EDITOR: Is the third Intifada coming?
Israeli analysts are adamant that Israel is safe – no third Intifada is on the way. Their argument is that Palestine is more divided than ever, that the West Bank is well-policed and controlled by the Abbas US-trained force, and that the PNA is acting on behalf of Israel, and will not allow it.Looking at the events, and at pace of hostilities picking up, one may think otherwise; Abbas is, at best, a collaborating politician rather than a leader of the Palestinians, and his grip on the West Bank, or rather, the little parts of it which he controls, is very tenuous. The Palestinian population both in Gaza and the West Bank now fully realises that neither Israel, nor the US, are prepared to allow them to live, not even to ‘live like dogs’, as Moshe Dayan’s famous phrase defined the intentions of the military occupation. They now understand that Israel is playing the ethnic cleaning game, and that leaves them little choice. It is also clear that the hand on the tiller in Jerusalem is that of a ‘drunken driver’ to use Thomas Friedman’s definition of Netanyahu behaviour. It all adds up to an incredible powder keg, and the mad plans hatched about the temple in Jerusalem, the clearing up of the space in front of the Western Wall, and the rest of the building projects in every bit of East Jerusalem, are all bringing about a situation of great explosive potential. Netanyahu plays poker on the whole lot, and plays it badly.
Netanyahu and Obama are at point of no return: Haaretz
By Akiva Eldar
The strife between Israel and the United States concerns something far bigger than the proximity talks with the Palestinians. As far as President Barack Obama and his senior advisers are concerned, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to blame for nothing less than damaging the standing of the U.S.in the Middle East and the Muslim world.
Just as Netanyahu received his standing ovation at the AIPAC conference, Obama and his advisers were ruminating over an altogether different convention – the Arab League begins a meeting Tripoli on Saturday. For the Americans, Netanyahu’s Likudnik speech and the Shpeherd Hotel project matched in embarrassment the scandalous announcement of construction in East Jerusalem during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit here.
This year’s Arab League summit will be the scene of struggle between the allies of Iran and the allies of American, and the violation of the status quo in Al Quds – Jerusalem – has direct implications for the balance of power between the sides. Over the last few weeks, Americans have been giving life support to the Arab Peace Initiative, born at the League’s summit in Beirut 2002 and set to be on the agenda this week.
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The absence of Egyptian President Mubarak, who is recovering from an operation in Berlin, doesn’t make it any easier for the U.S. to resist the efforts of Syria and Libya to suspend or possibly even terminate the peace initiative. The al-Mabhouh assassination, insulting as it was to the rulers of the Gulf, doesn’t do much for the other proponents of the initiative, King Abdullah of Saudia and King Abdullah II of Jordan. The Saudi king had asked the Quartet for clarifications about Israel’s latest moves in Jerusalem and specifically about Netanyahu’s statement of intent for the Arab part of the city.
The messages coming to the White House from Riyadh and Amman, then, were starkly clear: If you don’t rein in your Israeli friends, Tehran won’t be the only Middle East capital where American flags will burn.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has decisively supported General David Petraeus, the first American military man in years to describe Israel as a strategic burden on the U.S. Gates said America’s rivals in the Middle East are abusing the standstill of the political process between Israel and the Arabs. He stressed that he had no doubt a lack of peace in the region was influencing American interests there.
Netanyahu had been hoping to buy time until November’s Congressional elections, which coincide with the deadline he set for the settlement freeze. But with America’s strategic interest on the line, Bibi’s favorite political game (playing the Jewish community and Congress against the White House and the State Department) isn’t working anymore. Obama decided his moderate Middle East coalition is more important than Netanyahu’s extremist one. This is a point of no return.
Have a nice world war, folks: John Pilger
25 Mar 2010
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the increasing American war front across the world: from Afghanistan to Africa and Latin America. This is the Third World War in all but name, waged by the only aggressive “ism” that denies it is an ideology and threatened not by introverted tribesmen in faraway places but by the anti-war instincts of its own citizens.
Here is news of the Third World War. The United States has invaded Africa. US troops have entered Somalia, extending their war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and now the Horn of Africa. In preparation for an attack on Iran, American missiles have been placed in four Persian Gulf states, and “bunker-buster” bombs are said to be arriving at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
In Gaza, the sick and abandoned population, mostly children, is being entombed behind underground American-supplied walls in order to reinforce a criminal siege. In Latin America, the Obama administration has secured seven bases in Colombia, from which to wage a war of attrition against the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay. Meanwhile, the secretary of “defence” Robert Gates complains that “the general [European] public and the political class” are so opposed to war they are an “impediment” to peace. Remember this is the month of the March Hare.
According to an American general, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is not so much a real war as a “war of perception”. Thus, the recent “liberation of the city of Marja” from the Taliban’s “command and control structure” was pure Hollywood. Marja is not a city; there was no Taliban command and control. The heroic liberators killed the usual civilians, poorest of the poor. Otherwise, it was fake. A war of perception is meant to provide fake news for the folks back home, to make a failed colonial adventure seem worthwhile and patriotic, as if The Hurt Locker were real and parades of flag-wrapped coffins through the Wiltshire town of Wooten Basset were not a cynical propaganda exercise.
“War is fun”, the helmets in Vietnam used to say with bleakest irony, meaning that if a war is revealed as having no purpose other than to justify voracious power in the cause of lucrative fanaticisms such as the weapons industry, the danger of truth beckons. This danger can be illustrated by the liberal perception of Tony Blair in 1997 as one “who wants to create a world [where] ideology has surrendered entirely to values” (Hugo Young, the Guardian) compared with today’s public reckoning of a liar and war criminal.
Western war-states such as the US and Britain are not threatened by the Taliban or any other introverted tribesmen in faraway places, but by the anti-war instincts of their own citizens. Consider the draconian sentences handed down in London to scores of young people who protested Israel’s assault on Gaza in January last year. Following demonstrations in which paramilitary police “kettled” (corralled) thousands, first-offenders have received two and a half years in prison for minor offences that would not normally carry custodial sentences. On both sides of the Atlantic, serious dissent exposing illegal war has become a serious crime.
