EU’s Ashton: Israel must open all Gaza border crossings: Haaretz
European Union’s FM says ahead of three-day visit to the region that the organization has been calling for ‘fundamental’ changes of policy regarding Gaza blockade.
The European Union urges Israel to open all Gaza border crossings, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton said Friday, ahead of her planned three-day visit to the region.
“The European Union has been calling for an urgent and fundamental change of policy regarding the closure of Gaza,” Ashton said before departing for Israel.
Referring to a recent cabinet decision to lift the ban on some of the products which Isrtael previously prohibited from entering the Strip, Ashton said the EU “welcomed the announcements made by Israel following the flotilla incident and are now awaiting their implementation.”
“We stand ready to support the opening of the Gaza crossings for the traffic of goods to and from Gaza,” she continued.
During her visit, Ashton will meet with Israeli and Palestinian leadership – including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, as well as the Quartet’s special envoy to the Middle East, Tony Blair.
Ashton also reportedly plans to visit UNRWA projects sites in Gaza on Sunday.
In its statement the PMO emphasized that the change would not counter Israel’s policy “to defend it citizens against terror, rocket fire or any other hostile activities from Gaza.”
Late last month, Israel approved a loosening in its blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, with the highlight of the new policy being the fact that only weapons or “dual-use” materials that could be used to manufacture weapons will be on the list. Any item not on the list will be permitted into Gaza.
Large quantities of building materials are to be brought in for projects with PA approval such as schools, clinics and water and sewage infrastructure. Building materials for homes in Khan Yunis and other Gazan towns will also be allowed in.
All construction projects are to be under close UN supervision to ensure that Hamas does not use the building material for fortifications and bunkers.
“Israel seeks to keep out of Gaza weapons and material that Hamas uses to prepare and carry out terror and rocket attacks toward Israel and its civilians,” Netanyahu said. “All other goods will be allowed into Gaza.”
House-by-house struggle for East Jerusalem: BBC
By Jeremy Bowen
BBC Middle East editor
Sometimes you can see just why it is so difficult to make peace in Jerusalem.
This city excites strong passions.
Not only is it holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians. It is also a national symbol for Israelis and Palestinians.
No piece of ground on the planet is more contested. It has changed hands violently many times.
On a dusty, narrow and steep street on the Israeli occupied eastern side of the city stands a battered seven-storey building. Scorch marks smudge the stonework around some of the windows.
When cars pull up, security guards wearing flak jackets emerge from the building’s heavy door to escort the passengers inside.
Quite often patrols from Israel’s paramilitary border police trudge past, wearing combat helmets, carrying M-16 assault rifles, with rubber clubs shoved inside their backpacks.
‘Just business’
The building’s name is Beit Yonatan, Hebrew for Jonathan House. It is named after Jonathan Pollard, who has served 23 years in an American prison for spying for Israel.
I was given a tour of the building by Daniel Luria, an Israeli who works for a Jewish group called Ateret Cohanim. He said the marks round the windows were made by petrol bombs.
Ateret Cohanim is an organisation that helps Jews buy houses, flats and land from Palestinians. Usually they pay well over the market rate.
The newly rich Palestinians who sell often have to disappear – usually abroad – because they are considered traitors.
Mr Luria said it was just business.
“An Arab wants to sell, a Jew wants to buy. It’s that simple. We help them do it.”
The building’s residents call their section of Israeli occupied East Jerusalem the Yemenite Village, after a small group of Jews who lived there until 1938.
The district, which is overwhelmingly Palestinian, is more commonly known as Silwan.
The Israelis who live there, including families with young children, are highly motivated religious nationalists.
They believe that they are doing God’s will. They want Beit Yonatan to be the beginning of a Jewish community in Silwan.
Mr Luria said that if local Palestinians didn’t like that, they should leave.
State backing
The Israeli state has worked long and hard, and spent a great deal of money, to make the walled Old City and the territory it captured in and around Jerusalem in the 1967 war more Jewish.
Its project started as soon as the shooting stopped in 1967, and it continues. Ateret Cohanim regards itself as a vital player in a national struggle.
I asked Mr Luria if he was fighting house-by-house to control the place he says is no longer Arab Jerusalem. He said it was inch-by-inch.
The state helps in all sorts of ways.
The vehicles that pull up outside Beit Yonatan are armoured. The government pays for the private security company which shuttles the residents in and protects the building.
In a court petition, government lawyers justified the expense by saying their lives were in danger.
An order was issued more than two years ago for the Jews who live in Beit Yonatan to leave and for the building to be sealed, as it was built illegally. But the police have never carried it out.
Settlers who go to live in the heart of Palestinian communities in Jerusalem are regarded as trouble-makers by many Israelis who believe in making peace. Their presence raises the tension considerably.
Palestinian story
But Mr Luria, sat in an armoured land rover as we were driven through streets he regards as hostile, dismissed the idea, insisting that his views were shared by most Israelis.
“Land for peace doesn’t work… The world has to wake up to reality that Jerusalem, it’s impossible to divide.
