Wall Street Journal: Palestinians make surprisingly large land offer to Israel: Haaretz
In framework of proximity talks, Palestinian negotiators have reportedly proposed giving up twice the West Bank territory Abbas offered Olmert.
The Palestinian Authority has offered surprising concessions to Israel regarding borders for a future state, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
In the framework of proximity peace talks now being mediated by the United States’ special Middle East envoy George Mitchell, Palestinian negotiators have reportedly offered to match and even double the amount of West Bank land territory that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas offered to former prime minister Ehud Olmert during their one-on-one 2008 talks.
During those talks, Abbas offered Olmert to exchange 1.9% of West Bank land for an equal amount of Israeli territory. Olmert countered with a much higher demand of his own, which the current reported offer would still not come close to matching.
Palestinian officials told The Wall Street Journal that the unexpected proposal was being made due to their assumption that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not serious about reaching a final status deal within the indirect negotiations.
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said his government was approaching the proximity talks in good faith and “are not going to waste Mitchell’s time.
“We want Mr. Mitchell to succeed because his success is our freedom,” he said.
Mitchell was in the region this week for talks with Abbas and Netanyahu. A statement from Netanyahu’s office said they had discussed during their meetingsthe possibility of gestures toward the Palestinians. No details were given, but the gestures seemed likely connected to easing movement for Palestinians in the West Bank.
Palestinian nonviolence relies on global non-silence: The Guardian CiF
The world cannot expect Palestinians to abandon violence while remaining silent on Israel’s repression of nonviolent activists
When will there be a Palestinian Gandhi? I’m often asked this question by people who sympathise with Palestinian suffering but are uncomfortable associating themselves with resistance movements that they see as violent or terrorist.
The reality of course is that Palestinian nonviolent resisters are not only active today but have a long and storied history in the Palestinian struggle. The real question is: why haven’t we heard about them?
Like many resisting oppression, Palestinian Gandhis are likely to be found in prisons after being repressed by Israeli soldiers or police or in the hospital after being brutally beaten or worse.
In recent years, the Israeli repression of Palestinian nonviolent dissent has increased significantly and Israel is showing signs of transforming into a fully-fledged police state. Even Israeli citizens, both Palestinian such as Ameer Makhoul and Jewish, have faced intimidation in one form or another for being critical of Israel’s policies. Surely, Israel has realised that its ongoing occupation, continued colonisation of Palestinian land, and its bombardment of civilian-packed Gaza have significantly and negatively impacted on its image abroad. The images of nonviolent Palestinian protests against the Israeli occupation aren’t helping Israel’s reputation either.
Perhaps that is why recently many nonviolent activists and initiatives have been shut down and repressed. Jamal Juma, Muhammad Othman and Abdallah Abu Rahman may not be household names like Gandhi or Mandela but they have been just as consistent in resisting Israel’s illegal segregation wall in the West Bank by organising nonviolent demonstrations for years. And, like Gandhi and Mandela they have paid a price by being arrested on multiple occasions.
The Israeli repression efforts extend far beyond the arrests of nonviolent demonstrators against the wall. Last month, Palestinian and international activists sat in front of Israeli bulldozers about to confiscate more Palestinian land for the expansion of a settlement. Soldiers quickly dispersed the crowd and thoroughly pummelled and pepper-sprayed an organiser at point-blank range.
Most recently, several leaders of human rights organisations advocating Palestinian rights have been arrested and thrown into jail for allegedly posing security risks to the state. One of them, Izzet Shahin, is a Turkish national whose crime was organising boat shipments of humanitarian aid to the besieged people of Gaza. During past attempts to bring supplies to the blockaded strip, the boats were commandeered by the Israeli navy and the nonviolent activists were arrested before being deported even though they had never entered Israeli waters.
The list goes on, and despite the increase in Israeli repression, Palestinian nonviolent resistance is nothing new. While some have adopted an Israeli narrative that identifies nonviolent Palestinian dissent as something new, the reality is that Palestinians have consistently chosen nonviolent resistance before arms – from the general strikes of 1936, to the consistent appeals to international legal bodies, to the weekly demonstrations against the wall. It has been the continued dispossession at the hands of Israel, and the silence of the international community despite these nonviolent efforts, that has led some Palestinians to view violence as the only option.
Alas, it is often the major explosions that make headlines and not the nonviolent demonstrations or their violent repression by Israel’s secret police or its military occupation. That’s why some still wait for a Palestinian Gandhi despite the fact that they have taken many a beating and seen the inside of many a jail cell.
When an Iranian protester – Neda – was shot and killed last year, the world knew her name – so did President Obama. But most would be hard-pressed to name one of the many nonviolent protestors in Palestine who have been arrested, beaten, shot or even bulldozed to death.
The international community has an obligation to Palestinian nonviolent activists. Leaders cannot simply call on Palestinians to abandon violence in the face of Israeli occupation and remain silent when the nonviolent activists are politically repressed. This only reinforces the idea that the use of force reigns supreme and that Palestinians have no choice but to accept hardships at the hands of their Israeli lords.
Sadly, the same leaders who call on Palestinians to abandon violence have been silent in the face of Israeli repression. By condemning violent Palestinian resistance while remaining silent in the face of Israeli crackdowns and political arrests, they are simply endorsing violence against civilians by one side instead of the other.
The United States should take the lead in condemning Israeli repression of nonviolent dissent, just as they would in Iran, Burma or apartheid South Africa, because nonviolent dissent is not only a critical part of the Palestinian struggle but it is an American value as well.
