David Bellamy urged: ‘Pull out of Zionist talk’: The Jewish Chronicle
The British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (Bricup) has urged botanist David Bellamy to pull out of a Zionist Federation event at which he is expected to speak about Israel’s environmental achievements.
Mr Bellamy is due to appear at the ZF’s Israel Blue White and Green seminar alongside leading Israeli scientists on Tuesday.
The event, which is primarily aimed at non-Jewish schoolchildren, is a follow-up to last year’s Israel Science Day which Bricup also attempted to disrupt.
But the group’s protests fell flat after a small group of demonstrators turned up at the venue and left after an hour.
Bricup wrote to Mr Bellamy this week saying: “We are outraged, and think you ought to be too, at the prospect of Israel presenting itself (especially to relatively unformed minds) as a champion of environmentalist virtues.
“Their university scientists, as elsewhere, have made some useful contributions. These events, however, will try to use these to ‘greenwash’ the whole state of Israel.”
The letter was signed by 97 supporters including Lord Ahmed, Baroness Tonge, Clare Short MP and Tom Hickey of the University and College Union.
Among their allegations is the claim that untreated sewage from Israeli settlements in the West Bank is being dumped into valleys, polluting Palestinian agriculture and water sources.
Bricup’s Jonathan Rosenhead said: “For Israel to be held up as the environmental ‘good guy’ while it is destroying the environment of the West Bank and Gaza is like Machiavelli posing as a supporter of open government.”
The ZF declined to comment on the letter, but said it expected the event to go ahead as planned.
Mr Bellamy was unavailable for comment.
Gideon Levy / If Israel lets ex-pats vote, what’s to stop enfranchising all Jews?: Haaretz
What rejoicing in America! How delighted they will be – Abe (formerly Avraham), Joe (formerly Yossi) and Sam (formerly Shmulik). From now on, they will be able to vote from afar.
We’ll have elections by text messages, governments chosen by remote control. We are legitimizing what used to be regarded as Israel’s great sin – emigration.
The most right-wing government in Israel’s history, which hunts down anyone who hasn’t done military service and declares war on anyone who questions its whims, is now opening its legs to those whom until recently it regarded as traitors.
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From now on, those who left Israel will be able to vote on its leadership. Tomorrow, maybe all the Jews in the world will do so. Anything to increase the support for the right-wing parties, anything to neutralize the “demographic threat.”
If worst comes to worst, maybe we’ll even let the Christian Evangelists – those friends of Israel – vote. Why make do with 5 million Israeli Jews? Let’s add another million.
Much water has flown through the Hudson River since Yitzhak Rabin called the migrants “dropouts.” Today we follow their success stories – whether real or imaginary – with envy. We read the stories about those who “made it” there, and every used car salesman on the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio seems to have achieved the ultimate Israeli dream.
They come here once a year or two, stay at the Hilton and lecture us from the lobby to strike harder, to kill more, to deepen the occupation, to strengthen the settlements. It’s easy to be nationalist in Manhattan.
Now they will be our partners. War and peace, territories and settlements, subsidized medicine and Avigdor Lieberman. All these issues will be in the hands of about 1 million old-new Israelis who left shamefacedly. They will vote for racism and war, while we will eat the rotten fruit.
Israel won’t hear about a Palestinian right of return, and deprives all rights to every Palestinian who goes abroad, after his or her family lived here for generations. But it is opening its gates to people who haven’t lived here for decades. Now they will vote with their acquired American accent.
Benjamin Netanyahu knows a thing or two about them personally. Most of his uncles and cousins on his father’s side left Israel or were born to Israeli expatriates. Exemplary patriots.
Not all is clear yet. What about the ex-Israelis’ children? Will they be able to vote, too? How about their grandchildren? Are Arab Israelis included?
All this does not matter. Netanyahu and Lieberman have broken a new record for cynicism. A singer who did not serve in the Israel Defense Forces isn’t allowed to perform, left-wingers are seen as a traitors. But an Israeli who hasn’t stood in a traffic jam here for 50 years will be able to vote. Lo how the Zionism of once has become today’s cynicism.
