EDITOR: There is Only One Netanyahu
They may well believe in Washington thst they have some pull over Netanyahu, which only shows they are quite green around the ears. Netanyahu is only representing one thing – the continued control of Palestine by the IOF, with all the brutality and lawlessness that this means. If Obama either does not understand this, or worse, decides to avoid confrontation in an election year, he becomes another US collaborator of Zionist ethnic cleansing.
Netanyahu says East Jerusalem demands ‘prevent peace’: BBC
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will not accept demands that Israel stop building in occupied East Jerusalem.
Demands to halt building in the part of the city that Palestinians want as the capital of their future capital “prevented peace”, he told ABC news.
The comments by Israel’s prime minister come just days after the US pressed Israel to do more to pursue peace.
Relations have been strained between the two allies recently, reports say.
Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since 1967. It annexed the area in 1981 and sees it as its exclusive domain. Under international law the area is occupied territory. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.
Let’s get into the room and negotiate peace without preconditions
Benjamin Netanyahu
Mr Netanyahu said the Israeli government would discuss East Jerusalem as part of what he called “final discussions”, but it could not be a precondition to direct talks.
“This demand that they’ve now introduced, the Palestinians, to stop all construction, Jewish construction in Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem, is totally, totally a non-starter, because what it does is prevent peace.”
He said Israel was right to refuse the demand, as Palestinians would never accept preconditions to talks demanded by Israel.
“You would rightly say: ‘Ah, Israel is trying now to load the deck. To stack the deck. It’s trying not to enter in negotiations,'” he said.
“I say let’s remove all preconditions, including those on Jerusalem. Let’s get into the room and negotiate peace without preconditions. That’s the simplest way to get to peace.”
Under strain
He said direct talks were the only way to achieve peace.
But Palestinian leaders have said they will not enter any kind of negotiations with the Israelis until they show good faith by freezing the building of Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Last year Mr Netanyahu agreed to a 10-month building pause in the West Bank, but refused to include East Jerusalem.
In March the Palestinians said they would not get involved in indirect or proximity talks after new building plans in a Jewish neighbourhood of Eat Jerusalem were revealed.
While US Vice President Joe Biden was visiting Israel, it was announced that 1,600 new apartments would be built in the Jewish Orthodox district of Ramat Shlomo.
The announcement has put US – Israeli relations under strain.
On Friday US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton again called on Israel to do more to pursue peace with the Palestinians, repeating the demand that settlement building be halted.
The secretary of state said supporting the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas was the best weapon to counter Hamas and other extremists.
Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements in the West Bank, among a Palestinian population of about 2.5 million.
The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
The Middle East quartet – the US, EU, UN and Russia – has called for a halt in settlement building and immediate final status negotiations to reach a comprehensive peace deal within two years.
Netanyahu: Israeli construction in East Jerusalem is justified: Haaretz
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Monday that Israel would not accept Palestinian demands that it stop building settlements in East Jerusalem.
Appearing in an interview broadcast Monday on ABC’s Good Morning America, Netanyahu called the Palestinian demand that Israel stop building in settlements “unacceptable” and said this long-standing Israeli government position is not his alone, but rather dates to governments led by Golda Meir, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin.
Netanyahu has sought to minimize differences with U.S. President Barack Obama over the Middle East peace process. But he acknowledged on Monday that “we have some outstanding issues. We’re trying to resolve them through diplomatic channels in the best way that we can.”
During the interview, Netanyahu also urged the United States and the world to impose “crippling sanctions” on refined petroleum on Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
“If you stop Iran from importing refined petroleum – that’s a fancy word for gasoline – then Iran simply doesn’t have refining capacity and this regime comes to a halt,” Netanyahu said on the morning program.
The U.S. is leading a push in the United Nations to apply another round of sanctions against Iran in an effort to stop it from pursuing a nuclear program that Western nations believe is aimed at building atomic weapons.
Tehran says its program is designed to produce electricity for civilian use.
Calling the standoff with Iran “the biggest issue facing our times,” Netanyahu said the international community could deliver “crippling sanctions,” without the support of China and Russia, both permanent members of the UN Security Council.
“You’re left doing it outside the Security Council,” Netanyahu said. “There’s a coalition of the willing and you can have very powerful sanctions.”
Asked whether Obama had given assurances Washington would go along with refined oil sanctions and other restrictions, Netanyahu said: “What the United States has said is that they’re determined to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and I think that’s an important statement.”
The Israeli leader said his country would prefer that the international community led by the United States stop Iran’s nuclear program.
Netanyahu acknowledged that relations between the United States and Israel have gone through a bumpy patch lately, but he said the overall relationship between the two countries remained “rock solid.”
‘Palestinians will rule themselves’ says Ehud Barak: BBC
Ehud Barak was speaking as Israel commemorated soldeirs killed in action
Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak has said Israel must, eventually, allow the Palestinians to rule themselves.
In an interview with Army Radio he said in the future there would be a separate Palestinian state “whether you like it or not”.
The interview comes as Israelis mark Memorial Day, commemorating Israeli soldiers killed in action.
