Both Israel and Hamas say open to truce if other side stops firing: Haaretz
Qassam strikes south of Ashkelon, mortar fire continues on Negev after Palestinian militants launched more than 120 rounds at Israel over the weekend; 19 Palestinians killed in IAF retaliatory attacks.
Both Hamas and Israel on Sunday signaled willingness to agree to a mutual cease-fire to end days of cross-border violence that saw at least 19 Palestinians killed and more than 100 rockets fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel would be willing to accept a mutual cease-fire with Hamas if the movement stopped firing from Gaza. “If they stop firing on our communities, we will stop firing. If they stop firing in general, it will be quiet, it will be good,” Barak told Israel Radio.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters that “The Palestinian factions are not interested in escalation,” adding: “If the Israeli aggression stopped, it would be natural for calm to be restored.”
Palestinian militants fired approximately 120 rockets and mortars at Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip over the weekend, with tens of thousands of people spending the past few nights in reinforced rooms.
Another three mortar rounds hit the Negev early Sunday and a Qassam rocket exploded south of Ashkelon later in the morning. No casualties were reported, but electricity was temporarily cut in parts of the region.
A total of 38 rockets were fired at Israel on Saturday, 23 of which were aimed at Negev communities and 15 at communities in the Lachish region. There were no injuries in the Palestinian rocket barrage, but damage to homes and poultry runs in the Eshkol region was extensive. Most fell in open areas.
The Israel Air Force’s Iron Dome system has successfully intercepted a total of eight rockets fired at Ashkelon and Be’er Sheva since Thursday.
In Gaza, the death toll among Palestinian militants and civilians climbed to 19 since Israel launched its retaliation for a rocket attack on a school bus that critically wounded a teenager on Thursday.
Asked if Israel was considering a ground offensive into the Gaza Strip to end Hamas’s rule there, Barak said all options were on the table, but that it may not be necessary.
“If it will be necessary, we will act, but when it’s not necessary, we don’t need to,” he said. “Restraint is also a form of strength.”
GOC Southern Command Tal Russo met Friday with the heads of the local authorities near Gaza and said Thursday’s rocket attack on a school bus, which critically injured 16-year-old Daniel Viflic “crossed red lines.”
“We are in the midst of action, and we will weigh all options of response,” Russo added.
According to the head of emergency medical services in Gaza, Adham Abu-Salmiya, most of those hit were civilians, and among the dead were several women and children.
Five Palestinians were killed on Thursday, and 10 on Friday, among them a 45-year-old woman, Najah Kadih, and her 25-year-old daughter, Nadal Kadih, in Khan Yunis, according to Palestinian reports.
The IDF said it regretted the deaths of non-combatants but accused Hamas of continuing to operate from within civilian population concentrations.
Two of those killed Friday were identified as members of the military wings of Islamic Jihad and Hamas, Balal al-Ariar and Riyad Shehada, according to statements from those groups.
Among the dead was also a 10-year-old boy, Wail al-Jaro.
According to Hamas, two senior militants of the Hamas military wing were killed Saturday morning and one was critically injured when the vehicle in which they were riding was fired on from the air west of Rafah.
The two men killed were identified by Palestinian sources as Taysir Abu Sanima and Mohammad al-Uja. Abu Sanima is suspected of involvement in the abduction of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit and is also believed to have been behind the firing of Katyusha rockets a few months ago from Sinai to Eilat.
Reports from Gaza say that the Israel Defense Forces fired heavy artillery from tanks and cannons as well as from the air, including from F-16s.
A 30-year-old militant of the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, Zoheir Albar, was killed in an artillery strike on the Zeitun neighborhood of Gaza City. Three more militants were injured in the same incident, two of them seriously.
Palestinian sources reported Saturday that a civilian in his 50s, Ahmed Azeituna, was killed by an artillery shell in Jabalya, north of Gaza City.
Hamas denounced what it called international silence in the face of Israeli aggression, particularly by the European Union, considering that Hamas had announced a cease-fire after it fired at the school bus Thursday.
The Arab League is to convene an emergency meeting today in response to a demand by Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas called on the Arab League and the European Union to pressure Israel to stop the fighting.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said Saturday that Israel had continued artillery and aerial fire on civilian concentrations and while Hamas did not want to be dragged into conflict with Israel, it could not ignore what he said was Israel’s aggression. The Hamas military wing said it would respond accordingly to Israeli aggression and Hamas military wing spokesman Abu Obeida said: “Palestinian blood is not for forfeiting.”
Security sources said Saturday that as long as rocket fire continued from the Gaza Strip, Israel would continue extensive air attacks there.
Security sources also said that while the Hamas government in the Strip wants to calm the situation, the military wing continues to allow rocket fire from its own people and other factions.
Senior Egyptian officials met over the weekend with senior Israeli and Hamas figures to try to prevent further escalation in Gaza.
Sources in the Prime Minister’s Bureau said Israel did not want escalation, but that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had decided on his return to Israel on Friday from Berlin and Czech Republic to respond resolutely to fire from the Gaza Strip to create deterrence.
Netanyahu met over the weekend with Defense Minister Barak and spoke with other defense officials over the phone.
