EDITOR: The Show deteriorates into soap Act 3 Scene 3
You have to cry, really, when reading this text, one of many, about the moving love story gone so wrong… Is there nothing that can be done, to bring back those two lovies together? To read the reports, you would think they are bound for the divorce court, to say the least. Please do not get unduly worried – it is all part of the play.
In a week or two, who would even remember this buildup of consternation between such loving partners. It is just part of the great scheme of things. And the love will be ever greater, as the elections in November get nearer. So, good people, do relax, there is a happy end coming up.
Ties between Israel and US ‘worst in 35 years’: BBC
Ambassador Michael Oren reportedly made the remark to Israeli diplomats
Israel’s ambassador to the US has said that relations between the two countries are at their lowest point for 35 years, Israeli media have reported.
Last week Israeli officials announced the building of 1,600 new homes in occupied East Jerusalem while US Vice-President Joe Biden was visiting.
The move was seen as an insult to the US. Palestinian leaders say indirect talks with Israel are now “doubtful”.
But Israel’s PM said Jewish settlements did “not hurt” Arabs in East Jerusalem.
Addressing Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, Benjamin Netanyahu said he wanted peace negotiations, and hoped the Palestinians would not present “new preconditions” for talks.
Israel and US: A bruised friendship
“No government in the past 40 years has limited construction in neighbourhoods of Jerusalem,” he said.
“Building these Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem does not hurt the Arabs of East Jerusalem or come at their expense.”
Meanwhile, EU foreign policy head Baroness Ashton, who is on a Middle East tour, said Israel’s decision had put the prospect of indirect talks with the Palestinians in jeopardy.
‘Difficult period’
Previously the Israeli government had played down the strain in relations with the US.
But Israel’s ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, told a conference call with Israeli consuls general in the US that “the crisis was very serious and we are facing a very difficult period in relations”, the Israeli media reported on Monday.
ANALYSIS
Paul Wood, BBC News, Jerusalem
Mr Netanyahu has been presented with a choice: a breach with right-wing members of his coalition – or with the Americans. With his speech to the Knesset, he seems to have chosen to put the needs of domestic politics first.
It seems the Americans are so angry because they believe that Mr Netanyahu went back on an understanding. This was, apparently, that Israel would not to push forward with any big new settlement building projects in East Jerusalem.
This was necessary if the Palestinians were to be persuaded to join the long-delayed negotiations so painstakingly put together by the US mediators. The decision to go ahead with new building has left the Americans affronted and Mr Netanyahu, while apologetic, is unbending.
The question is now what the US is prepared to do to rescue peace talks in which it has invested so much of its power and prestige.
On Friday, Mr Oren was summoned to the state department and was reprimanded about the affair, the Israeli Ynet News website reported.
Ynet quoted the ambassador as saying “Israel’s ties with the US are in the most serious crisis since 1975”.
In 1975, US-Israeli relations were strained by a demand from then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin partially withdraw its troops from the Sinai Peninsula, where they had been since the 1967 Six-Day War.
The Haaretz newspaper said the ambassador’s quote had been reported to it by four of the Israeli consuls general following the conference call on Saturday.
Mr Oren had appeared “tense and pessimistic”, the consuls general told the newspaper.
They were instructed to lobby members of congress and Jewish community leaders and tell them Israel had not intended to cause offence.
“These instructions come from the highest level in Jerusalem,” Haaretz quoted Mr Oren as saying.
The Israeli embassy in Washington has not yet commented publicly on the story.
The EU, as part of the Middle East Quartet, has already condemned Israel’s decision to build new homes in East Jerusalem.
Speaking to members of the Arab League in Cairo on Monday, Lady Ashton said the move had “endangered and undermined the tentative agreement to begin proximity talks”.
She added: “The EU position on settlements is clear. Settlements are illegal, constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten to make a two state-solution impossible.”
‘Insult’
On Sunday, a top aide to US President Barack Obama said Israel’s announcement of plans to build 1,600 homes for Jews in East Jerusalem was “destructive” to peace efforts.
David Axelrod said the move, which overshadowed Mr Biden’s visit to Israel, was also an “insult” to the United States.
Just hours before the announcement Mr Biden had emphasised how close relations were, saying there was “no space” between Israel and the US.
Mr Netanyahu has tried to play down the unusually bitter diplomatic row between the two allies.
He said the announcement was a “bureaucratic mix-up” and that he “deeply regretted” its timing.
Under the Israeli plans, the new homes will be built in Ramat Shlomo in East Jerusalem.
