EDITOR: The Show Drags On…
Though few tickets were sold for this piece of hamming, and even fewer came to witness it, it still drags on like an aligator through thick molasses. Now Netanyahu, shedding crocodile tears, is regretting the whole affair, like a burglar who, having been caught, saying the whole thing wasn’t his idea, he did not know, he is just the PM, how can he possible know what was, according to Akiva Eldar, agreed between Israel and the US in advance of Biden’s visit?
On the other side of the Pond, Mrs Clinton is all steel. She will not allow this, she will not accept that, and couldn’t Israel wait few days before advertising the fact that they will continue to build, and intensify the building? Are you asking why thee is nothing here from the NY Times? Well, they have nothing to say… again.
You have to hand it to the cast: though not experienced in this kind of acting, they are certainly doing the very best to persuade each other, and maybe also Brown and Berlusconi. The rest of us will have to resist the temptation to retch at such performance. Still, this show will close this week, and you will never hear of it again, same as the Dubai murder (what murder? In Dubai? Never heard about it.) After all, we now have to prepare for the attack on Gaza and Lebanon, the Iran war, and the 3rd Intifada…
Watch this space!
Netanyahu: Row with U.S. should not have happened: Haaretz
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday referred to Israel’s recent approval of a plan to build 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem, announced during U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s visit, as a “harmful” incident that “should not have happened.”
In his first public remarks on what Israeli commentators called his most serious crisis with Washington since taking office a year ago, he gave no sign he would meet Palestinian demands to cancel a project for 1,600 new settler homes.
“There was a regrettable incident here, that occurred innocently,” Netanyahu told his cabinet at its weekly meeting, though he urged ministers to stay calm amid the tensions.
“We opened the newspapers this morning and read all kinds of commentary and assumptions regarding the crisis with the U.S. I recommend not to get carried away and to calm down,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu reiterated that he had appointed a committee to investigate the events leading up to the decision to ensure that such a thing not happen again.
The prime minister stressed the importance of Israel’s relations with the United States, which were strained as a result of the incident.
The U.S. has waged harsh criticism of Israel’s announcement on Tuesday about new settlement construction – a move that deeply embarrassed Biden and imperiled U.S. plans to launch indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
The investigative team will be headed by Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office, Eyal Gabai, and will include members of the Interior Ministry, Housing Ministry and the Jerusalem Municipality.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday called Israel’s announcement “insulting” to the United States.
“I mean, it was just really a very unfortunate and difficult moment for everyone – the United States, our vice president who had gone to reassert our strong support for Israeli security – and I regret deeply that that occurred and made that known,” Clinton told CNN.
Clinton did not blame Netanyahu personally for the announcement, but she said: “He is the prime minister. Like the president or secretary of state…ultimately, you are responsible.”
Sources in the Prime Minister’s Office said over the weekend that the ensuing crisis appeared to be orchestrated by the U.S. administration, as Netanyahu apologized to Biden and believed that the crisis was behind the two allies.
EDITOR: The Settlements Show, Act 2, Scene 4
So now the discussion is clearing up. Neither the US, nor the EU are much worried about Israel stealing the whole of Palestine, or building settlements. After all, if they were, they had 43 years to say so, and also do something about it. The opposite is true. Now they are discussing the main issue: the Timing of the announcement! As we all know, all good theatre is a matter of perfect timing. So the advice to the cast in Jerusalem is simple: ‘improve your timing!’. First allow American and EU politicians to prattle on peace, then allow them to return home, and only then announce more building. That way, the Palestinians can be blamed for the debacle, and we can get to Act 3, at last.
In Israel, they are picking up the message loud and clear. Delaying the discussions in Jerusalem until the EU representative, the esteemed Baroness Munchhausen has been and left make a lot of sense. She is also singing the 2-State song, with the same old tune. Nice. Isn’t it good to know that the fate of the Middle East, Europe, the world, is in the hands of capable actors, who know their lines by heart? Enjoy the Show!
Jerusalem council drops construction, apparently due to U.S. crisis: Haaretz
The Jerusalem District Planning and Building committee has canceled two meetings planned for this week, apparently out of concern that any more decisions on construction might result in further tensions with the United States.
As reported in Haaretz last week, the committee had already pulled from its agenda discussion of all Israeli construction over the Green Line.
The Interior Ministry has said that the meetings were canceled due to technical reasons, as the director of the committee Ruth Yosef had been invited to overlapping Knesset sessions.
Interior Minister Eli Yishai denied last week having ordered the committee to change its agenda following the recent crisis with the U.S. ? but committee members nevertheless have received a new schedule, on which all meetings pertaining to controversial construction areas were erased.
Yishai last week gave the city approval of a plan to build 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem, a decision which led to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most serious crisis with Washington since taking office a year ago.
Members of the building and planning committee were instructed last week not to hold any more discussions or approve any more announcements regarding construction in East Jerusalem.
Sources close to the matter have said that the meetings in question were to have dealt with minor construction plans.
Likud faction whip Ze’ev Elkin earlier Sunday urged Netanyahu not to deviate from his policy on East Jerusalem construction, saying Israel must keep the capital undivided and under its sovereignty.
Netanyahu had not included East Jerusalem in his declaration of a 10-month construction freeze, but Israel’s recent approval of 1,600 new housing units during U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s visit has raised tensions between the two allies.
The timing of the disclosure deeply embarrassed Biden, whose visit coincided with Palestinian agreement to restart peace talks suspended since December 2008 in the form of indirect, U.S.-mediated negotiations with Israel.
Opposition leader and Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni on Sunday cast her own criticism of Netanyahu regarding the recent row, saying his weakness to his coalition partners was costing the government its stability.
“The coalition agreement is not a substitute for a set path and a vision,” Livni said, adding that “we have a prime minister who does not know what he wants and this weakness is leading to a political landslide.”
“Israel is paying the price for the fact that her government is not making decisions and it will continue to pay for it,” Livni added.
“It is not God’s decree for the world to be against us,” said the opposition leader. “We can change the reality, but for this we need a prime minister who has a clear policy and strategic path, who doesn’t place national security in the hands of [Interior Minister] Eli Yishai.