EDITOR: Only Israeli Children Are Hurt
In the wake of the murderous attack by Israel in Lebanon in Summer 2006, over 35 people have died as the result of the more than a million ‘bomblets’ left behind by the only-democracy-in-the-Middle East; many of them were children. Not a single of those was important enough for any form of coverage in the Israeli media: they were not Jewish, after all. This double-standard is staggeringly striking, when huge amounts of media coverage are concentrated on an Israeli child who was hurt by an Israeli mine on occupied territory. The message seems clear: “No Israeli children should be hurt by mines, while other children are not our business, even when the bombs and mines are ours”
A child’s wish: ‘I want no one else in Israel ever to be hurt by a landmine’: The Independent
The Knesset has been moved to begin clearing some of its 260,000 mines by a remarkable 11-year-old. Donald Macintyre meets him
Friday, 21 May 2010
When the friendly boy with the shock of black curly hair, the alert blue-green eyes and the Argentinean football shorts answers the door, the last thing you would think is that he had undergone a dozen operations since losing a limb in a horrific accident three months ago. His stride is so firm that it’s a moment before you even notice that he is fitted with a prosthesis where his right leg was, before it was blown off by a landmine planted in the Golan Heights more than four decades earlier.
Though accurate, “self-possession” and “determination” seem strangely banal attributes when applied to Daniel Yuval, 11. It’s not just that he managed to walk his first steps within a month of his injury, or that he unflinchingly allowed his dressings to be changed without any form of analgesic, or that he has already made up for all the time he lost from school – getting 90 per cent in a recent science exam. It’s also that he has persuaded a majority in the Israeli parliament finally to support a long overdue start to clearing some 260,000 landmines that currently hold hostage an area about the size of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv together – 1 per cent of Israel and the Occupied Territories.
It was back in February that Guy and Tali Yuval, Daniel, their other son and three daughters, decided to make a detour to the Golan Heights, where snow had freshly fallen, on their way to visit the children’s grandparents in Haifa. Many other Israelis had had the same idea, and with not too many places to park, Guy left the two younger girls with their mother in the car, while he, Daniel, 12-year-old Amit, and 8-year-old Yoav walked into the Mount Avital nature reserve. There were other families relaxing there already.
“We threw snowballs and played around for about five minutes,” said Daniel. “Then I remember taking a step forward and I heard the explosion. For a few minutes I don’t remember much. My father picked me up.”
His father Guy Yuval recalls how everyone else in the vicinity immediately scattered, some thinking the explosion had been caused by a rocket. Recognising that his son’s leg had been severed by a landmine – which had also poured shrapnel on to his sister Amit – Mr Yuval applied a tourniquet to Daniel’s right leg while gripping the left one, also bleeding from shrapnel. “I was suddenly alone now,” he remembered. “And we were in the middle of a minefield.”
Not knowing where other mines might be, Mr Yuval followed the footprints left by his family and others to make a grim, ginger, 10-minute journey back to safety. “Daniel told me to make the tourniquet tight, and he asked me at one point if we could stop for a second and attach his leg back on.” In fact he seemed as concerned about his sister as himself. “He didn’t cry at all.”
It was later that, as Daniel wrote in a letter to all 120 Knesset members, he realised the full extent of what had happened, and what it meant. “When I awoke from the surgery at the hospital and saw my amputated right leg,” he wrote, “I told my Mum that I wanted no one else to ever be hurt by a landmine, and that I mean to do something about that.”
This turned out to be an understatement. Since then he has launched a high-profile campaign, in which he has managed to speak to a range of senior government figures – from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu down – culminating in a visit to the Knesset this month. On that visit, he met the opposition leader Tzipi Livni and spoke to a meeting of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, whose chairman Tzachi Hanegbi is now promoting a bill to set up a mines clearance authority. The cost of the task is estimated at about $60m (£42m). Like the US, China, India and much of the Middle East, Israel is not among the 158 signatories of the 1997 UN convention against the use of landmines.
Daniel’s unlikely lobbying was greatly helped by Survivor Corps, the anti-landmine organisation founded by a veteran American campaigner Jerry White. White, who himself lost a leg to a mine while hiking in the Golan as an exchange student in 1984, helped to draft the 1997 convention. He saw that Daniel – an Israeli boy from a middle class family – had rare potential to galvanise Israel’s political establishment into the action he had long urged. Mr White told The Jerusalem Post this month: “In the international landmine campaign, we had a tipping point with Princess Diana… Daniel Yuval is the tipping point where Israelis woke up. Every year there are Palestinians, Thai labourers and even cattle who are injured by mines, but this time it really hit home. This was the next generation, playing in the snow.”
Daniel is anything but star-struck by his visit to the Knesset. “I wasn’t very interested in all the politicians,” he told The Independent this week. “I was only interested in talking about the mines.” But he had made a big change already? “I hope I will make a big change, but I haven’t seen that change yet. The bill has to go through the Knesset three times before it becomes law. Only when it will pass will I make a big change.”
Nor is he impressed by security arguments in favour of preserving the mines. “People are always inventing a new story not to remove the landmines.” Accepting that a minority of the mines may have to remain at some of Israel’s borders, he says: “There should not be mines where people travel.”
This was not a case of pushy parents urging their son on. Guy Yuval is still traumatised by finding himself alone with his three children, two badly injured, in a snow-covered minefield last February. “I still haven’t recovered from that,” he says. He says he is “apolitical” and would never normally have had the “energy” for a visit to the Knesset had it not been for the determination of a son who, even before his accident, was strong-willed and “a little difficult to control”.