Israel wouldn’t need propaganda if it changed its policies: Haaretz
dawn to dusk. But how many times have you seen a foreign diplomat in Israel explaining how right his country is? Who would listen to him?
By Gideon Levy
What do Israel and Syria have in common? Not much, but both have ministries of hasbara. No such thing exists in the West. No such thing exists in democracies. But in Israel, we have falafel and a minister of hasbara, who is known as the minister of public diplomacy and diaspora affairs. The Israeli president, prime minister, cabinet members and MKs fly all over the world on useless hasbara missions. Israeli diplomats deal with hasbara from dawn to dusk.
But how many times have you seen a foreign diplomat in Israel explaining how right his country is? Who would listen to him? How many times have other countries’ ministers been guests here on hasbara missions? What would come out of them? As for us, Richard Goldstone has changed direction, so we’ll leverage it using Israel’s embassies: The Palestinians are firing Qassams at the south. We’ll use the Qassams for hasbara. And yet, how amazing: Never has Israel’s image been at such a low point.
The enlightened world doesn’t need propaganda, which we call hasbara in Israel. Elsewhere it’s understood that policy is the best and worst hasbara. A country’s image is determined by the media, which conveys reports, pictures and information, not propaganda, which has no buyers in the modern world. It’s crazy and primitive to believe that if only we have hasbara, if the people who explain Israel are good at their jobs, canny propagandists and seasoned PR people, look how our position would change, how the world would stand and cheer us. It’s a waste of time and money. The day Israel changes its policy it won’t need hasbara anymore; until then, it’s useless anyway.
It was the late Ambassador Yohanan Meroz who coined the word “hasbarable.” Some things, he said, were not hasbarable. Israel’s current policy, for example. The world has seen the Qassams landing in Israel over the past few days, and perhaps it condemns the Palestinians. Then it sees Israel’s harsh response, including many dead and wounded in Gaza, is infuriated and its heart goes out to Gaza. No hasbara will change that.
The world knows that this is a battle between the Israeli Goliath and the Palestinian David, and its heart is with the underdog. The world heard Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speak of a two-state solution and was filled with hope. But after two years of total deadlock, hollow talk, illusions, Israel’s unreasonable setting of conditions and the construction of more and more settlements, the world has condemned Israel. No hasbara can change that.
Hasbara will not overcome the unequivocal fact that Israel has been an occupying power for more than four decades. No propaganda can persuade people of good conscience that we’re right as long as millions of Palestinians are living without rights.
Even Israel’s impressive wins at tennis and basketball and its home-grown supermodels will not change that. President Shimon Peres can circumnavigate the globe a thousand times and nothing will change. Statesmen and journalists may be amazed by his energy and charm, but they will not change their opinion about Israel because of him. “Mr. Hasbara,” Netanyahu, with his polished American English, is now one of the most excoriated statesmen in the world. If only he would change direction, he wouldn’t need his television tricks. In contrast, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, a colorless man with broken English, garners much more sympathy; his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, was an icon.
That’s how it is in the land of the brainwashed. We believe in hasbara because it works for us. With most of the media pro-government, hasbara has a proven track record in Israel. The campaigns dehumanizing and demonizing the Palestinians have sown fear and hatred no less than that sown by Palestinian terror. The fanning of nationalist and false patriotic flames have sown an evil wind and reaped a whirlwind.
But media outlets elsewhere have no intention of taking part in a hasbara campaign. There, they know the basic facts: Occupation is illegal, immoral and unjust. It produces violent opposition that in the end will be accepted with understanding and perhaps even with sympathy. So let’s say: Enough hasbara, let’s have policies that are just.
Haaretz WikiLeaks exclusive / Netanyahu’s ‘friend’ Sarkozy tried to dodge the PM: Haaretz
In their report of a June 2009 meeting between the French president and the Israeli premier − who claim to be friends − French officials said Sarkozy tried to avoid a tete-a-tete with his guest.
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Paris at the end of June 2009, he was sure he was going to be meeting a friend.
Less than three months earlier the new government of Israel he headed had been sworn in, and 10 days earlier he had delivered the address that U.S. President Barack Obama expected of him − the so-called “Bar-Ilan speech.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whom Netanyahu considered a personal friend, was presumed to be one of the incoming prime minister’s allies in the European arena.
Netanyahu and Sarkozy became acquainted thanks to Meir Habib, a leader of the Jewish community in France. Since 2003 they had met several times, in Israel and in France; they had even shared a cozy dinner with their wives when Sarkozy − still a cabinet minister − visited Israel (with his wife at the time, Cecilia).
A detailed cable about their meeting, written on June 29, 2009 by Kathleen Allegrone, the political attache at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, depicts Sarkozy as a person who is sometimes tied down to an official position that he cannot change as president, even though he might want to do so personally.
The cable also indicates that even though he is supposedly a friend to Netanyahu, Sarkozy − the European leader upon whom the Israeli premier should be able to rely more than any other − had reservations about him and preferred not to be left alone with him.
The report on the meeting is based on the briefing provided to the Americans by Boris Boillon, at the time Sarkozy’s adviser on Middle East affairs and one of the president’s veteran associates. Boillon subsequently left the Elysee Palace for a posting as his country’s ambassador in Iraq, where he served from 2009 to 2011.
