New film by Rachel Leah Jones, for Adalah
The film “Targeted Citizen” (15 minutes), produced by filmmaker Rachel Leah Jones for Adalah, surveys discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel. With the participation of experts Dr. Yousef Jabareen of the Technion and Dr. Khaled Abu Asbeh of the Van Leer Institute, as well as Adalah attorneys Sawsan Zaher, Abeer Baker and Hassan Jabareen, inequality in land and housing, employment, education and civil and political rights are eloquently addressed. These interviews are reinforced by the contrasting informality of on-the-street conversations conducted by Palestinian comic duo Shammas-Nahas and punctuated by the hard-hitting rhymes of Palestinian rap trio DAM. The film’s theme song “Targeted Citizen,” written and recorded by DAM especially for Adalah, tells it like it is without missing a beat.
US envoy George Mitchell in Mid-East talks push: BBC
US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has met Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in an attempt to restart indirect talks.
The meetings come one day before the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) decides whether to proceed with talks.
Talks in March were delayed by a row over building in East Jerusalem. Washington has said it expects the so-called proximity talks within days.
Mr Abbas is to advise Mr Mitchell of the PLO decision later on Saturday.
Middle East peace talks have been stalled since 2008.
Shuttle diplomacy
In Jerusalem, President Peres told Mr Mitchell that Israel was committed to reaching a Middle East settlement, but stressed that the country’s security must be at the top of the agenda of any possible indirect talks.
Later on Friday, Mr Mitchell met Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and also Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni.
He then went to the West Bank to hold separate talks with Mr Abbas. No statements were made after the meeting.
The US envoy, who arrived in the region on Wednesday, has already seen Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu twice.
Mr Abbas has said he wants the backing of the PLO, due to meet on Saturday, before committing to the indirect talks.
After the Arab League backed Palestinian participation in the talks last Saturday, Mr Abbas said he did not “want to lose hope”.
The Palestinians pulled out of talks in March after an announcement that Israel had approved plans for new homes in the East Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo during a visit to Israel by US Vice-President Joe Biden.
The move caused deep strain in Israeli-US relations.
The Palestinian Authority’s formal position is that it will not enter direct talks unless Israel completely halts building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In November, Israel announced a 10-month suspension of new building in the West Bank, under heavy US pressure.
But it considers areas within the Jerusalem municipality as its territory and thus not subject to the restrictions.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967. It insists Jerusalem will remain its undivided capital, although Palestinians want to establish their capital in the east of the city.
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.
Israel needs a new nuclear policy: Haaretz Editorial
The expanse between excessive weaponry and disarmament is not a slippery slope. Israel should enter it.
The Security Council’s permanent members this week reiterated an old call to establish a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East. The Arab states have no nuclear weapons – and when Iraq and Syria started developing them, the Israel Defense Forces attacked them. Therefore, this call is clearly directed at Israel, which is believed to possess such weapons, though its official position is that it only has a “nuclear option.”
The call was issued at a five-year Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, on the 40th anniversary of the treaty’s inauguration. It’s a sad celebration. North Korea has been making a mockery of the treaty for a decade and a half. Another member of the club, Iran, is developing nuclear weapons and challenging the council. Three states – India, Pakistan and Israel – are still refusing to join the NPT, which affords few privileges (such as using foreign nuclear material for domestic needs ) and numerous obligations (refraining from nuclear weapons, agreeing to supervision ).
India and Pakistan have even conducted nuclear tests and make no secret of possessing nuclear weapons. It may be for mutual deterrence, but there is no guarantee that the safety catch will remain on forever.
Egypt, which has always spearheaded demands for the region’s total nuclear disarmament, decided in the 1970s that it was incapable of taking Israel on in the nuclear arena. Anwar Sadat, who indicated when he came to Jerusalem that he chose peace with Israel in part because of the nuclear issue, took the “if we don’t have it, neither shall you” approach.
The peace agreement with Israel has not stopped Egypt from consistently demanding, for more than 30 years now, that Israel be disarmed of its alleged nuclear weapons. This demand is raised every autumn at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s annual conference in Vienna, and frequently in other international forums.
The Arab demand, and the world’s support for it, are nothing new. Nor is Israel’s response. Ever since the days of foreign minister Yigal Allon’s appearances at the UN General Assembly on behalf of Yitzhak Rabin’s first government, Israel has preferred saying “yes, but” to outright rejection. Yes, certainly, Israel would be pleased if a nuclear-free zone were established, but on condition that the region’s borders be defined so that it includes Iran (and Libya, and what about the nuclear weapons that may creep in from Pakistan? ), and that the region no longer be hostile.
In brief, if the Egyptians say that without disarmament there will be no peace, Israel says peace now, disarmament later. What Israel is prepared to give for peace is already a different issue.
However, the periodic demand for regional disarmament is different this time, on two counts: Israel describes the nuclear weapons Iran is expected to acquire as a threat to its survival, and U.S. President Barack Obama is passionately striving for a nuclear-free world, not merely region. In this situation, Israel must adopt a new policy – one that does not go as far as total and immediate disarmament, but does agree to freeze new nuclear activities.
The expanse between excessive weaponry and disarmament is not a slippery slope. Israel should enter it.
PLO convenes to discuss peace talks with Israel: The Independent
By Tom Perry, Reuters, Saturday, 8 May 2010
The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) convened today and was expected to approve indirect peace talks with Israel, clearing the way for the first negotiations in 18 months.
The PLO executive committee, meeting in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, would approve a US proposal for indirect talks which will be mediated by US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, committee members said.
The United States has sought to revive the peace process, calling the Middle East conflict a “vital national security interest”. However many doubt whether the latest US effort can succeed where years of diplomacy have failed.
The United States proposed the indirect talks as a way to break an impasse over Jewish settlement construction on Israeli-occupied land where the Palestinians aim to establish a state alongside Israel.
The United States said last week it expected the indirect negotiations, known as “proximity talks”, to move forward before Mitchell’s departure from the region, scheduled for tomorrow.
Mitchell is set to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas later today.
“The (PLO) executive committee will approve proximity talks but we are against it,” said committee member Bassem al-Salhi of the People’s Party. The PLO is dominated by the Fatah faction led by Abbas. The Arab League last week approved four months of indirect negotiations.
Praise Israel’s Arabs for reaching out to Muslim world: Haaretz
An Arab citizen who has strategic depth in the region is a more significant partner in the effort of building a shared Israeli society.
By Mohammad Darawshe
The visit two weekends ago of a delegation of Israeli Arabs to Libya elicited a lot of criticism back home. The trip, by some 40 political figures, took place at the invitation of Libya’s eccentric president, Muammar Gadhafi.
In addressing their host, who had invited these Arab citizens of Israel to “reconnect” with an Arab world from which they and their people had been isolated since 1948, MK Ahmed Tibi referred to the Libyan president as “king of kings” and “leader of the Arab leaders,” two titles Gadhafi had assumed for himself at last year’s Arab League summit meeting. Many of those present told me it was clear to them that Tibi was mocking Gadhafi, and their shared sense was that the visit was more of a curiosity than an event of great political import.
In that regard, it seems as though some Israeli Jewish politicians took the visit more seriously than the participants. But by now, it is clear that some Israelis have a knee-jerk, negative reaction every time Arab citizens have the audacity to visit another state in the region.
Back in the 1970s, when I was taking civics in eighth grade, we were told by the establishment that we, the Arab citizens of Israel, would someday be a bridge for peace between our country and the Arab world. We were taught that in the future we could help with the creation of political, economic, social and cultural ties, and that bridging the gap would be the most significant contribution that we could make to peace and stability in the Middle East.
