June 26, 2012

EDITOR: The J14 movement tries to rise again, despite growing police brutality

It seems that in Israel, not only the protesters are learning from the Arab Spring developments, but also the regime and its police. Used to act extremely violently against the Palestinians, the police now acts in a similar manner against the few hundreds who came out trying to continue last year’s unsuccessful protest during the summer of 2011. Netanyahu takes no chances he made sure the police sent a brutal message to the protesters.

Will this also persuade the J14 movement that excluding the occupation and Palestine from their campaign was a mistake? I personally doubt this. The J14 movement was a middle-class, nationalist uprising of an odd sort – making sure by all means that no Jews were excluded, thus excluding the Palestinians, both inside Israel and out, and insisting that this is is not ‘political’ protest, but ‘social’ only, as if one could so neatly divide such activities. What they meant by this claim, is that they are not entering the minefield of anti-occupation action, and remain withing the Jewish, nationalist collective, well-represented by the new right-wing leader of the Labour party, Shelly Yachimowich. If they thought this ploy will persuade the government not to touch them, they have failed. The two leaders of the J14 campaign have even been sent by the government to Britain on a special anti-BDS mission last year, after the protest died, in order to persuade academics in Britain that the BDS campaign is wrong. This has not stopped the police from acting brutally, once the campaign has been renewed. The fact that J14 has never been courageous or principled enough to stray away from the right wing nationalism now ruling Israel, makes it totally unlikely that it may embrace the case of Palestinian freedom and rights. A campaign dividing rights on imperialist lines – fighting for rights of the occupier, including the right to occupy – is likely to fail even on its own despicable terms! Justice, rights, peace – cannot be divided according to nationalist criteria – they are indivisible.

Mursi takes Power, by Carlos Latuff, 2012

Thousands of Israelis Join “Citizen’s Mutiny”: TheRealNews

After violent arrest of the symbolic leader of Israel’s social justice movement, thousands pour onto streets in rage

Related Story: Israel’s J14 Movement and the Occupation

More at The Real News

EDITOR: One down, more than 500 to go…

So, at last, one settlement is vacated, months after the High Court decision that it is illegal… Well, there are NO legal settlements in the Occupied Territories! All of them are illegal, as is the Apartheid wall! Nothing that Israel is doing there is legal, and it is about time not just Israel, but its many western allies, understand this.

West Bank Jewish settlers leave Ulpana outpost: BBC

Jewish families at Beit El (file photo)

Israeli authorities have begun to evacuate Jewish settlers from an unauthorised West Bank outpost after a court ordered it to be dismantled.

Officials arrived on Tuesday morning to help the first of 30 families relocate from Ulpana to temporary housing in adjoining settlement of Beit El.

There had been fears the settlers would resist and have to be forcibly removed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the construction of 300 new homes in Beit El.

The move was seen as an effort to placate the settler movement and right-wing critics in Mr Netanyahu’s own Likud party

All settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

The settler outposts are also illegal under Israeli law and the government agreed to remove them under the 2003 Road Map peace plan.

The fate of Ulpana, which was built on private Palestinian land, has been a source of tension between settlers and the government.

Ulpana is part of the bigger settlement of Beit El, north of Jerusalem, which is built on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians say it should be part of their future state.

The decision to build the new homes in Beit El was criticised by the Palestinians and the US, which said it undermined peace efforts.

 

by Carlos Latuff, 2012

Israel Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial attack: Three held: BBC

Three ultra-Orthodox Jewish men have been arrested in Israel, suspected of defacing the national Holocaust memorial with anti-Zionist graffiti.

One of the slogans daubed in paint on the walls of the memorial read: “If Hitler had not existed, the Zionists would have invented him.”

The suspects have admitted vandalising the site, a police spokesman said.

Suspicion for the attack had fallen on radical ultra-Orthodox Jews who oppose the creation of the state of Israel.

One of the slogans, all in Hebrew, was signed “world ultra-Orthodox Jewry”.

Another read: “Thanks Hitler for the wonderful Holocaust you organised for us. Only thanks to you we got a state from the UN.”

A third went: “Honourable government of Poland, stop allowing the Zionists to hold manipulative ‘memorial’ ceremonies in Auschwitz.”

Some ultra-Orthodox Jews believe a Jewish state can be established only after the coming of the Messiah, and that the state of Israel is therefore illegitimate.

A small number of extremists believe the myth that Israel’s founders conspired with Hitler to bring about the Jewish state.

In a statement, Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said: “I believe that it was important to know the identities of those who spray-painted the graffiti. The suspects are extremist ultra-Orthodox Jews, anti-Zionists, who are on the fringes of society, and do not represent the majority who respect the memory of the Holocaust.”

Yad Vashem was established in 1953 and commemorates the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during World War II.

The three suspects are to appear before a Jerusalem court later on Tuesday.

 

June 25, 2012

EDITOR: Read about typical US Jewish hysteria

To most people, the item below reads like the hysterical rant that it is. To US Jews, it reads like a genuine debate about positions to take in support of Israel. That US have adopted the worst possible position – combining racism with Islamophobia, is hardly a surprise to anyone who followed the growing bigotry of the last decade in US Jewish circles. They are combining with Born Again and other extreme Christian Zionist circles to support an agenda of hate and conflict, vying with each other as to who displays the more extreme positions.

Conservative blogger Pamela Geller lashes out at L.A. Jewish federation over nixed speech: Haaretz

Geller, a fiery critic of Muslims, liberals and mainstream Jewish organizations, took to her blog to blast the federation, comparing modern-day Jewish leaders to those who did not do enough to protest the Nazis in the years leading up to the Holocaust.

By JTA | Jun.25, 2012

Blogger Pamela Geller. Courtesy.

Blogger Pamela Geller

Conservative blogger Pamela Geller is lashing out at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles for what she says was its decision to cancel her Sunday appearance.

Geller, a fiery critic of Muslims, liberals and mainstream Jewish organizations, took to her blog, Atlas Shrugs, to blast the L.A. federation, comparing modern-day Jewish leaders to those who did not do enough to protest the Nazis in the years leading up to the Holocaust.

“This is tragic. Imagine, without so much as firing a shot, they’re caving in to a Hamas front group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations,” Geller wrote.

CAIR had issued its own statement criticizing the L.A. federation for agreeing to allow its space to be used for Geller’s appearance, which was sponsored by the Zionist Organization of America. The scheduled talk was titled “Islamic Jew-Hatred: The Root Cause of the Failure to Achieve Peace.”

Geller gained national attention by leading the efforts to stop the development of an Islamic community center near Ground Zero and has been a leading voice in warning against what she describes as a campaign to impose Islamic law on the United States. She is the author of “Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance” and “The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America.”

The Anti-Defamation League, which also opposed the Islamic community center, has accused one of Geller’s organizations of promoting “a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda under the guise of fighting radical Islam” and seeking “to rouse public fears by consistently vilifying the Islamic faith.”

Geller has lashed out at the ADL and other mainstream Jewish organizations. She sounded a similar note in attacking the L.A. federation.

“Shame on our cowardly leadership for throwing one of our own under the bus,” Geller wrote Sunday. “We expect that from kapos, not from proud Jews who should hold the freedom of speech as a fundamental Jewish value.”

As of press time, the L.A. federation could not be reached for comment.
In its own statement, the ZOA said the L.A. federation cited security concerns in cancelling the event.

“We believe that the Jewish Federation has succumbed to political pressure by Muslim and Left-wing Jewish groups not to let a rational voice of criticism of Islam and its war against Israel be heard on its premises,” the ZOA said in a statement, as cited on Geller’s website. “These Muslim and Jewish groups have blown up the blogosphere with lies about Ms. Geller and harsh criticism of the ZOA for hosting her at the Jewish Federation.”

ZOA said that such an approach “effectively shuts down free speech.”

Supporters of ZOA have faced similar criticism for their efforts to block communal organizations from providing space to the liberal group J Street and speakers critical of Israeli policy.

Israel’s historic city of Acre faces tourist and settler tensions: Guardian

Mixed Arab-Jewish ‘sleeping beauty’ city awakes to gentrification and influx of nationalist-religious Jews

Han El Umdan clock tower in Acre, Israel

Acre in Israel: the city is potentially a magnet for wealth tourists and investors. Photograph: Chameleons Eye / Rex Features

Amid narrow winding alleys, crumbling courtyards and dark doorways of neglected buildings, a work of art gleams within the walls of Israel‘s ancient but dilapidated city of Acre. The Efendi Palace hotel opened in March after eight-and-a-half years of painstaking restoration.

A team of experts was brought from Venice to work on Ottoman-era wall and ceiling paintings; stone walls dating from the Byzantine and Crusader eras have been carefully preserved in what is now the wine cellar; a 400-year-old Turkish bath has been restored. Light floods through the windows, from which there are views across the rooftops and ramparts of the historic old city to the Mediterranean.

The Jewish owner is Uri Jeremias, known to everybody in Acre as Uri Buri after his eponymous avant garde seafood restaurant five minutes’ walk from the Efendi Palace, and instantly recognisable from his magnificent long grey beard.

Describing the old city as “a sleeping beauty”, he says the restoration was “an investment of the soul” as well as a huge, but unspecified, amount of money. The Efendi Palace is a symbol of Acre’s potential as a magnet for wealthy tourists and investors.

It has also become emblematic of growing tensions between the Arab and Jewish populations of one of Israel’s few mixed cities. Arabs, who make up 28% of Acre’s population but 100% of the old city, fear that a programme of gentrification funded by Jewish investors will – either by design or simply as a consequence – drive them out.

The hotel, whose 12 rooms range in price from $300 (£191) to more than $800 (£510) a night, is a nugget of luxury amid the decrepit homes of impoverished Arab residents. For now it is unique, but not for much longer: the Old Acre Development Company, a subsidiary of the Israeli tourism ministry, is marketing many of the old city’s historic buildings for development as luxury hotels, restaurants, boutique shops and exclusive apartment complexes. The magnificent arched Khan el-Umdan, where weeds sprout from cracks in the 40 stone pillars, is being offered for immediate development alongside its neighbour, the Khan a-Shuna, as a 170-room hotel and commercial space. The two khans, says the development company, are the most important buildings in the old city, which was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 2001.

It describes another, el-Shawarda, as one of the oldest and most elegant khans, constituting part of the sea wall. It is earmarked for a 60-room hotel and commercial complex.

According to Arab activists in Acre, this is part of a grand plan, driven by the city’s Jewish mayor, to gentrify and rebrand the old city – and persuade, induce or coerce Arabs to leave. But they also say there is a wider context that reaches beyond the walls of the old city into the newer neighbourhoods of Acre. In recent years there has been an influx of nationalist-religious Jews, associated with the hardline West Bank settler movement, seeking to “reclaim” mixed cities such as Acre and prevent their Arab populations becoming a majority.

In the new city of Acre, housing developments reserved exclusively for religious Jews have alarmed Arab residents. “More and more extreme people from settlements are targeting the Arab community [in Israel],” says Ja’far Farah of Mossawa, a civil rights organisation. “The settlers want to prove that the conflict is not just about the [West Bank] but all of Israel. They are targeting mixed cities in an attempt to prove there is no future for coexistence.”

It is “a very tense city”, says local activist Sami Hawari. The edginess boiled over into violent clashes between the two communities three years ago, the underlying causes of which have not been resolved. “When Jewish leaders call the muezzin [the Muslim call to prayer] ‘environmental pollution’, and when they consider us a demographic threat even though they are more than 70% of the population, when the mayor constantly declares Acre a ‘Jewish city’, it adds tension to the lives of people.”

The mayor, Shimon Lankry, says these are “ridiculous accusations, only voiced by extremists”. He points out that not a single Jewish family has moved into the old city, and says that “in spite of the fact that there is not a great love between the two communities, we walk the same streets, shop in the same supermarkets and live in the same apartment buildings. We want to keep the old city as a historical site with its original population living in it, but we want to develop businesses, hotels and restaurants.”

Ahmed Odeh, an Arab member of the city council, claims that about 50 properties in the old city have been acquired by Jewish investors for redevelopment. He says a number of ruses have been employed to encourage Arab residents to give up their properties – whose ownership was taken by the Israeli state after the 1948 war – to developers. These include straightforward cash offers, often irresistible to poor families; orders for expensive repairs; and eviction if debts are defaulted on.

Uri Buri – who has no connection to the nationalist-religious groups – says the purchase of the properties which became the Efendi Palace is above-board and fully documented. He declines to say how much he paid, but says that he was the only person to place an offer during the tender process. “My conscience is clear. I’m not doing anything to harm anyone and I obey the law. I’m not saying everything is honey, but [the Arabs] shouldn’t fight people coming to help and develop Acre.”

His investments have brought benefits for the local population, he says. Affluent tourists spend money in the souks of the old city. His hotel, restaurant and an ice cream shop employs around two dozen Arabs alongside a similar number of Jewish workers.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with Arabs and Jews,” he says. “This is a poor area and when it’s developed the poor people are pushed out and the rich people move in. This is how it works everywhere in the world.” He cites Canary Wharf in London as an example.

“Since my childhood I’ve said Acre is a miracle. I’ve travelled a lot and I’ve seen very few cities with such undeveloped potential. But I don’t see any Arabs coming to invest.”

Not on the scale of the Efendi Palace, perhaps, but one local Arab investor is Reem Hazzan, who opened Beit Maha, a restaurant and bar, in her family’s waterfront property seven months ago. “We opened this place because we believe investors should be local,” she said. “This may be one of the last old cities in the world which is not a tourist centre.”

She rejects Uri Buri’s assertion that the tension is only about rich and poor. “Yes, it is a class issue, but it’s also about Arabs and Jews. When the investors are Jews, and when the poor people are Arabs, you can’t ignore that. We need investors who believe in the potential of local people, and who will invest in a socially responsible way. If you take the people out of the old city, it will lose its soul.”