Recently Sarkozy hastily appointed him ambassador to Tunisia in order to restore some of France’s diplomatic honor after it failed to predict the revolution there.
According to the American report, during the preparations for the meeting with the prime minister, Sarkozy refused to agree to Netanyahu’s request that they confer one-on-one. “After a tete-a-tete, each side says what it wants” about the things said in the meeting, explains the memo. In fact, the meeting was held in the presence of advisers from both sides.
During the meeting Sarkozy, “while conveying his feelings of ‘personal friendship’ to … nonetheless deliberately ignored two direct appeals by Netanyahu to break off for a one-on-one exchange.”
According to a French Foreign Ministry source who also briefed the U.S. officials, it was Sarkozy who “drove the meeting from start to finish,” and he who talked most of the time, not allowing Netanyahu “to set traps” for him.
For his part, according to the French reports, Sarkozy was assertive on the issue of the Jewish settlements in the territories. He demanded that Netanyahu act on the matter of dismantling roadblocks in the West Bank − and in general spoke against the settlement project, telling the Israeli, “You have nothing to gain from them,” and “They provide no security.”
At these moments Netanyahu looked “offended,” say the French, though he did not respond. Daniel Levy, an official of the Israeli Embassy in Paris who also briefed the Americans, confined himself to reporting that there was “no real discussion” between the two leaders.
There was, however, discussion of the Bar-Ilan speech, which Netanyahu had delivered on June 14. According to the French account, it was Sarkozy who first brought up the subject, telling Netanyahu that the Palestinians “must have a state of their own.”
When Netanyahu pulled out the speech, Sarkozy said it was “good but insufficient” and refused to show enthusiasm over the prime minister’s explicit use of the words “Palestinian state.” The French president believes Israel has no time to waste, said the report: “Time is against us.” In general, he said, “The longer you wait, the more support you will lose.”
At the meeting, Netanyahu raised the demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. According to the American document, the French president’s adviser admitted that during the meeting Sarkozy agreed, in principle, to support the notion of Israel as a Jewish state, but explained that in public, Sarkozy will go no further than to mention “two states for two peoples.”
The reason for this? Sarkozy was “worried that any mention of the Jewish nature of the State of Israel will ‘insult’ the Palestinians …, who could interpret a statement as ‘a sign that we don’t support the right of return.’”
The French adviser concluded that Sarkozy “believes in a Jewish nation state for the Jewish people … he believes that’s why Israel was created.” Thus Sarkozy “privately recognizes Israel as a Jewish state” − but is not prepared to say these things “publicly,” not even for the sake of his friend Netanyahu.
Israel: Stuck in the collapsing certainties of tyranny and corruption?: Dialogue
April 2011, 5th
By Haim Bresheeth
An important plank of the Israeli anti-Arab propaganda was the pretence that Israel, despite insisting on calling itself a Jewish State, and speaking of ‘Jewish democracy’, was somehow also the only secular democracy in the Middle East, while all other regimes were either fundamentalist Islamic states, such as Saudi Arabia, or confessional states, such as Lebanon. The pronounced illiberal nature of some of the Arab regimes, and their attitudes towards other religions and cultures, especially in the case of the Wahabis, was a persuasive argument in supporting Israel’s westernised value-system. This was so despite the growing and swift Judaisation of the state, and its intensely unequal and racist policies towards the non-Jews under its control. It was a question of comparability – relative to the worst Arab states, Israel looked like an identifiable western democracy, especially to the uncritical eye of the western news media machine, with its orientalist, pro-Israeli bias.
It is of course too early to evaluate either the success, exact nature, or the longevity of the Arab Spring of 2011. The shockwaves of this political earthquake are still spreading as these lines are written, and will continue for some time, as the long-term patterns of change clarify and establish themselves. Some patterns are already evident, however, and could be discussed as surprisingly prevalent, and crucially important for any future developments.
The first is the fact that in all the protest movements in the Arab world, and also extending to Iran’s Green Revolution of 2009, the Islamic parties and sentiments were all but missing from the process, and played either no roll, or a small and insignificant one in the movement for change. This was not only in contrast to Israeli predictions, but also of those of the western intelligence community, strongly influenced by Israeli analysis and outlook. Their warnings of the Moslem Brotherhood being behind the Egyptian uprising were so clearly unsupported by events, that the Brotherhood’s leadership has come under pressure from its members to play a larger role in the developments…
A related misapprehension, also strongly supported by Israeli propaganda, was the claim that the protest was mainly fuelled by anti-Israeli (and according to some deluded commentators, even anti-Semitic) sentiments, and would by its nature bring about anti-Israeli governments into being, and revive the Arab-Israeli wars. While it is clear that the Egyptian revolt was also directed at Mubarak’s servile attitude towards Israel, and his role in enforcing the illegal Gaza blockade, acting as an agent of Israeli policy, the revolt was surely driven by the main complaints – the corrupt, undemocratic and oppressive nature of his regime, which was also what made his reactionary policies towards Palestine possible. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict as such did not play an important role in the Arab wave of protests. It is indeed probable that a democratically-elected Egyptian government is unlikely to continue the Mubarak policies towards Israel, but there was no sign of anti-Israel sentiment as the main driver of the protest. This was crucially an Egyptian protest, concentrating on Egyptian issues – freedom, justice, civil liberties, food and work, and an end to police brutality and the illegalities of the regime and the Mukhabarat.
