EDITOR: Now you see, now you don’t…
Netanyahu is forever changing, forever updating himself, but despite all the manoeuvres, the main core of his aggressive, unrelenting and almost blind fundamentalist Zionism comes through every time. He may be saying this and that to Clinton or Ban, if he thinks he needs to assuage them, but in the end, the old Netanyahu comes baqck, like a Jack-in-the -box stalwart, jumping to his task of continuing the advance of militarised Zionism. Sharon’s job must be furthered and completed.
Netanyahu says ‘no concession’ on Jewish settlements: BBC
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out any concession on the building of settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, despite international pressure.
Mr Netanyahu said he had written to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to remove any doubt about the issue.
He made the remarks hours before he left for Washington to address the influential pro-Israeli group, Aipac.
He has been invited to meet President Barack Obama on Tuesday, indicating a possible thaw in relations.
Tensions between the two allies has been running high over Israel’s announcement to build 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since 1967, despite US efforts to re-launch stalled peace talks.
The invitation to the White House was delivered by President Obama’s special Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, who met Mr Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Sunday.
On a day of intense diplomatic activity in the region, Mr Netanyahu also met UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is on a rare two-day visit to the region.
Gaza conditions ‘unacceptable’
But he said Israel was willing to widen the scope of planned indirect talks with the Palestinians that Mr Mitchell is to mediate.
The diplomatic package Mr Netanyahu is offering has not been made public, but officials say one element is agreement to discuss all the outstanding issues, including the future of Jerusalem, as well as borders, Jewish settlements and Palestinian refugees.
Mr Netanyahu comments on settlements were quickly denounced by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as unhelpful to attempts to restart peace talks, the AFP news agency reported.
Mr Abbas also condemned the recent killing of four Palestinians in the West Bank by Israeli forces.
Speaking in Gaza on Sunday, Mr Ban called on Israel to end its blockade on Gaza, saying it causes “unacceptable suffering” and “undercuts moderates and encourages extremists”.
Israel imposed the blockade in 2006 and tightened it when the militant movement Hamas overran the territory the following year. Egypt, which borders Gaza to the south, also helps maintain the blockade.
Mr Ban said families in Gaza were living under “unacceptable, unsustainable conditions” and that it was “distressing” to see damage to housing caused by Israel’s offensive 14 months ago, with no reconstruction possible under the blockade.
Also on Sunday, the Israel army said soldiers shot dead two Palestinians who tried to stab a soldier at a checkpoint in the West Bank.
On Saturday, a Palestinian teenager was shot dead during clashes near Nablus. A second person shot on Saturday died of his injuries on Sunday, West Bank medical officials said.
Atias to continue Ramat Shlomo marketing process: Ynet
Minister of Housing does not intend to stop the construction process at east Jerusalem neighborhood. Marketing to contractors may take place as talks with Palestinians at peak
While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes his way to the US, Ynet has learned that Minister of Housing and Construction Ariel Atias (Shas) intends to continue to market the Ramat Shlomo lands to contractors for construction.
This decision is significant in light of the recent crisis in Israel-US relations following Israel’s announcement, during US Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to the region, of its decision to build 1,600 housing units in the east Jerusalem neighborhood. US President Barack Obama placed the responsibility for the decision on Interior Minister Eli Yishai.
Several hours before leaving for Washington, Netanyahu clarifies that his message to American administration will be sharp and clear: ‘Our policy on Jerusalem is like the policy in the past 42 years.’ Defense Minister Barak hopes ‘this week will put Israel on the course of negotiations’
The process for construction in Israel has two main stages. First, planning permission must be obtained. This stage is managed by local committees tied to local authorities, and by the regional and national planning committees, subordinate to the Interior Ministry.
When this stage is completed, the land is marketed to contractors for construction. This stage is managed by the Israel Lands Authority and the Ministry of Housing, except in the rare cases where construction is on privately-owned land.
The land approved for construction in Ramat Shlomo had passed the first stage and was ready for the second stage, and Atias has no intention of stopping the process.
This stage is lengthy, and it is estimated that it will take at least a year before the marketing begins. If talks take place between Israel and the Palestinians, the marketing may be at its most intensive just at that time.
