EDITOR: Israeli ‘Independence’ goes sour
In a number of European capitals the celebrations of 62 years to the Nakba by the Zionist Federation and the state of Israel, have gone awry. The London event was a total flop, and what awaited the few who made it, was indeed the flags of Palestine, as you can see in the report below.
Protest against Nakba Day ‘Independence’ Events!: ISM London
Pro-Palestinian activists gathered outside the institute of Education by Russell Square, London protest the Zionist Federation’s “Israeli Independence” celebrations yesterday.
Approximately 40 protesters gathered to chant slogans and raise their voices in opposition to an event which effectively marks the violent expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in 1948, known to Palestinians as al-Nakba — the Catastrophe in Arabic.
Activists who had managed to enter the building previously, dropped a massive Palestinian flag bearing the words “Free Palestine” from the front of the building. This act was met with raucous cheers and drew attention from the many tourists who were staying at the two large hotels opposite.
One cheeky Zionist attempted to grab the flag down, but activists shouted him down preventing possible criminal damage.
Police and the Institute of Education staff eventually got hold of those who had dropped the lag and ejected them from the building.
Nonetheless, more ISMers snuck back into the building with the flag and this time dropped it from the tower of the building. Police once again were not amused, and neither were the event organisers. However, there were no charges and no one was arrested.
Back at the protest, activists were keen to chant slogans at arriving Zionists, but found their opportunities few and far between. At a venue which has a capacity for over 990 people, the Zionist Federation must have had barely 100 people in attendance.
The celebratory event had been marred first by the Palestinian-Israeli singer, Mira Awad withdrawing from the event having found out what it was for. This was followed by the British X-Factor finalist Stacey Solomon, pulling out after her management were notified of the political nature of the event.
Not wishing their potential star to be associated with ethnic cleansing and racism, it was clear they felt it inappropriate for her to perform.
The Zionist Federation will continue their celebration of apartheid and ethnic cleansing this evening with a party at the proud Galleries in Camden, London. Pro-Palestine groups once again, will be mobilising to oppose this — join us!
Netanyahu: There will be no building freeze in Jerusalem: Haaretz
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Thursday that Israel does not intend to comply with the American demand that it halt settlement construction in East Jerusalem.
“I am saying one thing. There will be no freeze in Jerusalem,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Channel 2 television. “There should be no preconditions to talks,” he added, referring to the Palestinian demand that Israel end all settlement construction before they would be willing to resume peace negotiations.
Netanyahu’s comments were broadcast on Channel 2 TV shortly after special American envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell arrived in Israel for his first visit in six weeks. Mitchell’s efforts had been on hold due to disagreements over East Jerusalem, the section of the holy city claimed by Israel and the Palestinians.
Although Netanyahu was repeating his long-standing position, the timing of the statement threatened to undermine Mitchell’s latest efforts to restart peace talks. Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman, denied earlier reports that Israel had officially rejected an American demand for a settlement freeze in Jerusalem.
There was no immediate U.S. reaction.
Earlier Thursday, The Prime Minister’s Bureau responded to a Wall Street Journal report that Netanyahu’s government had delivered over the weekend its most substantive response yet to the U.S. request.
Obama reportedly made the demand for an East Jerusalem construction freeze, along with other requests, in a tense White House meeting with Netanyahu on March 23.
Obama’s administration had seen been awaiting Netanyahu’s reply, while the latter had deliberated with his top ministers on possible confidence-building measures that would allow a revival of peace talks with the Palestinians.
According to the report in the Wall Street Journal, Netanyahu rejected the demand on East Jerusalem, but did agree to other confidence-building measures, such as allowing the opening of PA institutions in the eastern part of the city, transferring additional West Bank territory to Palestinian security control and agreeing to discuss all the core issues of the conflict during proximity talks with the PA, instead of insisting that these issues only be discussed in direct talks.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called the Netanyahu position very
unfortunate and said he hoped the U.S. would be able to convince the Israeli government to give peace a chance by halting settlement construction in East Jerusalem and elsewhere.
MK Oron: Netanyahu is worsening U.S.-Israel rift
Right-wing lawmakers on Thursday praised Netanyahu for refusing the Obama administration’s demands to freeze construction in East Jerusalem, as their leftist rivals expressed fears that the move would worsen tensions between Israel and the United States.
“Netanyahu has said no to the peace process, aggravating the rift with the American administration,” declared Meretz Chairman Haim Oron.
National Religious Party Chairman Daniel Herskovitz, however, lauded Netanyahu for his “appropriate Zionist response” to the ultimatum posed by President Barack Obama at the two leaders’ meeting in Washington last month. “The future of Jerusalem cannot be subjected to an edict,” Herskovitz declared.
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, said that even the Americans know that “the true reason the peace process has frozen is due to the weakness and inability of the Palestinian leadership.”
MK Ophir Ekonis declared that Netanyahu’s response to Obama offered “further proof that the Likud is committed to the future of Jerusalem, and expresses a wide national agreement that the Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people.”
Israel, U.S. secretly working to bridge gaps in peace process
Israel and the United States have been conducting behind-the-scenes negotiations in recent days in an effort to find a formula that would bridge their differences over peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and America’s demand that Israel halt construction in East Jerusalem for at least four months.
According to a senior Obama administration official, the top Middle East policy specialist at the White House, Dan Shapiro, arrived in Israel Wednesday on a secret visit. Shapiro’s delegation also included David Hale, who serves as deputy to U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell and is permanently based in Israel.
Neither the White House nor the Prime Minister’s Office have officially announced the talks or even Shapiro’s arrival in Israel. Officially, total silence is being maintained, and the Prime Minister’s Office therefore refused to comment Wednesday.
But a senior Israeli official said talks with American officials have been conducted throughout the past week – by phone, via the Israeli embassy in Washington and with the White House officials who arrived in Israel on Wednesday.
The dialogue between Israel and the Obama administration is to continue next week, when Defense Minister Ehud Barak visits Washington. Barak, who will leave for the U.S. on Sunday, is slated to deliver a speech at a conference sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, at which U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will also speak.
