EDITOR: The cracks appear in Israeli intransigence
Make no mistake about it – any easing of the Gaza Blockade will make real difference for Palestinians, and it is a sure sign of the anger and shock after the Flotilla murders which has brought about enormous public pressure on Israel, forcing it to mitigate its illegal and immoral blockade. However, this is only a chink in the Israeli armour; important in that it tells of a new trend, it will not, in itself, be enough. Gaza cannot be rebuilt in this manner, and that is what Palestinians need now. Some people with little knowledge of the conflict may even think that this is humanistic measure by Israel… It is definitely planned to affect them in that way. This reaction will be mistaken, of course. Israel moved because it was forced by public opinion.
It seems that this is also an important lesson: for three years, and ever since the Gaza massacre of Dec 2008 – January 2009, Israel has been shouting from the rooftops that nothing will force it to ease the blockade, yet here they are doing exactly that. We should redouble our effort on the BDS front, to put even more pressure on this criminal regime, before it has a chance to commit more war crimes.
Israel says it will ease Gaza land blockade: The Independent
17 June 2010
A Palestinian labourer collects gravel at an abandoned airport that was damaged by past Israeli air strikes, in Rafah in the southern
Israel agreed today to ease its land blockade on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, hoping to quell growing worldwide outrage following a deadly raid on an international flotilla bound for the Palestinian territory.
In one of the major changes, Israel will now allow in more desperately needed construction materials for civilian projects, provided those projects are carried out under international supervision, government and military officials said. Israel has barely allowed in materials such as cement and steel, fearing Hamas militants could use them to build weapons and fortifications.
That policy has prevented rebuilding after Israel’s brief but fierce war with Hamas in Gaza last year.
An Israeli military official told The Associated Press that all foods would be freely let in to Gaza, effective immediately. Israel has previously allowed a narrow and constantly changing list of authorized food items.
A brief government statement announcing today’s decision also indicated the naval blockade on Gaza would remain in force.
Israel will “continue existing security procedures to prevent the inflow of weapons and war material,” it said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly warned that if the naval closure is lifted, then the Iranian-backed Hamas would turn Gaza into an “Iranian port.”
There was no mention of lifting or easing bans on exports or the import of raw materials that would be crucial to galvanizing the territory’s battered economy. And the statement contained no specifics on what else would be allowed into Gaza.
But the fact that Israel was forced to respond to an international outcry over the blockade was evidence of the intense pressure the country’s leaders felt.
The European Union cautiously welcomed the decision.
“This is a step in the right direction,” said Cristina Galach, spokeswoman for the bloc’s Spanish presidency.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said officials wanted to see how the Israeli decision is carried out. “The detail is what matters,” she said.
Israel must “make sure that many, many more goods can get in to Gaza to enable people to reconstruct their homes, to build schools, to place infrastructure, and also enable people to get on with ordinary lives,” she said.
UN spokesman Chris Gunness said the blockade has prevented the United Nations from bringing in construction materials needed to carry out an internationally approved plan to rebuild thousands of homes and other buildings Israel damaged or destroyed in last year’s war in Gaza.
The closure has also shuttered hundreds of factories, put tens of thousands of people out of work and brought the territory’s fragile economy to a standstill, mainly hurting ordinary Gazans.
EU officials will discuss the possibility of helping reopen Gaza’s border crossings, Ashton added. The EU helped monitor Gaza’s southern border with Egypt until Hamas took power in 2007.
The partial lifting of the siege did not satisfy Hamas.
“We want a real lifting of the siege, not window-dressing,” said Hamas politician Salah Bardawil.
Israel, with Egypt’s cooperation, imposed the blockade three years ago after Hamas, which calls for Israel’s destruction, violently wrested control of Gaza. For the most part, only basic humanitarian goods have been allowed in.
But the blockade failed to achieve its aims of stanching the flow of weapons to Gaza, weakening Hamas or winning the release of an Israeli soldier held in captivity in Gaza for years. A network of smuggling tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border became a conduit for both weapons and commercial goods sold at black market prices. Gazans sank deeper into poverty, turning their anger against Israel and not their Hamas rulers.
Israel drew new scrutiny of the embargo when it sent naval commandos to stop a blockade-busting flotilla in late May. The troops clashed with activists on board one of the ships, killing nine Turks. Both sides said they acted in self-defence.
In the West Bank, the rival pro-Western Palestinian government of President Mahmoud Abbas also criticized the Israeli decision. Negotiator Saeb Erekat said the closure should be ended altogether. “The siege is collective punishment and it must be lifted.”
Amid the heavy international criticism that followed the Israeli naval raid, Egypt opened its land border crossing with Gaza — the main gateway for some residents to enter and exit the crowded territory.
But most Gazans remained confined to the territory. Egypt is only letting in people with special travel permits, such as students and Gazans with foreign passports. In the past two weeks, only 10,000 Gazans have crossed into Egypt.
On Sunday, the Israeli commission appointed to investigate the flotilla attack met for the first time. Two international observers are to join the deliberations later.
EDITOR: Speaking in Tongues…
Read this please. Two announcements from the same Netanyahu office at the same time, but saying very different things, as one is in Hebrew intended internally, while the English one is for export…
Who do you believe? Obviously not Netanyahu.
PMO announces plan to ease Gaza siege, but no such decision made: Haaretz
Prime Minister’s office issues two statements, one in English announcing plan to ease blockade, and one in Hebrew devoid of binding decision.
The Prime Minister’s Office announced on Thursday that the security cabinet had agreed to relax Israel’s blockade on the Gaza Strip, but as it turns out, no binding decision was ever made during the cabinet meeting.
