Netanyahu proved Israel doesn’t want peace: Haaretz
Netanyahu shows to the world that Israel wants neither an agreement nor a Palestinian state, and for that matter not peace, either.
By Gideon Levy
On Friday night Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again proved himself to be an excellent elucidator, this time in the service of the Palestinians: He demonstrated to the world, better than even Mahmoud Abbas, why they had no recourse but to appeal to the United Nations. If there is one clear take-home message from his Hezekiah and Isaiah speech, it is this: The Palestinians (and the world ) can no longer expect anything from Israel. Nothing.
Netanyahu was particularly persuasive when he explained that a Palestinian state would endanger Israel – narrow waist, just hundreds of meters from Israeli cities, thousands of rockets – one giant blah-blah that willfully ignores the possibility of peace. A Palestinian state, perhaps, but absolutely not in our time, and not in our school of thought.
Our school of thought seemed especially deluded Friday night. Every decent Israeli must be ashamed of their prime minister, who stands before the world and tries to sell it the same old shopworn, even rotten goods that are long past their expiration date, expounding on ancient, irrelevant chapters of history and attempting to market cheap sentimentality like a beggar who exposes his wounds, both real and imaginary, to passersby. And the beggar is in fact a regional power.
Netanyahu, peddler of emotions, did not shrink from or forget anything, save reality. Abraham the patriarch, Hezekiah, Isaiah, pogroms, the Holocaust, 9/11, the children, the grandchildren and, of course, Gilad Shalit – all fodder for the tear wringer that assuredly didn’t bring forth a single tear anywhere on the planet, with the possible exception of a few Jewish nursing homes in Boca Raton, Florida. There, perhaps, people were still moved by this kitschy death speech.
Netanyahu needed thousands of years of history to obscure reality, but Abbas’ sense of history proved to be much more developed: He had no need to call up distant memories to elicit sympathy; all he needed was to soberly depict current events in order to attempt to shape a new history. The world and the auditorium cheered for Abbas because he spoke like a 21st-century statesman, not like a co-opted archaeologist of centuries past. Abraham or Ibrahim, Hezekiah or Netanyahu, Benjamin or Jacob-Israel, Jew or Judea – our prime minister’s Bible and Holocaust stories should have made Israelis sitting down to their Friday night dinner feel awkward and uncomfortable. Is that all we have to sell to the world? Is that all we have to say? Is that what is being said on our behalf? Is that what we look like?
The faces said it all. Sitting around the table of Netanyahu’s cheerleading squad (all of them Ashkenazi men, of course ) were two kippa-wearers, two generals, two former Russians, three current beard-wearers – a depressing and threatening group portrait of Israel’s extreme right, class of 2011. The table of the Israeli delegation, even more than Netanyahu himself, revealed the true face of the most denounced country in the world today, with the exception of Iran and North Korea. They clapped, politely and obediently, not including Avigdor Lieberman and his loyal servant, Daniel Ayalon.
Israel’s real face was also seen in Israel; Lieberman wasn’t the only one to call Abbas’ judicious, impressive address an “incitement speech.” Joining the chorus, as usual, was Tzipi Livni – the Israeli alternative – who “didn’t like the speech.”
What was there not to like about Abbas’ speech, apart from his silly mistake in failing to mention the Jews, together with the Christians and Muslims, to whom this precious land belongs? What in his speech was anything but true and very painful? “Enough” of the occupation? Ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley? Obstructing checkpoints on the way to the hospital, and settlements that are a barrier to peace? What was incorrect, damn it? “A difficult speech,” the chorus of Israeli commentators sang immediately afterward; indeed, a difficult speech describing an even more difficult reality – but what do they know about reality? And not a soul asked: Why isn’t Israel reciting the travelers’ prayer for the Palestinians, for their journey to statehood.
On Friday night the final curtain fell on Netanyahu’s masked ball of a two-state solution. Hiding behind the curtain are darkness and gloom. And in that lies an event of historical performance: It proved to the world that Israel wants neither an agreement nor a Palestinian state, and for that matter not peace, either. See you at the next war.
While the diplomats haggle, deadly tensions are mounting in the nascent Palestine: Guardian
The quest for Palestinian statehood at the UN has worsened a climate of fear on the ground in the West Bank
Harriet Sherwood in Qusra
Women at the Jewish settlement of Pnei Kedem practise firing pistols and high-powered rifles. Photograph: Nati Shohat/Flash90
The settlers come down the hill from the outpost, mostly on foot, but occasionally on horseback or in tractors or 4x4s. They carry Israeli flags, and sometimes bring guns, shovels and dogs. There may be as few as three or as many as 40. They taunt the local villagers and sometimes attack them. Often the Israeli army arrives and trains its weapons on the villagers.