He will also hold meetings with U.S. National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones, Clinton and other senior officials. The talks will deal with the peace process and the effort to bridge the disagreements between the U.S. and Israel, as well as the Iranian nuclear issue and weapons smuggling from Syria to Lebanon.
Im Tirtzu: delegitimising the ‘delegitimisers’: The Guardian CiF
A campaign to suppress all criticism now extends to smearing Israeli human rights activists as hostile to Jewish statehood
The word “delegitimisation” has become the most significant weapon in the rhetorical arsenal of those defending Israel against external and internal enemies. In Israel, rightwing policymakers, thinkers and Zionist groups are deploying the word to describe the underlying motives of the country’s critics. Outside Israel, pro-Israel groups and Jewish defence organisations use it to attack those who protest when Israeli officials speak in public, promote boycott campaigns and accuse Israel of apartheid policies.
The Israeli Reut Institute promotes the term assiduously. It produced a highly influential report, Building a Political Firewall Against Israel’s Delegitimisation, that defines delegitimisation as criticism that “exhibits blatant double standards, singles out Israel, denies its right to exist as the embodiment of the self-determination right of the Jewish people, or demonises the state”.
The term is doubly useful. It’s negative when exposed as the motive of Israel’s critics. But it’s positive when used as a means of undermining Israel’s human rights organisations. The delegitimisation of rights groups began soon after the Netanyahu government came to power. It took an insidious turn in January when Im Tirtzu: the Second Zionist Revolution, a student-based organisation that aims to “strengthen the values of Zionism in Israel”, attacked the New Israel Fund for supporting the Israeli human rights groups, which, Im Tirtzu claimed, provided more than 90% of the data for the war crimes accusations against Israel in the Goldstone Report. A second phase of Im Tirtzu’s attack began on the day Israel remembered its fallen soldiers. In a report issued on 19 April, the group directly accused rights organisations of betraying the country and engineering the indictment of Israel’s leaders when they travel abroad.
Im Tirtzu is clearly a radical rightwing movement whose latest effort comprised a national billboard campaign, a specially commissioned highly emotional pop song, which conveys the betrayal message and the accusation that rights groups are prepared to knife Israel’s soldiers in the back while they protect the country, and the distribution to synagogues of 15,000 copies of a version of the memorial prayer for dead soldiers including a passage inciting against human rights groups. Such extensive activity requires substantial funding. The Christian evangelical John Hagee Ministries and the New York Central Fund, both of which fund settler groups, are among Im Tirtzu’s funders.
The claim that critics of Israel are delegitimising the state’s existence is not new. The argument was made in the 1980s when the USSR orchestrated an anti-Zionist campaign largely through the UN. But the response then was to see the problem in terms of Israel’s poor public relations. It was felt that more sophisticated presentation of “good news” stories, the government’s “genuine desire for peace” and an overall positive image of Israel would turn the tide of international opinion in Israel’s favour.
Israel hasn’t entirely abandoned this strategy, but since it has failed to stem the growing pressure on Israel to submit to international accountability, end the occupation and respond positively to the Obama administration’s tougher line, a more apocalyptic assessment of the country’s plight now dominates thinking. This is clear from the Reut Institute’s latest “delegitimacy” update. It speaks of:
“a systematic and systemic assault on Israel’s political and economic model, which aims to bring about its implosion. These dynamics have evolved into a strategic concern of potentially existential implications that require transitioning from ‘local and situational re-action’ to ‘global and systemic pro-action.'”
Two things seemed to have reinforced the conclusion that criticism represents an existential threat. First, a realisation that playing the antisemitism card has also failed to moderate criticism. Second, a perception that US policy now endangers, rather than guarantees, Israel’s existence.
In this frame of mind, it’s perfectly logical to redefine what was once seen as tolerable, but albeit bitterly contested, dissent – the reports and critiques of Israel’s human rights organisations – as a form of intolerable and existentially threatening delegitimisation. And as Yair Wallach argues, since the Israeli government is offering no realistic, negotiated path to the two-state solution it professes to support, it’s forced to do more to defend the status quo:
“The occupation appears as a de facto permanent feature of the Israeli system of government rather than as a set of temporary policies and security measures.”
Despite the call for “global and systemic pro-action” (which sounds like meaningless jargon), it’s hard to believe that the delegitimisation argument will lead to anything but more violence and further repression of dissent. The failure of this apocalyptic thinking to even consider the idea that Israel is delegitimising itself is perverse. Not because it’s the argument made by the human rights groups, but because some of Israel’s own leaders have made it. Defence minister and Labour leader Ehud Barak said recently: “If millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.” In November 2007, former prime minister Ehud Olmert said Israel risked being compared to apartheid-era South Africa if it failed to agree to an independent state for the Palestinians.
The continued denial of the Palestinians’ human and political rights is the most effective way of delegitimising Israel.
Veolia tries to spin its involvement in the occupation: The Electronic Intifada
Adri Nieuwhof, 22 April 2010
Nesher cement found at a construction site in occupied East Jerusalem, June 2009. (Clean Hands Project) By participating in the touring Veolia Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition, the French transnational company Veolia Environnement is attempting to spin its image that has been tarnished by the exposure of its involvement in the Israeli occupation.
The UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign used the occasion of the exhibition, featured at London’s Natural History Museum and in BBC Wildlife Magazine, to remind the public of Veolia’s participation in a segregated transportation project and the building of infrastructure to service Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank. The exhibition at the Natural History Museum was met with a “Dump Veolia” demonstration on 10 April and further protests are anticipated as the exhibition will travel to other UK cities and Ireland, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the US.
Veolia Transport, a subsidiary of Veolia Environnement, is involved in the construction and operation of a light rail system undertaken by the City Pass Consortium that links West Jerusalem to the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The company also operates regular bus services to the illegal settlements, including Beit Horon and Givat Zeev, along road 443, on which Palestinians are banned from traveling. Through its involvement in these projects, Veolia is directly implicated in maintaining illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and plays a role in Israel’s attempt to make its annexation of Palestinian East Jerusalem irreversible.