The reaction of Israelis from across the political spectrum to the Arab Spring was strikingly unified and telling – not a single voice from the political arena welcomed the incredible wave of democratic energy and action across the Arab world, and the speakers and writers have all voiced deep consternation and concern about the loss of their favoured interlocutors – the various tyrants they have been dealing with, and especially that of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.
In a Guardian piece published at the height of the Libyan conflict, the Israeli editor-at-large of the liberal Haaretz daily, Aluf Benn, has clearly described the unified reaction:” Even in its third month, the Arab revolution fails to resonate positively in Israel. The Israeli news media devote a lot of space to dramatic events in the region, but our self-centered political discourse remains the same. It cannot see beyond the recent escalation across the Gaza border, or the approaching possibility of a Palestinian declaration of statehood in September. Israel’s leaders are missing the old order in the Arab world, sensing only trouble in the unfolding and perhaps inevitable change”1. As Israel has modeled itself as the servant of western interests in the region, it has set itself up as an opponent of the genuine interest of the Arab world and its citizens, by definition, and it finds it difficult if not impossible to shake this role off, to see the new region as an opportunity rather than a further threat. Benn points this out: No serious political figure in Israel has reached out to the revolutionaries, celebrating their achievement or suggesting we need to know them better since they might share values and ambitions with secular, liberal Israelis2. Democratic governments in the Arab world will, by definition, less reliable from the Israeli-Zionist point of view – they may, one hopes, be less corrupt and less pliable to pressure from Israel and its western allies, less willing to serve its interests, and less willing to subdue the Palestinians on Israel’s behalf, as was done so dependently by Mubarak for long decades.
So, one result of the Arab Spring, a seemingly unintended consequence of this complex process of socio-political change, is the fact that unless Israel changes its priorities and behaviour radically, it will find its current modus operandi impossible to continue with, even with the level of support it currently enjoys from the USA, EU, and western allies elsewhere. It is no longer a question of presentation – Israel would indeed be unable use the old slogan of the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’, (which was a lie even in the past) but will also have to start behaving more democratically, or it will stand out from its neighbours in a most unwelcome manner. Its brutal and racist nature were indeed increasingly noted over the decades of the occupation post 1967, but were always ameliorated by the undemocratic nature of the region in which it was situated; this may no longer be a likely outcome – the comparison will be made with democratic states, rather than with tyrannies whose citizens are devoid of human and political rights. If Israel chooses, as seems most likely, to continue its illegal occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people, it is more likely to meet with international censure of its policies and actions, probably leading to a global campaign, resembling that of the Anti-Apartheid movement, with boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) being increasingly enacted against it, and forcing it to abandon those policies in the long run, under global pressure.
This putative result of the current conflagration is not only probable because of Israeli action or inaction, but will be mainly forced as a result of the likely changes in power balance over the next few decades. With the decline of western, American and European power and the rising of the BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia India and China, one is also likely to see a marked rise in the political fortunes of Middle Eastern countries, which under future democratic leadership will find their just place in the pecking order. Egypt under Mubarak was a pawn of the west; Egypt under a democratic government will climb up from its insignificance and servility, to mention just one example. Such likely changes will also bring about changes in the way western powers relate to the Arab world, and are also likely to bring about long-overdue changes to the UN and its Security Council, where the out-of-date, undemocratic veto of the old imperial powers still pertains. A world where the US cannot easily and automatically veto any resolution relating to Israel, will be a very different proposition, and hence Israel’s continued angst about the changes in the region and the world are to be understood in the context of the long-term trends, not just the short-term power changes in individual countries. In the long run, the Israeli mission of ridding Palestine of its indigenous population cannot prevail, when we take into account the direction of change.
Now, it would be interesting to examine the likelihood and potential for change in Israel, as the trends of global change must also be evident to Israeli politicians. Could Israel, voluntarily and willingly, offer a major change in its priorities, when faced with the new realities? This question was broached recently by Gideon Levy, writing on the day after Mubarak fell:” The news from Egypt is good news, not only for that country and the Arab world, but for the entire world, including Israel. Now is the time to be happy for the Egyptian people, to hope that this amazing revolution will not go wrong. Let us lay aside all our fears – of anarchy, of the Muslim Brotherhood or a military regime – and let this great gamble have its say. Let us not wallow in the dangers; now is the time to bask in the light that shines from the Nile, after 18 days of popular, democratic struggle.”3 One is left genuinely wondering if Levy has indeed believed in the possibility of such adulation as his own, being shared across society in Israel, or has written the piece ironically, knowing well the impossibility of such a change of heart. The almost palpable feeling of relief which was evident across the globe with Mubarak’s departure, was evident by its total absence in Israel – a sentiment that Israel must have shared only with the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Yemen… Indeed what was evident is the opposite – a feeling of despair for the deposed tyrant.