The Palestinians are threatening to boycott newly agreed, indirect talks unless the Ramat Shlomo project is cancelled.
Close to 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
EDITOR: Bibi and Juliet, a Love Story
Well, how could anyone not love this man? He is tough, he is not afraid of anyone, he can even face little Palestinian boys – he is the Macho Man of the Orient, and the US and the EU are both wooing with gusto. Now he tells it like it is – “We will continue to build in Jerusalem, whatever you Lovey-doveys say, so there”. You can tell they will only love him more for it in the end…
Netanyahu: Israel will keep building in Jerusalem: Haaretz
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said that Israel would continue to build in Jerusalem in the same way that it has over the last 42 years.
“The building in Jerusalem – and in all other places – will continue in the same way as has been customary over the last 42 years,” said Netanyahu at a Likud party meeting.
Israel drew angry reactions from the U.S. and the Palestinians by announcing last week the construction of 1,600 new housing units in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo during a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden last week.
Netanyahu did not specifically address the diplomatic crisis with the U.S.over Israel’s announcement about the East Jerusalem construction.
However, when asked by MK Tzipi Hotovely what would happen in September, when the 10-month settlement freeze ends, Netanyahu responded that construction would continue unabated.
Under U.S. pressure, Netanyahu imposed a limited moratorium on new housing starts in West Bank settlements in November but excluded Jerusalem from the 10-month partial freeze.
Also on Monday, in a speech to the Knesset to welcome Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Netanyahu said the construction of homes for Israelis in the city’s eastern sector in no way hurts Palestinians.
In his speech, Netanyahu gave no indication he would cancel the project or limit construction in East Jerusalem.
“For the past 40 years, no Israeli government ever limited construction in the neighborhoods of Jerusalem,” he said in a speech to the Knesset, citing areas in the West Bank that Israel captured during the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed to the city.
Netanyahu called on the Palestinians, who have said they would not restart peace negotiations unless the project was scrapped, not to place new preconditions on the revival of the talks.
He added that there was nearly total consensus among Israeli political parties that what he called Jewish neighborhoods in and around Jerusalem would remain “part of the state of Israel” in any future peace agreement.
Palestinians say Israeli settlement in the West Bank will deny them a viable state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They claim East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future state.
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Ehud Barak earlier on Monday urged the government to work toward defusing the diplomatic crisis over Israeli construction in East Jerusalem and getting peace talks with the Palestinians back on track.
The government must make an effort in order “for this crisis to be forgotten and for the proximity talks, and later direct talks, to return to the right path,” said Barak at a Labor party meeting.
Barak said he met with American officials about the necessary steps to move forward.
“Peace talks are a first priority for Israel and for the entire region,” said Barak. “The political process is in the interest of the state and it is a subject in which the Labor party believes. It is one of the things that anchors us in the government and drives us to work within it.”
Leading article: Israel’s high-risk strategy: The Independent Editorial
Monday, 15 March 2010
Israel’s Prime Minister has often tried, and succeeded, in having it both ways on the question of a peace deal – talking to the US, in vague but emollient tones, about a two-state solution while palming off his right-wing allies with pledges of more Jewish settlements on the West Bank.
The escalating row between Benjamin Netanyahu and the US suggests this strategy is now starting to unravel. Hillary Clinton’s heated discussions with Mr Netanyahu at the weekend showed that the Obama administration feels that Israel has crossed a red line by announcing plans to build thousands more Jewish homes in East Jerusalem, and by releasing that inflammatory information when the US Vice-President, Joe Biden, was in town to restart stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Mr Netanyahu’s latest contribution, a suggestion that everyone should “calm down”, has not helped matters, by sounding patronising. There is no disputing the virtue of calmness, but the real obstacle to fresh talks between Israelis and Palestinians is not excess emotion; it is the Israeli’s leader’s reluctance to alienate his right-wing coalition allies by spelling out exactly what he is prepared to pay for peace.
Like many in Israel, and on the political right in the US, Mr Netanyahu may be banking on Mr Obama turning out to be a one-term president; a leader to be endured until a more ardently pro-Israeli Republican takes back the White House. That offers one explanation for Israel’s almost deliberate-looking humiliation of the President. But if this is the strategy – to appeal over Mr Obama’s head to a right-wing audience in America – it is fraught with risk.
The strength of Israel’s alliance with the US has depended on its bipartisan character, which meant Israel not taking sides between Democrats and Republicans. The danger of Mr Netanyahu’s approach is that Democrats may start to see Israel not as the great friend of America but as the great friend of the Republicans, which will change the entire dynamics of the alliance. It may be that in a few years’ time the US will have another Republican president, in which case Israel can presumably restart settlement activity without any apology. But it should not bank on such an outcome at this stage.
