Drop the security excuse: Haaretz Editorial
The prime minister needs to make the difficult decision to secure Gilad Shalit’s release immediately and stop hiding behind security rationales to avoid that decision.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s explanations for the delay in a deal for the return of captive soldier Gilad Shalit are gradually being reduced to a single key argument: It is impossible to free heavyweight prisoners – people responsible for major terror attacks – because they will then endanger the welfare of all Israelis. In his speech last Thursday, Netanyahu explained that he is not willing to release such prisoners into the West Bank, because once there, they are liable to establish new terrorist networks that would threaten both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
To refute this argument, it is sufficient to listen to what GOC Central Command Avi Mizrahi told Haaretz about six weeks ago: “The IDF can deal with this. … I’m not afraid of the return of these terrorists; it takes them a long time to reconnect to the territory.”
Mizrahi, who is responsible for the West Bank, can be relied on to know what he is talking about, even if his view contradicts that of Netanyahu.
But one need not rely on the view of any particular officer, because it is clear that the decision is not military, but political. The Israel Defense Forces’ ability to deal with 40 or 400 terrorists is not in question. Were it not for this ability, these prisoners would not currently be in jail.
The prime minister’s argument essentially equates the threat that these dozens of terrorists would pose if released with the far greater threats posed, for example, by Hezbollah or Iran. Yet Netanyahu has never been heard to say that Israel is incapable of dealing with these threats.
There is no choice but to conclude that the prime minister is trying to hide behind security rationales in order to avoid a difficult political and diplomatic decision. No one disputes that the price Hamas is demanding for the kidnapped soldier is a heavy one, but both in principle and in practice, Israel has already agreed to pay it. The proof of this is those 1,000 prisoners whom Netanyahu himself described as the agreed-upon price.
The prime minister would be wise not to put the public and its support for the Shalit family to the test. His weak arguments merely deepen the public’s distrust of his position.
He must make the difficult decision to secure Shalit’s release immediately. Four years of negotiation are a heavy price in and of themselves – both for Shalit and his family, and for a frustrated public.
US to press Binyamin Netanyahu to extend freeze on settlements: The Guardian
Barack Obama is anxious to build on what has been achieved since settlements freeze started in November
An armed Jewish settler in the occupied West Bank with Israeli soldiers during a demonstration in Beit Omar village near Hebron on Saturday. Photograph: Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images
Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, will come under intense pressure on Tuesday to extend his 10-month freeze on the building of settlements in the West Bank when he meets President Barack Obama in Washington – amid warnings from the Israeli right that they will vigorously oppose such a move.
Despite the moratorium, building in settlements has continued in the past seven months thanks to loopholes and violations. Preparations are under way for a construction boom this autumn.
Obama is expected to press hard for a continuation of the ban in the knowledge that large-scale settlement expansion would imperil the fragile “proximity” talks between Israel and the Palestinians. White House aides last week made it clear that the president wants to “capitalise on the momentum” provided by the freeze.
Today, Netanyahu said the main goal of the White House meeting would be to move toward direct peace talks with the Palestinians. “Whoever wants peace must hold direct talks for peace. I hope this will be one of the results of the visit to Washington,” he said. But he has given little indication which concessions he is prepared to make and said in a TV interview on Friday that the government’s position on settlements had not changed.
The 10-month moratorium, which excludes building in East Jerusalem, is due to end at around the same time as the four-month period set for proximity talks comes to an end. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, set a building freeze as a precondition for entering talks.
Israel’s combative foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman – a settler himself – has publicly urged Netanyahu to resist pressure to extend the freeze, saying concessions to Palestinians have not brought results. September would pose a “big test” for Israel, he said.
At least two other members of Netanyahu’s inner cabinet of seven have made their position clear. “We will renew building when the moratorium ends,” said Moshe Ya’alon. “There is no chance that Netanyahu will extend the freeze,” said Benny Begin.
Last week, leaders of the settlers warned that they would launch an “unprecedented struggle” if they were not permitted to resume building.
“If Netanyahu returns from the US with another commitment to a freeze, he will encounter an unprecedented response of settlers who will hound him no matter where he goes,” they said in a statement.
Settlers’ organisations have taken advertisements in the Israeli press, accusing the prime minister of “trampling on” the settlements. And Settlement Watch, an Israeli organisation, said that preparations are being made for a massive construction boom this autumn on the assumption the moratorium will be lifted.
“There are approved plans for between 40,000 and 50,000 housing units waiting,” said Hagit Ofran. “The only thing they need is for the mayor [of each settlement] to sign the permit. On 26 September, those mayors will have a big pile of permits on their desks.”
Under the terms of the freeze, plans can be drawn up for new buildings, but construction cannot begin. The order, which covers both private and public projects, expires at midnight on 25 September.
There are more than 300,000 Israelis living in settlements on occupied land on the West Bank, which are illegal under international law. There are another 200,000 settlers in East Jerusalem. The Palestinians argue that the massive growth in settlements, along with their infrastructure of roads and services, plus military protection, is making a viable state an impossibility.
The freeze, which began last November, was wrung out of Netanyahu by the White House after months of negotiation and against the opposition of the prime minister’s rightwing coalition partners. Work that had already begun was exempted. In the months running up to November, when a moratorium was widely anticipated, there was “a race” to start new projects, according to Settlement Watch. Around three-quarters of the way through the freeze, there are more than 2,000 housing units under construction in West Bank settlements, she said.