This striking difference between the sentiments in Israel and the rest of the world can only be explained by the many decades of instrumental colonialism, where colonial reality forms consciousness, and where being dictates thought. One is what one does, after all, and it is impossible to continue to uphold liberal and progressive values if one is daily involved with brutalities and injustice. Many Israeli intellectuals try to fool themselves (and the rest of us), cliaming that even after four and half decades of iniquitous occupation, they are still holding up human rights and liberal values. This is plainly untenable, and the total lack of fraternity towards the Tahrir Square victory over tyranny, is the clearest evidence of such emotional and intellectual salto mortale by Israeli ‘liberals’ being sheer nonsense. By its very nature, Israeli society has excepted itself from the great mass of humanity which has expressed its elation with the fall of a brutal regime in Egypt, achieved by unarmed massed with the slogan ‘Salmieh’ (‘peaceably’ or ‘peacefully’) being the most common one. It seems certain that, like the South African Apartheid state before it, Israel will only relent under the most intense political, financial and cultural pressure from the world community. That pressure is now developing swiftly, and is now more likely than ever to lead to the collapse of the apartheid state in the Middle East.
[1]Benn, A Israel is blind to the Arab revolution, in Haaretz, March 24th, 2011, p. 31, and on http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/23/israel-blind-to-arab-revolution?INTCMP=SRCH, accessed on March 25th, 2011.
[2]Ibid
[3] Levy, G Israel Must Congratulate Egypt, Haaretz, February 13th, 2011, and also on http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-must-congratulate-egypt-1.343039″, accessed on March 25th, 2011
Israel should recognize Palestinian statehood: Haaretz
Instead of fearing a declaration of Palestinian statehood, Israel could join the international community and accept it, ceasing to view it as an enemy and existential threat.
By Zvi Bar’el
The waiting and expectation are nerve-racking. Each day another page is ripped from the year’s calendar, and the political seismographs are already going wild. In contrast to the Tsunami in Japan, the forecast regarding our own affairs is known in advance. “A political tsunami is anticipated,” declared the defense minister. He, however, is just a forecaster and not a planner. Like any forecaster, the defense minister simply issued a report and has no control over events. Neither he nor anyone else decides when September will come, it being the month which follows August and precedes October. Nor is Barak locking himself in his office to draft political lines of defense. A diplomatic or strategic plan? A peace initiative? Not with Barak – in another five months, he is bound to yell “I told you so,” and he will be right. After all, he talked about a political tsunami.
Barak is not the only member of the government who is issuing warnings. The garrulous leader who heads the government, and also the figure who is called the foreign minister, wave threatening fists and warn that “Israel will take unilateral steps should the Palestinians issue a statehood declaration.” That such statements impress anyone is to be doubted. While these politicians articulate drivel, analysts at the United Nations say that 130, or perhaps 150 countries will recognize the Palestinian state, and even the U.S. position cannot be anticipated in advance.
When the U.S. cast a veto on a proposed resolution condemning the settlements, it made clear that this would be its last veto on the topic – but anything is possible. Will the U.S. be the last brick in a collapsing wall of resistance, or will it join the supporters of the statehood declaration? Obama does not seem to have an alternative plan, and has learned that Israeli promises do not come with timetables for their implementation.
Instead of waiting for a miracle – that is a new Israeli or American initiative – it is prudent to accept as a working assumption that a Palestinian state will win recognition this September, and that in the immediate aftermath of such recognition Ramallah will fill itself with official diplomatic installations of most countries of the world. Yet that will constitute just the symbolic side of recognition – it will represent a form of historic reckoning with Israeli leaderships that derisively dismissed the UN and its resolutions. What will Israel do? Boycott countries that send ambassadors to Palestine? Not allow them to enter Palestine via Ben-Gurion Airport?
As a member of the UN, the state of Palestine will have a new legal and international status, one which allows it to make claims against Israel in international criminal courts, or establish an airport without Israeli authorization. And the status will allow Palestine to demand international action against Israel’s occupation – not just paper denunciations but genuine sanctions, and perhaps even the deployment of UN troops to protect the security of Palestine’s citizens. The Palestinians will not even need to launch a new violent or nonviolent intifada. International anger with Israel has reached the point whereby the internationalization of the dispute will solve all the Palestinians’ problems.
But there is another possibility. In this scenario, Israel could join the international community, recognize the Palestinian state, cease to view it as an enemy and existential threat, and even take part in a meeting of donor states that the Palestinians are sure to organize after their state wins recognition. September does not have to be a threat; it does not have to be a gladiator ring in which only one contestant remains alive.
The dread of September can turn into a constructive launching pad if Israel announces now that the negotiations it is asked to carry out, in order to leave the territories, will be conducted with an internationally recognized state and not with the Palestinian Authority. This will alter the agenda, but not necessarily to Israel’s detriment. Negotiations would not beget a Palestinian state; the opposite would happen. The iron rule that has always derailed negotiation processes – this being the idea that Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state would come at the end of the process – would turn into the starting point of talks.
The new Palestinian state would also have to compromise. It would not be able to issue threats of leaving the process, or breaking the rules of the game. Once a state is established there is no turning back, and its borders can only be established after the state itself is established.
This will also be an opportunity to build a new alliance, including Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Israel, and provide real content to the Arab proposal for regional peace. Those who fear international recognition being afforded to the Palestinian rebellion via the recognition of statehood should be at ease – the Palestinian cause already has international legitimacy. So September should just start already.
