EDITOR: Judge, Jury, Executioner and Public Relations firm
That the US will decide and punish those responsible for the breakup/nonexistence of those talks, useless even before the handshakes begun, is not just bizarre, but also malicious. This is done to force the PNA into another round of totally meaningless ‘negotiations’ just at the time that Netanyahu is acting with ever more impunity to make a solution even less than impossible.
Exclusive: U.S. vows to assign blame if Israel-PA talks fail: Haaretz
The United States government has committed to playing a role in indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and promised that if the talks were to fail, the U.S. will assign blame and take action, according to a document sent by the U.S. to the Palestinian Authority, which Haaretz obtained on Friday.
The U.S. government sent the document to the Palestinians responding to their inquires regarding the U.S. initiative to launch indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
“We expect both parties to act seriously and in good faith. If one side, in our judgment, is not living up to our expectations, we will make our concerns clear and we will act accordingly to overcome that obstacle,” it was written.
This commitment by the U.S. was a determining factor in the Palestinians’ and the Arab League’s decision to agree to the U.S. proposal on indirect talks.
The document also reveals that U.S. involvement will include “sharing messages between the parties and offering our own ideas and bridging proposals.”
The U.S. also emphasized that their main concern is establishing a Palestinian state.
“Our core remains a viable, independent and sovereign Palestinian State with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967,” the document read.
Regarding the settlements, the U.S. noted its continued commitment to the road map, which dictates that Israel must freeze all construction in the settlements, and dismantle all outposts erected since March 2001.
“Palestinian leaders gave the U.S. response a warm welcome”
A prominent Palestinian official told Haaretz that the Palestinian leadership welcomed the U.S. response, and the only reason PA President Mahmoud Abbas delayed responding to the U.S. initially was so he could receive support from the Arab League.
The Palestinians are especially satisfied from the U.S. commitment to put the blame on the side responsible if the talks fail.
Israeli apartheid week: Al Jazeera
A controversial campaign in the Western world links Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the treatment of blacks in apartheid South Africa.
It is called Israeli apartheid week.
University campuses in more than 40 cities around the world are marking the week with lectures, films, multimedia events, cultural performances and demonstrations.
Since it was first launched in 2005, the week has become one of the most important global events in the Palestine solidarity calendar, according to its organisers.
The organisation says its goals are ending the Israeli occupation of Arab lands, and the recognition of Palestinians’ right to return to their homes in Israel.
They also want Arab citizens of Israel to be treated equally and the separation wall to be torn down.
Several Israeli officials have criticised it and condemned the participation of senior Israeli academics and artists.
Is criticism of specific Israeli policies raising doubts about Israel’s right to exist? And is Israel now on the PR offensive to fight back?
Inside Story presenter Imran Garda is joined by Gidi Grinstein, the president and founder of the Reut Institute, Hazem Jamjoum, one of the organisers of the Israel Apartheid Week, and Eyal Sivan, a filmmaker and research professor in media production at the University of East London (UEL).
This episode of Inside Story aired from Wednesday, March 3, 2010.
Israel’s Supreme Court slams police over Sheikh Jarrah protests: IOA
Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem demonstration (Activestills.org)
By Nir Hasson, Haaretz – 4 March 2010
Supreme Court justices harshly criticized Jerusalem police on Thursday over their handling of the protests in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem.
This criticism was issued by the justices during a court hearing on a petition filed by residents of Sheikh Jarrah, who demanded to be allowed to protest on this coming Saturday night, a demonstration the police hasn’t authorized.
The justices sided with the residents and stressed that the police should not seize the residents’ right to protest.
“The police’s behavior regarding these protests takes us 30 years backwards,” the justices said.
Protesters demand the right to demonstrate in Sheikh Jarrah near the contested houses inhabited by settlers which once belonged to Palestinians.
Last December, police arrested 25 left-wing activists during a protest which turned into a violent confrontation with security forces. Some 300 activists took part in the demonstration.
UN official to Haaretz: Israel ‘nourishing despair’ in Gaza: Haaretz
By Akiva Eldar
The combination of diplomatic caution and British understatement threatened to turn my interview with John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, into a trap of boredom. However, perhaps due to his approaching retirement, Holmes came out with several incisive, even scathing remarks.