EDITOR: Dénouement – Act 3 Scene 2 of the Great Show in Jerusalem
Now it seems that they all started reading this blog… How else could they have worked it out? Not by themselves, surely?…
On stage we see the main culprits now sticking knives into each other’s back – The band of robbers fighting each other after a failed job – Barak gets Netanyahu while he can, and Axelrod spills the beans about the real task of the announcement. I feel they are starting real competition with the blog, and I wonder how I can stop them from stealing my lines…
Barak: East Jerusalem announcement was unnecessary, damaging: Haaretz
Obama aide Axelrod says approval of 1,600 new East Jerusalem homes seemed meant to thwart talks.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday joined widespread condemnation of the Israeli government’s recent announcement to build 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem.
“The mishap that took place while the U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was visiting was unintentional, but it was, without a doubt, unnecessary and damaging,” said Barak.
Earlier Sunday, President Barack Obama’s chief political adviser David Axelrod slammed the Israeli construction plan in East Jerusalem and said that the move, which was announced during Biden’s visit, looked like a deliberate attempt to frustrate upcoming proximity talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Barak, speaking during an event celebrating the upcoming Passover holiday, emphasized the importance of the Israel-United States friendship.
“Even though we are the ones ultimately responsible for our fate, the friendship of the United States is important to both the security and the peace of the region, and this friendship commits us to mutual respect and responsibility,” Barak said.
“I am convinced that we must carry on the renewal of peace talks, and we must also invest thought and effort into it.”
Referring to Israel’s announcement of the plan to build 1,600 more housing units in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden, Axelrod told ABC’s This Week that “what happened there was an affront.”
Earlier Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to the announcement as a “harmful” incident that “should not have happened.”
In his interview with ABC, Axelrod hinted that Israel’s announcement was a deliberate attempt to thwart indirect talks with the Palestinians.
“It was an insult, but that’s not the most important thing,” Axelrod added, saying that the move was disruptive to upcoming proximity talks with the Palestinians and that the approval during Biden’s visit “seemed calculated to undermine that, and that was – that was distressing to everyone who is promoting the idea of peace and security in the region.”
Axelrod said that the bond between Israel and the United States was “strong,” but adding that “for just that very reason, this was not the right way to behave.”
“That was expressed by the secretary of state, as well as the vice president. I am not going to discuss what diplomatic talks we’ve had underneath that, but I think the Israelis understand clearly why we were upset and what, you know, what we want moving forward,” Axelrod added.
Responding to the possibility that Israel’s move could have any effect on U.S. soldiers in the region, Axelrod said that he believed “that that region and that issue is a flare point throughout the region, and so I’m not going to put it in those terms.”
However, the top Obama aide added that he did “believe that it is absolutely imperative, not just for the security of Israel and the Palestinian people, who were, remember, at war just a year ago, but it is important for our own security that we move forward and resolve this very difficult issue.”
In his first public remarks on what Israeli commentators called his most serious crisis with Washington since taking office a year ago, Netanyahu gave no sign earlier that he would meet Palestinian demands to cancel a project for 1,600 new settler homes.
“There was a regrettable incident here, that occurred innocently,” Netanyahu told his cabinet at its weekly meeting, though he urged ministers to stay calm amid the tensions.
“We opened the newspapers this morning and read all kinds of commentary and assumptions regarding the crisis with the U.S. I recommend not to get carried away and to calm down,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu reiterated that he had appointed a committee to investigate the events leading up to the decision to ensure that such a thing not happen again.
The prime minister stressed the importance of Israel’s relations with the United States, which were strained as a result of the incident.
The U.S. has waged harsh criticism of Israel’s announcement on Tuesday about new settlement construction – a move that deeply embarrassed Biden and imperiled U.S. plans to launch indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
The investigative team will be headed by Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office, Eyal Gabai, and will include members of the Interior Ministry, Housing Ministry and the Jerusalem Municipality.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday called Israel’s announcement “insulting” to the United States.
“I mean, it was just really a very unfortunate and difficult moment for everyone – the United States, our vice president who had gone to reassert our strong support for Israeli security – and I regret deeply that that occurred and made that known,” Clinton told CNN.
Clinton did not blame Netanyahu personally for the announcement, but she said: “He is the prime minister. Like the president or secretary of state…ultimately, you are responsible.”
Sources in the Prime Minister’s Office said over the weekend that the ensuing crisis appeared to be orchestrated by the U.S. administration, as Netanyahu apologized to Biden and believed that the crisis was behind the two allies.
Children of Gaza: Scarred, trapped, vengeful: The Independent
1,000 days into the Israeli blockade and Palestinian youngsters are denied medical help, education and any hope of a decent future
By Rachel Shields, Sunday, 14 March 2010
Omsyatte adjusts her green school uniform and climbs gingerly on to a desk at the front of the classroom. The shy 12-year-old holds up a brightly coloured picture and begins to explain to her classmates what she has drawn. It is a scene played out in schools all over the world, but for one striking difference: Omsyatte’s picture does not illustrate a recent family holiday, or jolly school outing, but the day an Israeli military offensive killed her nine-year-old brother and destroyed her home.
“Here is where they shot my brother Ibrahim, God bless his soul. And here is the F16 plane that threw rockets into the house and trees, and here is the tank that started to shoot,” she says, to a round of applause from the other children. The exercise is designed to help the pupils at the school come to terms with the warfare that has dominated their short lives; particularly the horrors of the 2008 Israeli military offensive Operation Cast Lead, which killed 1,400 Palestinians, and destroyed one in eight homes.
Like hundreds of displaced Gazans, Omsyatte’s family have spent more than a year living in a tent on a site near their home. Little rebuilding work has been done during this time – with supplies unable to pass into Gaza because of the ongoing blockade imposed by Israel in 2007 – and groups of children now pick their way through piles of rubble, kicking footballs around the bombsites which used to be local landmarks.
