EDITOR: Preparations for War: A whole series of local wars planned by Israel
It seems that Israel is preparing four wars at the same time: in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran! They plan to pick and chose the one to start at any point in time, and Israeli commentators are pointing out the links between those military adventures: a war against Iran will, by necessity, also mean attacking Hizbullah in Lebanon, for example… so at last, the US has the Sheriff it always wanted in the Middle East, spewing fire and destruction in all directions, and at the same time claiming to be the underdog, and under attack from all sides. The amazing fact is that this seems to be an efficient policy, working well on otherwise seemingly intelligent politicians, like the western leaders, without whom it could never succeed. This is hardly an accident: at a time that the west has become ever more aggressive towards the Arab and Islamic world, Israel’s value as a local terrorising agent has never been clearer, in subduing parts of the Middle East at will, assisting the greater plan. Below one can easily detect the ominous strands coming together:
Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri warns of Israel ‘threat’: BBC
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri says he is concerned about “escalating” threats posed to the Middle East by Israel.
Mr Hariri told the BBC that Israeli planes were entering Lebanese airspace every day, and he feared the prospect of another war with Israel.
He accused Israel of making a huge mistake by allegedly threatening both Lebanon and neighbouring Syria.
His comments come days after Syria and Israel exchanged hostile accusations.
The BBC’s Natalia Antelava in Beirut says that while such rhetoric is hardly new, there is concern it could lead to more serious confrontation.
In an interview with the BBC, Mr Hariri said: “We hear a lot of Israeli threats day in and day out, and not only threats.
“We see what’s happening on the ground and in our airspace and what’s happening all the time during the past two months – every day we have Israeli war planes entering Lebanese airspace.
“This is something that is escalating, and this is something that is really dangerous.”
Mr Hariri also said that Lebanon was united, and that the government would stand by Hezbollah – the Lebanese militant group which fought Israel in 2006.
“I think they’re betting that there might be some division in Lebanon, if there is a war against us.
“Well, there won’t be a division in Lebanon. We will stand against Israel. We will stand with our own people.”
His comments come just days after the foreign ministers of Syria and Israel exchanged aggressive accusations, which fuelled both media speculation and public fear about what many in the region describe as the “imminent next war”.
Such hostile rhetoric is hardly new to the Middle East, and yet, because calm in this is region is so fragile, many are concerned that it could lead to a more serious confrontation.
Lebanese PM: We will stand united against Israeli threat: BBC
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Wednesday said that he was concerned over Israel’s “escalating” threats to Lebanon and Syria, and that if Israel were to attack, he would stand united with his own people.
“I think they’re betting that there might be some division in Lebanon, if there is a war against us,” Hariri said in an interview with BBC News.
“Well, there won’t be a division in Lebanon. We will stand against Israel. We will stand with our own people,” he said, referring to Hezbollah’s role in the divided country.
The Lebanese premier also said that Israeli planes enter Lebanese and Syrian air space on a regular basis.
“We see what’s happening on the ground and in our airspace and what’s happening all the time during the past two months – every day we have Israeli planes entering Lebanese airspace,” Hariri said. “This is something that is escalating, and this is something that is really dangerous.”
Hariri’s remarks follow a week of increased tensions between Israel and Syria.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman responded to Hariri’s remarks Wednesday, saying, “Hezbollah murdered his father and he is in the position of being a hostage,” Channel 10 reported, quoting Army Radio.
Addressing a business conference at Bar-Ilan University last week, Lieberman warned Syrian President Bashar Assad that if his country entered a conflict with Israel, it would not only lose, but his regime would also disintegrate.
“Assad should know that if he attacks, he will not only lose the war. Neither he nor his family will remain in power,” Lieberman told the audience.
The foreign minister’s remarks come after Assad on Wednesday told Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos that Israel was pushing the Middle East toward a new war.
“Our message should be that if Assad’s father lost a war but remained in power, the son should know that an attack would cost him his regime,” Lieberman continued. “This is the message that must be conveyed to the Syrian leader by Israel.”
Israeli PM plays down minister’s Lebanon war claim: BBC
Israel’s prime minister has distanced himself from comments by a member of his cabinet who suggested Israel was heading for a new war with Lebanon.
Israel was “not seeking any conflict” with Lebanon, Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Earlier, Yossi Peled, minister without portfolio and a reserve army general, had said that a repeat of the 2006 war with Lebanon was only a matter of time.
More than 1,000 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and about 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, died in the conflict.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clarifies that Israel is not seeking any conflict with Lebanon,” the Israeli leader said in a statement on Saturday.
“Israel seeks peace with its neighbours.”
The statement came shortly after comments by Mr Peled were broadcast in which the minister said Israel was “heading towards a new confrontation”.
“In my estimation, understanding and knowledge it is almost clear to me that it is a matter of time before there is a military clash in the north,” he said.
In 2006 the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah launched a raid into Israel in which it captured two Israeli soldiers. Hezbollah also sent thousands of rockets into northern Israel.
Israel launched huge air and sea attacks on targets all over Lebanon, and then a land invasion.
Obama vows ‘significant’ sanctions against Iran: BBC
US President Barack Obama has said the US and its allies are developing a “significant regime of sanctions” against Iran for its nuclear programme.
He said the international community was unified over Iran’s “misbehaviour”.
Speaking in Washington, he said despite Tehran’s denials, it was clear Iran was working to build nuclear weapons.
His remarks came after Iranian state media reported that Iran had started the process of enriching uranium to 20% for use in a medical research reactor.
Russian disapproval
In an unexpected appearance in the White House briefing room, Mr Obama said the US was confident the international community was “unified around Iran’s misbehaviour in this area”.