Silence in other high places allows this moral travesty. Across the arts, literature, journalism and the law, liberal elites, having hurried away from the debris of Blair and now Obama, continue to fudge their indifference to the barbarism and aims of western state crimes by promoting retrospectively the evils of their convenient demons, like Saddam Hussein. With Harold Pinter gone, try compiling a list of famous writers, artists and advocates whose principles are not consumed by the “market” or neutered by their celebrity. Who among them have spoken out about the holocaust in Iraq during almost 20 years of lethal blockade and assault? And all of it has been deliberate. On 22 January 1991, the US Defence Intelligence Agency predicted in impressive detail how a blockade would systematically destroy Iraq’s clean water system and lead to “increased incidences, if not epidemics of disease”. So the US set about eliminating clean water for the Iraqi population: one of the causes, noted Unicef, of the deaths of half a million Iraqi infants under the age of five. But this extremism apparently has no name.
Norman Mailer once said he believed the United States, in its endless pursuit of war and domination, had entered a “pre-fascist era”. Mailer seemed tentative, as if trying to warn about something even he could not quite define. “Fascism” is not right, for it invokes lazy historical precedents, conjuring yet again the iconography of German and Italian repression. On the other hand, American authoritarianism, as the cultural critic Henry Giroux pointed out recently, is “more nuance, less theatrical, more cunning, less concerned with repressive modes of control than with manipulative modes of consent.”
This is Americanism, the only predatory ideology to deny that it is an ideology. The rise of tentacular corporations that are dictatorships in their own right and of a military that is now a state with the state, set behind the façade of the best democracy 35,000 Washington lobbyists can buy, and a popular culture programmed to divert and stultify, is without precedent. More nuanced perhaps, but the results are both unambiguous and familiar. Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, the senior United Nations officials in Iraq during the American and British-led blockade, are in no doubt they witnessed genocide. They saw no gas chambers. Insidious, undeclared, even presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, the Third World War and its genocide proceeded, human being by human being.
In the coming election campaign in Britain, the candidates will refer to this war only to laud “our boys”. The candidates are almost identical political mummies shrouded in the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. As Blair demonstrated a mite too eagerly, the British elite loves America because America allows it to barrack and bomb the natives and call itself a “partner”. We should interrupt their fun.
Israel ends Gaza incursion: Al Jazeera TV
Hamas attributes Friday’s fighting to rising tensions in occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem [Reuters]
Israel has ended its incursion into the Gaza Strip a day after its military was involved in a deadly clash with Hamas, the Palestinian faction that rules the territory.
Troops and tanks left Gaza on Saturday after the bloodiest clash in 14 months killed two Israeli soldiers and at least one Palestinian, witnesses said.
The fighting was the fiercest since Israel fought with Hamas in a three-week offensive last year that killed at least 1,400 Palestinians, mainly civilians, and 13 Israelis, mainly troops.
Israeli military confirmed an officer and a soldier had been killed and two soldiers injured on Friday.
Hamas ‘defence’
Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said it engaged the Israeli military after the incursion.
“An Israeli army force raided 500 metres into Palestinian territory, and was confronted by our gunmen,” Abu Obeida, a Hamas spokesman, said.
“This was our work, but was carried out for defence.”
Al Jazeera’s Barnaby Phillips, reporting from Gaza, said that the situation “does seem to have improved” but that it was “certainly tense”.
“There was a fair amount of helicopter and drone activity over the skies above Gaza last night,” he said.
“The Israelis are saying that a rocket was fired out of Gaza into Israel this morning, [but] no group has claimed responsibility for it. It landed in open ground and didn’t cause any harm to anybody.”
Our correspondent said he had spoken to Hamas officials who said that “this is not the time to try and draw the Israelis into a larger conflict”.
“They recognise that people in Gaza want peace at the moment above all,” he said.
The correspondent added that a 23-year-old Palestinian who had been wounded in the clashes had died of his wounds.
Responding to the Israeli deaths, Israel’s defence minister issued a veiled threat to Hamas.
‘Ramifications’
“We have been used to seeing breakaway [Palestinian] groups doing the firing, and Hamas trying to calm things down. Possibly it is loosening its grip, for all sorts of reasons,” Ehud Barak told Israeli television on Friday.
“Should that indeed prove to be the case, and then there will also be ramifications for Hamas,” he said, but added: “We have no interest in returning the region to what was in the past.”
Some witnesses said Friday’s exchange of fire began when an explosion, possibly caused by an anti-armour rocket fired from the nearby Palestinian town of Khan Younis, hit an Israeli army patrol on the central Gazan border.
Backed by tanks, the troops fired back at their assailants and entered Gazan territory, the witnesses said.
Such pursuits are common practice for the Israelis, who try to maintain a buffer zone within the border fence off-limits to Palestinians.
Israelis quit Gaza after worst clash in over a year: The Independent
By Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters
Israeli troops and tanks left the Gaza Strip today, witnesses said, ending an incursion into the Hamas-ruled enclave made after the bloodiest clash in 14 months killed two soldiers and at least one Palestinian.
The violence underscored the deadlock in US-mediated talks between Israel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose peace strategy has been sapped by Hamas hostility along with continued Israeli settlement construction on occupied land.
The impasse has triggered sporadic rocket attacks this month from Gaza which drew Israeli airstrikes. Yesterday, Palestinians ambushed soldiers who, the army said, had crossed the border to dismantle a mine. Two infantrymen were killed and two wounded.
The skirmish – in which the Israelis said they killed two Palestinian gunmen – was the fiercest since the three-week Gaza war of early 2009. Some 1,400 Palestinians, mainly civilians, and 13 Israelis, mainly troops, died in that conflict.
Hamas, having largely held fire since, announced that its men took part in the border clash, calling it self-defence. That drew veiled threats of escalation from Israel.