The defence ministry said in February that 29 settlements – including Ma’ale Adumim, a massive settlement east of Jerusalem – were in breach of the freeze order. Settlement Watch claims another 14 are also in violation.
In the large settlement of Qiriyat Arba, near the southern West Bank city of Hebron, building continued last week on a substantial number of homes. Settlement Watch says that work started on most of the units after the freeze and they are therefore in breach of the moratorium. No one from the settlement’s council was available for comment.
There are suggestions that, rather than a simple end or extension to the moratorium, Netanyahu could attempt to fudge the issue by granting more exemptions while maintaining that the “freeze” continues.
Deputy prime minister Dan Meridor has proposed lifting the moratorium in the big settlement blocs that are widely expected to remain part of Israel in a peace deal, but maintaining a freeze in smaller – often ideologically-driven – settlements.
“I have suggested that we build in areas that will remain part of Israel in the future, and not in those areas that won’t be part of Israel,” he said. “We have to build [in the settlements] wisely so as not to harm the negotiations with the Palestinians.”
EDITOR: The real face of the occupation
The next item is illuminating for those not fully cognisant of the brutality of the IOF. The danse macabre in this video is evidence of what soldiers really think, and how they are perceiving their function.
IDF soldiers face penalty after uploading Hebron dance video to YouTube: Haaretz
WATCH: Video of soldiers, armed and wearing bulletproof vests, patrolling as a Muslim call to prayer is heard. Then the music changes and they break into a Macarena-like dance.
A number of Israel Defense Forces soldiers could face disciplinary action after they uploaded to YouTube a video of themselves stopping a patrol in the West Bank to dance to American electro-pop singer Kesha’s hit Tick Tock.
The video “Batallion 50 Rock the Hebron Casbah” shows six dancing Nahal Brigade soldiers, armed and wearing bulletproof vests, patrolling as a Muslim call to prayer is heard. Then the music changes and they break into a Macarena-like dance.
The video was uploaded over the weekend, and quickly spread across Facebook pages and blogs.
By late afternoon on Monday, the video was removed by those who uploaded it. Another version of the video was then uploaded by a different YouTube user, who titled it “It’s easy to laugh at the occupation when you’re the repressor (and a douche bag).”
The IDF said the video was a stunt carried out a few soldiers and that the issue was being taken care of by the commanding officers.
Similar clips involving other armies have grabbed headlines in recent months, including one of American forces in Afghanistan doing their take on a Lady Gaga song.
And if thousands of prisoners go free?: Haaretz
We don’t have to recall Maj. Gen. Avi Mizrahi’s statements to know that the danger in releasing the prisoners is less than what is being described. The opportunity, in contrast, is great.
By Gideon Levy
Remember Zakariya Zubeidi, Israel’s “most wanted,” commander of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in Jenin, symbol of the armed struggle, enemy of the people? Now he’s an official in the Palestinian Authority’s Prisoners Ministry, devoting his free time to the Freedom Theater in his refugee camp. He is helping Udi Aloni and Juliano Mer put on “Antigone” in the Jenin refugee camp, and a film is to be produced based on the play starring the theater’s company of amateur actors.
Since Israel granted Zubeidi partial amnesty, he has fathered two children and a third is on the way. He built himself a new house to replace the one the Israel Defense Forces destroyed, and he says he has hung up his gun. The days of the armed entourage that surrounded him are over, the days of fear and suspicion. The war is over. There are many others like him.
And what would happen, do you think, if Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti were to go free from Israeli prison? The Palestinians would have the kind of leader who knows us so well; one who even knows how to appreciate what should be appreciated about us. He would be busy unifying his people’s factions and trying to reach an agreement with Israel. Even if Barghouti was directly involved in terror, a thousand Israeli witnesses (and friends ) have heard him over the years warn against terror. Israel would have done well to listen to him on time; we should have released him long ago.
While we are arguing over the release of the 1,000, or more precisely, the handful who are in contention, while we are being frightened day after day over their release, the question must be asked: What will happen if Israel releases not 1,000 prisoners, but thousands? The automatic response is of course: disaster. But is it? We don’t have to recall GOC Northern Command Avi Mizrahi’s statements, published in Haaretz yesterday, to know that the danger in releasing the prisoners is less than what is being described. The opportunity, in contrast, is great.
As opposed to the conventional thinking, the tens of thousands of Palestinians in Israeli prisons are human beings; as opposed to the conventional thinking, they also have families whose worlds have been destroyed. Most of them are not murderers, some are political prisoners in every way; others are various kinds of “bargaining chips” or throwers of stones and Molotov cocktails and carriers of kitchen knives.
They have been sitting in jail for years. Almost all of them were sentenced by a military tribunal; the connection between the latter and a court is like the connection between a military band and music. Anyone who has ever been to a military tribunal knows that a Palestinian has almost no chance with the military judges; quite a few of them are settlers, and a Palestinian will always be found guilty unless proven otherwise.
A thousand human beings who rightly fought the occupation, some with criminal violence, some jailed since before the Oslo Accords, want freedom. There is no lack of candidates to be terrorists; terrorism stops as the result of a political and social decision. In any case, most of them will be freed one day; their sentences were disproportionate to begin with, imposed more because of their nationality than their offense.