Sources familiar with the process confirmed that it is possible to stop the process. Therefore the decision to continue the process is a conscious decision by the minister of housing, without regard for political consequences.
Netanyahu set up a committee to investigate the process that had caused so much embarrassment during Biden’s visit, and instructed that he be personally informed of any future decision regarding building in east Jerusalem, but it is not clear whether this will prevent marketing of plots where planning permission has already been granted.
The Ministry under Atias’ leadership has recently issued a slew of tenders for marketing land throughout the country in an effort to bring down house prices. Thus hundreds of housing units were marketed in Neve Yaacov and Pisgat Zeev in north Jerusalem, on the other side of the Green Line. The ministry also intended to market in Har Homa, but has not yet done so for technical reasons.
The ministry told Ynet, “When we reach a development agreement with the Jerusalem municipality, and when the tenders are ready to be issued, we’ll publish them. It will all be done with the required sensitivity, according to the prime minister’s instructions.”
Clinton to tell AIPAC: U.S. will tell Israel the truth when needed: Haaretz
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will tell delegates to the annual AIPAC conference in Washington on Monday that she has a “personal commitment” to Israel’s security, but that the U.S. is prepared to “tell the truth when it is needed” regarding the situation in the Middle East.
In her address to the influential pro-Israel lobby on Monday afternoon, the secretary of state will say that Israel faces “difficult but necessary choices” on the road to Mideast peace because the status quo with the Palestinians is unsustainable.
“There is another path. A path that leads toward security and prosperity for all the people in the region. It will require all parties – including Israel – to make difficult but necessary choices,” according to excerpts of a speech released by her office ahead of delivery at 9 A.M. Washington time.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who departed for Washington on Sunday night, marks a fresh chance to repair the frayed personal ties between the Israeli leader and U.S. President Barack Obama.
Netanyahu’s government two weeks ago approved a plan for further construction in East Jerusalem during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to the region, a move which angered the Obama administration and led Clinton to deliver a personal rebuke to the Israeli premier.
Netanyahu will also speak to delegates at the conference sponsored by the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, several hours after Clinton is scheduled to address the group.
In her address, Clinton will also tell delegates that the U.S. is determined to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, but was “taking time” before agreeing to harsher sanctions.
The U.S.’ goal is “not incremental sanctions,” she will say, “but sanctions that bite.
U.S.-Israel row clouds opening day of AIPAC conference: Haaretz
WASHINGTON – Barbara Isaacson, 78, took the overnight train from Massachusetts to make it on time to the opening of the annual AIPAC conference in Washington. At one time she fought to gain exit visas for Jewish Prisoners of Zion in the Soviet Union, but now too she admits that the struggle goes on.
She is writing letters to President Barack Obama, asking him to deal fairly with Israel and telling him that Jerusalem is not up for negotiation.
The crisis Israel-U.S. relations underwent during the past week, did not leave her indifferent.
“Our vice president, [Joe] Biden, was wrong,” she says. “They should not have said that it was an insult. Israel showed great restraint. Israel is an amazing country that is giving us pride and it should not have to build bomb shelters in Sderot instead of playgrounds. I came to this conference so that Israel will know that in America there are those who dedicated their whole life to it, even though my five children live in the United States.”
On the steps of the conference center in Washington, Barbara is ready to enter a new battle: now against a group of demonstrators wearing t-shirts with Palestinian flags, protesting against an “apartheid state.”
During the exchange of words, it turns out that the mother of one of the demonstrators is Jewish.
“So you are Jewish!,” Barbara declares victoriously. “May God bless you and lead you to understand how wrong you are!”
Protesters in front of the conference center put up signs in favor and against. Boris Zelkin puts up signs saying “Bibi – You are a Leader! Bibi, We believe in you!” and complains that he has been driven away from a number of places and has not been permitted to demonstrate inside the hall.
“I came to tell the American Jews too that if they want to be multicultural and tolerant, then I don’t – I want to be Jewish,” he says.
Several meters away stands Bill Perry, a Vietnam veteran whose wounds left him disabled. He is holding up a sign which says “AIPAC bought the Congress and the Senate.”
“It is embarrassing for how little our politicians can be bought,” he declares. “This is the first time I came to demonstrate. It just makes me laugh, the ‘conflict’ between Israel and Washington. There was no conflict. Israel will continue its apartheid policy.”