The Prime Minister’s Office issued a press release in English following the meeting, which was also sent to foreign diplomats, was substantially different than the Hebrew announcement – according to the English text, a decision was made to ease the blockade, but in the Hebrew text there was no mention of any such decision.
It is not clear whether this discrepancy was a deliberate attempt to buy time in the face of international pressure, or a clerical omission on behalf of the Prime Minister’s Office.
The cabinet ministers held a long discussion on Wednesday and another one Thursday morning on the topic of altering Israel’s policy following the three-year siege on the Hamas ruled territory. The siege was imposed after Hamas violently seized control over the Gaza Strip in 2007. The aim of the discussions was to approve a plan drafted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the envoy of the Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators Tony Blair. The discussions spanned a total of six hours, but no decision was ever made.
During both meetings, many ministers voiced their opinions regarding the blockade, and the defense establishment presented the plans for the “liberalization” of the blockade. However, upon concluding the discussions, the ministers did not vote on any binding practical draft of the decision. In fact, the policy by which the government is currently bound is the one decided by the security cabinet during the previous term of former prime minister Ehud Olmert, by which the blockade remains as it was.
Two official statements came out of the Prime Minister’s Office in regard to the security cabinet meeting – one in Hebrew for the Israeli media and another in English for the foreign media and foreign diplomats. The English version said that “It was agreed to liberalize the system by which civilian goods enter Gaza [and] expand the inflow of materials for civilian projects that are under international supervision.” The Hebrew version addressed mainly remarks made by Netanyahu, but failed to mention any decision or agreement.
The Hebrew version also failed to mention whether the prime minister’s position was formally approved. “Israel will alter the system in order to allow more civilian goods into Gaza,” the Hebrew statement read.
In addition to the English statement, word was sent to foreign consulates and embassies indicating that the decision made by the security cabinet will be implemented immediately. However, according to the officials charged with the actual monitoring of the transfer of goods into Gaza, they have not been notified of any change in policy as a result of the cabinet meeting.
A senior defense official said Thursday that “there was every intention to increase the transfer of goods into Gaza even before the cabinet meeting. We have notified the Palestinians, regardless of the cabinet meeting, that we will allow the entry of food items, house wares, writing implements, mattresses and toys. Beyond that, we have not said a thing.”
Sources at the Prime Minister’s Office admitted that there was no decision, and no vote, during the security cabinet meeting. One of the sources said that “it was a briefing by the prime minister,” and another source said it was a “declaration of intent.”
“A meeting will be held soon, and we hope that a binding decision will be taken then,” the prime minister’s office said, explaining that the reason for the delay is “the need for continued contact with allies within the international community in order to gain support for the liberalization plan.” This despite the fact that most of the international community has already voiced support for the plan, following a campaign launched by Blair, who drafted the plan with Netanyahu.
Suddenly, the Israel lobby discovers a genocide: Salon.com
I once tried to blow the whistle on the Israel lobby’s denial of the Armenian Genocide — and I had to leave my job
BY MARK ARAX
Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi
Armenian Americans and people against genocide gather to commemorate the 95th anniversary of the World War One killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks and a call for it to be termed a genocide in New York City April 25, 2010.
Some of the most powerful leaders in the American Jewish community have stepped forward in recent days to acknowledge the 1915 Armenian Genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turkey.
On the surface, this would seem unremarkable. As victims of the Holocaust, Jews might be expected to stand beside the Armenians and their tragedy. After all, the massacres and death marches across Anatolia during the fog of World War I became a model for Hitler himself.
But this sudden embrace of the Armenian Genocide actually marks a shameless turnaround for the major American Jewish organizations. For decades, they have helped Turkey cover up its murderous past. Each year, the Israel lobby in the U.S. has played a quiet but pivotal role in pressuring Congress, the State Department and successive presidents to defeat simple congressional resolutions commemorating the 1.5 million Armenian victims.
Genocide denial is not a pretty thing, they now concede, but they did it for Israel. They did it out of gratitude for Turkey being Israel’s one and only Muslim ally.
Now the game has changed. Israel and Turkey are locked in a feud over the Palestine-bound flotilla that was intercepted on the high seas by Israel. Turkey is outraged over the killing of nine of its citizens on board. Israel is outraged that a country with Turkey’s past would dare judge the morality of the Jewish state.
So the Armenian Genocide has become a new weapon in the hands of Israel and its supporters in the U.S., a way to threaten Turkey, a conniver’s get-even: Hey, Turkey, if you want to play nasty with Israel, if you want to lecture us about violations of human rights, we can easily go the other way on the Armenian Genocide. No more walking the halls of Congress to plead your shameful case.
If I sound cynical about all this, maybe I am.
In the spring of 2007, I wrote a story that revealed how genocide denial had become a dirty little pact between Turkey and Israel and its lobby in the U.S.
The story, as it turned out, was my last story at the Los Angeles Times, the only story in my 20-year career that was killed on the eve of publication.
Three years later, I can still hear myself framing its contours to one of our editors in the Washington bureau:
A rift over genocide denial has begun to crack open inside the Jewish community. If you listen closely, you can hear the stirrings of a debate.
On one side were the conservative, Likud-devoted lions of the major Jewish organizations who championed the virtues of Turkey, the first Muslim country to formally recognize Israel. As long as Ankara continued to cooperate in Israeli military exercises and purchase Israeli war machines, it deserved special treatment. Israel itself had adopted an official policy of denying the Armenian Genocide. Its supporters in the U.S. were obliged to do the same.