Veolia claims that the contract to operate the light rail does not set any access restrictions on any population or passengers, and has expressed its commitment to operate the Jerusalem light rail on “a clear, non-discriminatory policy based on free access for all parts of the population.” However, statements by City Pass Consortium spokesperson Ammon Elian show that the project will entrench the status quo situation of segregation. He told a Belgian researcher without a trace of irony: “If Palestinians would want to make use of the light rail, both groups will not meet on the train, because of their different life patterns.” Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the territory annexed by Israel after its occupation in 1967, receive starkly inferior municipal services and are subjected to the revocation of residency rights and home demolitions.
Meanwhile, Veolia Transport continues to operate the segregated bus service 322 from Tel Aviv to Ashdod. At the terminal for bus 322 in Tel Aviv, small posters promise eternal damnation for those who do not observe the rules of halacha, or Jewish religious law. On 8 April chairman of the municipal council in Tel Aviv Yael Dayan told the Swiss newspaper Le Temps that bus service 322 is a “kosher” bus route, meaning that gender segregation is practiced with the agreement of the authorities. Women enter through the rear of the vehicle and the men from the front. They cannot touch each other or sit next to one another. In some buses, a thick blanket is hung in the middle of the bus between the two sexes. “It’s the return of the Middle Ages,” Dayan told Le Temps. Veolia Transport confirmed in a phone call with Who Profits from the Occupation? that bus 322 is segregated.
In addition to providing transport services to the settlements, Veolia is also involved in waste collection and dumping in the occupied West Bank. TMM Integrated Recycling Services, a subsidiary of Veolia, owns the Tovlan landfill near Jericho in the Jordan Valley. Veolia has leased the Palestinian-owned land from the Israeli civil military administration, according to British electronic magazine Corporate Watch. The magazine interviewed a worker who monitored the cars entering the landfill from 2002 until 2009 and who stated that until two years ago, Tovlan received some waste collections from Nablus. According to the worker, the waste dumped at Tovlan landfill comes primarily from the numerous illegal settlements in the Jordan Valley (“Veolia’s dirty business: The Tovlan landfill,” 29 January 2010).
Meanwhile, in 2009 Corporate Watch photographed Veolia garbage trucks picking up waste in Massua settlement, and in March 2010 a picture was taken of a Veolia vehicle picking up rubbish from Tomer settlement.
Veolia’s involvement in the occupation does not end there. The company has won a contract with Nesher cement factory to build and operate a large facility for sorting and transforming waste into a source of energy in Hiriya near Tel Aviv. The website of Who Profits from the Occupation? — an Israeli group that monitors corporations’ involvement in Israel’s occupation — states that 85 percent of all cement in Israel is sold by Nesher Cement and the use of Nesher products has been documented in construction sites in West Bank settlements and in the construction of the light rail project in Jerusalem.
Despite the photo exhibition designed to promote Veolia’s image, the corporation’s involvement in the occupation is not lost on solidarity activists. Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign spokesperson Freda Hughes announced at a 30 March demonstration that the group will this year highlight the role of Veolia in entrenching Israeli apartheid. The city council of Dublin is under pressure not to enter or renew contracts with Veolia, and activists protested in front of the city hall on 12 April.
Meanwhile, in the UK, the Green Party in Croydon is calling the city council to ditch Veolia because of its involvement in the breaching of Palestinians’ human rights. Veolia is responsible for waste and recycling collections in Croydon.
Adri Nieuwhof is a consultant and human rights advocate based in Switzerland.
Goldstone, you’re welcome!: Ynet
Avraham Burg says debate between Israel, Goldstone part of real Jewish culture
Pressures exerted within Judge Richard Goldstone’s Jewish community in South Africa prompted him to stay away from his grandson’s bar mitzvah celebration. I assume that many people rubbed their hands with glee, yet I greatly regretted it.
Original Report
Report: Goldstone banned from grandson’s bar-mitzvah / Aviel Magnezi
Rabbis say South African Jews angry at judge and that his appearance there could ’cause a scene’
Full Story
This is because Judaism, the way I understand it, flourished and succeeded in periods when it was able to contain within it existential contradictions and huge disagreements; on the other hand, it deteriorated to great lows at times when boycotts, disputes, splits, and divisions characterized its conduct.
Judaism of boycotts, which withdraws into itself ultimately turns into a snail detached from anything that is different.
On the other hand, an open and confident culture that is able to contain various shades at its schools, in the synagogue, on the street, and in its cultural discourse is a much richer culture. A one-dimensional society that adheres to the “be like me or be nothing” dictum is a society doomed for oblivion. It features no forces for revival and no energy for dialogue.
However, a society that features wealth of expression and a culture of debate works out the disagreements, and the combination of my thesis and your antithesis gives rise to a synthesis that is in fact the next chapter in our culture.
There is no shortage of examples here. When the Judaism of Jerusalem in the year 70 AD was preoccupied with mutual assassinations of anyone who was not zealous enough, it prompted the city’s destruction and loss of our sovereignty. On the other hand, when Shamai and Hillel and all their students managed to build bridges and agreements on how to disagree, we in fact saw the birth of 2,000-year-old Judaism.
I see the satisfaction of the boycotters in South Africa, I’m attentive to their brethren in Jerusalem, I know their acquaintances in Bnei Braq and in Brooklyn, and I know that their path is not my path and their Judaism is not my Judaism.
Had I known Judge Goldstone, I would ignore all his positions and invite him and his family to celebrate the bar mitzvah at my home. I would extend invitations to all my friends and I’m sure that many of them
would arrive and say that the kind of Judaism that puts a wedge between a grandfather and his grandson is not their kind of Judaism.
There are no boycotts around here. There is room for Goldstone at my friends’ and my children’s Jewish school. We do not always agree with you, yet the debate between us is part of our culture and of the clarification of the human and moral awareness that binds all of us.