On the face of it, opening day at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Conference was business as usual. Congressmen and Senators complimented Israel, spoke of the strong bonds between Israel and the United States, historical moments of meetings between the leaders of the two countries were broadcast on a large screen, along with shots of new immigrants and IDF soldiers.
The hallways were decorated with the photographs of the major donors and activists of the organization, with their comments on why they support AIPAC.
In various halls there were lobbying seminars, for beginners and advanced, discussions on Syria, Iran, Turkey, Latin America, and meals accompanied by discussions, including a meeting with young African-Americans whose generation does not really know the role that American Jews played in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Even the competition with the new Israel lobby group on the left, J Street, did not succeed in shaking the standing of AIPAC, at least in terms of the numbers of participants, with 7,500 people signing up, a record high for the group.
But the week of friction between Jerusalem and Washington has left a bitter taste in the mouths of many veteran activists.
“I would not say that I am disappointed by the Netanyahu government,” says Donell Weinkopf from New York. “But I feel like shit. Israel did something stupid by declaring this construction. I am not concerned about he future of the relationship because I think that the shared values and interests still stand, and that this was genuinely an ‘accident inside the family,’ but I think that the time has come for Israel to stop biting the hand of a friend.”
Rabbi Yossi Lipsky from Massachusetts says he thinks the current discord will leave a “minor scar.”
“People in the community were disappointed by the disproportionate response from America to what, in the worst case scenario, was bad timing,” he says. “In the agreements with the Americans there was no mention of freeze in East Jerusalem. But because this response had no basis and made no sense, I am optimistic that it will pass. Now both sides are doing the right thing – they are trying to fix things quietly, diplomatically. I hope that they will focus on the fact that Israel made unprecedented concessions without seeing any return from the other side.”
Seymour Krinsky from Kansas is worried by the reception that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will receive this morning.
“I am making an effort so that people will behave toward her with civility,” he says using the Hebrew words derekh eretz, “and that they will remember that she is a guest in spite the things she said recently. There were many interpretations in the press. I hope that they were mistaken, that she said different things.”
AIPAC meanwhile is trying to renew its power base and bring in fresh supporters. This year, in addition to using Twitter and YouTube, some 1,300 young activists and students are taking part.
For many of them, immigrating to Israel is not part of their immediate plans. “We were never exposed to anti-Semitism, but we heard about anti-Israel campaigns in colleges, and next year we are going to college, and we want to have the tools to deal with that,” one said.
Both Sides Claim Success as Diplomatic Row Wanes: NY Times
By ETHAN BRONNER
JERUSALEM — After 10 days of public quarreling over Jewish building in East Jerusalem, the Israeli government and the Obama administration have each declared victory and started to make up. The Americans believe they have extracted important concessions from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; the Israelis think they have yielded little.
On Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu called Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to respond to specific requests she made a week earlier. The offers were not made public, but on Friday, Mrs. Clinton called them “useful and productive” and agreed with a BBC interviewer that her “escalated tone” had paid off; George J. Mitchell, the American envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict whose trip here to further peace talks was delayed until the phone call, announced he would be arriving on Sunday. Mr. Netanyahu will be in Washington this week and is expected to meet with top officials, possibly including President Obama, another sign of reconciliation.
The Americans say they believe that the kind of rude surprise that occurred when Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was visiting here earlier this month — an Israeli announcement of 1,600 units of Jewish housing in a part of Jerusalem conquered by Israel in 1967 and claimed by the Palestinians — is not likely to be repeated in the coming months. That was one of Mrs. Clinton’s central demands of Mr. Netanyahu: no more acts that disturb the atmosphere as indirect talks with the Palestinians get under way.
The 1,600 units in East Jerusalem constituted the latest of several steps that the Americans considered problematic. The Palestinians felt exposed and the Americans were furious.
The Israelis, by contrast, say that while Mr. Netanyahu offered confidence-building measures for Palestinians in the West Bank, he made no concessions on Jerusalem. There are dozens of projects in the pipeline in Jerusalem, they said, and he has no intention of slowing down or interfering with them.
Whether he will quietly do so anyway, allowing each side the chance to go on claiming it won, remains to be seen.