Einat Wilf, a Labour member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs committee who is backing the new bill, says that Daniel’s campaign has provided a “moment of grace” in which the long-ignored issue of mine clearance is engaging the Israeli public and political establishment. “It was clear that this could have been anyone. It was a normal Israeli family that had gone to see the snow and everyone can identify with that.”
Nevertheless she envisages that, even if the bill is passed, progress could be gradual. The first target would be the Israeli border areas with Jordan, with whom Israel has a peace treaty, and where rural communities have watched with increasing anger as Jordanian troops on the other side of the river have removed some 58,000 mines while those in Israel remain. This could be followed by “non-operational minefields” – which comprise the vast majority throughout the country – in the interior of the Golan Heights. Removal of those in the occupied West Bank could be part of any peace deal with the Palestinians, she thinks. But Daniel, who this week opens a new campaign website, danielyuval.org, will be keeping up the pressure.
Meanwhile Daniel’s mother Tali acknowledges that, on one level, the campaign has helped Daniel’s therapy. He says the only time he gets angry at what happened is when he gets up in the morning and has difficulty putting his leg on. But both parents are struck by his overwhelmingly “positive” attitude despite periods of acute pain. Passionate about football, he hopes, artificial limb technology permitting, to play again one day.
He recalls that he told his father two things after he woke up in hospital and realised he had lost his leg. “One was that we would try to make sure it didn’t happen to other people, and the other was that I’ll do my best in physiotherapy provided you stop supporting Barcelona and Chelsea and choose Manchester United instead; and in Israel support Hapoel Tel Aviv instead of Maccabi Tel Aviv.” The second, at least, was a good call. Hapoel Tel Aviv, one of whose players visited Daniel in hospital, has just won the Israeli double. Many people will be hoping that the 11-year-old’s judgement will prove as prescient on Israeli landmines.
A tip for the Shin Bet: Haartez
Bullets are fired, trees are chopped down, fields are set ablaze, window panes are shattered and houses are subject to pogroms while the representatives of law and order keep themselves safe and at a distance.
By Yossi Sarid
It’s impossible to ignore any longer the calming presence of the Shin Bet security service in our lives – from the hummus in Gaza to Noam Chomsky in Bir Zeit.
This hyperactivity demands an explanation: How can we explain that one arm is long and powerful, when it comes to those who wish to destroy us, whereas the other arm is short and delicate, when it comes to those exacting a “price tag.”
At the beginning of the week, Aysar Zaban from a village near Ramallah was shot in the back and killed. He was 15 years old and will no longer throw stones at cars. They’re looking for the gunman, and there’s no chance they will find him.
How do I know? Very simple: Not a single settler has ever been caught. There have been hundreds of “terror-settler” events and all the avengers are still walking about free. There is evidence and there are traces, but there is no justice.
Bullets are fired, trees are chopped down, fields are set ablaze, window panes are shattered and houses are subject to pogroms while the representatives of law and order keep themselves safe and at a distance. Soldiers and policemen already understand the principle; the spirit of the commanders explained it to them.
How does a person dare make such accusations, just after Yaakov (Jack ) Teitel was finally caught? For 12 years he murdered Palestinians and planted explosive devices, and had he not made the foolish mistake of harming Jews as well – even though they were leftists – he would never have been found.
Now it has been ruled that his mental state makes him unfit to stand trial – as if Teitel has suddenly fallen ill with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The right to go mad like a cow is reserved for Jewish terrorists only.
And if he’s so crazy, how was he so cunning as well, managing to deceive the Shin Bet with such sophistication for so long?
And let’s assume he is found to be normal – then they’ll tailor a plea bargain for him. And let’s assume he is convicted without a plea bargain and they make sure to get him pardoned.
If you plot only against the living, that’s not so terrible. But plotting against the dead and sacred sites – that’s really too much.
And look, six months ago a mosque in the West Bank village of Yasuf was torched. The president expressed shock and concern, and the prime minister ordered that the perpetrators be caught without delay.
But two weeks ago another mosque was torched, this time in Luban al-Sharqiya, and the foundations did not shake as they did the first time. They went up in flames.
When they torch a synagogue, wherever it may be, or desecrate Jewish graves or steal a sign from Auschwitz, the cry rises from here to the heavens: Catch the hooligans at once.
The stopwatch starts in Jerusalem; they check how determined the goyim are to act quickly in the fight against anti-Semitism.
It took the Poles three days, the Greeks less: After half a day they arrested the neo-Nazis in Thessaloniki who had sprayed swastikas and shattered tombstones, as we were informed this week.
Maybe “Jewish division” is what is hampering the investigations. Maybe the rioters from the settlements of Yitzhar, Havat Ma’on, Havat Gilad and Har Bracha are not ours at all, maybe they are only pretending to be Jews. Maybe an examination of bones will prove that they are pagans.
I’ve given you a tip, friends, a clue. Now get to work before fire emerges from the mosque and consumes, as the head of Central Command warned in a brigade exercise on the eve of the holiday – the eve of the terror.
Israel army kills infiltrators from Gaza: BBC
Israeli forces have shot dead two Palestinian gunmen who had entered Israel from the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said.
The incident occurred across the border from the southern Gaza Strip.
Hamas security officials confirmed that two men were sent on an operation to attack Israel and clashed with soldiers near the border, AP reports.
Separately, Israeli air force jets bombed parts of Gaza in pre-dawn raids, but no-one was killed or injured.
The Israeli army said the raids were a response to the launching of a Qassam rocket earlier this week.