So Mazal Tov to you, the Goldstone family!
Leftists to Elie Wiesel: Occupied Jerusalem can’t be holy: Haaretz
Jerusalem must be shared by both Israelis and Palestinians, a leftist activist group said Thursday, in response to Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel’s ad in the Washington Post last week.
“For me, the Jew that I am, Jerusalem is above politics,” Wiesel wrote in the ad, titled “For Jerusalem.” To this, the group responded by saying that as long as the city remains occupied it cannot be holy.
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“It is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture – and not a single time in the Koran…the first song I heard was my mother’s lullaby about and for Jerusalem,” Wiesel had written.
Wiesel also wrote that Jews, Christians and Muslims were able to build their homes anywhere in Jerusalem and that only under Israeli sovereignty had freedom of worship for all religions been assured in the city.
“The anguish over Jerusalem is not about real estate but about memory,” he wrote.
In the open letter made public Thursday, activists in the Just Jerusalem group, which includes Israel Prize laureates Avishai Margalit, Zeev Sternhell as well as former Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg, said they wanted to express their “frustration, even outrage” at Wiesel’s letter, saying that “Jerusalem must be shared by the people of the two nations residing in it.”
“Only a shared city will live up to the prophet’s vision: Zion shall be redeemed with justice,” the letter said.
The letter’s signatories said that their “Jerusalem is concrete, its hills covered with limestone houses and pine trees; its streets lined with synagogues, mosques and churches.” They added that that Wiesel’s Jerusalem, on the other hand, was “an ideal, an object of prayers and a bearer of the collective memory of a people whose members actually bear many individual memories.”
“Our Jerusalem is populated with people, young and old, women and men, who wish their city to be a symbol of dignity – not of hubris, inequality and discrimination. You speak of the celestial Jerusalem; we live in the earthly one,” the letter said.
The letter’s signatories also said that the reason they found Wiesel’s ad so troubling wasn’t only “because it is replete with factual errors and false representations, but because it upholds an attachment to some other-worldly city which purports to supersede the interests of those who live in the this-worldly one.”
“For every Jew, you say, a visit to Jerusalem is a homecoming, yet it is our commitment that makes your homecoming possible. We prefer the hardship of realizing citizenship in this city to the convenience of merely yearning for it,” the letter said.
Jerusalem, the letter continued, was not, as Wiesel claimed in his ad, above politics since “contemporary Jerusalem was created by a political decision and politics alone keeps it formally unified.”
“Second, your attempt to keep Jerusalem above politics means divesting us of a future. For being above politics is being devoid of the power to shape the reality of one’s life,” letter writers continued.
The signatories culminated their response by appealing Wiesel to visit Jerusalem for himself, thus seeing “with your own eyes the catastrophic effects of the frenzy of construction.”
“You will witness that, contrary to some media reports, Arabs are not allowed to build their homes anywhere in Jerusalem. You discover see the gross inequality in allocation of municipal resources and services between east and west,” the writers said.
“We will take you to Sheikh Jarrah, where Palestinian families are being evicted from their homes to make room for a new Jewish neighborhood, and to Silwan, where dozens of houses face demolition because of the Jerusalem Municipality?s refusal to issue building permits to Palestinians.”
The letter culminated by reiterating the chant used by Sheikh Jarrah activists in their weekly rallies: “Nothing can be holy in an occupied city!”
Hamas vows to carry out more executions: The Electronic Intifada
Mel Frykberg, 21 April 2010
GAZA CITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IPS) – The Hamas authorities in Gaza have vowed to carry out more executions of those on death row despite intense international criticism and condemnation from both Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups.
During the last few days, the Islamic movement has faced a barrage of denunciation following the execution of two Gazan men last Thursday, by firing squad, for alleged acts of treason.
Gaza military courts had accused Muhammad al-Sebea, 36, from Rafah in southern Gaza, and Nasser Abu Frej, 34, from northern Gaza, of providing Israel with sensitive security information during the December 2008-January 2009 war.
The two, whose bullet-riddled bodies were delivered to al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City following the execution, were also accused of being responsible for the death of several Gazan resistance fighters due to the information they supposedly provided Israel.
Despite the intense pressure de facto interior minister Fathi Hammad said on Monday that his government “would not hesitate” to implement more death penalties against other collaborators.
“The Hamas government will continue enforcing capital punishment in the coastal enclave against those who have caused harm to national interests and who were the cause of the death of many Palestinians,” added Hammad.
Sixteen men are currently on death row in Gaza having been sentenced to death in 2009 and the first few months of this year. Eight of them are accused of treason.
Civil courts in Gaza apply the death penalty under the 1936 Penal Law No. 74, dating from the British mandate.
In the occupied West Bank, the PA’s civil courts impose capital punishment under the 1960 Jordanian Penal Law No. 16, which dates from Jordan’s occupation of the West Bank.
Military court death sentences are applied under the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Revolutionary Penal Code of 1979. However, the code remains vague in regard to some of the situations in which it can be applied.
Penal code article 165 applies to capital punishment for any crime that “incites people” and “harms the reputation or prestige of the Palestinian revolution.”
Furthermore, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) has not ratified the code and therefore it remains unconstitutional even under Palestinian law.
The PLC remains frozen and politically divided between Hamas and Fatah following the civil war which broke out between the two main Palestinian political factions in Gaza in June 2007 when Hamas ousted Fatah from the coastal territory.
Human rights groups remained unimpressed by Hammad’s statements. “In addition to objection in principle to the death penalty, Thursday’s executions were based on trials that did not meet even minimal standards of due process,” says Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.
Bill van Esveld from Human Rights Watch (HRW), which has monitored the death penalties being carried out in both the West Bank and Gaza, concurs.
“We are concerned about the lack of transparency, due process and impartiality. We see Fatah members being sentenced to death in Hamas courts,” van Esveld told IPS.