Several days ago the prime minister’s office sent out a letter to the Ministries of Interior and Housing and the construction and planning committees for Jerusalem requesting a detailed list of all plans of more than 20 units in the city’s post-1967 neighborhoods. The letter also asked for all details on Ramat Shlomo, the neighborhood where the 1,600 units are to be built. The information was to be provided before Sunday night, when Mr. Netanyahu leaves for Washington.
The implication was clear: Mr. Netanyahu does not want to be surprised again by a construction announcement.
But will he act to stop the projects as they come up? He did just that two weeks ago when the mayor of Jerusalem was about to announce the redesign of a Palestinian neighborhood against the wishes of the residents. After Obama officials called him, Mr. Netanyahu called the mayor and got him to delay.
“I don’t think anything official will be announced, but I can imagine that there will be little building for Jews in Arab neighborhoods,” said a former official who remains a consultant to the Israeli government and would speak only on the condition of anonymity to guard his official relationship. “And on Ramat Shlomo I imagine the prime minister gave assurances that nothing would be built for some years.”
Another government adviser, however, said neither of the promises had been made, nor would they be.
“If we are talking about any freeze in Jerusalem, the seven top ministers of the government did not agree,” he said. “I don’t see any concessions possible in Jerusalem. It is politically impossible.”
A senior official agreed. Speaking on the condition that he not be named, he said that Israel considered itself sovereign in Jerusalem and that even though the world disagreed, Israel would do nothing to foster, even tacitly, the de facto division of the city.
The discord with Washington has left the Israeli public divided and perplexed. In a poll published Friday in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, 46 percent of 500 respondents said construction should be stopped in East Jerusalem, the section of the city claimed by the Palestinians, while 51 percent said it should not. Asked who was responsible for the latest dispute with Washington, 35 percent blamed Israel and 37 percent blamed the United States (the rest did not respond).
Asked whether Mr. Netanyahu led his ministers or they led him — he has a large coalition mostly of the right — 41 percent said he led, 47 percent said he was being led. Yet when asked to name the person they would most like to lead the government, Mr. Netanyahu still came out ahead of all others, with 41 percent selecting him. Tzipi Livni, leader of the opposition Kadima party, got 33 percent. The nationwide telephone poll conducted by the Dahaf Institute had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
“The public is confused, and the prime minister is confused by what has happened,” Yaron Dekel, a morning radio host and former Washington correspondent of Israel Radio, said in a telephone interview. “Both were taken totally by surprise by the Americans’ reaction, since building in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem had never before produced such a response.
“I think this was an excuse for the Americans to teach him a lesson,” he continued. “Now they have made their point, and they are acting like lawyers trying to find the substance in things he supposedly offered. But on this point, he is not going to change.”
Meir Sheetrit, a member of Kadima, said the tension between Washington and Jerusalem was not really about building in Jerusalem but about Mr. Netanyahu’s failure to move peace talks forward in the past year. Mr. Sheetrit was a minister under Mr. Netanyahu when he was prime minister in the late 1990s and then a minister under Mr. Netanyahu’s successors, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.
“When we in Kadima were in power, we built lots of Jewish housing in Jerusalem, but everyone understood we were negotiating seriously for peace,” he said by telephone. “Since everyone sees this government going nowhere, every small action gives the perception that it is creating obstacles for peace.”
Mr. Netanyahu and his top aides disagree, saying that they have been pushing hard for negotiations with the Palestinians for a year and that there was no reason for the Americans to begin a public campaign against their Jerusalem building practices, which differ in no way from those of all previous Israeli governments.
They say that the disagreement over Jerusalem will simply have to remain while larger issues, like peace talks and Iran, take precedence.
“The difference in policy on Jerusalem is unchanged,” one aide said. “Still, there is definitely a desire on both sides to pull back from the brink of confrontation.”
Clinton says Israel faces choices on path to peace: Washington Post
Monday, March 22, 2010; 6:37 AM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday that Israel faces “difficult but necessary choices” on the road to Mideast peace because the status quo with the Palestinians is unsustainable.
“The status quo is unsustainable for all sides. It promises only violence and unrealized aspirations,” Clinton said in excerpts of a speech released by her office and scheduled for delivery at 9 a.m. EDT/1300 GMT to an influential pro-Israel lobby group.