They are also locked up under Israeli prisons’ most severe and cruel conditions: They don’t receive phone calls home, furloughs or one-third off their sentences for good behavior. Sometimes they don’t even get visits. They have paid a very heavy price, and the time has come to let go of our instinct for revenge and to let them go. The time has come to think out of the box, the hollow box of threats.
A large-scale prisoner release, as an Israeli initiative and not another capitulation, not petty bargaining but a real gesture, full of good intensions, is the surest way to get a new wind blowing. It’s also, of course, the surest way to get Gilad Shalit released. Don’t lift the blockade because of a Turkish ship, but open the prison gates thanks to a wise and courageous Israeli leader. Does it sound like an unbelievable hallucination? Yes it does, and more’s the pity.
Counter the Complicity of Israel’s Medical Establishment: Boycott the Jerusalem International Conference on Integrative Medicine: PACBI
Occupied Ramallah, 30 June 2010
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) urges international medical professionals to boycott the Jerusalem International Conference on Integrative Medicine, scheduled for 19-22 October 2010 in Jerusalem. The conference, which is sponsored by virtually all of the major medical centers in Israel, in addition to several health organizations and the Israeli Ministry of Health, advertises its location this year by rhetorically asking, “Could there be a better place to host an international meeting about the connection between body and mind?” It thus aims to whitewash not just Israel’s system of colonial and apartheid oppression, but also the fact that the Israeli medical establishment has been complicit in the use of torture by the Israeli intelligence services against Palestinian prisoners, including children, traumatizing both their bodies and minds.
Convening such a conference in a state that violates international law and human rights as persistently as Israel would have been objectionable at any time. Organizing it now, despite the ongoing atrocious Israeli siege of 1.5 million Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip is nothing short of conscious collusion in covering up Israel’s crimes. The UN and leading human rights organizations have amply documented the devastating consequence the siege has had on the health conditions of the Palestinian population, especially on children, where stunted growth and anemia have become widespread. A recent report in the BBC in fact reveals how Israel is only allowing the “minimum calorie intake needed by Gaza’s million and a half inhabitants, according to their age and sex,” as a form of severe collective punishment. [1]
Coming on the heels of Israel’s latest Freedom Flotilla massacre on 31 May 2010, convening this conference displays total disregard to human rights and, at best, betrays apathy towards substantial violation of medical ethics in Israel. Scottish human rights campaigner, Theresa McDermott, who survived that Israeli bloodbath with minor injuries revealed to the media the role Israeli physicians played in covering up the brutal and illegal treatment the victims had suffered at the hands of the Israeli commando troops who forcibly took all the hostages to the port of Ashdod. “We were processed through Ashdod and doctors there examined us, but never really treated us. When some of us pointed out the levels of bruising they told us it was just mosquito bites.” [2]
A recent study by leading Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations of Israel’s exit policy at the Erez Crossing regarding Gaza patients seeking medical treatment unavailable in Gaza concludes that the “consistent Israeli policy of distinguishing between life-threatening cases and cases that affect quality of life, as a basis to deny their exit from the [Gaza] Strip for medical treatment, … violates the principles of medical ethics and international law.” [3]
The Israeli medical establishment has consistently refused to shoulder its ethical responsibility to ensure that its institutions and members do not engage in serious violations of universal medical ethics, not to mention basic human rights, particularly Palestinians’ rights to life and freedom from torture and ill-treatment.
Many convenors of this conference are no doubt aware of the persistent challenge presented to the Israeli medical establishment, and the Israeli Medical Association in particular, to investigate evidence of the collusion of medical personnel, including physicians, in the ill-treatment and torture of Palestinians in detention centers, prisons, and other facilities supervised by the security forces.
In May 2009, an open letter was addressed to the World Medical Association (WMA) Council by 725 physicians and professors from 43 countries around the world, coordinated by Professor Alan Meyers of Boston University and Dr. Derek Summerfield of the University of London. [4] The signatories protested the appointment of Dr. Yoram Blachar, the longstanding President of the Israeli Medical Association (IMA), as President of the WMA, and called for his removal. In the words of the signatories, “under Dr Blachar’s leadership the IMA made a decision on political grounds years ago to turn a blind eye to torture in Israel and the institutionalised involvement of doctors.” The initiative was earlier supported by Palestinian medical and health institutions urging the condemnation of the IMA [5]
The context within which the challenge to the Israeli Medical Association was made, and which continues to be ignored by the IMA, is the WMA’s Declaration of Tokyo (1975) that specifies that “physicians shall not countenance, condone or participate in the practice of torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading procedures, and in all situations, including armed conflict and civil conflict”. The WMA Annual General Assembly of 2007 made it clear that inaction was not an option, stating that “this is the first time the WMA has explicitly obliged doctors to document cases of torture of which they become aware. The absence of documenting and denouncing such acts might be considered as a form of tolerance and of non-assistance to the victims” [6]
The authors of the letter also based themselves on a 1996 Amnesty International report concluding that Israeli doctors working with the security services “formed part of a system in which detainees are tortured, ill treated and humiliated in ways that place prison medical practice in conflict with medical ethics.” Later, Amnesty’s briefing to the UN Committee against Torture in September 2008 focused on Amnesty International’s continuing concerns about Israel’s failure to implement the Convention against Torture in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the intensification of measures amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment. [7]
The letter goes on to explain that a 2007 report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) gives a graphic demonstration of the extent to which Israeli doctors continue to form an integral and everyday part of the running of interrogation suites whose output is torture. In November 2008, PCATI filed a contempt of court motion to the High Court of Justice against the government of Israel and the General Security Service for their responsibility for a policy that grants a-priori permits to use torture in interrogations. The IMA has never challenged torture as state policy in Israel. [8]
The letter points to a justification of the use of “moderate physical pressure” (condemned as torture by the UN Committee Against Torture) by the President of the IMA in the international medical journal The Lancet in 1997, concluding that “[t]his surely unprecedented action by the president of a national medical association has not been disowned…. In the age of evidence-based medicine his rejection of the documentary record has been unprofessional and frequently contemptuous.” [9]
The response of the National President of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, which operates the Hadassah Medical Organization, one of the partners of the October conference in Jerusalem, reflects the attitude of the medical establishment in Israel. Instead of supporting a call for an investigation of serious charges of collusion by medical personnel in torture, she claimed, “[W]e are fighting to immunize science from politics…we remain above politics…and know the accusation is not true…Hadassah will mount an army to defend Israel and its medical institutions” [10].