On the other side were more progressive Jews who couldn’t stomach the notion that Holocaust survivors were working so diligently to erase the memory of another people’s genocide. How could Jewish leaders whose every sense was tuned to detect the Holocaust deniers in our midst, who had gone to the ends of the earth to hunt down Hitler’s henchmen, now enlist with the patrons of genocide?
It was the sort of hypocrisy that made the vow of “Never Again” sound exclusive, a shelter for just one.
My editor was intrigued. Here was an important and timely topic that no newspaper or magazine had ever covered. The fact that I was the grandson of Armenian Genocide survivors didn’t seem to give him any pause. If nothing else, my ethnic background gave me a working knowledge of the issues and the players.
I knew that experts in the field of Holocaust studies recognized the Armenian Genocide as an antecedent with chilling echoes. And Jewish scholars were openly condemning Turkey’s long campaign of denial, seeing it as the psychological continuation of genocidal trauma.
But these same scholars were mostly silent when it came to the behind-the-scenes role that Israel and its lobby in the U.S — the Anti-Defamation League, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, neoconservative think tanks and Bush administration hawks — were playing in this denial.
This was the story I wanted to tell as the ceremonial bill went to committee that April — the month that Armenians remember their martyrs.
The only caution from my editor was that I conduct all interviews on-the-record. “Unnamed sources aren’t going to work for this one,” he said.
I drove down Wilshire Boulevard and knocked on the door of the Turkish Consulate. The diplomat in charge, a polished man in a three-piece suit, wondered how the events of 1915 could constitute a genocide if I, an Armenian, was standing literally before him.
“So both of your grandfathers survived, huh?” he said in an accuser’s tone.
I tracked down Yair Auron, the professor at the Open University of Israel who had authored the seminal 2003 book “The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide.”
He had written it out of shame, he said. “Denial of the Armenian Genocide in the Jewish Diaspora is closely connected to the policy of denial in Israel. This is nothing less than a betrayal of the moral legacy of the Holocaust.”
Then I found my way to the equivocators and deniers who sat at the helms of the major American Jewish organizations. None was more blunt than Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League in New York. The Armenian Genocide had become his own convenient cudgel to keep Turkey in line.
Foxman had just returned from a meeting with Turkish military and government leaders to discuss pressuring Congress, the State Department and President Bush to turn back the genocide resolution once again.
“Our focus is Israel,” he explained. “If helping Turkey helps Israel, then that’s what we’re in the business of doing.”
But such a bottom line would seem an uncomfortable place for a Jewish leader to be when the question was genocide.
“Was it genocide?” he said. “It was wartime. Things get messy.”
He questioned whether a bill in Congress would help “reconcile” the differences between Turks and Armenians, as though the whole thing was a marital spat that needed some calming down.
“The Turks and Armenians need to revisit their past. The Jewish community shouldn’t be the arbiter of that history. And I don’t think the U.S. Congress should be the arbiter, either.”
He was lifting lines right out of the Turkish playbook. I almost had to revisit his website to make sure that the ADL was still in the business of fighting not only anti-Semitism but “bigotry and extremism” and “securing justice and fair treatment to all.”
I pointed out that the genocide had already been documented as a fact by many prominent historians. And Congress recognizes all sorts of people’s history. Resolutions commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, for instance.
“You’re not suggesting that an Armenian Genocide is the same as the Holocaust, are you?”
I tried to draw the parallels that the scholars had drawn, but Foxman saw it as an affront. The oneness of the Holocaust was being debased by Armenians looking for a piggyback ride.
“Are you Armenian?” he finally asked.
“Would it matter if I was?” I replied. “Black reporters cover civil rights. Latino reporters cover immigration. Jewish reporters write about Holocaust deniers. We’re journalists.”
I wrote the story and filed it. My editor in Washington was pleased. It landed on the weekend budget, a strong candidate for Page One.
The weekend came and went, but the story held. I called the editor and asked if there was a problem. He was sorry to say that the story had been killed — on a last-minute order from the managing editor.
“But why?” I asked.
“Your byline,” he said.
“My byline?”
Then it hit me. Even as the paper was nominating one of my other stories for a Pulitzer Prize, on this story I was an Armenian.
The official explanation was a beauty. The managing editor said I was not an objective reporter because I had once signed a petition stating that the Armenian Genocide was a historical fact.
I had never signed such a petition. But if I had, how did this prove bias? Our own style book at the Times recognized the genocide as a historical fact.
“Would you tell a Jewish reporter that he couldn’t write about Holocaust denial because he believed the Holocaust was a fact?” I asked.
His answer was to reassign my story to a colleague in Washington who covered Congress. That this reporter was Jewish — and the story dealt with Jewish denial of the genocide — didn’t seem to faze the managing editor. The colleague, who may not have had a choice in the matter, proceeded to gut my story. By the time he was done, there was not a single mention of Jewish denial.
After an ugly public fight, I left the paper. The managing editor was later pushed out when an internal probe showed that my story was factual and without bias.
These days, I find myself more than a curious observer of the new cold war that has broken out between Turkey and Israel and its supporters.
What to make of the rush of Jewish leaders — from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington to a city councilman named Jack Weiss in Los Angeles — coming forward in the past few weeks to divulge their role in genocide denial?
“Frankly, [it] was not becoming for Jews, given that we have likewise been victims of genocide,” Weiss wrote in an inelegant piece in the Jewish Journal.
How to account for these sudden confessions? A pang of remorse? A cleansing of the soul? I’m afraid not. These aren’t confessions, at all. Rather, they are reminders of the debt Turkey owes Israel — and they come with teeth bared.
Last week, four Jewish professors from Georgetown and Bar Ilan universities urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide. Take that, Turkey!
How will Ankara react? Will fear of genocide recognition, which it considers a national security issue, eventually cause Turkey to soften its accusations of apartheid against Israel and become a compliant ally again?