Homelessness is just one of the issues facing the 780,000 Gazan children in the aftermath of the conflict, problems that are explored in a revealing new documentary Dispatches: Children of Gaza, to be screened tomorrow at 8pm on Channel 4. Perhaps the most disturbing of these is the emotional scars borne by children who have survived the conflict; the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme reports that the majority of children show signs of anxiety, depression and behavioural problems.
Small boys build toy rockets out of drinks bottles, and talk about the fake guns they are going to buy with their pocket money. While boys the world over are preoccupied with fighting and weapons, this takes on a more sinister significance when the game isn’t Cowboys vs Indians, but Jews vs Arabs, and the children’s make-believe warfare is chillingly realistic.
These games may reflect the children’s desire for revenge against their neighbours, of which many speak openly. “I think we are seeing a growing desire for violence, and it saddens me,” said Jezza Neumann, the Bafta-winning director of the programme. “If they could get revenge legally, or saw someone saying sorry, then perhaps they could come to terms with it, but there has been no recourse. What you’re seeing now may only be the tip of the iceberg.”
Mahmoud, 12, describes the day Israeli soldiers knocked on the door and shot his father dead, lying down in the dirt where his father fell in a heartbreaking reconstruction, and describes the enormous changes it wrought upon him. “Before the war, I was thinking about education, but after I started thinking about becoming a fighter,” he says, his thickly lashed brown eyes staring straight into the camera. “God willing, if I can kill one Israeli it will be better than nothing.”
Desperate to avenge his father’s death, Mahmoud is encouraged by his uncle Ahmed, a member of the terrorist group Islamic Jihad. Sitting Mahmoud down in front of a martyrdom film, Ahmed says, “Look how he doesn’t feel a thing when he is detonated” as a suicide bomber dies. Just a few hundred yards from the family’s home is a training camp for Gaza’s fighters – both Hamas and Islamic Jihad – where young men carrying rocket launchers are clearly visible.
While Mahmoud is desperate for revenge, his mother weeps when she considers the possibility that he may become a martyr. “It is an honour to die in the name of Allah, but I don’t want to lose my son,” she said.
Some believe that with Israel’s tight restrictions on movement blocking conventional career options for the 1.1 million people who live there, children may feel they have no choice but to join resistance movements. Last week Palestinians in the Gaza Strip lit 1,000 candles and held a peaceful protest to mark 1,000 days of the Israeli blockade. During this time, unemployment has risen to 45 per cent, with 76 per cent of households now living in poverty.
“The children are struggling with the idea of the future,” Mr Neumann said. “Many graduates in Gaza are unemployed, and they can’t see a way forward because they can’t get out.”
Families have been fractured by the conflict, with many parents racked by guilt because they couldn’t protect their children from the violence, and now cannot provide for them in the aftermath. Sitting in the tent which is now their home, Omsyatte’s father weeps as he talks of his regret over the death of his son Ibrahim.
“The Israelis killed my son while he was in my arms, and I could do nothing to protect him,” he says, tears streaming down his face. “I couldn’t even look at him when he was taking his last breaths of life, because the soldiers were right above my head. I was too much of a coward to even hug my son. I was afraid that they would kill me. These things torment me.”
Dr Ahmed Abu Tawanheena, the director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, says this issue is also affecting children in Gaza. “They have lost their parents twice: first, during the conflict, when they saw their parents terrified and unable to protect them from the violence. Now, under the blockade, they see their parents are still unable to provide for their basic needs, such
as shelter or food,” he said. “It’s a crisis which is threatening families and communities across the Gaza Strip.”
For some, this crisis has had a devastating impact on family relationships, with mental health professionals and NGOs linking a rise in domestic violence with these feelings of guilt and impotence. A study by the Palestinian Women’s Information and Media Centre (PWIC) in March 2009 found that 77 per cent of women in the Gaza Strip are exposed to domestic violence, while a survey by the UN Development Fund for Women (Unifem) also indicated that violence against women increased during periods of heavy conflict.
Many children are suffering the physical effects of the conflict. One of these is Mahmoud’s nine-year-old sister Amal. Trapped under the rubble of her home – which was destroyed by Israeli shells – for four days before she was rescued, Amal was left with shrapnel lodged in her brain. Plagued by headaches and nosebleeds, and unable to get the medical care she needs in Gaza, Amal is lucky enough to be granted papers which allow her to travel to nearby Tel Aviv to be examined by a specialist. However, her experiences have left her so scared of Israelis that she doesn’t want to go.
Crouching over a colouring book, her curly brown hair held back with pretty hair bands, she explained: “I’m scared to go to Israel. From the Jews. I’m frightened they might kill me.”
Many of the children in Gaza’s Shefa hospital do not have the option of leaving the strip, and the prognosis for children in the oncology ward is bleak. Chemotherapy is not available in Gaza, and many of the children on the ward have not been granted the papers they need to seek the treatment readily available to Palestinians just across the Israeli and Egyptian borders. One of these children is 10-year-old Ribhye, crippled by advanced leukaemia and unable to leave Gaza. His distraught father, sitting in a hospital room devoid of the equipment and medicine his son so desperately needs, is devastated not to have been granted leave to take Ribhye out of Gaza. “How do I get out? This border is closed, that border is closed. What do I do?” he asked.
“The mortality rate for cancer in Gaza is much higher than elsewhere,” said Steve Sosebee, president of the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. “You have to get a permit if you want to cross into Gaza and most of them are not granted. A lot of kids are dying as a result of the decisions being made by the people in charge, whether Hamas, the Egyptian government, the Israeli government.”
Even the parents who have papers allowing their children to leave don’t fare much better. Eight-year-old leukaemia sufferer Wissam was granted permission to cross into Egypt for treatment, but has been waiting for weeks for the border crossing to be opened. After being told that he would finally be allowed through after sitting at the border for hours, the coach full of hospital patients was turned away, and had to make the long drive back to the Nasser hospital. Wissam’s father desperately tried to find out from hospital officials why the coach was turned back. “Every day the child stays here is a danger to his life,” he said, his words echoing the thoughts of so many Palestinian parents.
‘Dispatches: Children of Gaza’ airs tomorrow at 8pm on Channel 4; childrenofgazafund.org/
Sleepless in Jerusalem and Gaza: Must View!