June 24, 2012

Violence sponsored by the state: Haaretz Editorial

We can only hope that the attempt to forcibly silence the social protest won’t succeed. But the police’s illegitimate action reveals system-wide contempt for the foundations of Israeli democracy.
Jun.24, 2012

Police arrest protest leader Daphni Leef in Tel Aviv, June 22, 2012. Photo by Alon Ron

The police’s violent suppression of a demonstration Friday on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard, with the close cooperation of municipal inspectors, clearly reflects the government’s intent to prevent more social protests this summer. The inability to come to terms with legitimate protest is another worrisome stage in the government’s disparaging approach to protecting democratic society.

The scene Friday will not soon be forgotten: Daphni Leef, lying on the sidewalk and surrounded by riot police, trying to protect herself from the representatives of public order. Another demonstrator, her hands shaking and her voice gone, displayed the scratches and bruises caused by the people who are supposed to protect us.

This time, stuttered apologies and innocent looks from Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch and Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino will not help. Summoning activists to police stations to find out their plans for the summer is not legitimate. An attempt to gather information ahead of a legal demonstration is not legitimate. Conveying messages such as “don’t cross the line” is not legitimate.

We can only hope that the attempt to forcibly silence social protest won’t succeed. But the police’s illegitimate action, without opposition from their superiors, reveals system-wide contempt for the foundations of Israeli democracy. If the police and the minister in charge of them do not understand that they must respect the protest, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must make a clear statement on the matter.

Experience shows that the chance this simple expectation will be met is not particularly high. Under such circumstances, the attorney general must make clear to the authorities that protest is an inseparable part of democratic life.

Israeli air strikes kill Palestinian militant and wound six: Guardian

Rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel, threatening to disrupt the unsteady truce brokered by Egypt

Israel launched two air strikes in Gaza on Friday, killing a Palestinian militant and wounding six people, after rockets were fired from the enclave into southern Israel, threatening to unravel an Egyptian-brokered truce. Palestinian officials in Gaza said the militant killed in a strike on a refugee camp was a member of a pro al-Qaida fringe Salafist Islamist group which Israel blamed in part for a cross-border attack from Egypt’s Sinai that killed an Israeli man on Monday. A second air strike launched after darkness fell wounded four other men in northern Gaza, Hamas medical officials said.

Jonathan Cook: Israel’s ‘price tag’ terrorism has tactical political goals: Jonathan Cook

By Jonathan Cook, The National – 22 June 2012

Violent, so-called “price tag” attacks by Jewish settlers have become a staple of life for Palestinian communities over the past few months. The latest is the torching this week of a mosque in the village of Jaba, close to the city of Ramallah.

Palestinians in areas of the West Bank under Israeli control live with settler neighbours who beat and shoot them, set alight fields, poison wells, kill livestock and steal crops. These acts of terror have begun to spread elsewhere: homes, cars, cemeteries, mosques and churches are now targets in East Jerusalem and Israel too. Earlier this month a school and several cars were vandalised in Neve Shalom, the only genuinely mixed Jewish-Arab community in Israel.

Invariably the “price” invoked by the settlers is unrelated to any Palestinian action. Instead Palestinians are punished indiscriminately for the smallest concession the settlers fear Israel might make in the diplomatic arena.

Superficially, the settlers’ behaviour looks like a particularly vicious form of tantrum-throwing, but there are tangible benefits to be gained from the trail of destruction they leave behind.

They provided a clue to their reasoning, as they always do in “price-tag” attacks, on the walls of Jaba’s mosque. In black spray-paint, they spelt out their grievance: “Ulpana”.

Ulpana, also near Ramallah and home to 30 Jewish families, is a settler “outpost” – one of more than 100 such settlements-in-the-making that are scattered across the West Bank. Unlike a similar number of much larger and more established settlements, which are illegal under international law, the outposts violate Israeli law too.

After years of petitions from human-rights groups, Israel’s Supreme Court has reluctantly ruled recently that Ulpana must be removed. D-Day for the settlers, July 1, is rapidly approaching.

The torching of the mosque – the settlers’ trump card – was intended chiefly as a reminder to Israel’s right-wing government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, that any move against them risks triggering a round of intensified violence that will further damage Israel’s image with the international community.

But it was also designed to dampen the enthusiasm of the courts for further costly run-ins with settlers. The Supreme Court, settlers hope, will be in no hurry to enforce the destruction of future Ulpanas.

Following the torching of Jaba’s mosque, Mr Netanyahu made the usual formulaic nods towards enforcing the rule of law. Dan Halutz, a former military chief of staff, was more candid, admitting there was no will to stop such attacks. “If we wanted, we could catch them [the perpetrators], and when we want to, we will,” he told Army Radio.

There are no signs a change of heart from the army is imminent. In fact, quite the reverse: for the past two decades the settlers have been strenuously working to take over the military’s combat units and its top ranks. What was once the Israeli people’s army is now very much the preserve of the settlers. The resulting collusion has been amply on display in recent weeks as a stream of embarrassing “occupation videos” have surfaced.

A few weeks ago, for example, Shalom Eisner, one of the new breed of settlers turned army commander, was caught on filmsmashing his rifle butt into the face of a Danish peace activist in the Jordan Valley. Mr Eisner’s only remorse, after the video was aired on Israeli TV, was to concede: “Maybe it was a professional mistake to use the gun when there were cameras around.”

And last month Palestinians in Asira Al Qibliya, near Nablus, filmed soldiers abetting armed settlers as they attacked the village. While villagers threw stones to repel the invaders, settlers opened fire, seriously injuring a youth. All the while, the soldiers could be seen guarding the settlers, clearly neither in danger from the Palestinians nor interested in stopping the shooting.

Israelis have not asked why, in cases such as the Asira video, where the faces of the lawbreaking settlers and soldiers are clearly visible, there have been no arrests.

Nor are they questioning Mr Netanyahu’s response to the Ulpana ruling. He has adopted the modus operandi of the settlers, inflicting his own price tag, this time on the courts: at the latest count, 60 new homes are to be built in a relocated Ulpana settlement for every one targeted by the judges.

But his pandering to the settlers has gone even further. He has effectively declared Ulpana’s existing five apartment blocks sacred territory, vowing, despite the enormous cost, to “saw” them: that is, to move them wholesale to the new site in the West Bank. In this way, he has sanctioned the very zealotry that finds its perfect justification and expression in the price tag attacks.

Ordinary Israelis are likewise adopting a mood that chimes with that of the settlers. The mounting documentary evidence of the settlers’ brutality, difficult for Israelis to ignore or deny, is rapidly hardening public opinion.

This toughening of public emotion leaves Israelis both indifferent to the suffering of Palestinians and in a mood for violence and vengeance towards any non-Jews who share their state, including not only 1.5 million Palestinian citizens but also migrant workers and now African asylum-seekers.

Once Israelis longed to believe in their own mythical slogans of ethical superiority: they had the “most moral army in the world” and their soldiers, as Golda Meir famously observed, suffered uniquely from an oversensitivity syndrome termed “shoot and cry”.

Nowadays, even the pretence of soul-searching is gone. If Israelis have a current motto, it is “shoot and shrug your shoulders”.

Jonathan Cook won the 2011 Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

EDITOR: Alice Walker stands with Palestine!

In a world where money rules, such as that of literary prizes and honours, where even such literary giants such as Amitav Gohsh or Margaret Atwood are not immune to taking blood money from Israel, if the sum is large enough, it is very refreshing to hear about a principled writer such as Alice Walker, refusing to allow her book The Colour Purple to be printed in a Hebrew version. Below is an argument by the usual Zionist apologist, writing that for Israel, ‘the occupation is only one of our problems’… obviously, not an important problem. Thank you, Alice Walker, for again serving as a moral lighthouse in these times of moral relativity and easy conscious.

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple should be read in Israel: Guardian CoF

By not allowing a new Hebrew edition, Alice Walker is preventing those who could learn from her powerful novel from reading it

Alice Walker

‘Alice Walker’s aspiration should be to have her books read by those with whose beliefs she does not agree.’ Photograph: Tara Todras-Whitehill/AP

Literature at its best should be a Trojan horse. Good authors don’t just tell us a story to pass the time in a pleasant way; he or she offers ideas that insinuate themselves into the reader’s mind, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes in the form of a tale that disguises its moral and cultural lessons. Books can provide readers a mirror in which they will see something they hadn’t seen before, and give them the opportunity of subsequently seeing themselves and their surroundings in a different light.

Alice Walker relinquished the possibility of becoming a literary Odysseus when she announced recently that she had declined the offer to publish a new Israeli edition of her classic novel The Color Purple. Walker explained her decision on the grounds that Israel is an apartheid state and added that she hoped the boycott would have an effect on civil society in Israel.

Let us set aside the proposition that Israel is an apartheid state, though to me this doesn’t seem an accurate definition. The background to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not racial. It would have been enough to talk about the Israeli occupation: there is no need to bandy slogans around in order to strengthen the argument that the occupation must be ended.

But let us use Walker’s assumption that Israel is indeed an apartheid state. If South Africa was still under an apartheid regime, would it not be smarter to enable the people there, by as many means possible, to read what Walker has to say about racial discrimination?

Boycotting is easy. A herd of boycotters is a comfortable herd. Being anti-Israeli these days is fashionable. As a boycotter you join a popular crowd, and you’re safe in the knowledge you will get automatic applause from your intellectual and literary milieu. Clearly the issue of Israel/Palestine is important to Alice Walker, but she and others involved in the arts who are implementing a cultural boycott of Israel are accomplishing the opposite of what they believe in.

What is Walker achieving by preventing a new generation of Israelis – a translation was originally published in the 1980s – from reading The Color Purple in Hebrew ? What punishment does she, and all the boycotters of Israel, think they are meting out to us? To be plain, most Israelis don’t have any particular interest in Alice Walker, and her own boycott won’t make waves.

But the accumulation of boycotts does have an effect on Israeli life. By isolating them, boycotters create a renewed sense of unity and self-worth among Israelis, and greater antagonism and closedness to the outside world. In one sense, the boycotters are feeding the flames of a lingering sense of victimhood. Victimhood is one of those mental constructs that is hard for Israelis to rid themselves of – and therefore, one which the Israeli establishment itself nurtures because it is convenient.

Some people say that when a writer prevents publication of his or her book in Israel, or refuses to participate in literary festivals here, she or he is in fact punishing precisely those – in the centre and on the left, who are disproportionately represented in literary circles – who support peace and oppose the current government’s policy.

I’d like to suggest a different argument, using the example of the Trojan horse. I believe Alice Walker’s aspiration, and that of other major cultural figures, should be to have her books read precisely by those people with whose actions and beliefs she does not agree. Walker, of all people, who has confronted racism and written a powerful fictional critique of it, is preventing Israelis from being exposed to the very kind of literary work that is crucial for them to read.

Walker should want her books to appear not only in bookshops and on private bookshelves but on huge billboards along the highways in the state of Israel. For whose edification is she talking about racism and segregation? Is her aim only to preach to the converted, to the liberal masses of Scandinavia? It is precisely here in Israel that her voice needs to be heard, and in Hebrew.

Had Walker herself done more research, she would have certainly have found that the occupation is only one of our problems. Perhaps it’s the most acute of our problems, but the manifestations of racism in Israeli life are far more extensive than solely attitudes towards the Palestinians. The incarceration and deportation of African migrants living in Israel is an intense current issue here and it is eliciting unprecedented racism from Israelis, and not only from the mob in the streets but also in the Knesset – the Israeli parliament – and from senior government ministers, who have actively fanned the flames of race hatred.

Maybe this public and humiliating demonstration of primitive racism to the world is Israel’s punishment for the occupation. Something inside us is sick. The situation is disturbing as well as infuriating – but the way to fight it is to make your voice heard, not to be silent. In her decision not to have her book translated in Israel, Walker is choosing to keep silent, absenting herself from Israel’s crucial public discourse about racism and the occupation. This is a strange and disappointing choice for an activist writer such as her.

June 19, 2012

EDITOR: The fascist attacks continue unabated

In Israel, few things are certain. Still, we can be certain about the continuation and increase of racism, fascism and extreme nationalism, stoked by the government and large sectors of society. The attacks on Palestinians in the Occupied Territories will continue, as their final aim is to rid the territory of its people, and replace them with settlers. It was ever thus, since Herzl wrote such lines in his diary in June 1896, and it has never changed. The differences are mainly of style. Some Zionist call it the ‘Lorry solution’, while others prefer better transportation for the expelees…

Mosque in West Bank village set alight in suspected ‘price tag’ attack: Haaretz

Unidentified vandals set fire to a Palestinian mosque, spray-paint graffiti on its walls; IDF: Attack could undermine security in the area.
By Chaim Levinson and Gili Cohen Jun.19, 2012

A man outside the mosque in Jab'a on June 19, 2012. The graffiti reads "Ulpana war." Photo by Iyad Haddad, B'tselem

A mosque in the West Bank village of Jab’a, located south of Ramallah, was set on fire in a suspected “price tag” arson attack early Tuesday morning.

Graffiti carrying messages such as “The war has begun” and “You will pay the price” was spray-painted on the mosque’s walls.

Shin Bet agents and police, accompanied by a heavy contingent of IDF soldiers, were combing the area for clues and interrogating witnesses in the village on Tuesday morning.

The mosque appears to have been attacked around 1:30 A.M. While none of the villagers saw the arsonists, they noticed the fire following the attack and hurried to extinguish it.

According to villagers, while the incident was immediately reported to the IDF, the army only arrived on the scene around 6 A.M.

Jab’a is located near Highway 60, a central traffic artery in the West Bank, but the access road to the village is blocked by large dirt mounds. Police are still investigating whether the attackers arrived by car or on foot.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak condemned the attack on Tuesday morning, calling it “a grave and criminal act, meant to harm the fabric of life in the area and distract the IDF and the security forces from their missions, which include protecting Israeli citizens in the area.”

