EDITOR: There is Only One Netanyahu
They may well believe in Washington thst they have some pull over Netanyahu, which only shows they are quite green around the ears. Netanyahu is only representing one thing – the continued control of Palestine by the IOF, with all the brutality and lawlessness that this means. If Obama either does not understand this, or worse, decides to avoid confrontation in an election year, he becomes another US collaborator of Zionist ethnic cleansing.
Netanyahu says East Jerusalem demands ‘prevent peace’: BBC
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will not accept demands that Israel stop building in occupied East Jerusalem.
Demands to halt building in the part of the city that Palestinians want as the capital of their future capital “prevented peace”, he told ABC news.
The comments by Israel’s prime minister come just days after the US pressed Israel to do more to pursue peace.
Relations have been strained between the two allies recently, reports say.
Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since 1967. It annexed the area in 1981 and sees it as its exclusive domain. Under international law the area is occupied territory. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.
Let’s get into the room and negotiate peace without preconditions
Benjamin Netanyahu
Mr Netanyahu said the Israeli government would discuss East Jerusalem as part of what he called “final discussions”, but it could not be a precondition to direct talks.
“This demand that they’ve now introduced, the Palestinians, to stop all construction, Jewish construction in Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem, is totally, totally a non-starter, because what it does is prevent peace.”
He said Israel was right to refuse the demand, as Palestinians would never accept preconditions to talks demanded by Israel.
“You would rightly say: ‘Ah, Israel is trying now to load the deck. To stack the deck. It’s trying not to enter in negotiations,'” he said.
“I say let’s remove all preconditions, including those on Jerusalem. Let’s get into the room and negotiate peace without preconditions. That’s the simplest way to get to peace.”
Under strain
He said direct talks were the only way to achieve peace.
But Palestinian leaders have said they will not enter any kind of negotiations with the Israelis until they show good faith by freezing the building of Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Last year Mr Netanyahu agreed to a 10-month building pause in the West Bank, but refused to include East Jerusalem.
In March the Palestinians said they would not get involved in indirect or proximity talks after new building plans in a Jewish neighbourhood of Eat Jerusalem were revealed.
While US Vice President Joe Biden was visiting Israel, it was announced that 1,600 new apartments would be built in the Jewish Orthodox district of Ramat Shlomo.
The announcement has put US – Israeli relations under strain.
On Friday US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton again called on Israel to do more to pursue peace with the Palestinians, repeating the demand that settlement building be halted.
The secretary of state said supporting the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas was the best weapon to counter Hamas and other extremists.
Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements in the West Bank, among a Palestinian population of about 2.5 million.
The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
The Middle East quartet – the US, EU, UN and Russia – has called for a halt in settlement building and immediate final status negotiations to reach a comprehensive peace deal within two years.
Netanyahu: Israeli construction in East Jerusalem is justified: Haaretz
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Monday that Israel would not accept Palestinian demands that it stop building settlements in East Jerusalem.
Appearing in an interview broadcast Monday on ABC’s Good Morning America, Netanyahu called the Palestinian demand that Israel stop building in settlements “unacceptable” and said this long-standing Israeli government position is not his alone, but rather dates to governments led by Golda Meir, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin.
Netanyahu has sought to minimize differences with U.S. President Barack Obama over the Middle East peace process. But he acknowledged on Monday that “we have some outstanding issues. We’re trying to resolve them through diplomatic channels in the best way that we can.”
During the interview, Netanyahu also urged the United States and the world to impose “crippling sanctions” on refined petroleum on Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
“If you stop Iran from importing refined petroleum – that’s a fancy word for gasoline – then Iran simply doesn’t have refining capacity and this regime comes to a halt,” Netanyahu said on the morning program.
The U.S. is leading a push in the United Nations to apply another round of sanctions against Iran in an effort to stop it from pursuing a nuclear program that Western nations believe is aimed at building atomic weapons.
Tehran says its program is designed to produce electricity for civilian use.
Calling the standoff with Iran “the biggest issue facing our times,” Netanyahu said the international community could deliver “crippling sanctions,” without the support of China and Russia, both permanent members of the UN Security Council.
“You’re left doing it outside the Security Council,” Netanyahu said. “There’s a coalition of the willing and you can have very powerful sanctions.”
Asked whether Obama had given assurances Washington would go along with refined oil sanctions and other restrictions, Netanyahu said: “What the United States has said is that they’re determined to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and I think that’s an important statement.”
The Israeli leader said his country would prefer that the international community led by the United States stop Iran’s nuclear program.
Netanyahu acknowledged that relations between the United States and Israel have gone through a bumpy patch lately, but he said the overall relationship between the two countries remained “rock solid.”
‘Palestinians will rule themselves’ says Ehud Barak: BBC
Ehud Barak was speaking as Israel commemorated soldeirs killed in action
Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak has said Israel must, eventually, allow the Palestinians to rule themselves.
In an interview with Army Radio he said in the future there would be a separate Palestinian state “whether you like it or not”.
The interview comes as Israelis mark Memorial Day, commemorating Israeli soldiers killed in action.
Mr Barak, a former top ranking soldier, leads the Labour Party which is part of the current government coalition.
“The world isn’t willing to accept, and we won’t change that in 2010, the expectation that Israel will rule another people for decades more,” he said.
We shouldn’t delude ourselves, the growing alienation between us and the United States is not good for Israel
Ehud Barak
“There is no other way, whether you like it or not, than to let them rule themselves,” he said, speaking about the idea of a separate Palestinian state.
‘Alienation’
He also warned of a growing rift between Israel and the United States. He said the government of Benjamin Netanyahu had “done things that didn’t come naturally to it”, like agreeing to a 10 month pause in settlement building and moving toward accepting the principle that there should be two states, one for Palestinians and one for Israelis.
“But we shouldn’t delude ourselves, the growing alienation between us and the United States is not good for Israel,” he said.
Israel’s Memorial Day commemorates some 22,600 soldiers killed in action and the 1,750 Israeli citizens killed in attacks by Palestinian militant groups.
It coincides with the celebration of Israel’s 62nd independence day.
In its 62nd year, Israel is in a diplomatic, security and moral limbo: Haaretz Editorial
The joy attendant on Israel’s Independence Day traditionally focused on emphasizing the growing list of the young state’s achievements and the sense that the country was progressing toward a better future – one of peace, enhanced physical and existential security, integration into the family of nations and the region, and a normalized existence. But the country’s lifespan, which was considered a great virtue in and of itself during the first few decades, has become secondary to a far more important question: Within what dynamic is Israel operating? Is time on Israel’s side? Is it setting goals for itself and working toward their realization? Has it blossomed into maturity? Are its citizens more secure and happier? Does it greet the future with hope?