For many years there was no opportunity to play that role, until, in 1990, Ezer Weizman and Yitzhak Rabin, then junior partners in the coalition government led by Likud’s Yitzhak Shamir, used the good services of the same Ahmed Tibi to be an envoy between Israeli politicians and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat – a move that almost got Weizman dismissed from the government. A few years later, behind-the-scenes messages delivered by Israeli Arabs also helped bring the Oslo talks to fruition, resulting in mutual recognition and the initiation of official Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Later, in 1994, a delegation of Arab leaders from Israel traveled to Syria to pay condolences to its then-president, Hafez Assad, who had lost his elder son in a car accident. It was considered to be a mission of goodwill from Israel, but Syria also showed goodwill in agreeing to receive Israeli citizens for the first time since 1948.
Arab citizens of Israel have an interest in increasing their regional value. Strengthening their links with Arab countries will make them more valuable in their dialogue with the country’s Jewish majority, and in efforts to build a shared society here. Being part of the regional majority is a rich natural resource they will not and should not surrender. It is something to bring to the table, even more valuable than the possibility of serving in the military or doing national service.
Many Israeli Jews think that being a bridge for peace means serving as good messengers and perhaps even representatives of the official government line. That won’t work. A strong bridge needs to have strong foundations at both ends.
The legal system in Israel seems to be light-years ahead of the political system in its understanding of the meaning of the cultural links between the Arab citizens of the country and the Arab world. The Supreme Court decided last month to permit Ala Hlehel, an Israeli Arab writer, to travel to Beirut, where he was to receive a prize from the Beirut39 literary festival. When Justice Yitzhak Amit asked Interior Minister Eli Yishai during the hearing on Hlehel’s petition whether the attempt to ban the visit was “good for the country,” Yishai could only respond: “There is no reason to change the policy.” In its ruling, the court basically indicated that contacts by Israeli citizens with the Arab world cannot be viewed through the security prism alone, but also need to be evaluated for their humanitarian, cultural and intellectual dimensions. Last week’s visit to Libya adds a political dimension as well.
These examples prove that Israel’s Arab citizens are actively opening up the doors of the Arab world. As is the fact that about a third of the country’s Arab university students currently study in Jordanian universities. The bridge is being built, even though it does not have strong foundations on either side of the rift it is trying to span.
Even the request by Israeli Arab representatives to be granted an observer seat in the Arab League need not be viewed as an anti-Israeli act; rather, it is the expression of a desire by Israeli Arabs to reconnect with the Arab world, of which they are an integral part. By the same token, representatives of the Jewish diaspora attend the Zionist Congress, and help to decide the future of the Jewish people, despite being minorities in their own countries.
The day will come when Israel will sign peace treaties with the states of the Arab League, and the country’s Arab community needs to be better prepared for that day. Having healthy relations with the Arab states can only strengthen those accords.
Mohammad Darawshe is the co-executive director of the Abraham Fund Initiatives.
Ameer Makhoul: Israel’s repression of its Palestinian citizens unites us in struggle: The Electronic Intifada
By Ameer Makhoul, 6 May 2010
Ameer Makhoul, director of Ittijah and chairman of the Popular Committee for the Defense of the Political Freedoms, was arrested by Israeli forces today [6 May 2010] during a raid of his home, two weeks after a travel ban was imposed on him by the Israeli Ministry of the Interior. Police have also raided the offices of Ittijah and confiscated equipment and documents. Makhoul, a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, submitted the following op-ed to The Electronic Intifada prior to his arrest:
Last month, when I traveled from Haifa to the land border between Jordan and Israel, the Israeli border police prevented me from leaving my country. The police handed me an order issued by the Israeli Minister of the Interior Eli Yishai prohibiting me to leave Israel for two months. The travel ban imposed on me is part of an increased campaign to intimidate and to spread fear among Palestinian civil society. The repression is meant to divide us, but it has had the opposite effect. We Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and the diaspora are only more determined and united to claim our rights and to build a nation where we can live in freedom and have equal rights.
The Israeli minister of the interior holds the opinion that my travel outside the country “poses a serious threat to the security of the state,” according to article 6 of the 1948 emergency regulations. I am the director of Ittijah, Union of Arab Community-Based Associations and the chairman of the Popular Committee for the Defense of Political Freedoms, which is a sub-committee of the High Monitoring Committee of Arabs in Israel. All three bodies unite Palestinian Arabs in Israel and we jointly decided not to appeal my travel ban at the Israeli high court.
Any meeting in the Arab world or with any Arab person anywhere in the world arouses the suspicion of the authorities. The accusations against me are made on the basis of secret evidence that I am not allowed to see, and the high court merely acts as an extension of the Israeli General Security Services (GSS), or the Shin Bet. Israel does not need to prove that there is reason for suspicion; instead, I have to prove that there is no need for their suspicion. The Israeli legal system is far from fair for Palestinians.
Israel is intimidating Ittijah and the Popular Committee for the Defense of Political Freedoms because we are reasserting our community’s stake in the Palestinian struggle. Twenty years ago few considered the Palestinians in Israel as a part of the Palestinian people or the Palestinian cause. During the Oslo process of the 1990s, we were considered an internal problem for Israel to deal with, but our networking, advocacy and lobbying has changed this. Israel is increasingly repressing us to divide Palestinians from each other and isolate us from the outside world.
The repression and persecution of Palestinians in Israel is not new. Since 1948 Israel imposed a policy of control under the guise of security. In 2007, Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin introduced a new policy targeting the whole Palestinian community as a security risk to thwart democratic efforts such as the issuing by Palestinian civil society in Israel visions of a state for all its citizens.
Repression has increased dramatically since then and more than 1,000 Palestinian youths in Israel were interrogated by the Shin Bet after the Gaza massacre of winter 2008-09. Leaders of the Palestinian civil society, like myself, are under attack. Sheikh Raed Salah, the leader of the Islamic movement, is being persecuted for his involvement in the protection of Jerusalem from ongoing Israeli colonization and extremist settlers. Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament (Knesset) Mohammed Barakeh was shot in the leg with a sound bomb when he tried to protect protesters from the aggression of Israeli forces in the West Bank village of Bilin. MK Said Nafa was stripped of parliamentary immunity because of his visit to Syria, while former MK Azmi Bishara found himself in an imposed exile since three years for the same reason. One year ago, the Shin Bet ordered me to come to their offices and they interrogated me for one day in an attempt to silence my protest of the Israeli massacre in Gaza.
Israel applies a multi-track approach to attack our struggle: the authorities repress and persecute Palestinians while they prohibit foreign solidarity activists, organizations and journalists from visiting the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Additionally, right-wing groups within Israel commit public violence against Palestinian families in places like Acre and Jaffa, with total impunity. One week ago the right-wing group Im Tirtzu published posters inciting violence against individual members of Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights.
Palestinian civil society protests Israel’s repressive policies of intimidation but at the same time resolves to continue our struggle. We have achieved unity, and it is important for us to protect this. We will not allow Israel to isolate members or parts of our community. We have become more influential in the Arab media and we will use this influence. We have built our international networks and we call on them to support us. The attacks that are meant to divide us have had the complete opposite effect. Injustice unites us; we are all together in this struggle.
Israel diplomats breathe sigh of relief at Clegg’s poor poll showing: Haaretz
Analysis / It is unclear how diplomatic ties will unfold under Britain’s new government, but the candidate from the party perceived as toughest on Israel will certainly not hold the reins of power.
Sighs of relief will have been heard in Israel’s London embassy on Friday morning as it emerged that Britain’s Liberal Democrat party had failed to capitalize on a surge in pre-election opinion polls.
With nearly all the votes counted, the ‘Lib Dems’ languished on 56 seats in the U.K.’s 650-seat legislature, far behind the Conservatives with 301 and the incumbent Labour party with 255.