Barak added that he had instructed the IDF and Israel’s security forces to use “all means” to find the perpetrators of the attack and bring them to justice.

The IDF said it views the incident gravely and that it could undermine the stability of security in the area.

“Price tag” attacks are generally carried out by West Bank settlers and their supporters against Palestinian targets, often in retaliation for moves against settlements.

Tuesday morning’s attack followed an extensive drill by Israel Police on Monday, held in preparation for the expected evacuation of the Ulpana Hill neighborhood in the West Bank settlement of Beit El.

Earlier this month, vandals carried out similar actions in the East Jerusalem neighborhood Shuafat, as well as in the Jewish-Arab village of Neveh Shalom.

Also in early June, a number of Middle East experts warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that continued settlement construction or the burning of a major mosque by Jewish extremists could ignite a third intifada in the West Bank.

Amira Hass: The law, ass or donkey?: Haaretz on IOA

18 JUNE 2012
By Amira Hass, Haaretz – 18 June 2012

Susya, June 2012: Will Palestinian residents be expelled for the third time? (Image: Rabbis for Human Rights)

Three High Court justices sit down to familiarize themselves with the facts: The residents continue to build without construction permits. And the three justices issue an interim order against any such construction within the two clusters that the petition relates to. The order was issued on June 7, the day after the petition and had been discussed.

Subject of the petition: Illegal outpost

Essence of the petition: Disregard of the laws of symmetry and the failure to implement the house-demolition orders issued regarding the structures of the said outpost. The subtext is clear: You ruled against Migron and the Ulpana neighborhood; why are you silent this time?

The justices: Asher Grunis, Hanan Melcer and Daphna Barak-Erez

The buildings: Neither low-rise apartment blocks like the ones in the Ulpana neighborhood nor single-family villas similar to housing in the West Bank settlement of Ofra (the vast majority of which is constructed on private land belonging to the villages of Silwad and Ein Yabrud, and therefore also lacks a detailed construction and development plan ), not even trailers hooked up to water and electricity like the ones in Migron and Givat Assaf. Only a cluster of hovels, tents and concrete rooms slapped together in a hurry.

Guess: The residents are Palestinians (only Palestinian “illegal outposts” remain unconnected to the electricity grid, phone and water lines ).

The land: Private Palestinian land, just like in Migron, Givat Assaf and Ofra, but unlike the Jewish outposts, this “outpost” is located on land owned by its inhabitants. No forged signatures or documents, no other acts of fraud perpetuated.

Name: Susya, southern slope of Mount Hebron

Some history: The adjacent Jewish West Bank settlement of Susya was erected in 1983.

1986: A confiscation order is issued against the lands of the Palestinian village Susya. The village is decreed an archaeological site (because of remnants of an ancient Jewish settlement ). And the Palestinian residents? Instead of treating them with respect and thanking them for preserving the location over the centuries, the IDF and Civil Administration expel them from their homes (caves located among ancient stone structures ), wells and fields.

And then? Susya’s Palestinian residents, members of the Nawaj’ah family, move onto the land they’ve been farming, into caves and tents.

July 2001: Under the guise of the second intifada, the IDF and Civil Administration expel the Nawaj’ah family for a second time. Tents are crushed, caves and wells sealed and wrecked, farmland destroyed, animals killed.

A small but surprising twist: On September 26, 2001, the High Court of Justice instructs the authorities to stop destroying the buildings at the height of a public campaign by the residents and left-wing groups, and the residents’ legal battle led by attorney Shlomo Lecker.

Despite the injunction, Jewish settlers and the army prevent the residents’ access to some 3,000 dunams (about 740 acres ) of their land.

The court orders an end to the demolition and expulsion, but does not instruct the Civil Administration to allow the Palestinians to build, forcing them to build without permits, for example, a school. As of May 2012, 18 demolition orders have been issued against hovels and buildings, including a school.

Another plot twist: Via the organization Rabbis for Human Rights, Susya residents appeal the blocked access to their private land and the fact that Jewish settlers are making a grab for it.

Another surprise twist: In October 2011, the military commanding officer declares a large part of their land as “closed to Israelis,” i.e., Jewish settlers, in order to stop the encroachment and land grab.

An attempt to fix the twist, February 2012: Regavim, a nonprofit association to protect the Jewish nation’s land, and the Jewish settlement of Susya petition the High Court to accelerate the pace of the Palestinian Susya demolition orders and to stop construction. In other words: a recipe for a third expulsion.

In her response, Attorney Avital Sharon of Rabbis for Human Rights points to the petition’s lack of good faith, and why it should be rejected outright. For example, she points to unauthorized construction in Jewish Susya and to the fact that the director general of Regavim himself lives in an unauthorized outpost.

Sharon also also gives reasons for the case in question: the earliest expulsion. The Civil Administration discriminates against Palestinians by not creating construction and development plans for them. Contrary to what is stated in the petition, the Civil Administration tirelessly demolishes Palestinian structures. In the last four years alone, 1,101 such structures have been demolished. Susya and the rabbis are busy working on a construction and development plan for the village (even though this is the responsibility of the official authorities ).

The judges listen to the supposed voice of symmetry coming from the petition submitted by Regavim and the Jewish settlement of Susya and do not reject the petition outright. They even issue an interim order to stop new construction in the village of Susya.

Construction in the Jewish settlement Susya continues, as it does in its satellite outposts.

As a result of the High Court ruling, officers of the Civil Administration show up in Susya on June 12 and hand out six collective demolition orders affecting 52 buildings, including a preschool, a clinic and a solar panel system supplying electricity to the village and its steadfast residents.

Demolition time frame: within three days (Attorney Quamar Mishirqi Assad of Rabbis for Human Rights manages to get a 10-day extension to submit challenges to the demolition orders ).

The residents of Susya ask the honorable justices Grunis, Melcer and Barak-Erez: Is this how you understand the word “justice” of your titles?

Israel uses Jenin murder probe as pretext to arrest, harass Freedom Theatre staff: Electronic Intifada

18 June 2012

Since the murder of Juliano Mer-Khamis, the Israeli army continues to harass and arrest members and staff of the Freedom Theatre.

(Wagdi Eshtayah / APA images)

Micaela Miranda’s two-year-old daughter is having nightmares, two weeks after her father was taken away in the middle of the night by the Israeli army.

“She saw her father being taken away,” Miranda said. “It’s very difficult. This is the second time that he was taken.”

Miranda’s husband, Nabil al-Raee, is the artistic director of the renowned Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. A group of armed Israeli soldiers arrested him at the family’s home in the early morning hours of 6 June.

Currently held in Jalameh prison in northern Israel, al-Raee has, to date, been denied access to a lawyer and from contacting his family. According to Miranda, his arrest and detention seem to be related to the investigation into the 2011 murder of Juliano Mer-Khamis, a founder of the Freedom Theatre.

“For us, this is not acceptable because we have been in interrogation before. We went by our own feet and we talked with them. They don’t have anything else so they just keep him in prison,” Miranda said.

“I see it as harassment. I don’t know why the Israeli authorities are doing this. Do they have the wrong information from the Palestinian Authority? Or are they doing this for several reasons: to harass the theater, to shut down the theater, or to see what is the reaction of other people while Nabil is under arrest?” she said.

Meant to intimidate

Al-Raee is the latest in a string of people affiliated with the Freedom Theatre — including a young lead actor and a member of the theater’s board of directors — who have been arrested over the past year.

The Israeli army has also broken theater windows and equipment and shot live ammunition during night raids conducted in the camp, and intimidated and ransacked homes of theater employees.

Mer-Khamis, a well-known actor and director, was an Israeli citizen born to a Palestinian father and Jewish Israeli mother. He was shot and killed in front of the theater in April 2011. The Israeli authorities continue to say that the arrests were related to the probe into his murder.

But most people close to the theater aren’t convinced.

“These kinds of abductions and attacks on the Freedom Theatre physically have happened too many times now, which leads us to believe that maybe this is not conducted entirely, or even at all, as part of an investigation surrounding Juliano’s murder,” explained Jonatan Stanczak, the theater’s managing director. “It may actually be a way for the Israeli army to harass and break the Freedom Theatre.”

Stanczak said that since Freedom Theatre staff members have cooperated with the Israeli authorities in their investigation into Mer-Khamis’s death, arresting people in the middle of the night is an unnecessary measure.

“We are calling for people of conscience around the world to talk to their local Israeli representative in order to get an explanation of what motivates a large scale military operation in order to abduct the artistic director of the Freedom Theatre, and why this could not have been done through a simple phone call?” he said.

The Jenin refugee camp is a 0.42-square kilometer area in the north of the occupied West Bank that is home to approximately 16,000 registered Palestinian refugees, more than half of whom are under the age of 24.

Today, the Palestinian Authority has jurisdiction over the camp, and it began a criminal investigation into Mer-Khamis’ death immediately after he was killed. The Israelis also began their own investigation shortly thereafter, run jointly by the Israeli army, police and the Shabak security agency, also known as the Shin Bet (according to its Hebrew acronym).

To date, no one has been charged.

International pressure building

On 13 June, 50 European parliamentarians sent a letter to Catherine Ashton, theEuropean Union’s foreign policy chief, demanding al-Raee’s release. The letter was published on the Freedom Theatre’s website.

“We consider that it is a duty of the international community and much more of the European Union, to demand from the leaders of the State of Israel to respect international law and cease maintaining the repressive and brutal wave of detentions, contrary to the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention,” the letter stated.

“Furthermore, the EU should support the cultural work done that helps bring about a climate of understanding. Given the urgency of the situation, we would appreciate your response to safeguard and protect the life of Nabil al-Raee,” it added.

Petitions demanding that al-Raee be released from prison are also circulating across Europe and North America, and the Freedom Theatre has encouraged individuals to appeal directly to Israeli politicians and to the Israeli army’s District Coordination Office.

Not losing hope

The next hearing into Nabil al-Raee’s arrest and detention is scheduled for 19 June at Israel’s Salem Detention Center, near Jenin. According to Micaela Miranda, the Palestinian Authority should also be held responsible for her husband’s fate.

“There is cooperation between the PA and the Israelis. We don’t even know if this arrest has its origin in wrong information from the PA because they’re supposed to be giving the Israelis information from inside [about] what is going on [in Jenin],” Miranda told The Electronic Intifada, adding that the Israeli army enters Jenin at least three times each week to make arrests.

“[When] we see there is no PA [police] in the street, we know they’re all inside and the [Israeli] army’s coming. For us, it’s clear that the PA is not here to protect the Palestinians.”

Despite this reality, Miranda said she continues to hope that her husband will soon be released.

“The pressure we can make is very small because the Israeli system and Israeli law is built in a very smart way, and so we feel helpless. We just have to accept it like this and wait and see how it goes,” she said. “We are continuing and hoping for Nabil to come home.”

Jillian Kestler-D’Amours is a reporter and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. More of her work can be found at http:jkdamours.com.

Arab educators in uproar over plan to study Begin and Ben-Gurion: Haaretz on IOA

18 JUNE 2012
By Jack Khoury and Talila Nesher, Haaretz – 18 June 2012
Principals and teachers at Arab schools in Israel are furious over the Education Ministry’s plans to make all the country’s schools – including those in Arab towns – focus their curriculum next year on two of Israel’s most prominent leaders.

Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced several weeks ago that the curriculum for the next school year will focus on the leadership of the late prime ministers David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin. Students will be visiting Ben-Gurion’s home in the Negev and the Etzel Museum, which commemorates the pre-state underground militia led by Begin.

Over the last few days, educators at the country’s Arab schools have come to realize that the Ben-Gurion-Begin curriculum may be used in their schools too. Arab principals, teachers and intellectuals have asked the Follow-up Committee on Arab Education, a professional body addressing pedagogic issues related to Israeli Arabs, to take action.

“From the perspective of the Arab population, which was part of the Palestinian people, David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin are not just prime ministers,” said committee spokesman Raja Zatara. “The former is identified with the Nakba, from our perspective, and with the repression and land appropriation during military rule, while the latter is identified with the activities of Etzel, with the Lebanon War and the massacre at Sabra and Chatila, and with the use of emergency measures for oppressing the Arab population.”

He said the issue shows that the Arab school system needs to be governed independently and should have its known autonomous pedagogic secretariat made up of Arab educators and other experts.

The Arab education committee is considering creating an alternative curriculum that addresses the way many Arabs think of Ben-Gurion and Begin, and focuses on two Arab figures as a counterweight to the Jewish ones. Two of the figures being considered are Palestinian literary theorist Edward Said, who next year will have been dead a decade, and the poet Abdelrahim Mahmud, who was born in 1913. The committee will make a final decision in the coming days.

The founding director of the Arab Center for Law and Policy, also called Dirasat, said the Education Ministry’s move is alienating Arab students.

“This is a continuation of the Education Ministry’s policy of denying the cultural and national uniqueness of Arab students, and pours oil on the fire of the exclusion and alienation of the Arab students in the system,” said Yousef Jabareen. “Proper treatment of Arab education would have required sensitivity to the special situations of the Arab students,” which could be shown in the selection of Arab leaders whom the Arab population sees as heroes, like Nazareth Mayor Tawfik Ziad, a former MK, or former MK Tawfik Toubi. Both of those people “fought for the equality of the Arab population for decades,” said Jabareen.

The Dirasat director said the Education Ministry decision seeks to force the Zionist narrative on Arab students.

Professional educators are seeking to match the curriculum to Arab schools by integrating figures from Palestinian history and presenting all the historical facts about Begin and Ben-Gurion, “and not just the positive side,” said one.

The Education Ministry said it was in the process of discussing a possible alternative curricular focus for non-Jewish schools next year. But in his initial announcement, Sa’ar said in a press release in Hebrew and Arabic that the topic was chosen because next year marks the 100th anniversary of Begin’s birth and the 40th anniversary of Ben-Gurion’s death.