An excellent expose of the nefarious context of the Anthony Julius publication about anti-semitism:
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Still no hope of common sense in the war against anti-Semitism: The Independent
These defenders to the end of all Israeli actions knowingly mix politics and race
One would not choose to roll around naked in a field of nettles. One learns that choosing to write on anti-Semitism is just as rash, possibly more so. Protesters and malicious maligners stalk anyone who ventures on to the subject. And for the only Muslim weekly columnist in the country (who knows for how long) to tread into that field is extreme recklessness. Or reveals a worrying proclivity for masochism. Stinging rebukes will arrive before I am awake and all manner of outrageous allegations will roam the streets of the internet, rogue rumours against which there is no defence. Every word typed can be distorted or has the potential to offend. The column will madden both hyper-Zionists and insufferable Islamicists. So divisive is the issue today that many who see themselves as “reasonable” Muslims and Jews may not be too happy either. Ah well so be it. No more procrastination. Unto the breach dear friends.
The lofty, intellectual lawyer Anthony Julius, whose most famous client was Diana, Princess of Wales, has written Trials Of The Diaspora, an erudite history of anti-Semitism in Britain. He convincingly exposes the “polite”, almost naturalised anti-Jewish attitudes still rife among genteel folk of this country. When Diana chose him as her divorce lawyer, to The Daily Telegraph Julius was a clever Jew who was unlikely to understand the “English” idea of fair play. The paper was obliged to publish a grovelling apology.
George Orwell wrote a stirring essay in 1945 on this English prejudice. Julius describes a train journey when he was a young boy. An Englishman who did business with his father praised the excellent manners of a young Jewish girl who knew his daughter, as if such good manners were remarkable and unexpected. Orwell describes such moments too and asks: “Was it a conscious effort to behave decently by people whose subjective feelings in many cases must have been very different?”
This week we had a report published by the Community Security Trust, a Jewish organisation that monitors hate crimes against British Jews. In 2009, there were 598 incidents and attacks, 56 per cent more than in 2006, another bad year. I believe both Julius and the CST. Wagner said: “I hold the Jewish race to be the born enemy of pure humanity and everything noble in it.”
In a coffee shop before Christmas, I overheard a group of yummy mummies of all races going on about Bernie Madoff and how “these people” got the world into the mess it is in. It really is all around us. Just look up the Jew-haters on the internet, the neo-Nazis and Islamicists and the bloggers who say anti-Semitism is exaggerated. Across Europe, even in Sweden, Jewish citizens say hatred against them is in the air once more.
More wounding than racism itself is the denial of it, the invalidation of lived and felt experience. Racist statements and judgements are today defended with unprecedented ardour and conviction. Black and Asian people are instructed to learn toleration, to understand banter and brave free expression, to stop inventing pain and to end their wretched PC whinges. Muslims too are suspected of making up stories, imagining humiliation and “using” discrimination for unholy purposes. Ironically, Julius rejects the claim that Muslims are facing increasing hostility in Britain. I know Muslim activists who say exactly the same about the rise in anti-Semitism.
We should trust witness and victim testimonies of bigotry. But we can’t and shouldn’t become credulous. Unquestioning accommodation would be naïve. Accusations of racism are used by all vulnerable groups to deflect legitimate concerns about, say, female genital mutilation, or forced marriages, or the too many young black men sunk into drug addiction and violence, or the lack of real democracy in the Muslim world.
Julius plays that game, dextrously extending the accusation of anti-Semitism to implicate principled critics of the Israeli state. Jewish objectors, like the esteemed American Tony Judt, are also cut down with a poisoned blade. Richard Goldstone, the South African Zionist, has found himself similarly discredited by Zionists for writing a scathing UN assessment of the Israeli assault on Gaza. Similar treatment is meted out to others who try to remain scrupulously fair yet tough when scrutinising the government of Israel.