This military language is reflective of the arrogant Zionist mindset that is emboldened by the immunity Israel enjoys in the corridors of power. Spokespersons defending the state believe that through their aggressive hasbara they can intimidate and silence critics. But that time is coming to an end. The myth of Israel as a law-abiding country has surely been shattered.
The Conference announcement introducing the controversies surrounding the incorporation of conventional and “alternative” medical principles and practices invites potential participants to Israel, “a developed Western country that is known beyond its borders for its advanced modern medical services.” [11] This colonial discourse masks the fact that instead of being a law-abiding state, Israel stands out today as one of the most serious violators of international law, all the while enjoying the protection of hegemonic world powers. Increasingly, Israel is being viewed by world public opinion as a pariah or “outlaw state,” as described by British writer, Iain Banks in the Guardian. [12]
At a time when the international movement to boycott Israeli institutions is gaining ground in response to Israel’s flagrant and persistent infringement of Palestinian human and political rights, we urge those who may consider participating in this conference to reflect upon the implication of taking part in a gathering sponsored by some of those complicit institutions. As was the case in the academic boycott against South Africa’s complicit universities during apartheid, we believe that participation in medical or academic conferences or similar events in Israel not dedicated to ending Israel’s illegal occupation and systematic racial discrimination can only contribute to the prolongation of this injustice by normalizing and thereby legitimizing it. It will inadvertently contribute to Israel’s efforts to appear as a “normal” participant in the “civilized” world of science while at the same time practicing the most pernicious form of colonial control and legalized racial discrimination against Palestinians.
Israel’s assault on the humanitarian relief Flotilla is only the latest proof that it does not understand the language of persuasion. We urge you to heed the recent appeal by the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), a wide coalition of the largest Palestinian mass organizations, trade unions, networks and organizations, that calls “on people of conscience and citizen groups all over the world to intensify BDS campaigns against Israel as the most effective means of ending the siege and holding Israel accountable to international law in the pursuit of a just peace.” [13].
We also remind you that during Israel’s war of aggression on Gaza in 2008-2009, which left over 1,440 Palestinians dead, of whom 431 were children, and in which 5380 were injured and scores of medical facilities and ambulances were directly targeted leading to the death and injury of medical personnel, the Israeli medical establishment was silent. The UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, headed by the highly respected South African judge, Richard Goldstone, found Israel guilty of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, as did major international human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The Goldstone report concluded that Israel’s war on Gaza was “designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.” [14]
Our call for a boycott of this conference comes against the background of repeated appeals by Palestinian health workers and medical organizations to boycott the Israeli health establishment. In 2006, an appeal issued by major health organizations in Gaza at the height of the siege that left patients dying and health workers and hospitals under fire, urged a boycott of Israeli health institutions. [15]
The 2004 PACBI call for boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions, [16] like the Palestinian civil society’s widely endorsed call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) in 2005, [17] is based on the same moral principle embodied in the international civil society campaign against the apartheid regime in South Africa: that people of conscience must take a stand against oppression and use all the means of civil resistance available to bring it to an end.
US questions its unwavering support for Israel: The Guardian
Consensus forming in Washington that Israeli government is abusing support with policies seen to be risking US lives
Binyamin Netanyahu, left, arrives in Washington tomorrow to patch up relations with Barack Obama and the US administration. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
There are questions that rarely get asked in Washington. For years, the mantra that America’s intimate alliance with Israel was as good for the US as it was the Jewish state went largely unchallenged by politicians aware of the cost of anything but unwavering support.
But swirling in the background when Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, arrives in Washington tomorrow to patch up relations with the White House will be a question rarely voiced until recently: is Israel ‑ or, at the very least, its current government ‑ endangering US security and American troops?
Netanyahu would prefer to be seen as an indispensable ally in confronting Islamist terror. But his insistence on building Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem, which is causing a deep rift with Washington, is seen as evidence of a lack of serious interest in the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. That in turn is seen as fuelling hostility towards the US in other parts of the Middle East and beyond, because America is perceived as Israel’s shield.