“Engaging with their visions and actions will allow students an in-depth familiarity with figures who left their mark on the nature and character of the State of Israel, along with historic events in the history of the state,” Sa’ar said. He added that students would learn about the significant decisions Ben-Gurion and Begin made, and examine the complexity of those decisions, the considerations that went into them and the values that guided the leaders.

June 17, 2012

Documentary offers damning critique of how Western media covered Gaza attack: The Electronic Intifada

Sarah Irving Amman  15 June 2012

In The War Around Us, reporter Sherine Tadros reflects on the roles and responsibilities of journalists during wartime.

Only two English-language journalists reported from Gaza as it suffered an all-out attack from Israel in late 2008 and early 2009. The War Around Us is a powerful, deeply moving new documentary through the eyes of these two reporters, Ayman Mohyeldin and Sherine Tadros.

Directed by Abdallah Omeish (whose best-known film is Occupation 101), The War Around Us is just 75 minutes long. But that’s enough. Tightly focused and intentionally restricted in its scope and aims, it follows in chronological order the course of the conflict, intercut with post facto interviews with Mohyeldin and Tadros. At the time both were reporting for Al Jazeera English. Mohyeldin was based in Gaza, but Tadros was there on an assignment to cover reactions to the election of US President Barack Obama.

With apparently free access to Al Jazeera footage of the attack, as well as images from the Palestinian news agency Ramattan, the film is extremely graphic and disturbing. Scenes include that of a mother and her two dead children lying side-by-side on a hospital floor; another man screaming with grief as the body of his little girl flops on a blanket; young men lying in the courtyard of a police station hit by Israeli air strikes, each with one hand raised as they say the final prayers of the dying. A victim of the horrific burns inflicted by illegal white phosphorous munitions (made in the US, fired by the Israeli military) lies in a hospital bed; huge pools of blood lie clotting on the steps of a school in Jabaliya refugee camp run by the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).

Icy fury
Less graphic but equally devastating is the interview footage. Rima, a beautiful and intensely dignified young mother, tells Tadros how her children no longer say they are afraid of dying — they just want to make sure that they die along with her so they’re not left alone. John Ging, then a leading figure in UNRWA, speaks with icy fury as desperately-needed food supplies burn behind him. And 16-year-old Ahmad Samouni’s face writhes in pain as he describes lying for days surrounded by the bodies of his family, waiting for the Israeli army to allow ambulances to fetch him.

Many viewers are perhaps now inured to the kind of violence we regularly see on YouTube and activist media, but to watch news media footage — where cameramen have often risked their lives to chase the most graphic images, and which has been edited and soundtracked for intensity and impact — for over an hour is hard to stomach, even now.

It is, then, something of a relief that the film intercuts the material from the attack on Gaza with extended interviews with Mohyeldin and Tadros. They reflect on the roles and responsibilities of journalists in such a situation, on their “anger” at finding that they were the only mainstream Western journalists reporting from inside Gaza, and on the personal impacts of covering such a horrific story.

“Where was the outrage?”
Mohyeldin, already a seasoned conflict reporter when he was posted to Gaza, is the more political one in his comments. He is patently furious at the Western media for their failure to adequately deliver to their audiences the truth of what he calls in the film “a story of great shame to humanity.” American and British news channels, he says, “neglected the story and then had the audacity to question the only journalists on the ground … they tried to spin it in a way that would marginalize or diminish what was happening.” He condemns the “silence of the international community. Where was the outrage?”

Tadros’s comments are more personal. A newcomer to frontline reporting, she is frank in saying that she will never put herself in that position again. Obviously hugely affected by the mothers and children she interviewed — in their homes and hospital beds — she recounts how, coming home to London after the attacks, she couldn’t hold her one-year-old nephew because she imagined blood seeping through his clothes. She also describes vividly the difficulty of facing death day after day, not from one’s own perspective, but from that of the family, thousands of miles away, who are powerless to help.

Tadros admits that during the attacks, Mohyeldin found her to be a “princess.” But behind-the-scenes footage shows a drained, haggard woman working 19 hours a day, snatching sleep on an office floor, desperate to achieve her role of showing the human impacts of a conflict which much of world was seeing only from Western reports in southern Israel or the insidious lies of Mark Regev and Avital Leibovich, chief mouthpieces for the Israeli government and military.

Specific aim
Ayman Mohyeldin, in a question and answer session following a screening of the film in Amman, acknowledged criticism of the documentary for its focus on two mainstream journalists, rather than telling the story from a Palestinian perspective. Although Mohyeldin has a Palestinian mother, he doesn’t labor this as a claim to authenticity. Instead, he insists that the film has a very specific aim — to speak to Western audiences, to use himself and Tadros, two Western journalists of Arab origin, as a bridge to the sympathies of Western viewers, and to “make people question their own media for not telling [the truth about the attacks].”

Ultimately, The War Around Us is a damning critique — from within the industry — of the Western media’s reporting of Palestine, as well as a powerful tool in the hands of Palestine solidarity campaigners. There is no way to walk away from this film not feeling angry and deeply distressed, but also with a visceral and fundamental grasp on the depth of Israel’s denial of the Palestinian right not only to life and liberty but, in Ayman Mohyeldin’s words, “of the right to aspire.”

For details of future screenings of The War Around Us, see http://thewararoundus.com

Sarah Irving is a freelance writer. She worked with the International Solidarity Movement in the occupied West Bank in 2001-02 and with Olive Co-op, promoting fair trade Palestinian products and solidarity visits, in 2004-06. She is the author of a biography of Leila Khaled and of the Bradt Guide to Palestine and co-author, with Sharyn Lock, of Gaza: Beneath the Bombs.

Iran arrests suspects over nuclear scientists’ deaths: Guardian

Iran intelligence ministry claims detained suspects are linked to assassinations of nuclear scientists and have ties with Israel

Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan

Iran has claimed it has arrested the “main elements” behind the assassination of two of its nuclear scientists, alleging they were spies working for Israel.

The intelligence ministry said on Thursday it had identified a number of agents affiliated with the “Zionist regime” involved in the January assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a key figure at one of Iran’s main uranium-enrichment facilities and the 2010 killing of Majid Shariari, a senior nuclear scientist.

Local news agencies published what appears to be a terse statement by the ministry, which does not shed light on the numbers, names or nationalities of those said to be detained nor clarifies where and when they were arrested.

“A series of heavy and thorough intelligence operations which begun after the assassination of our first nuclear scientists … led to the identification of a number of agents [gathering information] for the fake regime that rules over the occupied territories,” it said.

In January, attackers on a motorbike stuck a magnetic bomb to a car carrying Roshan, deputy director of the Natanz plant. The car’s driver, Reza Ghashghaee, was also killed in the attack, which took place during morning rush-hour in Tehran.

Roshan was the latest victim in what is widely seen as a covert war against the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme. It was the fifth assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist in the past two years.

Shariari, a member of the nuclear engineering faculty at Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University, was killed in November 2010 when bomb attacks targeted two Iranian nuclear scientists.

Shahriari was killed. His colleague, Fereidoun Abbasi-Davani, who was wounded in the attack, was later promoted as head of the country’s atomic energy agency.

Shahriari and Abbasi-Davani were targeted by attackers on motorcycles who attached bombs to the victims’ cars.

In recent years, Iran’s nuclear programme has experienced setbacks including the assassination of its scientists and the release of the Stuxnet computer worm, designed to sabotage its atomic facilities and halt its enrichment programme. The malware is believed to have targeted a control system used in Iran’s nuclear sites in July 2010.

Embarrassed domestically by the inability to protect its scientists, Iran claims it has launched various sophisticated operations to identify the culprits.

In May this year, Iran hanged 26-year-old Majid Jamali Fashi, who the authorities alleged was responsible for the assassination of Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, a particle physicist killed in January 2010.

According to Iran, Jamali-Fashi confessed to having attached a remote-controlled bomb to a motorcycle parked on the street, which detonated and killed Ali-Mohammadi while he was leaving home for work. The extent of Ali-Mohammadi’s involvement in the country’s nuclear programme is unclear.

In the face of little independent information available on Jamali-Fashi, observers have questioned whether he was involved in the killing of Ali-Mohammadi. Some suspect Iran is struggling to cover its embarrassment at home by staging a series of show trials and claims of arrests.

Iran says its nuclear activities are peaceful and has accused the west – the US and Israel in particular – of attempting to prevent Tehran from acquiring a technology it claims to want for medical and energy supply purposes.

The west fears Iran’s nuclear programme may have military applications and has imposed sanctions to force the authorities to permit the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors full access to its nuclear sites.

Iran is due to hold nuclear talks with the world’s major powers in Moscow next week, when its top officials meet their counterparts from the US, France, Germany, China, Russia and Britain, the group known as P5+1.

Madonna sings for apartheid; yet campaign to boycott Israel grows stronger: Electronic Intifada

12 June 2012

“I chose to start my world tour in Israel for a very specific and important reason,” Madonna said.

(Mark Cornelison / MCT)

Madonna kicked off her “MDNA” tour on 1 June with all the spectacle one has come to expect from her. First-rate choreography, costume changes galore and, of course, all the hits trotted out for a crowd of 30,000 at Ramat Gan Stadium on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. There was even a little controversy mixed in to remind us of the days when the “Queen of Pop” used to be truly shocking.

Now, the hired pens are frothing over her depiction of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen with a swastika on her forehead. Predictably, the responses range from the obtuse (“how can she show the swastika in the land of the Jews?”) to the supportive (“she was right to bring attention to the rise of the right in Europe”) to outrage from Le Pen herself (who is threatening to sue “if she tries that in France”).

All of this commentary misses that which is both most obvious and most hidden: that in order to play in Israel in the first place, Madonna had to cross what must be world’s largest picket line.

“I chose to start my world tour in Israel for a very specific and important reason,” said Madonna from the stage of the stadium. “As you know, the Middle East and all the conflicts that occur here and that have been occurring for thousands of years, they have to stop. You can’t be a fan of mine and not want peace in the world.”

That same day, two Palestinian brothers, both in possession of tickets to Madonna’s “peace” concert, filmed their attempt to get to the show (“Anarchists Against the Wall and Sheikh Jarrah movement reject Madonna’s invitation to whitewash Israeli apartheid and occupation,” Live from Occupied Palestine, 31 May 2012).

That attempt was thwarted by Israel’s wall in the West Bank. Madonna said nothing about them or the other innumerable Palestinians who were similarly unable to attend. For all her rhetoric about world peace, she said nothing of the very segregated crowd for whom she was performing.

Silent on Palestinian suffering

She said nothing of the Palestinian political prisoners on continued hunger strike. Nor did she say anything about the members of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, calling for African refugees to be summarily deported. In fact, her “thousands of years” line, parroted from the same old Orientalist schlock fed to the West every day, reveals that Madonna knows absolutely nothing about the daily conditions of Palestinians.

Even the debate over the image of Marine Le Pen ignores a massive part of the issue — specifically that even while the fascist menace seems to be gaining traction in European elections, the far-right is on the rise in Israel too. Ultra-orthodox gangs are allowed to beat up Arabs on Israel’s streets with impunity. Cities like Haifa are warning businesses that they’ll lose their licenses to operate if they hire African refugees.Avigdor Lieberman, the same foreign minister who routinely promises “transfer” of Palestinians, has enthusiastically met with Geert Wilders, the hard right, anti-immigrant leader of the Dutch Freedom Party.

One simple, shocking image of Marine Le Pen won’t even scratch the surface of this, and as you may have guessed, Madonna didn’t mention any of Israel’s home-grown proto-fascists. As for the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, the Queen of Pop wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.

This, in essence, is where the victory lay for Israel’s occupation of Palestine: the brutal reality of a colonial settler state relying on a policy of racism and apartheid, repainted as a clash between a peace-loving bastion of culture and a civilization bent on war.

It’s no wonder, then, that such fanfare has surrounded Madonna’s Israel tour-launch. Ever since she announced it at this year’s Superbowl, the concert has been touted loud and clear — perhaps by nobody more than Israel’s politicians and officials. In the days leading up to the concert, the Israeli embassy in London took time to smear the BDS campaign as “an anti-Israeli movement.” The Board of Deputies of British Jews called comparisons to apartheid South Africa “a specious and desperate effort by a failing boycott campaign” (“Israel is new South Africa as boycott calls increase,” The Independent, 3 June 2012).

PR gimmick

But if the push for cultural boycott is failing, then why go out of the way to denounce it so vociferously? Why is the Knesset passing laws that allow for boycott advocates to be sued in court? Why is the Israeli government discussing stepping in to insure promoters against the financial effects of “politically motivated cancellations”?

So scared of BDS are some in the music industry that last year saw a consortium of American and Israeli entertainment executives to set up the “Creative Community for Peace,” whose expressed intention is to counter the movement for a cultural boycott of Israel.

Truthfully, the Israeli government and concert industry have plenty of reason to be nervous. Though the launch of the “MDNA” tour did indeed take place in Israel, the BDS campaign surrounding it was one of the most high-profile in some time. It was so public that Madonna’s public relations team stepped in to announce that 600 tickets to her show would be given to members of left-leaning organizations (“Madonna invites Israeli, Palestinian activists to Tel Aviv concert,” Haaretz, 31 May 2012).

This too backfired. Some groups declined the invitation on the grounds that those living in the occupied West Bank and Gaza wouldn’t be able to attend. And given the amount of publicity surrounding the controversy, they were afforded a larger platform to make the case for BDS.