Despite claims by the party’s leader, Nick Clegg, of his support for Israel, both Israel’s foreign ministry and Britain’s Jewish community continue to harbor suspicions over his party, whose members have called for sanctions against Israel and dialogue with Hamas.
Many British Jews are still angry with Clegg for not expelling from the party Jenny Tonge, a veteran parliamentarian who has sympathized with suicide bombers and recently called for an investigation into allegations Israel had stolen human organs during an earthquake rescue mission to Haiti.
Nor has Clegg himself steered clear of controversy. Last year he used a speech at an anti-Semitism conference to ask: “Is the idea of Israel as a Jewish state something new?” Even if he continues to back Israel publicly, it will not alter the fact that of the three major parties, his is seen as most hostile to Israel and most willing to appease Britain’s Muslim community.
Conservatives or Labour: Which is best for Israel?
Once the dust settles, it is likely that the center-right Conservatives will replace center-left Labour at the head of a new government – with or without the support of Clegg’s party in a coalition. Yet it is unclear whether this would improve Jerusalem’s ties with Downing Street.
Gordon Brown loses no opportunity to explain how from early childhood he absorbed a love for Israel from his father, a Christian clergyman and declared Zionist. On the other hand, he has not fulfilled a promise to change a law that sanctions the arrest of senior Israelis on war crimes charges during visits to the U.K. He has also been a leading advocate of a ban on exports from settlements to the European Union.
That said, it is clear that with his departure, Israel would lose a loyal friend, who throughout his career fostered close relations with both Israel and Britain’s Jews.
Would Israel find a new ally in a Conservative government? The party’s leader, David Cameron, has often expressed support for Israel – but perhaps not with the same conviction as Gordon Brown, or the current prime minister’s predecessor, Tony Blair.
Cameron has been a proud critic of Israel’s building in East Jerusalem and his shadow chancellor, William Haig, was surprisingly vehement in denouncing Israeli tactics in the 2006 Lebanon war, which he called “disproportionate”.
But Israel is not without stalwart friends in the Conservative party. Foremost among them the party’s leading ideologue, Michael Gove. Some of the views expressed in his speeches and opinion articles over the past few years would put the mainstream Likud to shame.
IOA Exclusive interview with Moshé Machover – 7 May 2010: IOA
Moshé Machover is a mathematician, philosopher, and socialist activist, noted for his writings against Zionism. Born to a Jewish family in Tel Aviv, then part of the British Mandate of Palestine, Machover moved to Britain in 1968 where he became a naturalised citizen. He was a founder of Matzpen, the Israeli Socialist Organization, in 1962. [More in Wikipedia.]
IOA: A background question first. As one of the founders of Matzpen, a small radical anti-Zionist organization founded in the 1960s that served as a catalyst to much of what followed by way of Israeli resistance to the Occupation, would you give us a broad overview of how both the reality of the Occupation and the anti-Occupation movement have changed since 1967?
Moshé Machover: I must begin by questioning the wording of your question.
First, describing Matzpen as a “radical anti-Zionist organization” may sound to some people as though what drove us to found Matzpen in 1962 was our being radically anti-Zionist. Perhaps you meant to say “radical and anti-Zionist”. Yes, we were of course opposed to Zionism, but this was just one of the implications of being radical socialists. We founded Matzpen because we thought there was a need for a radical socialist organization that would be independent – unlike the Stalinist Communist Party, which toed the Soviet line.
Second, there isn’t very much that can be described as “Israeli resistance to the Occupation”. There is some opposition to the post-1967 Occupation. (There is a significant difference, which is lost in Hebrew, because it uses the same word for resistance and opposition.) Most of what can really be described as “resistance” is done by the Palestinians under occupation.
The reality in the post-1967 Occupied Territories (OTs) worsened dramatically after the first intifada (1987–93) and the Oslo Accords (1993). From the 1970s, there was a substantial influx of Palestinian labour into the Israeli economy. This was an exceptional period in the history of Zionist colonization, which had historically aimed at excluding the indigenous Palestinians altogether rather than exploiting their labour-power. It seemed that Israel was beginning to converge to the exploitative model of colonization (then typified by South Africa). During that exceptional period, Palestinian workers could make a living in Israel, but were harshly exploited there. A masterly analysis of that state of affairs was written by Emmanuel Farjoun http://matzpen.org/index.asp?p=english_reserve1979.
At the same time, the growing encroachment of Israeli colonization of the OTs led to increased resentment. The Israeli government – a broad coalition including both the Likkud led by Shamir and the Labour Party led by Peres and Rabin – instituted a policy of harsh repression (“iron fist”) in the OTs.
All these social, economic and political tensions exploded in the first intifada, an unarmed popular resistance. Alarmed by the steadfastness of this grass-root mobilization, and the great material and moral cost Israel incurred in containing it, the Israeli government decided to disengage from direct day-to-day contact with the Palestinians in the OTs and instead control them indirectly.
First of all, they instituted a policy of “closure”, making it almost impossible for workers from the OTs to work inside Israel. (By now their number is down to about one tenth of what it was just before the first intifada.) They have been replaced by migrant workers from all over the world: China, Thailand, Philippines, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa – you name it. The OTs were to be insulated from Israel and converted into a series of enclaves, not so much like the South-African Bantustans (which were a reserve of labour for the settlers), more like the Indian Reservations, where the indigenous people could rot out of sight. So Israel reverted to the traditional Zionist policy of almost totally excluding the Palestinians from employment in its economy.
In order to control the populace in these Reservations, Israel needed to sub-contract this policing task to Palestinian proxies. It found a willing partner in Yassir Arafat, leader of the PLO. Why did he agree to do this? It is a complicated question; perhaps we can talk about it some other time. Suffice it to say that following the Gulf War of 1991 he was in a desperate situation, in which he was ready to agree to almost anything.
This led to the Oslo Accords of 1993. Arafat was allowed to return to Palestine from his exile in Tunisia and establish the so-called Palestinian Authority (PA), whose role from Israel’s point of view was to be responsible for Israel’s security by suppressing any resistance. But the Israeli leadership was divided as to how much rope to give Arafat and his PA. Rabin and Peres, who led the then Labour-dominated government, agreed that the Palestinians should have at least a face-saving semblance of sovereignty. The leaders of the Likkud opposition (which then included both Sharon and Netanyahu), as well as some members of the Labour Party, such as Sharon’s friend Ehud Barak, thought that even this was going too far, and Arafat should only be given enough rope to hang himself. By the way, the Oslo Accords said nothing about a Palestinian state.
All the while, during the Oslo “peace process” Israeli colonization of the OTs, especially the West Bank, proceeded apace in the large spaces between the shrinking Palestinian Reservations.
From there it went from bad to worse to worser. Rabin was assassinated and the next harder-line Israeli Prime Ministers, Netanyahu, Barak and Sharon junked even the charade of the Oslo Accords. The separation wall – separating Palestinians from some of their best lands – started to be built. Arafat was isolated and besieged until his death in November 2004 (very likely bumped off by Israel). He was replaced by the totally invertebrate Mahmoud Abbas. In 2005 Sharon pulled out Israel’s troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip (in which there is little scope for Israeli colonization) and converted it to the world’s biggest concentration camp, strangled by Israeli–Egyptian blockade.
The resistance of the Palestinians to the Occupation has gone through several stages, which I can only sketch here. Until the outbreak of the first intifada (end of 1987), there was armed resistance of Palestinian fighters coming from outside the OTs. It took the form of incursions, which were ineffectual and in fact played into the hands of the Israeli authorities because they often resulted in civilian casualties. The first intifada was an enormous change. It was an unarmed mass popular resistance that posed great difficulties to the Occupation regime.