Savage sentences on Muslim demonstrators will be counterproductive: Letters to the Guardian
The savage “exemplary” sentences handed out to young Muslims (Sent to jail for throwing a single bottle, 13 March) need to be viewed in the broader context of the “war on terror”, which itself has turned out to be a euphemism for a more shadowy war on Islam. While the government’s huge assault on our basic civil liberties has affected a wide range of citizens (prayers for the fallen at the Cenotaph, calling out “rubbish” at a party conference, silent prayer in Trafalgar Square), it has impacted mainly on the Muslim community.
The absurdly high-profile assaults on Muslim households are designed to send a clear message to a vulnerable group. They should be seen within the context of the illegal attack on Iraq, the government’s acquiescence in the incarceration of over a million Gazans, and the calamitous neglect of Afghanistan post-2002. The attitudes inherent in all these actions seem designed to create a climate of contempt that can only oil the wheels of extremism, defeating the very object the government proclaims – at the expense of the daily loss of young lives and the huge waste of economic resources.
Future historians may well trace the dramatic decline of this country in economic, political, social and democratic terms to this disastrous failure to relate these repressive attitudes to the ongoing creation of a negative climate that can only be self-destructive.
Roger Iredale
Yeovil, Somerset
• On reading the report on the arrest and conviction of many young Muslims over the January 2009 demonstrations against the massacre in Gaza, a number of uncanny similarities strike one with the situation in Palestine. The first is the reported police brutality in response to low-level violence, where the Israeli security forces use similar methods.
The second parallel is the behaviour of the legal systems. Israel’s overlooks the war crimes in Gaza reported by Judge Goldstone, but is keen on arresting and holding without charge boys of 10, and treating boys of 12 who throw stones as terrorists. Meanwhile, the London courts seem as keen to throw young Muslims in jail, as Gordon Brown is prepared to bend the legal system after the election so as to not inconvenience those responsible for ordering and managing the massacres in Gaza. Certainly, if Britain set out to create Muslim radicalism, it could do no better.
Professor Haim Bresheeth
University of East London
• After acknowledging Mosab al-Ani’s excellent character, Judge John Denniss is quoted as saying: “I’m going to give you this [prison] sentence to deter other people.”. I thought fair sentencing was supposed to work on the “punishment fits the crime” principle. If so, Judge Denniss badly needs reminding of this, or better, early retirement. I was at the demo and that bottle never got near the Israeli embassy.
Judith Kazantzis
Lewes, East Sussex
PA’s betrayal of human rights defenders the unkindest cut: The Electronic Intifada
Nadia Hijab, 14 March 2010
The Palestinian Authority undermined Judge Richard Golstone’s factfinding mission to the Gaza Strip and is now asking UN special rapporteur Richard Falk to resign. (MaanImages/POOL/United Nations) They hail from opposite parts of the globe, but they have much in common: Jewish; experts on and passionate defenders of international law; and pummeling bags for Israel and the Palestinian Authority. And the future of the law of war lies at the heart of the campaigns against them.
Richard Goldstone, whose international stature was cemented as chief prosecutor in the Yugoslavia and Rwanda tribunals, has been excoriated by Israel and its allies ever since his team submitted the report on the Gaza war requested by the United Nations Human Rights Council in September 2009. The steady stream of invective (the report is “full of lies,” and he has “used his Jewishness to jeopardize the safety and security of Israel” are just two of the milder attacks) has also targeted his family and taken a toll on the publicly stoic judge.
Richard Falk, professor emeritus at Princeton University and UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, has been attacked by Israel for years. But now, in a new twist, he is being hung out to dry by the Palestinian Authority. This, perhaps, the unkindest cut of all.
The PA pummeling is more discreet. It has quietly suggested to Falk himself that he resign. One reported reason is that Falk can’t do his job because Israel will not allow him into the country — though this should, one would have thought, be all the more reason to defend him.
And the PA has asked the Human Rights Council to take Falk’s report off the 22 March agenda and “postpone” it to June, which the Council has done. The PA-appointed representative to the UN in Geneva insists that there are simply more important reports than Falk’s on the agenda — yet at the same time he says the PA has “many” reservations about the Falk report. The real reasons seem to be that the PA did not like the mention of Hamas in Falk’s report and his earlier criticism when the PA tried to “postpone” the Goldstone report in September under pressure from Israel and the United States. A public outcry among Palestinians reversed that decision.