This summer, after three and a half years in office, Holmes will return to Britain to head an important research institute. He no longer has to fear the sharp tongue of Israeli officials, who see any criticism of Israel as a synonym for anti-Semitism.
This morning, after visiting the Gaza Strip and West Bank and meeting officials on both sides, including Hamas “technocrats”, Holmes is going home dejected. As the official in charge of the UN’s rescue mission in disaster areas such as Haiti, he knows what depression is.
In a previous interview with you more than a year ago, you suggested that Israel shake off the delusion that pressure on the Gaza Strip would lead to Hamas’ downfall. In your visit to Gaza this week, did you have the impression that the blockade was weakening Hamas?
I don’t think my voice alone would have changed Israeli policy. It is hard to be sure what exactly the objective of this policy is. Of the blockade, the siege, the collective punishment. It is hard to see that it has been achieved, because Hamas is still there, firmly in control. Meanwhile, the condition of the people there [in Gaza] remains grim.
How grim?
It depends on how you look at it. People are not starving in Gaza. There are plenty of goods available, some coming in through legitimate crossing points but mainly through the tunnels. While it relieves the pressure in a sense, it isn’t good at all, because all it really does is encourage a smuggler-gangster economy, which incidentally benefits Hamas financially.
The smuggler-gangster economy is undermining some of the best legitimate forces in Gaza’s civil society, which do exist, whatever people might think. It is therefore not in anyone’s interest, certainly not in Israel’s. So I think this policy continues to be ineffective and indeed counterproductive.
What the policy of the blockade is doing is not encouraging the forces you want to encourage. Gaza is not a nest of terrorists. For the most part there are people who just want to live ordinary lives, and they are being undermined by what’s happening. So you are in danger of creating a generation of people who are nourished on despair.
Do you agree with Israel’s claim that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza?
Even though there are plenty of goods available in Gaza, and that people should be able to get them, the problem is of course that most people have no money. Eighty percent of the people in Gaza are essentially dependent on outside food aid, either from UNWRA or the World Food Program. Not because there isn’t food in the shops – there is – but they can’t afford it, or they can’t afford enough of it because any livelihoods that there were, any jobs that there were outside the government have effectively disappeared. Most private businesses have been destroyed, essentially by the blockade – bulldozed – and the rest finished off by Cast Lead.
Other than the people that work for Hamas, or are paid by the PA, there is no income, so people are forced to live on handouts.
What do you think will happen after Egypt completes its wall and closes the tunnels? How do you see Gaza’s future?
If Egypt did complete the wall and effectively block all the tunnels, the amount of goods going in across the crossing points – if it remained at the current level – would be completely unsustainable.
The trouble is that most of the avenues that could lead to change are blocked.
If Gilad Shalit was released, although the link between his fate and the fate of 1.5 million people is not a reasonable one, that might at least lead to some improvement. It is unclear how great that improvement would be, but let’s hope so. But that negotiation seems to have run into a dead end, and negotiations between Hamas and Fatah seem to be stuck, so it is hard to see how it can get any better.
I assume you’ve warned the Israeli authorities of the political implications. What response do you get from them?
The answer is A., Gilad Shalit, and B., we don’t want to do anything that would benefit Hamas, or from which they would get credit, and C., we’re not aiming to hurt ordinary Gazans. But they are being hurt.
Israel has certain responsibilities as to the siege in Gaza. Israel, as we see it, continues to be the occupying power. And it is not fulfilling those responsibilities as we believe it should.
The basic medical position [in Gaza] is not unreasonable, but there is a wider point which is not just about Gaza, but about the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where barriers, checkpoints and restricted movement means that access for many people to basic medical services is getting more and more difficult. The staff of hospitals in East Jerusalem can’t get to work, and the patients can’t get there either.
This is only one illustration of a much bigger problem of how restrictions of movement and difficulties of access to basic services is being cut off, and people can’t do the things they used to be able to do.
Your division is responsible for many distressed areas worldwide. Why do you devote so much energy to this small place?
It is a small geographical area but also a very focused problem with very significant humanitarian problems – people facing eviction after living in one place for 60 years, because of settler pressure; the Bedouins in Area C increasingly being squeezed from all directions and finding it very difficult to survive.