And what about the Armenians and their lobby? Aren’t they guilty of their own cynicism for watching the flotilla feud and now thinking that the winds of geopolitics have finally blown their way? Will they cozy up to Jewish leaders suddenly eager to embrace their genocide? Or will they tell them “thanks but no thanks” and join Turkey in standing up for the Palestinian cause?
Only next April, the season of the return of the genocide resolution, will tell.
Mark Arax is the author of several books, including the most recent, “West of the West.”
Report: Israel Police shot Palestinian instead of arresting him: Haaretz
East Jerusalem man who ran over Border Police officers was reportedly shot twice in the face from close range while lying on the ground.
By Amira Hass
A motorist from East Jerusalem who ran over and wounded several Border Police officers Friday was shot twice in the face from close range while still lying on the ground, eyewitnesses said. Neighborhood witnesses said the fatal shots were fired once the officers no longer had reason to fear that their lives were in danger, and could have easily arrested the suspect.
Witnesses in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi Joz told Haaretz that the motorist, Ziad Jilani, suddenly swerved his car and hit the group of officers walking further up the road. They said, however, that they believed the collision was an accident, and not committed intentionally as initially reported.
Jilani, 39, was self-employed and the father of three daughters. His wife is a U.S. citizen, and he himself lived for an extended period in both the U.S. and Switzerland.
Around 2 P.M. Friday, Jilani was driving his van home from prayers in nearby Shoafat. Several minutes before the incident, Border Police officers were seen riding horses toward the Wadi Joz industrial area. A number of other officers were deployed around the area, and several started making their way toward Jerusalem’s Old City. Jilani’s car was traveling in tightly packed, slow-moving traffic with no oncoming vehicles.
The neighborhood soon filled up with people returning from Friday prayers, and some stores were already being opened. Two eyewitnesses said stones were hurled at the officers, one of which struck Jilani’s car. He then swerved his car left, they said, veering from its lane and striking the group of policemen.
Shots were heard immediately, another witness told Haaretz, and one of the officers fell to the ground. Two policemen tended to him until an ambulance arrived, and the other officers got in their vehicles and began pursuing Jilani, who had continued driving after the collision, and shooting at his car.
Another witness said that he had not seen stones thrown, but rather believed Jilani had tried to overtake the vehicles in front of him. Several other witnesses said the windshield of Jilani’s car had been shattered, but were unsure if the damage had been caused by a bullet or a stone.
Jilani turned his vehicle into a dead-end alley where his uncle lives, and the officers continued pursuing his vehicle and shooting.
A mother and her adult daughter present at the scene saw the man emerge from his car. The daughter told Haaretz, “I was further down the alley, and I heard shots … I saw a car driving, followed by many police officers. The car stopped right next to me, and someone got out. I saw him next to the car door, and he looked at me with an expression I didn’t really understand, but I will never forget.
“There was shooting and I started to scream,” the woman continued. “My mother ran toward me and threw me to the ground. Everything happened within seconds. I realized he wasn’t walking normally, and saw the shattered windshield of the car, maybe from a stone. He ran until he fell over,” she said.
Ten meters separated the parked car and the spot where Jilani fell to the ground.
“He got out of the car, and they came after him. Not just one of them shot, but many of them, and then they started yelling in Hebrew for people to go back into their homes,” the daughter said.
Both women said they saw Jilani lying on his stomach with several officers gathered around him, and the daughter said one of the policemen kicked him in the head. The mother said she saw an officer point his rifle extremely close to Jilani’s head, and when she put her head down to the asphalt she heard a shot ring out.
A Border Police spokesman, Chief Superintendent Moshe Pinchi, did not comment on the questions posed to him by Haaretz. In his response, Pinchi wrote, “Individuals have been killed and dozens wounded in vehicle attacks in Jerusalem between 2008 and 2009 … All of those attacks were committed by East Jerusalem residents, and in each case those close to the perpetrators described the incidents as ‘accidents.’
“Four Border Police officers were wounded in this last incident in Wadi Joz and hospitalized for treatment, and only by a miracle were fatalities avoided,” he said.
A Rising Urgency in Israel for a Gaza Shift: NYTimes
GAZA — Three years after Israel and Egypt imposed an embargo on this tormented Palestinian strip, shutting down its economy, a consensus has emerged that the attempt to weaken the governing party, Hamas, and drive it from power has failed.
Relief workers distributed food and cooking supplies to registered recipients at a warehouse in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza.
In the days since an Israeli naval takeover of a flotilla trying to break the siege turned deadly, that consensus has taken on added urgency, with world powers, anti-Hamas Palestinians in Gaza and some senior Israeli officials advocating a shift.
In its three years in power, Hamas has taken control of not only security, education and the justice system but also the economy, by regulating and taxing an extensive smuggling tunnel system from Egypt. In the process, the traditional and largely pro-Western business community has been sidelined.
This may be about to change.
“We need to build a legitimate private sector in Gaza as a strong counterweight to extremism,” Tony Blair, who serves as the international community’s liaison to the Palestinians, said in an interview. The views of Mr. Blair, a former prime minister of Britain, reflected those of the Obama administration as well. “To end up with a Gaza that is dependent on tunnels and foreign aid is not a good idea,” he said.
Businesspeople in Gaza say that by closing down legitimate commerce, Israel has helped Hamas tighten its domination. And by allowing in food for shops but not goods needed for industry, Israel is helping keep Gaza a welfare society, the sort of place where extremism can flourish.