This amazing series continues! Another 26 minutes every day! How do you do it, girls?! if you want to see how vibrant Palestinian society is, how resistant it is to all that is hurled at it, despite all that was done to break it, view those moving, humane, humorous and unique series of daily reports.
Sleepless Gaza Jerusalem 13..mpg
Sleepless in Gaza and Jerusalem Day 12.mpg
sleepless in gaza and jerusalem 11.mpg
Sleepless in Gaza and Jerusalem Day 10.mpg
Israel’s Arabs have been misbehaving lately: Haaretz
By Gideon Levy
Our Arabs have been misbehaving lately. After all we did for Scandar Copti – funding and grooming him and sending him off to Hollywood – he dared say that his film “Ajami” – our film, the film of us all – doesn’t represent us in the end. After we allowed MK Ahmed Tibi to study medicine at Hebrew University (!) and even let him be elected to the Knesset, he dared compare our saintly Zionist militants – the Olei Hagardom who were hanged by the British during the Mandate period – to their terrorists. That’s not nice, Scandar. That’s not right, Ahmed.
The young are going wild in the streets: a survey published in Haaretz last week offered a suitable Zionist answer to the rebellious Arabs. Half our young people think that Arabs do not deserve the same rights as Jews; 56 percent believe that they should not be allowed to run for a Knesset seat. If our Arabs continue to behave so disgracefully, after everything we’ve done for them, these numbers will only rise.
Since our Arabs have been acting out lately, maybe we should summon their parents for a talk. They would never have acted like this. Members of the first generation of the 1948 trauma would never have dared to behave so ungratefully. They, who obsequiously waved not one but two Israeli flags on our Independence Day, like the hero in Emile Habibi’s “The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist”, would not have spoken like Copti and Tibi. They voted en masse for Mapai, the precursor of the Labor Party, while the Shin Bet security service allowed them to become teachers in their own towns. They knew how to appreciate all of this.
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It’s not us, it’s them: if the new Arabs behave nicely, if they look like us, talk like us, eat like us with knives and spoons, live in trendy areas of Tel Aviv and drive jeeps, cook maqluba and mop up hummus, perhaps we’ll vote for them again on the next season of “Big Brother,” as we did for the fair and noble Futna Jaber. But if they talk like Tibi and Copti, their fate will be the same.
Copti made an impressive movie about the depressing reality of Jaffa. He has no reason to feel that he represents our Israel, which does not give him the feeling that he belongs. The film funding he received for good behavior recalls regimes that give money to artists according to the messages they send.
Tibi doesn’t owe the state anything either. But when he dared ask if the Olei Hagardom were heroes or terrorists, the Knesset speaker hurried out of the hall. Does the question lack legitimacy? Doesn’t Tibi have not only the right but also the obligation to raise it? Aren’t we obliged to answer? A devilish act took place the same day the Knesset remembered the Olei Hagardom, one of whom fired on a bus and killed several passengers: the Palestinian Authority sought to name a square in Ramallah after Dalal Mughrabi, who took part in an attack on an Israeli bus on the coastal road in 1978. Israel railed against this. “Each nation has its own truth,” Tibi said before he was removed from the hall.
The ultimate Israeli dream is that the Coptis and Tibis will disappear from sight. If the so-called demographic problem can’t be solved by driving Arabs out, we’ll try to get rid of them another way: destroy their identity, cloud their national memory and turn them into Israelis, not to mention Zionists. It won’t work. We are not only talking about economic discrimination, but about trampling on national heritage. This won’t work either. The third generation after the Nakba is informed. It’s true that some of them are being Israel-ized, the way we like to see, but Arabs lacking identity will also pose a pressing social problem. The Jews’ situation in the world is much better than theirs.
The solution does not just lie in budgets, as we like to believe (but don’t act on). Until we recognize equal rights, including the right to say things we don’t want to hear, they will remain a demographic problem without a solution. Until we understand that we didn’t give them anything, that in a democracy rights are natural and taken for granted, and until we accept – not only the fabulous Futna but the less pleasant Scandar and Ahmed – there will be no democracy here. They aren’t loyal to the state? The state is much less loyal to them.
Letter to The Guardian
On reading the report on the arrest and conviction of many young Muslims over the January 2009 demonstrations against the massacre in Gaza “Sent to jail for throwing a single bottle”, Saturday March 13, see below) a number of uncanny similarities strike one, with the situation in Palestine. The first is the reported police brutality, certain to qualify as standard, somewhat low level violence in Palestine, where the Israeli security forces use similar methods. The second parallel is the behaviour of the legal systems – while the legal system in Israel totally overlook the war crimes reported by Judge Goldstone, but are keen on arresting and holding without charge boys of ten, and treating boys of twelve who threw stones as terrorists, the London law courts seem as keen to throw into jail young Muslims for similar offences, and this time, for years. So, in both cases, the ones ordering and managing the massacres in Gaza get off scot free, with Gordon Brown being prepared to bend the legal systems after the elections, so as to not inconvenience those responsible. The boys, here and in Palestine, will end up in prison, and justice would have been seen to be made. Certainly, if Britain set out to create Muslim radicalism, it could do no better.
In the meantime, impunity to the murderers, prison for those who protest against murder!
Haim Bresheeth
Sent to jail for throwing a single bottle: The Guardian
Last year, during protests against the attack on Gaza, a mixed group of demonstrators clashed with police. But when the alleged culprits were arrested in dawn raids, nearly all those taken were young Muslims
Badi Tebani and his wife were sleeping peacefully when all hell broke loose. He shudders at the memory. The front door was forced open, and then came the screaming. “Wah, wah, wah, get down, get down, you are under arrest.” Any number of voices. He thought it was a nightmare – that he was back in Algeria in the bad old days before he was granted political asylum in Britain, and that the military had broken into the house. When he opened his eyes, his bedroom was full of police officers. “I have diabetes and high blood pressure,” he says quietly. “It was worse than Algeria, even. I became very depressed.”