But there are many more long-running problems, and every time I come back I don’t find that things have improved. By and large the facts on the ground continue to go against the kind of settlement that everyone wants to see, which is the two-state solution.
What’s your advice?
I feel depressed when I listen to and see what is going on, because I don’t think it’s going in the right direction. There is a need on the part of everybody to fully recognize that, but also to look to the long term. Where is this really going to finish off in the longer term, rather than thinking how I can manage the situation for the next six months.
EDITOR: Israeli justice shines bright
After decades of murdering Palestinians, not a single Israeli soldiers was indeed sentenced and convicted for murder. On the other hand, Israeli justice was amazingly quick to inquire, condemn and put in jail one of those murderers, for advertising in advance an operation in the West Bank. There is nothing like a proper sense of priorities…
Israeli military ‘unfriends’ soldier after Facebook leak: BBC
An IDF poster warns against loose talk on social networking sites
The Israeli military cancelled a planned raid on a Palestinian village after one of its soldiers posted details of the operation on Facebook.
The unnamed soldier revealed the time and place of the raid and the name of his unit on the social networking site.
He said on his status update that his unit planned a “clean up” raid.
The soldier was court-martialled and sentenced to 10 days in prison. He was also ousted from his battalion and relieved of combat duties.
“On Wednesday we clean up Qatanah, and on Thursday, God willing, we come home,” the soldier wrote on his Facebook page. Qatanah is a village in the West Bank near Ramallah.
His Facebook friends and fellow soldiers reported the post to the authorities.
The decision to cancel the raid was made by commanders after it was feared the leak would put the unit in danger. The operation went ahead several days later.
A statement from the military released after the leak said, “Uploading classified information to social networks or any website exposes the information to anyone who wishes to view it, including foreign and hostile intelligence services.”
“Hostile intelligence agents scan the internet with an eye toward collecting information on the IDF (Israel Defence Forces), which may undermine operational success and imperil IDF forces,” it added.
Posters
Prior to the leak, the Israeli military had launched a full-scale campaign warning of the hazards of sharing military information online.
In military bases, posters show a mock Facebook page with images of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Below their pictures and a Facebook friend request, the slogan reads, “You think that everyone is your friend?”
Israel says arrest raids in the West Bank are aimed at detaining people suspected of planning attacks in Israel. Palestinian Authority officials criticise the raids as hampering efforts to enforce law and order in the West Bank.
Reports on whether the targets of the raids are militants or civilians are often contradictory.
Video Interview: Jeff Halper – The Global Pacification Industry: IOA
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Jeff Halper: The Global Pacification Industry – 26 Feb 2010
Interview with Jeff Halper, Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and author of Obstacles to Peace: A Re-framing of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and An Israeli In Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel.
Plan to change war crimes law delayed by general election: The Guardian
Straw to seek views on arrest of foreign politicians although Israel is concerned about postponed legislation
A British court issued an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni on war crimes charges but withdrew it on finding she had cancelled a planned trip to Britain. Photograph: Gil Cohen Magen/Reuters
Changes in the law to remove the threat of foreign politicians becoming victims of “politically motivated” war crime arrests every time they visit Britain have been postponed until after the general election. The justice secretary, Jack Straw, said the decision to delay immediate legislation had been taken because the government recognised it was a controversial issue that involved the long-standing right of private prosecution.
The Israeli government said it was disappointed, but pro-Palestinian MPs said Straw was right to reject its pressure for rushed changes to British law.
Expectations that a change in the law was imminent were raised yesterday by a signed article by Gordon Brown in the Daily Telegraph which backed proposals to end the current system under which magistrates are obliged to consider applications for an arrest warrant for crimes under international law presented by a private individual.
“The only question for me is whether our purpose is best served by a process where an arrest warrant for the gravest crimes can be issued on the slightest evidence,” wrote Brown. “As we have seen, there is now significant danger of such a provision being exploited by politically-motivated organisations and individuals.”
Ministers say they want the right to prosecute in such “universal jurisdiction” cases to be restricted to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), where they involve offences committed outside Britain, by people who are not British nationals.
This will raise the bar for such arrest warrants to be issued, as the CPS will have to consider whether there is a realistic likelihood of a successful prosecution. But when the statement was made by Straw to MPs he disclosed that change will not happen before the general election: “Rather than legislating now, we are going to seek views on the proposals we are minded to make.”