“However, we haven’t seen Hamas members who we have documented being involved in similar crimes being sentenced to death in Gaza. Part of an emerging pattern involved the lawyer of one of the accused telling us his client was forced to confess,” van Esveld said.
“This was backed up by the court which used this confession as part of its evidence against the individual despite the circumstances under which it was obtained.
“What is also problematic is the number of condemned civilians who should not have been tried in a military court in the first place,” said van Esveld.
“Any death penalty has to be ratified by the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,” says Shawan Jabarin from Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq
“Therefore all those Gaza sentences were carried out illegally,” Jabarin told IPS.
However, in an interview with IPS in his Gaza office Hamas Deputy Foreign Minister Ahmed Yousef countered that Abbas’ term officially ended in January 2009 when new presidential and legislative elections were meant to be held.
“Furthermore, the current Palestinian Authority (PA) government was installed in 2007 as an emergency government which under Palestinian law is legal for only a month. It was not elected into power,” Yousef told IPS.
Yousef also rejected the accusations that the men had been coerced into confessions.
“I reject those accusations completely. If there were any abuses perpetrated against the accused, I am not aware of these,” Yousef told IPS. “There are those with vested political interests who are making these accusations. Those men were given a fair trial.”
Hamas has accused its arch-foe and Fatah leader Muhammad Dahlan, who is widely believed to be a stooge of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States and the Israelis and a key figure behind an attempted Gaza coup, which Hamas preempted in June 2007, of being behind the false rumors.
During Israel’s blistering military assault on the Gaza Strip last winter rumors were circulating in numerous media sources that Dahlan, and other members of the PA, had actually egged the Israelis on in their attack as well as provided logistical information.
Two of Dahlan’s employees in Dubai are also alleged to have been involved in the January assassination of Hamas military leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh supposedly carried out by Mossad.
Clinton: U.S. to advance Syria ties despite reported Hezbollah Scud deal: Haaretz
The Obama administration is still committed to improving relations with Syria, despite “deeply disturbing” reports of its moves to aid the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in neighboring Lebanon, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday.
Clinton, speaking at a news conference before the opening of a NATO foreign ministers meeting in this Baltic capital, said the administration has concluded that the benefits of sending a U.S. ambassador to Damascus – after a five-year absence – outweigh the costs.
She said the presence of an ambassador gives Washington a better insight into what is happening in Damascus.
“We have a long list of areas that we have discussed with the Syrians and we intend to continue pushing our concerns, and we think having an ambassador there adds to the ability to convey that message strongly and hopefully influence behavior in Syria,” she said.
“The larger question as to what the United States will do with respect to Syria is one we’ve spent a lot of time considering and debating inside the administration,” she said. “Where we are as of today is that we believe it is important to continue the process to return an ambassador; this is not some kind of reward for the Syrians and the actions they take that are deeply disturbing.”
Some U.S. senators are threatening to hold up the confirmation of the administration’s choice for U.S. ambassador to Syria – career diplomat Robert Ford – because of unconfirmed reports that Syria was transferring Scud missiles to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
Clinton did not confirm the reports. Without mentioning Scuds or Iran, which many believe is the source of the missiles, she described the situation in a way that strongly suggested that the U.S. does not believe Scuds have been transferred to Hezbollah yet.
Clinton referred to “these stories that do suggest there has been some transfer of weapons technology into Syria with the potential purpose of then later transferring it to Hezbollah inside Syria”. Pressed to say whether she meant that the Scuds in Syria had originated in Iran, she replied, “I just said that we have expressed our concern about that.”
Israel, which regards Hezbollah as a major threat, has accused Syria of providing the group with Scuds. A Scud has a far longer range and can carry a much bigger warhead than the rockets Hezbollah has used in the past, and could reach anywhere in Israel from Hezbollah bases in southern Lebanon. Syria has denied the charge, as has Lebanon’s Western-backed prime minister.
Israel deports West Bank prisoner to Gaza: Palestinians: Google News
By Hossam Ezzedine (AFP)
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Israel deported a Palestinian prisoner to the Gaza Strip instead of releasing him to his West Bank home, the man and Palestinian officials said, charging Israel with using controversial new military orders.
The prisoner, Ahmad Sabah, 40, was refusing to leave the Palestinian side of the main crossing between Israel and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
“It is inhumane what they are doing. He has no connection to Gaza, no relatives there, nothing,” said Issa Qaraqi, the minister of prisoner affairs in the government of the Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
Qaraqi claimed Israel was implementing a new set of military orders that critics fear could lead to mass deportations from the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
Sabah was a member of the Palestininan security forces and was arrested in 2001 for security offences against Israel, AFP’s correspondent said.
Israel denies it plans to carry out mass expulsions, saying the new orders that came into effect last week concern only people staying in the West Bank illegally and that the changes will allow oversight of deportation orders.
Family members said Sabah was born in Jordan and since returning to the West Bank had lived in the town of Tulkarem with his wife and family. However, his ID document was issed in Gaza.
They said they were waiting for him to be released on Wednesday at a West Bank crossing, when other prisoners said he had been sent to Gaza.
Sabah was refusing to leave the Erez crossing into Gaza.
“It is my right to return to my wife and family,” he told AFP.
The orders have sparked widespread condemnation from Palestinians and across the Arab world.
Earlier this week Abbas vowed to confront them.
“Israel has no right to deport any Palestinian, and the Palestinian Authority will not allow it and will confront it with various means,” he said, quoted by Egypt’s official news agency MENA, without elaborating.
The move has been condemned in the Arab world at a time when peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel are locked in a dispute over Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
On April 13, the Cairo-based Arab League called on the Palestinians to refuse to heed the amended orders from the Israeli military that could trigger the West Bank deportations.
Earlier on Wednesday, the rival Palestinian movements Hamas and Fatah took part in a joint demonstration against the orders, reuniting for the first time since their violent 2007 split.
Hundreds of Gazans as well as representatives of all Palestinian factions — including the Islamist Hamas movement and secular Fatah — attended the rally near the Erez crossing.