In Qusra, deep among the terraced hills of the West Bank, fear is on the rise. “The settlers are provoking us continuously,” said Hani Abu Reidi, head of the village council. “They uproot olive trees, kill our sheep, burn our mosques and curse our prophet. They want to drag us into the sphere of violence. We do not want to go there.”
As the Palestinian quest for statehood looks set to be mired in diplomatic back rooms for weeks or months, tension on the ground is mounting. Both Palestinian villagers and Jewish settlers say each other is responsible for a spike in attacks over the past fortnight; mostly small-scale incidents such as throwing stones, molotov cocktails and insults. Both sides claim the other is preparing to invade their communities and attack their people. It has created an edgy climate of fear and menace, and is a forewarning of potential battles to come if the struggle for the land moves up a gear with impending Palestinian statehood.
The request by the Palestinians to be admitted to the United Nations as a full member state, formally submitted on Friday, will now be considered by the security council for an undefined period, during which efforts to get both sides back to the negotiating table will intensify.
If no progress is made, the Palestinians will press for a vote at the security council, a move the US has pledged to veto. The Palestinians would then have the option of asking the 193-member general assembly for enhanced status, albeit short of full statehood. As this process inches forward, anger on the ground is rising.
On Friday, violence between settlers from the outpost of Esh Kodesh and around 300 Qusra villagers ended in a haze of teargas and bullets fired at the villagers by Israeli troops, two of which struck Issam Odeh, 33, killing the father-of-eight.
Qusra set up a defence committee earlier this month after one of the village’s four mosques was vandalised in a settler attack condemned by the US and the European Union. Up to 20 unarmed men patrol the mosques from 8pm to 6am every night, and Abu Reidi claims they have already foiled at least one attack. Other Palestinian villages have followed suit.
On the hilltops, preparations for clashes have also been under way for weeks. Security around settlements and outposts has been reinforced with extra barbed wire, CCTV cameras, security guards and dogs. And the settlers themselves are armed and primed in anticipation of what they believe will be incursions by Palestinians intent on making their hoped-for state a reality on the ground.
This week, photographs were published on a pro-settler news website, Arutz Sheva, showing women from Pnei Kedem, an outpost south of Bethlehem, learning to shoot. In Shimon Hatzadik, a Jewish enclave in the midst of the Palestinian neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, in east Jerusalem, settlers are preparing to invoke a law allowing self-defence against intruders. “We are talking about shooting at their legs and if that doesn’t work, and our lives are in danger, we won’t be afraid to shoot straight at them. Most of the residents here are armed,” spokesman Yehonatan Yosef told parliamentarians two weeks ago.
Activists in the settlement of Qiryat Arba, on the edge of Hebron, have distributed clubs, helmets and teargas to nearby outposts. “They’ve been given all of the tools we could provide for them in order to protect themselves,” Bentzi Gopstein, a member of Qiryat Arba’s council, told the Ynet news website. “But we must remember that the best defence is offence. We can’t stay close to our fences. If the Arabs can come to us, they must learn we can come to them.”
The settlers believe Israeli soldiers will be hampered by restraints imposed by commanders fearful of negative publicity. “They are not receiving the right orders,” said radical activist Itamar Ben-Gvir from Qiryat Arba. “There’s no state in the world that would allow the enemy to cross its lines and enter its communities. If the IDF will not act properly, we will have to defend ourselves.”
Women and children would take part in defensive action, he said. “We want to present an equation: women against women; children against children. The Arabs are intending to use their children and we will not sit still.”
Shaul Goldstein, mayor of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc south of Bethlehem, expects the focus in the coming weeks to “move from hypothetical issues in New York to practical terror here in Judaea and Samaria [the biblical term for the West Bank]”. Gush Etzion had a comparatively good relationship with its Palestinian neighbours, he said. “We are trying to talk to them to reduce friction and tension. But if the Palestinians march towards the settlements, there is a red line. If they try to cross, to penetrate our communities, it will be a big problem.”