These defenders to the end of all Israeli actions knowingly mix politics and race. Their enemies do the same: when Lebanon was attacked, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: “This is a war that is fought by all the Jews.” It wasn’t. To say so is iniquitous, just as bad as the Jihadis who claim all of us Muslims are on their side or must be. The much admired writer Anne Karpf points this out in a beautifully articulated column: “If the Israeli government (wrongly) elides Israel with all Jews it is hardly surprising if anti-Semites do so too.”
By reproducing this conflation in his book, the eloquent Anthony Julius undercuts his powerful case that anti-Semitism, a very light sleeper, is up again. Doubters have been given a reason to repudiate him. Oh, the pity of it all.
Gaza: UN chief Ban Ki-moon rules evidence ‘incomplete’: BBC
There is not yet enough evidence to say whether Israel and the Palestinians are complying with UN demands to probe the Gaza conflict, the head of the UN says.
In a report, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said submissions by both parties remained incomplete.
He said a ruling was not possible as Israel’s investigations was ongoing and the Palestinians only began recently.
They were asked to respond by Friday to last year’s Goldstone report, which accused Israel and Hamas of war crimes.
“No determination can be made on the implementation of the (UN) resolution by the parties concerned,” Mr Ban said in a report to the UN General Assembly.
The General Assembly has demanded that both Israel and Hamas launch independent investigations into their conduct during the 22-day Israeli operation which began in December 2008.
Denials
Israel and the Palestinian Authority Both submitted dossiers to the UN before the end of January, and Israel says its army has disciplined two officers for their conduct during the operation.
Goldstone accused Israel of using “disproportionate force” in Gaza.
A former international war crimes prosecutor, Mr Goldstone investigated the offensive and said crimes had been committed on both sides.
He accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure during the conflict, in which human rights groups say about 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died.
Israel has vigorously denied the conclusions of the Goldstone report, calling it a “distortion”.
The Palestinian Authority which runs the Palestinian controlled area of the West Bank set a high-level commission to probe the allegations and submit its conclusions to Mr Ban.
Hamas, the militant Islamist movement that runs Gaza, has rejected the criticism that it committed war crimes in the conflict.
Hamas insists it did not target civilians during the war in Gaza a year ago. It argues that the hundreds of missiles launched at Israel during an offensive on the Gaza Strip were targeted at the Israeli military.
Hamas’s indiscriminate firing of rockets into populated areas in Israel is widely seen as a war crime.
‘A prescription for civil war’: Al Jazeera online
By Jon Elmer in Bethlehem
Abu Abdullah has never been charged with a crime, but he has been arrested by Palestinian security forces so many times in the past two years that he has lost count.
He has been arrested at work, in the market, on the street, and, more than once, during violent raids by masked men who burst into his home and seized him in front of his family.
Deep in the heart of the Deheishe refugee camp on the outskirts of Bethlehem, Abu Abdullah describes in detail the beatings he has endured in custody, the numerous cold, sleepless nights in cramped and filthy cells, the prolonged periods bound in painful stress positions, and the long hours of aggressive questioning.
“The interrogations always begin the same way,” Abu Abdullah explains. “They demand to know who I voted for in the last election.”
Abu Abdullah is not alone. Since Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s caretaker government took power in Ramallah in June 2007, stories like Abu Abdullah’s have become commonplace in the West Bank.
The arrests are part of a wider plan being executed by Palestinian security forces – trained and funded by American and European backers – to crush opposition and consolidate the Fatah-led government’s grip on power in the West Bank.
An international effort
The government of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, is bolstered by thousands of newly trained police and security forces whose stated aim is to eliminate Islamist groups that may pose a threat to its power – namely Hamas and their supporters.
Under the auspices of Lieutenant-General Keith Dayton, the US security coordinator, these security forces receive hands-on training from Canadian, British and Turkish military personnel at a desert training centre in Jordan.
The programme has been carefully coordinated with Israeli security officials.
Since 2007 the Jordan International Police Training Center has trained and deployed five Palestinian National Security Force battalions in the West Bank.
By the end of Dayton’s appointment in 2011, the $261mn project will see 10 new security battalions, one for each of the nine West Bank governorates and one unit in reserve.