Among these were Anarchists Against the Wall and the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement, the latter of whom released a statement making clear that: “Madonna has never criticized the Israeli occupation, its separation policies, or its regime of privileges. Therefore, we believe that the reason she sought the presence of Israeli peace activists was to further a public image of an artist who promotes peace in the Middle East. We refuse to be a public relations gimmick for Madonna at the expense of the Palestinians. This is not our way” (“Madonna invites leftist groups to concert, anarchists refuse,” +972 Magazine, 31 May 2012).

The inequities of Israeli society have even been inadvertently illustrated from within Madonna’s own camp. Headlines were made when Ali Ramadani, one of Madonna’s backup dancers of Palestinian heritage, tweeted from al-Aqsa mosque while visiting. “At the amazing al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem,” wrote Ramadani. “I don’t want to say it’s in Israel, but Palestine, strength and honor.” Israeli newspapers called his tweet a controversy (“Keeping up with Kabbalah’s Queen of Pop,” Times of Israel, 29 May 2012).

It seems, then, that even as the Israeli concert industry has stepped up its game, so has the BDS movement. The campaign surrounding Madonna’s mega-show has arguably been the most high-profile since 2010, when the Gaza Freedom Flotillamassacre provoked several well-known acts to cancel performances in protest.

Since then, there have been several other cancellations Israeli concerts (Tuba Skinny,Natacha Atlas and Cat Power) after consistent campaigning from BDS activists. Still others (The YardbirdsZdob si Zdub), while not officially joining the BDS campaign, have quietly canceled their gigs in Israel without rescheduling. Far from failing, the cultural boycott movement is doing exactly what it’s meant to do: shine a light on the fierce injustice of Israeli apartheid and shame those who cross the picket line.

If the stakes have indeed been raised on both ends, then the need for sharp critique and hard arguments can’t be understated. Madonna’s endless prattle about world peace may have been hollow, but it’s also effective in the hands of colonizers. Just as in South Africa, Israeli officials have long sought to paint the Arab-Israeli conflict as “equal-sided.” Famous images of young Palestinians slinging rocks at massive tanks provided to Israel by the world’s biggest military superpower have gone a long way toward poking holes in this myth over the past twenty years.

Obscuring a double standard

Nonetheless, Israel’s political class — from its far-right to its dwindling liberal camp — continue to demand that Palestinians put down their arms, even as Israeli settlers and the Israeli military barrel through towns in the West Bank, and Gaza is locked from the rest of the world. The double standard is palpable, but the role of culture — at least in the hands of the occupiers’ government — has been to obscure it.

Speaking of those activists that did attend the concert, Madonna told the crowd, “There are several very brave and important NGOs [non-governmental organizations] that are representing both Palestine and Israel together.” Again, note the wording. And note the implication: that it’s two equal sides at war here.

Never mind the Nakba (the systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948), never mind the decades of displacement, the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees scattered by Israeli land grabs or the thousands locked up in its prisons. Never mind that Israel is armed to the teeth by the west and is one of the world’s top military spenders as a proportion of national income. With that simple turn of phrase, all of this history and reality is swept aside for words that let the colonizers off the hook and place at least some of the blame on the colonized who dare to resist.

There is another crime, more esoteric in nature, at play here. Whether Madonna is aware of it or not (and there’s a good chance she is), her music and art are willfully being lent to the cause of crude state propaganda. This is no conspiracy theory. Israeli politicians are frequently over the moon to have high-profile artists play in Israel.Benjamin Netanyahu himself was so publicly chuffed to have Justin Bieber perform in Tel Aviv that he attempted to force a meeting with the teen pop star (“Justin Bieber’s meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu ‘cancelled’,” The Daily Telegraph, 13 April 2011).

When fake punkers Simple Plan announced their own show in Israel earlier in the spring, it made it onto the State of Israel’s Twitter account. Nissim Ben-Sheetrit, former deputy director general of the Israeli foreign ministry, has said publicly, “We are seeing culture as a hasbara [propaganda] tool of the first rank, and I do not differentiate between hasbara and culture” (“About face,” Haaretz, 20 September 2005).

This, of course, flies in the face of everything that those who are against BDS tell us: that art is somehow “above” politics, and has no role to play other than “bringing people together.” No matter how many times it’s debunked, this old chestnut persists. It ignores that art, for all its high falutin’ pretensions, is a form of labor. And, as any union member will tell you, when labor is withheld it can throw one hell of monkey wrench into the gears of the machine.

This is, ironically, even more true for mega-stars like Madonna. Though she may not have to put the same amount of sweat and sacrifice into her music that she had to 25 years ago, her shows require countless stagehands, sound techs and security staff to pull them off.

And so, once more, it really can’t be denied that the launch of the “MDNA” tour in Israel was a victory for the apartheid state. What also can’t be denied is the growth of the movement for BDS. Every effort was taken to put the heat on Madonna’s camp, resulting in some surprising chances to speak truth to power. Case in point: the ongoing campaign to get the Red Hot Chili Peppers to cancel a forthcoming Tel Aviv show has gained a welcome shot in the arm.

There’s no substitute for that experience. The opportunity to shine a light on Israel’s crimes is arguably bigger than it’s ever been. Madonna’s glitzy, glaring flash might blind and confuse for a little while, but in the end, it’s really no match for the collective effort of all those pushing that light in the right direction.

Alexander Billet is a music journalist and solidarity activist living in Chicago, and runs the website Rebel Frequencies (www.rebelfrequencies.net). His first book, Sounds of Liberation: Music In the Age of Crisis and Resistance, will be available in the fall. He can be reached at rebelfrequencies [AT] gmail {DOT] com.

Continue reading June 17, 2012

June 12, 2012

EDITOR: The perfect ploy…

Having made some 800,000 Palestinians refugees in 1948, and over 250,000 in 1967 (according to Israeli figures…) and then never allowing them to return to their homes, which were then destroyed or given to Israeli Jews, Israel is not quite happy enough with the result. It must now stop the payment to the refugees and their families, as to lower the figures of the refugee total. The morality of this is really beyond me, or as the biblical prophet has said: “Have thou murdered and then inherited?” (Hebrew: Hartsachta Vegam Yarashta) – yes, they have murdered and expelled, then destroyed and inherited. But, this seems to be OK, because they are the Chosen People.

And you know what? They are likely to succeed this time also, unless we kick up a mighty fuss about this travesty! We must stop this; This kind of atrocious behaviour, amongst other evils,  also gives rise to anti-Semitism.

In the meantime, back on the farm: Israeli border Police are searching high and low for anyone black and arresting them, to later deport them by force. Strange Fruit, indeed… the fruit of Zionist racism.

Israeli MK, AIPAC behind Senate bid to cut total number of Palestinian refugees: IOA

12 JUNE 2012
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz – 12 June 2012

Newly passed amendment requires State Department to specify how many of the 5 million Palestinians who receive aid from the UN are refugees who were personally displaced from their homes in 1948, and how many are their descendants.

Capitol Hill in Washington was rocked late last month when the Senate Appropriations Committee approved an amendment requiring the State Department, for the first time, to do a “count” of Palestinian refugees.

The amendment required the State Department to specify how many of the five million Palestinians who receive aid from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency are refugees who were personally displaced from their homes in 1948, and how many are descendants of those refugees.

Known as the Kirk Amendment, after its sponsor, Senator Mark Kirk (R-Illinois), considered one of Israel’s strongest supporters in Washington, the bill conceals within its 150-plus words a fierce battle between Republican legislators and the State Department over the United States’ relationship with UN institutions.

Every year the United States allocates $250 million to UNRWA, which provides food as well as health, education and employment services to millions of Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. For years Congressional representatives have been trying to reduce U.S. contributions to the agency, on the grounds that UNRWA was born in sin and that its policies are anti-Israeli.

What is not common knowledge in the Beltway is that the Kirk Amendment got its start in the Jerusalem office of MK Einat Wilf (Atzmaut ), who toiled for months, together with AIPAC lobbyists and Kirk’s staff, to promote the change.

Last September, as the Palestinians prepared their unilateral bid at the UN, Wilf met with representatives of the pro-Israel lobby in Israel. “I asked them why they weren’t doing anything about UNRWA,” Wilf says, adding: “The answer I got was that figures in the Israeli government had blocked such moves in the past.”

Wilf met with senior Defense Ministry policy official Amos Gilad and explained that she sought to end the agency’s policy of giving refugee status to successive generations of Palestinian refugees. “UNRWA’s activities perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict instead of solving it,” Wilf says.

In a letter he sent Wilf in January, Gilad set the boundaries for her initiate, writing that the UNRWA budget should not be harmed , and that “UNRWA plays an important role in aiding the Palestinian population.”

“One must prevent a circumstance which endangers the continued transfer of these [UNRWA] services, services that align with Israeli interests,” Gilad added.

After Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Ron Dermer, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign-policy adviser, gave their approval to Wilf’s efforts, she returned to AIPAC staffers and also approached Steven J. Rosen, a former foreign policy director for the organization who now works for a Washington think tank, to get things rolling on Capitol Hill.

In April Wilf and Rosen met with Kirk’s deputy chief of staff, Richard Goldberg. Kirk is recovering from a stroke he suffered a few months ago, and Goldberg is promoting the senator’s legislative efforts.

After a preliminary draft of the bill was worded, AIPAC officials went on board in an attempt to pass it, holding meeting with many of the senators on the appropriations committee in an attempt to sway them into supporting the legislation.

However, opposing the move were State Department officials, who went as far as sending a harshly worded letter to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations Patrick Leahy.

In the letter, the State Department indicated that the United States recognized the refugee status of 5 million Palestinians, and accepts UNRWA’s definition of refugee descendents as refugees themselves.

While the State Department’s opposition succeeded in altering the bill, it did not bring about its cancellation, with the legislation eventually passed in the panel.

The amendment serves as a precedent since it represents the first time that a Senate committee sets demands to the American administration concerning UNRWA’s through legislation, even if it’s only the demand to report.

Responding to the report, Wilf said that her position was that “settlement building and the continued status of Palestinian refugees are both obstacles to peace.”

“I have nothing against the descendents of refugees and I’m not asking them to give up of their dream of returning, but if we want a two-state solution, UNRAW can’t continue to aid an inflation of refugees,” she added, saying: “It ends up harming peace.”

Michel Platini welcomes #Israel to #UEFA - #MahmoudSarsak, by Carlos Latuff

How hunger strikers “tied the hands of the occupation”: a view from Israeli prison: The Electronic Intifada

Ameer Makhoul,  Gilboa Prison 9 June 2012

A demonstration in solidarity with hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners, Jaffa, 12 May 2012. (Oren Ziv / ActiveStills)

Palestinians have achieved three consecutive victories in the last few months. In October 2011, there was the release of prisoners (the exchange deal involving the kidnapped Israeli soldier).

Then there was a series of individual hunger strikes, which lasted for unparalleled periods of time. These began with Khader Adnan, who went on hunger strike to protest against the Israeli policy of administrative detention.

Adnan’s action spurred an open-ended hunger strike by prisoners, started by more than a thousand prisoners on 17 April. It ended on 14 May, with more than 2,000 prisoners taking part. The strike began a new page in the history of the Palestinian struggle for liberation, written by the prisoners along with their Arab and international supporters.

The agreement signed on 14 May 2012 between the authorities in charge of the strike and Israel — with Egyptian and international mediation and guarantees — confirmed that the prisoner movement not only scored a major achievement, but realized a clear victory. We can now speak of two periods, the before and after, with the watershed moment being the hunger strike of 2012.

Clear aims, coordination and preparation

From the beginning, the strike had several strong points. The most important of these was the clarity of its aims — key goals achievable through struggle and determination. These goals fused with the significant and highly conscious coordination between the prisoners on strike and those leading it inside the prisons, and between the latter and the wider political authorities outside.

Strong points became clear. There was no detailed involvement with everyday demands and issues. Thereby, a situation was avoided where larger aims would become entangled with specific demands. This tied the hands of the occupation, which could not manipulate these aims.

A huge role was also played by the strong, clear approach to the media taken by the leadership of the strike, while Israel failed in its attempts to broadcast a contrary view. There was also an accurate reading of Palestinian, Arab and international realities. A central goal was determined through prior planning — the possibility of reviving the Palestinian popular movement and making the most of the significant Egyptian role as a principal party to support the strike and guarantee the achievement of its goals. This risk proved worthwhile as was evident in the Egyptian sponsorship of the agreement to end the strike.

Another significant achievement was the clear preparation and the impressive readiness of the international solidarity movements to launch their campaigns all over the world, particularly in Europe and America, to support the prisoners in their fight for freedom. They declared 17 April as Palestinian Prisoners’ Day.

This resulted in international public pressure in favor of the Palestinians’ right to confront the collusion of their government with the Israeli occupiers. These movements adopted a clear discourse on the humanitarian and political rights demanded by the prisoners. They also proved the importance of cumulative efforts to internationalize the cause of the prisoners and the cause of Palestine.

The strike adopted an approach which has blown the policy of “postponement” — imposed by Israel with official American and European support — out of the water. This is what happened in Oslo, where crucial components of the Palestinian issue were postponed to fit the policy of dictation and domination over the Palestinian leadership.

One of the issues postponed under that formula was the release of prisoners, but this too was brought back to the top of the official Palestinian agenda by the strike. The strikers refused to accept that the prisoners were pawns under the mercy of the occupation.

The strike also succeeded in neutralizing the negative effect of Israeli public opinion by not addressing it at all. This is because if it had moved, it would have gone against the just demands of the prisoners. It is a colonialist public opinion, extremely hostile to Palestinian rights, and therefore cannot support its own victims.

Only one victorious side

There is a difference between achieving specific matters within a wider set of demands and achieving all the goals of a decisive act of struggle. There is also a difference between a clear victory and a case in which each side thinks they’ve won. The outcome of the strike, as expressed in the agreement, is clear — there is only one victorious side, the prisoners.