As well as fighting on the ground, many settlers believe they must also wage a political battle against the Israeli government. “Netanyahu is a weak leader, not standing for the values he was elected for,” said Goldstein. “The [settlement] construction freeze was the first in history – and this from a rightwinger. So we have to push him, to press him, to keep him to hold the line.”
The settlers are not just fighting to hold on to the land they already occupy; they intend to expand and grow – as they see it, reclaiming the land that has been willed to them by God.
“Our purpose is to build new towns and communities, new outposts in Judaea and Samaria,” said veteran activist Daniella Weiss. “It’s our role as Jews to build the land of the Jews.”
In Qusra, Abu Reidi agreed the land is at the heart of confrontations between Jewish settlers and Palestinian villagers. “Their ultimate goal is to drive us from our land,” he said. “Defending the land is a holy task. If we let them succeed, they will take more and more.”
Who will stop Netanyahu and Barak?: Haaretz
During a moment of frustration caused by his inability to recruit support in the IDF for an attack on Iran, Barak scolded officers in the General Staff, saying that with ‘such a caliber of officers, Israel would never have won the Six Day War.’
By Alon Ben David
With the coming of autumn, doubts return. In another month, after the holidays, clouds will blanket the sky, and make it difficult for spy satellites and planes to see what is afoot down below. Whoever entertains the thought that an attack on Iran would deflect attention away from the Palestinian issue will have to wait until the skies clear again in April.
At first glance, the scenario seems deluded: Why would Israel, which is enveloped in the most severe strategic isolation it has faced since 1967, decide to engage in a war that would be liable to set the whole Middle East aflame? Yet the anticipated diplomatic stalemate, compounded by the sense of a thickening siege, could potentially prod the prime minister and the defense minister into seeking their own political resurrection in Iran. Anyone who has heard the description given by former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, regarding the intense responses stirred by the Iranian issue in recent years, can imagine that this scenario is not so far-fetched.
This would be the rationale: During the coming winter, centrifuges in Iran will produce close to a ton of enriched uranium, and Iran will relay this uranium product to its underground vault at Qom. There, beneath layers of stone, it would be very hard for an airstrike to derail the production process.
Until recently, Netanyahu and Barak’s rashness has been blocked by a wall of stiff opposition put up by the security apparatus. An “iron triangle” of Dagan, IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin stood steadfast, and opposed schemes to attack Iran. This opposition was joined by others in the inner cabinet – Dan Merido, Moshe Ya’alon, Benny Begin and even Avigdor Lieberman. During a moment of frustration caused by his inability to recruit support in the IDF for such an attack, Barak scolded officers in the General Staff, saying that with “such a caliber of officers, Israel would never have won the Six Day War.”
The State Comptroller Office’s report on the Ashkenazi replacement affair is likely to shed light on calculations that led to the unconsummated selection of Major General Yoav Galant. Benny Gantz hinted about these motivations before he was summoned to become Chief of Staff: “I refused to relinquish my principles in order to gain the post,” he said, hinting that Galant’s selection was influenced by his strategic positions.
Subsequently, the entire security corps has undergone a shuffle, and there are new heads of the IDF, Mossad and Shin Bet. These security chiefs are not just newly-appointed – none of them were first choices for their posts. At first glance, this fact would seem to free them from obligations to the politicians who selected them. The problem is that they appear not to have accumulated the self confidence necessary to confront and disagree with their political superiors.
Waiting on the horizon is another appointment fraught with strategic implications. In April Major General Ido Nehostan will end his term as head of the Israel Air Force. Major General Amir Eshel, head of the IDF planning division, is considered the front-runner for the appointment, but recent pressure has been leveled by the Prime Minister’s Office in favor of appointing Netanyahu’s military secretary, Yochanan Locker, to the post.
Both men would be worthy appointees, but some are concerned that support for Locker stems from the desire to appoint a figure whose strategic outlook is akin to that of Israel’s leading political officials. In contrast, Eshel has acquired a reputation as a figure who is not afraid to clash with his superiors.
Gantz favors Eshel for the job. Should anyone else get the appointment, it would indicate that the IDF Chief of Staff is not the person who makes decisions on top IDF appointments. Such a move would also demonstrate that the political leadership wants to reduce IDF opposition to its plans.
On the day he left his post, Dagan stated that “Israel should wage war only when a knife is at its neck, and is already cutting flesh.” Without belittling the severity of Iran’s nuclear threat, it still bears noting that the knife is not there yet.
The writer is Channel 10’s military affairs correspondent.