Their aim is clear. Speaking before a House of Representatives subcommittee in 2007, Dayton described the project as “truly important to advance our national interests, deliver security to Palestinians, and preserve and protect the interests of the state of Israel”.
Others are even more explicit about what the force is for. When Nahum Barnea, a senior Israeli defence correspondent, sat in on a top-level coordinating meeting between Palestinian and Israeli commanders in 2008, he says he was stunned by what he heard.
“Hamas is the enemy, and we have decided to wage an all-out war,” Barnea quoted Majid Faraj, then the head of Palestinian military intelligence, as telling the Israeli commanders. “We are taking care of every Hamas institution in accordance with your instructions.”
After the takeover
Ten new security battalions will be created under the Dayton project [GALLO/GETTY] When he arrived in the last days of 2005, Dayton’s assignment was to create a Palestinian security force ostensibly tasked with confronting the Palestinian resistance. The project began in Gaza.
Sean McCormack, a state department spokesman at the time, explained Dayton’s role as “the real down in the weeds, blocking and tackling work of helping to build up the security forces”.
But within weeks of his arrival, things began to fall apart. Hamas’ decisive January 2006 election victory ushered in a crippling international blockade on the Palestinians in Gaza. Soon after, the security forces of Hamas and Fatah began fighting in the streets, culminating in Hamas’ June 2007 takeover of the enclave.
Dayton’s initial aims lay in tatters, and while Fayyad became prime minister in a ‘caretaker’ government in Ramallah, a new security strategy was formulated.
As a grim status-quo established itself in Gaza, Dayton’s new mission became clear. The job of the security coordinator was now “to prevent a Hamas takeover in the West Bank,” according to Michael Eisenstadt, Dayton’s former plans officer.
A coordinated attack on Hamas’ civilian apparatus was launched immediately after the takeover in Gaza in June 2007. Major-General Gadi Shamni, the head of the Israeli army’s central command, led an initiative to target the base of Hamas’ support in the West Bank. The plan, dubbed the Dawa Strategy, involved pin-pointing Hamas’ extensive social welfare apparatus, the lynchpin of their popularity amongst many Palestinians.
Dr Omar Abdel Razeq, a former finance minister in the short-lived Hamas government, explains the effect this had. “When we talk about the infrastructure we are talking about the societies and the cooperatives and the institutions that were to help the poor,” he says. “They finished [off] the infrastructure of Hamas.”
Israeli Brigadier-General Michael Herzog, the chief of staff to Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, summed up the Israeli view of the project. “[Dayton’s] doing a great job,” he said. “We’re very happy with what he’s doing.”
Torture allegations
The Dawa Strategy has seen more than 1,000 Palestinians jailed by Palestinian Authority (PA) forces. The arrests – though concentrated on Hamas and its suspected allies – have touched a broad swathe of Palestinian society, and all political factions.
They have targeted social workers, students, teachers, journalists. There have been regular raids on mosques, university campus’ and charities, and repeated allegations of torture carried out by US and European-funded security officers, including several deaths in custody.
In October, Abbas issued a decree against the most violent forms of torture used by his forces and replaced the interior minister, General Abdel Razak al-Yahya, a long-time US and Israeli partner, with Said Abu Ali.
While noting an improvement since the decree, human rights workers say the changes are not enough. “There is still no due process, still no legal justifications for many of the arrests and civilians are still being brought before military courts,” says Salah Moussa, an Independent Commission for Human Rights attorney.
Major-General Adnan Damiri, a spokesperson for the Palestinian security forces, acknowledged wrongdoing but attributed the acts to individuals and not to a policy.
“Sometimes there are officers or soldiers who have made mistakes in this way, with torture,” Damiri said. “But now we are punishing them.”
Damiri cited 42 cases of torture in the past three months that resulted in various forms of reprimand, including loss of rank. Six soldiers were dismissed for their acts.
But on the streets, the mood is darkening as the foreign-backed security services tighten their grip on the West Bank.
Naje Odeh, a leftist community leader in Deheishe who operates a thriving youth centre in the camp, characterised the security apparatus as akin to the US-allied regimes in Jordan and Egypt. “If you speak out, you are arrested,” he explains. “This behaviour will destroy our society.”