A short consultation will now take place involving the Commons justice committee, with a closing date of 6 April.
As the change will require primary legislation, this is too late for any move before the general election.
The Conservatives said they will vote to back a new law, but more than 110 backbench MPs have signed an early day motion opposing the change.
The former Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, cancelled a trip to London earlier this year after an arrest warrant was issued by Westminster magistrates for alleged crimes committed during last year’s military operation in Gaza. The former US secretary of state, Colin Powell, has also expressed alarm about his possible arrest in Britain.
Israel welcomed the intention to change the law, but was concerned about further delays after having been promised by the government that it would be fast-tracked.
Ron Prosor, the Israeli ambassador to Britain, said: “The engine is finally being revved up.
“However, we are wary that this legislation could end up getting stuck in the crawler lane, or perhaps run out of fuel. Hopefully, the coming weeks will see action materialise from intention.”
MP Richard Burden, chairman of the British-Palestine parliamentary group, said: “I am pleased that the government recognises the need to properly consider any proposed changes.”
EDITOR: The Jew in Arms – from the Wild West to the West Bank
What could be better than putting together two traditions: that of the armed settler in Palestine, and the much older one of the armed settlers in the Wild West? Two proud histories of killing and dispossessing the indigenous population. What exactly those proud armed Jews are protecting against is, as yet, a mystery. This tendency will also guarantee an even stronger support from NRA and the Christian loony right for Zionism. It is also good to learn that in both communities, the rabbis are leading the trend…
Jews with guns – not only in the Israel Defense Forces: Haaretz
WASHINGTON – In the year after the election of Barack Obama as president, more than 14 million weapons were sold in the United States compared with 12.7 million the year before. Gun-shop owners have argued that the rise in sales is linked in part to concerns that the Democratic administration will try to restrict the rights of Americans to hold weapons under license.
The Obama administration has not taken a clear stance on the issue, but in some U.S. states legal battles over the right to bear arms has begun in earnest.
So far Obama has been forced to sign into law the right to carry weapons in national parks, and also the right to bear arms in train compartments. Virginians, meanwhile, were given the right to carry concealed weapons in bars and restaurants, while a 17-year-old law banning the right to buy more than one gun per month was revoked.
In Indiana, companies may no longer prevent their employees from keeping arms in their cars parked on company property. Starbucks became the site of demonstrations by supporters and opponents of gun control after the coffee chain decided to allow customers in states where carrying arms is legal to enter its cafes carrying unconcealed weapons.
Much of the Jewish community has remained outside the debate: Some 90 million U.S. residents hold 200 million firearms, but only a tiny minority of American Jews have guns. However, there appears to be a revival among supporters of the right to bear arms among Jews who say that attitudes are changing because of new threats they face.
One of them is Dovid Bendory, an Orthodox rabbi, 42, from New Jersey. Not only did he buy a gun, he also became an authorized shooting instructor and is giving lessons to members of the Orthodox community. He also distributes material that explains, on the basis of biblical texts, the right of Jews to self-defense.
“I did not grow up with guns, not even with toy guns,” he says. “I think that the first time I saw a real gun was when I visited Israel at age 16. But I began to think about weapons seriously after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As far as I’m concerned, the Twin Towers disaster changed the entire scene, because until then we thought that the terrorist threat existed only outside the United States.”
Another turning point was the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November 2008, where one of the targets was the Chabad House.
“I realized that this is no longer political terrorism but anti-Semitism,” he says. “In May 2009 they arrested people in Riverdale, New York who wanted to blow up a synagogue in that neighborhood, which is a 40 minutes drive from my community.”
Bendory says the understanding that terrorism can reach America’s Jews, too, led to his decision to be ready.
Bendory took part in courses offered by an Israeli instructor, and then decided to disseminate his discoveries among the country’s Jewish community with a Web site and his “Ten Commandments for Self-Defense.”
“I think that in view of our history, every Jew who is physically and psychologically capable of carrying a gun should do so,” he says. “We must be ready to defend ourselves, and God will make sure we will never need to do so. I am not a supporter of Kahane, but I also do not want to find myself on the wrong side of a gun.”
About 30,000 people lose their lives in the United States as a result of gunfire every year, but in more than half the cases the shots are self-inflicted.