Following the Oslo Accords, the PA under Arafat did what was expected of it by Israel: it put the lid on the popular resistance and policed the populace. A corrupt bureaucratic collaborationist regime allowed a small privileged elite to benefit. But the ordinary people became increasingly frustrated as the Oslo process petered out and the Occupation continued. It was in fact worse than before as far as ordinary workers were concerned, because now there was a great deal of unemployment due to the Israeli closure policy. The frustration erupted in September 2000 in the second intifada, sparked off by a deliberate provocation of Sharon, with the kind permission of his friend Prime Minister Ehud Barak. This phase of resistance was again largely armed, but conducted from inside the OTs rather than from outside. This time militant Islamic organizations (mainly Hamas) took the lead. This achieved very little.
At present there is increasing mobilization for non-violent resistance, which can draw on a growing international solidarity, and support of volunteers from across the world, including Israel.
The Israeli opposition to the Occupation is not a single movement but consists of two components. The broader and softer component, led by Peace Now, consists almost entirely of Hebrews (Israeli Jews) who are relatively moderate Zionists. It has no real criticism of pre-1967 Israel, but would like to put an end to the post-1967 Occupation because of its corrosive and corrupting effect on Israeli society. It is committed to the so-called ‘two-state solution’, and actually supports the Israeli government when its actions appear to be directed towards that goal. In this it allows itself to be easily misled, because it is quite willing to take the appearance for reality. It supported enthusiastically the Oslo Process, depicting it as a genuine drive towards ending the Occupation. In 2004–5 it supported Sharon’s ploy of “disengaging” from the Gaza Strip, taking it to be a genuine end of the Israeli occupation of that part of the OTs. This soft component of the anti-Occupation movement greatly declined following the Camp David Summit (July 2000). At that meeting, Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Barak – who had opposed the Oslo Accords – wrong-footed Arafat by dressing up as a “generous offer” an ultimatum whose conditions were too dire even for the pliant Arafat. Like most of the Western press, the soft anti-Occupation movement in Israel was hoodwinked by Barak’s ploy, and concluded that it is not Israel but the Palestinians who constitute an obstacle to settling the conflict. This movement then went into disarray and decline.
The more radical component of the Israeli opposition to the Occupation is made up of a whole lot of small but active groups of Israelis of both nationalities. These groups are interlinked, and their memberships often overlap. They are basically one-issue groups, each one concentrating on action against a particular evil, a specific aspect of the Occupation. They are too many to list here, and it would be invidious to mention just a few of them. This radical component of the movement is growing, and the Israeli extremists, including most of the present government, are getting worried about this effective opposition – especially because of its links with non-violent resistance in the OTs and with solidarity organizations abroad. Currently, harsh repressive measures are being applied to these groups, and worse ones are threatened.
IOA: As a Marxist in a world dominated by countries that have increasingly distanced themselves not only from socialist ideas but even elementary concepts of social democracy, how do you see Marxist revolutionary ideology surviving and where might it be relatively more attractive or applicable?
MM: Again, I must comment on the wording of your question.
I feel a bit ambivalent about being described as a “Marxist”, because this term is often used to denote some kind of orthodoxy. I don’t subscribe to every opinion expressed by Karl Marx (neither did he, by the way, for he changed his mind on various issues; and he famously said that he was not a Marxist…). For example, I co-authored (with Emmanuel Farjoun) a book that points out a central error in Marx’s economic theory, and shows how this can be corrected. But if being Marxist means that I have been profoundly influenced by Marx’s ideas, his view of history and his analysis of the working of the capitalist mode of production – then, OK, I am a Marxist in this sense.
You referred to something you called “Marxist revolutionary ideology”. This is – unintentionally, I’m sure – dissing Marx. He always used the term “ideology” in a pejorative sense:
“Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces”. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism.)
By the way, this is somewhat similar to the way Freud described the working of the human mind; the significant difference is that for Marx the hidden “real motive forces” behind the false consciousness are not individual but social. I know that many people (including self-styled Marxists) use “ideology” for any system of ideas (and sometimes for what is barely a single idea); but I think this is unfortunate, because we do need a special word for socially generated false consciousness.
But to answer your question in its intended meaning: Marx’s ideas, especially his analysis of the capitalist mode of production, have an extraordinary vitality; it is much too soon to declare them dead and buried. For a while they have been in abeyance, for two reasons. First, there were regimes that embezzled the label “Marxism” but in fact practised a grotesque perversion of what Marx stood for. When those regimes imploded, the ideologues of capital misrepresented it as a refutation of Das Kapital. This worked for a while, but it shows signs of wearing off, not only due to the passage of time, but mostly as a result of the global crisis. Because the second reason for the abeyance of Marx’s ideas was that capitalism – or as Marx would put it, more precisely, the capitalist mode of production (he never used the term “capitalism,” as far as I know) – seemed for a long while to be not only stable but in good health. So the ideologues declared that history had come to an end, by which they meant that the existing system would go on forever. This seemed almost convincing: if it ain’t broke, why try to fix it?
But now we have witnessed a colossal crisis, which was triggered off by the bursting of the financial bubble but is evidently a manifestation of a profound malfunction of the entire global capitalist system. It is broke; and it can’t really be fixed. Besides, there is a growing awareness that this system is in any case not sustainable in the long run for ecological reasons. It is a sorcerer’s apprentice.
So Marx is currently back in vogue. Since we are still living in a capitalist world, this is naturally first reflected in sales figures. On 20 October 2008, the London Times reported: “In Germany Das Kapital, which for the past decade has been used mainly as a doorstop, is flying off the shelves”. Of course, as is normal in great transitions, the change occurs at first in the heads of artists and intellectuals, especially young ones, who are keen on novelty, including retro novelty. Among them red is getting back in fashion, this time with a green fringe. A groundswell is yet to come. Of course, it is by no means certain, and the form it may take is hard to predict.
You ask where Marx’s ideas might be more attractive or applicable. Well, it is very hard to predict where (and whether) a groundswell will start. Such things are triggered off by local and seemingly accidental factors. But we live in a globalized capitalist world – as Marx clearly predicted, by the way – so, wherever it starts, it will spread across the world. And as for applicability: by their nature Marx’s ideas are applicable globally or not at all.
IOA: Over the years, you’ve covered extensively the question of One-State vs. Two-State solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While critics of the One-State solution often say that it is “unrealistic,” a Two-State solution with a Palestinian state that is truly independent, viable, and closely follows the 1967 borders is hardly more realistic. How do you bridge the gap between the ideals inherent in your vision for a future Israel-Palestine on the one hand, and today’s stark reality of the Occupation on the other? And, just how might we get from here to there?
MM: Yes, I have repeatedly warned against the illusion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be resolved within the “box” of so-called “historical Palestine”, whether as a single state or divided into two. A resolution will only become possible following far-reaching transformation of the entire region. I have recently explained this position (which was first developed by Matzpen in the 1960s, well before the 1967 war) in an article “Resolution of The Israeli–Palestinian conflict: A socialist viewpoint”.
I don’t have a “vision for a future Israel–Palestine” as such. This would be thinking inside that very box, against which we in Matzpen have been arguing. We envisage a future progressive regional federation, which will include both a de-Zionized Israeli component and a Palestinian-Arab component. This is indeed a project of long duration. But, I repeat, it is an illusion to expect the conflict to be resolved without major changes in the regional balance of power.
The answer to the question as to how “we get from here to there” is twofold. First, we have to organize and work patiently towards the long-term aim. Second, there is much to do in the meantime in mobilizing forces in the OTs, in Israel, in the region and worldwide in a defensive struggle against the current effects of Zionist colonization, including the danger of another major wave of ethnic cleansing. This defensive resistance and opposition struggle, and campaigns of solidarity with it, are of extreme importance and great urgency. I have expanded on this theme in a talk at a conference on The Left in Palestine / The Palestinian Left held in February 2010: “Israeli Socialism and anti-Zionism: Historical Tasks and Balance Sheet“.