Odeh says the security forces carrying out the raids know that what they are doing is wrong. “Why are they masked?” he asks rhetorically. “Because we know these people. We know their families. They are ashamed of what they are doing.”
Some fear that the behaviour of the US and EU-trained security forces will spark potentially deadly confrontation.
“If they attack your mosques, your classrooms, your societies, you can be patient, but for how long?” a senior Islamist leader in the West Bank asks.
Abdel Razeq, the former Hamas finance minister, is more explicit in his predictions.
He says: “If the security forces insist on defending the Israelis, this is a prescription for civil war.”
Read below on the dangers posed to Israel by Geographers:
Palestinian expert on settlements barred from foreign travel: Haaretz
By Amira Hass
Interior Minister Eli Yishai has banned Palestinian geographer Khalil Tufakji, a resident of Jerusalem, from traveling abroad for six months, citing unspecified security concerns.
The banning order was issued on the recommendation of the Shin Bet security service and is based on 1948 Emergency regulations.
“Having been convinced that there is real concern that the exit of Mr. Khalil Tufakji from Israel may harm the security of the state, I order that he be banned from exiting the country until 2 August, 2010,” the order reads.
Tufakji, 60, was summoned last week to a meeting at Jerusalem police headquarters in the Russian Compound. There, a man in civilian clothes calling himself Shadi, gave him the order.
The Shin Bet said that the man was a policeman.
Tufakji has for years been researching Israel’s settlement policy and the ways by which Palestinian land is taken over, as well as planning policy which discriminates against Palestinians.
He heads the cartography department of the Arab Studies Society, established in 1980 to document the social, political and cultural history of the Palestinians.
Since 1992 Tufakji has been part of Palestinian negotiating team on property borders, land and settlements. In addition to his research, he lectures in Israel and abroad and is often interviewed by journalists.
Tufakji says that he has no scheduled lectures abroad in the near future.
Palestinian activists say that the order against him is part of a policy of oppression by the Israeli authorities, targeting popular and public opposition to the occupation.
The Shin Bet said in response that “as far as we know the minister issued the order after reviewing relevant information and a recommendation by the Shin Bet that there is a significant security threat by the exit of the aforementioned person abroad.”
Leading Israeli author: Israel is becoming a mini-Iran: Haaretz
An Education Ministry decision to bar a Kfar Sava school from teaching sexually explicit poetry by Israeli writer Yona Wallach shows that Israel is becoming a mini-Iran, Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk said over the weekend.
After receiving complaints from parents of students in Edna Resh’s literature class at Rabin High School in Kfar Sava, Shlomo Hertzig, the ministry’s supervisor of literature education, ordered the school and Resh to stop teaching Wallach’s sexually explicit poems, Yedioth Ahronoth reported last week.
Many of Resh’s students protested the decision, and were joined over the weekend by some of Israel’s most prominent writers and literature educators.
“We are gradually becoming a mini-Iran,” said Kaniuk. “Everyone talks about the threat of Iran’s bombs and missiles, but they forget that the worst thing is this lousy religion, which is flourishing nowadays. They’re taking over our lives. It’s terrible what they’ve done to the Jewish religion. Yona Wallach is a terrific poet.”
Wallach’s poem “You Are (He Is) My Girlfriend,” which refers explicitly to sexual organs and raises questions about sexual identity, is one of several controversial literary texts taught at Rabin High School as part of a three-year-old program aimed at encouraging students to think critically, said Resh and Regev Yakobovich, who teaches the program with her.
As part of the program, 10th-graders through 12th-graders choose two topics to learn about per year. The Wallach poem that has since been blacklisted was introduced as part of a class called “Pride and Prejudice: Single-sex Couples – Perversion or Choice?”
Other subjects include “Belief in God: Opiate for the Masses or Commitment to Values?” as well as “The Army As a Test of Israeliness” and “On the Arab Image in Israel – Fifth Column or Free Citizen?”