“We have been used to seeing breakaway (Palestinian) groups doing the firing, and Hamas trying to calm things down. Possibly it is loosening its grip, for all sorts of reasons,” Defence Minister Ehud Barak told Israeli television yesterday.
“Should that indeed prove to be the case, then there will also be ramifications for Hamas,” he said, but added: “We have no interest in returning the region to what was in the past.”
Gazan doctors said a 23-year-old civilian was killed in the clash, and five other Palestinians wounded. Hamas and another faction that took part in the fighting said they lost no men.
Israel captured Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Egypt and Jordan in a 1967 war. It withdrew from Gaza in 2005 but has expanded Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians want statehood in all the territories.
Resisting US pressure in what analysts called a bruising encounter with President Barack Obama in Washington this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would not stop building in West Bank areas it annexed to East Jerusalem.
Netanyahu vowed to find a way out of the faceoff, but a meeting of his senior cabinet convened to discuss confidence-building measures ended without breakthroughs.
“Israeli construction policy in Jerusalem has remained the same for 42 years and isn’t changing,” spokesman Nir Hefez said.
Four Palestinians have died in West Bank clashes with Israeli forces this month. Obama wants Israel to halt settlement in East Jerusalem, an issue that created new friction when a plan to build 1,600 more houses was published as Vice President Joe Biden visited to urge indirect talks under US mediation.
“The prime minister set further discussion in the forum for the coming days, as well as continued contacts with the US administration in order to reach an agreed path for getting the diplomatic process moving,” Hefez said after the meeting.
Israeli tanks ‘enter Gaza’ after deadly clashes: BBC
Israeli tanks advanced briefly into the Gaza Strip following clashes with Palestinians in which two Israeli soldiers died, reports say.
Witnesses in Gaza said tanks and bulldozers moved towards the southern town of Khan Younis before withdrawing.
They also said there had been firing from the Israeli navy along the Gaza coastline.
It is the first time Israeli soldiers have died in Gaza since Israel’s 22-day offensive there more than a year ago.
Reports say at least two Palestinians have also been killed.
Israel says the fighting started when its troops crossed into Gaza after spotting militants planting explosives along the border.
Reports from inside Gaza say the militants then tried to capture an Israeli soldier.
Retaliation
The BBC’s Jon Donnison, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, says many inside Gaza will now expect retaliation from Israel to be stepped up following the deaths of the soldiers.
The army said an officer and a conscript died when gunmen fired on a military patrol inside the Gaza Stip. Two soldiers were injured and two Palestinian fighters killed in the clash, it said.
The two soldiers killed were named by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper as Eliraz Peretz, 31, and 21-year-old Ilan Sebiatkovsky.
Army spokeswoman Avital Leibovich described their deaths as “tragic” and “painful”.
“I think it’s true to say that this is one of the fiercest days we have had since operation Cast Lead happened,” she said, referring to the Israeli offensive.
A ceasefire between Israel and Islamist militant group Hamas, which governs Gaza, has largely held since the Israeli offensive.
However, hundreds of rockets have been fired into southern Israel by militants in Gaza.
Hamas’s armed wing – the al-Qassam Brigades – said in a statement sent to the BBC that it had killed the two soldiers.
Speaking to Reuters news agency, Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida is quoted as saying: “This was our work, but was carried out for defence.”
Militants have been holding another Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, for more than three years.
Israel’s Provocation at al-Aqsa: Jonathan Cook
Rabbi Plans “Miracle” at the Western Wall
The Israeli government has indicated that it will press ahead with a plan to enlarge the Jewish prayer plaza at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City, despite warnings that the move risks triggering a third intifada.
Israeli officials rejected this week a Jerusalem court’s proposal to shelve the plan after the judge accepted that the plaza’s expansion would violate the “status quo” arrangement covering the Old City’s holy places. Islamic authorities agreed to the arrangement after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967.
The site eyed by Israeli officials is located at the Mughrabi Gate, an entrance to the mosque compound known as the Haram al Sharif, the most sensitive site in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Inside are Al Aqsa Mosque and the golden-topped Dome of the Rock.
Earlier encroachments by Israel on Islamic authority at the site have triggered clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians. A heavily armed visit to the compound by Ariel Sharon in 2000, shortly before he became prime minister, to declare Israeli rights there sparked the second intifada.
In recent weeks, analysts have grown increasingly concerned that a third intifada is imminent as Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has advanced settlement building in East Jerusalem and declared several places deep in the occupied West Bank as Jewish heritage sites.
Another assault on Muslim control so close to Al Aqsa Mosque risked “pouring fuel on the fire”, said Hanna Sweid, an Arab member of the Israeli parliament who filed the original planning objections to the Israeli scheme.
According to evidence presented to the Jerusalem court, Israeli officials used minor storm damage to a stone ramp leading to the Mughrabi Gate as a pretext to tear it down six years ago. The intention is to replace the ramp with a permanent metal bridge and then extend the Jewish prayer plaza into the area where the ramp was.
The scheme is the brainchild of Shmuel Rabinowitz, the rabbi in charge of the Western Wall, who declared the damage to the ramp in 2004 a “miracle” that had offered Israel the chance to take control of more land from Islamic authorities in the Old City.
The rabbi’s plan was approved in late 2007 by a special ministerial committee headed by Ehud Olmert, then the prime minister. The project has also won backing from Mr Netanyahu, though he froze construction work in July under orders from the Jerusalem court.
The judge, Moussia Arad, proposed in January that the ramp be reinstated, or at the very least that the bridge follow the exact route of the ramp, and that all prayer at the site be banned. That position won the backing of United Nations officials monitoring Israel’s work at the Mughrabi Gate.
The Jordanian, Turkish and Palestinian Islamic authorities have all expressed deep concern at Israeli excavations at the Mughrabi Gate that are seen as a prelude to the plaza’s expansion.