Unfortunately, Israel’s 62nd Independence Day finds it in a kind of diplomatic, security and moral limbo that is certainly no cause for celebration. It is isolated globally and embroiled in a conflict with the superpower whose friendship and support are vital to its very existence. It is devoid of any diplomatic plan aside from holding onto the territories and afraid of any movement. It wallows in a sense of existential threat that has only grown with time. It seizes on every instance of anti-Semitism, whether real or imagined, as a pretext for continued apathy and passivity. In many respects, it seems that Israel has lost the dynamism and hope of its early decades, and is once again mired in the ghetto mentality against which its founders rebelled.
Granted, Israel is not the sole custodian of its fate. Yet the shortcomings that have cast a pall over the country since its founding – the ethnocentrism, the dominance of the army and religious functionaries, the socioeconomic gaps, the subservience to the settlers, the mystical mode of thinking and the adherence to false beliefs – have, instead of disappearing over time, only gathered steam. The optimistic, pragmatic, peace-seeking spirit that once filled the Israeli people, in tune with the Zionist revolution, which sought to alter Jewish fate, has weakened. And it is not clear whether the current government is deepening the reactionary counterrevolution or merely giving it faithful expression.
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On the eve of Independence Day last year, we wrote in this space: “Stagnation has taken the place of change. Not only does this government, which was formed not long ago, not bode well for hope and change. It champions a policy of regression in a number of areas: the diplomatic front; the Palestinian question; the state’s attitude toward the settlers; issues of state and religion; its handling of Israeli Arabs; and its general behavior toward our Arab neighbors and the world. Whoever clings to the vision of ‘managing the conflict’ and despairs of reaching a solution to the conflict will find himself treading water. Instead of growing and reinventing ourselves, we will be the ones managed by crises.”
It is saddening to discover that all these fears came true this year, to an even greater degree than we expected. When the prime minister’s main message to the country is that we are once again on the verge of a holocaust, and his vision consists primarily of delving into the Bible, nurturing nationalist symbols and clinging to “national heritage sites,” it seems that Hebrew independence has become a caricature of itself. One can only hope that forces within the nation will soon arise to reshape the state and the leadership in a way worthy of us all.
Arab-Israeli row thwarts Med water deal in Barcelona: BBC
Israel and its Arab neighbours disagree over scarce water resources
A row about how to name the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories has scuppered a 43-nation scheme for managing Mediterranean water resources.
The Mediterranean Union conference in Barcelona had hammered out 99% of a draft text, delegates said.
But the deal failed when Israel and Arab countries disagreed over how to describe the Palestinian territories.
Israel objected to “occupied territories”, while “territories under occupation” did not suit the Arab bloc.
The United Nations has warned that almost 300 million people in the Mediterranean region will face water shortages by 2025.
The Mediterranean Union was launched by France during its EU presidency in 2008, to foster co-operation between European states, and countries in the Middle East and North Africa bordering the Mediterranean.
In Barcelona on Tuesday the Union’s secretary-general, Ahmad Masadeh from Jordan, called for urgent action to guarantee access to water for all the region’s residents.
Spain, the conference host, warned that the Mediterranean was prone to cyclical floods and droughts that required a “common strategy for a scarce resource”.
Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have lived under Israeli occupation since 1967. The settlements that Israel has built in the West Bank are home to around 400,000 people and are deemed to be illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
Israel evacuated its settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and withdrew its forces, but Israel and Egypt maintain an economic blockade on the Palestinians living there.
EDITOR: Netanyahu is told: ‘Join the West!’…
Ari Shavit, one of the more committed right=wingers in Haaretz, considers himself to be on the left. This is not unusual in Israel, where a war criminal like Barak is also a left winger… In an impassioned ‘open letter’, he calls on Netanyahu to be ‘a man’ and decide to join the west. This is not about the Palestinians and their rights, or about the brutalities Israel continues to inflict, but about Israeli self-image, and Israel’s image in the world. On reading this denuded text, one is quite unsure about who is worse – Shavit, or Netanyahu…
An open letter to Netanyahu: Act before it’s too late: Haaretz
By Ari Shavit
Dear Mr. Prime Minister,
It isn’t every day a journalist writes an open letter to the prime minister. But today is no ordinary day. Nor is this an ordinary hour. This is the hour when the clock is about to strike midnight. A rare confluence of circumstances has created a situation in which on Israel’s 62nd Independence Day, the state of the Jews is facing a challenge the likes of which it has not known since May 14, 1948. The year between this Independence Day and the next will be a crucial one.
Shortly after you became prime minister, exactly one year ago, I entered your office for a few minutes. Uncharacteristically, you rose to greet me and gave me a hug. Also uncharacteristically, I hugged you back. I told you that as a citizen, a Jew and an Israeli, I wished you success. I told you I thought I knew how heavy the burden laid on your shoulders was. You replied that I don’t know. That even though I think I know, I don’t. That there has never been a time like this one since Israel’s resurrection.
Based on previous conversations, I knew what you were talking about: the nuclear challenge, the missile challenge, the delegitimization challenge. The hair-raising conjunction of an existential threat from the east, a strategic threat from the north and a threat of abandonment from the west. The danger of a war unlike any we have had before. The danger of Israel’s allies not standing at its side as they did in the past. And the sense of isolation. The sense of siege. The sense that once again, we must meet our fate alone.
You are a hated individual, Mr. Prime Minister. The president of the United States hates you. The secretary of state hates you. Some Arab leaders hate you. Public opinion in the West hates you. The leader of the opposition hates you. My colleagues hate you, my friends hate you, my social milieu hates you.
But in the 14 years I have known you, I have never shared this hatred. Time after time, I have come out against this hatred. I thought that despite your shortcomings and flaws, you were not unworthy. I thought that despite the vast differences in our worldviews, there was virtue in you. I believed that in the end, when the moment of truth came, you would have the vision necessary to create the correct synthesis between the right’s truth and the left’s truth. Between the world of your father, from which you came, and the world of the reality in which you must maneuver. Between the feeling that Israel is a fortress, and the understanding that this generation’s mission is to bring Israel out into the wider world.
On June 14, 2009, you proved that you indeed have this synthesis in you. You spoke approximately 2,000 words in Bar-Ilan University’s auditorium. But of those 2,000, only seven or eight were of historic significance: a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside a Jewish Israel. It was obvious you had a hard time speaking those words. They were pulled from your mouth in agony. But on that evening at Bar-Ilan, the statesman in you overcame the politician. The sober Herzlian overcame the anachronistic nationalist.
