Financial Times: Israel’s choice is land or peace: Financial Times
2 Sept 2010
Israeli-Palestinian talks is under way after a carefully choreographed White House ceremony rich in political pieties and low on substance. No sooner was it over than the questions began.
It is not just that, while both sides employ the same words – peace, two-states solution and so on – they mean different things. It is not just that both camps are split and their leaders may not be able to close a deal, were they to reach one. Nor is it just that Israel, as the occupier, able ultimately to count on unconditional US support, is so much more powerful than the occupied Palestinians.
Within weeks the talks could judder to a halt. On September 26, the partial Israeli moratorium on building settlements on occupied Palestinian land expires – and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu says it will not renew it.
While ways of fudging this are being looked at, the settlers’ lobby, powerful within Mr Netanyahu’s coalition and, indeed, his own Likud party, wants none of it.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, is under enormous pressure. He has nothing to show for his strategy of seeking a Palestinian state by negotiation. Israel has expanded the occupation, having taken 42 per cent of the West Bank according to B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group. To retain what little remains of his credibility, Mr Abbas may be forced to withdraw if the moratorium is not renewed.
The standstill was in any case relative. Exclusions of Palestinians from occupied east Jerusalem have increased. Two Arab villages have just been razed, in the Jordan Valley and Negev desert. Segregated, Israelis-only roads have bulldozed ahead. The situation is explosive enough even without the moratorium timebomb under the talks. Mr Abbas called off West Bank municipal elections in July, even though Hamas – which defeated his Fatah party in the 2006 general elections – was not standing.
While every consideration is being given to the delicacy of Mr Netanyahu’s position, little or none is accorded to Mr Abbas.
Yet, it should be perfectly obvious that talks aimed at the creation of a Palestinian state cannot possibly prosper while Israel continues its strategic colonisation of the land on which that state would be built. The US and its international partners must insist on a cessation of settlement-building.
Would this sink the Israeli coalition? Very possibly. But Mr Netanyahu has options, including an alliance with the centrist Kadima party. Mr Abbas has none.
Fidel Castro tells Ahmadinejad: Stop denying the Holocaust: Haaretz
‘The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust,’ former Cuban leader tells U.S. journal The Atlantic.
Cuba’s former leader Fidel Castro has urged Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to stop slandering the Jews, according to an article published on the U.S. website The Atlantic on Tuesday.
The ageing revolutionary devoted much of a five-hour conversation to the issue of anti-Semitism, wrote Jeffrey Goldberg, who interviewed Castro in the Cuban capital Havana.
Castro told The Atlantic that the Iranian government should understand the consequences anti-Semitism.
“This went on for maybe two thousand years,” he said. “I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims. They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything. No one blames the Muslims for anything.”
He added: “The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.”
Asked by Goldberg if he would repeat his comments to Ahmadinejad, Castro said. “I am saying this so you can communicate it.”
Following the interview, Goldberg spoke with Haaretz about his impression of the thinking behind Castro’s comments.
“I think he [Castro] realizes he’s gone too far in certain criticisms of Israel,” Goldberg said.
“I think he wants to be a player in this issue; and I think he’s genuinely offended by Holocaust denial.”
Ahmadinejad has publicy called the Holocaust “a myth”, claiming Jews exaggerated the Nazi genocide to win sympathy from European governments.
Legitimizing an obstacle to peace: Haaretz
I have often spoken out in opposition to cultural boycotts… but in the political arena, artists make a statement by their presence or their absence.
By Theodore Bikel
I feel compelled to speak out on the controversy surrounding the Israeli artists who have announced their refusal to perform in the territories. For the record, my career as a performer has spanned 68 years. In my 20s, I was a cofounder of the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv (of that group, I am the last one alive). I have resided in America since 1954, and as a concert artist I frequently work in the field of Jewish culture, performing in the languages of our people − Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino and even in English, the language spoken by the largest Jewish community in the world.
As president of the Associated Actors & Artistes of America (the umbrella union covering performers in the United States), I have often spoken out in opposition to cultural boycotts. I have argued that art opens minds and builds bridges, even when carried into the very heart of enemy territory − perhaps especially then. But life, as we know it, often defies simple formulas. In the political arena, artists make a statement by their presence or their absence.
Pablo Casals, the world-famous cellist, who chose life-long exile from his native Spain because of the fascist dictator who ruled the beloved country of his birth, said this: “My cello is my weapon; I choose where I play, when I play, and before whom I play.”