In recent months Barack Obama has said that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a “vital national security interest of the United States”. His vice-president, Joe Biden, has confronted Netanyahu in private and told the Israeli leader that Israel’s policies are endangering US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senior figures in the American military, including General David Petraeus who has commanded US forces in both wars, have identified Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian land as an obstacle to resolving those conflicts.
More recently, Israel’s assault on ships attempting to break the Gaza blockade has compromised relations with Turkey, an important American strategic ally.
A former director of intelligence assessment for the US defence secretary, last month caused waves with a paper called Israel as a Strategic Liability? In it, Anthony Cordesman, who has written extensively on the Middle East, noted a shift in thinking at the White House, the US state department and, perhaps crucially, the Pentagon over the impact of Washington’s long-unquestioning support for Israeli policies even those that have undermined the prospects for peace with the Palestinians.
He wrote that the US will not abandon Israel because it has a moral commitment to ensure the continued survival of the Jewish state. “At the same time, the depth of America’s moral commitment does not justify or excuse actions by an Israeli government that unnecessarily make Israel a strategic liability when it should remain an asset. It does not mean that the United States should extend support to an Israeli government when that government fails to credibly pursue peace with its neighbours.
“It is time Israel realised that it has obligations to the United States, as well as the United States to Israel, and that it become far more careful about the extent to which it test the limits of US patience and exploits the support of American Jews.”
Cordesman told the Guardian that the Netanyahu government has maintained a “pattern of conduct” that has pushed the balance toward Israel being more of a liability than an asset.
“This Israeli government pushed the margin too far,” he said. “Gaza was one case in point, the issue of construction in Jerusalem, the lack of willingness to react in ways that serve Israel’s interests as well as ours in moving forward to at least pursue a peace process more actively.”
It was a point made forcefully by Biden to Netanyahu in March after the Israelis humiliated the American during a visit to Jerusalem by announcing the construction of 1,600 more Jewish homes in the city’s occupied east.
The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that at a meeting between the two men, Biden angrily accused Israel’s prime minister of jeopardising US soldiers by continuing to tighten the Jewish state’s grip on Jerusalem.
“This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace,” Biden told Netanyahu.
Obama’s chief political adviser, David Axelrod, said the settlement construction plans “seemed calculated to undermine” efforts to get fresh peace talks off the ground and that “it is important for our own security that we move forward and resolve this very difficult issue”.
Netanyahu sought to head off the issue when he spoke to pro-Israeli lobbyists in Washington earlier this year. “For decades, Israel served as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism. Today it is helping America stem the tide of militant Islam. Israel shares with America everything we know about fighting a new kind of enemy,” he said. “We share intelligence. We co-operate in countless other ways that I am not at liberty to divulge. This co-operation is important for Israel and is helping save American lives.”
But that argument is less persuasive to the Americans now. Last month, Israel’s ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, said the Jewish state had suffered a “tectonic rift” with America. “There is no crisis in Israel-US relations because in a crisis there are ups and downs,” he told Israeli diplomats in Jerusalem. “Relations are in the state of a tectonic rift in which continents are drifting apart.”
Oren said that assessments of Israeli policy at the White House have moved away from the historic and ideological underpinnings of earlier administrations in favour of a cold calculation.
Cordesman said it is too early to tell whether Netanyahu has fully grasped that while there will be no change in the fundamental security guarantees the US gives Israel, “the days of the blank cheque are over”.
He added: “I think it is clear there is more thought on how to deal with Gaza, how to deal with the underlying humanitarian issues, less creating kinds of pressures which frankly, from the viewpoint of an outside observer, have tended to push Hamas not toward an accommodation but toward a harder line while creating of all things an extremist challenge to Hamas. But until you see the end result, some comments and some token actions don’t tell you there’s been a significant shift.”
Israel ‘black-lists’ chemicals and weapons-making tools from Gaza: Haaretz
Official list published Monday includes certain fertilizers which could be used in the manufacture of explosives, parachutes, gliders, flares and fireworks
Israel published Monday its “black list” of goods it will not allow into the Gaza Strip, under a new policy whereby its four-year-old siege of the coastal territory will now be defined by a list of goods to be kept out, rather than by those allowed in.
The banned products include arms and munitions and items which could be used to develop, produce or enhance the military capabilities of the Gaza militias, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Also forbidden are what the ministry called “materials and equipment liable to be used for terror attacks and technology that could be used by terrorists.”
Such material includes chemicals – such as certain fertilizers which could be used in the manufacture of explosives – ball bearings, hunting knives and machetes, certain navigation aides, parachutes, gliders, flares and fireworks and missile-related technology.
Certain building materials – cements, ready concrete, steel elements, which militants could also use for military purposes – will be allowed into the enclave only to facilitate construction projects in Gaza which have been authorized by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and are implemented and monitored by the international community.
In a related development, Defense Minister Ehud Barak met in Jerusalem on Monday afternoon with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, to plan the transfer of humanitarian goods into the Strip.
Israel imposed its blockade on Gaza shortly after Palestinian militants staged a cross-border raid on June 25, 2006, and snatched Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, who is still being held somewhere in the territory as talks on a possible prisoner swap grind on in fits and starts.
The Israeli cabinet, after coming under massive international pressure, decided in late June to significantly loosen the siege, a move both the PA, and its fierce rival, the Islamist Hamas movement which controls the Strip, said was insignificant.