“There is another path. A path that leads toward security and prosperity for all the people in the region. It will require all parties — including Israel — to make difficult but necessary choices,” Clinton said.
Clinton’s speech, coming after a row over an Israeli announcement of plans for new Jewish settlements that rocked the U.S.-Israel relationship, underscored the Obama administration’s “rock solid” commitment to Israel’s security and its future.
“Guaranteeing Israel’s security is more than a policy position for me. It is a personal commitment that will never waver,” Clinton said in the excerpts of the speech to the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC.
But she said it was the United States’ duty “to tell the truth when it is needed” and urged Israel to take steps to end the conflict with the Palestinians, which she said “threatens Israel’s long-term future as a secure and democratic Jewish state.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to address the same group later on Monday. Netanyahu, before departing for Washington, said he had informed U.S. leaders that Israel would not stop the construction of Jewish settlements around Jerusalem.
Israel’s announcement of new settlement construction during a visit this month by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden angered Washington and threatened to pull the plug on just-launched indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
U.S. special Mideast envoy George Mitchell is currently in the region attempting to restart the talks.
Clinton said the United States would continue to demand that Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian group that controls the Gaza Strip, renounce violence and recognize Israel. She also repeated U.S. calls for the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, according to the speech excerpts.
Clinton’s speech also highlighted the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program, which the United States and other Western members of the Security Council are seeking to target with a fresh round of U.N. sanctions.
Clinton said a nuclear-armed Iran “would embolden its terrorist clientele and could spark an arms race that could destabilize the region.”
“That is unacceptable. Unacceptable to the United States. Unacceptable to Israel. And unacceptable to the international community.”
Clinton said the United States was determined to work with its partners in the U.N. Security Council to show Iran’s leaders that there are consequences to intransigence on the dispute over its nuclear program, which Tehran insists is purely for peaceful purposes.
“Our aim is not incremental sanctions, but sanctions that will bite,” Clinton said, adding that it is taking time to reach agreement but that this is “a worthwhile investment for winning the broadest possible support for our efforts.”
Time to bury dead ideas about Palestine: The Electronic Intifada
Martha Reese, 19 March 2010
Only a just solution can end the current reality of religious and ethnic discrimination.
There is a growing recognition that the Israeli settlement enterprise in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is, in practical terms, irreversible. The two-state solution, which for decades has been characterized as the preferred solution of an amorphous “international consensus” has generally been understood to involve a return to the pre-1967 occupation boundaries (referred to as the green line) with minor territorial adjustments by the parties. By now, even optimists refer to this solution as “unlikely” and “virtually impossible,” while realists recognize that the concept has outlived its usefulness as a political aspiration.
Israeli prime ministers (including Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and, most recently, Benjamin Netanyahu) have, in turn, announced their transformation from supporting an Israel-centric one-state solution to a two-state solution. In each case, these announcements have caused short-lived paroxysms of hopefulness among dispirited two-staters. But in the wake of each of these would-be conversion experiences, foreboding and gloom have returned, time and again, as it becomes evident that the language of political flexibility is merely a rhetorical ploy. Each Israeli government since 1967, whether led by Labor, Likud, or Kadima, has perpetuated the dispossession of Palestinians and the concomitant establishment of Jewish-only colonies on expropriated Palestinian land.
All talk to the contrary — including ineffectual official objections registered by the Obama Administration — it is evident that the Israeli political establishment has been and is utterly lacking the political will to take even minimal steps in the direction of a two-state solution. Official maps disseminated by Israeli government ministries show that the green line has been effectively erased; Israel stretches from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River (see for example maps offered by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism or the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption). Although Israel’s de facto borders include the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the people who live there, the non-Jews who inhabit this land are in a condition of perpetual limbo, deprived of political rights.
Mainline Protestant Christian denominations, like other institutions, are struggling to reconcile their historic, official two-state position with the mounting awareness of its uselessness as a model. Growing numbers within those denominations are promoting an essential reexamination of their churches’ support for an outcome that, instead of delivering the hoped-for just peace, merely legitimizes decades of illegal activity and leaves the Palestinians fragmented, impoverished and virtually landless.