He said the new push for sanctions on Iran was “moving along fairly quickly” and should be completed in the next few weeks.
Mr Obama also said he was pleased at Russia’s quick disapproval of Iran’s latest move.
But he said it was unclear how China would respond to a new push at the UN Security Council for another round of sanctions against Iran.
China, a UN Security Council member, has called for further talks over the issue.
China and Russia have been reluctant in the past to support international sanctions against Iran.
“How China operates at the Security Council as we pursue sanctions is something we’re going to have to see,” Mr Obama said.
The five permanent members of the Security Council – the US, Russia, China, France and Britain – have a veto over resolutions, including sanctions.
Iran currently enriches uranium to a level of 3.5% but requires 20% enriched uranium for its research reactor, which is meant to produce medical isotopes. A bomb would require uranium enriched to at least 90%.
The US and its Western allies say Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon – a charge Iran denies.
In October, a deal brokered by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was thought to have been struck for Iran to send its uranium to Russia and France for enrichment.
But last month, diplomats said Iran had told the IAEA that it did not accept the terms of the deal – though there have since been other, conflicting messages.
Also on Tuesday, US state department spokesman PJ Crowley said the international community was willing to help Iran secure medical isotopes from abroad.
The offer would help to “build some confidence” and show Iran that enriching uranium to 20% purity was “unnecessary”, Reuters news agency quoted him saying.
EDITOR: The continuing saga of the Ariel College of ‘Judea and Samaria’
Ever since the declaration of the first army university in the Occupied Territories, in January, there has been unrest in the Israeli academic circles. While fighting tooth and nail against the wider BDS campaign, growing numbers of academics are now being vocal against the Barak declaration, less because of their opposition to the occupation, and more for reasons of academic control – they resent the involvement of the army in issues of academic autonomy; while this is of course understandable in itself, it is also showing the limits of Israei academia when taking political action: it may well act to defend what it sees as its own ‘sectorial’ interests, but hardly oppose the growing corruption and brutality of the occupation system. This is battle about control and funds, and not against the ravages of the occupation, that much is clear: Israeli academics fight against such actions only when they feel professionally threatened by them, and never to defend the rights of Palestinian academics as equals, or or their human rights under occupation.
Israeli academics: Reject university status for settlement college: Haaretz
Two hundred fifty Israeli faculty members sent an open letter to the Council of Higher Education Tuesday, calling on it not to recognize the Ariel college as either a “university center” or a university.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced last month that he would recognize a five-year-old government decision to upgrade the college formally to a “university center,” as a step toward recognition as a full-fledged university.
The signatories wrote that they hope the council instructs “universities in Israel not to work with the college in Ariel as they do between themselves.”
Last week, council Planning and Budget Committee chairman Manuel Trajtenberg said, “There will be no developments on the matter [of Ariel college] without the committee agreeing to it.”
“It’s inconceivable for another research university to arise in Israel within the next 20 years,” he added.
Trajtenberg’s comments were the first reference to Barak’s announcement by a senior council official.
In their letter, the academics wrote that while the Council for Higher Education in Judea and Samaria (the body’s West Bank branch) may grant the college whatever status it likes, “the Council in Jerusalem must declare that it is not party to such recognition. It was a mistake from the start to allow the creation of a college outside the borders of the State of Israel and to give it Council for Higher Education recognition, but insult must not be added to injury.”
The authors added that the college is influenced “by a distinct ideological flavor, and the Council must ensure that the institutions under its authority do not have any ideological or political character.”
Distancing itself from Barak’s announcement, they wrote, “would aid us in thwarting attempts to impose an academic boycott on Israel’s universities. The Council’s clear opposition to recognizing the college in Ariel as a university would show that Israel’s academic establishment is not participating in [Israel’s] tightening hold on the West Bank.”
Faculty members at Tel Aviv University’s Department of History, including noted historian Miri Eliav-Feldon, initiated the letter. Signatories included Israel Prize recipients Simon Sandbank of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Myriam Yardeni of Haifa University, Benjamin Isaac of Tel Aviv University and other prominent academics.
At last week’s council meeting, Trajtenberg said Ariel College’s recognition as “Ariel University Center of Samaria” has “no significance” and was merely a “declaration.”
“I have doubts as to whether there is indeed a need for the seven research universities Israel has today,” Trajtenberg added. “When we examine the level of the various faculties, we have barely five universities at a suitable level.”
The executive committee chairman of Ariel University Center, Yigal Cohen-Orgad, said in response to the letter, “I’m pleased that the scientific community in Israel and abroad is not waiting for instructions from the peripheral group of anti-Zionists who stand behind the letter.”
“Unfortunately, there were attempts to impose an academic boycott on Israel before the Ariel University Center existed, and there will be attempts in the future.”
Responding to Trajtenberg’s remarks, Cohen-Orgad said, “Our every move is made out of respect for the authority of the Council for Higher Education. As for the prediction of Prof. Trajtenberg, it is premature.”
The Council for Higher Education said, “We do not respond to comments made in the council’s internal forums. It is clear to all that authority for naming the institution in Ariel is not in the council’s hands.”
Editor: Palestinian Academics call again for an Academic Boycott of ALL Israeli Universities
Below you can read a more principled view about BDS against Israeli universities: a publication of PACBI, it analyses the question of complicity of the Israeli academia in the wider occupation of Palestine, as well as the hollow ring sounded by the Israeli academics now rounding up on Ariel College, in order to protect their own inversities from the Academic Boycott campaign.