“I can’t get cocoa powder, I can’t get malt, I can’t get shortening or syrup or wrapping material or boxes,” said Mohammed Telbani, the head of Al Awda, a cookie and ice cream factory in the central town of Deir al Balah. “I don’t like Hamas, and I don’t like Fatah. All I want is to make food.”
In June 2007, after winning parliamentary elections the previous year and uneasily sharing power with the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, Hamas took full control in a four-day civil war, leaving the Palestinian Authority restricted to the West Bank.
Israeli officials say they have been working for months on a change of policy, but they want to guard against helping Hamas or bringing renewed rocket attacks on Israel. Israel imposed the embargo in part to prevent Hamas from receiving rockets and other weapons, in particular from Iran.
Israeli officials are less convinced than foreign leaders about the benefits of a full-scale tilt toward the business community, but they see room for increased activity.
“Hamas is strong,” Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot, the Israeli Defense Ministry official in charge of Palestinian civilian issues, acknowledged. “It controls Gaza, and it doesn’t look like that is going to be changed in the coming months or maybe years. But we must protect our security while helping interests in Gaza that are not under Hamas’s control.”
For Israel, any shift in Gaza is complicated by the fact that Hamas has been holding one of its soldiers for four years. In addition, Israel does not want Hamas or its associates to gain credit for new relief.
This is a problem for Olfat al-Qarawi, stuck in a makeshift tent with her husband and six children 18 months after their house was destroyed by an Israeli invasion. The Qarawis expected to get a donated trailer last year, but it went to a family loyal to Hamas, she said.
When a charity official told her that she would receive one of 200 prefabricated homes arriving on the aid flotilla, she was elated. When the Israeli Navy confiscated the cargo in the raid that killed nine Turks, she fell into despair. The group that had promised her the house was the Islamic Turkish charity known by the initials I.H.H., a sponsor of the flotilla.
Mehmet Kaya, who runs the I.H.H. office in Gaza, says his group sponsors 9,000 orphans, helps with a hospital and runs job-skills training sessions. He said that the flotilla carried not only the 200 prefabricated houses but enough building materials for another 200. He was the one who promised Ms. Qarawi a house.
“We only work through Hamas, although we don’t limit our aid to its followers,” he said. “We consider Israel and the United Nations to be the terrorists, not Hamas.”
The I.H.H. cargo is sitting at the border in Israel, which is trying to find a more appealing partner to distribute it. That may prove difficult. Meanwhile, Turkish flags are fluttering across Gaza, people are giving their babies Turkish names and Ms. Qarawi still lives in a tent.
“I fear we will die here,” she said of the rusting pipes and frayed plastic sheeting that serve as her home in the village of El Atatra, in northwest Gaza. “They won’t have to move us far,” she added with dark mockery. “The cemetery is up the road.”
In truth, most of the postwar tents are gone now, and daily life is neither as awful as many abroad assert nor as untroubled as Israel insists. Instead, it has a numbing listlessness.
“In Gaza, no one is dying,” said Amr Hamad, deputy secretary general of the Palestinian Federation of Industries. “But no one is living.”
For Omar Shaban, who runs a research center called Pal-Think for Strategic Studies, the key to understanding the impact of the siege and Hamas rule is to understand Gaza.
“Don’t compare us with Sudan or Haiti,” he said. “We are an educated people with 2 percent illiteracy. But Israel’s effort to say that everything is O.K. here is ridiculous. I can’t travel. Students are trapped.”
Israel imposed the embargo, allowing in charitable goods and letting out people with medical emergencies. It invaded in late 2008 to stop a flow of rockets and destroyed thousands of buildings. With almost no construction materials allowed in, Gazans have scrounged from the rubble to create their own, but there has been only limited rebuilding.
Egypt, which dislikes Hamas for its Islamist ideology and Iranian backing, imposed the same closing from the south.
The idea was that the West Bank would prosper while Gaza would fester. That has happened, but it has done less than expected to change the power dynamic and has caused much suffering.
Mahmoud Daher of the World Health Organization said that both chronic and acute malnutrition had crept up, and that hospitals waited up to a year for vital equipment like CT scanners, X-ray parts and infusion pumps. Mr. Hamad estimated that political loyalties in Gaza were divided into equal thirds: pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian Authority and independent, many in the private sector. He has been telling foreign officials that if they helped foster businesses, there could eventually be a majority coalition of non-Hamas parties here.
Under current circumstances, he said, the soil for extremism remained fertile.
Israel to ease Gaza blockade, but major restrictions remain in small print: The Guardian
Lifting of restrictions on some civilian goods not enough to constitute breakthrough many had hoped for after Freedom Flotilla raid
Palestinians try to circumvent Israel’s blockade by building smuggling tunnels to Egypt. Photograph: Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images
Expectations that Israel would lift its blockade of Gaza were raised amid international outrage over the bloody interception of the “Freedom Flotilla” that set out to deliver aid to the Palestinian coastal territory. The reality so far looks rather different.
Today’s announcement by the Israeli national security council does not give enough detail to gauge whether significant change is coming. Liberalisation of the system under which civilian goods enter Gaza sounds good: the lifting of restrictions on all food items, toys, stationery, kitchen utensils, mattresses and towels is an improvement for 1.5 million people still living in siege conditions that are relieved only by humanitarian aid and smuggling goods through tunnels from Egypt.
Potentially more significant is the pledge to “expand the inflow of materials for civilian projects that are under international supervision”. But if, as the small print suggests, this means only the UN, the scope will inevitably be limited.
Both these ideas have been promoted by Tony Blair, representative of the Quartet – the UN, US, EU and Russia – as has the idea that EU monitors again be stationed at crossing points between Israel and Gaza.