It was 5am, April 2009. Badi’s eldest son Hamza, 23, takes up the story. “I woke up and tried to get out of bed. The next thing is three police officers jump on top of me with their knees, and they handcuffed me so hard I screamed. That’s when I really woke up.” Hamza had been sleeping in shorts. When he asked if he could put a shirt on the police said no and opened the window. “It was freezing. I was shaking.”
His three brothers, the youngest of whom was 15 at the time, were also handcuffed. Hamza says there were too many officers to count – somewhere between 20 and 30. They took computers, clothes, iPhones, everything. “I’ve never been in trouble, never been to the police station except when my car was broken into, and they were treating me as a criminal. One of the officers was playing card games with my iPhone, another was just ordering coffee.”
Badi, an Arabic teacher, tuts. “They make our house into a coffee shop.”
But it wasn’t Badi or Hamza the police were after. It was Yahia, one of Hamza’s younger brothers. When Yahia heard that the police were looking for him he was confounded. “I didn’t know why they were there, and then I hear my name and I’m shocked.”
Three months earlier, in January last year, Yahia had been outside the Israeli embassy on a fractious demonstration against Israel’s sustained bombing of Gaza. The British foreign secretary, David Milliband, had condemned the “unacceptable” loss of life caused by the Israeli strikes on Gaza, saying the “dark and dangerous” events could fuel extremism, and had called for an immediate ceasefire from both Israel and Hamas.
Protesters complained that the demonstration was policed provocatively and that they had been “kettled” inside a tunnel and beaten. Meanwhile, the police complained that they had been assaulted by demonstrators.
Yahia, 18, says both accounts are true. He claims that the policing was aggressive and intimidatory, and that demonstrators responded by throwing sticks and bottles at the embassy and the officers, who were wearing full-body shields. Yahia picked up a few sticks from discarded banners and flung them in the direction of the police. He was one of approximately 50,000 demonstrators, many of whom threw objects. It was a mixed bunch – white and black, Muslim and Christian, Stop the War Coalition, CND, all sorts. This was one of a number of Gaza demonstrations covered on television news, and it was reported there had been some trouble – but nothing on the scale of, say, the G20 protests or the poll tax riots.
Yahia, who was studying media technology at Kingston University, had gone on the march for two reasons – to protest, and to interview fellow demonstrators for a project on Gaza. The crowd was held by the police for four hours and eventually released. Some people were filmed and had to give their name and address to the police, some were arrested. Yahia simply left of his own accord, and eventually got home at midnight.
He told Hamza it had been a difficult day, it had given him plenty of food for thought, and that was that – until the police broke into the family home in Finsbury Park, north London, three months later. Yahia was arrested in March and charged with violent disorder and burglary – at one point during the demo, he says, he had taken a chair from the nearby Starbucks to sit on, but police reports said the Starbucks was trashed and mugs and chairs were used as weapons. He was advised that the burglary charge would be dropped if he pleaded guilty to violent disorder, for which he would probably receive a suspended sentence or community service. He thought a lesser charge of affray would have been fairer, but agreed to the compromise. “It would always look bad in the future if it says burglary. People won’t know what really happened, so I couldn’t risk that being on my file.”
What Yahia didn’t realise was nearly all the protesters who pleaded guilty to violent disorder would end up receiving immediate prison sentences. His friend Sidali is serving two years. Yahia was in court the day Sidali was sentenced. “He didn’t even throw sticks,” he claims. “He just pushed or something, and his clothes were ripped a bit. In court he was crying. The shock on his face, I’ve never seen anything like that. Pah!” He blows his lips together in dismay.
Yahia is to be sentenced this month. How’s he feeling? “Stressed. Pah. Just waiting to go in. I’ve been asking my friend what it’s like. He says time goes quick – he doesn’t want to scare me.”
It’s not just the prospect of prison that terrifies him, it’s what comes after. “If I’ve got ‘ex-prisoner’ on my file, how am I going to get a job? It will destroy my career.”
At Isleworth crown court in London, where the cases are being heard, a disturbing pattern is emerging. Most of the 78 protesters charged with public order offences were young men in their late teens or 20s. Many were students. And nearly all were Muslim. Some 22 protesters have already received prison terms of up to two and a half years for public order offences, and more cases are due to come before the courts in the coming months.
The Gaza Protesters Defence Campaign has been formed by the families of some of those arrested, together with sympathetic MPs, the Stop the War Coalition and CND. The campaign aims to highlight the perceived injustice, and has launched a petition which will be presented to the attorney general and the director of public prosecutions.
Earlier this month, families queued up outside committee room 15 in the House of Commons for a campaign meeting. Many feel bewildered by the sentences the courts have passed on their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. When Joanna Gilmore, a researcher at the University of Manchester’s law school who has monitored the cases, gets to her feet the room is already full, and latecomers are forced to listen from the corridor. “The vast majority of the people involved here are of exemplary character,” she says, to mutters of approval. “The demonstrations were overwhelmingly peaceful and if you compare the relatively minor disturbances that took place with the violence on other demonstrations these sentences are very severe.”
Gilmore, who has followed all the court cases, says the police arrested more people at the Gaza protests than at any political demonstration since the poll tax riots, when about 90 were charged with public order offences. At last year’s G20 demonstrations, during which a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland was looted, 20 were charged.
“Many were on their first demonstration and were protesting because they were appalled about what was happening in Gaza,” Gilmore says. “These people and their families are in shock and say that they will never take part in political demonstrations again.”
Bruce Kent, a former general secretary of CND and long-time peace activist, gets to his feet to address the packed meeting. Kent, 80, had been on the demonstration and says he was “amazed and indignant” about the reaction of the police and the courts.
“I don’t know why there isn’t absolute outrage … All this will do is solidify in people’s minds the idea that there is a persecution of Muslims which is determined and organised and will result in some young people being radicalised.”
He says there is a huge discrepancy in the way different people are treated by the law, and recalls a time in 1986 when he had been convicted of criminal damage after cutting a wire fence during a protest at a nuclear base. “I was in the crown court waiting with my toothbrush packed. I thought I was off to one of her majesty’s holiday camps. Not at all, not even a fine. Why? Because I am middle-class and white.”