Boycott “Ariel” and the Rest! All Israeli Academic Institutions are Complicit in Occupation and Apartheid
In response to the recent decision by the Israeli government to upgrade the status of the so-called Ariel University Center of Samaria (AUCS) to a full university, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) reiterates its call for a boycott of AUCS and all other Israeli academic institutions due to their complicity in maintaining Israel‘s occupation, colonization and apartheid against the Palestinian people. While PACBI welcomes the recent protests against the decision to recognize AUCS–located in the fourth largest Jewish colony in the occupied Palestinian territories–-as a university, it cautions against attempts to divert the boycott movement away from its basis in the comprehensive, UN-sanctioned rights embodied in the Palestinian call for boycotting Israel to a selective focus on a subset of these rights.
Academics, journalists and others on the Zionist “left” who have opposed the academic boycott for years are now enthusiastically advocating a boycott that solely targets Ariel College because it is illegally built on occupied Palestinian territory. This, however, reduces the scope of the academic boycott to one against settlement institutions, while exonerating the Israeli academy at large, which is just as complicit, if not more, than Ariel in maintaining and justifying the Israeli colonial and apartheid apparatus. But even if the boycott were to apply only to universities built on occupied Palestinian territory, why hasn‘t the fact that the Hebrew University‘s Mount Scopus campus sits on occupied Palestinian land in East Jerusalem provoked any Ariel-like condemnation?
All Israeli universities are deeply linked to the military-security establishment, playing indispensable — direct and indirect — roles in perpetuating Israel‘s decades-old violations of international law and fundamental Palestinian rights. No Israeli university or academic union has ever taken a public position against the occupation, let alone against Israel‘s system of apartheid or the denial of Palestinian refugee rights. Israeli universities are profoundly complicit in developing weapon systems and military doctrines deployed in Israel‘s recent war crimes in Gaza [1]; justifying the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land and gradual ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians [2]; providing moral justification for extra-judicial killings and indiscriminate attacks against civilians [3]; systematically discriminating against “non-Jewish” students in admissions, dormitory room eligibility, financial aid, etc.; and many other implicit and explicit violations of human rights and international law. [4]
As BDS gains momentum globally, an increasing number of Israeli voices are emerging in support of this strategy as the most effective, non-violent route to bring about change towards justice and durable peace. The endorsement by Israeli artists and academics of specific boycott actions in the past few years is welcome and well known. After Israel’s war of aggression on Gaza, several Israeli academic and cultural figures came out in support of BDS. [5] Long before the Gaza massacre, though, staunch Israeli supporters of Palestinian rights such as Rachel Giora, Ilan Pappe, Haim Bresheeth, Oren Ben-Dor, Anat Matar and the late Tanya Reinhart had embraced BDS and defended it against Israeli critics, particularly so-called “leftists” in the academy. [6] The recently formed group, Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within [7], is particularly praiseworthy, as it unconditionally accepts BDS as defined and guided by the Palestinian BDS National Committee, and is therefore regarded by the BNC as a reliable and principled partner in the movement.
These emerging voices from inside Israeli society point to the growing appeal of BDS and the recognition of its power to effect real change towards just peace. It is nevertheless crucial to emphasize that the BDS movement derives its principles from both the demands of the Palestinian BDS Call, signed by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations in July 2005, [8] and, in the academic and cultural fields, from the Palestinian Call for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, issued a year earlier in July 2004. [9] Together, the BDS and PACBI Calls represent the most authoritative and widely supported strategic statements to have emerged from Palestine in decades; all political factions, labour, student and women organizations, and refugee groups across the Arab world have supported and endorsed these calls. Both calls underline the prevailing Palestinian belief that the most effective form of solidarity with the Palestinian people is direct action aimed at bringing an end to Israel’s colonial and apartheid regime, just as the apartheid regime in South Africa was abolished, by isolating Israel internationally through boycotts and sanctions, forcing it to comply with international law and respect Palestinian rights.
Since the formulation of these calls, a great deal of emphasis has been placed on defining the principles of the boycott movement. Rooted in universal values and principles, the BDS Call categorically rejects all forms of racism, racial discrimination and colonial oppression. PACBI has also translated the principles enshrined in its Call into practical guidelines for implementing the international academic and cultural boycott of Israel. [10] All the while, the Palestinian boycott movement has been clear as to what the focus and goals of the BDS movement are.
In this respect, the importance of the 2005 BDS Call lies in its comprehensive approach to the Israeli colonial and apartheid system as a whole, and its subjugation of the Palestinian people, whether as second-class citizens inside Israel, subjects under its military occupation, or dispossessed refugees. This was summarized in the concise demands outlined in the Palestinian BDS call that Israel recognize the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self determination and fully comply with international law by: respecting, protecting and promoting the right of return of all Palestinian refugees; ending the occupation of all Palestinian and Arab lands; and recognizing full equality for the Palestinian citizens of Israel. In this sense, the BDS Call effectively counters the systematic Israeli fragmentation of the Palestinian people and the reduction of the struggle for freedom and self-determination to an endless bargaining game over land in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Central to the Palestinian BDS movement’s three demands is an understanding of Israel as an apartheid state. Israel fits the UN definition of apartheid not just in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; it defines itself as a Jewish state, not a state of all its citizens. Most importantly, Israeli laws, policies, and practices discriminate openly against Palestinian–i.e., “non-Jewish”– citizens of the state. The pervasive and institutionalized racism and discrimination are particularly evident in the vital domains of land ownership and use, education, employment, access to public services, and urban planning. The apartheid character has been part of the design of Israel since its inception. [11]
The state of Israel was established in 1948 by forcibly displacing the overwhelming majority of Palestine’s indigenous Arab population from their homeland. Today, these Palestinian refugees are prevented from returning to their homes and lands from which they were expelled. In contrast, any person who claims Jewish descent from anywhere in the world may become an Israeli citizen and national under the so-called Law of Return. Moreover, Israel’s brutal war on Gaza was not an anomaly; rather, it represents the most recent example of the systematic policies of ethnic cleansing and colonial oppression that Israel has carried out against the Palestinian people for more than six decades. During this recent military onslaught, Israel killed over 1,440 Palestinians, of whom 431 were children, and injured another 5380. [12] Israel subjected the besieged population of Gaza to three weeks of unrelenting state terror.