The White House welcomed the publication as an “important step”.
“We believe the list of restricted goods for Gaza announced today will make a significant improvement in the lives of people in Gaza, while keeping weapons out of the hands of Hamas,” said spokesman Tommy Vietor.
“This is an important step in implementing the new policy announced by Israel two weeks ago. The president looks forward to discussing it with the prime minister tomorrow.”
AN OPEN LETTER TO ANNE SOFIE VON OTTER
Dear Anne Sofie von Otter,
We are writing to you because we wonder whether a musician who has done as much as you have to make the world remember the Nazi ‘show camp’ of Theresienstadt might be willing to think about the implications of your performances in Israel, scheduled for this October.
Possibly among your audience will be survivors of the Holocaust – and no one would want to deny people who suffered so much the pleasure of hearing you interpreting the wonderful music you will sing. Unless your presence in Tel Aviv raised a moral question – and in our view, respectfully, it does.
Because scattered all over the world are survivors of another kind – some of the 750,000 Palestinian men, women and children – half the population – who were driven out of their country by Israeli forces in 1947/48 and have never been allowed to return. Of the roughly 450 Palestinian villages that were emptied this way – producers of wheat, barley, olives, almonds, cotton, goats, honey, peaches, figs, apricots, some from before Roman times – almost all were bulldozed. Beautiful ancient Palestinian cities – Jaffa, Lydda, Acre, Majdal – were suddenly proclaimed Israeli. The Palestinians thus wiped off the map, their children and children’s children, in exile from Detroit to Adelaide, in refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, and under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza – none of these Palestinians will be able to come to Tel Aviv and hear you sing.
You have said that as you researched the music written in Theresienstadt, you discovered that your father, a Swedish diplomat in
Berlin during World War II, had learned about the death camps and alerted his government, to no avail.
If your father were alive today, what do you think might trouble him?
Perhaps the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which has sealed off 1.5 million people, many of them still traumatised and homeless after the threeweek carpet bombing Israel subjected them to early last year. Perhaps the daily struggles of a West Bank farmer who’s lost her orchards to Israeli settlers, whose well has been sucked dry by the settlement, whose children can’t get to school because the Israeli army blockades the village and the settlers shoot at the children, whose harvest of tomatoes and cucumbers rots at a checkpoint at the whim of the soldiers – we could go on. Richard Horton, editor of the reputable British medical journal The Lancet, writes about ‘the small daily atrocities that are continuously eroding the future of Palestinian families’.
Consider the appearance of civilised normality your concerts will give – a glass of wine after work; coffee and cake on a Friday afternoon; a chance to contemplate the meaning of Um Mitternacht in an atmosphere charged only with the beauty and drama of your voice. And yet forty minutes’ drive from the concert hall, a million and a half people will be walled up in the Gaza ghetto. While you are singing,
Palestinians in the Occupied Territories will be facing the ‘small daily atrocities’ that Richard Horton evokes, and calling on their stores of resilience – because he also says that what he observes among Palestinians is ‘a quiet civic resistance and resilience to chronic terror’.
Your presence in Tel Aviv will implicitly condone that ‘chronic terror’. But you could make a different choice. When the International Committee of the Red Cross inspected Theresienstadt in 1944, they believed the show the Nazis put on for them – that this cruel antechamber to Auschwitz was a model resettlement town for Jews, complete with parks and children’s
playgrounds and concert halls. You, on the other hand, have access to all the information anyone could possibly need to understand the cruel situation in which the Palestinians live. You have knowledge, and the power of choice. (Your one-time colleague, Elvis Costello, considered the evidence, and, to his very great credit, changed his mind about
going: http://www.elviscostello.com/news/it-is-after-considerablecontemplation/44.)
Please, don’t sing in Tel Aviv.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Haim Bresheeth
Mike Cushman
Professor Hilary Rose
Professor Steven Rose
Professor Jonathan Rosenhead
BRICUP, London, July 2010
Lieberman to Turkey: Israel won’t apologize for Gaza flotilla raid: Haaretz
Turkey warns Israel: Apologize for Gaza flotilla raid or we’ll cut ties; Barak says he opposed meeting between Trade Minister Ben-Eliezer and Turkish foreign minister.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Monday that Israel has no intention of meeting Turkey’s demand for an apology over a deadly Israeli raid on a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza.
Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper earlier quoted Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as saying that Israel has three paths. “It either apologizes, or accepts the findings from an international commission investigating the raid, or Turkey will cut off ties,” the daily quoted Davutoglu as saying.
But Lieberman rejected this possibility. “We don’t have any intention to apologize. We think that the opposite is true,” he told reporters after meeting Latvia’s foreign minister during a visit to the Baltic state.
“We are concerned about what we have been seeing and hearing from Turkish officials, such as the possible Turkish vote against Iran sanctions at the UN Security Council,” said Lieberman. “Such remarks are part of Turkey’s about-face and new policy, which is an internal affair in which we cannot meddle.”
The once-close Turkish-Israeli relationship has taken a steep nose dive following a tragically botched May 31 Israeli commando raid on a Gaza aid flotilla led by a Turkish non-governmental organization.
Nine Turks were killed in the attack.
Turkey recalled its ambassador to Israel after the raid. It has also closed its airspace to Israeli military aircraft in response to the incident.