Lia Tarachansky: On reporting from Palestine and Israel: IOA
9 APRIL 2011
Paul Jay of The Real News Network interviews Lia Tarachansky – Apr 6-7, 2011
Part I: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6512
Part II: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6532
Lia Tarachansky about how she went from growing up in an Israeli settlement to reporting on the Middle East for TRNN.
Part I
Paul Jay interviews Lia Tarachansky, The Real News Middle East correspondent. Tarachansky covers the political economy of the occupation, while also focusing on international law and its applicability to the conflict. Having grown up in an Israeli settlement in the heart of the occupied West Bank, Tarachansky speaks about how denial of narrative fuels a conflict where the two peoples, the Israelis and Palestinians, become further segregated, physically, socially, and psychologically.
Part II
In the second part of Paul Jay’s interview with Lia Tarachansky, she talks about the stories she produced while working for The Real News Network in the Middle East. While in the region, Tarachansky investigated who benefits from the occupation and attempted to provide context for the news. Now, she is heading back to the region to establish a permanent base on the ground, working with both Israeli and Palestinian journalists to dedicated to independent media.
Bio
Lia Tarachanskyis an Israeli-Canadian journalist with The Real News Network covering the Middle East. She is also currently working on her first documentary, Seven Deadly Myths, a Journeyman Pictures co-production.
Part I Transcript
PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Washington. Lia Tarachansky covered Israel and Palestine for The Real News Network for ten months last year, and she’s about to go back. Now joining us from Ottawa, about to get on an airplane for Israel and Palestine, is Lia Tarachansky. Thanks for joining us, Lia.
LIA TARACHANSKY: Thanks, Paul.
JAY: So most of our viewers have watched your material, I’m sure, with great interest, but they don’t know very much about you. So why don’t you just tell us a little bit about your background, and then how you came to doing journalism about the Middle East?
TARACHANSKY: I came to Israel in the 1991 immigration from the former Soviet Union, along with 1 million other Russians. And as part of that immigration, we were one of the biggest populations to move to the West Bank to settle in the growing settlements in the mid ’90s during the–what’s known as the Oslo years, the beginning of the peace negotiations. So I grew up on a settlement in the occupied West Bank, and about a decade ago we moved to Canada and started writing quite a bit. And then The Real News took me to Toronto and trained me in video production.
JAY: Now, I was with you in Israel a few months ago, and we went back to the settlement you grew up in. And there was a moment there where you looked out from between the houses and you saw a Palestinian village. Talk a bit about that moment.
TARACHANSKY: Sure. You had the great misfortune to capture me in one of the most emotionally charged moments I had. And the whole settlement is sort of like a giant amoeba resting on a huge hill. And we go to the highest point and we overlook it, and we just sort of said something along the lines of why don’t we do a quick throw and say, “I’m Lia Tarachansky, I work for The Real News,” you know, “this is where I grew up”? And while we’re in the middle of doing this, you know, I stand up, and all of a sudden–I don’t know if you remember this, but the call to prayer starts. And I suddenly realize, as I’m looking in the camera and you were asking me all these questions, that it was the first time in my life that I was hearing this call to prayer. And so that started a very long process of thinking about how it is possible to grow up for years in the heart of the occupied Palestinian territories and never factor in that there are Palestinians everywhere. I mean, we grow up knowing that there’s The Enemy everywhere (capital T, capital E), but we never think of it as the people that make up The Enemy. So it’s not only a denial through politics; it’s such a deep psychological denial that we physically don’t see or don’t hear, or at least I didn’t, until [inaudible] gone back.
JAY: And just–again, so people get the geographic picture, it’s not that you couldn’t look up and see them. It’s as you said at the moment: it’s like they’re invisible. It’s not that they’re not there to be seen.
TARACHANSKY: Sure. And I think the same thing is true on the other side, because most Palestinians in the Palestinian territories have never seen an Israeli just exist. They’ve seen soldiers, some of them have seen settlers, but they’ve never seen, you know, like, a Jewish person or an Israeli person just go to the store or play in a kindergarten or, you know, buy groceries. They’ve never seen the normalized Israeli. So in their mind, as far as I understand from speaking to Palestinians, that is also an entire context that’s missing.
JAY: And part of that is because a lot of the settlements have these settler-only roads between settlements to get back and forth to Israel proper that Palestinians are not allowed to. So you could–I guess you could live in a settlement, travel on those roads, and as you’re saying, never meet a Palestinian directly that lived in villages right next to you.
TARACHANSKY: Sure. And, I mean, in Ariel during the Oslo years, before the whole system of Apartheid roads became really solidified, we had to travel through Palestinian villages to get to Israel proper. And, of course, the adults, you know, did it for ideological reasons, for economic reasons, for historical reasons, but for us who grew up in these settlements, you grow up and you never factor in the humanity of the other. And that’s very important if you’re going to produce a nation of people who are willing and happy to go and serve in the army.
JAY: I remember when we were there I asked you, why do people hate each other, and you said you don’t think it’s that we hate each other; it’s both sides are afraid of each other.
TARACHANSKY: There is such a disconnect between the human beings that it’s more fear of the other. And when you rationalize the entire conflict, you boil it down to its facts, right? We talk to people, and you just talk about the facts, you know, intransigence and the failure of the negotiations. And it always ends at these big things like, well, how can we trust them? So these big questions. So it’s not even about the facts at the end of the day; it’s about these big metaphysical questions that have no answer.