IOA: Do you believe that the struggle against the Occupation has changed since Israel’s attack on Gaza, December 2008 – January 2009? If so, how different is the post-Gaza reality from an anti-Occupation struggle standpoint?
MM: There has been a very noticeable change in the climate of opinion at three levels. First, in world public opinion, among ordinary people in many countries. I can feel it here in Britain and I hear reports about similar shifts in public opinion in several other countries. A survey conducted recently in 28 countries on 29,000 respondents reveals that only Iran, Pakistan and North Korea have more negative perception than Israel http://tinyurl.com/36bggza. Israel is well on its way to being regarded a pariah state in world public opinion.
Second, there is a shift in the attitude of some governments that were formerly very friendly to Israel. The clearest case is Turkey.
But perhaps the most significant shift is among Jews outside Israel. In this respect the Goldstone Report may be a milestone. Not all Jews are as yet ready to come out publicly and criticize Israel; but many who don’t do so are nevertheless tacitly withdrawing their support. There is a growing feeling among Jews that being identified too closely with Israel is both morally wrong and against their own best interest. This shift is important because it encourages opposition among non-Jews, who have been intimidated by the Zionist propaganda that mendaciously brands opposition to Israel as “anti-Semitic”.
All this is having an effect on the struggle in the OTs, Israel and elsewhere. The campaign for boycott, disinvestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel is gaining momentum at a pace that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. This applies even in the US, where formerly very few voices had been raised against Israel’s misdeeds. The recent majority resolution of the students’ senate of Berkeley University (which was blocked by an undemocratic veto of the president of that body) is just one instance.
Israel has reacted by intensifying repression in the OTs, viciously and violently targeting persons engaged in non-violent resistance. Inside Israel too, there is growing repression against oppositional organizations and individuals.
Finally, there is a desperate Israeli PR campaign worldwide, trying to de-legitimize the growing opposition and revulsion. But as far as I can see this is not having much effect. It may actually backfire.
IOA: What are the appropriate strategies and tactics to fight the Occupation, and struggle for a just future for Palestinians and Israelis? How do we keep the faith for a better future despite the many obstacles? Would you share with us your experience from the UK and other places where you are active?
MM: It would be presumptuous of me to advise the Palestinians inside the OTs how exactly to conduct their struggle. But obviously it would be wise to draw lessons from past experience as to which methods of struggle have been most effective.
The most important task for us, expatriate Israeli dissidents, is educational – in the broad sense of the word. When I first came to the UK, not only general public opinion, but even much of the radical left, was very sympathetic to Israel. We had a tremendous job educating the left on the true nature of Zionism as a colonizing project and Israel as an expansionist settler state. This story is told in the film Matzpen. Our analysis was in great demand; we were invited to speak at many meetings.
Following the decline of the left in the late 1970s, interest in our message subsided. But recently it has revived. Nowadays we can use the Internet as a great tool of education and information. You in the IOA are part of this. In my opinion we are doing fine, but we must be patient because it is a very long-term project.
Finally, as for the struggle inside Israel: I would not presume to advise the militants in the various one-issue groups (to which I referred in my answer to a previous question), each of whom is devoted to action against a particular evil, a specific aspect of the Occupation. In fact, I think that on the whole they are doing a great job in the current struggle.
But what is lacking is a non-sectarian radical socialist organization dedicated to the long-term strategy of patiently building towards the future transformation of Israel as part of the entire region. In my recent talk, “Israeli Socialism and anti-Zionism: Historical Tasks and Balance Sheet,” I explained why in my opinion such an organization will be called upon to play a crucial role in the future of Israel and the region, and the resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Building it is a vital task.
IOA: Thank you, Moshé.
MM: It’s a pleasure.
More of Moshé Machover’s work HERE
Report: IAEA to discuss Israel’s nuclear activities for first time: Haaretz
Israeli nuclear capabilities are on the provisional agenda for the International Atomic Energy Agency’s June 7 meeting.
Israel’s secretive nuclear activities may undergo unprecedented scrutiny next month, with a key meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency tentatively set to focus on the topic for the first time, according to documents shared Friday with The Associated Press.
A copy of the restricted provisional agenda of the IAEA’s June 7 board meeting lists Israeli nuclear capabilities as the eighth item – the first time that that the agency’s decision-making body is being asked to deal with the issue in its 52 years of existence.
The agenda can still undergo changes in the month before the start of the meeting and a senior diplomat from a board member nation said the item, included on Arab request, could be struck if the U.S. and other Israeli allies mount strong opposition. He asked for anonymity for discussing a confidential matter.
Even if dropped from the final agenda, however, its inclusion in the May 7 draft made available to The AP is significant, reflecting the success of Islamic nations in giving concerns about Israel’s unacknowledged nuclear arsenal increased prominence.
The 35-nation IAEA board is the agency’s decision making body and can refer proliferation concerns to the UN Security Council – as it did with Iran in 2006 after Tehran resumed uranium enrichment, a potential pathway to nuclear weapons.
A decision to keep the item would be a slap in the face not only for Israel but also for Washington and its Western allies, which support the Jewish state and view Iran as the greatest nuclear threat to the Middle East.
Iran – and more recently Syria – have been the focus of past board meetings; Tehran for its refusal to freeze enrichment and for stonewalling IAEA efforts to probe alleged nuclear weapons experiments, and Damascus for blocking agency experts from revisiting a site struck by Israeli jets on suspicion it was a nearly finished plutonium producing reactor.
Iran and Syria are regular agenda items at board meetings. Elevating Israel to that status would detract from Western attempts to keep the heat on Tehran and Damascus and split the board even further – developing nations at board meetings are generally supportive of Iran and Syria and hostile to Israel.
That in turn could stifle recent resolve by the world’s five recognized nuclear-weapons powers – the U.S., Russia, Britain, France and China – to take a more active role in reaching the goal of a nuclear-free Middle East.
Inclusion of the item appeared to be the result of a push by the 18-nation Arab group of IAEA member nations, which last year successfully lobbied another agency meeting – its annual conference – to pass a resolution directly criticizing Israel and its atomic program.
Unlike the board, the conference cannot make policy. Still, the result was a setback not only for Israel but also for Washington and other backers of the Jewish state, which had lobbied for 18 years of past practice – debate on the issue without a vote.
A letter to IAEA chief Yukiya Amano by the Arab group that was also shared with the AP urged Amano to report to the board what was known about Israel’s nuclear program by including a list of the information available to the Agency and the information which it can gather from open sources.
The April 23 Arab letter urged Amano to enforce the conference resolution calling on Israel to allow IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities.
Israel has never said it has nuclear weapons but is universally believed to possess them.
The latest pressure is putting the Jewish state in an uncomfortable position. It wants the international community to take stern action to prevent Iran from getting atomic weapons but at the same time brushes off calls to come clean about its own nuclear capabilities.
Additionally, Amano, in a letter obtained Wednesday by the AP, has asked foreign ministers of the agency’s 151 member states for proposals on how to persuade Israel to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Egypt has proposed that a Nonproliferation Treaty conference now meeting at UN headquarters in New York back a plan calling for the start of negotiations next year on a Mideast free of nuclear arms.
The U.S. has cautiously supported the idea while saying that implementing it must wait for progress in the Middle East peace process. Israel also says a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement must come first.
Still, Washington and the four other nuclear weapons countries recognized as such under the Nonproliferation Treaty appear to be ready to move from passive support to a more active role.
In her speech to the UN nuclear conference on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Washington would support practical measures for moving toward that objective.