The attacks on Falk and Goldstone are hard for the two men to bear. And they tear at the very fabric of international law and the mechanisms put in place to uphold it. The Human Rights Council has stepped on a slippery slope by agreeing to postpone Falk’s report. Instead of listening to the PA (and Egypt) the Council should have backed its special rapporteur. If it does the unthinkable and relieves Falk of his duties because the PA does not want him, the system of independent special rapporteurs would be undermined, just as it would if the Council gave in to Israeli or American pressure.
Undermining the Goldstone report would be an equally harsh blow to the human rights system. Several earlier reports have called for the application of international law to the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the International Court of Justice’s seminal opinion on the illegality of Israel’s separation wall in the West Bank. But the Goldstone report has been published at a time when people are ready to listen, which is partly why Israel is fighting it with such ferocity and on so many fronts.
On one of those fronts, Israel is trying to change international law itself, as Israeli human rights advocate Jeff Halper reveals in an important article, “The Second Battle of Gaza” (Alternative Information Center, 22 February 2010). Halper identifies the Israeli figures leading the campaign “to alter international law in ways that enable them — and by extension other states involved in ‘wars on terror’ — to effectively pursue warfare amongst the people while eliminating both the legitimacy and protections enjoyed by their non-state foes.
No one is more aware of the dangers to international law than Palestinian human rights advocates. Their organizations have acted as a group to support the implementation of the Goldstone report and to protect Falk and his role.
Last month, 11 Palestinian human rights groups wrote to the High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay expressing dismay at the PA actions against Falk. His reports have provided “powerful instruments to advocate for Palestinian people’s rights” they said, urging Pillay to ensure that Falk enjoyed the highest level of support from her office. They also called on her to reinforce the independence of the special rapporteurs from UN member states so as to protect the UN’s own credibility.
More recently, 19 Palestinian groups wrote to PA president Mahmoud Abbas criticizing Falk’s treatment and pointing out the repercussions for the Palestinians’ internationally-recognized human rights.
If the attacks on the two Richards succeed, the Palestinian cause will suffer and the world will be a poorer and more dangerous place — one in which the might of the strong is legally allowed to prevail against the rights of the weak.
Nadia Hijab is an independent analyst and a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies. This column was syndicated on 4 March 2010 by Agence Global.
Bruce Anderson: Obama has failed to bring peace to the Middle East: The Independent
When it comes to peace terms, most Israelis are wholly unrealistic
Monday, 15 March 2010
There are worse threats than five more years of Gordon Brown. In the Middle East, tension is growing. In Amman, Beirut, Damascus and Jerusalem, anxious voices are prophesying war while the West seems powerless. The UK has no clear position. Neither does the US. There is a general gabbling burble: “These are dangerous times… time for all men of goodwill…important that all sides show restraint”. There is nothing with any purchase on the situation; nothing beyond Cathy Ashton’s level of competence. She is the EU’s foreign minister: a good joke, in circumstances that are beyond a joke.
A year ago, there did seem to be grounds for cautious optimism. Barack Obama had been swept to office on a cloud of liberal afflatus. It had been less of a campaign than an outbreak of religious mania. Even so, despite his inexperience, his naiveté and his left-wing instincts, there was one reason to welcome the new President. His prestige gave him leverage. Outside Iran and North Korea, noone was queuing up to be the first head of government to fall out with him. It did not seem impossible that he could re-animate the Middle East peace process. Although George Bush had talked about a Palestinian state, there had been no progress. Perhaps that would change.
There has been no change, as the Biden visit demonstrated. Intellectually, Joe Biden is unimpressive; just a folksy version of Cathy Ashton, not remotely on a par with Dick Cheney. But the Vice-President of the United States is entitled to diplomatic respect, if only ex officio. Mr Biden arrived in Israel to kick-start the peace process. Instead, his hosts kicked him. By announcing the latest batch of settlements, the Israelis were treating the Americans with contempt. Eighteenth-Century diplomats fought duels over lesser insults. The Palestinians responded by withdrawing from the proposed indirect talks. The Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, had no choice. He has one consolation. The Israelis made a bigger fool of the US Vice-President.
It was surprising that the Israelis should have snubbed the Americans quite so brutally. They are normally more circumspect. After all, there are lots of American passport holders in Israel, yet none of their documents was finagled for the Dubai escapade. The Israelis usually know when and at whom they can safely thumb their noses, and super-powers do not like being made fools of. In official Washington, there are a lot of bruised egos with angry owners. One of them is Hillary Clinton, who has a temper on her, as they would say in Ireland. If there were some easy way for this Administration to punish Israel, that would be done. But there is no such option, especially in an election year; especially when the President’s prestige has proved so evanescent and most of the levers have broken in his hands.