“I can’t see how restrictions on carrying arms would have helped in cases like the shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington in June 2009,” Bendory says. “As a felon, the shooter was not permitted to carry arms anyway, but he did not care about the law, and the only thing the law did was that none of the people in the Holocaust Museum had a weapon to protect themselves.
“It’s strange that so many Jewish Americans are proud of the IDF, but when a Jewish American speaks in favor of guns, they think he is mad. However, when I speak in the synagogue about the need for self-defense, suddenly people come out of the closet and admit that they have guns,” Bendory says.
“I put guns in the hands of dozens of people who held one for the first time. In my latest course I taught 12 Orthodox women to fire for the first time in a range,” Bendory says. He adds that non-Jews also contact him and encourage him.
William Daroff, director of the Washington office of the Jewish Federations of North America, believes that support for guns in the Jewish community is a marginal phenomenon; he says his organization does not have a set position on the matter.
Aaron Zelman from Wisconsin, who set up the organization Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership 20 years ago recalled with nostalgia his first experience shooting a gun at a Jewish camp in Tucson, Arizona, where he grew up. “It would never happen today,” he says.
EDITOR: ‘Peace’ again?
While the folowing editorial in Haaretz is presenting the tired and well-worn stereotypes which have been bandied about for the last few decades; so while there is not much new here in political terms, and it shows how infertile and unimaginative the Israeli Middle Class has become, it is also evidence of their deep disenchantment with the current government and its bizarre performance of bravado combined with ineptness.
If Netanyahu wants peace, he knows what to do: Haaretz Editorial
Following an excessively long winter hibernation, the Israeli-Palestinian track is beginning to show signs of life. U.S. mediator George Mitchell is expected to return to the region in the hope of laying the groundwork for the upcoming visit by Vice President Joe Biden, who will be in Jerusalem and Ramallah to announce the start of indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians. This was preceded by a decision by Arab League foreign ministers to support indirect peace talks for a period of no more than four months, at the end of which the League will decide whether to support a renewal of direct talks.
Arab foreign ministers characterized this stage as a last-ditch effort to promote the peace process as a form of dialogue with Israel. Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa said that if the proximity talks reach a dead end, the Arab states will seek an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss alternate ways of ending the occupation.
The Arab League’s positive contribution to peace efforts is evidenced by the head of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, who called on Arab leaders to reconsider their position. Hamas, like Israel’s radical right, fears “the danger” that indirect talks will lead to a renewal of direct peace negotiations and, by extension, a fair and equitable partition of this land that has been torn by war between the two nations.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the decision by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, with support from the Arab League, to say yes to the American initiative. As Netanyahu noted, the proximity talks are a step back from the mechanism of direct, open negotiations that have characterized relations between the two sides since the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993. Netanyahu said he hoped this stage would be limited to a few months and that the two sides would eventually engage in direct talks.
The success of the indirect talks is contingent on restoring trust between the two sides and presenting realistic positions on the conflict’s core issues. The Palestinian Authority must keep on restraining extremist elements, who will try to sabotage a diplomatic process. The Israeli government must abide by its commitment in the road map to completely freeze construction in the settlements. Issuing government-sanctioned tenders and permits for expanding Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem does not reconcile with improving the atmosphere and the demand to refrain from altering the status quo in the territories before a final outcome via negotiations.
During the proximity talks, the prime minister will have to present his position on the permanent border between Israel and the Palestinian state. We should hope that Netanyahu does not plan to adhere to his hard-line stance of recent months. During the Kadima government’s final days, much progress was made and important understandings were reached in talks between Abbas and Ehud Olmert, as well as between Ahmed Qureia and Tzipi Livni. Any effort to restart talks from scratch, ignoring those same understandings, is a sure recipe for disaster.
As the coalition – as well as his own Likud faction – is currently constituted, Netanyahu cannot take far-reaching diplomatic steps. If Netanyahu is truly interested in carrying out “a historic move” vis-a-vis the Palestinians, as President Shimon Peres believes, he must immediately commence serious proximity talks with the Kadima leadership.
EDITOR: Israeli Apartheid Week special
Especially for this week, the Israeli court system has come up with this case – showing so graphically how apartheid works in reality, in daily life of the occupation. There is nothing like the quotidian to tear the mask off the face of the ‘Only Democracy in the Middle East’. An army fighting such children, has already lost the battle.