About an hour after the speech ended, when I spoke with you on the phone, it was possible to hear relief in your voice. You knew that at long last, you had done the right thing. You knew that very belatedly, you had overcome yourself. You knew that henceforth, you were a Zionist, centrist leader who seeks a secure peace. Who aimed to divide the land in order to fortify the state. Who believed that in order to strengthen Israel and ensure its future, we must rectify the colossal historic mistake we made in the West Bank.
Mr. Prime Minister, something very bad has happened since that evening. Perhaps the blame lies with U.S. President Barack Obama: His ceaseless, unbalanced and unfair pressure on you caused you to freeze in place. Perhaps the blame lies with the international community: Its outrageous attitude toward Israel caused you to feel besieged. Perhaps the blame lies with opposition leader Tzipi Livni: Her cynical behavior shackled you with iron chains to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who are hobbling you.
Yet even if others are to blame, the responsibility is yours. You are the one sitting at that wooden desk in that wood-paneled room where our fate is decided. Therefore, you are the one responsible for the fact that a year after your election, Israel is still mired in the toxic swamp of the occupation into which it sank 43 years ago. You are responsible for the fact that we are sinking even deeper into the mud.
Granted, you suspended construction in the settlements. Granted, you made every effort to persuade Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to enter negotiations. At a time when the Palestinians did not lift a finger, you made one concession after another. But the political game you played was lost from the outset. What is now clear to everyone was clear from the start: There is no Palestinian partner for true peace. There isn’t even a reliable Palestinian partner for partitioning the land.
Yet the fact that the Palestinians are not acting like a mature nation does not give us the right to act like them. Since we are the ones sinking in the mud, we are the ones who must do something. It is Israel that must break through the noose tightening around its neck.
Mr. Prime Minister, here are the basic facts: The grace period granted the Jewish state by Auschwitz and Treblinka is ending. The generation that knew the Holocaust has left the stage. The generation that remembers the Holocaust is disappearing. What shapes the world’s perception of Israel today is not the crematoria, but the checkpoints. Not the trains, but the settlements. As a result, even when we are right, they do not listen to us. Even when we are persecuted, they pay us no heed. The wind is blowing against us.
The zeitgeist of the 21st century threatens to put an end to Zionism. No one knows better than you that even superpowers cannot resist the spirit of the times. And certainly not small, fragile states like Israel.
Therefore, the question now is not who brought us to this pass – the right or the left. The question is not who brought the greater disaster down upon us – the right or the left. The question is what should be done to bring about an immediate change in Israel’s position in the world. What should be done so that the storm of history does not topple the Zionist project.
The possibilities are known: Offer the Syrians the Golan Heights in exchange for ending its alliance with Iran. Offer Abbas a state in provisional borders. Initiate a second limited disengagement. Transfer territory into the hands of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, to enable him to build a sane Palestinian state. Reach an agreement with the international community on an outline for partitioning the land into two nation-states.
Each of these five options entails high risks. Each of these options will exact a high political price. You are liable to be booted out of office. But if you do not adopt at least one of these five proposals, there is no point to your tenure in office. Your government will be remembered as the government under which Israel became a leper state, poised on the brink of destruction.
The cards you received when you came into office were the worst possible: Iran on the brink of nuclear weapons, Hezbollah at unprecedented strength, Israel shunned by the world, an unfriendly administration in Washington and a dysfunctional government in Jerusalem. Indeed, earth scorched to ash.
But you did not get to where you are in order to bewail your bitter fate. Even with the bad hand of cards you were dealt, you must win. On the scorched earth you inherited, you must make hope blossom. This is what there is. And you have to make the best of it. You have to grow into the greatness you promised.
The challenge of 2010 is a monumental challenge. On one level, it resembles Chaim Weizmann’s challenge in securing the Balfour declaration: As in 1917, today, too, Zionism must mobilize widespread, solid international support for the Jewish state’s right to exist. On another level, it resembles David Ben-Gurion’s challenge at the inception of the state: As in 1947, today, too, the leadership must prepare the nation for almost inconceivably difficult scenarios. On a third level, it resembles the Dimona challenge faced by Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol and Shimon Peres: As in 1966-1967, the national leadership must give Israel’s existence a strong, unshakable envelope of protection.
But in order to meet this multidimensional challenge, Israel needs a courageous alliance with the Western powers. In order withstand what is to come, Israel must once again become an inalienable part of the West. And the West is not prepared to accept Israel as an occupying state. Therefore, in order to save our home, is necessary to act at once to end the occupation. It is essential to effect an immediate and sharp change in diplomatic direction.
Mr. Prime Minister, the relationship between us has never been personal. We are not friends. You have never been in my home; I have never been in yours for any purpose except professional. We never stole horses together. We never planned a maneuver together. You have always known you would not receive immunity from me. I have always known you would never bribe me with journalistic scoops.
But I did give you a chance. Time after time after time, I gave you a chance. I saw the patriot in you. I saw the abilities you had. I also saw the human being that you try to hide. But time has run out, Benjamin Netanyahu. The time is now. Therefore, I decided to take the unusual step of writing you this unusual letter.
I myself am of no importance, of course. But I do believe that what I wrote is what many Israelis would like to tell you on this 62nd Independence Day. Do not betray them. Do not betray yourself. You are the man of this historic hour. Be a man.
This Independence Day, Israel still turning its back on the Arab peace plan: Haaretz
By Akiva Eldar
“If I am you and you are me, I am not me and you are not you”
– The Kotzker Rebbe.
This was one of our most independent years ever. Completely independently, we decided to welcome the vice president of the United States with an announcement of new construction in East Jerusalem; the deputy foreign minister independently humiliated the Turkish ambassador; the foreign minister independently boycotted the president of Brazil; the Knesset independently sabotaged relations with the European Union via legislation that would limit its donations to human rights groups; the government independently decided to bait the Muslim world by declaring holy sites in the occupied territories as “heritage sites.”
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The extremists who gathered on Massada also decided independently, some 2,000 years ago, to commit suicide. Since then, the term “independence” has acquired a meaning more complex than an act or decision by an individual or group that takes no account of others or of the environment. In modern Western society, independence is not considered the freedom to do whatever one wishes. Responsible governments, like adult people, must find the right balance between the particular and the global. The policies they shape reflect a compromise between the interests of their own community and the interests of the international and regional community.
Sixty-two years after Israel declared independence, its right-wing government is entitled to decide that the time has come to annex Ariel, Ma’aleh Adumim and the Jordan Valley – just as the Labor government did 43 years ago, when it decided to annex a sizable territory to Jerusalem. This year, too, Israeli citizens are entitled to celebrate Jerusalem Day in the only capital in the world that hosts not a single embassy. Benjamin Netanyahu can even propose that U.S. President Barack Obama append his list of questions to the Wye Agreement, the road map and the Annapolis Declaration. After all, Israel is an independent country.