Observers had hoped that, faced with the danger of another row with the United States so soon after the diplomatic crisis sparked by Israeli settlement building in East Jerusalem, Mr Netanyahu might agree to the court’s compromise.
They have been proved wrong.
“Netanyahu has a history of trampling on Palestinian rights in the Old City,” Mr Sweid said. “There is every reason to be worried about what he plans to get up to this time.”
In 1996, during his previous stint as prime minister, Mr Netanyahu opened the Western Wall tunnel, another excavation close to the mosque compound, resulting in clashes in which 75 Palestinians and 15 Israeli soldiers were killed.
Israel, which says the mosques sit on the ruins of two ancient Jewish temples, built by Solomon and Herod, refers to the site as Temple Mount and has staked a claim to a degree of sovereignty over the area in recent peace negotiations.
Last week, in a sign of the explosive consequences of tampering with the status quo concerning Jerusalem’s holy places, riots broke out in a “day of rage” in East Jerusalem following Israel’s announcement that it had rebuilt an old synagogue, the Hurva, close to the mosques.
“The Haram al Sharif is a site of unrivalled Muslim sensitivity and the Israeli government is playing with fire here,” said Mohammed Masalha, a lecturer who heads a coalition of Islamic groups inside Israel that brought the court case.
In evidence presented to the court, Meir Ben Dov, an Israeli archaeologist and the excavations director at the Western Wall for nearly four decades, produced photographic evidence showing that the storm had caused only a minor landslide.
“I was asked by the government to inspect the damage two days after it occurred and I found maybe a dozen stones had been dislodged,” he said. “The ramp could have been repaired in less than a week but instead they decided to demolish it.”
Judge Arad, Mr Ben Dov said, had been “shocked” when she saw the photographs.
Mr Ben Dov said his recommendation that the walkway be repaired for $14,000 was ignored by Israeli officials, including the then-tourism minister, Benny Elon, a settler rabbi who heads a far-right party. Instead the government tore down the ramp and built a temporary wooden bridge to the Mughrabi Gate while excavations were carried out in the area exposed by the ramp’s destruction.
The Jerusalem comptroller, Shulamit Rubin, the city’s watchdog official, criticised the excavations at the time, saying they were illegal because the necessary authorisations had not been sought.
The secretive nature of the excavations was widely assumed by Islamic groups to be evidence of an Israeli intention to search for parts of the destroyed temples. With such evidence, Israel would have a stronger claim to extend its control.
The unscientific approach to the excavations was highlighted in early 2007 when it emerged that three years earlier Israeli archaeologists had unearthed at the site a Muslim prayer room from the time of the Saladin, dating to the 11th century, but had kept the discovery quiet.
In February 2007, when Israel brought heavy machinery to the Mughrabi Gate excavations, hundreds of Palestinians clashed with police while the Islamic Movements within Israel staged large demonstrations. Islamic Jihad said it had fired two Qassam rockets from Gaza in response, and Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade threatened to carry out attacks if the work was not halted.
To read the rest of this excellent aerticle, use link above.
Arab League chief warns peace process may fail: The Independent
The chief of the Arab League is warning that Israel’s actions could bring about a final end to the Middle East peace process.
Amr Moussa urged an Arab leadership summit in Libya today to forge a new strategy to pressure Israel.
He said the peace process cannot be “an open ended process.”
Earlier this month, Arab nations opened the door for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to enter four months of indirect, American-brokered peace talks with Israel. But they later threatened to withdraw support for the talks because of Israeli announcements on new plans for construction in areas Palestinians want for a future state.
The summit will also address the West’s standoff with Iran over its nuclear program, and Iraq and Sudan.
Arabs must ‘prepare alternatives to failing peace process’: Haaretz
‘The situation has reached a turning point,’ Arab League chief Amr Mousa tells leaders at Libya summit.
Arab states should prepare for the possibility that the Palestinian-Israeli peace process may be a total failure and prepare alternatives, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said on Saturday.
“We have to study the possibility that the peace process will be a complete failure,” Moussa told a summit of Arab leaders in the Libyan town of Sirte.
“It’s time to face Israel. We have to have alternative plans because the situation has reached a turning-point,” he said.
Mousa did not specify what the alternatives might be.
He also said the Arab League should open a dialogue with Tehran to address concerns, especially among Iran’s neighbours across the Gulf, about its nuclear programme.
The status of Jerusalem and Friday’s clashes in the Gaza Strip, the worst in a year, are likely to dominate talks when members of the 22-nation summit, which began Saturday.
The summit comes amid heightened, and lethal, tensions over Israeli plans to continue building in east Jerusalem and access to sites there revered by Jews and Muslims alike, and follows clashes in the Gaza Strip Friday that saw Israeli tanks and heavy machine-gunners exchange fire with Palestinian militants.
Hisham Yussef, Moussa’s chief of staff, on Saturday told reporters in the coastal Libyan town of Sirte that the status of east Jerusalem would be a focus of the talks.
“In light of current conditions, it is difficult to talk about negotiations,” Yussef said Saturday.
“It is unacceptable that while the Palestinians have been moving toward negotiations in good faith, the Israelis have taken decisions contrary to the understandings that were reached and to the possibility of achieving progress,” he said.
Israel has stood firm behind its plans to continue building in east Jerusalem, despite U.S. and European pressure to freeze construction east of its 1967 borders so that indirect, or “proximity” talks with the Palestinians can begin.
“Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said ahead of his meeting with US President Barack Obama in Washington last week.
“We must provide adequate support to the steadfast Arab citizens in the holy city, because their survival is very important in the battle to maintain the city’s Arab identity,” Yussef said.
He cautiously welcomed reports that Libya would offer $400 million in support to Arab residents of East Jerusalem.
“If this is true,” Yussef said, “It is wonderful news. But we must hear this directly from Libya, and so far there has been no official word.”
The aid would support Palestinian Authority institutions in East Jerusalem.
In addition to leaders and representatives of the Arab League’s members, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Italian President Silvio Berlusconi are also expected to attend Saturday’s summit.