Over the years, official Israel has developed an acute, subtle and wholly unsentimental insight into American politics. Many senior Israelis have a better grasp of the US system than of their own – hardly surprising, given the fractious complexity of Israeli politics. The lack of sentiment is important. Vis-à-vis the US, Israel is like a pussy-cat with a fond owner, who beams down as the moggy purrs and strokes its fur around his calves. A charming scene for humans, but the cat is thinking that if it knew how to open fridges and tins, it would not need humans. Although it would be absurd to regard Israel as a glove-puppet waiting for a strong American hand, the Israelis know that ultimately, they are dependent on America. Like most dependents, they occasionally resent that status. They have also learned how to organise matters so that the dependency is rarely irksome.
It is the Americans who often feel irked. Back in 1982, when the Israeli campaign in Lebanon was beginning to bog down, Ronald Reagan expressed his concerns to Menachem Begin. It was good advice. Everyone would have been better off if Mr Begin had taken it. He failed to do so. President Reagan warned the Israeli Premier that some Congressmen were becoming uneasy. “Don’t worry about the Hill, Ron” said Mr Begin; “I’ll take care of that”. Mr Reagan was serene by temperament and pro-Israeli by long and deep conviction. But that was too much. Suddenly, he had a temper on him. “Sonofabitch. What’s he mean he’ll fix the Hill? He’s not American”. As if that mattered. Last February, just after the God-President’s apotheosis, some London liberals were assuming that Mr Obama just had to stretch forth his right arm and there would be a Palestinian state. Philip Bobbitt, the author, has a powerful synoptic intelligence and – remarkable in a life-long Democrat – a profound understanding of America. He urged caution: “Netanyahu has more votes on the Hill than Obama does”. Mr Bobbitt was right then, and has become more so since.
A year ago, we were dreaming about a Palestinian state. Now, it is: “Please, Israel, must you build even more settlements – and even if you do, why must you ruin Mr Biden’s visit?” It is hard not to admire the Israelis’ chutzpah, dealing with the Obama Aministration as if they were flicking a fly off their sleeve. But the outcome could be tragic.
Most Israelis want peace. They long for the day when they would no longer have to worry about their children travelling about the place: the day when military service might become less onerous, and would become less dangerous. But when it comes to the peace terms, most Israelis are wholly unrealistic. They almost want the Palestinians to go under the yoke and to crawl to an attenuated statehood at the price of national humiliation. In large part, this is the Palestinians’ fault. Any nation prepared to be led by that corrupt wretch Arafat almost deserves the Palestinians’ fate. There were tactics which would have enabled the Palestinians to secure widespread sympathy and to put Israel under pressure. Passive resistance was one, as was an offer to relinquish all Palestinian claims to statehood in exchange for Israeli citizenship. Either of those could have been a route to the moral high ground. But that was never part of Arafat’s route-map.
The Palestinians preferred suicide bombers. At moments, the Israelis have been guilty of exploiting the Holocaust for the purposes of emotional blackmail. But one can understand why their reaction to the suicide bombings was Holocaust-conditioned, especially when children were the murderers and Israeli children their victims. There arose an Israeli refrain: “What kind of a people is this who send their children to kill our children”?
As a result of the suicide bombings, a lot of Israelis came to despise Palestinians, and who can blame them? But it is not a helpful reaction. It encourages that chronic Israeli unreality, entirely understandable and equally entirely unreasonable: the desire for a risk-free peace. That cannot be. The Israelis are condemned to live in a dangerous neighbourhood. Even if there is a Palestinian state including almost all of the pre-1967 West Bank, plus a presence in Jerusalem, plus generous support from the US and the EU – a fair number of Palestinians will hate Israel and Israelis. Some individuals will let that hatred consume them, until they become diabolical agents of fire and death. Israelis will always have to live under threat.
There is only one hope of mitigating that threat. Most Palestinians also want to live in peace. If they had a state where they and their children could prosper and in which they could take pride, they would not permit it to become a cockpit of terrorism and war. This does not mean that all terrorism would be instantly eliminated. But it could mean co-operation between Israeli and Palestinian security services, thus reducing the risk. That is the only sane option for Israel. Yet there is little hope that the Israelis will take it.
Israel closes villages of Bilin and Nilin to protests: BBC
Protesters say the demonstrations are peaceful but the IDF disagrees
The Israeli Defence Force has barred Israelis and foreigners from two West Bank villages, the scene of protests against Israel’s “separation wall”.