Washington also has been discussing it with the Israelis, said a Western diplomatic source, who asked for anonymity since he was discussing other countries’ contacts.
Russian arms negotiator Anatoly I. Antonov, speaking on behalf of the five Nonproliferation Treaty nuclear powers, said these nations were committed to full implementation of a Middle East nuclear free zone.
Wagering on Washington: Al Ahram Weekly
When all suspect that proximity talks with Israel will end in failure, Dina Ezzat tries to understand why the Arabs have agreed to engage in them
“This won’t work — indirect talks, proximity talks will not yield results,” Israeli Intelligence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor said Wednesday.
The Israeli official spoke hours before George Mitchell, envoy of US president to the Middle East, was planning to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to finalise the launch of proximity talks that he will supervise between Israel and the Palestinians, slated for the next four months.
Meridor’s prophecy of failure is not one sided. On Saturday, a limited number of Arab foreign ministers also predicted that proximity talks are unlikely to deliver, due to what they qualified as the “lack of good faith” on the side of the Netanyahu government.
The Arab decision to accept the US proposal of indirect talks was adopted despite prior Arab threats of turning down talks if Israel did not halt its aggressive settlement expansion activities in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem that Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders say should be the capital of a future Palestinian state.
According to Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hamed Ben Jassem, Arab countries decided to give “the American broker a chance so maybe they can do something.” “This is a chance we are giving to the Americans,” he added, following the five-hour meeting that adopted a communiqué outlining the Arab stance on the parameters of a lasting solution.
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa too said that Arabs are not about to turn their backs on the administration of US President Barack Obama who has been trying, even if not successfully, to be a fair and honest broker.
According to Meridor, however, US involvement in indirect talks is exactly the reason why the talks won’t work. “Everyone will want to pull America to their own side, and they won’t get closer, they will get further,” he said Wednesday.
On Tuesday, in Cairo, US Ambassador to Egypt Margaret Scobey insisted that the US is not going to force a solution on anyone. “The US cannot impose any solution,” she said. Acknowledging the difficulties ahead, Scobey insisted that “there is a way forward” and that there are “reasons to be cautiously optimistic”. Arab peace process diplomats, including Palestinians and Egyptians, do not share this assessment. “It will not work for long. Netanyahu is not sending any signals of serious peace talks engagement,” said one. According to another, “Netanyahu is going into these talks only to fudge it sooner rather than later, and I would be surprised if the four-month timeframe endures.”
A senior PA official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that President Mahmoud Abbas was under “considerable pressure from Washington to give proximity talks a chance. And even if not convinced, [Abbas] had to bow,” especially that some Arab capitals urged him not to miss this chance and that practically speaking he has no other alternatives.
During the past few days Abbas worked on garnering enough high-level Arab support for his otherwise clearly weak political posture. On Wednesday morning he was in Cairo for talks with President Hosni Mubarak., who had earlier discussed with Netanyahu ways of reviving the stalled talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
In Cairo, as in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, the previous two stops of his limited Arab tour, the Palestinian president was reassured that he would not be standing alone in the face of public anger should Netanyahu do the expected: engage in proximity talks while acting provocatively on the ground.
And the provocations will surely not only come from Netanyahu. On Tuesday, Palestinians accused Jewish settlers of setting fire to a mosque in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian complaint included blame for the lack of effective intervention by the Israeli authorities to prevent the attack.
The PA, nonetheless, is not willing to make an issue of the incident at this point — not that it has traditionally done otherwise. The official stance now is that another year should not pass under the Obama administration “without getting something out of the Israelis”.
Some Arab capitals while sharing the same sentiment disagree with the tactics. They favour going straight to the UN Security Council. However, Palestinian sources suggest that only at a later stage might the US be willing to entertain talk of the UN Security Council, if it feels that the Arabs have done everything possible and that Israel has not been responsive.
The Arabs’ nod to indirect talks comes as Israel and the US are hurling indirect threats and accusations against Syria and Hizbullah for the latter allegedly acquiring Scud missiles. It also comes as over 1.5 million Palestinians are kept under an impossible and suffocating siege in Gaza.
Palestinian Authority: Israel must choose – peace or settlements: Haaretz
U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell meets Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.
Israel must make the choice between peace and settlements, the Palestinian Authority urged on Friday, following a meeting between U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell and PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said that the Palestinians want to give the negotiations a chance, but that success is mainly up to Israel, whose actions could doom the peace process.
“If the price that we will pay for saying yes to Mitchell will be more settlements and more dictations, that’s a big question mark about the possibility of continuing,” said Erekat.
“Now the Israeli government has a choice, either peace or settlements, and it can’t have both,” he said.
The Palestinians refuse to enter into direct negotiations unless Israel halts all settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim as the capital of their future state.
Netanyahu has agreed to a temporary slowdown in the West Bank, but refuses to announce a construction freeze in East Jerusalem.
Mahmoud Abbas has agreed to participate in indirect peace talks with Israel, but has said he still requires the formal backing of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s executive committee, which is expected to sign off on the negotiations when it meets Saturday.
Mitchell arrived earlier this week, and has already held two days of talks with Netanyahu. He was to meet again with Abbas on Saturday and Sunday, said Saeb Erekat.
Earlier on Friday, President Shimon Peres told visiting U.S. envoy George Mitchell that Jerusalem was committed to reaching a Middle East settlement that would see the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state beside Israel, but that security must be a central focus of these talks.
During their meeting, Peres told Mitchell that Israel placed security at the top of the agenda for the upcoming talks.
Richard Goldstone: I have no regrets about the Gaza war report: Haaretz
By Akiva Eldar
Richard Goldstone during a session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, Sept. 29, 2009.
Judicial decisions Richard Goldstone made in South Africa that resulted in sending black South Africans to their deaths under the apartheid regime have nothing to do with his report on the Gaza war, he told Haaretz yesterday.
The comments came in response to an article in which he was accused of being in no moral position to judge Israel because he was involved in capital punishment in the apartheid regime.
The article in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily said Goldstone, who headed the UN committee that accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes during the Gaza war of 2008-2009, was responsible for sending at least 28 black South Africans to their deaths when they appeared before him in court.
“As far as I’m concerned, there’s no connection to the appointment I had in South Africa to these accusations,” said Goldstone, who calls himself pro-Zionist. “I took an appointment to the bench, as did a number of liberal judges, and we had to uphold the law of the country. It was a moral dilemma to do that, but the approach was that it was better to fight from inside than not at all. The moral dilemma came up when I had to apply the law.”
Goldstone said he sentenced only two people to death directly, but upheld a majority of appeals in the Supreme Court, as one of three judges on a panel.
“The law at the time stated that when there were aggravating circumstances, the death penalty was obligatory,” he said. “The regrets I have now are the same that I had at the time. I have not changed my position on this. It was unpleasant to be involved in capital punishment – then and now. And I’ve always been against the death penalty. But when I accepted the position to the bench I had to honor the oath of office.”
Regarding the UN report on the Gaza war, for which many Jewish groups have attacked Goldstone, the judge said he has no regrets about the position he took.
“I felt that because I was Jewish, it would be hypocritical not to get involved in the Middle East,” he said. He said he advises Israel to have an open public inquiry into the war crimes allegations.
Goldstone said he was “extremely upset” by the attacks and by the effect they have had on his family.
Some members of the Jewish community had tried to keep Goldstone away from his grandson’s recent bar mitzvah in Johannesburg because they objected to his position on Operation Cast Lead.
“It was a wonderful simcha,” Goldstone said of the bar mitzvah. “It was joyous and meaningful, and it came after much aggravation. There were people who wanted to stop me from attending. But that was eventually solved after a meeting on Monday.”