Turkey has previously stated its demands that before relations are normalized Israel must apologize, pay compensation to the victims and allow for an international inquiry into the event.
Israel has so far refused to meet those demands. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week said his country would not apologize or pay compensation to the flotilla victims.
Israel has meanwhile set up its own inquiry, headed by a former Supreme Court justice.
“We showed them an exit road. If they apologize as a result of their own investigation’s conclusion, that would be fine for us. But of course we first have to see it,” Davutoglu said.
“They are aware of our demands. If they do not want to apologize, then they should accept an international investigation,” he added.
Davutoglu also suggested that Turkey could impose further sanctions against Israel should it fail to meet Turkey’s conditions.
“If steps are not taken, the process of isolation will continue,” he said.
On Friday, Trade and Labor Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer refuted a report by Turkish daily Hurriyet, which claimed that he had indicated to Davutoglu during their clandestine meeting in Brussels last week that Israel was rethinking its refusal to compensate and apologize over the flotilla incident.
“We have no plans to do that, and the minister did not promise anything to that regard during his meeting with the Turkish foreign minister two days ago,” Ben-Eliezer’s bureau said in response to the report.
Davutoglu warned Ben-Eliezer during their meeting that Turkey may ban commercial flights between the two countries unless Israel agreed to its demands.
The covert talks – the first high-level contacts between the tense allies since the deadly raid – raised a storm in both in Israel and in Turkey.
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Monday said that when he was in the U.S. last week, officials tried to schedule a meeting between him and the Turkish foreign minister and ambassador, but he declined.
“It was clear these meetings were intended to raise Turkish complaints about the flotilla deaths and to demand compensation for those killed and injured, because of which I thought it is not the right time to meet them,” said Barak.
Barak added that upon his return to Israel he told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it would be an inappropriate time for Ben-Eliezer meet Turkish officials.
Turkey threatens diplomatic break with Israel over raid: BBC
5 July 2010 17:33 UK
Turkey has for the first time threatened to break diplomatic ties with Israel over its raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May.
Turkey’s foreign minister said a break could only be averted if Israel either apologised or accepted the outcome of an international inquiry into the raid.
The Israeli government said it had nothing to apologise for.
Ankara curtailed diplomatic relations with Israel after the naval raid, in which nine Turks were killed.
Turkey – which until recently was Israel’s most important Muslim ally – withdrew its ambassador and demanded that the Israelis issue an apology, agree to a United Nations inquiry and compensate the victims’ families.
Emotions are still raw enough over this incident for both sides to maintain the hardest possible line, even if behind the scenes they say they want to salvage the relationship.
Although Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu made a hardline statement, it doesn’t look like a fundamental change in position.
Turkey’s demands for an apology, compensation and an international inquiry have been unflinching. But Mr Davutoglu said Turkey would be satisfied if Israel’s inquiry found them at fault and if Israel apologised. That seems unlikely.
The Obama administration is pushing these key US allies to make up. But there is no realistic way of this happening for some time.
A Turkish foreign ministry official told the BBC relations with Israel had hit rock bottom, but Ankara would not rush into cutting ties.
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Turkey would be satisfied with the ongoing Israeli inquiry if that found Israel to be at fault.
Mr Davutoglu told Hurriyet newspaper: “[The Israelis] will either apologise or acknowledge an international, impartial inquiry and its conclusion. Otherwise, our diplomatic ties will be cut off.”
He also said there was now a blanket ban in place on all Israeli military aircraft using Turkish airspace, not just on a case-by-case basis.
It comes just five days after a surprise meeting between Mr Davutoglu and Israeli Trade Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer in Switzerland.
Reacting to the Turkish stance, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said: “We don’t have any intention to apologise.”
Foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP news agency: “When you want want an apology, you don’t use threats or ultimatums.”
Israel says its commandos acted in self-defence after being attacked by activists wielding clubs and knives as the troops boarded one of the aid convoy ships.
Activists on board the Mavi Marmara say lethal force was used from the start of the raid by Israeli forces.
The vessel was part of a flotilla trying to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Amid mounting international pressure following the raid, Israel last month announced it would ease its four-year blockade of the territory.
Blockade blacklist
On Monday, Israel published a revamped blacklist of items barred from entry into the Gaza Strip.
Long-standing restrictions on allowing consumer goods into Gaza are being dropped.
Construction materials, badly needed in Gaza, will only be permitted in under supervision for use by organisations such as the UN.
The Islamist group Hamas, which controls Gaza, said the measures were “worthless” and of no use to the Palestinians living there.
Israel says its blockade is needed to prevent the supply of weapons to Hamas.
Turkey and Israel forged strong military and trade ties following Ankara’s recognition of Israel in 1949.
But relations have cooled in recent years. The Turkish government headed by the AK Party – which has Islamist roots – strongly criticised the raid launched by Israel in Gaza in December 2008.
In January 2009, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed out of the World Economic Forum in Davos, after a clash with Israeli President Shimon Peres.
In January this year, Israel was forced to apologise over the way its deputy foreign minister treated the Turkish ambassador.
Israel’s new master plan: Al Ahram Weekly
Quietly, Israel is preparing the biggest illegal land grab in recent memory, all on Obama’s watch, writes Khaled Amayreh in Jerusalem
Palestinians scavenge gravel from the Rafah runway, destroyed by an Israeli air strike, as cement and other building materials are banned under the Israeli blockade
A few days before his scheduled visit to Washington on 7 July, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu appears as deliberately thwarting American efforts to push forward indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA).