Like Yahia Tebani, 24-year-old Ashir was in bed when the police raided her west London flat at 4am. The strange thing is, she says, her brother, who is due to be sentenced for his part in the demonstrations this month, has never been interested in “politics or religion” and only joined the protest because he was at his cousins’ house when they decided to go.
Although Ashir says her younger sibling did not throw any missiles, she admits he did protect himself when the “police people started fighting”. He left as soon as he could, giving his details to officers. Two months later the police made their unannounced visit.
“We heard a disturbance at the neighbour’s flat first and I heard loads of banging and shouting,” she says. “I looked out of the window but no one had police uniforms on so I didn’t know what was happening. A few minutes later when we were getting back into bed we heard people running up the stairs and then our door burst open. I was so scared because I had no idea what was happening or who these people were.”
Every detail chimes with Yahia’s experience – the family were handcuffed for two and a half hours, Ashir only had her nightclothes on and was not allowed to get dressed and her computer was taken. “They said I may have weapons in the house, but I didn’t understand – what weapons could I have? I am not a criminal. They went through everything. They said they were looking for evidence, for clothes that my brother had been wearing on the demonstration. They took my laptop which had my university dissertation on spa tourism on it because they said he had had access to it. I asked if I could at least email the dissertation to myself but they said I wasn’t allowed to touch it. I still have not got it back almost a year later even though I keep asking for it. I had to start my dissertation from where I had last saved it on a uni computer.”
Ashir, who does not want to give her real name because she fears going public might result in her brother being given a bigger sentence, still has panic attacks about what happened that night. “I am scared if I see any police anywhere. Even if I was angry about something I would never go on a demonstration now because I have seen what can happen.”
Muhammad Sawalha, president of the British Muslim Initiative anti-racist group, has two questions: why were such a high proportion of those arrested Muslim, and why have they been dealt with so heavy-handedly?
Actually, Judge John Denniss has been quite clear about sentencing policy. He has said, more than once, the draconian sentences are meant to act as a deterrent to future protesters. But, because of the fact that the people being brought before the courts are disproportionately Muslim, Sawalha says, the consequences could be disastrous: “The British Muslim Initiative encourages Muslims to express their feelings and ambitions and frustrations only through political and legal processes. But if anything sends the message that Muslims cannot express themselves through political processes, and they will not be dealt with like others, it will give more strength to the fringes within the community who say democracy and the political system doesn’t apply to Muslims in this country. This will only increase the frustration and sense of alienation among these people.”
Dr Khalil al-Ani says his son Mosab was one of the lucky ones. There was no pre-dawn raid, no handcuffs, no ransacking. He was simply asked to surrender his passport to the police. Months after throwing an empty Orangina bottle – the police said it was at them, Mosab said it was at the Israeli embassy gates – he was charged. Mosab, who was on a medical access course, hoped to be a dentist or dental technician. He is now in prison serving a one-year sentence.
It was the first demonstration Mosab had been on since his family marched against the Iraq war in 2003. Al-Ani, an Iraqi who works as a GP in Wakefield and Leeds, was pleased his son would be on the march. His two sisters were also going, and Al-Ani felt Mosab, then 20, would protect them.
Mosab was arrested on the day and taken to a police station where he admitted throwing the bottle, apologised, and stressed that he had not aimed it at the police. He was released and returned to Yorkshire, but didn’t tell his father what had happened – he didn’t want to worry him, and he assumed it was the last he would hear of it.
“He didn’t think it was serious because how many times have you seen something like this or more serious, and nothing happens.” Al-Ani stops, and apologises for his tears. “I’m sorry I get so emotional. I came to this country in 1981. You can hear by the way I speak my accent is not purely British. It is a foreign accent after all these years. But Mosab was born here in 1988 – he is British in every sense. This is the first time I feel that because he’s a Muslim he’s been discriminated against. What he did was certainly wrong, but he should be treated similar to a British citizen. He’s gone to prison for a single bottle that didn’t hurt anybody.”
The astonishing thing is, he says, that the judge gave Mosab a flawless character reference. “He said, ‘I know you came here peacefully, I know you have an excellent character, I know you were not armed, you said sorry to the police.'” He was sure his son would go free. “I was so pleased. Then the judge says, ‘I’m going to give you this sentence to deter other people.'”
Back in north London, Badi Tebani is looking at the door the police forced open. As they left the house, they made a point of telling him it was still in one piece. “When they finished their work, the police officers show me the door and say, ‘It’s not broken, look, look,’ and they took a photograph. I told him, it doesn’t matter if you broke the door, you broke my life.”
Obama aide calls Israeli settlement announcement an ‘insult’ to the US: The Guardian
• Axelrod brands plans as ‘very destructive’
• Netanyahu tries to calm tension with key ally
David Axelrod has said Israeli plans to build houses in occupied East Jerusalem could undermine peace efforts in the Middle East. Photograph: Fred Watkins/AP
One of President Obama’s most senior aides has described Israel’s sudden announcement of plans to build 1,600 homes in occupied East Jerusalem as an “affront” to the US which could undermine peace efforts in the Middle East.
Yesterday, David Axelrod said the move, which overshadowed a visit to Israel by the US vice-president, Joe Biden, was “very destructive”.
“This was an affront, it was an insult but most importantly it undermined this very fragile effort to bring peace to that region,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “For this announcement to come at that time was very destructive.”
Axelrod, one of the architects of Obama’s election, is not the first US official to have criticised the decision but he is one of the president’s closest advisers. His remarks came after the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, sought to downplay the row with Washington.
“We opened the newspapers this morning and read all kinds of commentary and assumptions regarding the crisis with the US. I recommend not to get carried away and to calm down,” Netanyahu told his cabinet today, Associated Press reported. “There was a regrettable incident that was done in all innocence and was hurtful, and which certainly should not have occurred.”
Asked about Netanyahu’s remarks, Axelrod said he believed the strong rebuke from Washington had sunk in. “I think the message was received,” he said, although Netanyahu gave no indication the government was prepared to cancel the plan.