As the two-state solution in its historical incarnation faces abandonment on practical — if not moral and ideological — grounds, other political models for coexistence are being explored and discussed. The one-state solution remains a live option, if in an egalitarian and democratic binational expression different than the Greater Israel envisioned by many Zionists. All possible outcomes — one state, two states, and a continuation of the deplorable status quo — face opposition from one or more parties on demographic, religious, security, ideological, or economic grounds; therefore, no solution can be eliminated from consideration as hopelessly idealistic or fatally impractical. Any resolution worth aspiring to will require, over time, a profound transformation in consciousness and identity among Palestinians and Israelis.
Can the moribund two-state solution be resuscitated? Can the two-states-for-two-peoples notion be implemented in a way that does not hinge on redrawing Israel’s borders to legalize its state-sponsored land-grab of Palestinian territory? Could a “settlers-to-citizens” program offer the Jewish settlers now living in East Jerusalem and other West Bank colonies an alternative to moving back to Israel? Imagine Palestine, a democratic state with a Jewish minority, in which today’s settlers emerge from behind their razor-wire-encircled, self-inflicted ghettoes and become tomorrow’s neighbors. Imagine Israel, finally at home in the Middle East, its indigenous Palestinian minority no longer second-class citizens but living in full equality with their Jewish neighbors. Can the Israeli government offer its settlers an alternative to repatriation by assisting those settlers to buy the land and dwellings they call home from the Palestinian owners on whose land those dwellings have been built? What if a state-funded Israeli reparations program were to help fund the economic redevelopment of the nascent Palestinian state, whose current state of de-development is a by-product — if not a goal — of the Israeli settlement and occupation enterprise?
The old ideas, like the peace process itself, are dead; it is time to lay them aside and move on. Because the Palestinian, Israeli and US governments have shown themselves to be obstacles to a resolution, it is up to ordinary Palestinians, Israelis and Americans to work together with allies around the globe to find the way forward. Whether a one-state, a two-state, or other solution, a just solution will leave behind the legacy of religious and ethnic discrimination that has created the current painful reality.
Martha Reese is a Chicago-based veteran interfaith peace activist who has lived and traveled in the Middle East. She is a member of the steering committee of the Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine (www.cjpip.org).
House rental in Israel: Arabs need not apply: The Electronic Intifada
Jonathan Cook, 22 March 2010
The Zakai and Tarabin families should be a picture of happy coexistence across the ethnic divide, a model for others to emulate in Israel.
But Natalie and Weisman Zakai say the past three years — since the Jewish couple offered to rent their home to Bedouin friends, Ahmed and Khalas Tarabin — have been a living hell.
“I have always loved Israel,” said Natalie Zakai, 43. “But to see the depth of the racism of our neighbors has made me question why we live in this country.”
Three of the couple’s six dogs have been mysteriously poisoned; Natalie’s car has been sprayed with the words “Arab lover” and the windows smashed; her three children in school are regularly taunted and bullied by other pupils; and a collection of vintage cars in the family’s yard has been set on fire in what police say was an arson attack.
To add to these indignities, the Zakais have spent three years and thousands of dollars battling through the courts against the elected officials of their community of Nevatim, in Israel’s southern Negev desert, who have said they are determined to keep the Tarabins from moving in.
Last week the Zakais’ legal struggle looked like it had run out of steam. The high court told the two families the Tarabins should submit to a vetting committee of local officials to assess their suitability — a requirement that has never been made before by the Negev community in the case of a family seeking to rent a home.
“The decision of the committee is a foregone conclusion,” Ahmed Tarabin said.
Chances for Jews and Arabs to live together — outside of a handful of cities — are all but impossible because Israel’s rural communities are strictly segregated, said Alaa Mahajneh, a lawyer representing the Zakais.
Israel has nationalized 93 percent of the country’s territory, confining most of its 1.3 million Palestinian Arab citizens, one-fifth of the population, to 120 or so communities that existed at the time of the state’s creation in 1948.
Meanwhile, more than 700 rural communities, including Nevatim, have remained exclusively Jewish by requiring that anyone who wants to buy a home applies to local vetting committees, which have been used to weed out Arab applicants.
But Mahajneh, from the Adalah legal center for the Arab minority, noted that legal sanction for such segregation was supposed to have ended a decade ago, when the high court backed an Arab couple, the Kaadans, who had been barred by a committee from the community of Katzir in northern Israel.