Absent from the summit will be Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak due to his recent surgery. Lebanese President Michel Suleiman and several Gulf state leaders will also be absent due to tensions with Libya.
Visions of Palestine’s present and future in “Invictus” and “Avatar”: The Electronic Intifada
Abdaljawad O.A. Hamayel, 26 March 2010
The stage was set; Nelson Mandela stood among millions of his fellow countrymen and women, tall as ever, stronger than ever, welcoming the world to the new South Africa, or as he loved to call it: the rainbow nation.
This was the theme of the 2009 movie Invictus which dramatizes the true story of the 1995 Rugby World Cup hosted and won by South Africa just a year after its first democratic, post-apartheid election. The South African national rugby team — known as the Springboks — which long excluded nonwhite players, had symbolized the racist regime and was subject to international boycott. Mandela made its victory a symbol of national rebirth when he emerged on the field wearing a Springbok jersey, an iconic act of reconciliation. The film honors Mandela and his achievements in the later period of his political life; it is a movie about strong will, persistence and a belief in an idea many saw as unrealistic.
Today, South Africa is not an ideal place, many of the old apartheid structures still plague the country, poverty is rampant and discrimination is still alive. Nevertheless, the 1995 rugby championship marked a moment when a nation was born, with tension perhaps, with old divisions possibly, but for that day all of the carnage of the past seemed trivial and a bright future possible.
Many have seen a resemblance to Palestine in another recent Hollywood movie, Avatar. It depicts the struggle of the “Na’vi” people whose planet is invaded by the “sky people” (humans from Earth) who attempt to confiscate their land. And although many people also link the struggle against apartheid in South Africa with the struggle for freedom in Palestine, the specific lessons that can be drawn from the victims of apartheid deserve further analysis.
Avatar highlighted the unbreakable and unyielding bond of a people with their land, a bond that Palestinians understand today more than ever as settlers set their eyes on denying us even the scent of olive trees, a scent Palestinians grow up with since the youngest age.
Clint Eastwood’s Invictus, starring Morgan Freeman as Mandela, offered us the hope of a future not imprisoned by the past. Mandela rallied a broken nation around a rugby team that had been a potent and visible symbol of oppression for apartheid’s victims, and turned it into a national moment of triumph and unity. Mandela was able to see that a peaceful transition to freedom for black people from apartheid was interconnected and linked with the freedom of whites from existential fear and prejudice as they relinquished the power they unjustly enjoyed for decades.
This theme has much to do with our struggle as Palestinians: is a victory in the struggle for Palestine and to achieve all our rights and aspirations also intimately related to freeing Israelis from their own self-made shackles of post-holocaust annihilation fears? These are the questions that can be drawn from Invictus.
What differentiates the world of dreaming from the melancholy of what we experience here and now is our ability to see the dream unfold in front of our eyes. This was the power of the main character in Invictus as his deep resolve gave impetus to a new nation born out of its diversity. Here in Palestine, the dream takes different forms, shapes and colors. Do we fight for one state for all? Or do we fight for two states for two nations? Do we continue our struggle to turn Palestine into an Islamic state as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad advocate?
Avatar depicts another vital theme which Palestinians must take to heart: unity as a precursor to freedom. The unity of the Na’vi tribes was fundamental in their victory over sky people. It was the unity in shedding blood and tears but also the unity in vision and struggle that allowed the Na’vi to overcome the threat of colonization of their land. Unfortunately this is a missing reality here in Palestine as divisions among rival factions deepens and a unifying vision seems further away than ever.
Invictus and Avatar inspire reflection on the past, present and future hopes of our nation. The response to these movies among audiences around the world underscores the amount of sympathy around the world for moral struggles that ensue after the creation of an unjust reality, a sympathy Palestinians have been slow at garnering. But if Martin Luther King Jr.’s proclamation was right, “the arch of the moral universe is long, but it is tilted towards justice,” we Palestinians may have some hope.
Abdaljawad O.A. Hamayel is a graduate of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands where he was Editor-in-Chief of the University College Utrecht’s newspaper The Boomerang and chair of the All Student Interest Council at the same university. He now resides in Ramallah.
PM Netanyahu’s trap: Y Net
Latest east Jerusalem construction permit highlights prime minister’s problem
The Shepherd Hotel compound in Jerusalem is just a small example of the trap faced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
For two weeks now, the government has been preoccupied with efforts to mitigate the conflict that erupted in wake of the announcement of Ramat Shlomo construction during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit in Israel. Netanyahu made an effort to convince the Americans that he didn’t know. He begged for a meeting with the president and paid with major diplomatic currency.
Diplomatic Crisis
What is the probability that under such circumstances, a similar event will take place? Logically speaking, you would think that there would be a zero chance for a repeat. Yet reality is stronger than fiction and logic.
For months now, the US Administration has shown great sensitivity to the Shepherd Hotel compound in east Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The hotel was built on the home of Mufti Sheikh Amin al-Husseini and was purchased by far right billionaire Irving Moskowitz more than 25 years ago.
Moskowitz planned to build a Jewish neighborhood at the site, yet for many long years the Jerusalem City Hall and Israeli government did everything in their power in order to delay construction.
The Left is at fault?
Several months ago, the US and British governments exerted their influence in order to prevent construction at the site. The Americans even summoned Israel’s ambassador in Washington and demanded explanations. Moskowitz, who planned to redesign the compound and build about 100 housing units realized it won’t be possible and decided to make do with 20 units.
If you enter the Jerusalem City Hall website these days and look into the status of Moskowitz’s construction requests for the compound, you will discover that the obstacles for construction that persisted for dozens of years had been lifted.
When did it happen? That’s right, on Thursday of last week, in the midst of Bibi’s great efforts to appease the US Administration, when a meeting with President Obama was still a craving. Precisely at that time, someone in the Jerusalem City Hall decided to remove the last obstacle to the problematic construction project at the disputed site.