In his remarks to the cabinet, Netanyahu said: “Israel and the US have mutual interests but we will act according to the vital interests of the state of Israel.”
The announcement on Tuesday that thousands of new homes were being planned in Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem came on the eve of Biden’s arrival in the region for discussions to restart “proximity talks” between Israel and Palestinians, with the US mediating. Almost immediately, the news prompted Palestinian leaders to pull out of the new round of talks.
Israel’s cabinet minister, Isaac Herzog, apologised for the timing of the announcement but not for its substance.
Obama administration officials have criticised the scheme in a stream of sharply worded statements accusing the Israeli government of jeopardising good-faith negotiations with the Palestinians.
Hillary Clinton spoke at length with Netanyahu by phone on Friday, calling the move a “deeply negative signal” about Israel’s approach to its relationship with the US. In an interview on Friday, Clinton also called the move “an insult to the US”, though she reiterated that the US-Israel relationship remains “durable and strong”. She suggested the move was the work of elements within the Israeli government who oppose the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
“It was just really a very unfortunate and difficult moment for everyone … and I regret deeply that it occurred,” she said.
Israel has agreed to slow construction of settlements in the West Bank but has refused to halt building in East Jerusalem. Israel considers East Jerusalem, which it captured in the 1967 war, its sovereign territory and Netanyahu has spoken frequently in defence of settlements there.
EDITOR: N Y Times wakes up
It seems that even Thomas L. Friedman, unofficial Israeli ambassador to New York, apologist for Israel on many occasions, is finding the show has gone of the rails, and is writing some new lines, especially for Joe Biden. If indeed someone is a drunken driver in Jerusalem, who is responsible for them? Who finances and backs them? Who is the boss? At the end of the piece, Friedman comes out of his hideout, with a song and dance about Netanyahu policies and their contribution to ‘peace’… He says Netanyahu has lost contact with reality – but he is not the only one…
Driving Drunk in Jerusalem: N Y Times
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, March 13, 2010
I am a big Joe Biden fan. The vice president is an indefatigable defender of U.S. interests abroad. So it pains me to say that on his recent trip to Israel, when Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s government rubbed his nose in some new housing plans for contested East Jerusalem, the vice president missed a chance to send a powerful public signal: He should have snapped his notebook shut, gotten right back on Air Force Two, flown home and left the following scribbled note behind: “Message from America to the Israeli government: Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. And right now, you’re driving drunk. You think you can embarrass your only true ally in the world, to satisfy some domestic political need, with no consequences? You have lost total contact with reality. Call us when you’re serious. We need to focus on building our country.”
I think that — rather than fuming and making up — would have sent a very useful message for two reasons. First, what the Israelis did played right into a question a lot of people are asking about the Obama team: how tough are these guys? The last thing the president needs, at a time when he is facing down Iran and China — not to mention Congress — is to look like America’s most dependent ally can push him around.
And second, Israel needs a wake-up call. Continuing to build settlements in the West Bank, and even housing in disputed East Jerusalem, is sheer madness. Yasir Arafat accepted that Jewish suburbs there would be under Israeli sovereignty in any peace deal that would also make Arab parts of East Jerusalem the Palestinian capital. Israel’s planned housing expansion now raises questions about whether Israel will ever be willing to concede a Palestinian capital in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem — a big problem.
Israel has already bitten off plenty of the West Bank. If it wants to remain a Jewish democracy, its only priority now should be striking a deal with the Palestinians that would allow it to swap those settlement blocs in the West Bank occupied by Jews for an equal amount of land from Israel for the Palestinians and then reap the benefits — economic and security — of ending the conflict.
Unfortunately, that is not what happened last week. For nine months now, America’s Middle East special envoy, George Mitchell, has been trying to find a way to get any kind of peace talks going between Israelis and Palestinians. The Palestinians don’t trust Netanyahu, and Netanyahu has serious doubts as to whether the divided Palestinian leadership can deliver.
Nevertheless, Mitchell was eventually able to persuade the two sides to agree on “proximity talks” — the Palestinians would sit in Ramallah and the Israelis in Jerusalem and Mitchell would shuttle 30 minutes between them. After a decade of direct talks, this is how far things have fallen.
Mitchell’s and Netanyahu’s aides struck an informal deal: If America got talks going, there would be no announcements of buildings in East Jerusalem, nothing to embarrass the Palestinians and force them to walk. Netanyahu agreed, U.S. officials say, but made clear he couldn’t commit to anything publicly.
So what happened? Biden arrived the day after the proximity talks started and out came an announcement from Israel’s Interior Ministry that Israel had just approved plans for 1,600 new housing units in Arab East Jerusalem.
Netanyahu said he was blindsided. It’s probably true in the narrow sense. The move seems to have been part of a competition between two of Netanyahu’s right-wing Sephardi ministers from the religious Shas Party over who can be the greater champion of building homes for Sephardi orthodox Jews in East Jerusalem. It is a measure of how much Israel takes our support for granted and how out of touch the Israeli religious right is with America’s strategic needs.
Biden — a real friend of Israel’s — was quoted as telling his Israeli interlocutors: “What you are doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and endangers regional peace.”
This whole fracas also distracts us from the potential of this moment: Only a right-wing prime minister, like Netanyahu, can make a deal over the West Bank; Netanyahu’s actual policies on the ground there have helped Palestinians grow their economy and put in place their own rebuilt security force, which is working with the Israeli Army to prevent terrorism; Palestinian leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad are as genuine and serious about working toward a solution as any Israel can hope to find; Hamas has halted its attacks on Israel from Gaza; with the Sunni Arabs obsessed over the Iran threat, their willingness to work with Israel has never been higher, and the best way to isolate Iran is to take the Palestinian conflict card out of Tehran’s hand.
In sum, there may be a real opportunity here — if Netanyahu chooses to seize it. The Israeli leader needs to make up his mind whether he wants to make history or once again be a footnote to it.