The rocket fell in the Ashkelon region, south of Tel Aviv, without causing any damage, the army said.
Israel launched a devastating assault on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip in December 2008, aimed at halting the sporadic rocket fire from Palestinian militants in Gaza.
Some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in the 22-day war.
IDF soldier wounded by Palestinian sniper fire on Gaza border: Haaretz
Soldier from Givati Brigade in moderate condition; incident occurs after IDF kills two Palestinian infiltrators near Kibbutz Nirim; Islamic Jihad claims responsibility for infiltration attempt.
An IDF soldier was moderately wounded on Friday by Palestinian sniper fire in the Eshkol Regional Council on the border with the Gaza Strip.
The soldier, a tracker in the Givati Brigade, was transported to Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheva. He was shot while securing a road near Kibbutz Nirim where there had been an infiltration attempt earlier in the day.
IDF troops killed two Palestinians who had infiltrated from Gaza, apparently with the intention of carrying out terror attacks in Israel.
The infiltrators successfully crossed the border and advanced several dozen meters into Israeli territory near Kibbutz Nirim before they encountered IDF troops from the Givati Brigade and the armored corps. The troops opened fire and killed the militants.
Islamic Jihad said that the two militants were from its organization, CNN reported.
Before dawn on Friday, Israel Air Force fighter jets bombed targets in the southern and northern parts of the Gaza Strip in what the Israel Defense Forces say was a response to the launching of a Qassam rocket earlier this week.
The Israeli warplanes, according to the IDF Spokesman’s Office, struck what two tunnels targets in Gaza’s south, as well one in the north.
Gaza militants fired a Qassam rocket into Israel on Wednesday, causing no casualties or damage. The rocket exploded in an open area in the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council.
The IDF said that the tunnel struck on Thursday had been dug a kilometer away from Gaza’s border with Israel, and intended to be used in an infiltration as well as a possible terror attack against Israeli citizens and soldiers.
A spokesman said that the strike came as “a response to the rocket fire at the Eshkol region on the previous day,” adding that the IDF considered “the Hamas terror organization as responsible for the doings in the Gaza Strip.”
“The IDF will not tolerate any attempt to harm Israeli citizens and soldiers and will continue to act severely and determinately against any group which attempts to terrorize the State of Israel,” the spokesman said.
The last rocket attack occurred 10 days ago, where a Qassam exploded in an open area in the Ashkelon region of the Negev. The Israel Air Force bombed two targets in southern Gaza in retaliation for the rocket attack.
Last month, two Katyusha rockets were fired at the southern port city of Eilat, one landing in an open area in the Jordanian city of Aqaba, and the second landed in the Eilat port, causing no casualties.
Iran to hand uranium swap deal letter to IAEA on Monday: Haaretz
Letter details the uranium swap agreement announced by Iran, Brazil and Turkey earlier this week; UN chief hopes the deal leads to negotiated settlement of Iran’s nuclear dispute with the West.
Iran will hand an official letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency chief on Monday about its nuclear fuel swap agreement with Brazil and Turkey, the official IRNA news agency reported on Friday.
Leaders of the three countries announced the agreement, under which Iran will send some of its enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for fuel rods for a Tehran medical research reactor, on Monday.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in Istanbul on Friday he hoped the deal would open the way to a negotiated settlement of Iran’s row with the West over its nuclear program.
But the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, after months of negotiations, agreed a draft resolution on a new set of sanctions against Iran that Washington handed to the Security Council on Tuesday.
“After the joint announcement of Iran, Turkey and Brazil, Iran’s permanent ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency announced the country’s readiness to submit the letter to the agency,” IRNA reported.
“In a meeting with the agency’s chief Yukiya Amano on Monday, Iran will hand over the letter,” the news agency added.
Western powers fear that Iran is secretly trying to produce nuclear weapons, but Tehran denies this and says it is enriching uranium only to produce fuel for nuclear power stations.
Under the agreement, the first batch of Iran’s uranium would arrive in Turkey within a month, in return for fuel rods to keep a Tehran medical research reactor running.
Such an arrangement was first mooted last October as a way to cut Iran’s uranium stockpile below the minimum that would be needed for a nuclear weapon if enriched to a high fissile purity – and buy time for more negotiations.
Turkey and Brazil — both currently non-permanent members of the Security Council — and Iran have urged a halt to talk of further sanctions because of the deal, but Western powers suspect it is an Iranian tactic to avert or delay sanctions.
The new, extended sanctions would target Iranian banks and call for inspection of vessels suspected of carrying cargo related to Iran’s nuclear or missile programs.
Iranian officials have dismissed the draft resolution as lacking legitimacy, and rejected international demands that it suspend enrichment.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday that described the uranium swap deal as opening the door for a diplomatic solution to the nuclear standoff with Iran.
Also on Friday, the European Union’s top diplomat Catherine Ashton said that Iran has shown “indications” that it is ready to talk about its nuclear program.
“We have seen indications that Iran may be willing to meet with the E3+3,” Ashton said in a statement, referring to the three EU nations of Germany, Britain and France, along with Russia, China and the U.S.
Aside from Germany, all are permanent veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council and are declared nuclear weapons powers.
“I repeat that we are ready, and have been since our last E3+3 meeting in October, to meet with Iranian officials to discuss international concerns about Iran’s nuclear program,” said Ashton.