The winning phrase of the 62nd year of Israel’s independence is undoubtedly the angry response Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon would make to reports that the Obama administration intends to present its own peace plan. The man who was Israel’s ambassador to Washington said that by doing so, the U.S. would become a “party to the conflict.” In other words, today, the U.S. is not a “party to the conflict.” The implication is that in order to respect Israeli independence, the American administration is required to forever put up with the Israeli occupation and ignore the settlements. The U.S. is a “party to the conflict” only when Israel requires an airlift of arms, sanctions against Iran or a veto of unpleasant resolutions at the United Nations.
Shortly after the previous independence day, it seemed that Netanyahu had struck the right balance on how the conflict should be resolved between the particularist worldview he shares with most members of his government and the positions of the world’s major powers. Moreover, it appeared that the support he expressed in his speech at Bar-Ilan University for a solution of two states for two peoples reflected recognition of the fact that Israel’s independence will not be complete until the Palestinians receive their own independent state.
Instead, the Netanyahu government has implemented the views of the majority of independent Israel’s Knesset, which supports the policy of settlements in the West Bank and deepening the Jewish hold on East Jerusalem. To fend off pressure from abroad, Netanyahu has once again transformed the Jewish Diaspora into a defensive army against the might of the nations of the world. The leader of “independent” Israel has transformed Jewish activists into “parties to the conflict” between his government and the American administration (we, of course, are allowed to meddle in American politics).
In its 62nd year of independence, as it has every year since March 2002, Israel is taking advantage of its independence to turn its back on the Arab Peace Initiative. This year, too, it is ignoring a plan that offers it normalization in return for a withdrawal from the occupied territories and a just and agreed resolution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194.
What would the fathers of Zionism have said had the Arabs (with the support of all Muslim countries) presented them with such a proposal 62 years ago? And what significance do the wonderful words of the Declaration of Independence have today: “We extend our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.”
It is true that we are entitled to replace the hand extended in peace and neighborliness with a hand that digs the foundations for more outposts and more graves. After all, we are independent. Happy Holiday.
Israel’s manufactured outrage over a presidential palace: The Electronic Intifada
Stephen Maher, 15 April 2010
Israel has gone out of its way in recent months to goad the Palestinians into confrontation. (Anne Paq/ActiveStills)
The headlines were ablaze last week after the Palestinian Authority (PA) announced that it would build the new presidential compound on a street named after Yahya Ayyash. Ayyash, whose nickname was “The Engineer,” was a Hamas military commander who orchestrated several attacks against Israeli civilian targets in the mid-1990s in response to the 1994 massacre of Palestinian worshipers at Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque by an Israeli-American settler named Baruch Goldstein. In 1996, Ayyash was assassinated by Israel in Gaza City.
“This is a shocking incitement to terrorism by the Palestinian Authority,” boomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement. “Arch-terrorist Ayyash,” as Netanyahu called him, had “murdered hundreds of innocent Israeli men, women and children,” and so building the presidential compound on this street was an act of “wild incitement by the Palestinians for terror and against peace.” The United States reacted with strong support for the Israeli position. “Honoring terrorists who have murdered innocent civilians, either by official statements or by the dedication of public places, hurts peace efforts and must end,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.
The hysterical reaction of the Israeli government, and US support for it, is hardly surprising. Of note however is the double-standard exhibited by Israel and its patron, the US. The assumption throughout is that Israel’s actions are just, defensive and in pursuit of peace for all. Conversely, Palestinian actions are aggressive and evil, and worthy of worldwide condemnation. The strength of this narrative allows the US and Israeli governments to make the construction of a new government building on a street whose name Israel disproves of into a major incident, worthy of outrage and international condemnation, while grotesque Israeli crimes and far more flagrant provocations go unquestioned.
A Jerusalem Post editorial headlined “Glorifying Terrorism” exemplifies this point. The “inescapable message is that such crimes are the PA’s ideal,” the editorial stated, since it “acclaims malevolence instead of denouncing it.” The Jerusalem Post declared that the act was “an affront to the very notion of coexistence,” and yet another example of the PA’s “consistent policy” of “deception” and “insincerity” which has undermined “the Oslo promise.” “Our misfortune,” The Jerusalem Post lamented, “is that the world’s outrage is very selective and very misplaced.”
That such manufactured outrage could be delivered without a hint of irony is startling in light of recent events. This includes a series of internationally-condemned deliberate Israeli provocations — supported by Washington — in reaction to the UN-commissioned Goldstone report.
Investigated and published in the wake of Israel’s invasion of Gaza last winter, the Goldstone report documents the deliberate targeting of civilians, including the “systematically reckless” use of white phosphorous, showering densely-populated and impoverished refugee camps with the burning chemical, resulting in horrific burns and death. It also describes deliberate Israeli attacks on mosques, hospitals, schools, ambulances, UN facilities and indiscriminate bombardment of crowded slums. “You feel like an infantile little kid with a magnifying glass looking at ants, burning them,” one Israeli soldier said of the attack, which killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and left thousands more injured, mutilated and homeless.
In a shocking example of “acclaiming malevolence instead of denouncing it,” the US and Israel have attacked the report relentlessly and attempted to marginalize it, and Israel has refused to even conduct a credible investigation into its findings. While concerned citizens in cities around the world took to the streets to express their anger at the horrific atrocities documented in the report, the US called it “unbalanced” and “flawed” and moved to block its consideration at the UN, promising to veto any action in the Security Council if necessary. Likewise, Israeli President Shimon Peres referred to the report as “a mockery.” The US and Israel then pressured PA President Mahmoud Abbas to defer action on the report in the General Assembly (though overwhelming popular pressure later forced him to reverse that position).
Israel has gone out of its way in recent months to goad the Palestinians into confrontation, including naming two places deep in the West Bank “Israeli Heritage Sites,” sparking days of protests. Israel has also escalated its provocations around the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam. Along with the Dome of the Rock, the mosque sits inside the Haram al-Sharif, which is known as the Temple Mount to Jews. In addition to repeatedly deploying soldiers around the compound, Israel has announced that it will expand the Jewish prayer area at the Western Wall, despite a Jerusalem court’s decision that such a move would violate the status quo agreement that has governed Jerusalem’s holy sites since Israel seized the Old City in the June 1967 War.
A further escalation was the reopening of the “Hurva,” a Jewish synagogue just a few hundred meters from the al-Aqsa Mosque. With growing numbers of Jewish fundamentalists insisting that they be allowed to pray inside the Haram al-Sharif, many of whom advocate demolishing the al-Aqsa Mosque and building a third Jewish temple in its place, the reopening was universally condemned in the Muslim and Arab world. It was also reported in the Israeli press that according to a 300-year-old rabbinical prophecy, the reopening of the synagogue foretold the construction of the third temple in the place now occupied by the al-Aqsa Mosque. Yet when Palestinian leaders called for a “day of rage” in response to these provocations, the US sharply criticized them for overreacting. Yet only weeks later, Israel opened another synagogue in East Jerusalem 100 meters closer to the Haram, and Washington was silent.