This was the first time that negotiations were carried out directly with those involved in the case. It is also the first time a decision has been made by the occupier — the General Security Service (Shabak or Shin Bet) — not the Israeli Prison Service, which in the scale of Israeli oppression is just a subcontractor of the Shabak and the security services.

The strike neutralized the Israeli Prison Service and the longer it went on the more direct the dealings with the principal player, the Shabak, became. This is because of the strength of the strike and its solid basis. It forced the Israeli apparatus to reveal itself, because it limited its ability to manipulate and maneuver.

But the most important issue here is the success of the strike in removing the strategic oppression tools the Shabak has used for decades, particularly the laws of administrative detention and solitary confinement in prisons. In this way, the rules of a deeply rooted, coercive game were broken.

As a result of its strength, the strike also revealed the hostility and criminality of the Israeli judicial system, which since its conception has been an instrument to whitewash the racist colonialist project, the Israeli state’s crimes. It gave them legitimacy, justifying administrative procedures, the British mandate’s emergency laws, and continuous solitary confinement, all under the guise of security. And here we saw the Shabak forced to back down over some of them, confirming that the Israeli judicial system played and still plays the role of “palace guards” for the ruling security apparatus.

As for the popular international movement, which turned into official efforts, the Arab role, particularly the Egyptian, and the carrying out of multi-sided negotiations (the prisoners, Israel, Egypt and international pressure) — all these created a new atmosphere, an equation more akin to real negotiations than simply an occupying country dealing with its victims. The strike also confirmed that Israel’s power is not absolute, that its strength and sway can crumble in the face of targeted Palestinian efforts.

Dissolving divisions and boundaries

It is true that the strike was not comprehensive. It was Hamas who took the decision to launch it, along with Islamic Jihad, and with the support of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Members of the Palestine Liberation Organization/Fatah took part in it. Those who initiated the strike kept their word when they guaranteed that all factions were represented in the authoritative body and leadership of the strike, each according to their role and numbers.

Although the strike included no more than a third of the prisoners, with Hamas being the most heavily represented, this in no way weakens its legitimacy. There might have been an argument prior to the strike about declaring it officially, but the moment it began, it became the prisoners’ strike. It became the responsibility of those prisoners taking part in it, and even those who were not, to make it succeed, support it, and share responsibility for it.

The strike proved that when our people or the prisoners’ movement engage in large-scale battles with the occupying oppressive state, the whole nation gets involved.

It is worth confirming that support for the Palestinian cause and Palestinian rights in their entirety is above political factions, rendering such divisions marginal and the people united. When the struggle of our people in Galilee, the Triangle, the Naqab desert and the coast meets with that in Jerusalem, Gaza, the West Bank and those in exile, all boundaries between our people dissolve.

Mobilizing every corner of the homeland

Reconciliation is not the goal of the Palestinian people, it is the responsibility of the political factions involved. The goals of the Palestinian people are return, freedom, liberating the homeland and the people, and self-determination. What is more important than reconciliation is the unity of the struggle and its integration on the basis of the fundamentals of Palestinian rights, not on curtailing them.

This is where the strike succeeded in mobilizing an unprecedented Palestinian movement in every corner of the homeland. With the support of the international movement, this turned the equation on its head in the last stages of the strike, when the prisoners became the ones holding the occupiers and the prisons under siege.

The Palestinian popular movement was followed by an important and effective movement. The initiative launched by the prisoners’ affairs ministry, the freed prisoners, the leadership of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization is a promising model for overcoming factional divisions.

It is now clear that coordination is possible, roles can be complementary, even if the divisions continue. It is clear that the unity of the goal and the people over the prisoners’ struggle is the basis. This is an integrated working model which is capable of achieving victories.

In his last speech in February 1965, Malcolm X said: “The only thing power respects is power.” This is one of the most important lessons of the strike. How do we create this power through determination and justice, and how do we use it well as prisoners and as a people? We must not forget that the most important goal of the prisoners, and the people, is freedom, and that requires more power. The hunger strike in 2012 is a victory on the road to freedom.

Ameer Makhoul is a Palestinian civil society leader and political prisoner at Gilboa Prison.

This article is co-published by Al Akhbar English and translated from Arabic.

Continue reading June 12, 2012

June 11, 2012

EDITOR: Israel racist panic is at its height

With Netanyahu behind mass deportations, and with his ministers each vying to to excel in racist behaviour, Israel is gearing up for the largest migrant expulsion of its kind. As in anything else, on this issue also, Israel will do all to be exceptional. Like in the case of the 45 years of occupation, civil society in the country has failed again to protect the weak and vulnerable from the brutal forces of racist extremism. This at a time that Netanyahu’s close advisers are warning him that Israel’s behaviour in the Occupied Territories will bring about a third Intifada. What a model society… while there is much talk of Jewish suffering during the Holocaust, the daily behaviour towards the other is a model of brutal racism.

Israel to house Ulpana evictees in unauthorized outpost buildings: Haaretz

Deputy AG cites ‘urgent military requirements’ to waive the need for any building permit for the mobile homes to which the occupants of the West Bank homes are slated to move.
By Chaim Levinson     Jun.11, 2012

Protesters set out on a three-day march from the West Bank outpost of Ulpana, June 4, 2012. Photo by Reuters

Citing “urgent military requirements,” Deputy Attorney General Mike Balas has waived the need for any building permit for the mobile homes to which the occupants of the Ulpana homes are slated to move by the end of the month.

As previously reported in Haaretz, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein last week approved a plan to move residents of the five apartment buildings in the outpost of the Beit El settlement slated for demolition because they were built on privately owned Palestinian land to a nearby tract of land that was appropriated by the state in 1970 for military use. The plot is now part of an army base.

By law, a Civil Administration committee must approve any such building, and only after allowing 14 days during which the public can submit objections to the proposal. A committee meeting scheduled for May 31 was canceled, presumably for political reasons.

GOC Central Command Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon, in consultation with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz and in coordination with Balas, agreed to allow the earthworks needed to ready the site for the 35 mobile homes to go ahead without the procedures required by law. Tractors leased by the Defense Ministry began work on the site last week.

In allowing the work to start without the necessary zoning approval process, Balas cited a law permitting construction for military purposes without need of permits. The law is intended to allow for the urgent building of military facilities such as earthwork barriers or positions for guarding roads.

Balas cited the “urgent and immediate military need” to put up the civilian accommodations, adding that they must be erected “quickly and urgently in order to preserve public order and security in the area.”

In so doing, Balas has broken a 33-year tradition of not citing military requirements to justify the construction of civilian housing.

In a response, the Justice Ministry said the construction work “complies with international law and with the desire of the authorities to carry out the Supreme Court ruling in a spirit of peace and cooperation.”

The response of the Israel Defense Forces spokesman’s office was similar.

On a related issues, work on a temporary camp for residents of the Migron outpost is proceeding apace. In April the cabinet approved an allocation of NIS 53 million for the construction of two temporary housing sites for evictees from Migron. One of the temporary sites, known as the Yekev compound, is about two kilometers from Migron, alongside the permanent site selected for the Migron settlers. The Yekev site had originally been zoned as a tourist site, but an extraordinary order expediting the site’s rezoning for housing was issued, and the temporary plan is expected to be approved by June 15.

The Mukhmas local council submitted an objection to the plan. If the proposal is not approved by the deadline, the Migron evictees will be moved to the Adam settlement. Massive earthworks are taking place in both sites, around the clock, in order to complete the temporary camp by August 1, the eviction deadline set by the High Court of Justice.

The warning – and the responsibility: Haaretz Editorial

Everything is out in the open for all to see. One merely has to understand what is happening, and immediately work toward diplomatic progress and stop giving in to the settlers.
Jun.11, 2012

Protesters set out on a three-day march from the West Bank outpost of Ulpana, June 4, 2012 Photo by Emil Salman

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s problematic attitude toward the National Security Council was at the center of the complaints voiced against him by former NSC head Uzi Arad. This attitude was also discussed in a State Comptroller’s Report that is due to be released shortly.

Perhaps that’s the reason the current NSC head, Yaakov Amidror, took the trouble to invite renowned experts on Middle East affairs to his meetings with Netanyahu, so they could share their information and insights. This is a welcome initiative, a genuine opportunity to make it clear to Netanyahu, using sources outside the regular government channels, how his government’s policies and the regional situation are intertwined.

These scholars, whose joint expertise encompasses the Palestinians, the Arab states, Turkey and Iran, were asked to analyze the regional phenomenon of the past year known as the Arab Spring, but they ended up warning Netanyahu about what might turn into a hot Israeli summer.

According to the accepted count, over the past quarter century, since 1987, there have been two intifadas, the first a popular uprising, and the second, which started in September 2000, a combination of popular uprising and organized terror. The time span between the start of the first and second intifadas is similar to the length of time between the start of the second intifada and today. There are also signs pointing to similarities between the three periods, such as improvised terror attacks stemming from religious and national distress. It could be that a third intifada will erupt shortly.

According to these experts, what could ignite such a conflagration, literally, might be the torching of a large and important mosque, either in the West Bank or Israel proper, by right-wing “price tag” activists responding to either a terror attack or what they would consider undue government capitulation to the Palestinians.

Another catalyst for an explosion could be the massive housing construction that Netanyahu announced last week, which came as compensation to the settler community for his obeying of the High Court of Justice’s order to evacuate several buildings in Beit El’s Givat Ulpana neighborhood. Violent confrontations are likely to be caused either by a declared policy that favors the settlers, or by the weakened position of the Palestinian Authority’s moderate leadership, which may not be able to – and may not even want to – stifle the unrest.

These Middle East experts are not relying on classified information. Everything is out in the open for all to see. One merely has to understand what is happening, and immediately work toward diplomatic progress and stop giving in to the settlers.

Netanyahu has been warned. Now he bears the responsibility.

Stuxnet: the worm that turned Obama into a hypocrite?: Guardian

The president who made a stirring declaration about internet freedom authorised a wave of cyber-attacks on Iran, it has been revealed

Iranians work in an Internet cafe in Tehran. President Obama authorised cyber-attacks on the country's nuclear programme. Photograph: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA / Rex Features

‘”Great nations”, said General (and President) de Gaulle, “do not have friends; they merely have interests”. Substitute “ethics” for “friends” and you’d be closer to the mark. In May 2011, the Obama administration published an admirable document setting out the US’s international strategy for cyberspace. It was subtitled “Prosperity, Security, and Openness in a Networked World”, and contained a foreword signed by the president himself.

“Today,” wrote Obama, “as nations and people harness the networks that are all around us, we have a choice. We can either work together to realise their potential for greater prosperity and security, or we can succumb to narrow interests and undue fears that limit progress. Cybersecurity is not an end unto itself; it is instead an obligation that our governments and societies must take on willingly, to ensure that innovation continues to flourish, drive markets, and improve lives.”

Stirring stuff, eh? Obama goes on. “The digital world is no longer the province of a small elite. It is a place where the norms of responsible, just, and peaceful conduct among states and peoples have begun to take hold. It is one of the finest examples of a community self-organising, as civil society, academia, the private sector, and governments work together democratically to ensure its effective management. Most important of all, this space continues to grow, develop, and promote prosperity, security, and openness as it has since its invention. This is what sets the internet apart in the international environment, and why it is so important to protect.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself. But there is a small problem. At the time when he signed that stirring declaration, Obama knew something that the rest of us didn’t – namely that the Stuxnet worm, which caused such havoc at the heart of Iran’s uranium-enrichment process had been written, under his authorisation, by programmers in the US National Security Agency (with some assistance from software engineers working for the Israeli military).

When Stuxnet was first discovered in 2010, it attracted a great deal of attention for several reasons. For one thing it was so remarkably sophisticated and complex that its creation would have required a large software team. This led many of us to suppose that it must be the work of the security services of a major industrial country: it was hard to imagine run-of-the-mill malware authors going to all that trouble when they could be harvesting stolen credit-card numbers without getting out of bed. But the most intriguing thing about Stuxnet was the way it targeted a very specific piece of equipment: the Siemens Simatic programmable logic controller. It is commonplace in industrial operations everywhere – oil refineries, chemical plants, water-treatment facilities and so on. And it is also the device that controlled the centrifuges of the Iranian nuclear programme. Stuxnet could – and did – instruct the Siemens controller to cause the centrifuges to accelerate until they disintegrated.

All this pointed toward one conclusion – that Stuxnet must have been the creation of either the US or Israel. But no one knew for sure. Now, thanks to some fine investigative reporting by David Sanger, we do. The Stuxnet project – codenamed “Olympic Games” – was actually started by the Bush administration and accelerated by Obama in his first months in office. What’s more, Sanger claims that Obama took a detailed, personal interest in the progress of the Stuxnet attack and that there were some agonised discussions in the White House when it was realised that the worm, instead of remaining inside the Natanz nuclear plant, had escaped into the wild, as it were. An error in the code led it to infect an engineer’s computer. When he left the plant and hooked up his laptop elsewhere the software didn’t recognise that its environment had changed. And then the cat was out of the bag – which is how we first got to hear of it.

Sanger’s revelations raise some thorny issues, of which two immediately spring to mind. One: does Obama’s duplicity – publicly espousing the internet as a space that is unpolluted by cyberwar and cyberespionage while covertly sponsoring a cyberweapon like Stuxnet – fatally undermine America’s credibility as a defender of internet freedoms?

Or should it be seen as a defensible exercise in realpolitik – on the grounds that using software to sabotage Iran’s nuclear ambitions would cause less collateral damage than an Israeli airstrike? And two: given that (a) software like Stuxnet could bring our entire industrial infrastructure to a halt, and (b) the likelihood that any piece of malware will escape into the wild, should we treat cyberweapons like biological weapons and ban their use entirely? Discuss, as they say in politics exams.