Zero sum game: Al Ahram Weekly
Fatah and Hamas remain locked in contention, unable to resolve their differences and unable to move forward, writes Saleh Al-Naami
At noon on 13 May the sounds of laughter and joviality could be clearly heard all the way at the end of the corridor leading to the large meeting room on the fifth floor at one of the major ministries in Gaza City. A number of leaders from Fatah and Hamas were sitting around a table to focus on finding formulas to bring their points of view closer regarding reconciliation between the two factions. The atmosphere of the meeting, which concluded with lunch, was friendly and both sides agreed to meet again at the home of one of the Hamas leaders in Gaza.
Sources told Al-Ahram Weekly that several similar meetings had taken place in the West Bank and Gaza between leaders from both sides, mostly members of parliament from each faction. Moneeb Al-Masri, a prominent Palestinian businessman, was keen to convey to the West Bank some of the ideas that were discussed in Gaza and at length by representatives of both groups. While Fatah refuses to admit that prospects for reconciliation are under discussion, Hamas and independent Palestinian figures — along with the media that is closely following developments — insist that many proposals are being debated.
One informed source told the Weekly that Hamas and Fatah representatives had reached tentative points of agreement on some issues, while direct and indirect talks continue between the two sides regarding outstanding issues. The source said that to avoid any setbacks, both groups have agreed that they will not announce the outcome until all issues are settled and approved by the leaders of the two groups.
Apparently, the two sides have agreed on the following points, and only await the approval of faction leaders. First, both sides will inform Cairo that they have come to an agreement on the Egyptian reconciliation plan. They will later decide if they want to include some points of concern or add them in an addendum; these concerns, meanwhile, should not block Hamas from signing the proposal. Second, both sides would begin releasing detainees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and set up a mechanism to deal with supporters and institutions affiliated to each group in each region, including organisational and charity groups.
Third, the government in Ramallah must be more cooperative in ending the suffering of the residents of Gaza, such as paying for the fuel needed to operate the sole power station in Gaza to end daily power outages across the Strip that last at least eight hours. Fourth, both sides must show flexibility in reopening the Rafah Crossing to end smuggling through illicit tunnels.
According to the source, all these ideas were presented by Hamas in order to bridge the gap between the two sides, and were tentatively approved by representatives from Fatah who emphasised that senior Fatah leaders will have the final say, and hence their initial approval does not commit the group to these ideas. “We’re still a long way away from reaching a final agreement,” the source cautioned. “Signing the Egyptian plan is the first step on a long road of agreeing on a large number of details regarding elections, security, reforming the Palestine Liberation Organisation [PLO], and other issues.”
The source added that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas does not fully support these understandings, and wants Hamas to first sign the Egyptian proposal before discussing a final agreement. Abbas’s position is what caused Fatah leaders to deny progress is being made.
While Hamas leaders try to avoid discussing the understandings reached so far, Mahmoud Al-Zahhar, member of the group’s politburo, confirmed that Hamas is waiting for a final answer from Fatah regarding ideas presented by the group. “We suggested specific mechanisms and we asked them to think about it, and we are waiting for their response,” Al-Zahhar stated. “If we reach agreement, we will go to Egypt and we can make it part of the deal or an appendix to it.”
According to the Hamas leader, contacts with Fatah are focussed on two major points: first, the Central Elections Committee, and second, the PLO. Al-Zahhar believes that Fatah is being responsive. He added that Hamas wants the electoral committee to be based on mutual consultations, while Fatah wants it to be by mutual agreement. He criticised Abbas’s statements that no progress will be made until Hamas first signs the Egyptian proposal without revision. “If that is his opinion, then he shouldn’t hold his breath.”
Al-Zahhar further mocked statements by Fatah members that Hamas suffers from internal divisions. “He who lives in a glass house should not throw stones,” he said.
Azzam Al-Ahmed, head of Fatah’s parliamentary faction in the Palestinian Legislative Council, confirmed that direct meetings have been held between representatives from both sides in Gaza and the West Bank but denied that anything of substance was being discussed. Al-Ahmed underlined his group’s commitment to what was agreed upon in Cairo, urging Hamas to sign the Egyptian plan and express its concerns at the time of implementation.
However, a senior figure close to ongoing reconciliation efforts told the Weekly that despite optimism about recent meetings and many indicators that both sides believe their political futures are bleak without reconciliation, the probability of an agreement in the near future is slim because of foreign interference. The source said that Abbas, under pressure from the US and Israel, is now insisting that Hamas accept the conditions of the Quartet, including recognition of Israel, renouncing armed resistance against the occupation as terrorism, and recognising all past agreements signed by the Palestinians and Israel. The source pointed out that this requirement was never part of the Egyptian plan.
“While Israel insists on continuing its settlement building in the West Bank and Judaicisation of Jerusalem, and the world sees Israel as the obstacle to peace, it is unreasonable to condition [Palestinian] reconciliation with accepting the Quartet conditions,” argued the source. According to him, Abbas is facing strong counter pressure from members of Fatah’s Central Committee and Revolutionary Council to reject US-Israeli diktat and embrace reconciliation, because the status quo does not serve the group’s interests.
The source continued that there is restlessness in Fatah’s ranks, as expressed in a statement by Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades — Fatah’s military wing — that threatened to assassinate Mohamed Dahlan, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, for “conspiring” with occupation forces to obstruct efforts for national reconciliation. The source also pointed out another problem, namely escalating tensions between Hamas and Cairo compounded by accusations of torture of Hamas detainees in Egyptian jails. The source continued that Cairo’s hard line position, which insists that Hamas sign the Egyptian plan without revisions, blocks any possibility for Hamas to change its position but also save face with its popular base.