Although the Kaadans were eventually allowed to move into Katzir, the case has had little wider effect.
In fact, Mahajneh said, the decision in the Zakais’ case suggests “we’re going backwards.” The Kaadans won the right to buy a home in a Jewish community, whereas the Tarabin family were seeking only a short-term rental of the Zakais’ home.
The Zakais said they had been told by the officials of Nevatim, a community of 650 Jews a few kilometers from the city of Beersheva, that it would not be a problem to rent out their home.
Natalie Zakai brought the Tarabins’ ID cards to the community’s offices for routine paperwork. “When I handed in the IDs, the staff looked at the card and said, ‘But they’re Muslims.'” Later, according to Natalie, the council head, Avraham Orr, rang to say the Arabs would be accepted in Nevatim “over my dead body.”
Several weeks later, Natalie said, two threatening men came to their door and warned them off renting to Arabs. Soon afterwards 36 cars belonging to Weisman Zakai, who has a used car business, were set on fire.
Then behind the Zakais’ back, Nevatim went to a local magistrate’s court to get an order preventing them from renting their home. The couple have been battling the decision ever since.
Mahajneh said the Tarabins had accommodated a series of “extraordinary conditions” imposed by Nevatim on the rental agreement, including certificates of good conduct from the police, a commitment to leave after a year, and limited access to the house’s extensive grounds.
But still Nevatim officials were dissatisfied, insisting in addition that the Tarabins submit to questioning by a vetting committee to assess their suitability. Although 40 other homes in Nevatim are rented, Mahajneh said testimonies from past members of the vetting committee showed that this was the first time such a demand had been made.
“It is true that anyone buying a property in Nevatim is supposed to be vetted by the committee, but there is no reference in the community’s bylaws to this condition for renters,” Mahajneh said.
In 2008, a district court judge in Beersheva overruled Nevatim’s new condition, arguing that the vetting requirement would be “unreasonable and not objective.” The high court judges, however, sided with Nevatim in their concluding statements on 10 March.
Natalie Zakai said they had offered to rent their home to the Tarabins after the Bedouin couple’s home burnt down in their village in early 2007, killing one of their 10 children. The Tarabins have been living with relatives ever since, unable to afford a new home and keen to move away from the site of the tragedy.
Ahmed Tarabin, 54, said: “I want Khalas to rest and heal and this place would have been perfect for her. The house has large grounds and we could have kept to ourselves. No one in Nevatim needs to have anything to do with us if they don’t want.”
A Nevatim resident who spoke anonymously to the Haaretz newspaper last week suggested reasons for the community’s opposition: “If tomorrow the entire Tarabin tribe wants to live here and we don’t agree, what will people say? The problem will start after the first one comes because then dozens more families will want to move here.”
The close friendship forged between the Zakais and Tarabins is rare in Israel. The privileged status of Jews legally and economically, communal segregation and the hostility provoked by a larger national conflict between Israel and the Palestinians ensure that Jewish and Arab citizens usually remain at arm’s length.
But Weisman Zakai, 53, whose parents emigrated from Iraq and who speaks fluent Arabic, befriended Ahmed Tarabin in the late 1960s when they were teenagers in Beersheva. Later they served together in the Israeli army as mechanical engineers.
Natalie Zakai said: “If Jews were being denied the right to live somewhere, it would be a scandal, but because our friends are Arabs no one cares.”
Avraham Orr, the Nevatim council head, denied that he was opposing the Tarabins’ admission because they are Arab. “There are rules,” he said. “Every family that wants to buy or rent a property must first go through the committee.”
Fearful of the implications of the Kaadan ruling, Jewish communities in the Galilee unveiled a new approach to barring Arab applicants last year. They introduced bylaws amounting to loyalty oaths that require applicants to pledge to support “Zionism, Jewish heritage and settlement of the land.”
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.