“Hand in hand against the Zionist decision to expel Palestinians from the West Bank,” read one of the signs carried by the protestors.
Israel captured the West Bank, including east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War. It is expected to form the main part of the Palestinians’ promised future state.
The Israeli military can issue its own orders in the West Bank, but these can be overturned by the government or by Israeli courts.
Palestinians deported to Gaza: Al Jazeera online
Palestinians are outraged by the Israeli military order that facilitates the deportations [AFP]
Two Palestinians have been deported to the Gaza Strip from Israel, raising fears that more expulsions could follow under a controversial new Israeli military order.
After nine years in Israeli jail, Ahmad Sabah, a 40-year- old Palestinian, was sent to Gaza, instead of being released to the West Bank where his family was waiting for him.
Israelis sent him to Gaza because he had a Palestinian ID issued there.
His family said that Sabah, who was arrested in 2001 for “security offences” against Israel, has no connection to Gaza and he has refused to leave the border crossing in protest at his treatment.
“It is my right to return to my wife and family,” he said.
‘Inhumane policy’
The Israeli move drew condemnation from Palestinian political leaders, who denounced Sabah’s deportation as “inhumane”.
Issa Qaraqi, the minister of prisoner affairs in the government of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, said that Sabah should have been released to the West Bank.
“He has no connection to Gaza, no relatives there, nothing.”
He said that the deportation was an example of Israel invoking the controversial new military orders that allow “illegal” residents of the West Bank to be expelled.
But Israeli authorities denied the orders were behind the decision. “The individual’s release to the Gaza Strip was done in accordance with the Prison Service’s decision and in light of the location of his place of residence, and was not due to a repatriation order issued by any military commander,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
Sabah’s case follows that of Saber Albayari, who was deported to Gaza after seeking medical treatment in an Israeli hospital on Wednesday.
Albayari had been living in Israel for the past 15 years, but was returned to Gaza when Israeli authorities discovered that he had been born there.
Some fear that the expulsions could be the first in a wave of deportations of Palestinians from Israel and the West Bank.
Up to 70,000 Palestinians could be at risk of deportation under the military order, which has been roundly condemned by Arab politicians.
Last week President Abbas vowed to confront the order. “Israel has no right to deport any Palestinian, and the Palestinian Authority will not allow it and will confront it with various means.”
Al Jazeera’s Jackie Rowland, reporting from Jerusalem, said that the individual stories put a human face on what is a deliberate strategy by Israel to treat the West Bank and Gaza differently.
“It fits into a pattern of Israel’s strategy to treat Gaza and the West Bank as separate geopoliticial entities,” she said.
Anti-Israel group could cost Toronto Gay Pride parade its funding: Haaretz
Toronto officials are considering withdrawing funding from the city’s annual gay pride parade over the possible participation of an anti-Israel group, the Toronto Star reported on Tuesday.
According to the Toronto Star article, Toronto, which gave 121,000 Canadian Dollars to the Pride Toronto event in 2009, said it would withdraw city funding if a group called Queers Against Israeli Apartheid was allowed to march.
Toronto’s general manager of economic development and culture Mike Williams said that the city’s “anti-discrimination policy was likely violated by QuAIA’s conduct and even its very presence at last summer’s parade,” adding that there would be “very serious” repercussions if organizers of the parade were to permit another violation.
“We have the right to disqualify them from future grants, so we certainly would look at that,” Williams said.
In an interview given before the official’s remarks were made, Toronto Pride director Tracey Sandilands said Pride had not yet decided whether it would allow QuAIA to participate in this year’s parade.
“We have no legal grounds to ban the word apartheid,” Sandilands said. “While I understand there are a lot of people who don’t like the wording, there’s got to be more than just the name of the organization [to justify taking action],” Sandilands said.
But, she told the Toronto Star, the city has told them that Toronto Pride had contravened its anti-discrimination policy on the grounds that “those words make certain participants feel uncomfortable.”
All funding issues aside, Pride has no wish to violate the city’s anti-discrimination policy, she said. “That would be crazy.”
Elle Flanders, a member of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, said the city’s warning was “shameful,” saying the group sought to express a political opinion at an event with a long political history.
“They’re trying to compare it to hate speech, and I find it deeply offensive, as somebody who’s been fighting human rights battles for a really long time, to hear that criticism of the state of Israel is somehow hate speech. No way,” said Flanders.
Flanders, one of many Jewish members of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, added that she considered herself as a “big Jew-lover. And my Judaism taught me to stand up for what is right. This has nothing to do with anything other than criticism of Israel … Political difference need not be censored.”
Mood Is Dark as Israel Marks 62nd Year as a Nation: NY Times
By ETHAN BRONNER
JERUSALEM — Every year, Israelis approach the joy of their Independence Day right after immersing themselves in a 24-hour period of grief for fallen soldiers. Before the fireworks burst across the skies Monday night to celebrate the country’s 62nd birthday, the airwaves filled with anguished stories of servicemen and -women killed, the Kaddish prayer of mourning and speeches placing the deeply personal losses of a small country into the sweep of Jewish history.
An Israeli grieved at a Victims of Terror memorial at Mount Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem on Monday.
So there is nothing new or unusual about Israelis’ marking their collective accomplishments with sorrow and concern. It happens all the time, especially among those on the political left who are angry that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians shows no sign of ending.
But there is something about the mood this year that feels darker than usual. It has a bipartisan quality to it. Both left and right are troubled, and both largely about the same things, especially the Iranian nuclear program combined with growing tensions with the Obama administration.
“There is a confluence of two very worrying events,” said Michael Freund, a rightist columnist for The Jerusalem Post in a telephone interview. “One is the Iranian threat, an existential threat. Add to that the fact that for the first time in recent memory there is a president in the White House who is not overly sensitive to the Jewish state and its interests. You put the two together and it will affect anyone’s mood, even an optimist like me.”