In short, if the Palestinians are unable to free themselves from the restrictions placed on them by foreign parties, there is no guarantee that direct talks between Fatah and Hamas will be successful. In the next four months, which is the timeline of indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, there is little hope that attempts to end divisions amongst Palestinians will lead to anything positive.
‘Walking in the path of fascism’: Al Ahram Weekly
Israel’s denial of entry to Noam Chomsky is but the latest in a long list of attempts to silence critics of Zionist oppression and violence, writes Khaled Amayreh
Fearing that he would further expose Israel’s anti-peace stance and its oppression of the Palestinian people, the Israeli government this week barred Noam Chomsky from entering Israel-Palestine.
Chomsky, a world-renowned intellectual and linguist, was detained briefly at the Palestinian side of the Allenby Bridge on Sunday 16 May. There he was told by Israeli authorities that the Israeli government didn’t like his writings and that he was viewed as persona non grata.
Chomsky, 81, had been scheduled to lecture at the Birzeit University in the West Bank. Following his deportation, the non-conformist American Jewish intellectual told reporters that he concluded from the questions of the Israeli official at the border terminal that the fact that he came to lecture at a Palestinian and not an Israeli university led to the decision to deny him entry.
“I find it hard to think of a similar case in which entry to a person is denied because he is not lecturing in Tel Aviv. Perhaps only in the Stalinist regime.”
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor of linguistics and philosophy is a well-known critic of the Israeli occupation of Arab lands. On many occasions, Chomsky compared Israeli policies and practices in the West Bank with those of the defunct white minority apartheid regime in South Africa.
Chomsky also castigated the genocidal Israeli onslaught on Gaza last year along with the ongoing blockade of the coastal enclave’s 1.7 million people initiated by Israel more than three years ago for the purpose of pushing Gazans to rise up against Hamas. Hamas won a landslide victory in the 2006 general elections, which infuriated Israel and its guardian-ally, the United States, prompting them to impose draconian sanctions on Gaza.
“The young man [the Israeli border official] asked me whether I had ever been denied entry into other countries. I told him once, to Czechoslovakia, after the Soviet invasion in 1968,” Chomsky said, adding that he had gone to visit ousted Czechoslovak leader Alexander Dubcek, whose reforms the Soviets crushed.
According to Haaretz newspaper, Chomsky, who was accompanied by his daughter and several other friends, was questioned on the nature of his lectures, whether he was going to criticise Israeli policies and whether he had spoken with Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah. He was further asked why he didn’t have an Israeli passport since he was Jewish. He reportedly answered, “I am an American citizen”.
Chomsky supports the two-state solution but he rejects the Israeli concept of the two-state solution strategy: namely, ceding the Palestinians some isolated cantons cut off from each other and that could never be a “viable and territorially contiguous state”.
In recent years, especially with the rise to power in Israel of religious and rightwing anti- democratic parties, the Israeli political establishment became more sensitive to criticisms of Israeli policies abroad, especially from such Jewish intellectuals such as Chomsky.
In 2008, Israel refused entry to Richard Falk, an American Jewish academic, for comparing the Israeli occupation with Nazi crimes against Jews. In 2007, Falk, a Princeton University professor of international law, was quoted as saying that Israel’s blockade on the Gaza Strip was “a Holocaust in the making”. Falk was later appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Israel defended its decision to deport Falk, arguing that he indulged in “shameful comparisons to the Holocaust”.
Similarly, nearly, two years ago, Israeli security services deported Norman Finkelstein, another American Jewish intellectual and critic of the Israeli occupation. The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, said that Finkelstein was not permitted to enter Israel because of suspicious involvement with hostile elements in Lebanon, and because “he didn’t give a full account to interrogators with regards to these suspicions”.
Finkelstein remarked on that episode, saying: “I am confident that I have nothing to hide. Apart from my political views, and the supporting scholarship, there isn’t much more to say for myself — no suicide missions or secret rendezvous with terrorist organisations.”
Finkelstein, 57, had accused Israel of exploiting the holocaust for political ends and in order to justify its crimes against the Palestinian people. In 2000, Finkelstein wrote The Holocaust Industry on the exploitation of Jewish suffering.
Mounting international criticism of the repressive Israeli treatment of Palestinians, as well as the extensive havoc and destruction wreaked on civilians in the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon, generated strong reactions by intellectuals and human rights activists around the world. Such criticisms seemed to push the political class in Israel towards stonewalling with the Israeli government resorting to deportation as a method to silence vocal critics of Israeli practices.
In 2008, Israel refused Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu entry while on a UN fact-finding mission in the Gaza Strip. Israel apparently feared that Tutu would file a damning report, indicting Israel for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, as did Judge Richard Goldstone a year and a half later, following the Israeli blitzkrieg against Gaza that killed and maimed thousands of Palestinian civilians and inflicted widespread destruction.
Subsequently, Israel and its supporters repeatedly accused Goldstone of being biased against, and hostile to, Israel. Some “Israel-Firsters”, especially in North America, have gone as far as calling Goldstone an “anti- Semite” and “self-hating Jew”.
The abovementioned intellectuals are mere examples of how Israel, which claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East, is drifting towards Jewish fascism. On 18 May, one Israeli journalist wrote, commenting on the deportation of Chomsky: “Denying Noam Chomsky entry to Israel puts an end to the myth that Israel is a democracy. It is a state where the police arrest demonstrators protesting the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and expel a pregnant non-Jewish woman so that she won’t give birth to her child in Israel. I will not argue whether Israel is fascist or not. But in reality, Israel is walking in the path of fascism.”