My own choices have often been dictated by similar sentiments. For many years, when apartheid was the law of the land there, I refused official invitations and lucrative offers to perform in South Africa. Indeed, I have always refused to appear in halls that were racially segregated, whether in America or elsewhere in the world. More than two years ago, I refused an invitation by the mayor of Ariel to appear at the opening of the very same cultural facility then under construction and now at the center of the controversy.
There are weighty reasons why I find myself in full support of the artists’ refusal to perform in the territories. And it should be noted that I am not alone in supporting the courageous stand of our Israeli colleagues. There is a growing list of over 150 prominent artists and arts leaders from the U.S. who have expressed similar concerns to mine.
The cause celebre regarding the new performance facility in Ariel has given rise to statements from the leaders of that community as well as from Prime Minister Netanyahu and the culture minister, Limor Livnat. While the latter asserts that “political disputes should be left outside cultural life and art,” both the prime minister and the settlers’ council make it clear that the matter is not about art at all, but about what they call an attack on Israel “from within.”
The declaration of conscience signed by prominent Israeli artists − among them recipients of the Israel Prize, the highest cultural accolade given by the state − is characterized as emanating from “anti-Zionist leftists” and is described by the prime minister as being part of an “international movement of delegitimization.”
Clearly, anything that is connected to the settlers or to the settlements’ presence beyond the Green Line is political. And, if the refusal of the artists to perform in the territories is tantamount to delegitimization, it follows that any agreement to perform there would amount to legitimizing what many of us (in and outside of Israel) believe to be the single most glaring obstacle to peace.
Theodore Bikel is a Tony- and Oscar-nominated actor and musician.
Israeli soldier jailed for killing British activist Tom Hurndall released early: The Guardian
Tasyir Hayb freed from prison with two years remaining on his eight-year sentence for Briton’s manslaughter in Gaza in 2003
Tom Hurndall was shot in the head by Israeli soldier Taysir Hayb in 2003 as he helped Palestinian children cross a street in Gaza. Photograph: Kay Fernandes/Reuters/HO Photograph: Ho/Reuters
The Israeli soldier convicted of killing British activist Tom Hurndall was released from prison today, two years before completing his sentence.
Tasyir Hayb was found guilty of manslaughter in 2005, when a military court found he had violated orders. He was also convicted him of obstruction of justice and false testimony. He has served six years of his eight-year sentence.
Hurndall, then 22, was shot in the head in April 2003 while he was helping Palestinian children cross a street in Rafah, in the Gaza strip. He had been filming with the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Hurndall fell into a coma and died the following year.
According to Israeli newspapers, the military prosecution opposed Hayb’s early release, fearing it would damage Israel’s relations with the UK. But a military committee overruled this last month, arguing that Hayb, 27, had been sufficiently rehabilitated.
Tom’s mother, Jocelyn, today said: “From the moment that Tom was shot, we said it wasn’t about the soldier, who is a small part of the machinery, but about the responsibility of the Israeli army and its lack of accountability over civilian killings. To say that the soldier has reformed is to miss the point – the British government needs to hold Israel accountable for its actions.”
Hayb’s release comes as the case against the Israeli state filed by the parents of Rachel Corrie, the American activist killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Rafah the month before Hurndall was shot, is reconvened in Israel.
Sha’ath: PA will never recognize Israel as Jewish: YNet
Week after launching of direct talks, Palestinian negotiator says recognizing Israel as Jewish state would ‘directly threaten Muslims, Christians’ and prevent Palestinian refugees from ‘returning to their homes’
“The Palestinian Authority will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state,” Palestinian negotiator Nabil Sha’ath said Wednesday, just a week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas launched direct talks in Washington.
“Such a declaration would directly threaten the Muslims and Christians in Israel and prevent Palestinian refugees, who left their homes and villages a number of decades ago, from being granted the right to return to them,” Sha’ath told reporters in Ramallah.
The senior Palestinian official said he was not opposed to a Jewish majority in Israel, but stressed that “the Palestinian problem is purely political.”
Sha’ath, a member of the Palestinian negotiating team, said Netanyahu planned to raise the issue (recognition of Israel as a Jewish state) at Sharm el-Sheikh, where the direct negotiations are set to resume in mid-August, “but we flatly rejected this demand.”
“We won’t expose our people to security and political threats,” he added.
Earlier this week, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said Israel’s demand to be recognized as a Jewish state is worrying.
“If the international community defines Israel as a Jewish state – such a decision should be approved by the UN,” Aboul Gheit said.