The fact that that was not mentioned suggests Israel remains reluctant to entrust issues connected to its security to others. Nor was anything said about a role for the Palestinian Authority. The announcement made no mention either of a timeline or monitoring by the international community, nor of permitting the trade and exports that are crucial for rebuilding a shattered economy.
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that controls Gaza, predictably rejected the announced changes as insufficient. “What is needed is a complete lifting of the blockade,” said spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri. “Goods and people must be free to enter and leave. Gaza especially needs construction material, which must be allowed to come in without restrictions.” Gisha, an Israeli group, called the move “cosmetic”. Oxfam described it as a “baby step”. The EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, urged Israel to ensure that “many, many more goods can get in to Gaza” but diplomats say privately that they fear weeks or even months of detailed negotiations lie ahead.
The political issue here is that the US, Britain and the EU all now insist they want to end an “unacceptable and unsustainable” blockade but still share Israel’s goal of seeking to weaken Hamas, which has more or less maintained a de facto ceasefire since last year’s war, but still holds the captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.
Refinements of import controls could help stave off charges of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza and weaken international condemnation of Israel’s policy as “collective punishment”. But that will not be enough to constitute the breakthrough many had hoped to see.
Israel’s naval blockade remains in force and so do plans, in Europe, Lebanon and elsewhere, for sending more aid ships to challenge it, some as early as next week.
EDITOR: Apartheid in action
Read below about the little things which make Israeli apartheid so obnoxious, and which are accepted quite happily by most Israeli Jews as necessary and justified. In the following piece about Haredi Jews, you can disciver that racism in Israel is not only directed at Palestinians, but also at Jews…
In a side room at the airport: Haaretz
It is hard to convince the Jewish public in Israel that what happens at Ben-Gurion International Airport is a systematic injustice, if not worse. The ethnocentric panic undermines the principle of civil equality.
By Avirama Golan
Here is a story known to only some of the citizens of Israel. A few weeks ago a 43-year-old lecturer in sociology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who serves as a member of the prestigious academic journal Sociology, packed a suitcase and went to Ben-Gurion International Airport. From there he was supposed to take off for the journal’s annual editorial board meeting in London. He stood in line, showed his passport and his ticket and was immediately directed to a separate line.
The lecturer, whose name is Nabil Khattab and who lives in Beit Safafa, was not surprised. He says he accepts with understanding the lengthy security check, including the opening of his suitcases and rummaging in his carry-ons and laptop computer. He even accepts the detailed questioning (Where is he going? With whom will he meet? Where is the invitation? Who is the person who invited him? Give names of people. Are there representatives of enemy countries there? Who? ), though the connection between that and the security of the flight is not clear to him.
In recent years the security check has become a severe and exhausting hassle, which reaches its climax in the side room. The person being investigated is taken to the room and there he undergoes a thorough body check – head hair, ears, neck, armpits, every centimeter down to the soles of his feet, including private parts. Even this humiliating check Khattab accepts submissively.
This time, however, the examiner probed the lower part of his body with a cloth-covered stick and began to insert it under Khattab’s trousers.
“That was already intolerable,” he said. “I couldn’t keep quiet. With the greatest possible restraint I asked the examiner to stop. This has no connection to security, I said to him. If there is a suspicion that I am carrying explosives or metal on my body – let me go through the metal detector and if the machine beeps I will come back for examination.”
The examiner replied that if he did not agree to the examination with the stick he would not be allowed to board the plane. Khattab explained that he represents The Hebrew University on an important academic journal and that he cannot be absent from the meeting.
In vain. Angry and insulted, he took his suitcase and left. Ten minutes later, Khattab changed his mind but when he tried to go back to the side room he was told that because he had left the passenger terminal he would have to go through the whole check again, from the beginning. When he finally reached the room the examiner demanded he remove his trousers. “I will take them off only if they demand this of all passengers,” he said, and went home.
His wife persuaded him not to give in. He found a seat on the next flight to London, paid the difference and went back to the airport. The check was completed relatively quickly and included a body check. Without a stick.
The question arises as to whether an intrusive check with a stick is necessary. If so – why didn’t they do it the second time? If not – why did they want to do it?
However, even without sticks, the security check of Arab citizens of Israel is markedly different. Even the authorities in the United States, who have gotten carried away with paranoia since 9/11, have realized that it is impossible to do security checks by “profiling” and have determined to carry out random checks of all passengers. In Britain and Germany they do a thorough check of everyone: This is more expensive and it takes more time, but it avoids violations of civil rights.
At this time it is hard to convince the Jewish public in Israel that what happens at Ben-Gurion International Airport is a systematic injustice, if not worse. The ethnocentric panic undermines the principle of civil equality. Perhaps if they also opened the Levys’ suitcases and the Cohens’ suitcases, asked them innumerable personal questions and probed their bodies with a stick, the system would have to reexamine the security check.
Today there isn’t a Knesset that will decide this. Perhaps the High Court of Justice, where there is a petition pending on this issue, will be able to do so.
Segregated school affair: Fathers arrive in jail, mothers fail to show: Haaretz
100,000 protesters meet bus bringing Ashkenazi parents to jail for refusing to send their daughters to school with Sephardi girls.
Tags: Jewish World ultra-Orthodox Israel news
Thirty five men, fathers to Ashkenazi girls attending an illegally segregated school in the West Bank settlement of Immanuel, arrived at the Ma’asiyahu prison Thursday evening to serve a two-week sentence.
Parents of European, or Ashkenazi, descent at the all girls’ school don’t want their daughters to study with schoolgirls of Mideast and North African descent, known as Sephardim.
The Ashkenazi parents insist they aren’t racist, but want to keep the classrooms segregated, as they have been for years, arguing that the families of the Sephardi girls aren’t religious enough.