Hezbollah reportedly mobilizing in Lebanon ahead of large IDF drill: Haaretz
Group official warns AFP that Hezbollah will be prepared to attack if Israel launches offensive on Lebanon.
Week-long IDF drill scheduled to begin on Sunday
Hezbollah official: Fighters instructed to be ‘completely ready to confront Israeli maneuvers’
Israel believes Hezbollah has cache of more than 40,000 rockets
Hezbollah has mobilized thousands of its militants in southern Lebanon ahead of a major Israel Defense Forces drill planned for next week, AFP reported on Friday.
“The Hezbollah fighters have [been instructed] to be completely ready to confront Israeli maneuvers on Sunday,” Hezbollah official Nabil Qaouk told the French agency. “Thousands of our fighters will not go to the polls [for municipal elections Sunday] and will be prepared from today.”
Qaouk declared that Hezbollah would not hesitate to respond should Israel launch a military offensive on Lebanon. “In the event of any new attack on Lebanon, the Israelis will not find anywhere in Palestine to hide,” he told AFP.
Israel believes that Hezbollah has since built its cache to more than 40,000 rockets since the Second Lebanon War, and that the militant group has developed the capability to reach the center of the country with its weapons.
The IDF drill, scheduled to begin on Sunday, will last for a week.
Meanwhile, a Lebanese military official said Friday that troops had found a rocket in an area close to the border with Israel, but that the weapon was not ready for launching.
The official said the rocket was found Friday near the town of Hasbaya, about 15 kilometers north of the Israeli border.
The official did not identify the rocket type. He says troops were searching the area looking for more rockets. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.
U.S. Congress gives Obama okay to fund Israel rocket defense: Haaretz
Lawmakers voted to give Israel $205 million for its production of the short-range rocket defense system, Iron Dome defense, by 410-4 margin.
The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday voted in favor of President Barack Obama’s plans to help Israel fund the deployment of the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system.
Lawmakers, by a 410-4 margin, backed Obama’s plan to give Israel 205 million dollars for its production of a short-range rocket defense system.
The Iron Dome missile defense system aced a test run in January, and event that convinced senior defense officials that the defense system was on its way to becoming operational and that it will be able to effectively protect against short-range missiles, such as Katyushas and Qassams, which often hit Israeli towns.
The project’s first phase, which included development, test runs and the manufacture of two batteries, required a budget of NIS 800 million. The Israel Air Force has also trained a special new unit to operate the defense system.
However, the plan was not allotted an adequate budget. The Israel Defense Forces ducked away from funding the project with its budget, explaining that offensive readiness was a higher priority, and the Defense Ministry has been looking for other budgetary avenues.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman said following the vore that “with nearly every square inch of Israel at risk from rocket and missile attacks, we must ensure that our most important ally in the region has the tools to defend itself.”
“The looming threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, and the persistent threat posed by Iran’s allies Hamas and Hezbollah, only serve to reinforce our longstanding commitment to Israel’s security,” Berman added.
Israel completed tests in January on its Iron Dome system, designed to intercept short-range rockets and artillery shells fired at Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah.
Florida congressman Ted Deutch commended the “Obama Administration for
supporting the critical Iron Dome system, which could help save the lives of innocent Israelis who every day live in fear of rocket attacks on their homes, schools, and marketplaces.”
“Partnering with Israel on short-range missile defense technology demonstrates America’s unyielding commitment to Israel’s security,” Deutch added, saying that “Israel must be able to keep its citizens safe, and we must demand Palestinians end incitement and Hamas reject the use of terror.”
The Obama Administration must always work to address the threats posed to Israel not only by short-range missiles, but by the looming possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran.”
The pro-Israel lobby AIPAC released a statement following the Congress vote, saying that the decision, that “will reduce the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah rocket attacks, is a tribute to America’s commitment to Israel’s defense and underscores our fundamental security cooperation with Israel, an island of democracy surrounded by a sea of hostile terrorist and totalitarian threats.”
“America stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the people of Israel in their quest for peace and the right to live lives free of terrorism,” the statement read.
Obama to Jewish lawmakers: No imposed peace plan: Haaretz
Obama met with Jewish members of Congress on Tuesday night and reassured them of his support for Israel.
WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama met with Jewish members of Congress on Tuesday night and reassured them of his support for Israel. He did not intend to impose a settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the president said, but also warned that if indirect talks drag on, a window of opportunity will close.
Jewish members of Congress urged Obama at the hour-and-a-half-long meeting to publicly discuss his commitment to Israel and travel to Israel to demonstrate his support, participants said.
Obama convened the meeting with 37 Jewish Democratic lawmakers, the first such gathering of his presidency, after some Congressmen raised concerns about his administration’s attitudes and positions on Israel, said Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev. ), one of the lawmakers who attended the meeting.
Obama spoke of his plans to boost Israeli security and his administration’s backing of sanctions on Iran.
The meeting came at a delicate time, with U.S.-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians getting under way. It also follows the March ruffle in diplomatic relations following the announcement of construction in contested East Jerusalem in the middle of a visit by American Vice President Joe Biden.
“It was agreed that both the Israelis and the U.S. government probably could have handled that situation a little better,” Rep. Steve Rothman (D-N.J. ) said. Rothman said that from a military and intelligence-sharing perspective, the Obama administration is the best U.S. administration Israel has ever had. Administration critics were trying to distort that, he said, and Obama and his Jewish supporters in Congress needed to set the record straight.