Despite all this, the Israeli and American governments jointly denounce the Palestinians’ choice of which street on which to construct a new presidential palace as “wild incitement.” Are the Palestinians allowed to be outraged when Israel names streets, every inch of which lie on land that was taken from them, after the commanders that masterminded and executed the cleansing of 70 percent of Palestinian Arabs in 1948? What would the consequences be if Mahmoud Abbas started referring to Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who presided over a campaign that “punished and terrorized” the 1.5 million residents of Gaza last winter as an “arch-terrorist”?
Given recent Israeli provocations, and the American response to them, the operative principle is clear: the Israelis are justly defending their democracy, while the Palestinians are savage, uncompromising terrorists. Those fighting for justice and peace in the Middle East must relentlessly confront this narrative, spreading truth and awareness, the only basis on which the conflict can finally come to an end.
Stephen Maher is an MA candidate at American University School of International Service who has lived in the West Bank, and is currently writing his Masters’ thesis, “The New Nakba: Oslo and the End of Palestine,” on the Israel-Palestine conflict. His work has appeared in Extra!, The Electronic Intifada, ZNet and other publications. His blog is www.rationalmanifesto.blogspot.com.
No-one saw, no-one heard: 300 Palestinian olive trees uprooted: Haaretz
Some 300 olive trees belonging to Palestinians were uprooted on the night between Monday and Tuesday in groves near the village of Mihmas, close to the illegal outpost of Migron. Mihmas residents blamed settlers for the attack and said this was the third time the settlers had uprooted trees in the area.
Damaged live saplings could be seen littering the ground. Some were ripped out of the soil, and other had their slim trunks broken. The destruction appeared to have been well-organized, as trees were uprooted across a wide swathe and that required the cooperation of at least several people. The assailants apparently did not resort to saws of axes, but used their bare hands.
The owners of the trees told Haaretz that although the village was not involved in any violent confrontations with the settlers, the latter were doing everything they could to disturb village life. The deputy mayor of the village, Mohammed Al Haj (Abu Hussein) told Haaretz that in May 2008, trees were uprooted in plots close to Route 60, and in October 2009, more damage was done to local olive groves. The villagers filed complaints with the police and the Civil Administration.
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The Judea and Samaria police confirmed that a complaint had been filed. The Yesh Din human rights organization told Haaretz that very few investigations of the uprooting of trees have resulted in indictments.
An Israel Defense Forces patrol passes routinely by the village, and Abu Hussein said that if the army guarded the villagers like it guards the settlers, “none of it would have happened.”
One of the grove owners who had trees damaged in the latest incident, Ali Aaref Mohammed, said some of the villagers owned groves on the other side of Route 60, close to Migron. “Every time we go there to take care of the trees, the settlers come down and start a confrontation. They’re not letting us near the trees,” he said. The financial loss to the grove owners is immense, he said. Another villager, Amran Ali Asaeid, said the damage amounted to thousands of dollars.
Abu Hussein said that every time the settlers uproot trees, the villagers will plant more. “If they uproot five acres of trees, we’ll plant six,” he said. “They won’t break us.”
EDITOR: Barak the Man of Peace…
There are few Israeli politicians more culpable than Ehud Barak, the Killing Squad commander that becamea politician, but never changed his outlook, and looks at the Palestinians through the gunsight, is again pretending to wish to end the occupation, which he has done all he could to extend and continue… But it sounds good in Washington.
Barak urges end to occupation: Al Jazeera Online
Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, has said that his country must recognise that the world will not put up with decades more of Israeli rule over the Palestinian people.
Speaking to Israel Radio on Israel’s Memorial Day on Monday, Barak acknowledged that there was no way forward in negotiations with the Palestinians other than to meet their aspirations for a state of their own.
“The world is not willing to accept – and we will not change that in 2010 – the expectation that Israel will rule another people for decades more,” he said.
“It is something that does not exist anywhere else in the world.
“There is no other way, whether you like it or not, than to let them [the Palestinians] rule themselves.”
Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been stalled since Israeli forces launched a 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip in December 2008.
‘Alienation’
Barak heads the Labour Party, the most moderate member of the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and it was not clear if his remarks were his personal opinion or reflecting a changing attitude within the government.
He said that Netanyahu’s government had “done things that did not come naturally to it”, such as adopting the vision of two states for two peoples and curtailing settlement construction.
“But we also should not delude ourselves. The growing alienation between us and the United States is not good for the state of Israel,” he said.
Washington and its long-time ally have been at odds in recent months over Israel’s continuing settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Barack Obama, the US president, recently issued a pessimistic assessment of peacemaking prospects, saying that his country could not force its will on the Israelis and Palestinians if they were not interested in making compromises.
The Israeli defence minister said that the way to narrow the gap with the US was to embark on a diplomatic initiative “that does not shy from dealing with all the core issues” dividing Israelis and Palestinians.
Chief among these are the status of Jerusalem, final borders and a solution for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Middle East war.
Meanwhile, in an interview Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America”, Netanyahu south to minimise differences with the US and said he would not accept Palestinian demands that Israel stop building in predominantly-Arab East Jerusalem.
He said that the US and Israel “have some outstanding issues. We are trying to resolve them through diplomatic channels in the best way that we can”.
Later on Monday, Netanyahu told the audience at the national cemetery that Israel is eager for peace, but is ready to confront its enemies.
“We extend one hand in peace to all our neighbours who wish for peace. Our other hand grasps the sword of David in order to defend our people against those who seek to kill us,” he said.
Israel’s Memorial Day, which is dedicated to the nearly 23,000 fallen soldiers and civilian victims of attacks, is observed with a two-minute nationwide siren when people stand at attention, traffic is halted and everyday activities come briefly to a standstill.
At sundown on Monday, the sombre Memorial Day will switch to Israel’s 62nd Independence Day celebrations.
What would happen if Palestinians unilaterally declared statehood?: Haaretz
By Shlomo Avineri
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad recently announced that his government intends to declare an independent Palestinian state in the summer of 2011, even if no agreement is reached with Israel. This statement obviously generated unease in Israel, and not only among supporters of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government – especially as it was accompanied by hints that European countries, and even the European Union itself, would recognize such a unilateral declaration of independence.