The Supreme Court rejected that argument, and ruled that the 43 sets of parents who have defied the integration efforts by keeping their daughters from school were to be jailed on Thursday.
However, two of the fathers and 22 of the mothers failed to show up at the police headquarters in Jerusalem’s Russian Compound, despite the court’s instructions. The parents were required to return their daughters to school and refrain from discrimination, or face jail time.
Dozens of ultra-Orthodox protesters awaited the fathers at the prison, held a prayer and sang songs while the bus entered the prison gates. This after 100,000 ultra-Orthodox demonstrators thronged the Jerusalem streets earlier in the day in support of the Ashkenazi parents’ right to keep their children in classes segregated from their Sephardi peers, welcoming the parents as they arrived at the police headquarters. It was one of the largest ultra-Orthodox demonstrations in recent years.
Police commissioner David Cohen said at a police meeting aimed at evaluating the situation that “the ultra-Orthodox public and its leaders have proven, thus far, that it is possible to protest while abiding by the law. I hope that the restraint that we saw today will characterize all of the confrontations between the police and the haredi public, and other groups, of which we’ve had quite of few lately.”
When the parents arrived at the Russian Compound earlier Thursday, one of the fathers said “I am going to jail with great excitement and joy over the support we’ve received,”
“We are making sure our children get the best education possible,” he added.
When asked what will become of his children while he is jail, the father said “We have gotten calls from friends we forgot existed in recent days. Everyone had offered to take care of our children while we are serving our terms. The people of Israel are beginning to understand that even though we are different, we are not so bad. We’re not racist.”
Earlier Thursday, protesters snarled traffic in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, crowding onto balconies in city squares, waving posters decrying the court’s decision and proclaiming the supremacy of religious law.
According to Israel Radio, some of the Ashkenazi protesters attempted during the rally to attack Sephardi Rabbi Ya’akov Yosef, son of Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and a leading figure against the discrimination. Yosef’s students managed to guard their teacher, who had also been subject to an attempted attack during protests on Wednesday evening.
The court has permitted the parents to defer the jail term of one of the parents until the other parent completes their term so that their children will not remain unsupervised. The court has also exempted the mothers of children with special needs. The prison term of one mother, who signed an agreement to comply with the court’s ruling, has been overturned.
The protest in Bnei Brak began at 1 P.M. and ended just before 3 P.M. The protesters then began accompanying the bus that would bring the parents to the police headquarters in Jerusalem, to join forces with the thousands of people rallying there.
Dozens of the pro-segregation parents were to stand on the pedestrian bridge over Jerusalem’s Bar Ilan Street wearing signs saying “prisoner sanctifying the name of heaven.” Police had issued permits for 20,000 people to demonstrate in Jerusalem.
Heads of yeshivas and schools were urged by leading Ashkenazi rabbis to cancel classes Thursday so students could attend the protest.
The parents were ordered to arrive at the Jerusalem police headquarters in the Russian Compound at 5 P.M. on Thursday to begin carrying out their prison terms, after police asked the court to postpone the commencement.
The court had initially scheduled the sentencing to begin at 12 P.M. and then pushed it off to 1 P.M., before agreeing to the police request.
The 43 families of the Ashkenazi girls seemed elated Wednesday by the prospect of their impending arrest and two-week jail term, which some called “a historic stand for the sanctification of the name of heaven.”
A leading spokesman of Israel’s modern Orthodox stream on Thursday urged religious Zionists not to take part in the mass protests, regardless of the political price they may pay in the future for refusing to support the movement.
“I cannot take part in the racism and discrimination that is taking place, which is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Rabbi Yuval Sherlo, who heads the joint army-yeshiva program in Petah Tikva.
Religious Zionism must “return to its historic role” and bring both sides to a compromise. “It’s impossible to claim that this is Jewish law or that it is sanctifying the name of God,” he said.
Ads appeared in newspapers on Thursday will call on people to avoid violence. Yerah Tocker, a spokesman for the protest, said “avoiding violence is one of the main emphases of the organizers.”
“We want to protest the High Court ruling and declare that for all of us, in light of the ruling, Torah comes first,” he said.
Despite the pledges of non-violence, police deployed in large numbers in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Beit Shemesh, Immanuel and near Ma’asiyahu prison where the fathers of the girls were eventually taken, and Neveh Tirza Prison, where the mothers were expected to go.
Police also called on drivers to avoid the area of the demonstrations in Jerusalem on Yermiyahu, Bar Ilan, Shmuel Hanavi and Hanevi’im streets, and in the Russian Compound.
The Courts Administration on Wednesday beefed up security around Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy, who headed the panel that ruled against the segregation. Levy, who wrote the sole dissent from the anti-segregation ruling, came out strongly against parents seeking rabbinic advice on the ruling. “No ruling of a court in general, or the High Court in particular, requires the authorization of any person, not even halakhic (Jewish law ) authority,” Levy said.
Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman came out against Levy on Thursday afternoon, saying that he wasn’t convinced that the ruling wasn’t tainted by personal considerations.
Litzman, who arrived at the Russian Compound to show solidarity with the Immanuel parents, said that he respects the High Court of Justice and abides by its rulings when it comes to the operations within the Health Ministry, but that “if the court should require of me to perform actions that conflict with the Torah or Halakha (Jewish law), I would resign rather than do those things.”
Who’s more harmful than a yeshiva boy?: Haaretz
The settlers and the ultra-Orthodox are the two most energetic and determined groups among the complacent and somnolent Jewish populace.