Soldiers have posted flyers declaring areas around the villages of Bilin and Nilin are “closed military zones”.
The restriction applies to the areas every Friday, the day that protests are held, for the next six months.
Activists have been protesting against the barrier for five years in what they say are mostly peaceful demonstrations.
But the Israeli Defence Force says it considers the riots to be “violent and illegal”.
‘Inciters’
Around 100 members of the security forces have been injured policing the demonstrations, a spokesman said.
“Every week violent, illegal riots take place in the area of Nilin and Bilin, during the course of which members of the security forces are wounded and heavy damage is caused to the security fence and to public property,” a statement from the IDF said.
“In an effort to prevent the inciters of these riots from reaching the area in which the riots take place, three weeks ago, OC Central Command signed an order designating the area between the fence and the villages of Nilin and Bilin as a closed military zone.”
The statement said residents of the villages were exempt from the order.
Protests at the “separation barrier”, a fence between Palestinian land and Israeli settlements, had attracted young Israelis and peace activists from around the world.
Some demonstrations had also been attended by stone-throwing Palestinian youths.
Israeli security services have fired tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and on occasion live rounds at protesters.
There have been two fatalities among protesters and an American peace activist remains in a coma after being hit by a rubber bullet.
Huge police deployment in Jerusalem for synagogue dedication: Haaretz
Fears of renewed rioting as Palestinian leaders issue call to defend Al-Aqsa mosque.
Monday’s dedication of the restored Hurva Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City could spark riots, police warned yesterday.
Pamphlets distributed in East Jerusalem claimed the opening of the synagogue was the first step toward the reconstruction of the Temple, while senior Fatah official Mohammed Dahlan and Hatem Abdel Kader, who holds the Jerusalem affairs portfolio in the Palestinian Authority, called upon Israeli Arabs to go to the Temple Mount and protect it from Israel.
Israeli security sources speculated yesterday that the PA is trying to leverage the unrest in East Jerusalem to promote its political agenda and tighten the connection between Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Security officials will decide today whether to extended the closure on the West Bank announced by Defense Minster Ehud Barak on Saturday. A move usually reserved in recent years for Jewish holidays, the closure was intended to block the spread and escalation of violent demonstrations.
On Sunday, thousands of Jewish revelers guarded by hundreds of policemen celebrated the entry of the first Torah scroll in the synagogue, and then held a festive evening service. Despite warnings by police, no violence took place near the Old City during the event.
The Hurva, considered the most important synagogue in the country for many years, was destroyed at the end of the War Independence and totally restored during the last five years. Renovated with the help of old photographs, plans and drawings, the synagogue was rebuilt to match the original model identically.
On Monday, the synagogue will be formally dedicated by Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not attend the ceremony, but will deliver a prerecorded video greeting.
“The police will act forcefully to prevent both Muslim and Jewish extremists from disturbing public order and security in the Temple Mount and East Jerusalem,” a statement from the police said.
Police and Border Police forces will continue their special deployment today, with 2,500 officers spread across the Old City, East Jerusalem and adjacent villages. Entry of Palestinians to the Mount will be limited for the fourth day in a row, with only Israeli Muslim men older than 50 and women allowed to enter the compound to pray. No visitors or tourists will be allowed.
The Jerusalem police department also withdrew the permission it gave to a group from the El Har Hamor yeshiva to take its monthly march around the Old City gates, for fear it would escalate tensions even further. MK Uri Ariel (National Union) criticized the police for the decision, saying their job was “to protect Israeli citizens, not to surrender to Arab rioters”.
Police Commissioner David Cohen tried to calm nerves yesterday by appealing to all parties.
“The extremist, inciting statements being heard don’t correlate to the facts on the ground,” Cohen said. “I expect all parties involved to show responsibility, and to moderate any statements that could lead to an unnecessary escalation of violence in the city.”
Israeli intelligence services do not believe, however, that the PA is interested in unleashing a full-flung intifada, or in ratcheting up violence in the occupied territories, since this would hamper efforts being made by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to build Palestinian institutions and improve the economy.
Yesterday, Abdel Kader met with representatives of Old City merchants and other local leaders. They decided to hold a general strike today between 11 A.M. and 1 P.M., a critical time of day, when students leave schools and mosques conclude their noontime religious services.