Obama said at the meeting that he sees a nuclear Iran as a threat to the United States and its forces in the region, and that he wanted the Arab states to say openly what they say behind closed doors – that the region’s greatest problem is Iran, not Israel.
International orgs call on Israel to immediately release rights defenders: The Electronic Intifada
Press release, Euro-Mediterannean Human Rights Network, Front Line, International Commission of Jurists, The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, 19 May 2010
Ameer Makhoul (Adri Nieuwhof) On 6 May 2010, at 03:10am, 16 members of the Israeli General Security Services (GSS) and the Israeli police force raided the family home of Mr. Ameer Makhoul. During the raid Mr. Ameer Makhoul was detained; until Monday night 17 May 2010 he was held in incommunicado detention and denied fundamental due process rights, including access to his lawyer.
Previously, on 21 April 2010, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior had imposed a travel ban on Mr. Makhoul, preventing him from leaving Israel.
On 17 May 2010, the Petach Tikva Magistrate Court extended Mr. Makhoul’s detention until 20 May. This court hearing was the first time that Mr. Makhoul was granted access to his lawyers. Previously, Mr. Makhoul had not been allowed to attend court hearing and on one occasion his wife was forcibly removed from the hearing for “obstructing the proceedings.”
Mr. Makhoul was checked by a prison services doctor at the Petach Tikva interrogation center where he is being held. The doctor confirmed that he is suffering from pains in the head. After meeting him last night, Mr. Makhoul’s lawyers confirmed that he was suffering from exhaustion — as a result of sleep deprivation — and that he had been subjected to various forms of intensive interrogation, raising fears of possible torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; such abuses are more likely to occur during periods of incommunicado detention.
The GSS claims that Mr. Makhoul has been “meeting a foreign agent” and “spying.” Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel — the organization representing Mr. Makhoul together with Attorney Hussein Abu Hussein — remarks that such charges “allow the GSS to criminalize almost any Arab who establishes legitimate relations with political and social activists in the Arab world.” Mr. Omar Said, a political activist with the National Democratic Assembly – Balad, has also been detained based on the same accusations since 24 April 2010. During the initial stages of his detention, Mr. Said was subjected to sleep deprivation and other forms of ill-treatment.
The undersigned believe that Mr. Makhoul’s detention is arbitrary and amounts to harassment that appears intended only to sanction his activities as a human rights defender.
We further highlight that this harassment takes place in a context of an escalating campaign of arbitrary restrictions placed by Israeli authorities against human rights defenders in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In recent months, a spate of legislation has been introduced in the Knesset to impose severe restrictions on human rights organizations. One such bill, supported by the government, seeks to ban foreign government funding to human rights organizations, while another bill, led by the opposition Kadima party, seeks to shut down organizations that cooperate with foreign entities on human rights issues and to suppress credible evidence relating to the commission of war crimes or other international crimes by Israeli political leaders and/or military officials.
Human rights defenders play a critical role in society. They represent an essential safeguard against the abuse of State power, including the denial of fundamental due process rights, and are an essential component in the fight to uphold the rule of law.
The undersigned call on the Israeli authorities to:
Ensure that all charges against Mr. Makhoul be dropped and that he is released immediately;
Guarantee in all circumstances the physical and psychological integrity of Mr. Makhoul and to protect him from any torture, or inhuman or degrading treatment;
Ensure that all detainees’ due process rights — including access to a lawyer — are respected;
Respect and protect the legitimate work of human rights defenders;
Ensure that all court proceedings are conducted in accordance with international standards, in particular those contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;
End the current campaign of intimidation and any kind of harassment directed at human rights defenders and human rights organizations;
Conform in all circumstances with Israel’s obligations under international law, including under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as well as the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Undersigned organizations:
Euro-Mediterannean Human Rights Network (EMHRN)
Front Line, International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
International Commission of Jurists
The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint program of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)
EDITOR: An Interesting Innovation in Israel…,
See below new methods of fighting the Palestinians: Killing their camels. We have got used to Israel destroying olive groves, directing sewage at Palestinian village land, so why not kill camels? What about dogs and cats? Poisoning wells, maybe?
Soldiers kill Bedouin’s camel: YNet
Haredi troops settle dispute with Bedouin by shooting his camel to death
Three IDF soldiers belonging to the Nahal Haredi battalion shot and killed a camel in the Jordan Rift Valley Friday following a dispute with a local Bedouin.
The Bedouin said the soldiers were trespassing through his property. A formal complaint was handed over to the IDF through the Civil Administration.
The three soldiers involved in the incident left their base without permission around 6 pm Friday in order to tour the area. They passed by a local Bedouin resident and entered his tent.
Following an argument that lasted several minutes, the soldiers left the tent, but one of them kneeled down and fired at the camel.
The Bedouin immediately phoned Civil Administration officials and reported the incident. The Administration’s representatives, accompanied by Nature Reserve Authority members, rushed to the area and attempted to save the camel’s life. However, it was gravely hurt and died at the site.
Army to deal with ‘grave incident’
A report on the incident was relayed to the Nahal Brigade, to the Kfir Division, and to the Military Police. The Civil Administration’s chief, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, spoke with senior Palestinian officials in the Jericho area and pledged to look into and deal with the incident.
The Bedouin camel-owner will be summoned to the Coordination and Liaison office in Jericho Sunday in order to provide his account of the incident. He is also expected to file a lawsuit against the soldiers in order to receive compensation.
Military officials said the incident was grave and will be dealt with through disciplinary action.