Goldstone said no South Africans, including the country’s much revered first black president Nelson Mandela, who appointed him a judge, had accused him of undermining his moral authority by sentencing defendants to death or dismissing their appeals.
“I never had accusations of this sort,” he said. “The first time I have been accused of such things is now, by Yedioth.”
Why won’t Israel allow Gazans to import coriander?: Haaretz
In its response to a freedom-of-information suit last week, the state admitted that there is specific list of goods permissible for import to Strip.
By Amira Hass
The Defense Ministry is refusing – on security grounds, it says – to reveal why Israel prohibits the import into the Gaza Strip of items such as cilantro, sage, jam, chocolate, french fries, dried fruit, fabrics, notebooks empty flowerpots and toys, while allowing cinnamon, plastic buckets and combs.
But in its response to a freedom-of-information suit last week, the state did admit, for the first time, that there is specific list of permissible goods.
The suit, filed in the Tel Aviv administrative court by Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, sought to clarify the criteria and procedures the authorities use to determine what goods to allow into Gaza. It was filed after Gazans began claiming that commercial interests inside Israel, and their lobbying power, were determining the permitted items.
In its response, the state “apologized to the court and the plaintiff for inaccuracies presented during oral arguments [in January], due to certain misunderstandings.” The inaccuracy in question was its denial of the existence of written directives.
The response included two documents that the state termed drafts that are already being used in practice – one titled “Procedure for Permitting the Entry of Goods into Gaza” and one titled “Procedure for Tracking and Estimating Inventories in Gaza.” The latter is supposed to warn of existing or likely shortages.
The state also submitted a third document, a “List of Critical Humanitarian Goods for the Population,” whose existence it had previously denied. This list is periodically updated, it said.
A fourth document, called “Foodstuffs Consumption in Gaza – Red Lines,” is a draft for internal use only, the state said, “and has never served as a basis for decision-making.” Haaretz reporters Uri Blau and Yotam Feldman revealed the existence of this document in a June 2009 investigative report. It apparently determines the minimum nutritional needs of Gaza’s population, according to caloric intake and grams of food, parsed by age and gender.
The state seeks to deny Gisha’s suit on the grounds that revealing the first three documents would “harm national security and possibly even diplomatic relations.” And since the fourth is not a basis for policy, there is no need to reveal it, the state argued.
Gisha filed its response with the court yesterday, in which it reiterated its demand for any documents that determine the goods transfer policy. “It is difficult to imagine how publishing a list of products, such as medications, foodstuffs and hygiene products, or revealing the procedures that determine this list, could harm state security,” wrote attorney Tamar Feldman.
PLO executive committee approves new peace talks with Israel: Haaretz
Palestinian Authority to resume mediated negotiations, despite warnings from Hamas
The Palestinian Authority on Saturday got the green light to restart peace talks with Israel after the PLO’s executive committee voted to approve indirect negotiations.
At a meeting in Ramallah in the West Bank, Palestinian Liberation Organization officials backed a motion for the first talks between the sides in 18 months, to be brokered by United States peace envoy George Mitchell.
PLO spokesman Yasser Abed Rabbo said after the meeting that the vote marked the official start of the talks.
“The negotiations will take one form: shuttling between President Abu Mazen and the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu,” he said.
“As far as we are concerned, the start of the indirect negotiations can be announced today”.
The PLO decision came despite warnings from rival Palestinian group Hamas, which said on Friday that the move would only legitimize Israel’s occupation, Palestinian media said.
“Absurd proximity talks” would only “give the Israeli occupation an umbrella to commit more crimes against the Palestinians”, Hamas reportedly said in a statement.
“Hamas calls on the PLO to stop selling illusions to the Palestinian people and announce the failure of their gambling on absurd talks,” the statement said.
On Friday, the Chinese Xinuah news agency said that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a left-wing Palestinian militant group, had also rejected the idea of proximity talks, saying negotiations would be “ill and absurd, whether direct or indirect”.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had previously agreed in principle to participate in indirect peace talks with Israel, but said he required formal backing from the PLO’s governing body.
Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah said last week that all of the ‘final status issues’ – which include the sovereignty of East Jerusalem and the rights of Palestinian refugees and are potentially the biggest stumbling blocks in peace talks – would be on the table when negotiations restarted.
“Absolutely no issue will be excluded and Jerusalem will be the top priority,” Rdainah said.
On Friday, Abbas told Mitchell during a Ramallah meeting that Israel must make the choice between peace and settlements.
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat added that the Palestinians wanted to give the negotiations a chance, but that success was mainly up to Israel, whose actions could doom the peace process.
“If the price that we will pay for saying yes to Mitchell will be more settlements and more dictations, that’s a big question mark about the possibility of continuing,” Erekat said.
“Now the Israeli government has a choice, either peace or settlements, and it can’t have both.”
Mitchell arrived in the region earlier this week and has held two days of talks with Netanyahu. He was scheduled to meet with Abbas on Saturday and Sunday, Erekat said .
Earlier on Friday, President Shimon Peres told Mitchell that Jerusalem was committed to reaching a Middle East settlement through the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state beside Israel – but that security must be a central focus of upcoming talks.
Twilight Zone / The Moroccan model: Haaretz
A visit to the Jewish community of Morocco reveals surprising coexistence.
By Gideon Levy
In a small room within a large house − its construction nearly complete − with a breathtaking view of a valley of argan trees, a Moroccan carpenter planes doors made of local cedar wood. It seems unlikely that he knows exactly what he is making. In fact, for the past few weeks he has been building the holy ark for the synagogue of the Moroccan community of Kfar Sava. When the ark is ready, the owner of the house, Claude Senouf, a Jewish painter and journalist, will ship it to the central Israeli city, where it will be dedicated in honor of his grandfather, Raoul, who was one of Morocco’s moneyed elite. By then, too, the construction of Senouf’s magnificent home in western Morocco, not far from the town of Essaouira on the Atlantic coast, will be finished.
You may not have heard of Essaouira, but it was the birthplace of A.B. Yehoshua’s mother. The future writer was sent there in 1950, during the period of the austerity regime in Israel, to cavort for three months with his cousins. He has not been back since. Yehoshua told me that it was in Essaouira that the seeds of his 1997 novel “Voyage to the End of the Millennium” began to germinate. This week, an herbs and spices stall in the local market still had signs in Hebrew, such as: “Heightens desire for men and women,” and “Operates against kidney stones.”
Also born in this colorful town, the only place in the Arab world that had a Jewish majority, were Andre Azoulay and his wife, Katia. I have met few people as impressive as Azoulay, the long-time chief adviser to the king of Morocco. His deportment, together with the tone and content of his speech, bespeak nobility and sagacity.
More than 25 years ago, when I first met him, I called the hotel in Jerusalem where he was staying and asked to speak with Mr. Azoulay. “Does he work in the hotel?” the operator asked me, obviously thinking that Azoulay could not be the name of a guest. Azoulay still likes to recall that incident. Katia Azoulay also has an unfortunate recollection from Israel, where someone once remarked to her, “You don’t look in the least Moroccan.”
Azoulay was somewhat dispirited and disturbed when I met him late last month. For the first time in his impressive career as senior adviser to King Hassan II and to his son, the present monarch, King Mohammed VI, Azoulay was accused − by a local attorney, Khalid Soufiani, a pro-Palestinian activist − of being a Zionist agent in the employ of the Mossad.
Azoulay has an impressive background. He established the Identity and Dialogue group, one of the first forums to call for negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, back in the 1970s. He has devoted much of his career to working for peace between Jews and Arabs and always took pride in his Jewish identity while remaining a Moroccan patriot. He is responsible in no small measure for the relative democratization his country has undergone and for its comparative economic prosperity. He lived for about a quarter of a century in France and became an important economic figure there, but returned to his native land. Yet he finds himself suddenly under a cloud. It’s hard to believe that this never happened before − after all, he is a top Jewish adviser to the king of an Arab country, and with a home in Caesarea, too (until he sold it because of the frequent break-ins). But that says something about the openness in Morocco, where everyone is meticulous about calling the king “his majesty.”