Wall Street Journal: Why is Obama against Israel?: YNet
Day after political journalist Thomas Friedman slams Israel for authorizing east Jerusalem building, economic newspaper sides with Israel, criticizes Obama’s foreign policy: ‘When it comes to Israel, no trouble raising pitch’
US newspapers also go head-to-head regarding the crisis between the US and Israel over the cabinet’s approval of 1,600 housing units in east Jerusalem during US Vice President Joe Biden’s visit. Leading political journalists in the US fall on opposite sides of the fence in their opinions of the affair.
The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed Monday scathingly criticizing well-known New York Times’ journalist Thomas Friedman’s assault on Israel published Sunday.
American Israel Public Affairs Committee issues statement expressing concern following recent crisis over east Jerusalem construction, calls on Obama administration to ‘take immediate steps to diffuse tension with Jewish state’
Friedman wrote that upon receiving notice of the east Jerusalem construction, Biden “should have snapped his notebook shut, gotten right back on Air Force Two, flown home and left the following scribbled note behind: ‘Message from America to the Israeli government: Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. And right now, you’re driving drunk. You think you can embarrass your only true ally in the world, to satisfy some domestic political need, with no consequences? You have lost total contact with reality. Call us when you’re serious.'”
“Israel needs a wake-up call. Continuing to build settlements in the West Bank, and even housing in disputed east Jerusalem, is sheer madness… Israel’s planned housing expansion now raises questions about whether Israel will ever be willing to concede a Palestinian capital in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem — a big problem,” wrote Friedman.
Our friends are being disrespected
In response, the Wall Street Journal op-ed wrote that the Obama administration “has endorsed ‘healthy relations’ between Iran and Syria, mildly rebuked Syrian President Bashar Assad for accusing the US of ‘colonialism,’ and publicly apologized to Muammar Gadhafi for treating him with less than appropriate deference after the Libyan called for ‘a jihad’ against Switzerland.”
However, when it comes to Israel, “the administration has no trouble rising to a high pitch of public indignation,” wrote the article entitled “Obama’s Turn Against Israel.”
Not even “repeated apologies from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prevented Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—at what White House sources ostentatiously said was the personal direction of President Obama—from calling the announcement ‘an insult to the United States,'” stated the opinion piece.
“Since nobody is defending the Israeli announcement, least of all an obviously embarrassed Israeli government, it’s difficult to see why the Administration has chosen this occasion to spark a full-blown diplomatic crisis with its most reliable Middle Eastern ally… If Israel senses that the Administration is looking for any pretext to blow up relations, it will care much less how the US might react to a military strike on Iran.’
The financial newspaper took an opposite stance on West Bank settlements than that adopted by the Obama administration: “As for the West Bank settlements, it is increasingly difficult to argue that their existence is the key obstacle to a peace deal with the Palestinians. Israel withdrew all of its settlements from Gaza in 2005, only to see the Strip transform itself into a Hamas statelet and a base for continuous rocket fire against Israeli civilians.”
“This episode does fit Mr. Obama’s foreign policy pattern to date: Our enemies get courted; our friends get the squeeze. It has happened to Poland, the Czech Republic, Honduras and Colombia. Now it’s Israel’s turn,” quipped the Wall Street Journal.
Israel to go ahead with settlements: Al Jazeera TV
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has rejected calls from the US to halt settlement plans in occupied East Jerusalem, saying plans for building new homes would go ahead.
In a speech to Israel’s parliament on Monday, Netanyahu said construction “will continue in Jerusalem as this has been the case for the past 42 years” in reference to the 1967 occupation of the mainly Arab territory.
He said that the plans would not hurt Palestinians, who have said peace negotiations cannot go ahead until the project is cancelled.
His comments come after Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, condemned the plans as “insulting” to peace efforts and reportedly called on Netanyahu to reverse the decision.
Israel’s announcement to build 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem came during a visit to the region by Joe Biden, the US vice-president, sparking a diplomatic row between the two countries.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz said Clinton, in a phone call with Netanyahu on Friday, asked him to make a “substantial gesture” towards Palestinians to help restart peace talks.
She called for an official declaration that talks would deal with core issues, including borders, the status of Jerusalem, refugees, and settlements, the paper reported.
Response requested
Clinton was also said to have requested an official response on whether Tuesday’s announcement was a “bureaucratic mistake, or a deliberate act, carried out for political reasons”.
Netanyahu has apologised for what he called the bad timing and ordered an investigation into how government officials unveiled the plans during Biden’s visit.
The announcement embarrassed Biden, who was visiting Israel in a bid to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, said the spat had brought relations to a 35-year low and had created a “crisis of historic proportions”.
A major pro-Israel US lobbying group also said that the stern US remarks were “of serious concern.”
