Day: 15 May 2010

Ameer Makhoul’s Political Detention Extended: The Alternative Information Center

A video report produced by The Alternative Information Center – 14 May 2010

On the 12th of May 2010, an Israeli Magistrates Court extended the political detentions of Palestinian civil society activists Dr. Omar Said and Ameer Makhoul by 4 and 5 days, respectively. The extensions were issued in closed door hearings in which Said and Makhoul were not permitted to meet their legal representatives.

Rupert Cornwell: A war that nobody wants: The Independent

Thursday, 13 May 2010
You don’t have to be a fan of Dr Strangelove to recognise that wars can start by accident – that if the tinder is properly laid, a small spark can set off an uncontrollable blaze. First comes the miscalculation, a relatively small aggression that provokes a far larger retaliation. Then the concern not to lose face takes over, the refusal by either side to be seen to be backing down. Before you know it, a skirmish has spiralled into full-scale conflict.

The tinder, and not for the first time, is perfectly in place along Israel’s northern border. The actors are familiar. The protagonists are an Israel determined to defend its territory from attack, and the militant Islamic group Hizbollah, based in Lebanon and also a potent force in that country’s politics. Aligned behind Hizbollah are its two patrons, Syria and Iran, each concerned to advance its own interests in the most combustible region on earth. Israel and Hizbollah went to war four summers ago, and a lot of people now worry that the old script is poised for a repeat. And what makes it even more worrying is that none of the parties involved seems to want a war.

Israel of course would like nothing better than to eliminate the military threat from Hizbollah once and for all. But it well remembers what happened in 2006. In response to Hizbollah rocket attacks, and then the kidnap of two of its soldiers, it invaded southern Lebanon and bombed Beirut. The war lasted a month, a thousand people died and swathes of Lebanon were laid waste. But not only was the Israeli response judged grossly disproportionate, costing it dear in the court of world opinion, the mere fact that, despite the onslaught, Hizbollah lived to fight another day meant that Israel was deemed the loser. Why run the risk of a similar outcome now? To avoid sending the wrong signals, Israel has scaled back recent military exercises in the north and publicly assured Syria that war is the last thing on its mind.

Nor are its adversaries spoiling for a re-match. Certainly not Lebanon, which stands only to be devastated once again. Probably not Hizbollah either, whatever the boost to its prestige in the Arab world for actually daring to take on overwhelmingly powerful Israel. Syria too would seem to have little interest in letting itself be dragged into a hot war with Israel that it is bound to lose – and at a moment when it is trying to mend fences with the US, Israel’s key ally, and re-insert itself into Middle East peace negotiations now flickering back into life with “proximity talks” between Israelis and Palestinians.

And even Iran, for all its belligerent rhetoric, does not look to be spoiling for a real fight. After all, it is doing quite nicely as it is, pushing ahead with its nuclear programme while the West fails to agree on sanctions, and daring Israel and/or the US to attack its nuclear installations, and risk unleashing a regional war in which even the Lebanese front would probably be a sideshow.

But to call the stand-off uneasy is an understatement. Let us hope that the old Roman adage of, “if you want peace, prepare for war” still holds good in the Middle East. Thanks to reported deliveries of Scud missiles as well as nimbler and less detectable M-600 rockets from Syria, Hizbollah is now better armed than in 2006.

Both Israel and the Americans have told Syria to stop, and the US has delayed sending a new ambassador to Damascus to underline its displeasure. But apparently to no avail. The arms flow continues, even though Lebanon says the deliveries are no more real than Saddam Hussein’s imaginary WMDs. So the question becomes, how long will Israel put up with it?

And Hizbollah’s rearmament is just one possible casus belli. Another is a Hizbollah strike against an Israeli target outside Israel, perhaps in revenge for the 2008 killing of its then military commander Imad Mugniyah, which it blames on Israel. Then of course there is the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran. But on one thing Hizbollah and Israel do agree: if war were to come, 2006 would look like a warm-up in comparison. Back then, President Bush (backed by Tony Blair) ignored international calls for a ceasefire for as long as he could, to allow Israel a chance to finish the job, and Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, even described the war as the “birth pangs of the new Middle East”. Next time around, “death throes” might be a better choice of phrase.

No one wants a new war – but then no one wanted the First World War in the form it ultimately took. President Obama is now being urged to present his own comprehensive plan for a Middle East settlement. The tension on Israel’s northern border is one very good reason why.

Will anyone be Obama’s soulmate?
Mention of Barack Obama, and the arrival of David Cameron in the job once held by Tony Blair, prompts a separate thought. For all his global popularity, The Washington Post wondered recently, does the US President have any real mates among other foreign leaders? Gordon Brown wasn’t one. Nor, as far as can be judged, are either Nicolas Sarkozy or Angela Merkel, or China’s President Hu for that matter. Despite the cloying show of amity in Washington yesterday, Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai certainly isn’t one. Nor is Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. The closest thing to an Obama confidant, wrote the Post, might be Dimtri Medvedev – which given Russia was America’s arch foe in the Cold War, would be quite a turnaround.