The unease and the concomitant apprehensions are understandable, but they may well be fundamentally misplaced. After all, anyone with eyes in his head, unless he is a prisoner of empty slogans or committed to political correctness, must admit that even if negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians resume, the prospects for an agreement are nil. And this is not due solely to the positions of the Netanyahu government: Its predecessor, led by Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni, negotiated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for two whole years and made him very generous offers, but still never managed to reach an agreement.
The reasons are clear: On the core issues – borders, Jerusalem, refugees – the gaps between even the most moderate positions on both sides are so wide that no rhetoric, and no assertive American involvement, is capable of bridging them. Anyone who thinks otherwise is indulging in pipe dreams.
Therefore, we should seriously consider what would happen if the Palestinians were indeed to declare a state and win relatively broad international recognition. First of all, it is clear that Israel would announce that this unilateral declaration nullifies all prior agreements between it and the Palestinians, from Oslo on; that it is released from all the obligations it has undertaken, including the economic ones; and that it will henceforth relate to the areas under Palestinian control as foreign territory. It is also clear that all Israeli obligations arising from its military control of the territories would be abrogated under both Israeli and international law. Not everyone would accept this argument, but it would not be possible to ignore it.
A unilateral Palestinian declaration would not change the situation on the ground. By itself, such a declaration could not bring about the evacuation of the settlements, regardless of whether the Palestinians say they accept the settlers as citizens of their state or continue to claim that the settlements are illegal. The same of course goes for East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians would presumably say they see as their capital.
What a unilateral declaration of independence would generate, however, is a fundamental change in the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Instead of a dispute between Israeli occupiers and occupied Palestinians, it would become a dispute between two states. An independent Palestine would undoubtedly claim that Israel is occupying its territories, but so does Syria.
Moreover, if Palestine were independent, Israel would have no responsibility for the Gaza Strip, and the Israel-Gaza border would become an international border like that between Egypt and Gaza. Hence Israel would not be obligated, inter alia, to allow passage between its territory and Palestinian territory, just as there is no such passage between Israel and Syria.
Of course the matter is not that simple, but any measure that would make the Israeli-Palestinian dispute more “normal” – that is to say, a dispute between states – would also advance the prospect for negotiations: It would be far easier to conduct negotiations on borders, the future of the settlements, territorial exchanges, Jerusalem and other issues between states.
One must hope that this scenario does not deter members of the Palestinian leadership and make them change their minds. On the contrary, they should take their destiny into their own hands and stand up to Israel as a full-fledged state. In so doing, they would free both themselves and us of the occupation and do what they have not managed to do since 1948, and what we have not managed to do since 1967. This is the only way to realize the vision of two states for two peoples.
Did Banned Media Report Foretell of Gaza War Crimes?: Jonathan Cook
Publish investigation, Israeli MP demands
by Jonathan Cook, April 15, 2010
An Arab member of the Israeli parliament is demanding that a newspaper be allowed to publish an investigative report that was suppressed days before Israel attacked Gaza in winter 2008.
The investigation by Uri Blau, who has been in hiding since December to avoid arrest, concerned Israeli preparations for the impending assault on Gaza, known as Operation Cast Lead.
In a highly unusual move, according to reports in the Israeli media, the army ordered the Haaretz newspaper to destroy all copies of an edition that included Mr Blau’s investigation after it had already gone to press and been passed by the military censor. The article was never republished.
Mr Blau has gone underground in London after the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, demanded he return to Israel to hand back hundreds of classified documents they claim are in his possession and to reveal his sources.
He published several additional reports for Haaretz in 2008 and 2009 that severely embarrassed senior military commanders by showing they had issued orders that intentionally violated court rulings, including to execute Palestinians who could be safely apprehended.
Haneen Zoubi, an MP who previously headed an Israeli media-monitoring organization, said it was “outrageous” that the suppressed report was still secret so long after the Gaza attack. She is to table a parliamentary question to Ehud Barak, the defense minister, today demanding to know why the army suppressed the article and what is preventing its publication now. Mr Barak must respond within 21 days.
She said publication of the article was important both because Israel had been widely criticized for killing many hundreds of civilians in its three-week assault on Gaza, and because subsequent reports suggested that Israeli commanders sought legal advice months before the operation to manipulate the accepted definitions of international law to make it easier to target civilians.
“There must be at least a strong suspicion that Mr Blau’s article contains vital information, based on military documentation, warning of Israeli army intentions to commit war crimes,” she said in an interview.
“If so, then there is a public duty on Haaretz to publish the article. If not, then there is no reason for the minister to prevent publication after all this time.”
Ms Zoubi’s call yesterday followed mounting public criticism of Haaretz for supporting Mr Blau by advising him to stay in hiding and continuing to pay his salary. In chat forums and talkback columns, the reporter has been widely denounced as a traitor. Several MPs have called for Haaretz to be closed down or boycotted.
A Haaretz spokeswoman refused to comment, but a journalist there said a “fortress mentality” had developed at the newspaper. “We’ve all been told not to talk to anyone about the case,” he said. “There’s absolute paranoia that the paper is going to be made to suffer because of the Blau case.”
Amal Jamal, a professor at Tel Aviv University who teaches a media course, said he was concerned with the timing of the Shin Bet’s campaign against Mr Blau. He observed that they began interviewing the reporter about his sources and documents last summer as publication neared of the Goldstone report, commissioned by the United Nations and which embarrassed Israel by alleging it had perpetrated war crimes in Gaza.
“The goal in this case appears to be not only to intimidate journalists but also to delegitimize certain kinds of investigations concerning security issues, given the new climate of sensitivity in Israel following the Goldstone report.”
He added that Mr Blau, who had quickly acquired a reputation as Israel’s best investigative reporter, was “probably finished” as a journalist in Israel.
Shraga Elam, an award-winning Israeli reporter, said Mr Blau’s suppressed article might also have revealed the aims of a widely mentioned but unspecified “third phase” of the Gaza attack, following the initial air strikes and a limited ground invasion, that was not implemented.
He suspected the plans involved pushing some of Gaza’s population into Egypt under cover of a more extensive ground invasion. The plan had been foiled, he believed, because Hamas offered little resistance and Egypt refused to open the border.
On Monday, an MP with the centrist Kadima Party, Yulia Shamal-Berkovich, called for Haaretz to be closed down, backing a similar demand from fellow MP Michael Ben-Ari, of the right-wing National Union.
She accused Haaretz management of having “chosen to hide” over the case and blamed it for advising Mr Blau to remain abroad. She said the newspaper “must make sure the materials that are in his possession are returned. If Haaretz fails to do so, its newspaper licence should be revoked without delay.”
Another Kadima MP, Yisrael Hasson, a former deputy head of the Shin Bet, this week urged Haaretz readers to boycott the newspaper until Mr Blau was fired.