Mr Barak, a former top ranking soldier, leads the Labour Party which is part of the current government coalition.
“The world isn’t willing to accept, and we won’t change that in 2010, the expectation that Israel will rule another people for decades more,” he said.
We shouldn’t delude ourselves, the growing alienation between us and the United States is not good for Israel
Ehud Barak
“There is no other way, whether you like it or not, than to let them rule themselves,” he said, speaking about the idea of a separate Palestinian state.
‘Alienation’
He also warned of a growing rift between Israel and the United States. He said the government of Benjamin Netanyahu had “done things that didn’t come naturally to it”, like agreeing to a 10 month pause in settlement building and moving toward accepting the principle that there should be two states, one for Palestinians and one for Israelis.
“But we shouldn’t delude ourselves, the growing alienation between us and the United States is not good for Israel,” he said.
Israel’s Memorial Day commemorates some 22,600 soldiers killed in action and the 1,750 Israeli citizens killed in attacks by Palestinian militant groups.
It coincides with the celebration of Israel’s 62nd independence day.
In its 62nd year, Israel is in a diplomatic, security and moral limbo: Haaretz Editorial
The joy attendant on Israel’s Independence Day traditionally focused on emphasizing the growing list of the young state’s achievements and the sense that the country was progressing toward a better future – one of peace, enhanced physical and existential security, integration into the family of nations and the region, and a normalized existence. But the country’s lifespan, which was considered a great virtue in and of itself during the first few decades, has become secondary to a far more important question: Within what dynamic is Israel operating? Is time on Israel’s side? Is it setting goals for itself and working toward their realization? Has it blossomed into maturity? Are its citizens more secure and happier? Does it greet the future with hope?
Unfortunately, Israel’s 62nd Independence Day finds it in a kind of diplomatic, security and moral limbo that is certainly no cause for celebration. It is isolated globally and embroiled in a conflict with the superpower whose friendship and support are vital to its very existence. It is devoid of any diplomatic plan aside from holding onto the territories and afraid of any movement. It wallows in a sense of existential threat that has only grown with time. It seizes on every instance of anti-Semitism, whether real or imagined, as a pretext for continued apathy and passivity. In many respects, it seems that Israel has lost the dynamism and hope of its early decades, and is once again mired in the ghetto mentality against which its founders rebelled.
Granted, Israel is not the sole custodian of its fate. Yet the shortcomings that have cast a pall over the country since its founding – the ethnocentrism, the dominance of the army and religious functionaries, the socioeconomic gaps, the subservience to the settlers, the mystical mode of thinking and the adherence to false beliefs – have, instead of disappearing over time, only gathered steam. The optimistic, pragmatic, peace-seeking spirit that once filled the Israeli people, in tune with the Zionist revolution, which sought to alter Jewish fate, has weakened. And it is not clear whether the current government is deepening the reactionary counterrevolution or merely giving it faithful expression.
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On the eve of Independence Day last year, we wrote in this space: “Stagnation has taken the place of change. Not only does this government, which was formed not long ago, not bode well for hope and change. It champions a policy of regression in a number of areas: the diplomatic front; the Palestinian question; the state’s attitude toward the settlers; issues of state and religion; its handling of Israeli Arabs; and its general behavior toward our Arab neighbors and the world. Whoever clings to the vision of ‘managing the conflict’ and despairs of reaching a solution to the conflict will find himself treading water. Instead of growing and reinventing ourselves, we will be the ones managed by crises.”
It is saddening to discover that all these fears came true this year, to an even greater degree than we expected. When the prime minister’s main message to the country is that we are once again on the verge of a holocaust, and his vision consists primarily of delving into the Bible, nurturing nationalist symbols and clinging to “national heritage sites,” it seems that Hebrew independence has become a caricature of itself. One can only hope that forces within the nation will soon arise to reshape the state and the leadership in a way worthy of us all.
Arab-Israeli row thwarts Med water deal in Barcelona: BBC
Israel and its Arab neighbours disagree over scarce water resources
A row about how to name the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories has scuppered a 43-nation scheme for managing Mediterranean water resources.
The Mediterranean Union conference in Barcelona had hammered out 99% of a draft text, delegates said.
But the deal failed when Israel and Arab countries disagreed over how to describe the Palestinian territories.
Israel objected to “occupied territories”, while “territories under occupation” did not suit the Arab bloc.
The United Nations has warned that almost 300 million people in the Mediterranean region will face water shortages by 2025.
The Mediterranean Union was launched by France during its EU presidency in 2008, to foster co-operation between European states, and countries in the Middle East and North Africa bordering the Mediterranean.
In Barcelona on Tuesday the Union’s secretary-general, Ahmad Masadeh from Jordan, called for urgent action to guarantee access to water for all the region’s residents.
Spain, the conference host, warned that the Mediterranean was prone to cyclical floods and droughts that required a “common strategy for a scarce resource”.
Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have lived under Israeli occupation since 1967. The settlements that Israel has built in the West Bank are home to around 400,000 people and are deemed to be illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
Israel evacuated its settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and withdrew its forces, but Israel and Egypt maintain an economic blockade on the Palestinians living there.