The dominant spin blamed the Left for deliberately provoking a quarrel with the Americans. Oh, come on. The Jerusalem City Hall grants a construction permit, which is published on its website openly, yet the Left is at fault for the news reaching the US?
Gaza border firefight leaves four dead: The Guardian
Two Israeli soldiers and two Palestinian militants killed in worst fighting in Gaza for a year
Two Israeli soldiers and two Palestinians were killed today after heavy fighting on the Gaza border, the most serious violence there in more than a year.
The Israeli military said a soldier and an officer were killed in a battle with what it said were terrorists planting explosives along the Gaza boundary fence. Israeli tanks and troops then crossed into Gaza, firing artillery and tank rounds, according to the Palestinians. Three militant groups in Gaza, including Hamas, claimed involvement.
Two other soldiers were injured. Two Palestinians also died in the fighting and five civilians were injured.
Since Israel’s war in Gaza more than a year ago, the area has been relatively quiet. Hamas, the Islamist movement which won elections in 2006 and now controls Gaza, appeared to be trying to rein in militant groups and prevent outbreaks of violence. However, in recent weeks, rockets have been fired into southern Israel. One killed a Thai worker last week.
The Israel Defence Force, blamed Hamas. “The IDF holds Hamas as solely responsible for maintaining peace and quiet in the Gaza Strip,” it said.
A Hamas military spokesman, Abu Obeida, said Hamas fighters had been involved in the latest incident, saying Israeli troops “fell into an ambush”.
“An Israeli army force raided 500 metres into Palestinian territory, and was confronted by our gunmen,” he said. “This was our work, but was carried out for defence.”
Two rival groups, the Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, also said their fighters were involved. Last weekend, Israeli troops shot dead four Palestinians in the West Bank. The two incidents underline concerns about the continued lack of peace talks between the two sides.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, met his seven most senior ministers in Jerusalem today in the wake of his difficult visit to Washington. The Israeli government insisted it would continue building settlements in East Jerusalem, despite US pressure to stop and to take measures that might encourage the Palestinians to return to talks.
“Israeli construction policy in Jerusalem has remained the same for 42 years and isn’t changing,” his office said in a statement today .
Relations between Israel and the US have slumped since approval was given earlier this month for 1,600 new homes in the Jewish settlement of Ramat Shlomo in East Jerusalem. The US condemned the decision. The Palestinians said they would not go ahead with US-sponsored indirect talks agreed only a day earlier.
Washington is still eager to see those talks begin, in the hope that they will lead to a resumption of direct peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians – something that has been absent now for more than a year. It is unclear what was agreed in Netanyahu’s meeting with President Barack Obama. When Netanyahu left Washington he spoke of an attempt to find a “golden path” between restarting peace talks and keeping to Israeli government policy.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has maintained that he will not return to negotiations without a full freeze on settlement building, rather than the temporary, partial curbs that Netanyahu has announced. However, Abbas is firmly wedded to a policy of negotiation. Some in his Fatah movement disagree with that approach.
‘Arab summit is political theatre’: Al Jazeera TV
By As’ad AbuKhalil
Arab leaders have failed to offer meaningful help for Palestinians, says AbuKhalil [GALLO/GETTY]
Arab leaders are currently meeting in Libya in a ritual summit held almost annually since the end of the Second World War.
Although the League of Arab States (also commonly referred to as the Arab League) was established in 1945, it was not until 1964 that member states met for the first time at the Cairo headquarters to discuss the Israeli threat – to water resources.
Arab leaders met in a unified bid to study the danger of Israeli plans to divert the waters of the River Jordan. The summit plan was as effective as the subsequent Arab military plans to deal with the Israeli threat.
The Arab League was founded at the behest of the British, just as the Gulf Co-operation Council was founded at the urging of the US. One should not mistake these external pressures as efforts to push for Arab unity; in fact, quite the opposite is true.
Western powers have always been hostile toward all efforts of Arab unity, especially when Gamal Abdel Nasser,the late Egyptian president, stood as the symbol of Arab nationalism.But Western powers have favoured regional alliances that promoted Western security and political agendas.
The Arab League was a compromise between Arab popular expectations for a larger Arab political entity, and British concerns about Arab nationalism getting out of hand.
Arab summits have failedto get the Arab public’s attention since the defeat of Jordan Syria and Egypt by Israel in June 1967. Prior to that date, Arabs had hoped that their leaders would plan and execute a serious military operation to defeat Israel and liberate Palestine.
Grand promises
Prior to Israel’s occupation of Palestine in 1948,Arab newspapers used to send their top correspondents to cover pan-Arab meetings. Press clippings from that era were full of references to solid plans to defeat Zionism without even allowing for the Jewish state to be created.
Speeches were fiery and promises were grand. Arab leaders even signed a joint military pact. The key word was “joint”. Arab leaders were supposed to coordinate their political, diplomatic, and military moves especially when it came to confronting Zionism and helping the Palestinians.
Of course, the first war in 1948 was a humiliating experience for the Arabs, and a devastating blow to Palestinian aspirations.
The joint military pact did not amount to much: the rag-tag Arab troops that entered Palestine to prevent the Jewish state from occupying Palestine often engaged in “friendly” gun fights amongst themselves.
Ultimately, the regimes that led the Arab armies in 1948 were overthrown (except in Jordan). New Arab governments came to power in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and later in Sudan and Libya. The new regimes spoke the language of Arab nationalism and promised a quick fix for the occupation of Arab lands.
Amin Hafiz, the Syrian president in 1963, claimed that he had a solid plan that would defeat Israel in three days. Nasser, to his credit, was more cautious and stressed that planning for the liberation of Palestine required years of careful consideration.
But he also was ill-prepared and made fateful decisions (such as being dragged into the war in Yemen, appointing the notoriously incompetent Abdul-Hakim Amir as commander of the Egyptian forces, and allowing himself to be pushed by Jordan and Syria in 1967 into taking uncalculated risks that produced the eventual defeat).