A petition calling on the Shin Bet to end its threat to charge Mr Blau with espionage has attracted the signatures of several prominent journalists in Israel.
“We believe the Blau case is unique and are concerned this unique case will create a dangerous precedent,” their letter states. “Until now, prosecution authorities have not sought to try reporters for the offense of holding classified information, an offense most of us are guilty of in one way or another.”
A group of Israeli human rights organizations is due to submit a letter this week to the government demanding that the investigation concentrate on lawbreaking by the army rather the “character assassination” of Mr Blau and his sources.
Yesterday, the supreme court tightened restrictions on Anat Kamm, one of Mr Blau’s main informants, who has been under house arrest since December for copying up to 2,000 military documents while she was a soldier. She is accused of espionage with intent to harm the state, a charge that carries a tariff of 25 years in jail.
The papers copied by Ms Kamm, 23, included military orders that violated court rulings and justified law-breaking by soldiers.
Judge Ayala Procaccia said: “The acts attributed to the respondent point to a deep internal distorted perception of a soldier’s duties to the military system he or she is required to serve, and a serious perversion from the basic responsibility that a citizen owes the state to which he or she belongs.”
Ms Kamm, the court decided, must not leave her apartment and must be watched by a close relative at all times.
Media coverage of the case in Israel has been largely hostile to both Ms Kamm and Mr Blau. Gideon Levy observed in Haaretz today: “The real betrayal has been that of the journalists, who have betrayed their profession – journalists who take sides with the security apparatus against colleagues who are doing their job bringing light to the dark.”
Calling Israel “a Shin Bet state”, Mr Levy added: “If it depended on public opinion, Kamm and Blau would be executed and Haaretz would be shut down on the spot.”
A shorter version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.
EDITOR: The PA search for Justice…
The PA was not interested in the death of 1400 Palestinians, and tried to sabotage the UN report about the Gaza atrocities, as you amy remember. Now they demand the probe over one Plaestinian dead man.
Probe death of Palestinian prisoner in Israel jail, PA says: Haaretz
The Palestinian Authority on Saturday called on Israel to investigate the death of a Palestinian prisoner in a jail in southern Israel.
Issa Qaraqi, minister of prisoner affairs in the Western-backed government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said 27 year-old Raed Abu Hammad died on Friday in solitary confinement.
An Israel Prison Service spokesman said Hammad, who was about half-way through a ten year sentence for attempted murder, was found dead on the floor of his cell. Hammad was suffering from medical conditions and the Prison Service was checking the cause of his death, the spokesman said.
“We are demanding an investigation and to perform an autopsy to find out why he died,” Qaraqi said. “Israel is fully responsible for the death of the prisoner because he was sick and Israel and the doctors in the prison authority knew that.”
About 7,000 Palestinians are held in Israeli jails. Qaraqi said 19 Palestinians have died in jail in the last decade
Rashid Khalidi: Bad Faith in the Holy City: IOA/Foreign Affairs
By Rashid Khalidi, Foreign Affairs – 15 April 2010
How Israel’s Jerusalem Policy Imperils the Peace Process
The Israeli government’s announcement in March that it would further expand East Jerusalem settlements was just the latest in a decades-old series of calculated slights to the United States.
Since 1967, virtually every time a U.S. envoy has arrived to discuss the fate of the West Bank or Gaza, the Israeli government of the day has bluntly shown who is really boss, usually with a carefully timed unilateral expansion of Israel’s presence in the occupied territories. Since the 1970s, Israel has illegally settled close to half a million of its citizens in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, not to mention building a barrier mainly inside the West Bank on Arab-owned land that is longer and taller than the Berlin Wall.
Given that for a year the Obama administration has sought a settlement freeze in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, it is impossible to interpret the latest announcement of settlement expansion in the city as anything but a provocation. (The alternative explanation — that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot control his own government — cannot be taken seriously.) As if on cue, an obedient majority in Congress issued a letter demanding that there be no public discussion of U.S.-Israeli differences. This, however, has not ended the controversy.
Although this episode has revealed that some things never change, it has been unusual in the sense that U.S. administrations usually take great care to avoid offending the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (known as AIPAC). Yet, this year, senior officials suggested that unconditional U.S. support for Israel, far from serving U.S. national interests, may in fact jeopardize them. The Israeli paper Yediot Ahronot reported that Vice President Joe Biden said as much to Netanyahu in March; the message was reiterated in a statement by Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and in the congressional testimony of the head of the United States Central Command, General David Petraeus, who argued that “Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples [in the region].”
This is nothing new. It has been true at least since the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the first Gulf War, when the last shred of strategic justification for extensive U.S. support for Israel disappeared. After 1991, as the U.S. military presence grew in the Middle East, Washington’s overt bias toward Israel became a growing liability for the United States.
The intense media coverage of the recent diplomatic crisis has largely obscured what is actually happening in East Jerusalem, where the controversy began. As usual, given the media’s obsession with U.S. and Israeli perspectives, there were few, if any, Palestinian voices to point out precisely what each new housing unit, each fresh expulsion of Arabs from their homes, and each new strategic colony in East Jerusalem means for the 200,000 Arabs who live in the city, for the future status of Jerusalem, and for the possibility of a resolution to this conflict.
One telling problem was the media’s widespread use of the Israeli terms “disputed” and “neighborhoods” to describe East Jerusalem’s status and the illegal Jewish-only settlements proliferating there. There is nothing disputed about East Jerusalem’s status under international law as understood by every country besides Israel: it is universally considered occupied territory. Similarly, Israeli settlements in the parts of the city that lie across the Green Line are in clear contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying power from moving its own population into occupied territory.
Jerusalem is the slated location for the capital of an independent Palestinian state, and this is not a matter to be haggled over as far as the Palestinians and Arab and Islamic leaders are concerned. At least 40 generations of leading figures in Palestine’s and the Islamic world’s political, military, religious, and intellectual history — ranging from generals in Saladin’s armies and Sufi saints to great scholars and distinguished judges — are buried in the ancient Mamilla cemetery, located in present-day West Jerusalem. Part of this great historic landmark is now being excavated in order to pave way for a “Museum of Tolerance” to be built by the Los Angeles–based Simon Wiesenthal Center, despite the protests of the families of those buried there and of many leading Israeli academics and organizations. Its completion would erase not only part of Jerusalem’s Palestinian and Islamic heritage but also part of the heritage of all mankind that makes this city so important to the entire world.
Today, Jerusalem is the geographic center and communications hub of the West Bank. By walling the city off from its Arab hinterland and building fortresslike settlements in concentric rings around the city — and, increasingly, within its remaining Arab neighborhoods — Israel has succeeded in fragmenting and isolating Arab population centers within the city. These settlements also hinder the flow of north-south traffic through the West Bank, leaving Israel as the master of a terrain speckled with tiny Bantustan-esque islands of Palestinians.