These are, of course, early days. Obama’s been in office barely 15 months, and he’s had more than enough on his plate at home. But the question is not an idle one. Leadership is a desperately lonely business, which only other leaders can fully understand. Most presidents find a soulmate or two. But not yet, it would seem, Obama. Might this be an opening for our Dave?

EDITOR: Israel prepares for war

And just to prove the point made above, an article from someone quite clearly not on the left, published on the same day, castigating officers who shoot their mouth. “If you are going to shoot, shoot! Don’t talk”, is the motto of Yoel Markus, and it seems, of Israel. This war mongering will not stop at the Middle East; the west, which aided and abetted it, playing a role written  in Jerusalem, will suffer the consequences. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Thus spoke the dairy farmer: Haaretz

By Yoel Marcus
Many years ago, the incumbent chief of staff spoke at a prestigious club that used to host a prominent government figure every Friday. Mostly, reporters were also invited, and if there were no scoops to be had, at least they got a nice free lunch. I was present at that luncheon, and the CoS spoke such a lot of nonsense that I wrote a critical piece about his speech. Astonishingly, the military censor blue-penciled the whole article. The editor of Haaretz at that time, Gershom Schocken, taken aback at the deletion of an article about a public speech, called the censor, who came up with reasoning that sounded like a joke: The writer depicted the CoS as a fool, and that harmed security. Stunned by this reply, Schocken decided to go ahead and publish the piece, and the next day the paper received a substantial fine.

What has reminded me of this now? Well, Moshe “Bogey” Ya’alon, the deputy prime minister and minister of strategic affairs, and a former CoS himself, has threatened, plain and simple, to attack Iran. “There is no doubt that the technological resources that Israel has developed in recent years have improved the range and capabilities of aerial refueling,” he stated in a speech at the Fisher Brothers Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies in Herzliya. “From my point of view, all that remains is the best possible form of defense. And our capabilities are applicable in distant wars in such places as Iran.”
It is hard to believe that a man who served as head of Military Intelligence and ended up as CoS (although he did chatter himself into career suicide by saying that the grass around the IDF HQ is full of snakes ) would speak as if he were a lecturer at the university of Timbuktu. Is it conceivable that a deputy premier and a member of the seven-minister inner cabinet, a man who single-handedly can not only damage Israel’s cherished ambiguity policy but also cause the country to come under the inspection of the International Atomic Energy Agency, should let his tongue run free like this?

Moshe Vered, a former Defense Ministry official, has written a research paper, published by Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center, in which he posits that if we were to attack Iran, it would not take it lying down but would respond with all the weaponry at its disposal. Perhaps. But when Ya’alon declares that Israel is warming up its engines, he reminds me of Eli Wallach’s immortal line in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”: “When you have to shoot, shoot, don’t talk.”

With this kind of threat, we fit well into this part of the world, where everyone threatens everyone else. It’s a pity that we’ve sunk this low. David Ben-Gurion never threatened. The chattering proves that this government is disorderly. It is inconceivable that every minister can threaten to attack Iran or build Jewish housing in East Jerusalem. If we face a strategic threat, Ya’alon himself embodies it with his big mouth. Defense Minister Ehud Barak was right when he told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Israel was facing erosion in its international standing, but he nevertheless did not think there was a concrete threat to its position of nuclear ambiguity, despite the tension with the American government.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week made it clear that Israel did not intend to attack its neighbors. But it’s a pity that Bibi doesn’t rebuke his deputy. As the old saw goes, seven wise men won’t be able to extricate a stone that an idiot has dropped into a well. Nowadays, when the head of Military Intelligence’s research division, Brig.-Gen Yossi Baidatz, says that Hezbollah has received accurate rockets with half-ton warheads from Syria and Iran, it is clearly advisable to speak less and act to calm the neighborhood down.

The proximity talks are still looking like a bizarre move. They are like a wedding canopy which both the bride and the groom are reluctant to step under. What did the sides speak and agree about in the protracted talks they have had – to start indirect talks now? To start everything from scratch again? After all, the problems are well known, all the transcripts are filed away on the shelves. President Obama’s determined stance is also well known, and if he doesn’t apply pressure now, it’ll come after the mid-term elections at the end of the year. Whether the president takes a body blow in the House of Representatives or wins a victory, he will focus on a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a strategic move toward neutralizing the Axis of Evil, something that is also in our interest. Netanyahu’s cabinet is the biggest ever, and he enjoys optimal conditions for moving toward a solution: both a big government and a solid parliamentary majority with Kadima, which would support a solution. And there is a U.S. government that is committed to Israel’s security.

As prime minister, Bibi has ideal conditions – the best there have ever been, including public opinion – to set Israel’s permanent borders, as well as the support of most of the public for forcible action against the extremist settlers who would lift the banner of rebellion. The law of the secular government is the law, says the Talmud, and it supersedes any religious objections. Listen to what the majority of the nation wants, and not the declarations of the former dairy farmer from Kibbutz Grofit, Lt. Gen. (Res. ) Ya’alon.

Continue reading May 15, 2010