EDITOR: Shock and surprise…
How could anyone still pretend to be surprised by the sun coming up in the morning… Every child in Israel and Palestine must have been quite clear about the situation, so what is this pretense of surprise? Nethanyahu was, and is, an enemy of just peace in Palestine. All and sundry must have already understood this a long time ago, apart from President Obama, or is it still President Bush in the White House? One can get easily confused.
Diplomats: Mitchell misrepresented initial success of peace talks: Haaretz
Netanyahu refused to hold a serious discussion on any of the core issues apart from security, Abbas reportedly told diplomats.
The three meetings held so far between Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the current round of peace talks have addressed nothing of substance, diplomatic sources say.
American mediators are still trying to save the talks from collapsing in the crisis following the resumption of construction in settlements.
Netanyahu refused to hold a serious discussion on any of the core issues apart from security, Abbas reportedly told diplomats he met at the UN General Assembly. Israeli and foreign sources say the main problem is that Netanyahu refuses to present fundamental positions or discuss the borders of the Palestinian state.
“I heard nothing from Netanyahu but niceties,” Abbas reportedly told foreign diplomats.
U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell presented the talks as very successful, saying they were moving more rapidly than those in Northern Ireland, where he also served as mediator. He said Abbas and Netanyahu were dealing with all the tough issues and not leaving them to the end of the discussions.
But both Israeli and Palestinian sources said Mitchell’s statement was “inaccurate” at best. A European diplomat who met the Palestinian negotiating team in New York about a week ago told Haaretz the Palestinians were furious with Mitchell. “He gave a false presentation of progress,” the diplomat said a Palestinian official had told him.
Five Israeli and foreign diplomats, who were briefed about the Netanyahu-Abbas meetings by one of the parties or by senior American officials, said prospects for progress in the talks remained gloomy, even if the construction crisis were solved.
The two first meetings, held during the talks’ launch in Washington on September 2 and at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit on September 14, mainly dealt with technical matters like the order of the topics to be discussed and the future of the construction freeze in the settlements.
The first meeting dealt with setting a date for the next meeting and with formulating a “conduct code” for the talks, mainly to prevent leaks. They also discussed the construction freeze and what to discuss first – security or borders.
After the second meeting, Mitchell said the parties had discussed seriously and in detail core issues of the final status arrangement. But officials briefed about that meeting said it dealt with an attempt to define the “core issues” rather than presenting positions on them.
The sources said this discussion was strange as at least two Israeli governments had reached an agreement with the Palestinians on this issue.
The sources said the sterile discussion about whether to discuss borders or security first, or both issues simultaneously, continued.
Mitchell described the third meeting, held on September 15 in Jerusalem, as very positive and said it made considerable progress. Here too officials familiar with the talks said the opposite is true.
Abbas presented Netanyahu with all the details of his talks with former prime minister Ehud Olmert and the current Palestinian stands on borders, security, the refugees, Jerusalem and the settlements. Netanyahu refused to comment on the Palestinian positions, especially on the borders, and would only present his position on the security arrangements.
Abbas was “alarmed” to hear at that meeting that Netanyahu was interested in reaching a framework agreement within a year, but in implementing it over a period of at least 20 years, a European diplomat said.
The American brokers were reportedly extremely frustrated after the meeting in Jerusalem and some of them wondered if the talks hadn’t in fact gone backward.
A source close to the prime minister confirmed that Netanyahu refused to go into core issues such as the borders in detail. As long as the construction crisis was not over and the talks’ continuation was not assured, Netanyahu did not want to present a position that could endanger him politically, the source explained.
Architects against Israeli occupation: The Guardian CiF
Compromising architecture? A construction site in the West Bank settlement of Ariel. Photograph: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images
In deciding to back the boycott of Ariel theatre in the West Bank, Frank Gehry, the Canadian-American architect of Guggenheim fame, joins a growing body of professionals who are making a stand against the illegal settlements. Ariel, a quintessential illegal settlement, is continually expanding to fit the over-generous boundaries staked out over Palestinian land, choking the development of Palestinian villages nearby. Its new state-funded cultural centre, 20 years in the construction, is due to open in November.