Gaza civil society to UN chief: siege more than “unacceptable”: The Electronic Intifada
Open letter, various undersigned, 22 March 2010
The following edited open letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was issued on 21 March 2010:
Your Excellency:
You are already well aware of the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza as a consequence of Israel’s devastating military attacks and its siege. As recently as 27 December 2009, you called the blockade of Gaza “unacceptable.” While this statement is certainly valid, it constitutes a gross understatement of the actual situation which amounts to slow genocide. Such an understatement suggests that you are trimming your language to accommodate US pro-Israeli policy. We live an ongoing, illegal, crippling Israeli siege that has shattered all spheres of life, prompting the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, Richard Falk, to describe it as “a prelude to genocide.” Your own UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, headed by the highly respected South African judge Richard Goldstone, found Israel guilty of “war crimes and possible crimes against humanity,” as did major international human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The Goldstone report concludes that Israel’s war on Gaza was “designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever-increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”
The 1948 Genocide Convention clearly says that one instance of genocide is “the deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a people in whole or in part.” That is what has been done to Gaza since the imposition of the blockade by a UN member state, namely Israel, and the massacre of 1,434 Palestinians, 90 percent of whom were civilians, including 434 children.
On your second short visit to Gaza since the end of the Israeli onslaught in 2008-09, you will find what Professor Sara Roy, an expert on Gaza, describes as “a land ripped apart and scarred, the lives of its people blighted. Gaza is decaying under the weight of continued devastation, unable to function normally …” Professor Roy concludes that “[T]he decline and disablement of Gaza’s economy and society have been deliberate, the result of state policy — consciously planned, implemented and enforced … And just as Gaza’s demise has been consciously orchestrated, so have the obstacles preventing its recovery.” Israel is intent on destroying Gaza because official world bodies and leaders choose to say and do nothing.
As civil society organizations based in Gaza, we call on you to use your position as Secretary General of the UN, the world body responsible for holding all governments accountable for the safeguarding of the human rights of all peoples under international law, to bring to bear on Israel the full force of your mandate to open the borders of Gaza to allow the import of building materials as well as all the other requirements for decent living conditions for us, the besieged Palestinians of Gaza.
We understand you are coming to Khan Younis to inspect an UNRWA (the UN agency for Palestine refugees) housing project designed to provide housing for Palestinians whose homes were demolished by Israel’s war machine and who have been waiting for over five years for replacement. Of course the building project will not have been completed because of the blockade, even though it is an UNRWA project. The brazen refusal of Israel to cooperate with the decision of the international community to reconstruct Gaza, for which several billion Euros were pledged, should not be tolerated. Israel’s attacks have damaged or completely destroyed many public buildings and have according to the UN’s own OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) report as of 30 April 2009, severely damaged or completely destroyed some 21,000 family dwellings. Many other Palestinians who have spent the past several winters in flimsy tents have also been promised the means to rebuild homes and schools, though to date nothing has been done to alleviate their suffering.
In addition to the very visible lack of shelter, we in Gaza also suffer from the contamination of water, air and soil, since the sewage system is unable to function due to power cuts necessitated by lack of fuel to the main generators of the Gaza power grid. Medical conditions due to injuries from phosphorous bombs and other illegal Israeli weapons as well as from water contamination cannot be treated because of the siege. In addition to the ban on building materials, Israel also prevents many other necessities from being imported: lightbulbs, candles, matches, books, refrigerators, shoes, clothing, mattresses, sheets, blankets, tea, coffee, sausages, flour, cows, pasta, cigarettes, fuel, pencils, pens, paper … etc.
When you visit Khan Younis, keep in mind that a huge UN storage depot was directly targeted by Israeli phosphorus bombs only last year, destroying tons of badly needed food and other essentials. At that time UNRWA chief John Ging spoke of massive obstacles preventing humanitarian aid from reaching the civilian population of Gaza; those obstacles must be removed. The Red Cross called the Israeli assault “completely and utterly unacceptable based on every known standard of international humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles and values.”
We sincerely hope you will live up to your responsibility and speak for the suffering people of Gaza to those who hold the keys that could easily end the barbaric blockade, as the first step towards the implementation of all UN resolutions in Palestine.
Undersigned:
University Teachers’ Association in Palestine
General Union for Health Services Workers
General Union for Public Services Workers
General Union for Petrochemical and Gas Workers
General Union for Agricultural Workers
Union of Women’s Work Committees
Union of Synergies–Women’s Unit
Union of Palestinian Women Committees
Women’s Studies Society
Working Woman’s Society
Arab Cultural Forum
Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel
One Democratic State Group
Al-Quds Bank for Culture and Information Society