By Gideon Levy
The similarity is striking: two insular and arrogant population groups, different and at times peculiar, powerful minorities with authoritative leaders, both with their own laws and norms. The settlers and the ultra-Orthodox – the former is some 300,000 strong, not counting settlers in East Jerusalem, and the latter numbers about 700,000, including Haredi settlers.
In the Israel of 2010, these are the two most energetic and determined groups among the complacent and somnolent Jewish populace. Both wreak ruinous damage to the state, and both cost it vast amounts of money. And, lo and behold, while the campaign against the Haredim is gathering momentum – a campaign that is just in principle but is accompanied by ugly hatred and racism – the attitude toward the settlers fluctuates between apathy and sympathy, and even compassion.
Compassion? A member of the panel investigating how Israel handled evacuees of the disengagement from Gaza, Yedidya Stern, this week described them as no less than the victims of “the gravest infringement of human rights in the history of the State of Israel.” Not Israel’s poor, not the immigrants who were dumped in development towns, not the children at risk, not the children of migrant workers, not the Arabs who were driven out in 1948 and 1967, and not the Palestinians under occupation, but settlers who were evacuated and compensated, according to Prof. Stern’s remarkable ethical code.
Unlike the settlers, the Haredim are an easy target. There is no greater consensus in secular Israeli society than hatred for them. Criticizing the settlers is controversial, it has a price and it takes courage. Populist politicians build careers on spreading hatred of Haredim, but it is the courts rather than the country’s leaders that are taking the lead in changing the norms regarding them.
Without having made any previous attempt to draw closer to them, the courts laying down one ruling after another. The Supreme Court ruled that state-funded stipends for yeshiva students are unfair; it ruled there is intolerable racism in Immanuel; and the army wants to conscript thousands more yeshiva students. All these decisions were right and they were inevitable, but what in tarnation about that other recalcitrant group?
Racism? The settlers are more racist. Violence? The settlers are far more violent. Blatant disregard for the law of the land and maintenance of a separate legal system? More so among the settlers. Enormous budgets? The settlers cost us more, and the Haredim are poorer. Damage to society and state? That caused by the settlers is much more catastrophic, a weeping for generations to quote the Talmud and Ben-Gurion.
The self-isolation of the Haredim within their own world at the state’s expense is indeed something in need of change, and manifestations of racism among them must be eradicated. But where are public opinion and the state and its courts, when it comes to the settlers? The Haredim milk the budget, as we so often complain, and the settlers don’t?
According to Peace Now, the settlers cost us NIS 2.5 billion per year. For what? For their efforts at thwarting all prospects of peace. That’s not more harmful than a yeshiva boy? That’s not more dangerous than a Torah student?
The Ashkenazi Haredim treat the Mizrahim abominably. It is racism. But at least it is not violent, like the racism of the settlers toward Palestinians. The Haredim put their women at the back of the bus; the settlers not only bar Palestinians from their buses, but from the entire road at times. The Haredim erect barriers between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim in their schools; the settlers carry out ethnic cleansing under the state’s aegis, like that of 25,000 residents of Hebron.
So who’s the real racist here? Compared to the settlers’ hilltop youth, the yeshiva boys are models of morality. But who gets castigated? The Haredi of course. When will the courts come out against settler racism as they have against Haredi racism? They themselves maintain different systems for penalizing Jews and Arabs. When will we hear about the thousands of fictitious civil service positions held by settlers – a salaried security official in every mobile home – in the same way that we hear about the Haredi parasites? And what about the thousands of soldiers who have to guard the settlers, the superfluous roads that have been built to serve them, the electricity and water supplies laid for illegal outposts? All of it, everything, paid by us, more than we pay for Torah study as a Haredi occupation.
So let’s call this evil by its true name: a double standard. Cowardice works too.
UN screening of ‘one-sided’ Gaza flotilla film spurs Israeli complaint: Haaretz
Israel’s mission to the UN prevented from responding to screening of documentary film by one of the activists aboard the Mavi Marmara.
Israel on Thursday issued an official complaint against the president of the United Nations Correspondents Association for deliberately barring Israel from responding to the public screening of a documentary film on the events of the recent Gaza-bound aid flotilla, made by one of the activists.
On May 31, Israeli navy commandos boarded one of the ships in the flotilla, the Turkish Mavi Marmara, and were physically assaulted by the activists aboard. A clash ensued resulting in the deaths of nine activists and dozens of injuries.
The president of the UN Correspondents Association, Giampaolo Pioli, organized an event several days ago during which a documentary film by one of the Mavi Marmara activists was screened. In the invitation sent to all the foreign correspondents in New York Pioli wrote that he was inviting them to the debut of a film depicting the “Israeli attack on human rights activists.”
The spokeswoman for the Israeli delegation to the UN asked to take part in the event and present scenes from a film prepared by the Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Unit especially for the UN delegation.
At first, the president of the association agreed, but two hours before the start of the event he announced that he was canceling the screening of the Israeli film, offering to air the IDF film at a later date, and at a different location.
In the complaint, which Israel distributed to foreign correspondents in New York on Thursday, spokeswoman Mirit Cohen wrote that “I write this letter of complaint to officially protest your mishandling of the events.”
“Offering UN media facilities to screen video produced by a one-sided activist while actively preventing a member state of the United Nations an opportunity to respond in real time is severely unethical,” she wrote. “Your decision to ban the Permanent Mission of Israel from offering any feedback or comment during the aforementioned screening ensured that the reporters invited to the event would be offered only part of the story.”
“Furthermore,” she added, “the fact that you cancelled the participation of the Permanent Mission of Israel only two hours prior to the commencement of the screening raises grave doubts as to the reasons behind this decision.”
In conclusion, Cohen demanded an official apology.