Despite the clarity with which the Palestinian BDS movement has enunciated the goals of the Palestinian struggle, some Israeli and other advocates of boycott have tried to limit its scope. They have attempted to limit the goals of the BDS movement by restricting it geo-politically and confining it to a call to end the Israeli occupation over the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This “interpretation” of BDS is most dangerous as it attempts to appropriate the right to redefine the terms of the struggle in Palestine and to impose an ideologically suspect political agenda that lets Israel off the hook on the charges of apartheid and practicing the most pernicious form of racism and discrimination in all the territory under its control.
Some Israelis also base their support for BDS on a purely utilitarian rationale, that of ‘saving Israel from itself,’ rather than principled solidarity with the Palestinians. This Israel-centered, “pragmatic” perspective, however, reproduces a colonial attitude of superiority where the indigenous population and their inalienable rights and struggle for freedom are not even recognized. What matter, according to this perspective, are Israel’s own self-interest, international image, and future. Yet if some are committed to preserving Israel’s character into the future without challenging its colonial and apartheid laws and policies, how can they be counted on as true allies in the Palestinian-led, global BDS movement?
As for the targets chosen for BDS actions, the strength of the BDS movement lies in the fact that it does not impose specific targets or tactics on solidarity groups around the world. Based on the principle of context-sensitivity and respect for the autonomy and integrity of democratic international groups supporting Palestinian rights, the Palestinian BDS collective leadership has always believed that people of conscience and organizations advocating human rights know their respective situation best and are the most capable of deciding the appropriate ways and pace to build the BDS movement in their contexts. Sometimes the tactical targeting of settlement-only products may be the best way for a campaign to progress. At other times, it may be resolutions at local unions endorsing BDS, or cultural boycott targets, etc. But even if one were concerned only about Israel’s occupation, not its denial of refugee rights or its apartheid system, this cannot justify a principled focus on boycotting “settlement products” only, as if Israel’s colonies themselves were the party guilty of colonialism, not the state that established them and sustains their growth. In no other boycott context in the world does anyone call for boycotting a manifestation of a state’s violations of international law, rather than the state itself. After all, under international law states are the legal entities that are supposed to be held accountable for crimes and violations that they commit.
Regardless, it is never up to Israeli academics or activists, no matter what their principles are, to set out the reference parameters and priorities of the movement, particularly for activists worldwide. More often than not, members of the Zionist left have refused to recognize the BDS Call issued by the overwhelming majority of Palestinian civil society organizations, and its anchor and leadership, the Palestinian BDS National Committee, BNC. [13] In so doing they fail to respect the aspirations of the Palestinian people and our right to define the goals of our struggle. Moreover, in response to the Zionist left’s insistence on focusing on the symptoms of the Israeli system of colonial oppression, by calling only for an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it is worth emphasizing that in apartheid South Africa it would have been ludicrous to focus solely on the Bantustans. The struggle against the Bantustans was an intrinsic part of the struggle to end the apartheid system as a structure of dominance whereby the white minority subjugated and oppressed the Black South African population.
As a people living under Israeli apartheid and exiled from their land, it is up to the Palestinians and their mass organizations to set their priorities, objectives and strategies to attain our rights under international law. Israeli support is a welcome and necessary part of this movement. But it must be extended in the spirit of real solidarity, as in the case of Boycott From Within, respecting the wishes and aspirations of the Palestinian people themselves.
footnotes
[1] See, for example, the following incriminating evidence against Tel Aviv University‘s partnership with the Israeli army and weapons industries: http://www.electronicintifada.net/downloads/pdf/090708-soas-palestine-society.pdf
[2] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=63
[3] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1062127.html and Reuven Pedatzur, The Israeli Army House Philosopher, Haaretz, 24 February 2004.
[4] http://www.alternativenews.org/images/stories/downloads/Economy_of_the_occupation_23-24.pdf
[5] See, for example, Neve Gordon’s BDS article at: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gordon20-2009aug20,0,1126906.story and Udi Aloni’s at: http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=37582
[6] See, for example, Tanya Reinhart’s letter to Israeli academic Baruch Kimmerling at: http://www.mediamonitors.net/tanya13.html
[7] http://www.boycottisrael.info
[8] http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node/52
[9] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=869
[10] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1047 and http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1107
[11] For more on Israel‘s regime of occupation, colonization and apartheid see this important BNC strategic position paper: http://bdsmovement.net/files/English-BNC_Position_Paper-Durban_Review.pdf
[12] http://www.ochaopt.org/gazacrisis/index.php?section=3
[13] For example Uri Avnery’s sweeping dismissal of the Palestinian BDS Call and the Palestinian BDS National Committee: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1252168050
Posted on 10-02-2010
Editor: The Green Zionism myth
Some brilliant mind in the Israeli propaganda machine has come up with the Green/Blue/White campaign, pretending Israel and Zionism are not only great democratic achievements, but also at the forefront of the environmental campaign. This fallacy would not need to worry anyone, was it not acted upon with great investment in Europe and the US, and a series of activities to promote the new myth. This is indeed part of the new drive after the Gaza carnage, to roll back public opinion, which has clearly turned against Israeli atrocities. That Israel, which has destroyed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian tress, stole the water of the West Bank, spilled sewage on Palestinian plots and cut roads for Jews only which deface the landscape, is now selling itself as green, is not even funny. The pieces below deal with aspects of this issue.