Why has there been no ‘Palestinian spring’? One word: Oslo: Guardian

The 1993 accords turned the Palestinian struggle from one of resisting Israeli colonialism into occupation management
Ben White

A Palestinian man waves his national flag in front of the separation wall between Israel and Palestine. Photograph: Oliver Weiken/EPA

Ever since the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt began a regional earthquake 18 months ago, commentators have wondered about the absence of a “Palestinian spring”. Attempting to explain this is useful, since it also helps to shed light on key problems with the now-comatose peace process.

To some extent, the question “Why no Palestinian spring?” can be answered with one word: Oslo. The Oslo accords, signed in 1993, established a paradigm where the Palestinian struggle for return and decolonisation was turned into a facade of sovereignty, piecemeal concessions and occupation management.

That, in turn, has shaped the behaviour and direction of key political actors in the occupied territories. The Palestinian Authority (PA), for example, marked the shift from a revolutionary focus to that of “interim” autonomy – which in due course became an institutionalised entity maintained for its own sake. Not only unrepresentative of most Palestinians worldwide, the PA leadership is disconnected even from those over whom it governs; VIP passes and diplomatic letter-exchanges are a stark contrast with the needs of prisoners’ families or expelled farmers.

Another consequence of Oslo has been the “professionalisation” of NGOs, and the huge role these organisations have had in encouraging certain types of Palestinian agency while marginalising or delegitimising others. As was pointed out well over a decade ago, “the NGOs’ lack of a mass base and focus on development and governance issues make them incapable of organising at the mass level”. Their professionalisation has created a marketplace that competes for funding (influenced by donors’ priorities) and has meant “the exclusion of a wider public that participates in determining priorities and national agendas”.

The PA and NGOs (both international and local) have contributed to the emergence of a “broad swathe of public opinion and material interests linked to maintaining the status quo, either fearful of what change may bring or simply unbelieving in the possibility of positive change”. These include merchants, those dependent on the PA for their salaries and those who have permits to work for the settlements and/or inside Israel. This large group constitutes “a solid constituency for not altering the status quo”.

There are other problems, too. Palestinians are confronted by physical obstacles to unified resistance and strategising, in the form of Israel’s colonies, checkpoints, road networks and the wall. There is also the bureaucratic regime of “permits” and separation, driving a wedge between Gaza and the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, etc.

The physical fragmentation goes wider, of course, with Palestinians facing different realities – and experiencing a variety of legal regimes – in places as diverse as the Negev, Silwan, the Jordan Valley and Lebanese refugee camps. These create divergent sets of immediate priorities, which make it hard to create a campaign beyond the local.

An additional factor in the West Bank is the PA’s intolerant approach to dissent and public protest. The rulers in Ramallah are not only an obstacle to a “Palestinian spring” – for some, they are the target. Hamas in Gaza, too, has not been immune to the dangers of treating power as an end in itself.

In Amnesty International’s most recent global human rights report, both the PA and Hamas are criticised for mistreating detainees and restricting freedom of expression. Low tolerance for dissent in the media or in public demonstrations has been one example of the human rights violations that the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights says are “motivated by the ongoing state of political division, apparently as mutual reactions by each side towards the other one”.

Add to this the lack of a political programme representing Palestinian national aspirations, as well as the leadership vacuum brought about by the Fatah-Hamas conflict, and it’s no wonder that mobilisation is a tough challenge.

But that’s not to say it isn’t happening. Palestinians are mobilised but their mobilisation is decentralised and disparate – the energy is there but not in a way that may be immediately apparent. Multiple strands of activism are at play, some of which are aimed at directly, or indirectly, challenging the obstacles to resisting Israeli colonialism.

Until now, mass Palestinian action in the occupied territories is inhibited by a number of factors. But that’s not say things are standing still – and as we know from both Palestinian history and more recent events in the region, things can change in an instant.

 

June 10, 2012

EDITOR: The streets of Israel have become hunting grounds

The army now sent the Border Police, the most brutal of its units, to search for migrants! Another Israel first. All social problems can be resolved by the army, no doubt. These are the units who oppress the Palestinians, both inside Israel and in the Occupied Territories, so now there is a new use for their brutality. Racism has won the day, again. This is also worrying in another way, of course, as it also trials mass expulsion, which is always something they wish to apply to the Palestinians – the so-called Transfer Solution.

Israel begins deportation of South Sudanese migrants: Haaretz

Interior Minister Eli Yishai says arrests are first of many steps, yet cautions much work remains until his vision of migrant-free Israel is fulfilled.
By Dana Weiler-Polak     and Tomer Zarchin     Jun.10, 2012

Israel Border Patrol in south Tel Aviv, May 2012. Photo by Hadar Cohen

Israel’s Immigration Authority began rounding up African migrants on Sunday, with eight arrests reported in Eilat and central Israel.

The Jerusalem’s District Court ruled on Thursday that Israel could deport South Sudanese nationals back to their home county.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai said that this was a first  of many steps and that a great deal of work is left until his vision of a migrant-free Israel is fulfilled.

The court decision on Thursday permitting the deportation of the South Sudanese nationals rejected an appeal by migrant worker NGOs against Yishai’s decision to halt Israel’s collective defense of citizens form the war-torn country.

Once the court ruling was handed down, the Immigration Authority announced that it will begin enforcing the law as it applied to the South Sudanese nationals and their employers.

In addition, the authority announced that it will allow the South Sudanese to leave freely during the next week.

It should be mentioned that the authority would like as many of the migrants from South Sudan to leave of their own free will and because of this decided to extend their right to leave freely without legal penalty.

The Foreign Ministry recently outlined its position regarding 700 South Sudan nationals currently in Israel; the government says there are as many as 3,000 here.

The position is based on a report by Ambassador Dan Shaham, who was sent to South Sudan in April to examine the situation and see if it was suitable to return the migrants.

The document says returning the South Sudanese nationals in general would not constitute a breach of international law, which prohibits a state from expelling foreign nationals if returning them to their home country presents a clear and immediate danger to their lives.

“The international law does not oblige giving migrants shelter for socioeconomic reasons, unless the socio-economic situation in the receiving state is so bad it would endanger the asylum seeker’s life, or could be described as cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” the opinion says.

Weinstein is expected to say that despite the petitioners’ claims, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has not issued any opinion saying forcible expulsion is contrary to the Refugee Convention and has not stated that it objects to these expulsions.

Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman this week called the illegal migration to Israel a “national plague” and said the state was holding diplomatic talks to return them to their home country or a third state.

The Justice Ministry yesterday released a statement saying the decision to expel the migrants was made on the basis of the Foreign Ministry’s position paper, which said it was possible to return South Sudanese migrants to their home country only after it was established that they are not eligible for asylum.

Reports from the United Nations and human rights groups and testimonies by activists and citizens warn of severe human rights violations in South Sudan, continuous warfare and a critical shortage of food, water and medical care, which are leading to a humanitarian disaster.

The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recently ruled that the return of South Sudanese to their country must be done on a voluntary basis, due to the country’s instability.

Israel prepares mass deportation of South Sudanese refugees: Haaretz

Attorney General to seek okay from Jerusalem court to expel as many as 3,000 migrants to country facing humanitarian crisis.
By Tomer Zarchin     May.24, 2012

A demonstration against migrant workers in south Tel Aviv, May 23, 2012. Photo by Moti Milrod

The government is preparing a mass deportation of refugees back to their South Sudan homeland. Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein next week will argue before the Jerusalem District Court that there is no legal obstacle to the expulsions since individual checks will establish that none of them faces any threat to their lives in South Sudan.

The Jerusalem District Court recently issued a temporary order prohibiting the migrants’ deportation until it rules on a petition filed by five human rights organizations against the state’s intent to deport the refugees.

Weinstein, who has expressed support for sending migrants from South Sudan back home, will ask the court to lift the temporary order preventing their expulsion.

However, attorney Anat Ben-Dor of the Refugee Rights Clinic at Tel Aviv University, who filed the petition for the groups, said: “A humanitarian crisis is developing in South Sudan, which is expected to lead to extreme famine. In addition, the border conflicts with Sudan are continuing, so in these circumstances the decision to return the Sudanese to South Sudan is premature and irresponsible.”

The Foreign Ministry recently outlined its position regarding 700 South Sudan nationals staying in Israel; the government says there are as many as 3,000 here. The position is based on a report by Ambassador Dan Shaham, who was sent to South Sudan in April to examine the situation and see if it was suitable to return the migrants.

The document says returning the South Sudanese nationals in general would not constitute a breach of international law, which prohibits a state from expelling foreign nationals if returning them to their home country presents a clear and immediate danger to their life.

“The international law does not oblige giving migrants shelter for socioeconomic reasons, unless the socio-economic situation in the receiving state is so bad it would endanger the asylum seeker’s life, or could be described as cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” the opinion says.

Weinstein is expected to say that despite the petitioners’ claims, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has not issued any opinion saying forcible expulsion is contrary to the Refugee Convention and has not stated it objects to these expulsions.

Weinstein will tell the court the authorities will look into the circumstances of every migrant who expresses fear for his life in South Sudan, due to personal or government conflicts.

Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman this week called the illegal migration to Israel a “national plague” and said the state was holding diplomatic talks to return them to their home country or a third state.

The Justice Ministry yesterday released a statement saying the decision to expell the migrants was made on the basis of the Foreign Ministry’s position paper, which said it was possible to return South Sudanese migrants to their home country only after it was established that they are not eligible for asylum.

Reports from the United Nations and human rights groups and testimonies by activists and citizens warn of severe human rights violations in South Sudan, continuous warfare and a critical shortage of food, water and medical care, which are leading to a humanitarian disaster.

The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recently ruled that the return of South Sudanese to their country must be done on a voluntary basis, due to the country’s instability.

The state of Gaza: Five years after Hamas took power in the city, how has life changed for its citizens?: Independent

DONALD MACINTYRE    SUNDAY 10 JUNE 2012
The front office of Kamal Ashour’s small family clothing factory in Gaza City opens on to Izzedine al-Qassam Street, named, like Hamas’s military wing, in honour of the Islamist mujahid who led the anti-Zionist, anti-Mandate, Black Hand gang and was shot dead by British police in 1935.

Which makes it serendipitous to see the mannequins on one of its shelves triumphantly displaying four samples of the 2,000 acrylic cardigans and polo sweaters Ashour has just shipped off to the UK firm of JD Williams in the first clothing exports to leave Gaza for five years. And a lot more so to be talking on Ashour’s landline to a Jewish-Israeli clothier in Tel Aviv about how fast, if he had half a chance, he would revert to buying his goods from here, as he once did.

Having made the call, Ashour, a short, spry septuagenarian who used to export at least 80 per cent of his clothing to Israel, has thrust the phone into my hand to demonstrate just how highly his most favoured customer values his business. Sure enough, the Israeli trader explains that, since the blockade imposed in Gaza by his own government in 2007, he has been forced to find a Chinese supplier instead of Ashour; that, yes, the sweaters may be slightly –though “not much”– cheaper, but that he would still prefer Ashour every time. “Look, I’ve been working with Gaza for 30 years and with this guy for 11 or 12. The overall quality is high, better than China. He’s very, very good to work with. I trust him completely. If he says he will do something, he does it. He never changes his mind.”

Such is his nervousness about discussing a politically sensitive topic that, unlike Mr Ashour, his Israeli client, whose name we know, begs us not to use it. For this is a conversation across enemy lines. Gaza is still officially classified by the Israeli Cabinet as a “hostile entity” and since the turbulent events that unfolded in June 2007 the exports to Israel and the West Bank on which its economy depended have been prohibited.

Five years ago this week, Gaza was in chaos. The BBC correspondent Alan Johnston was being held as a hostage by the criminal jihadists who had kidnapped him in March. The Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, seized by militants on the Gaza border, had already been in captivity for a year. But in the streets outside, a brief but bloody civil war was raging between militants in the two biggest Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah.

Two years earlier, Ariel Sharon had pulled Israeli troops and the 8,000 settlers they had been protecting out of Gaza. Then, in January 2006, Hamas unexpectedly beat Fatah in notably clean parliamentary elections held throughout the occupied territories. The victory was not primarily because of ideology. (Fatah was committed to a two-state solution with Palestine, consisting of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem living side by side with Israel, while Hamas had always refused to recognise Israel.) Rather, it was because Palestinians were fed up with Fatah’s corruption, the failure of negotiations to bring any results, and perhaps because some, at least in Gaza, initially bought into Hamas’s extravagant boasts that its militants had “liberated” the territory from Israel.

Finding itself leading the new Palestinian Authority in uneasy co-habitation with a Fatah president in Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas was faced with a boycott by a US-led international community which effectively refused to recognise the results of the election it had sanctioned in the first place. The outcome was a coalition with Fatah; but it was a shotgun marriage that quickly degenerated into civil conflict.

Hamas, despite partially covert American help for the Fatah forces, was victorious. When the bloodshed ended on 14 June 2007 Hamas was left in charge of Gaza, Fatah of the West Bank. And Israel responded with its blockade of Gaza – central elements of which are still in force today – which the senior UN official Filippo Grandi said 12 days ago had “completely obliterated” the territory’s economy, and which leaves a deeply puzzling question: why is Israel still maintaining an export ban which, in Grandi’s words, has “penalised” the “common people” and the “business community” of Gaza but has left its Hamas rulers intact and unscathed?

Through the past five years, punctuated by Israel’s bloody three-week military offensive in Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009, Ashour has stayed in contact with his old Israeli customer. He explains that he last used his coveted businessman’s permit to visit the Israeli’s premises and drink tea with him, after Benjamin Netanyahu finally agreed the prisoner exchange with Hamas that made headline news with the release of Gilad Shalit last October. Ashour recalls that one of the Israeli’s sons told his father: “‘Look, Shalit’s out. The crossings must open now. Kamal could produce 10,000 pieces for us.'” At which point the clothier thrust a wad of 14,000 shekels (around £2,300) in banknotes into Ashour’s hand as a down-payment for just such an order. The Israeli trader’s optimism after the Shalit prisoner exchange was understandable, because one of the reasons cited by the government for maintaining the blockade in the first place had been the IDF soldier’s continued incarceration.

