries and short films followed, but it wasn’t until his 2002 film Rana’s Wedding, filmed during the early months of the second Palestinian intifada, that he started to get noticed in more international circles. The Electronic Intifada contributor Sabah Haider spoke with Hany Abu-Assad about how his films are received, Palestinian cinema and the challenges of filmmaking.

Sabah Haider: Are the themes that bind Palestinian films together the same themes that bind Palestinians as a people, a stateless people, together?

Hany Abu-Assad: We have more in common than that. We have our biggest shared interest, which is our case, our struggle. But we have our culture, Arab and Islamic culture. We are part of that culture, the language, the sense of humor. Our case is our priority and our instinct is that we can’t accept injustice. We are fragmented, but still we share a strong culture and language, which amongst the people isn’t just a movement, it’s also an identity and a set of values that is shared. We can’t accept injustice, even when it’s stronger than us.

SH: These themes include the resistance, trauma, statelessness and a longing for the return to Palestine, the right to return.

HA: For sure the dominant one is trauma. The right to return, let’s say, is absolutely dominant, but the trauma is part of that because the solution to the trauma is the right to return. Trauma is a consequence of the Nakba [the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland]. After that you resist, you keep the spirit alive, you keep the case alive, you try to understand. Part of the trauma is that you try to understand the complexity of the Israeli side. Part of the trauma is that you insist on the right of return — it’s a big thing happening to you. Psychological trauma, physical trauma and unconscious trauma, it’s all one big thing. Even after we get our rights back, we still have to recover from that trauma.

SH: How would you define Palestinian cinema?

HA: Since 1948 we are a resistance movement and keeping the case alive is a form of resistance. Making these films is like unconsciously making documents that can be kept in history and keep your case alive. It’s a way of resistance.

SH: Would you agree that the films that are classified as being in and of Palestinian cinema are bound by certain themes?

HA: Until this moment, consciously or unconsciously, there is the fight against the aggressor. The resistance against the aggressor is the common theme, sometimes in a small story or sometimes indirectly. Whatever your power is, the human voice is much stronger. Through military power, economic and political power they try to limit your human and basic rights. By not giving up it becomes a theme — not giving up and continuing with your life and identity.

SH: Your film Rana’s Wedding was produced soon after the second Palestinian intifada broke out. What challenges did that pose? How did that impact the film?

HA: If it happened, it happened unconsciously, as I couldn’t allow myself to be influenced by the general mood. You want to tell a story and the production is dictated by that — by a story-driven construction. Part of the trauma is to make sure that people understand. I was very aware of exposing the themes in Rana’s Wedding, I was very much explaining and exposing what’s going on in the situation rather than the traumatic experience, and we have a self-censor, I was so scared to explain what’s going on.

SH: Did the mood among Palestinian filmmakers reflect the overall mood among Palestinians at the time?

HA: For sure the intifada influenced the production because at the end of the film, reality is stronger than fiction. The occupation, the checkpoints — you don’t want them to interfere with your story but the ugliness of occupation influenced the look of film. As much as you might not want occupation to influence the making of the film, at the end it does influence it.

The mood among the general population and Palestinian filmmakers was [the same]. What the general population went through, we went through too. You feel angry and impotent. You feel you can’t do anything against this heartless operation going on. … I always tell the same story at festivals, but the difference is that you can be at a festival and be celebrated and you are treated as very important person, but when you go back to your homeland you are treated as non-human. I could be in Rome at a festival and be celebrated and the same day I can go back and be treated as a criminal. This contrast is amazing. The mood is the same among all Palestinians under occupation — you are the same as anyone else and are not protected.

SH: The characters in your films can be read as being positive and filled with hope. Is that intentional?

HA: I believe the most important part of resistance is hope, and the enemy is so strong. The Zionist movement is so strong and it’s not easy to fight with them, but without hope you can’t maintain the movement of resistance and you have to keep the hope alive. Still I believe that there is no way out — one way is creating hope in order to continue our struggle. Rana [the protagonist in Rana’s Wedding] has more hope than her husband.

SH: How do Palestinians receive films that aspire to represent them?

HA: The problem with our cinema is that we don’t have [our] distribution channels to our people. Every nation has its own distribution channels to its people but we don’t have that — we are relying on other channels, but we can’t massively achieve that.

There was a more positive hope at the beginning of the second intifada than there is now. There was more hope, I shot the movie before the invasion and siege of [then Palestinian Authority President Yasser] Arafat at the time. A few weeks before, it was at the beginning of the intifada, and at the time there was great hope.

Most of the Palestinians — especially the young ones — have hope. I believe that with the Palestinian people in the diaspora, their tragedy is so big, that they don’t see the end of the tunnel. Their existence [as refugees for] 60 years is because of the cowardice of Arab people, the leaders — the cowardice of the elite of the Arabs, their impotence, their unwillingness to fight or to sacrifice.

Israel is pushing everybody to a point of fundamentalism. At a certain point nobody cares anymore. They are pushing the situation to a path that is self-destructive, and the resistance is growing. The amount of awareness against the Zionist state has never been as big as it is now. And this was inevitable.

Editor’s note: due to a formatting error the interviewer’s insertion that “These themes include the resistance, trauma, statelessness and a longing for the return to Palestine, the right to return” was not marked as such. This version of the article is corrected for that clarification.

Sabah Haider is a Canadian journalist and filmmaker based in Beirut. She can be reached via email at sabafhaider A T gmail D O T com.