When planting trees is unethical: Haretz
By Zafris Rinat
It’s green and the people doing it consider themselves green, so tree-planting should really be a genuinely ecological act – and this is how it is indeed presented with regularity by the Jewish National Fund each year at Tu Bishvat, Jewish Arbor Day. But there is nothing environmental or ecological about enlisting tree-planting to promote the protracted occupation of the West Bank.
This year’s events were kicked off by the JNF with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planting trees at Ma’aleh Adumim. He took advantage of the occasion to state his political opinion that this large settlement would remain part of the State of Israel forever. With the aid of the JNF, it would even be surrounded by a green envelope of trees.
The JNF is a historical arm of the Jewish settlement of the Land of Israel. But it derived all its powers and authority as a tree-planter from its activities within sovereign Israel. Ma’aleh Adumim and other settlements, for those who have not yet forgotten, are outside the bounds of that sovereignty. The enlistment of tree-planting on behalf of the settlement enterprise, which entails the separation of a large population from its land and its rights, is clearly anti-environmental. This tree-planting ceremony should therefore arouse profound soul-searching concerning the JNF and its ecological pretensions. If it wants to be an environmental body in the full sense of the word, it should not operate in areas that are not part of the State of Israel or restrict itself to essential activities, like rescuing or preserving existing forests.
If it does not do so, environmental bodies in Israel and abroad that cooperate with the JNF should see it as part of the occupation and apply pressure on it to cease this involvement. Environmental activists who have joined it and play a central role in it should protest, and ask what moral justification there is for planting trees in settlements. Scholars and scientists from around the world who come as guests of the JNF to learn how to stop the desert from expanding should know that this organization also specializes in helping the occupation expand, and tries to beautify it with forests and groves.
It is important to distinguish between organizations like the JNF and the governmental Nature and Parks Authority, which also functions across the Green Line but does so as part of the obligation that an occupying power has to care for the territory it has conquered, including protecting the area’s natural assets.
The JNF does not fulfill such a role, but rather works with all its heart on behalf of the settlement enterprise. True, this enterprise has been approved by the government of Israel, but the JNF is not a governmental agency. Even certain actions that it has taken to assist the Palestinians with forestation do not justify the support it is providing for the occupation.
JNF personnel commonly say that it serves the needs of the Jewish people. But how can one reconcile tree plantings in occupied territory with the key environmentalist principle of public involvement and consideration for its needs? After all, the very essence of Ma’aleh Adumim is one long whistle of derision at the right of Palestinians to share in determining the fate of their homeland, in areas that are not part of Israel.
It is therefore possible to say that the JNF has definitely fulfilled its role as a Zionist body – only in the regrettable form Zionism has taken nowadays. But it is certainly impossible to view the JNF in the way it wants to be viewed, as an ecological organization whose goal is to improve the landscape and to plant trees to combat global climate change.
EDITOR: The fiction of Palestinian autonomy
Israel tells the world daily that it has ‘withdrawn’ from Gaza, and that the Palestinian Authority is in control of parts of the West Bank, small as those might be. There is nothing urther from the truth, of course. According to international law, Israel is the occupying power in all parts of Palestine; Israel acts daily to prove this, invading, bombing, hijacking and destroying. The actions against NGOs in Israel and the Ocuppied Territories are part of this policy, of ilegally curtailing any possible action against Israeli brutalities. Now, the NGOs are involved in astruggle for survival, rather in their primary roles.
Israel strikes Gaza in response to Qassam rockets: Haaretz
Israel Air Force jets fired missiles early Wednesday at targets in the southern Gaza Strip, responding to rockets fired from the coastal salient by Palestinian militants, Israel’s military said.
An Israel Defense Forces spokesman would not specify which targets were hit in the strike, shortly after midnight, nor confirm or deny eyewitness reports that an unused airport, named after late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, was struck by a number of missiles. No injuries were reported.
He said the air strikes were retaliation to two Gaza-made rockets fired into southern Israel on Sunday and Monday.
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“The IDF Israel Defense Forces will continue to act firmly against anyone who uses terror against Israel, and we see Hamas as solely responsible for maintaining peace and quiet in the Gaza Strip,” the military spokesman said.
Hamas, the radical Islamist movement running Gaza, has largely observed an unwritten truce since Israel’s offensive into the Strip last winter, in which some 1,400 Palestinians, many of them civilians, were killed.
But Palestinian militants from other, smaller factions, have continued their sporadic rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza at southern Israel.
Israel has responded to these with air strikes on smuggling tunnels along the Gaza border with Egypt and on sites from which the rockets and mortars are being launched at it.
Despite the relative calm in Gaza and southern Israel over the past year, tit-for-tat violence has been on the rise in recent weeks.
The IDF said more than 20 rockets and mortars have been fired at Israel since the beginning of 2010.
However, the number of projectiles fired since last winter’s Gaza war stands at some 320, compared to more than 3,300 over the same period leading up to the 2008-09 offensive.
IDF detains two pro-Palestinian foreigners in West Bank raid: Haaretz
Israel Defense Forces soldiers on Sunday arrested two pro-Palestinian activists from Spain and Australia during a raid on the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Israeli forces routinely enter the territory to arrest Palestinians accused of militant activity. However, Sunday’s raid marks only the third time troops have seized foreigners there on suspicion their visas had expired.