Architecture and planning are instruments of the occupation, and constitute part of a continuing war against a whole people, whether as a minority within Israel’s green line, or in the occupied territories. Since this involves dispossession, discrimination and acquisition of land and homes by force, against the Geneva conventions, it can be classified as participation in war crimes.
Arbitrary planning laws are not enforced in the many illegal projects built by settlers, and major development plans are implemented without complete approval. Areas owned by Palestinians are simply declared to be green areas, making their presence there “illegal”.
What can one say about the Israeli architects who follow the state’s policies and aims yet deny that their role is political? Despite all the evidence of illegality under international law and breaches of human rights in the land grabs, house demolitions and evictions, Israeli architects and planners continue their activities. They cannot claim that they do not know: there have been plenty of calls for them to stop.
More of the illegal projects that have been built over the last four decades are ready to go now that the recent settlement freeze has ended – with no sign of resistance or protest from the Israeli Association of United Architects (IAUA). This applies not only to ultra-Zionist architecture firms but mainstream architects of international repute such as Moshe Safdie and Shlomo Aronson. Safdie has been responsible for the now notorious Plan 11555 for the extreme nationalist settler movement Elad that has, in effect, been given control of Silwan, a Palestinian neighbourhood in East Jerusalem.
The International Union of Architects (UIA) has already taken note that Israeli architecture and planning in the West Bank is contrary to its professional ethics and codes of conduct. After Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine raised this issue at the UIA council meeting in Brazil in July 2009, the UIA issued a statement saying:
“The UIA council condemns development projects and the construction of buildings on land that has been ethnically purified or illegally appropriated, and projects based on regulations that are ethnically or culturally discriminatory, and similarly it condemns all action contravening the fourth Geneva Convention.”
With settlers now celebrating the prospect of thousands of new housing units being built in the West Bank, Israeli architects will continue reaping the bonanza of a housing boom that has continued for decades. Writing in Haaretz earlier this month, Esther Zandberg, the paper’s architecture correspondent, said:
“Trends and world-views seep in from the other side of the Green Line and impact on architecture in the rest of Israel more than architects are willing to admit. A protest by established architects within the community, figures with a reputation and influence, could lead to a protest movement that will draw many, restore to architecture its confidence in itself and its values, and may also make its own contribution to the end of the conflict over the land. Architects? Protest? Peace really can happen.”
The international solidarity movement has decided that the best way to change Israel’s behaviour is to take actions against Israeli companies and institutions in order to put pressure on the government there. Last year, as the result of a campaign led by APJP, Pacbi and universities in Europe, Spain disqualified architecture students from the “Ariel University Centre of Samaria” (sic) from a competition to build a solar house in the Solar Decathlon in Madrid. “Spain acted in line with European Union policy of opposing Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land,” a Spanish official said.
Since little seems forthcoming from the Israeli architects’ body, despite appeals over the last decade, the responsibility falls on architects worldwide and the UIA to press for action to end this complicity, and defend the ethics and humanity of their profession.
A Nobel Peace Prize laureate in prison: Haaretz
If the court indeed deports Mairead Corrigan-Maguire we’ll know that our court system is also tainted to the teeth
By Gideon Levy
The photograph was recently distributed by the IDF’s propagandists: Mairead Corrigan-Maguire is seen being taken off the abducted ship Rachel Corrie at Ashdod port, as a soldier from the world’s most moral army holds out his hand to help the honorable woman disembark. It was not long after the IDF’s violent takeover of the Mavi Marmara, and Israeli propagandists were now hastening to peddle their cheap merchandise, showing how Israel treats “real” peace activists, as opposed to the Turkish “terrorists” on the earlier vessel.
Only four months have passed since the earlier event, and the very same lady has now spent a weekend in the deportees’ cell at Ben-Gurion Airport. While we were having another warm, pleasant weekend, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate sat in an Israeli jail and nobody seemed to care. We were not ashamed, we were not outraged, we did not make a sound. It was a spectacle that could only have taken place in Israel, North Korea, Burma (Myanmar ) and Iran – the state imprisoning and deporting a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize – and raised no more than a yawn here.
One court has already upheld the deportation, in a characteristically automatic action, and the Supreme Court will debate it today.
The new Israel is once again portrayed as an indrawn, detestable state, with a branch of the thought police at Ben-Gurion Airport. World-renowned intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, Spain’s most famous clown Ivan Prado and now Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, are deported from it shamefacedly only because they dared to visit the country. And all this is backed by pathological public indifference.