The headlines of the kingdom’s newspapers immediately came to Azoulay’s defense, and Azoulay himself did not hesitate to take part at the end of April in the annual gathering of the Mimouna Club − an organization that seeks to preserve the Jewish cultural heritage in Morocco − held at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane. Mimouna, the traditional Moroccan festival marking the end of Passover, is held in Morocco’s answer to Switzerland. Ifrane is an elegant ski resort in the Atlas Mountains that seems to have been cloned from the Alps, with a university in which the language of instruction is English. Yet the university, which was established with Saudi funds as compensation for the pollution of the Moroccan coastline by a Saudi oil tanker, hosts the Mimouna Club meeting every year, with a large sign in Hebrew at the entrance to the resplendent auditorium. There is an exhibition of photographs of Jews, the president of the university opens the gathering and the Secretary of State to the minister of tourism, Anis Birou, is present. I could hardly believe my eyes.
Well, I could hardly believe my eyes altogether on this, my first visit to Morocco. The first preconception was proved wrong even before we landed: it was clear through the window of the plane that Morocco is green. In the days to come, many similar preconceived notions would have to be discarded. Morocco is not what I thought, and maybe not what my readers think, either.
For Avraham Sabag, a ritual slaughterer, it was a particularly busy day, and he still had two more chickens to slaughter. Nevertheless, Sabag, who also does ritual circumcision when needed, found time to show us around the mellah, the former Jewish ghetto of Fez. Indifferently dressed and speaking an archaic Hebrew, Sabag doled out charity to the many local beggars with his left hand, because that is what Jewish law prescribes. The left hand is used for giving to Arabs, he explained, just as one differentiates between sacred and profane, between the homes of the Jews and the homes of the Arabs. “There is no hatred here,” Sabag said, after all his supercilious mannerisms toward the mendicant Arabs, some of whom kissed his hand.
Armenian music was playing in Senouf’s Honda, followed by songs of Shlomo Bar, the Israeli musician, as we approached the House of the Living cemetery in the heart of Fez. The Jewish-owned Apollo cinema used to be here on the left, while on the right are the plastered headstones, inscribed in beautiful Hebrew: “A place of shrouding for a mortal’s body, a concealment to preserve the body for when the dead shall return to life.”
The cemetery was established hastily by the Jews when they were compelled to move it from a nearby site, but today it is better kept than any of the old Muslim cemeteries in Israel. Here is the grave of the rabbi whose son is a bank clerk in Netanya, here the last resting place of a girl who died for her faith. The former Azoulay Street in the mellah now has an Arab name, like all the other streets that once bore Jewish names, but the synagogue in the heart of the quarter has been superbly restored − at the initiative of Andre Azoulay, of course. There are only about 60 Jews left in Fez; our slaughterer, who is well into his sixties, is one of the youngest. Sabag is considering immigration to Israel: his son has arranged a job for him as a kashrut supervisor in an Eilat hotel.
Some of the Jews we met, notably our escort, Senouf, dream of applying the Moroccan model to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A colorful, charming figure, Senouf is now planning a project in which Israelis and Palestinians will come to Morocco to study the nitty-gritty of coexistence together with Moroccans. But in Morocco, as elsewhere, the Jewish community, which numbers only about 3,000 souls, does not speak in one voice. At the Ifrane conference, for example, Simon Levy, a communist and the director of the Museum of Moroccan Judaism in Casablanca, likened the Israeli occupation in the territories to Nazism. He also reminded the audience that the greatest massacre of Jews in history was perpetrated by Europeans, not by Arabs. Andre Azoulay told the gathering: “I have been a Moroccan for 3,000 years. I am a Moroccan and a Jew. Here in this country Jews and Muslims are brothers. We are the only ones who can say this.”
Morocco is a wonderful country, a land of contradictions and contrasts: the explicit and the mysterious, the overt and the veiled. There is much less interest in the Palestinian issue than one might expect − domestic issues are more acute: democratization, the economic situation, the faltering education and health systems, the Moroccan diaspora and the disputed Western Sahara, which no one dares mention. The economic and social situation is a faithful reflection of the kingdom’s geographic location − between Europe and Africa.
There are apparently far fewer political prisoners nowadays, and people no longer disappear without a trace. Kamal Lahbib, who spent five years in prison for communist activity, met with us at a trendy cafe in Casablanca and spoke freely.
Two hours from here, in a prestigious suburb of Marrakech, lunch is served at the home of Liz Lalanne and her partner, Jean-Pierre Benoliel. The meal is taken next to the pool of their spacious estate, designed in ornate Moroccan style, which seems to have leaped from the pages of a fashionable interior design magazine. The maid, signaled by an electric buzzer that keeps her moving between the guests and the kitchen, serves couscous, while the three house gardeners toil to level the grass in the sprawling five-dunam (1.25 acre) garden.
At the home of a former health minister, Dr. Abd Al-Rahim Haroushi, located in an affluent suburb of Casablanca, the host proudly shows off the many modern Moroccan works of art that adorn the walls. His wife, Claude, speaks knowledgeably about Amos Oz’s “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” which she recently read and greatly admired. Her husband sneaks a cigarette by the pool, out of sight of his wife.
A local Italian restaurant in the city serves prosciutto and Black Label on the rocks is offered at receptions, while outside many women wear the veil. “If not for the corruption, this place could be paradise,” sighs one of my escorts. Morocco, he means.
The fish market in Essaouira offers sardines and also sole and turbot, and then you move to the teeming workers’ restaurant, meager in the extreme, where the fish is fried and served with tomato salad and French fries. I have never eaten tastier seafood. At the inn on the main road between Essaouira and Agadir, mutton is ordered in advance; travelers delight in the stew, cooked on a low fire for three hours in an earthenware pot.
A bigger fire rises not far from there, at Had-Dra, site of the annual Fantasia. For two weeks, tens of thousands of Moroccans stream here from all parts of the kingdom to view the great horse-riding spectacle. Astride stylized saddles and holding colorful reins, the riders spur the animals on at frightening speed directly toward the audience. At the last minute − the last second − they bring the purebred Arabian steeds to a halt and in unison fire rifles into the air, generating an earsplitting noise and enveloping the crowd in columns of smoke. No doubt about it: the Moroccan rider is a man’s man.
Through the smoke and the dust kicked up by the charging horses, against the backdrop of the looming Moroccan sunset, are the furrowed faces of the thousands who flock here by roads and trails, dozens of them standing in the back of every pickup, for what is sometimes a brutal trip of several days. Many of them are illiterate − some 45 percent of Morocco’s rural population and 20 percent of its townsfolk cannot read or write − and this is their premier event of the year.
The Fantasia festival was held in the third week of April, and in the following week a chamber music festival, of which the honorary president is Andre Azoulay, took place in Essaouira. Azoulay beams with pleasure whenever anyone says something good about his hometown.
Snakes writhing to the tune of the flutes in the Marrakech market; a tapestry of straw rugs in the market of Casablanca; snow on the peaks of the Atlas Mountains in April; dozens of police along the road leading to Mohammed V Airport, perhaps because Mohammed VI is about to pass that way; traffic cops who waive your ticket in return for baksheesh, a small tip; and many checkpoints whose meaning became clear only afterward: a large Al-Qaida underground cell was uncovered here. A little Third World and a little First, Arabia and Africa with a touch of France, a land of almost limitless possibilities. In a word, Morocco.