The activists are members of the International Solidarity Movement, a group involved in protests against Israel’s West Bank separation barrier.
The activists’ lawyer, Omer Shatz, says he believes his clients were targeted because of their political activity.
In recent months, Israel has intensified its arrest campaign against those involved in the anti-barrier protests.
Haaretz learned last week that Israel’s new immigration police has joined security forces in cracking down on foreign activists residing in the Palestinian West Bank.
The Oz Unit participated two weeks ago in the attempted arrest of a number of activists in the West Bank town of Bil’in, and also in the raid that nabbed leading Palestinian militants Mohammed Hatib that same night. The week before that, the unit took part in the arrest of a Czech activist in Ramallah.
Israel denies NGOs work permits : Al Jazeera online
The Israeli interior ministry has stopped issuing work permits to foreigners working for international non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
In the last few weeks, NGO staff have been given tourist visas instead, making it virtually impossible for them to carry out their work.
The new Israeli policy affects 120 international NGOs, many of which provide vital developmental and humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Many NGO members have said that Israel’s actions are illegal because the country is obligated under Geneva and humanitarian law to issue them visas and let them work freely there.
To see the video clip, use the link above.
EDITOR: One Year on: Gaza fight to survive
While Israel ratchets further its stranglehold on Gaza, supposedly until the Gazan vote in the way prescribed by Israel, Gaza fights back, with great difficulty. Food for over 1.5 million people, medicines, water, gas, oil, not mention the cement which is so crucial for urgent repairs – all this is being provided at great cost and with great risk by a system of underground tunnels which were erected to supply the largest ghetto on earth. Robert Fisk, in another excellent piece, is examining the struggle for survival. The despicble role palyed by Egypt in supporting the ilegal Israeli blockade is especially tragic and shameful, and should never be forgotten.
Robert Fisk: Gaza’s defiant tunnellers head deeper underground: The Independent
They are threatened with drowning by the Egyptians and punitively taxed by Hamas. Our correspondent meets the Palestinian smugglers bringing oranges, car batteries and bottle tops to a territory under siege
They are the real resistance. They are the lung through which Gaza breathes. True, missiles must pass along their subterranean tracks, Qassam rockets, too, Kalashnikov ammunition, explosives. But by far the greatest burden of the tunnellers of Gaza is the very life-blood of this besieged little pseudo-Islamic statelet: fresh meat, oranges, chocolate, shirts, trousers, toys, cigarettes, wedding dresses, paper, entire motor-cars in four bits, car batteries, even plastic bottle tops. The tunnellers of Gaza are bombed by the Israelis, they die in their own collapsing tunnels – and now they face a new Egyptian wall, even the fear of drowning. Terrorists they may be to the Israelis – the promiscuous use of this word makes it fairly meaningless these days – but heroes they are to the Palestinians of Gaza. Rich ones, too, perhaps.
But right now, Abdul-Halim al-Mohsen is worried about the Egyptians. He sits by the spitting log fire near the shaft of his tunnel, turning his hands to the flames, breathing in the thick blue smoke, a vast white tent above him casting his fellow-tunnellers into Rembrandt-like shadow, half-faces, thick pullovers, bright flames amid the gloom, the generator purring in the corner.
“Of course I’m afraid of the Egyptian wall,” al-Mohsen says. “They will pour water down. How can we defeat this? We may drown.” He holds out the palms of his hands towards me in that familiar “what-can-we-do?” gesture of so many Palestinians – but he is speaking in a matter-of-fact voice. The tunnels beneath the Gaza-Egyptian frontier are a business, a professional’s game, Israel’s bombs a challenge rather than a problem. There’s even a four-truck miniature railway down one of the shafts. Money makes the wheels go round.
True to their treaties with Israel and the Quartet (of Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara fame), the Egyptians announced last month that they will build a wall – walls being the currency of the Middle East these days, from Kabul and Baghdad to the West Bank – between the southern-most rubble of the Palestinian Gaza Strip and Egypt, in order to break through and close down the “terrorist” tunnels. Foreign NGOs in Gaza dismiss this as the usual Egyptian window-dressing to please the Israelis – which means to please the Americans – adding that the Egyptian wall will only descend 18 feet beneath the ground, falling far short of the tunnels’ depth. Perhaps it is in the tunnellers’ interest to be more pessimistic. Al-Mohsen seems genuinely troubled by the Egyptian initiative.
“If they flood our tunnel, our dangers increase,” he says. “It takes an hour to get out of the tunnel if we are stooping or on our hands and knees. When the Israelis are bombing, we clamber through to the Egyptian end – the Israelis won’t bomb the Egyptian side – but if the Egyptians stop us, we will be caught by the bombing if the tunnel collapses.”
I wonder about this, especially when Abu Wadieh invites us to look at the cavernous vault which opens in the far corner of the tent. This is no dirt hole in the ground but a solidly built stone-and-brick vertical tunnel, almost 15 feet in width and 90 feet deep – so deep that I can scarcely see the tiny arms of the men far below me as they heap bags of fruit on to a big steel hook – and more than half a mile long. A hawser whisks the bags to the surface as the generator whines and the men at the rim of the tunnel give them a gentle push so that they swing back into their arms. These men know their job. All profess to be uninterested in politics, of course. No weapons pass through their tunnel. Oh no, indeed.