Stacked in a storeroom are the sweaters the Israeli has paid for, neatly boxed up and waiting for the moment when they are allowed to leave Gaza for Tel Aviv. A moment which still shows no sign of coming, since the Netanyahu government has not lifted its decree that no goods will leave Gaza for destinations in Israel or the West Bank. Which is exactly where 85 per cent of the territory’s exports went before June 2007.

In any case, it hardly compares with the 6,000 garments – two truckloads – Ashour used to send out to his Israeli customers every week. He did all he could to help out his impoverished employees after June 2007, first keeping them on half-pay and then with loans from his own pocket. But whereas he used to employ 35 to 40 workers for three shifts all the year round, in the past year he has employed only 25 for two shifts, and for just three months. Those that could, found jobs as bakers, taxi drivers, street cleaners or more frequently on NGO-sponsored short-term work programmes or as Hamas policemen. Those who he temporarily re-engaged came back – except the policemen. It is a neat illustration of how the slump in private-sector employment since 2007 served to boost the payroll of the Hamas authorities.

Now, the British order completed – and the second batch ready for dispatch – the factory is silent and empty. Ashour believes, not unreasonably, that a resumption of commerce between Israel and Gaza would foster better relations all round, and that, “I never saw a businessman throw a stone.” Breaking into English for his final rhetorical flourish, he adds: “The Jews understand me very good. For business, Tel Aviv is better for me than London or New York.”

The outrage that followed the fatal shooting by Israeli commandos of nine Turks aboard the Mavi Marmara, the flagship of the flotilla that set sail for Gaza in an attempt to break the blockade in May 2010, awakened Western governments to the need to be seen to press Netanyahu to lift the siege. The most immediate result of the subsequent negotiations between Tony Blair, as the international envoy of the “Quartet” (a mediating coalition of the UN, the US, the EU and Russia), and the Israeli Prime Minister was the rapid flow of Israeli goods into Gaza supermarkets as the military lifted it capricious “security” ban on a bizarrely comprehensive selection of commodities, which had ranged from musical instruments and razor blades to coriander, and as an infuriated US Senator John Kerry had discovered on a trip in 2009, pasta.

Blair also secured a resumption of raw-material imports for Gaza’s industry – which allowed Ashour to bring in his acrylic cloth from Turkey through Israel for the first time since 2007 and other manufacturers to start serving local markets again. Netanyahu also – in theory – agreed to allow exports, though in practice this has been mainly confined to dispatches, heavily subsidised by foreign governments, of flowers and fruit to Europe. Even conservative estimates put the total levels of Gaza exports at less than two per cent of pre-June 2007 levels.

It was less painful for Israel to change the policy, of course, because it had so manifestly failed. Indeed, whatever its effects on Gaza’s long-suffering public, it had done nothing to weaken, let alone dislodge, Hamas. Through the long period of international boycott, Israeli blockade and the 2008-2009 war, the Islamic faction has tightened its grip on government. At the end of last month, Gaza was once again alive with hopeful talk that Fatah and Hamas would heal the split that began so bloodily and form a “unity” government – an outcome strongly opposed by Israel.

Gaza, like the West Bank, is a land the Arab Spring forgot; but that does not mean its politics have been unaffected. Hamas has a dual leadership –de facto Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza and Khaled Meshal outside the territory. The uprising, fast becoming a civil war, in Syria and Bashar Assad’s brutal treatment of it, now condemned by Hamas, forced Meshal to leave his Damascus base, leaving him in need of new allies. And the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt – which will be even more marked if its presidential candidate Mohammed Morsi wins this week’s run-off – provided him with the chance to do just that. Deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak—and some of the intelligence chiefs still in post – always favoured Fatah over Hamas. But Hamas is an offshoot of the Brotherhood. And if the West is prepared to talk to the Brotherhood in Egypt, might they not in time, he may have reasoned, do so to Meshal himself, especially if he has a new accord with Abbas?

In the short term, moreover, no new Fatah-Hamas agreement was ever going to mean economic change for the better in Gaza. And the changes negotiated after the Mavi Marmara debacle were as significant for what they did not include as what they did. Not only were exports banned to the very markets in the West Bank and Israel they had overwhelmingly served, but Israel did not lift the ban – other than on imports for strictly identified projects supervised by the UN and other international organisations – on bringing in building materials, including for reconstruction needed after the 2008-2009 war. The latter decision, ostensibly on the grounds that Hamas could divert such materials for is own purposes, including military ones such as underground bunkers, went to the heart of the contradictions in Israeli policy in Gaza.

For both Hamas and the private sector have been importing everything they need from Egypt through the tunnels Gazan entrepreneurs constructed under the Egyptian border to beat the siege after 2007. It is almost impossible to overestimate the impact of the tunnels; “smuggling”, though technically correct, hardly seems an appropriate term to cover the cars, motorcycles and livestock coming under the border. Nor for the bulk building materials such as the truckloads of Egyptian cement from El Arish you can see trundling north along the Gaza Strip’s main Saladin Road.

Indeed something of a construction boom, however temporary, is the main factor behind a fall in unemployment to around one in three of the workforce, according to UN figures; there is even a shortage of skilled workers, such as carpenters and steel-fixers. Building sites abound in Gaza City, many funded with cash from the new breed of Gaza millionaires, many themselves tunnel operators and close to Hamas.

Meanwhile, a 2km stretch of the sandy, potholed Al Rasheed coast road is being proudly transformed into a “corniche”, one of several projects financed by PalTel, the main Palestinian telecommunications company, apparently to avoid the embarrassment of paying taxes directly to Hamas. Huge mounds of earth and roadside pyramid-shaped stacks of steel piping brought in at the beginning of the year testified to the scale of the project – with 5m-wide pavements, a central reservation and a pedestrian tunnel for families to get safely to the beach (a safety that can hardly be guaranteed in the sea itself, still dangerously polluted by the 15,000cm a day of raw sewage long pumped into the Mediterranean). Not only does this traffic fatally undermine the stated “security” goals of the Israeli policy, but it is of huge financial benefit to Hamas, which is levying 10 shekels (£1.65) on every ton of aggregate, 20 on cement, and 50 on steel.

The building boom cannot disguise the huge hole – which only a restoration of exports to the West Bank and Israel would truly start to repair – still left in Gaza’s economy. But the construction industry’s resilience is a reminder that even in the darkest days it has passed through since 2007, up to and including the aftermath of the war, there has always been more to Gaza than its stereotype outside the territory.

At one extreme, of course, the narrow alleys separating the famously overcrowded, zinc-roofed, breeze-block slums of the Jabalya refugee camp testify to a level of poverty in which the UN says more than 70 per cent of Gazans depended on food or cash aid. At the other, the glamorous young women, some daringly without headscarves, smoking narghila on a sociable Thursday evening under a late May new moon on the terrace of the Arabesque Al Deira hotel are a reminder that, for all its problems, Gaza City is the most metropolitan and in many ways sophisticated of all the Palestinian urban centres. It has two universities of its own as well as the offshoots of others in the West Bank, it has its crop of lively bloggers, often fearlessly critical of the Hamas authorities. It has some of the best of all Palestinian painters –and, for that matter, rappers. Its music school has just become part of the prestigious Edward Said Conservatory network…

It is a paradox which bothers Iqbal Qishta, who, like Gaza’s many hundreds of would-be exporters, has fallen victim to what increasingly looks like Israel’s systematic determination to separate Gaza from the West Bank. For the third change Netanyahu refused to make in the negotiations with Blair was to free the movement of people through the Erez Crossing out of Gaza.

The elegant Ms Qishta, who runs a successful Gaza City hair and beauty salon and has decided to take a university degree at a proudly unmarried 37, has been refused permission to attend a hairdressers’ convention in the West Bank city of Tulkarem. In previous times a veteran of such events – evidence that there are no security grounds against her – she argues that her presence and those of her peers in the past was as much the conventions’ gain as those of the Gaza invitees. “They can learn from us; for example some of the ways we dye hair in crazy colours which we get from Egypt and take to the West Bank.”

She is half-irritated and half-amused as she describes how far Palestinians in the West Bank, who now rarely if ever meet Gazans, have internalised an image of them as ingénues at best and barbarians at worst. At a previous convention, she says, “One woman from Jericho asked me: ‘Do you still all live in asbestos shacks?’ They wouldn’t believe we were from Gaza; they thought we were 1948 Palestinians [Arabs living in Israel]. It’s because of the media. They just show bombardments or they go to the Beach [refugee] camp and show kids playing in some sewage puddle, people wearing bad clothes and graffiti. They don’t go to the Mövenpick hotel [actually now the ArcMed, but still called after the Swiss company which originally built it in the more-hopeful 1990s] or the Lighthouse restaurant or the Al Deira.”

Qishta insists she will try again each year to attend the convention – resenting that it is easier for to go to Cairo through the Rafah crossing than to join her fellow Palestinians for a short meeting in the West Bank.

Even more sweeping is the military’s ban on students attending – as it routinely did before the first intifada broke out in 2000 – universities in the West Bank. Last month an unprecedented judgement in Israel’s Supreme Court gave the state 45 days to reconsider the routine application of the ban to four women in their thirties and forties, all of whom have been active in promoting women from attending courses in the West Bank.

But it did not intervene at all on the case of Loujain Alzaeem, 18, a law student with outstanding grades who has long been ambitious to follow in her mother’s footsteps to go to Birzeit University in Ramallah. “My dream since I was a kid was to go to Birzeit. It is one of the best universities in Palestine and the law faculty is very good. The fact my mother went there is a big factor and she has told me a lot about her time there. I can go to London but I can’t go to Birzeit or Jerusalem or anywhere like that. [The Israelis] just don’t want any students from here to go to the West Bank and that’s it.”

Not only has the military made no claim against Loujain – or the four older women – on security grounds, but her father Shaharbeel, one of the most prominent and best-connected lawyers in the country, a well-known advocate of non-violence, with clients in Israel and the West Bank as well as Gaza, is one of the select few with a permit to travel through the Erez Crossing into Israel.

The passage of people, like goods, between Gaza and the West Bank looks very much like a one-way street. Israel has deported Gazan-registered Palestinians living in the West Bank – even when married to West Bankers – for no other reason than that they hold Gaza IDs. And while it has promised under severe pressure from human-rights organisations to legitimise 5,000 Gazans by giving them new West Bank IDs, another 13,000 live under daily threat of deportation. The prisoners released in the exchange for Gilad Shalit whom Israel judged most dangerous were deported to Gaza – Sharharbeel Alzaeem calls it Israel’s “New Australia” policy. But the large majority of the 3,000 Gazans per month allowed to leave Gaza, and then only temporarily, are either medical patients sick enough to meet Israel’s strict criteria for treatment outside the Strip, or traders allowed through Erez to negotiate imports.

In Alzaeem’s view, this is part of a “systematic policy. They are trying to separate Gaza and the West Bank, and to throw Gaza south, towards Egypt.” He argues that an embargo which stimulated the extraordinary growth of the tunnels economy is a “very clear sign that that they want Gaza to be dependent on Egypt and not Israel”. He adds scornfully that if there was to be a state, Israel would prefer it to be Gaza, leaving in the West Bank “a few [Palestinian] islands surrounded by settlers, islands which would need little more than a municipal council to run”.

The student ban may also be more congenial to Hamas than Israel admits. Last year the de facto government refused exit permits to eight outstanding high-school students who had been awarded scholarships to study in the United States, citing “social and cultural reasons”. As Amira Hass, who knows Gaza better than any other Israeli journalist, wrote last month in Haaretz, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper: “Like the State of Israel, the Hamas education ministry doesn’t like it when Gazan youth go to the West Bank or overseas. And for good reason: political and religious indoctrination ebbs when horizons open up. If Israel genuinely wanted to weaken Hamas rule, it would respect freedom of movement, which has been restricted since 1991.”

It’s hard not to escape the conclusion – heavily denied by Israel – that there have been convenient aspects to a separated and Hamas-controlled Gaza, especially when military officers admit privately that the faction, for now, is often active in preventing smaller groups from firing rockets at Israel. The split between Gaza and the West Bank is, after all, an obstacle to the full two-state solution that many doubt the Netanyahu government really wants.

Sari Bashi, director of Gisha, the Israeli NGO which has done more than any other to highlight the impact of the Gaza closure, says that for decades Israel pursued a policy of economic integration which made Gaza wholly dependent on the West Bank and Israel for its exports, and that no economic recovery is possible without exports to its existing markets there rather than to “non-existent markets” abroad. “The idea of a two-state solution is premised on the integrity of Gaza and the West Bank, where four million Palestinians share economic, education, familial and social ties,” she says. ” Sealing Gaza off from the West Bank means sealing off access to schools, jobs, family unity – and the possibility of a two-state solution.”

Along with Kamal Ashour, Abed Al Rauf Abu Safar is another of the very few Gaza businessman who has managed, albeit with considerable difficulty, to get exports out through Israel – in his case, tomatoes to Saudi Arabia through Jordan. The amounts are nothing like the six or seven trucks he used to send each week through the now-closed Karni crossing, packed with vegetables for Israel and the West Bank; Abu Safar used to pay to equip dozens of farmers in the central and southern Gaza Strip for plantation, and then recoup the cost from his export revenues. He is acutely aware that since his loads passing through Israel on their way to the Allenby Bridge across the Jordan river meet all the stringent checks imposed by the military, it is not security but a policy of separation that stops him exporting similar loads to Israel and the West Bank. Instead, Abu Safar is now keeping his West Bank customers supplied from farms in Jordan – one of dozens of the more successful Gaza businessmen to shift operations abroad in a flight of capital directly triggered by Israeli policy. “It’s a tragic situation,” he says, “for Gaza.”