Watershed moment
Arabs in general drew distinctions influenced by Nasser’s political rhetoric between “progressive Arab regimes” and “reactionary Arab regimes” – the “tails of colonial powers”, as Nasser called them.
That distinction was buried in June 1967 during the Six Day War,a watershed event in Arab history. All the hopes that were pinned on Nasser and the Baathist socialist ideology were dashed. It would be fair to say that Arab summits never mattered after that day—at least as far as the Arab people are concerned.
Nasser attended the Arab summit in Khartoum in 1967, but he was a broken man,and he had to depend on Saudi and Arab help to rebuild his armies.
No more was the distinction made between the two camps in Arab politics relevant to the Arab people. Both had failed in fulfilling their promises.
Arab leaders continued to meet in irregular summits. But no one was paying attention anymore. No one expected Arab leaders to confront Israel when it invaded Lebanon in 1982, or when it attacked Gaza in December 2008,or when it attacked Lebanon in 2006, or when the US attacked Iraq – twice.
Arab leaders now meet for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the aspirations of the Arab people or dreams of Arab unity.They meet first and foremost to bestow the honour of hosting the summit on one another.
Every year, an Arab ruler and country play host to the summit. That carries with it a certain degree of formal prestige. The leader of that country receives more visitors and dignitaries than usual and is seen on his state TV receiving heads of state, and representatives of international organisations.
Impression of business
Secondly, Arab leaders often meet in order to follow US dictates.
Hosni Mubarak,the Egyptian president, hastily arranged an Arab League meeting in Cairo in the summer of 1990 in order to prevent an Arab consensus from developing to resolve the crisis created by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, because the US was pursuing its own agenda to expel Saddam’s army, and to project its power in the region.
The Arab summit in Beirut in 2002 was also an attempt (largely by Saudi Arabia, but also by other Arab governments as well) to fend off the wrath of the Bush administration in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
Arab leaders have another reason to meet. They like to project an impression of business; that they are attending to the problems of the people. But at some level, they are well aware that no one is paying attention.
Long flowery statements are still issued by Arab leaders, but they are not read anymore. This is not the age of Nasser. This is the era of ageing Arab leaders (or their sons) who lack charisma and popularity.
This is the age of US dominance in the Middle East where Arab leaders are given little room to manoeuvre.
Arab summits were capable of at least rhetorical surprises: the “Three No’s” of Khartoum (no to peace with Israel, no to recognition, and no to negotiation) in 1967 are the most famous, but now we know that those governments that officially endorsed the formula were already negotiating secretly with the Israelis.
The US government now keeps a very tight lid over the regimes that it controls. When King Abdullah, the Saudi monarch, referred to the US occupation in Iraq as “illegitimate” during his opening speech at the Riyadh Arab summit in 2007, a diplomatic crisis ensued and the King has never used that expression since.
The Arab people now are accustomed to gatherings that produce long, tedious documents that no one (except translators at foreign embassies) actually read.
Between watching Syrian and Turkish TV serials, and watching proceedings of Arab summits, the Arab people may be worshipping the remote control. Gone are the days when they were subjected to one state-controlled channel that bombarded them with speeches and daily movements of the “dear Arab leader”.
As’ad AbuKhalil is a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus, and author of the Angry Arab blog.
Jerusalem to dominate Arab summit: Al Jazeera TV
Arab leaders have gathered in the Libyan city of Sirte for the annual Arab League summit likely to be dominated by Israel’s plans to build more settler homes on occupied Palestinian land.
Hours before the summit got under way on Saturday, Amr Mussa, the Arab League secretary-general, said continued Israeli settlement building would end efforts to revive the Middle East peace process.
“Indirect Palestinian-Israeli peace talks depend on freezing settlements and especially on cancelling plans by Israel to build 1,600 settlements in [East] Jerusalem,” he said.
Many Arab leaders have also been angered by the opening of a restored 17th century synagogue near the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, home to Islam’s third holiest site.
Concerns over Jerusalem
They see such acts as a clear intention by Israel to “Judaise” Jerusalem and undermine chances for a peace agreement with the Palestinians who consider East Jerusalem the capital of their future state.
Jordan’s King Abdullah warned that Israel was “playing with fire” and trying to alter the identity of Jerusalem.
Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, described tensions with Israel as a “state of no-war, no-peace,” and said his country was ready if “war is imposed” by Israel.
Amr el-Kahky, Al Jazeera’s correspondent at the summit, said while leaders have a unified stand on Jerusalem and Israeli activity there, huge challenges remain.
“One thing [they could disagree on] could be the phrasing – whether they want to withdraw the approval they gave Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to go into the US proposed indirect talks with the Israelis.
“We understand they are trying to say no to talks without Israel freezing settlement activities.
‘Rescue’ plan
Arab leaders are expected to ratify an agreement drafted by their foreign ministers to raise $500m in aid to improve the living conditions for Palestinians in Jerusalem as part of a “rescue” plan for the city.
A senior Palestinian official said the money would go towards improving infrastructure, building hospitals, schools, water wells and providing financial support to those whose houses have been demolished by Israeli authorities.
The leaders are also due to discuss a number of strategies, including keeping a record of what they consider to be Israeli “violations” in Jerusalem to refer them to higher bodies such as the International Criminal Court, based in the Hague in the Netherlands.
Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, wants the summit to be one of unity, and has invited Ban Ki-moon, the UN chief, Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, to address Saturday’s opening session.
Ban met with Arab officials, including Abbas, on Friday, to brief them on last week’s meeting of the Middle East Quartet, made up of the US, the European Union, Russia and the UN, which called on Israel to halt settlements.
Is Gaza now Netanyahu’s biggest problem?: Haaretz
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s (second) first year in office has ended with almost no significant security challenges. The two offensives lead by Olmert’s administration, the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, left the two regions in relative calm.