JAY: Now, you’re going back in just a couple of weeks. What are you going to focus on? What–in this next seven-month gig in Israel and Palestine, what are you going to be looking for?
TARACHANSKY: Well, part of my assignment is to establish a permanent presence for The Real News in the Middle East. So I will be speaking to and training and trying to find Palestinian and Israeli journalists to carry on coverage of Israel-Palestine when I’m no longer there. But my main focus all along has been–from previous stories and will continue now, is to focus not only on filling in the context of the conflict, so how we end up in the conflict, but also talking about who benefits from the conflict, who’s building the settlements and the wall, and what are the–who are the people and what are the corporations that really benefit from the conflict continuing.
JAY: Now, I think one of the things we’re going to try to do differently this year is produce more of the stories in Hebrew, and perhaps Arabic as well, and do translations, so people in the region can watch the stories. But just to end up, what do you hope for people in North America and Europe that are watching? And what do you hope they see through your eyes? And then, what do you hope people in the region may see through your eyes?
TARACHANSKY: First of all, of course, one of the things that we always fight for on The Real News is context, is understanding why things happen. And I find that even amongst the community of the people who are very engaged with the conflict and very involved, there’s very, very shallow understanding of why things happen. So that’s number one. But besides that, the main point of what I’m trying to get at is that this situation in the Middle East is not exceptional. The reason it started, the reason it continues, and the people who benefit from this conflict, it’s almost insulting how typical it is in the methods and in the interests that are served. So one of the things we try to show by focusing on political economy is that these conflicts continue because it’s in the interests of business. And, for example, one of the stories I’ll be focusing on when I get there is the privatization of the occupation. So one of the stories I did about a year ago talks about how the Israeli military is trying to make as much of this conflict automatic as possible to minimize the human contact between the soldiers and the people that they’re occupying, the Palestinians.
JAY: This was the story you did, I think, with–titled “Remote control occupation”.
TARACHANSKY: With the Second Intifada over, Israel is changing its approach to the occupation through new technology. Israel’s annual military spending as a percentage of GDP outnumbers even that of the United States threefold, yet this figure does not even include the cost of the occupation, estimated at $9 billion a year. Most of Israel’s defence industry is owned by the government. However, Israel is looking to privatize the maintenance of the occupation and make it possible to maintain control remotely.
SHIR HEVER: The commanders of the army are the least interested in the boring minutia and details of controlling the checkpoints, controlling the daily lives of Palestinians. They’re much more excited about developing new offensive weapons, fancy aircraft, and that sort of thing. So they’re trying to find ways to save on manpower costs and to make the army, the military, more focused on actual fighting of wars. Occupation has changed the priorities of the Israeli military over years, and that was very apparent in 2006 in the war with Lebanon.
JAY: Thanks for joining us. And in the continuation of our interview with Lia, we’re going to talk more about the work she did over the last year when she was there and show you a little bit of it. Please join us again on The Real News Network.
End of Part I Transcript
Part II Transcript
Transcript
PAUL JAY: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Washington. We’re continuing our conversation with our Real News journalist who covers Israel and Palestine, is about to go back, Lia Tarachansky. Thanks for joining us again, Lia.
LIA TARACHANSKY: Thank you, Paul.
JAY: So talk to us about some of the stories. You produced many stories for us when you were there. But–so which ones jump out for you?
TARACHANSKY: The stories that jump out at me are the stories that are very much missing in the mainstream corporate media, stories that, for example, show the aftereffect of an incident. So while, you know, local media covers something that happens, we often cover what happens right afterwards, which is the most important part, the cannon fodder. One story particularly was after a settler was killed, and the entire corporate media was covering the death of the settler. Something similar just happened with a family of five in the settlement of /”i.t@.mAl/. But what was missing was the complete invasion and shutting down of the West Bank, the invasion of the city of Nablus, and the assassination of three Palestinians.
TARACHANSKY: On the night of December 26, dozens of Israeli Army jeeps and bulldozers occupied the streets of the Old City in Nablus. Witnesses reported that more than 70 soldiers were involved in the raid operation. The Real News spoke to Tahani Sarkaji, Raed Sarkaji’s wife, who witnesses the raid during which he was assassinated.
TARACHANSKY: Other stories are political economy stories that investigate who benefits from the conflict, specifically what people and what companies benefit from privatizing the occupation.
TARACHANSKY: The family is listed in the Israeli daily Haaretz list of 100 most influential people in Israel. Besides its investment in AHAVA, the Livnat family profits in various ways from the economy of the occupation. The Livnat family sits on the board of IDB Holdings Corporation, Israel’s largest investment conglomerate. Many of the family’s subsidiaries and firms are also part of the IDB enterprise. Many benefit directly from the occupation by either placing their factories in the West Bank or building the infrastructure of the settlement network. For example, some of the Livnat family’s biggest investments are in agricultural firms that grow produce in the West Bank and the occupied Golan Heights. Their IDB companies also produce cement for the construction of the segregation wall.