NYT columnist: Israel lost contact with reality: YNet
In article titled ‘Driving drunk in Jerusalem’, Thomas L. Friedman says US vice president should have gotten right back on Air Force Two immediately after Jerusalem construction decision, leaving behind a note reading, ‘You think you can embarrass your only true ally in the world with no consequences?’
WASHINGTON – In a new article titled “Driving drunk in Jerusalem”, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman – one of the world’s leading political journalists – criticizes Israel’s policy and the decision to build 1,600 new housing units in the northeast Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo during US Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to the region.
Last week, the NY Times referred to the decision as “a slap in the face” of the United States. One Sunday, Friedman used an even harsher tone, saying that Biden should have gotten right back on Air Force Two and left the following note behind: “Message from America to the Israeli government: Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. And right now, you’re driving drunk. You think you can embarrass your only true ally in the world, to satisfy some domestic political need, with no consequences? You have lost total contact with reality. Call us when you’re serious. We need to focus on building our country.”
The developing crisis between Israel and the United States refused to die down over the weekend. It began on Friday after Israeli Ambassador to Washington Michael Oren was reprimanded by US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, continued with the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s scolding phone call to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and worsened with a series of remarks by Clinton and other administration officials.
It appears that the particularly tough stand was generated during US President Barack Obama’s weekly meeting with Clinton at the White House on Thursday afternoon, during which the two discussed the heavy sense of insult felt by the Americans in light of the Israeli move. On Friday, the Americans did not act as a major power running the world, but as an injured bull.
Senior administration officials are openly accusing Israel of damaging the relations and are expressing their doubt over Netanyahu’s commitment to the two-state vision. The administration refuses to accept the prime minister’s apology over the timing of the decision, clarifying that the timing is not the only problematic thing – but the actual decision.
According to a State Department official, the US views the announcement as a deep negative symbol of the Israeli approach towards the bilateral relations, which contradicts the spirit of the vice president’s trip. The official added that the Israeli announcement undermined the trust in the peace process and the American interests.
A sign of the tension could be seen in Friday’s State Department press brieifing, which spokesman Philip J. Crowley dedicated to the reprimanding talk between Clinton and Netanyahu, during which he avoided the standard procedure of calling a foreign leader by his full name and referred to him as “Bibi Netanyahu” instead.
He explained that during the 45-minute conversation, Clinton rebuked Netanyahu, expressed Obama’s feeling of betrayal and insult, which she said was shared by the entire administration, and demanded that the prime minister engage in a number of trust-building measures in order to help calm things down and save the indirect peace talks with the Palestinians.
One of the reporters asked Crowley – a diplomat who usually chooses his words carefully – whether he had used the word “Bibi” intentionally. “That was my choice of words,” the spokesman replied without blinking.
Obama, Netanyahu not talking
During her conversation with Netanyahu, Clinton said she could not understand why Israel acted the way it did in light of the strong American commitment to Israel’s security. She told the prime minister that he must demonstrate his commitment to Israel’s relations with the US and the peace process with actions, rather than just words.
And what does Clinton think about this commitment? In an interview to CNN, the secretary of state clarified that the US supports the two-state solution, “which the prime minister himself says he supports,” although she did not appear to believe it.
Despite the crisis, Clinton stressed that the relationship between the two countries was still pretty good, with deep coordination on both the diplomatic and political level. She explained that the crisis was between the leaders, not between the countries. “Our relationship is durable. It’s strong. It’s rooted in common values,” she said.
But on the personal level there is a problem. Obama and Netanyahu don’t like each other. After Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, who were able to call US President George W. Bush at almost any hour of the day, Netanyahu and Obama don’t even talk on the phone.
Netanyahu, who the White House has been suspecting since the beginning of his term, has completely lost his credibility in the eyes of the Obama administration, although it should be noted that the US president has no intimate relations with any other foreign leader.
The Washington Post last week discussed Obama’s lack of chemistry with other world leaders, saying that compared to Bush – who was hated by most of the people of the world but had excellent personal relations with most of their leaders – Obama is popular among the residents but has failed to create any special relationships with their leaders.
Netanyahu is expected to arrive in Washington next week for an AIPAC meeting while Obama will be travelling to Indonesia and Australia. The two leaders are scheduled to meet when the prime minister returns to the American capital in about a month for the Nuclear Security Summit hosted by the US president.
Gibbs, Axelrod to convey calming messages
Will the crisis between the leaders interfere with the American efforts on the Iranian issue? It’s hard to believe. Iran and its nuclear program is the most important diplomatic test in Obama’s career.
The Americans view Iran as a global problem directly threatening American interests. The Americans will continue sending officials to Israel and hosting Israeli officials in Washington in order to maintain the coordination on this matter.
In any event, the peak of the crisis appears to be over. America will be dealing intensively this week with the healthcare reform, Obama will leave for Indonesia and Clinton will travel to Moscow.
Sources in Washington say the administration will now try to lower the flames, stop the insults and manage the crisis. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs and senior advisor David Axelrod will be tasked with conveying calming messages on leading US television networks.
Meanwhile, Friedman wrote in his column, “the last thing the president needs, at a time when he is facing down Iran and China — not to mention Congress — is to look like America’s most dependent ally can push him around.
“Israel needs a wake-up call. Continuing to build settlements in the West Bank, and even housing in disputed east Jerusalem, is sheer madness,” he added.
He explained to his readers who the construction was an obstacle to any future peace agreement, specifically in the upcoming indirect talks.
“Only a right-wing prime minister, like Netanyahu, can make a deal over the West Bank; Netanyahu’s actual policies on the ground there have helped Palestinians grow their economy and put in place their own rebuilt security force, which is working with the Israeli Army to prevent terrorism; Palestinian leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad are as genuine and serious about working toward a solution as any Israel can hope to find; Hamas has halted its attacks on Israel from Gaza; with the Sunni Arabs obsessed over the Iran threat, their willingness to work with Israel has never been higher, and the best way to isolate Iran is to take the Palestinian conflict card out of Tehran’s hand.
“In sum, there may be a real opportunity here — if Netanyahu chooses to seize it. The Israeli leader needs to make up his mind whether he wants to make history or once again be a footnote to it” (click here to read the full article).