“The Education Ministry has completely given up on its basic job – shaping an active citizen within society – and has remained solely within the professional sphere, transmiting information and matriculation exams,” said Yakobovich. “No one wants to get involved in conflicts, but the young people who are a bit more on the ball than the adults are are demanding it from us, demanding that we teach them, in the broad and true sense.”
Gali Siton, a 12th-grade student at Rabin who came to her teacher’s defense, said the controversy has made her realize “that we’re lucky, that I gained the opportunity to ask questions.”
Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar spoke to Resh on Friday, telling her that “there are various restrictions” and that he was looking into the matter, Resh said. She said Sa’ar apologized for what she underwent and said he wanted her to “feel protected.” Ministry officials said they were not planning to initiate any proceedings against her.
Meanwhile, poet Meir Wieseltier and Menachem Perry, a literature professor at Tel Aviv University, came out against the ban.
“Maybe [Hertzig] thinks there’s no need to teach poems, just to teach how to raise the flag during roll call,” said Wieseltier. “The flag is raised during roll call with a rope, not a poem.”
Perry said a curriculum could not be imposed from outside the classroom, adding that one can teach anything to a “good class.”
British PM ‘deeply troubled’ by record anti-Semitism in 2009: Haaretz
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Friday called the record number of anti-Semitic incidents across the United Kingdom last year “deeply troubling”, urging Britons to exercise greater vigilance.
Brown’s comments come as the Community Security Trust reported that 2009 was the worst year for anti-Semitic incidents in Britain since the Jewish group first began tracking them in 1984.
The trust said Friday that it had recorded 924 anti-Jewish incidents in 2009. It says much of them were attributable to anger over Israel’s offensive against Gaza; it says a large proportion occurred during the conflict and many included references to Israel and Gaza.
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The latest figure is more than 50 percent higher than the previous record, set in 2006, the year Israel invaded Lebanon.
If he so troubled by this, why is he supporting all and any Israeli aggressions and brutalities, so clearly shown to contribute to this perceived rise?
Below you can read about the Israeli police continuing to operate against Israeli laws, doing its level best to crack ISM activities. Bravo to the ISM and its courageous people:
Court frees foreign activists, raps West Bank crackdown: Haaretz
The Supreme Court on Monday released on bail two foreign activists arrested late Sunday near Ramallah, after prosecutors said Immigration Authority officials erred during their arrest.
The two activists are Spaniard Ariadna Jove Marti and Australian Bridgette Chappell, members of the leftist International Solidarity Movement. They have been in Israel since August and have lived in El-Bireh, a suburb of Ramallah, in Area A under full Palestinian Authority control.
The two were ordered to pay NIS 3,000 bail apiece, instead of the NIS 25,000 that the prosecutor had originally requested, were told they copuld not return to the Palestinian territories, but that they could file an official appeal over their deportation.
During a hearing on Monday, state prosecutors said the two should not have been transferred to the Oz immigration unit, which has previously been instructed not to participate in the arrest of activists in the West Bank.
State Prosecutor Ilil Amir said, “A legal problem exists regarding the authority to enforce the laws of entry into Israel.”
Chappell and Marti’s attorneys argued that their transfer to immigration authorities’ control outside of Israel was illegal. They claimed that like tens of thousands of foreigners living in the Palestinian territories, they do not need Israeli approval to reside there.
This is the sixth time the IDF has acted against leftists near Ramallah in cooperation with Oz immigration officers. Activists say these operations are part of a campaign intended to stop anti-separation fence rallies in the West Bank towns of Na’alin and Bil’in.
The two told Haaretz by telephone from their holding cell that they were questioned only in relation to their visas. However, the Israel Defense Forces has denied their arrest stemmed from a lack of visas, claiming it was security related.
“At about 2:30 at night soldiers opened the door and came in. There were 15-20 soldiers who aimed their guns at us,” Marti described from a holding cell in Ramle prison. “They asked for our passports and then asked us to take our things and go with them. They cuffed us and drove us to Ofer Camp.”
There they were handed over to the Oz immigration unit of the Defense Ministry.