TARACHANSKY: And also stories that really paint a context. So, for example, we did a story that investigates specifically the methodology behind how settlers take over Palestinian land. So how they go, they establish an outpost, exactly how that outpost grows into a settlement, how the government interacts with that outpost, how they get set up with electricity and water, etc., and how they manage to grow and take more land and more land. So the stories that really fill in the blanks that the corporate mainstream media leaves behind.
JAY: I thought one of the stories that I thought was most interesting was one we did about a town that’s sort of leading the way in a new form of resistance or civil disobedience. Talk a bit about that.
TARACHANSKY: Sure. Well, Palestinian nonviolent resistance has been going on for decades. And, actually, Palestinian leaders such as Marwan Barghouti have been calling for a boycott, you know, decades ago. So–but now we see global coverage of that nonviolent resistance through villages like Bil’in, which is a fairly famous village at this point that has a weekly protest against the Segregation Fence. And, actually, the Israeli high court, Supreme Court, actually voted in favor of that village. But the army refuses to abide by the Supreme Court ruling. So I did a story that looks at how Bil’in is at the center of this mass nonviolent movement. And if you look at the West Bank now, every week, usually around the weekends, there’s weekly protests that go on for years. So Bil’in has been going on for six years now, I believe, where every single Friday the village protests the wall, and every single Friday they get shot at by tear gas and water cannons and rubber bullets or real bullets by the Army. So this village is sort of at the center of a nonviolent resistance that’s really flourishing throughout the West Bank.
JAY: And to what extent–when you say “really flourishing”, how much is that developing? And I guess one of the things you might want to be covering when you go back is the consequences or effect of the uprising across the whole Arab world and how this is affecting the Palestinian struggle. Do you get some sense of that yet?
TARACHANSKY: I think that the repression, the Israeli repression of nonviolent resistance has been going on for–you know, since as long as it’s been–the nonviolent resistance has been going on. But one shift that we’ve seen is that because of Israeli noncooperation, Israeli activists cooperating in solidarity with this resistance, what we’re seeing now is a new wave of Israeli repression of Israeli nonviolent activists. And that’s been really increasing in the past six months to a point where Israeli activists have their houses raided, they get called by the Israeli intelligence, they get interrogated. So that’s new. I think that the uprisings in the Arab world sort of leave most Israelis in the dark, because I think most Israelis have never considered the possibility that the Arab people that live around them are, first of all, all different nationalities and communities and they want different things, and they’re not some big monolith of the Arab world countries. And, also, I don’t think that Israelis really consider that these people have–you know, really passionately want democracy. I think that the stereotypes we’ve internalized about the Arab world don’t include the democratic movement. So I think that these democratic movements from Tunisia to Algeria, Libya, you know, Egypt, etc., are going to really open the eyes of a lot of Israelis. And I don’t know what effect that’s going to have on the nonviolent resistance, but what I do know is that when I returned to Israel and started working for The Real News, I would go to the weekly protests also in East Jerusalem, in neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah, and it would be 200 people, and by the time I left Israel the last time, there would be 1,000 people. So this movement is growing. And what’s really inspiring is that this is a persistent movement of Israelis and Palestinians working hand-in-hand in complete solidarity, and they are relentless. They go week in and week out, every single Friday, every single Saturday, every single Sunday, and they protest every single week, despite the constant repression.
JAY: How do you assess other coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian issues?
TARACHANSKY: One thing I think the mainstream media really fails at doing is demonstrating the daily occupation and the daily life in Israel with the constant militarism that our society is undergoing. And by hiring a local Israeli journalist and a local Palestinian journalist, I think The Real News is really breaking through a wall that the mainstream media always seems to hit its head against, which is trusting the native people that live in the land to cover their own society. And I think that only an Israeli and a Palestinian journalist can really understand the inside of the reality of their life and the political map to really cover the region in a way that portrays what that conflict looks like on a daily basis. And mainstream journalists, you know, they typically get flown into Israel, they stay in Jerusalem for three, maybe, months, at most four months, and they go on these short assignments to the territories or to Israel, and they never really build any relationships with the local people on the ground that really demonstrate and in some ways empower those people to represent their own society for themselves. So I think that that’s–.
JAY: There’s another angle, too, which–as the American networks have so clearly internalized the idea of American national interest as a starting point for these issues and this sort of alliance with Israel, Al Jazeera, which on the whole does, you know, more interesting work, I think, than the mainstream US networks, still, it’s owned by the emir of Qatar, and Qatar’s a player in the region, and there’s been a lot of critique about how they’re covering Bahrain, and one has to keep it in mind. Russia Today, clearly it likes to critique just about anything American and has a certain amount of Russian interest in mind.
TARACHANSKY: Being independent means that when out and covering the conflict, I don’t need to worry about having our funding cut off when I’m calling in an occupation or when I’m showing what the Israeli army does after an incident happens, and I think that that’s very, very important, especially because of the way that the conflict currently is portrayed is always from the point of view of Western interests and not from the point of view of the fodder, the cannon fodder, the effect of those interests on the people on the ground.
JAY: Well, thanks very much for joining us, Lia.
TARACHANSKY: Thank you, Paul.
JAY: And if you want to see more of Lia’s work, it’s all down here below the player in a collection. And if you’d like to see more work from the Middle East, don’t forget the donate buttons here, because for Lia to go do that, you’ve got to punch this. Thanks for joining us.
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