One reason Israel continues to build settlements is that, according to the so-called Clinton parameters laid down in 2000, a final Israeli-Palestinian agreement would grant sovereignty over Jewish-occupied areas to Israel, and Palestinian-inhabited areas to the new Palestinian state. Indeed, well over a decade of failed negotiations have only led to an acceleration of Israel’s land grab in the Holy City. Israeli planners have spent this time pushing settlers into heavily Arab-inhabited areas of the city, such as Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, and Abu Dis, in order to create fresh “facts on the ground” — a tactic used by the Zionist movement for over a century in order to obtain control over more and more of Palestine.
The Obama administration’s more robust reiteration of longstanding U.S. positions on settlement, occupation, and East Jerusalem has made the current Israeli government extremely uncomfortable. Moreover, these days, groups that unconditionally support Netanyahu’s policies, such as AIPAC, no longer have the following that they like to claim they do. It is worth noting that in addition to the increasingly vocal segments of the U.S. Jewish community willing to question such Israeli policies, 78 percent of Jewish voters supported Barack Obama in 2008 despite establishment Jewish groups’ clear preference for Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his wholesale support of the Likud Party’s agenda.
It is exceedingly important today that the U.S. government emphasize such bedrock principles as the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force, the illegality of settlement in all occupied territories, and the legally invalid nature of “actions taken by Israel, the occupying power, which purport to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem,” in the words of a June 1980 Security Council resolution. These are not simply elements of any just and lasting future resolution of the conflict; they are also pillars of a world order that rejects the law of the jungle and is not beholden to the distortions of a slick public relations machine. They are relevant whether or not the two sides are on the cusp of substantial final-status negotiations that address the issue of Jerusalem.
Many obstacles are keeping Israelis and Palestinians from reaching a final-status agreement. First among them is the U.S. government’s reluctance to allow Fatah and Hamas to establish a consensus political platform and produce a coalition government that can negotiate effectively. It is foolish to expect a weak and divided Palestinian polity to deliver a final settlement or stand by it. Ultimately, the Palestinians must resolve their own debilitating internal problems themselves, but the United States must cease placing diplomatic and legal obstacles in the way of such political reconciliation. Without it, there can be neither successful negotiations nor an agreement that has the slightest chance of obtaining legitimacy in the eyes of a majority of the Palestinian people.
When it comes to Jerusalem, a final-status negotiation that begins from the status quo — the result of successive Israeli governments establishing settlements as faits accomplis — will be unacceptable to any Palestinian leader. Even a return to the status quo ante of 2000 is insufficient, given Israel’s aggressive reshaping of Jerusalem’s surface and subterranean landscape since the 1980s. One need only walk through the streets of Jerusalem with a sense of what they once looked like to understand how takeovers of key buildings; strategically placed new housing developments, roads, and infrastructure; extensive archeological excavations; and the digging of a vast network of tunnels under and around the Old City were intended to fragment Arab East Jerusalem and permanently incorporate it into Israel.
In the end, only a negotiation in which all of Jerusalem is placed on the table will suffice. This is not only the right thing to do; such a posture is rooted in a solemn U.S. obligation made in the all but forgotten U.S. letter of assurances to the Palestinian delegation issued on October 18, 1991, at the outset of the Madrid-Washington-Oslo sequence of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. In it, the U.S. government declared that nothing should be done by either side that would “be prejudicial . . . to the outcome of the negotiations,” notably “unilateral acts that would exacerbate local tensions or make negotiations more difficult or preempt their final outcome.” If these words meant anything, they meant that the United States would oppose any act seeking to unilaterally resolve issues slated for discussion during final-status negotiations.
The expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem (described in the 1991 letter as “an obstacle to peace”) and the separation of the city from its Arab hinterland fit this category. Once the United States issued the letter, the Palestinian delegations to the 1991-93 Madrid and Washington negotiations, to which I was an adviser, insisted that keeping with the letter’s spirit meant resolutely opposing such incendiary acts. We argued that there was no point to negotiations if unilateral and irreversible Israeli actions were deciding the fate of the very lands, buildings, and hilltops at issue. And what was a letter of assurances worth if the U.S. government would not or could not give it teeth?
Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush failed to prevent settlement expansion and the closure and encirclement of East Jerusalem. In consequence, none of them resolved the issue of Jerusalem, and every one left the situation far more fraught than it had been when he entered office.
The biggest obstacle the Obama administration must now overcome is the legacy of these two decades of failed policies. If the president wants a successful outcome to any future negotiations, he should decisively reject the failed approach of his predecessors and resolutely stress the positions of every previous administration as laid down in Security Council resolutions and international law. Such a clean break from the past is not enough to ensure a rapid and successful resolution of the Jerusalem issue, but it is an essential step toward producing the lasting and equitable peace that the people of that city and the region deserve.
Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of Sowing Crisis: The Cold War & American Dominance in the Middle East. He is also a member of the IOA Advisory Board.
Israel envoy hosts J Street chief in bid to end rift: Haaretz
WASHINGTON – J Street founder and executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami met Israel’s U.S. Ambassador Michael Oren for the first time on Wednesday as as Israel sought to heal a high-profile rift with the Jewish lobby group.
Oren invited Ben-Ami the Israeli embassy in Washington for talks that lasted around an hour and covered topics including the peace process, U.S.-Israel relations and Iran.
Wednesday’s meeting builds on months of discussions between the pro-Israel, pro-peace lobby and the embassy to clarify Israel’s understanding of J Street’s views.
“I greatly appreciated the opportunity to sit down with Ambassador Oren for a frank and fruitful conversation about how we can work together to ensure Israel’s prospects for peace and security,” Ben-Ami said after the meeting. “I applaud the Ambassador’s commitment to building a bridge to the pro-Israel, pro-peace community in the months since our national conference.”
He added: “The ambassador clearly recognizes the importance of dialogue and communication between the State of Israel and those parts of the American Jewish community that are deeply pro-Israel but at times disagree with the policies of its government.
Oren in October 2009 sparked anger when he rejected an invitation from J Street to attend its first national conference.
Relations between the dovish American Jewish organization and Israel’s right-wing Likud-led government worsened in February when Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon refused to meet a delegation of U.S. congressmen on a trip to Israel arranged by J Street.
Since then the government has changed tack and adopted a more conciliatory tone, however.
Ben-Ami was quick to embrace Israel’s move to end the spat, saying:
“J Street hopes that going forward we are building a relationship based on mutual respect and recognizing that our disagreements are rooted in a deep commitment to Israel’s security and its future as a democracy and the home of the Jewish people.
“I hope this is but the first of many conversations we will have.”