Haaretz, the newspaper that serves as the voice of the shrinking political left in this country, is in a truly depressed mood. Its editorial on Monday contended that Israel “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 on to the territories and afraid of any movement,” the editorial said. “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.”
Independence Day here is a moment to take stock of the country’s achievements. And the data are very positive. Per capita annual gross domestic product is nearly $30,000, double that of Russia and close to that of Germany. Israeli citizens live on average more than 80 years, on a par with life expectancy in Norway. The number of murders per capita is a third of that of the United States. Israel’s population has passed 7.5 million, more than nine times what it was at its birth in 1948, and is growing at 1.8 percent a year, a rate no other developed country approaches.
But the worries are deep, and the sense of celebration this year is muted. Yoel Esteron, a political centrist who is publisher and editor of a daily business paper, Calcalist, wrote an essay for Independence Day that praises the islands of high-tech excellence in Israel, but frets that they are surrounded by seas of underdevelopment. Israelis in the country’s business elite in and around Tel Aviv, he wrote, are increasingly focused on personal wealth accumulation and have lost sight of a collective pursuit of anything bigger.
“I have talked to many people in recent days, not only in preparation for that column but generally, and they say, ‘You know, I am worried,’ ” he said by telephone. “There is a kind of malaise, a sense among businessmen that the national future is not promising, and that feeling seems to exist for those on the right as well as the left.”
A new BBC poll of how people around the world regard other countries puts Israel among those least favorably viewed, including Iran, North Korea and Pakistan.
Israelis are profoundly worried — and profoundly divided — about their isolation. The left blames the government for a failure to withdraw from the West Bank, remove Jewish settlements and agree to share Jerusalem with the Palestinians. The right blames Palestinian and Arab intransigence and Western gutlessness, and says Jews have always been resented, so concessions will change nothing.
One thing both left and right have come to believe is that the government’s difficulties with the Obama administration are likely to prove central to the country’s fate in the coming year, especially if Iran gets closer to making a nuclear weapon.
The Jerusalem Post, the voice of the right-leaning English-speaking immigrants here, titled its Monday editorial “62, Under a U.S. Cloud” and fretted that the Obama administration “has diverged from the tone of previous administrations on the status of Jerusalem, and it has damagingly publicly questioned fundamental aspects of our alliance.” It added that Washington needed to understand that “Israel is still resented and rejected by most of the Arab world, not because of this or that policy, or this or that territorial presence, but because of the very fact of our existence here.”
Ari Shavit, a centrist intellectual who writes for Haaretz, agrees that much of the problem lies with Israel’s enemies. But in a plaintive column addressed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, he said the issue was not whom to blame, but how to save the country.
Unlike most writers at Haaretz, Mr. Shavit has written positively about Mr. Netanyahu and other rightist leaders. He noted in his column that after the election here a year ago, he entered Mr. Netanyahu’s office and received a hug.
Now, he wrote, Mr. Netanyahu faces a truly existential set of choices that he cannot avoid. The world, he said, has an unforgiving view of Israel no longer affected by the Holocaust, and Mr. Netanyahu has to take radical action. “What shapes the world’s perception of Israel today is not the crematoria, but the checkpoints,” he wrote. “Not the trains, but the settlements.” He said that Israel must again become an inalienable part of the West, adding that “the West is not prepared to accept Israel as an occupying state.”
He said he believed that this was what many Israelis would like to tell their prime minister on Independence Day. Whether or not he is right, and whether or not his prescription is widely shared here, his sense of alarm echoed in nearly every conversation here in recent days.
Obama to U.S. Jews: Nothing will distance us from Israel: Haaretz
As relations between Israel and Washington lurch from crisis to crisis, President Barack Obama has had to face down criticism over his Middle East policy from within the United States.
The president on Wednesday sent a rare letter to Alan Solow, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and a long-term Obama ally, in an attempt to allay Jewish fears that the United States is distancing itself from Israel.
In the letter, Obama emphasized his commitment to Israeli ties, saying his policy on the Middle East had been misinterpreted.
“I am sure you can distinguish between the noise and distortion about my views that have appeared recently, and the actual approach of my administration toward the Middle East,” Obama wrote.
He continued: “All sides should understand that our commitment to Israel is unshakeable and that no wedge will be driven between us.”
The letter follows a week of open tensions between the U.S. government and Jewish community leaders after World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder took out newspaper advertisements criticizing Obama’s Middle East policy.
A day later, Nobel laureate Elie Wisel did the same, writing in a full page advertisement in the Washington Post that U.S. pressure would not force a solution to the dispute over Israeli building in East Jerusalem.
“For me, the Jew that I am, Jerusalem is above politics,” Wiesel wrote. “It is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture – and not a single time in the Koran…the first song I heard was my mother’s lullaby about and for Jerusalem.”
Obama told Solow that while he remained dedicated to a two-state solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, his government would not impose a peace settlement.
“I am deeply committed to fulfilling the important role the United States must play for peace to be realized, but I also recognize that in order for any agreement to endure, peace cannot be imposed from the outside,” he wrote.
Obama to US Jews: peace cannot be imposed: Ynet
US president in letter to head of Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations says is ‘deeply committed to fulfilling role US must play for peace to be realized’ but recognizes that for agreement to endure, ‘peace cannot be imposed from outside’
Yitzhak Benhorin
WASHINGTON – While US special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell makes his way to Israel, American President Barack Obama vows he does not intend to force his own peace plan on the Middle East. In a letter to the Alan Solow, the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, Obama wrote that he does plan to impose peace “from the outside”.
Obama’s letter came in response to concerns voiced by Jewish leaders over Washington’s policies towards Israel. Recent times have seen increased behind-the-scenes activity by Jewish organizations aimed at curbing the trend.
“Since we have known each other for a long time,” Obama wrote, “I am sure you can distinguish between the noise and distortion about my views that have appeared recently, and the actual approach of my administration toward the Middle East.”
The American president stressed in his letter that, “for over 60 years, American presidents have believed that pursuing peace between Arabs and Israelis is in the national security interests of the United States.” He added that he has made the pursuit of this peace a top priority since his first day in the White House.