“Jerusalem is the centre of the Jewish world. For a Jew, for generations, the best thing they could do is to sing ‘next year in Jerusalem’ on Passover. Today they have the opportunity to live close to God’s house, near Temple Mount.
“Every Jew wants a piece of the action, wants to be here, close to God in the heart of Jerusalem,” Mr Luria said.
Just down the road from Beit Yonatan, behind a dented steel gate, is the home of the Palestinian Abu Nab family.
Three brothers and their wives and children live there, 45 people in all. The family has rented the property since 1948.
Ateret Cohanim, which is eyeing the property, says the building once was a synagogue.
Abdullah Abu Nab, one of the brothers, said that a year ago they were offered $1m (£647,306) to move out. They refused.
“I told him that even if you pay for every single centimetre in gold I won’t agree to leave. I’ll only leave my home dead – or they’ll have to throw me out in the street,” Mr Abu Nab said.
“Those who have no religion will sell, but those who have faith won’t give up their land – the land of our Palestinian grandfathers. Money isn’t tempting, because money comes and money goes.”
His family have now been served with an eviction notice. The Palestinian community in that part of Silwan reacted with fury and there were serious clashes with Israeli security forces. The area is still tense.
Even though some Palestinians have taken the money that is on offer from Ateret Cohanim and its wealthy supporters, many others have not. The Palestinians have learnt over the years that if they leave their land, Israel is not likely to allow them back.
Mr Luria says his side is winning. But there is no chance of peace in Jerusalem if Israel ignores Palestinian rights in the holy city that both sides believe is their birthright.
EDITOR: A voice in the wilderness
David landau, ex-editor of Haaretz, who cannot be described as a lefty by any stretch of imagination, calls in a courageous article to boycott the Israeli parliament, the Knesset! Evena year ago, this could only happen in Science Fiction rather than in the realities of the Israeli polis.
Boycott the Knesset: Haaretz
I am hastening to call for this boycott because I want to earn a footnote in Jewish history: He tried, Canute-like, to stand against the wave of fascism that engulfed the Zionist project.
By David Landau
I hereby call for a boycott of the Knesset.
A bill proposed by coalition chairman Ze’ev Elkin (Likud ) and the chairwoman of the Kadima faction, Dalia Itzik, together with MK Aryeh Eldad of the National Union, would punish any Israeli calling for a boycott of any Israeli individual or institution, whether in Israel or in the territories. The fine is NIS 30,000, plus any damages that can be proven. The bill passed its preliminary reading on Wednesday.
I therefore call for a boycott of Ze’ev Elkin and Dalia Itzik as individuals (no point in boycotting Dr. Eldad; he would thrive on it ), and of the Knesset as an institution. I call on parliaments throughout the democratic world, and interparliamentary associations, to boycott Israel’s parliament, once the pride of the Jewish people, until it buries the bill and recovers its democratic heritage.
That would also, of course, require revoking the infamous vote, also taken on Wednesday, in which MK Hanin Zuabi was deprived of parliamentary privileges because she took part in May’s flotilla to Gaza (believing it would be nonviolent ).
I am hastening to call for this boycott because I want to be the first person prosecuted under the new bill when it becomes law. This article will still be out there on the Internet, and I ought therefore to qualify. I want to earn a footnote in Jewish history: He tried, Canute-like, to stand against the wave of fascism that engulfed the Zionist project. I’m ready to pay NIS 30,000 for that.
Beyond that little vanity, perhaps a call to boycott the Knesset, if it gained any traction, could puncture that most smug and pernicious piece of propaganda: that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East.”
Israel is a democracy for Jews. “We’ll deal with your presence in the Knesset later,” MK Ofir Akunis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s longtime aide, informed Arab MK Ahmed Tibi ominously, unashamedly. True, he was admonished by the Knesset Speaker, Reuven Rivlin. But Rivlin the democrat is a mere fig leaf now, a holdover from another age.
Meanwhile, at any rate, Tibi’s still there. But four million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation have no political rights at all. Plainly, as was predicted decades ago by the peace camp, it is the occupation that is eroding democracy inside Israel.
The settlers got it right, too. “Yesha zeh kaan” – “Judea and Samaria are right here.”
This article would not be complete without the ritual, required – and actually completely true – addendum: I deprecate and despise the people calling for boycotts of Israeli universities. I most especially disdain them if they themselves remain faculty members of those same universities. Israeli universities do not deserve to be boycotted.
I know that “deserve to be boycotted” opens up a whole other can of worms. Do settler wines, for instance, deserve to be boycotted? I was in a restaurant recently where a salesperson from Barkan Winery was promoting her products. When someone muttered something about “boycott,” she smoothly replied that the winery had long ago moved to inside the Green Line. It was not a settler business, and there was no reason, therefore, for anyone to boycott it. So boycotts work, apparently.
But things are not always all that simple, given the complicated lives we lead here, in the fifth decade of the occupation. My darling grandchildren live in a settlement (albeit within one of the “blocs” ). Do I call for a boycott of them? I had better not, or they’ll call for a boycott of me.