A truck has backed into the tent, a squad of men piling fruit and vegetables and furniture and bottles of Egyptian Coca-Cola on to the lorry. I ask al-Mohsen – he swears he will be a construction engineer if peace (a muffled gasp here) looms – for his inspiration. He’s seen pictures of tunnels before and he saw a film long ago in which foreign prisoners – British – escaped from a German camp through a tunnel. Of course. The Great Escape! Richard Attenborough and James Garner and Steve McQueen and the truck on railway lines which ferries them out of their Stalag. It accounts for the professional quality of the tunnel – even for the underground railway line. Though I don’t choose to remind al-Mohsen of what happened to Attenborough.
But this is no laughing business. NGOs estimate that Hamas skims 15 per cent of the profits off the tunnellers’ turnover, giving that august institution – excoriated by Israel, the US and Europe ever since they had the temerity to win the 2006 Palestinian elections – a quiet $350m (£225m) income per annum.
So while the world blockades Gaza and condemns the 1.5 million souls here to penury and – in some cases – near-starvation, Hamas supplies itself with all the concrete, building materials, iron and weapons that its plentiful supplies of money can buy.
While the EU gutlessly allows Israel to deprive Palestinian civilians of cement to rebuild their homes after last year’s bloodbath in Gaza – because Hamas might use the cement to build bunkers – Hamas itself has more than enough cement to build a city of bunkers or a fleet of mosques, not to mention the buildings it has erected opposite Israeli troops at Erez.
In other words, the tunnels keep Hamas in pocket and Gaza alive. The Palestinian poor, of course, have to be fed by the United Nations. The tunnels thus represent not just a series of blood vessels between Gaza and Egypt, but a massive international hypocrisy.
Abu Wadieh, who employs 35 men working in and above al-Mohsen’s tunnel, stands beside the crackling fire, a kuffiah wound round his head like a builder’s helmet, rubbing his hands in the cold wind that pours into the tent as the latest truck carries its riches off to Gaza City.
“I’m afraid the men will all leave if there’s another war,” he says. “But they are experts. They know what to do.”
Only 100 metres away, the yellow shaft of an Egyptian drilling machine stands against the horizon and the very beginning of a grey wall. Behind it, an Egyptian flag snaps above a watchtower where the soldiers of Arab Egypt ensure that their Arab Palestinian brothers stay besieged in the rubbish pit of Gaza.
EDITOR: Zionism’s apologists abroad
As always, a network of Zionist aplogists is ready and waiting to justify Israel’s every move, every atrocity and brutality, to whitewash and expalin away, to interprete every crime as a blessing in disguise. Jonathan Friedland in the UK, like Thomas Friedman in New York, are leading proponents of this genre. Friedland is most adept at finding the positive in the most abject spaces in Israeli policy. His clock is almost set at ‘five to twelve’, it is always late, one must look for a solution everywhere, leave no stone unturned, etc. This clock has been running for decades, yet has never reached the twelvth hour, due the the enormous, unbeatable optimism of Mr. Friedland of the Guardian, his endless credit to the Israeli state. He has seen the bright side of Mr. Olmert, right when this war criminal has attacked Lebanon in Summer 2006, and later when he attacke Gaza in December 2008. He has time for generals Barak and Sharon, who were both brilliant, and were just about to save the situation, and had always warm words for Mr. Peres, the one who never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity for peace. It is excellent, I reckon, to have such optimistic minds working on the Middle East issue – they will never tire, will never rest, until the problem will be solved by Israel, probably through a Final Solution. It seems that the credit some of those apologists extend to Israel and its good intentions will last to the very last Palestinian.
Palestinians may not trust Netanyahu yet. But they would do well to test him: The Guardian
Allies of the Israeli prime minister insist that he is ready to talk peace. If his bluff is called, he’ll be forced to do just that
Tired of the jokes about his wife, perhaps, Northern Ireland’s first minister, Peter Robinson, last week cracked a gag of his own. Marking an end to more than 100 hours of talks, he said that the province would be lobbying for the inclusion of negotiating as an Olympic sport in time for the London games of 2012 – and that Northern Ireland would win the gold medal.
Not so fast. There could be stiff competition, at least in the endurance event. One hundred hours might seem like a marathon to Mr Robinson, as must the long Good Friday process that preceded it. But for Palestinians and Israelis, that’s little more than a warm-up. They have been involved in peace talks, one way or the other, since the Oslo accords of 1993. And while the people of Northern Ireland have a prize to show for all that effort – namely, peace – the negotiators of the Middle East are still, 17 years on, empty-handed. If Robinson and Martin McGuinness have earned their gold, the Israelis and Palestinians surely deserve a medal for fruitless stamina.
And now they are poised to submit themselves to another round, with 20 February pencilled in the diary. This time, just as beach volleyball made its debut at the Atlanta Olympics, the organisers are introducing a new format. The two sides will not sit across a table, but rather in two separate rooms. The referee – the role taken by that hero of Good Friday 1998, the former US senator and now Middle East envoy, George Mitchell – will shuttle between the two. If the Israelis say “no”, Mitchell will knock on the Palestinian door and say that they said “maybe”. If the Palestinians say that the Israelis can go to hell, the perennially patient Mitchell will relay the message as: “They’ve asked for more detail.” Think of a couple who refuse to speak to each other, communicating instead through their children. “Tell her, I need to use the car tonight.” You might call it infantile. In international diplomacy, they call it proximity talks.
After 17 years of disappointment, it makes sense to approach this latest effort with our expectations somewhere below the sub-basement. It’s not certain the talks will begin at all: Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is currently consulting Arab and other foreign leaders on whether he should drop his insistence that there should be no talks until Israel agrees to freeze all settlement-building in the occupied West Bank. The message he’s getting is that he should accept Israel’s partial and temporary moratorium on building, and talk.