“Aipac calls on the administration to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish state,” the American Israel Public Affairs Committee said on Sunday.
Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane, reporting from Washington, said there are steps the US could take to pressure Israel over the settlement issue.
“There’s a lot of financial aid that the US gives Israel,” she said.
“One programme that the US has used in the past is reducing loan guarantees. The amount that the settlements cost Israel, that is the amount by which the US can reduce the loan guarantees to Israel.
“We’ve seen that in the 1990s and then again in 2003.”
Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, who is currently on her first official visit to the region, has joined the chorus of criticism of Israel’s settlement plans.
Indirect talks
Speaking in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, on Monday, Ashton said that the Israeli decision “endangers” indirect talks between the country and the Palestinians.
“Recent Israeli decisions to build new housing units in East Jerusalem have endangered and undermined the tentative agreement to begin proximity talks,” she said.
“The EU position on settlements is clear. Settlements are illegal, constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten to make a two state-solution impossible.”
Besides Ashton, Luis Ignacio “Lula” Da Silva, the Brazilian president, is also visiting the region. He met Shimon Peres, his Israeli counterpart, on Monday, marking the start of a three-day visit.
Media reports suggest Lula is aiming to carve out a role for Brazil in mediating the peace process.
White House goes on the offensive against Netanyahu: The Independent
Israel’s announcement of new settlements was ‘insulting’ and ‘calculated to undermine’ peace talks with Palestinians
Monday, 15 March 2010
Israel’s government was yesterday facing the worst chill in relations with the US since taking office after a top White House official said the announcement of plans to expand an East Jerusalem settlement seemed “calculated to undermine” the negotiating process.
Earlier Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to a welter of local media reports about the new “crisis” in relations with Israel’s closest ally by telling a weekly meeting of his Cabinet: “I suggest that we not get carried away – and that we calm down.”
But David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said that the announcement during vice-president Joe Biden’s visit last week of the plan to build 1,600 homes for religious Jews in Ramat Shlomo , was an “affront” and an “insult”.
“We’ve just gotten… so-called proximity talks going between the Palestinians and the Israelis and this seemed calculated to undermine that,” he told the ABC This Week talk show.
Following a reprimand from US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, on Friday night – where she called Israel’s behaviour “insulting” – Mr Netanyahu said he had appointed a committee of senior civil servants to investigate how the announcement came to be made when it did. “There was a regrettable incident, that was done in all innocence and was hurtful, and which certainly should not have occurred,” he said.
But with no indication that his government actually intended to abandon the plan, Mr Netanyhau added: “It is of utmost importance to understand that the State of Israel and the US have common interests and we will act according to the vital interests of the State of Israel.” That still appeared to leave a significant gap between the two governments because of Washington’s dismay – made explicitly clear by Mrs Clinton in a, by all accounts, robustly-worded telephone call – at the substance as well the timing of the announcement.
The international community has never accepted Israel’s unilateral annexation of Arab East Jerusalem after the Six Day War. But Israeli officials said yesterday that Mr Netanyahu was acting no differently from his predecessors, Labour and Kadima, as well as his own party Likud, in treating the whole of Jerusalem as sovereign Israeli territory.
Likud chief whip Ze’ev Elkin yesterday urged the prime minister to maintain his policy of East Jerusalem construction.
Israeli officials also denied reports – in both The New York Times and The Washington Post – that last week’s announcement violated an informal understanding that if the US got talks going there would be no announcements of settlement building in East Jerusalem that might trigger a walkout by the Palestinians. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly demanded abandonment of the Ramat Shlomo plan as a condition of pursuing the indirect talks with Israel. Urging the talks to go ahead, however, vice-president Biden indicated before leaving Israel that Mr Netanyahu’s promise that the Ramat Shlomo plan would take “several years” to enact allowed time for the problem to be solved in talks between the two sides.
But Mr Axelrod yesterday hinted that the US was still seeking assurances from Israel as well as to persuade Mr Abbas to resume talks. “Israel is a strong and special ally,” he said. “The bonds run deep. But that is just the very reason this was not the way to behave… I think the Israelis understand clearly why we’re upset and what, you know, we want moving forward.”
Two meetings of the Interior Ministry’s Jerusalem District planning committee – the body that approved the Ramat Shlomo plan – were cancelled for this week though a ministry spokesman said this was because of the temporary absence of an official.
He refused to confirm that the committee had agreed not to discuss construction beyond the 1967 border for the time being, though Mr Netanyhau did ask the Jerusalem mayor two weeks ago to delay implementation of a highly controversial development and demolition plan in the East Jerusalem district of Silwan.