They said Interior Ministry officials asked them to agree to be expelled immediately from the country.
“They told us that they are taking us to Holon and there we can decide, either we agree to immediate expulsion or that we will be jailed for six months. He told us that we had time until the trip to Holon to decide,” Marti added.
The two say that at the Holon headquarters of the unit they were questioned, and that most of the questions dealt with the lack of visas.
They refused to sign documents that would see them willfully expelled.
Netanyahu heading to war: YNet
PM knows that rejection of peace with Syria will lead to terrible war
Eyal Megged
Enough has been said about the war mongers, ranging from Yossi Peled to Avigdor Lieberman. These are honest and transparent people. However, at this time we must raise a hue and cry vis-à-vis the peace imposers. We must scream in the prime minister’s face: You are not heading towards peace, so stop talking nonsense. You are heading towards war with Syria.
Peaceful Intent?
Netanyahu: Israel wants peace with Syria / Roni Sofer
Prime minister follows threats directed at Damascus by foreign minister Lieberman by extolling peace accords with Syria, Palestinians. ‘However negotiations must take place without preconditions,’ he says
You know it, even if you do not desire it. If you were seeking peace, you would be sitting down with Syrian President Assad and secure it. You know the price.
You also know where all the rejections and refusals, masks and costumes lead to. Ranging from Golda to Olmert, they have led to war, blood, and needless victims. Ariel Sharon told Assad to go to hell when the latter was at the door like a poor man begging to be rescued. The excuse was that Assad is too weak, so what’s the point. The result was that we missed out on peace with Syria on the most convenient terms possible.
It’s not too late
Sharon’s successor, Olmert, also ignored Assad’s pleas, because the Americans ordered him to do so. The price was a miserable and cursed war in Lebanon. The Left, for some reason, also does not rush to give up the Golan Heights for peace, so the media silence – with the exception of a few crazy souls committed to the cause like this writer – is guaranteed.
Netanyahu’s excuse is real: He does not believe in this peace, period. He will prevent it as long as he does not have the American sword at his throat. As his predecessors, he represses the incredibly clear knowledge that the death throes of peace will be followed by war. He also knows how terrible it will be.
Netanyahu most certainly knows that in the wake of that war he will be made to sit down and sign the same peace treaty he is presented with now, plus the needless victims. But hey, will he survive in power for another year? He will. That’s the most important thing. He will be coming up with an excuse to clear his conscience, and his speeches at military cemeteries, as a man who had known bereavement personally, will be better than his predecessors’ speeches.
Yet it’s not too late. We can still be salvaged.
Hamas leader Meshal: Israel has made Mideast peace impossible: Haaretz
Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal said Monday that he sees no prospects for a Middle East peace settlement, telling reporters during a visit to Moscow that Israel’s continued military offensives and occupation made such an agreement impossible.
Israeli leaders bring war and occupation thus blocking peace talks on the Palestinians, Syria and LebanoN, Meshal said after a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
“In the nearest future we see no prospects of peace settlement in the region, in Syria and Lebanon,” Meshal said.
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His statement leaves in doubt Moscow’s desire to host a Middle East peace
conference and to involve Hamas, despite strong opposition from Israel and the U.S. Russia is part of the Quartet of Mideast peace brokers with the U.S., the European Union and the United Nations.
After their meeting, Meshal praised Moscow’s position to promote his group’s stance in relations with Israel. “It’s enough that Moscow tells the world that Hamas is a movement of freedom fighters, not a terrorist group,” he told journalists.
The U.S. and the European Union list Hamas as a terrorist group.
Russia has repeatedly called for an end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip that was imposed by Israel after Hamas wrested control there in June 2007.
Moscow sees Hamas as an integral part of the peace process despite strong
opposition from Israel and the U.S., which list the organization as a
terrorist group. Russia has repeatedly called for an end to the blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Meshal said that during his talks with Russian officials he did not discuss plans to include Hamas in a peace conference.
He said the visit was his third trip to Moscow since 2006, and he expressed hope that Moscow’s mediation would boost the renewal of peace talks.