The Irish Corrigan-Maguire is the victim of state terror. A former secretary at the Guinness Brewery in Belfast, she had three nephews, all children at the time, who were killed during a British targeted assassination in Northern Ireland. Their mother, her sister, who committed suicide some time later, was also badly injured in the attack. Corrigan Maguire eventually married her sister’s widower and adopted his children. The frightful family tragedy turned her into a peace activist, and she began to hoist the flag of non-violent resistance. For this she won the Nobel Peace Prize for 1976 (awarded retroactively the following year ).
In recent years, Corrigan-Maguire has tried to hoist this flag in Israel, which knows a lot about state terror, assassinations and killing passersby, yet is now brutally closing its gates in her face.
Corrigan-Maguire demonstrated in Bil’in a few months ago and took part in two flotillas to Gaza. This is her sin. Israel is also claiming Corrigan-Maguire “ran wild” while officials tried forcibly to put her on an airplane. It is difficult to imagine this gentle woman running wild. She herself says she only tried to resist passively in order to complete the petition procedure granted her by law.
Israel, like North Korea, must have something to hide about its occupation regime and this is why it prevents people of conscience from entering and report about it to the world. Israel, like North Korea, is afraid of anyone who tries to protest against it or criticize its regime. No terrorists will enter here, but neither will anyone who opposes terror yet dares to criticize the occupation. For safety’s sake,let’s call them “terrorists” too, as we falsely called the Turkish activists. It will make it easier for us to deal with them. Yes, we prefer terror, because we know well how to handle it.
All those who are preaching sanctimoniously to the Palestinians to practice non-violent resistance had better take a look at the deportees’ prison in Ben- Gurion Airport. This is how non-violent protesters will be treated. A peace activist is being held there, a woman of conscience who was allowed to receive her personal effects over the weekend only after the invention of the district court in Petah Tikva. She awaits the ruling of our beacon of justice, the Supreme Court, which, one may guess, will also not dare to object to the deportation.
If the court indeed upholds the disgraceful act today, in response to the Adalah organization’s petition, then we’ll know not only what we’ve become – that this is how we treat those who advocate non-violence – but that our court system is also a collaborator in the treachery and is tainted to the teeth.
A Nobel Prize laureate sits in Israeli detention, a few days after Israel hijacked another Gaza-bound aid boat, whose passengers included a Jewish Holocaust survivor, an Israeli father who lost a child to terror, and an air force pilot-turned-conscientious objector. It hijacked the boat to prevent them from reaching their destination and reminding the world of the blockade. This is the portrait of Israel today.
Court: Irish Nobel laureate to be deported from Israel: Haaretz
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, who was deported from Israel after joining a Gaza-bound aid ship, is currently in a detention facility at the airport pending an appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Petah Tikva District Court rejected Friday an appeal against the deportation of Irish Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, who has been denied entry to Israel.
The Nobel laureate’s deportation, however, has been suspended for 48 hours in order to allow Corrigan-Maguire to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Corrigan-Maguire has been in a detention facility at Ben-Gurion International Airport since she was stopped by police for contravening a prohibition against entering Israel, imposed after she took part in a mission aimed at violating Israel’s naval blockade on the Gaza Strip, aboard the Rachel Corrie ship, in early June.
The MV Rachel Corrie was intercepted in June after the Gaza-bound aid ship refused to adhere to Israel’s requests to dock in the country and transfer its cargo to Gaza after inspection. The ship was then transported to the Ashdod port, and its passengers were deported from the country.
Before she was deported, Corrigan-Maguire signed a document stating that she was prohibited from entering Israel for the next 10 years. Corrigan-Maguire, however, says she was misled and had not agreed to such a condition.
High Court Justice Esther Hayut ordered the Petah Tikva court to hear Corrigan-Maguire’s case after hearing a petition submitted on behalf of the Irish peace activist on Wednesday at 1 A.M. by Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.
Adalah asked Justice Hayut to issue a temporary injunction against Corrigan-Maguire’s deportation. In addition to instructing the Petah Tikva District Court to hear the case, Hayut also ordered that Corrigan-Maguire’s belongings be returned to her.