At the heart of Abbas’s dilemma is a judgment on his Israeli counterpart. Is Binyamin Netanyahu serious about peace, or is he doing the bare minimum to keep Washington off his back? One nugget of conventional wisdom holds that while the Palestinians want a deal but not negotiations, the Israelis want negotiations but not a deal. In this view, Netanyahu is happy to go through the motions of talks – so that he can boast to world opinion that he is doing the right thing – just so long as he doesn’t have to do anything difficult. That way he can preserve his rightwing coalition, which would surely unravel at the first whiff of compromise. Others say that Bibi is sincere, even impatient for an agreement. Which view is right? Even those who work for the Israeli prime minister are not sure. One official tells me he does not yet know if his boss is Yitzhak Shamir – the former Likud PM and human roadblock who made a career out of saying no – or Ariel Sharon, the Likud leader who eventually seemed determined to resolve the conflict until he was fatefully struck down by a stroke.
In the Shamir column stands Netanyahu’s entire past record as a hawk who has repeatedly opposed peace efforts. His rhetoric does not suggest he has undergone the profound, internal shift that seemed to have moved Sharon or, more visibly, Bibi’s immediate predecessor, Ehud Olmert. Indeed, at the recent Herzliya security conference, Netanyahu pointedly contrasted himself with Sharon, who had used that same forum to announce his Gaza withdrawal plan, pledging his loyalty instead to “the land of our forefathers”. The message seemed clear: Sharon gave up land, I’ll keep hold of it.
Sure, he has agreed a freeze on some construction, but there are plenty of holes in that ice: East Jerusalem is not included, nor are non-residential buildings, nor is construction already under way. And even this limited “moratorium” expires in September, with Bibi giving no hint that it will be extended. Meanwhile, at his side remains a foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who not only continues to make thuggish threats to Israel’s neighbours but recently declared that “if a Palestinian state is established, there will be no Israel.” None of this will encourage the Palestinians that, when they sit down for talks, in the room next door will be a man ready to make peace.
And yet, just yesterday Netanyahu said at a lunch for European ambassadors, “Test me.” I’m told the Americans have been saying the same thing to Abbas and his team: you’ll be surprised how far Bibi is prepared to go.
This “Sharon” view of Netanyahu notes his belated endorsement of the two-state solution. Belated, yes; begrudging, most certainly; but it still came at a political cost, antagonising his rightwing base. They make similar noises about the settlement moratorium: for all its limitations, Hillary Clinton was right to say that it was “unprecedented”. No Israeli leader had done anything like it before. For those who doubt its reality, talk to the Palestinian construction workers who, in a bitter paradox, are angry that they can no longer get work building homes for Jewish settlers. As for that Herzliya speech, other observers spotted that when Bibi listed those places that constituted Israel’s true “heritage”, he named none in occupied territory.
But surely the fact that late last year Israel announced further building in East Jerusalem undermines any claim that Netanyahu is serious about peace? Not so, say his defenders. It merely showed that Bibi is now drawing a distinction between those lands he intends to keep and those he is ready to give up, an implicit end to the dream of Greater Israel, in which Israel would keep the lot.
The PM’s allies say that in person he is a different man from the brash, wheeler-dealer of his first, 1990s term. They describe a thoughtful person, always reading, determined to do more than merely keep “the seat warm”. They say he now wants to do what eluded his predecessors and come to an agreement.
It all sounds wonderful. The trouble is, as even his advocates confess, there is only the slimmest evidence for it: lots of warm words, very few concrete deeds. Which leaves the Palestinians with a choice. They can heed Mitchell when he says “Trust me” – and turn up at the proximity talks, waiting to hear what Bibi comes up with. Or, better, they can take Netanyahu at his word when he says “Test me” – and do more than wait. They should devise a strategy that will push the Israeli prime minister, forcing him to make good on all the talk. It will mean taking him by surprise with a move that requires a serious response. But do it: call his bluff.
One Palestinian insider says they are about to enter “a grey zone”, full of uncertainty. But the alternative is no talks at all. And, even after 17 years of frustration, that would be a disaster.
EDITOR: To listen to Israeli commentators, it was Israel which was under a blitz of Hamas rockets before they attacked Gaza… Not that most people were confused by this. Most people must have seen the real blitz in Gaza, under the most sophisticated war machine in the Middle East, poised against defenceless civilians. The report before again proves the Israeli lie.
Goldstone co-author: Hamas fired ‘something like two’ rockets before Gaza war: Haaretz
A co-author of the Goldstone Gaza report, which accuses both Hamas and Israel of war crimes, claims the Gaza militant group fired only two rockets at Israel prior to last year’s winter conflict, according to a new report published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
The report refers to recent remarks made by Desmond Travers, a retired Irish army colonel, who was one of four members of the fact-finding mission to Gaza and Israel.
Travers rejects the idea that Israel launched the offensive in Gaza on December 27, 2008, as an act of self-defense in response to Hamas rockets.
The Jerusalem center report says he bases this idea on a “fact” that he presents that in the month prior to start of the war, only “something like two” rockets that fell on Israel.
The report quotes an extensive interview with Travers in the Middle East Monitor, in which he also says that Hamas had sought “a continuation of the cease-fire” prior to Israel’s offensive in Gaza.
Travers also rejects Israel Defense Forces photographs as proof that Hamas hid weapons in mosques during the conflict.
“I do not believe the photographs,” Travers said, describing the IDF evidence as “spurious.”
He also accuses “Jewish lobbyists” of influencing British foreign policy in the Middle East and says that efforts to block the Goldstone reports findings have failed.
“The court of world opinion seems determined to see the report prevail,” he said.