He wrote, “I am deeply committed to fulfilling the important role the United States must play for peace to be realized, but I also recognize that in order for any agreement to endure, peace cannot be imposed from the outside; it must be negotiated directly by the leaders who are required to make the hard choices and compromises that take on history.
“We are determined to help them, particularly because the status quo does not serve the interests of Israel, the Palestinians, or the United States.”
‘Special relationship will not change’
The US president wished to stress that American-Israeli ties would not be damaged as a result of the current disagreement between his administration and the Netanyahu government. “Let me be very clear,” he said, “We have a special relationship with Israel and that will not change.
“Our countries are bonded together by shared values, deep and interwoven connections, and mutual interests. Many of the same forces that threaten Israel also threaten the United States and our efforts to secure peace and stability in the Middle East. Our alliance with Israel serves our national security interests.”
In conclusion, Obama wrote, “As we continue to strive for lasting peace agreement between Israel, the Palestinians, and Israel’s neighbors, all sides should understand that our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakable and that no wedge will be driven between us. We will have our difference, but when we do, we will work to resolve them as close allies.”
Obama offered Netanyahu a gentlemen’s agreement on Jerusalem: Haaretz
By Akiva Eldar
If the Independence Day speeches delivered this week by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin were any indication, Jerusalem Day came early this year.
As they took the podium to vow that “united Jerusalem” would never be divided, both were no doubt aware that President Barack Obama’s adviser, Dan Shapiro, was making his way to the region.
They could be sure that Shapiro, who heads the Middle East department at the White House, had not gone to the trouble of visiting Israel’s eternal capital simply to drive another nail into the coffin of the peace process, or to say kaddish over Israel’s relations with Washington.
Lieberman and Rivlin knew that Shapira and his colleague David Hale – deputy to U.S. special peace envoy George Mitchell and based permanently in Israel – would raise the subject of a building freeze in East Jerusalem in their meetings with the prime minister’s staff.
Their strident declarations of a united Jerusalem and for development on both sides of the Green Line in the city point to concern – or perhaps an understanding – that the prime Benjamin Netanyahu has already caved in to pressure from Obama to freeze construction beyond the Green Line in the city.
When on Wednesday a senior U.S. official told the Wall Street Journal that Netanyahu had unequivocally rejected U.S. demands for a freeze in East Jerusalem, he conveniently provided the prime minister with a thick smokescreen to hide behind.
The alacrity with which the government confirmed such a ‘damaging’ report attests this – and we can now presume the crisis is over. As long as Jews aren’t building in Sheikh Jarrakh or Ramat Shlomo, America couldn’t care less was Israel says or doesn’t say over a Jerusalem construction freeze.
Washington understands that Netanyahu can’t afford to admit, not even obliquely, that he is treating Jerusalem like the West Bank settlements, where building has been banned until September. As far as the America’s is concerned, Netanyahu can run and tell his friends that what goes for Tel Aviv goes for Jerusalem – as long Obama officials don’t wake the next morning to newspaper reports that Israel has approved a new building program in the Holy City.
What Obama has demanded from Netanyahu is in essence a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ that Israel will not launch new building tenders in East Jerusalem as long as proximity talks with the Palestinians continue. Obama needs this commitment in order to convince Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that that he is not playing into the hands of Hamas.
A few months ago, Abbas told Ehud Barak that he was willing to forgo his demand for an total freeze in return for a discrete promise from the defense minister that building would halt. He is still waiting for an answer.
Yet while the Americans and Palestinians may be willing to take Netanyahu’s domestic constraints into account on the issue of a construction freeze, there can be no doubting the role of Jerusalem in future final status talks. Since the Oslo Accords, by way of Camp David II, the Road Map and Annapolis, Jerusalem has always been at the heart of the dispute: Any divisions between Israel and the U.S. are mostly over procedure and timing. Netanyahu continues to demand prior commitments from the Palestinians on security and control of the Jordan Valley. The Americans (and, of course, the Palestinians) insist that talks deal immediately with all the core issues, including Jerusalem and refugees.
These negotiations over negotiations are concealing a growing skepticism on all sides over the chances of success in the proximity talks, and in the direct dialogue which is supposed to come after them.
As time passes and trust deteriorates, everyone is counting the days until August 2011 – when Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is set unilaterally to declare a Palestinian state. In the meantime, both sides can be relied upon to play whatever tricks seem necessary to gain the upper hand.
U.S.: Israel-Palestinian peace failures strengthening Iran: Haaretz
U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration said on Wednesday that progress toward Middle East peace would help thwart Iran’s ambitions by preventing it from “cynically” using the conflict to divert attention from its nuclear program.
Drawing an explicit link between Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and Washington’s drive to isolate Iran, Obama’s national security adviser, Jim Jones, urged bold steps to revive long-stalled Middle East negotiations.
U.S. officials hope that shared Arab-Israeli concerns about Iran can be exploited to spur old foes to help advance Israeli-Palestinian peace and restrain Tehran’s nuclear activities and rising influence in the region.
Jones coupled an appeal to Israel and its Arab neighbors to take risks for peace with a warning to Iran that it would face “real consequences” for its nuclear defiance. Obama is leading a push to tighten UN sanctions on Tehran.
“One of the ways that Iran exerts influence in the Middle East is by exploiting the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict,” Jones told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“Advancing this peace would … help prevent Iran from cynically shifting attention away from its failures to meet its obligations,” he said.
The Israeli government, locked in a dispute with the United States over Jewish settlement policy, has made clear it sees confronting Iran as more of a security priority for Washington, and Middle East peace should be handled on a separate track.
Jones – while voicing disappointment over the failure to jumpstart U.S.-sponsored indirect peace talks – insisted progress toward peace is a U.S. interest as well.
That seemed to echo Obama’s assertion last week that a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict was “a vital national security interest”, adding to speculation that he was considering his own broad peace proposal