The Kremlin irked Israel and Western nations by inviting Meshal to Russia, and observers said the talks were part of an effort by Moscow to regain the clout and influence it enjoyed in the Middle East during the Soviet era.
Meshal, however, downplayed Moscow’s political role in the talks.
“We appreciate any role that Russia and other countries could play in the
Mideast peace process, but only Egypt has the real capability to settle the problem,” he said.
Five Israeli cops hurt in arrest raid on Jerusalem refugee camp: Haaretz
A Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Jerusalem erupted in violence on Monday after Israeli security forces carried out a raid to arrest tax evaders and Palestinians responded by throwing stones.
Five police officers were lightly wounded during the clashes. One was transported to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem while the rest were treated on scene.
Twenty-five people were arrested, some for involvement in the unrest and others for the non-payment of municipal taxes and other bills, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
The violence in Shoafat refugee camp, within the expanded Jerusalem borders that Israel declared after capturing its eastern sector in the 1967 Six-Day War, was another example of tensions that are always near the surface in a city at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
After school let out in the afternoon, Palestinian schoolchildren threw rocks at police officers, who responded with stun grenades and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. Palestinian officials said 10 Palestinians were injured, none seriously.
Citing biblical roots to the city, Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its “indivisible and eternal capital”, a claim that has not been recognized internationally.
Palestinians want East Jerusalem, annexed by Israel after the 1967 war, to be the capital of the state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who under U.S. pressure ordered a limited settlement freeze in the West Bank, has refused to heed Palestinian demands to halt the construction of homes for Jews in East Jerusalem.
The Israel Defense Forces carried out another series of arrests in the West Bank earlier Monday. Among those detained was the wife of the mayor of the town of al-Bireh. An army spokesman said she was suspected of involvement in the Islamist Hamas movement.
Israeli forces raid West Bank camp: Al Jazeera online
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Israeli forces have raided a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, arresting at least 40 people.
The arrests on Monday at the Shuafat camp in annexed east Jerusalem were part of an operation that Israeli police said was aimed at “putting order” in the area.
Al Jazeera’s Elias Karram, reporting from the camp, said: “The raid was divided into two parts: the first of which ended on Monday when Israeli army and intelligence forces invaded the came and detained around 40 poeple based on their political affliation – either to Hamas or Fatah.
“The second part is still under way and it targets Palestinian workers who have come from various parts of the West Bank to work in the camps without necessary working permits.”
Israeli troops also stormed shops and hospitals in the camp, Karram said.
Rights group targeted
In a separate incident, Israeli military officials raided offices of Stop the Wall, a human-rights group that campaigns against the construction of the West Bank separation barrier.
Stop the Wall released a statement on Monday saying that at least 10 military vehicles invaded the city of Ramallah before officials searched through the offices, “confiscating computer hard disks, laptops, and video cameras along with paper documents, CDs, and video cassettes”.
Jamal Jumaa, the co-ordinator of Stop the Wall, said in the statement: “This is part of the continuous targeting of the popular grassroots movement and the struggle of the Palestinian human rights defenders for Israeli accountability.
“Palestinians will not be intimidated by this. The struggle against the Wall will only stop once the decision of the International Court of Justice, which calls for the Wall to be torn down, is implemented.”
Jumaa said: “We call on the international community and in particular the European Union to step up pressure on Israel to ensure it respects international law and human rights and ends its repression of Palestinian and international human rights defenders working on the ground.”
The raid came after Jumaa was arrested along with Mohammad Othman, a youth co-ordinator from Stop the Wall. Both activists were released on Monday.
Arrest campaign
In recent months, Israel has intensified its arrest campaign against those involved in the anti-barrier protests. Two pro-Palestinian foreigners were arrested on Sunday. The activists were employed with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), one from Spain and the other from Australia. Israeli forces routinely enter the territory to arrest Palestinians accused of “militant activity”. However, Sunday’s raid marks only the second time troops have seized foreigners there on suspicion their visas had expired. The ISM is involved in protests against the separation barrier. Omer Shatz, the activists’ lawyer, says he believes his clients were targeted because of their political activity.