Palestinian Child, 12 years old, To Be Tried as Adult By Israeli Military Court: The Only Democracy?
March 4th, 2010, by Carol Sanders
In the West Bank, Jewish settlers accused of crimes are covered by Israeli domestic law, with all its due process protections; Palestinians are subject to Israeli military law. Under military law a person can, for example, be seized and imprisoned without charge for six months, and that six months can be repeated indefinitely. Among the many other searing inequities arising from this two-tiered system is this: Settler children cannot be tried as adults until age 18; Palestinian children can be tried as adults as young as age 12.
The International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) reports that Israeli Authorities have decided to file charges against al-Hasan al-Mohtasib, a 12-year-old Palestinian child from the southern West Bank city of Hebron, who was arrested and charged with throwing stones at the Israeli military. The boy’s seven-year-old brother was also detained and released after 10 hours.
As the boys’ father, Faydel, frantically searched for his sons after witnesses told him they were kidnapped by soldiers, the children were moved from one military camp to another, and from one detention center to another.
Al-Mohtasib voiced an appeal to human rights groups, and Defense for Children International, to intervene and ensure the release of his child.
EDITOR: Keeping an eye on the pressure valves
Every time that the dangers of another inflamation of the conflict in the Occupied Territories is looming, the old chestnut of ‘peace talks’ is taken out of the fire by the US administration and the age-old performance starts again: Ambassadors of good will hold ‘negotiations, Presidents press the flesh, tired smiles flash at cameras, and old speeches are aired and brushed for representation, only to be stashed again until the next time. Usually the Palestinian Authority is playing its assigned role without fail; now it seems that some are finding it difficult to play the role of the gifted piano-playing dog. Dahlan is usually the one really loved by Israeli pundits, for the role he played against Hamas, butif even he finds this charade too much, then it is a worrying sign for the production company of this musical in Washigton, O’Bomber Entertainment.
Dahlan against talks: Israel just wants to gain time: Ynet
Palestinian opposition to PA president’s intention to renew dialogue mounts. Fatah spokesman: It suits Netanyahu’s strategy of stalling while appearing to negotiate
Despite support from the Arab League for renewing indirect talks with Israel, more and more Palestinian voices are being heard opposing the move. On Thursday evening, Fatah Central Committee spokesman Mohammad Dahlan added his voice to the chorus.
“In light of Israel’s acts,” he said, “in particular the continued settlement and aggression against holy sites, there is no point to direct or indirect negotiations with the Israeli government.”
Peace Progress?
Speaking to the Palestinian news agency Maan, Dahlan said, “If America’s behavior was an attempt at gaining time without results, it fits (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu’s strategy, which is to gain time while making a show of negotiating. We are sick of the current situation, of negotiation in the shadow of the occupation, which has been going on since 2000.”
Another Palestinian source expressed doubt about Israel’s intentions, and referred to the Arab League decision, which enabled the Palestinians to ‘get down from the tree’ and return to the negotiating table.
“The decision has landed the Palestinians with a problem and a challenge,” he said. “Up till now we have followed a policy according to which there is no point negotiating for the sake of negotiating, which indicated a certain change in the Palestinian leadership. However, another negotiating failure will lead to a complete collapse of belief in negotiations.”
Hamas has also criticized Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas figure Izzat al-Rishq in Damascus called on Abbas to resign, accusing him of selling the Palestinians “illusions” by moving to resume peace talks with Israel.
“Mahmoud Abbas has to step aside. The Palestinian people want a solid leadership that leads them to their national rights and not a leadership that offers compromise after compromise,” said Rishq, who is a member of Hamas’s politburo.
Rishq said Palestinians would not be closer to realizing their aspirations for independence because Abbas had ruled out “resistance” as a tool of struggle with Israel.
“If we don’t have options, Israel will be tempted to mount more aggression and further refuse to give us any of our rights,” said Rishq, who lives in exile in Syria along with other members of the Hamas leadership.
The decision to go back to the talks gives the Israeli enemy the cover to continue settlements. There will not be anything left to negotiate on,” he added.
US Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell is due to arrive in Israel on Saturday evening. He will talk with Israeli and Palestinian officials on Sunday and return to Washington on Monday, and not wait for the arrival of Vice President Joe Biden, expected Monday evening.
Judging by Mitchell’s whistle-stop visit, it seems the Obama administration holds little hope that it will be possible to announce renewed talks immediately.
State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said the visit was just to “check the territory” after the Arab League summit in Cairo. If the two sides are willing to advance, he said, the US is ready to assist in the dialogue.
He added that Mitchell was ready to be deeply involved if negotiations began.
Peace not wanted: Haaretz
By Gideon Levy
Israel does not want peace with Syria. Let’s take off all the masks we’ve been hiding behind and tell the truth for a change. Let’s admit that there’s no formula that suits us, except the ludicrous “peace for peace.” Let’s admit it to ourselves, at least, that we do not want to leave the Golan Heights, no matter what. Forget about all the palaver, all the mediations, all the efforts.
Let’s face it, we don’t want peace, we want to run wild, to paraphrase an Israeli pop song from the ’70s. Don’t bother us with new Syrian proposals, like the one published in Haaretz this week that calls for a phased withdrawal and peace in stages; don’t pester us with talk about peace as a way to break up the dangerous link between Syria and Iran; don’t tell us peace with Syria is the key to forging peace with Lebanon and weakening Hezbollah. Turkey isn’t an “honest” broker, the Syrians are part of the axis of evil, all is quiet on the Golan – you know how much we love the place, its mineral waters, its wines – so who needs all the commotion of demonstrations and evacuating settlements, just for peace?
It’s not only the current extreme right-wing government that doesn’t want this whole headache, and it wasn’t only all of its predecessors – some of which were on the very brink of withdrawing from the Golan and only at the last moment, the very last moment, changed their minds. It’s all the Israelis – the minority that is really against it and the majority that doesn’t give a damn. They’d rather pretend not to hear the encouraging sounds coming out of Damascus in recent months and not even try to put them to the test.
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Everyone would rather wave the menacing picture of Bashar Assad alongside Hassan Nasrallah and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his partners in the axis of evil, with the hummus and the bulgur. That on its own should have made Israel try 10 times harder to make peace. But in Israeli eyes, the picture of the banquet, as one Israeli paper termed the “modest meal,” is worth more than a thousand words. After that, do you really expect us to give up the Golan? Don’t make us laugh. We’ll make peace with Micronesia, not Syria.
When the Syrians talk peace, it is all “empty words,” “deception” and a wily way of getting closer to the United States. But when Assad poses with the president of Iran, that’s the truth, that’s Syria’s real face. Even when he merely says, on the same occasion, that Syria must prepare for an Israeli attack, he is immediately accused of “threatening” Israel.
Do you want proof that we really don’t want peace with Syria? Well, there has not yet been one Israeli prime minister who has said that we do. Because, after all, the order would have to be the opposite of the usual Israeli haggling. A prime minister who really wanted to achieve peace would have to say one terribly simple thing: We undertake in advance – yes, in advance – to hand back the entire Golan in exchange for a full peace. But no, not one prime minister has declared readiness to leave the Golan – right up to the last grain of sand, as we did in Sinai – in exchange for a peace like that which we have with Egypt.
Why on earth do we always have to hold onto this card so it can be played last? And what kind of a card is it, anyway? What kind of end does it ensure? After all, if the Syrian reply is negative, nobody will make us leave the Golan Heights. And what if the reply is positive? Why not start off with a promising, invigorating declaration, one that will give the Syrians hope and thereby at least put their intentions to the test.
But we are not the only ones who don’t want peace. The United States has turned out to be a true friend that extricates us from every briar patch. It doesn’t want peace enough either, praise the Lord. It’s a fact: Washington is applying no pressure. Here’s another marvelous pretext for doing nothing – America isn’t pressing us and the redeemer will come to Zion, in the words of the prophet Isaiah. Yet we are the ones who have to stay in the dangerous and menacing Middle East, not the Americans; we should be more interested than anyone in preventing another war in the north, in creating a new relationship with Syria and then with Lebanon, and in weakening Iranian influence; in trying to integrate, at last. An Israeli interest, no? And what do we do to advance it? Half of nothing.
So what is there left to do? At least admit the truth: We do not want peace with Syria. That’s all there is to it.