Now, as Netanyahu debates how he should respond to American pressure regarding construction in East Jerusalem and the future of the settlements, he will, for the first time, have to face an urgent security problem: Four Israeli fatalities along the Gaza border in less than a week.
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The last thing Netanyahu needs right now is a war in Gaza. The ongoing crisis with the United States and the critical atmosphere against Israel in the international arena will make it difficult for the prime minister to enjoy the same freedoms for military strategizing that his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, enjoyed.
The difficulty lies in the identities of those involved in Friday’s incident. For the first time, the Hamas military wing has claimed responsibility for the attack. Over the last 14 months, since the end of the Operation Cast Lead, small Islamist divisions have claimed responsibility for the small number of terror attacks emanating from Gaza. Hamas has even acted to restrain their activity; earlier this very week, the IDF exclaimed that it was impressed with the pressure Hamas has exerted to thwart the attacks.
Does Friday’s incident testify to the fact that Hamas is trying to change the rules of the game, or, from their perspective, was it self-defense against the sudden entrance of IDF soldiers into the Gaza Strip?
When asked about this, Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that “Hamas will have to pay a price” for changing the rules of the game.
“The army will know to find the right time to retaliate,” Barak told Channel 2 television’s news broadcast hours after the deaths of the soldiers. The defense minister is usually very cautious about field security. Perhaps he wanted to avoid giving the enemy unnecessary information ahead of time. But his response also embodies his and Netanyahu’s headache: Something has to be done, but how do they do it without dragging the southern border into another war?
Major Eliraz Peretz, the Golani regiment’s deputy commander who was killed in Gaza on Friday, lost his elder brother, First Lieutenant Uriel Peretz, in an explosion in southern Lebanon in 1998, in the midst of Netanyahu’s first term as prime minister. Lebanon was Netanyahu’s most urgent security concern at the time (the Palestinian terror attacks had been reduced for more than two years at the time). But the prime minister preferred to avoid making a decision regarding the turbulent region. It was his successor, Ehud Barak, who removed the IDF from Lebanon a year and a half after later. The difference in Gaza, of course, is that Israel left the strip in 2005.
A common perception of Israeli politics claims that only a government with a leftist-centrist orientation can initiate military action, because they are backed by public consensus. While rightist governments can dare make peace agreements, by the very same logic. Netanyahu, by the way things seem right now, cannot do either.
House members to Clinton: Resolve crisis with Israel: Y Net
327 members of Congress sign letter addressed to Clinton in which Obama Administration urged to resolve differences with Israel ‘quietly, as befits longstanding strategic allies’
WASHINGTON – Three days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama met at the White House, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received a letter signed by 327 members of the House of Representatives expressing concern over the growing tensions between Israel and the US over construction in east Jerusalem.
Prime Minister Netanyahu, his six senior ministers try to come up with creative solution on east Jerusalem, Gaza siege. Meeting ends with no conclusions, forum to reconvene next week
The letter, initiated last week by a bipartisan slate of leaders, including US Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the US House of Representatives majority leader, and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House minority leader, says, “differences are best resolved quietly, in trust and confidence, as befits longstanding strategic allies.”
We are writing to reaffirm our commitment to the unbreakable bond that exists between our country and the State of Israel and to express to you our deep concern over recent tension. In every important relationship, there will be occasional misunderstandings and conflicts,” read the letter.
The letter warns that the tensions are jeopardizing international efforts aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program, adding that in every relationship there are misunderstandings and differences.
The representatives added that they accept Netanyahu’s apology to the Obama Administration for the announcement on the construction of 1,600 apartments in east Jerusalem, which came during Vice President Joe Biden’s recent visit to the Jewish state.
“We are reassured that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s commitment to put in place new procedures will ensure that such surprises, however unintended, will not recur,” they wrote.
The members of Congress further wrote that it is in the interest of the US to safeguard Israel’s security while also preserving its independence.
“The United States and Israel are close allies whose people share a deep and abiding friendship based on a shared commitment to core values including democracy, human rights and freedom of the press and religion. Our two countries are partners in the fight against terrorism and share an important strategic relationship,” said the representatives.
“A strong Israel is an asset to the national security of the United States and brings stability to the Middle East. We are concerned that the highly publicized tensions in the relationship will not advance the interests the U.S. and Israel share. Above all, we must remain focused on the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear weapons program to Middle East peace and stability,” they wrote in the letter.
Uri Avnery, MK Barakeh attend ‘Land Day’ rally in Qalqilya: Y Net
Palestinian Authority marks 1976 Arab demonstrations against ‘expropriation of millions of dunams of Palestinian land in Israel’. PM Fayyad: Those who call for intifada do not know meaning of word
Senior Palestinian Authority officials, as well as prominent Israeli left-wing activists and Arab Knesset Member Mohammad Barakeh (Hadash) took part in a rally in the West Bank town of Qalqilya on Saturday to mark “Land Day”.
“Land Day” commemorates Arab-Israeli demonstrations in 1976, which came in response to the Israeli government’s announcement of a plan to expropriate thousands of dunams of land for “security and settlement purposes”.
Six Arab citizens were killed and about one hundred were wounded in ensuing clashes with Israeli security forces.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad spoke of what he called the “expropriation of millions of dunams of Palestinian land in Israel.”
“Every day in which the Palestinian people hold on to their land is ‘Land Day’,” he said.
“This is our answer to those who call for a popular uprising in the West Bank,” said Fayyad in a clear reference to Hamas’ leadership in Gaza, which is calling for intifada in the West Bank.
“The Palestinian people constantly resist the occupation. The next phase is an uprising and an intifada. Those who call for an intifada now do not know what it means. This call stems from a lack of understanding of the word ‘intifada’ and a lack of understanding of the Palestinian nation and the character of its struggle,” he said.
MK Barakeh and left-wing activist Uri Avnery slammed Israel’s policies, saying they led to the events of 1976.
Barakeh urged the Palestinians to seek unity, while Avnery called for Israeli-Palestinian cooperation to advance peace.