This week, an Israeli government body was set to approve “an unprecedented master plan” for an all-out expansion of Jewish settlements that would effectively — using the words of one Palestinian official — “decapitate” East Jerusalem’s Arab identity.
The plan would see the building of tens of thousands of Jewish-only apartments in East Jerusalem to be constructed on Arab owned land.
The Jerusalem Municipal Council, controlled by fanatical Jewish radicals advocating ethnic cleansing of non-Jews in the city, is trying to enforce the plan with a discernible green light from the government.
In essence, the plan would leave a zero room for future expansion of Arabs in Jerusalem, as virtually all remaining open space or “green areas” would be used for “Jewish development”.
The estimated 270,000 Arab East Jerusalemites are already confined to a mere 13 per cent of East Jerusalem while more than 85 per cent of the city has been seized by Jewish authorities since 1967, when Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.
According to Palestinian officials, the plan — if carried out — constitutes a turning point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and will surely lead to an early and potentially violent collapse of the shaky and uncertain peace process.
“I don’t believe that the peace process will withstand the reported plan to expand Jewish settlement in Jerusalem. In fact, the main goal of that plan is to kill any remaining hope for peace,” said Ghassan Al-Khatib, a PA spokesman in Ramallah. “This is more than a provocation. It is actually a decapitation of the peace process.”
PA President Mahmoud Abbas told reporters in Ramallah on 29 June that, “We haven’t heard from Israel anything that would encourage us to continue negotiating.” “We will see what [US Peace Envoy George] Mitchell is carrying with him. If he has positive answers from the Israelis, then we might agree to switch to direct talks. But we have heard nothing from him that would encourage us to keep up the talks.”
Mitchell was due to arrive in Ramallah on Thursday 1 July, the latest Israeli settlement expansion schemes expected to top the agenda of talks with Abbas. Since taking up his position as envoy, Mitchell has visited the region 18 times without achieving any real progress.
Israel officials, including Netanyahu, have carefully refrained from elaborating on the plan. Their reticence appears motivated by the desire not to mar Netanyahu’s upcoming visit to Washington.
The Israeli media has reported that the Obama administration is frustrated with the slow pace of the peace process, particularly Israeli-PA proximity talks. Washington is urging both sides to switch to direct talks, though no evidence suggests that moving to direct talks would make any difference.
Netanyahu, too, has been demanding that the PA engage in direct talks. However, it is understood that this is posturing intended to give the false impression that the Palestinians are the ones impeding progress to peace. The Israeli premier may also be aiming to divert attention from the plans to radically expand Jewish settlements following the expiration in September of a largely disingenuous moratorium on settlement expansion adopted under US pressure early this year.
On the other hand, Netanyahu seems convinced that the Obama administration is largely a paper tiger and that the powerful Jewish American lobby will be able to defeat the president in any confrontation over Israel. Netanyahu’s calculations in this regard don’t seem out of touch with reality. A number of senators and congressmen from both parties have already censured the president for “exerting too much pressure on Israel.”
Illustrative of Israel’s excessive confidence, this week the Israeli government approved a plan to demolish 22 Arab homes in the Silwan neighbourhood in East Jerusalem. The wanton demolitions are part of a larger plan to destroy hundreds of Arab homes in the densely populated Arab neighbourhood. Israel says it wants to build a Talmudic park and other tourist attractions in the area, to make it more “attractive”.
Palestinians in East Jerusalem, already exasperated by unrelenting Israeli efforts to narrow their horizons are threatening an all-out uprising. “I think the Israelis are pushing us into a situation where we have nothing to lose,” said H Abu Saud, a long-time resident of the city. “Israel is pushing Jerusalemites to embrace violence. What would you do if you were facing systematic persecution on a daily basis?”
IKEA furnishing the occupation: The Electronic Intifada
Adri Nieuwhof, The Electronic Intifada, 5 July 2010
Swedish Radio reported on 23 June that home furnishings retail giant IKEA in Israel discriminately ships to Israel’s illegal settlements but not Palestinian cities in the occupied West Bank.
Swedish Radio’s correspondent in Israel, Cecilia Udden, explained that she was moving to the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank and asked the staff at IKEA Israel if her furniture could be delivered there. She reported that behind the store’s counter was a huge map of Israel that showed no boundaries for the occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip, or the Syrian Golan Heights. Although IKEA’s cost of transport is calculated according to distance, to Udden’s surprise, transport to Ramallah was not possible. However, the store did inform her that furniture could be delivered to various Israeli settlements throughout the occupied West Bank.
Ove Bring, a professor of international law, explained to Swedish online magazine Stockholm News that IKEA’s policies discriminate against Palestinians. In addition, the shipping policies violate the company’s code of conduct, which is published on its website (“IWAY Standard” [PDF]).
IKEA stated in Udden’s report that because it relies on local transport companies for deliveries it is bound by local rules. However, Bring challenged the company’s assertion and stated that IKEA must examine whether the transport companies are truly unable to deliver to all customers who request the products. Indeed, when Udden insisted on an answer from the transportation company about why her furniture could not be delivered to Ramallah, she was informed that the Israeli military prohibits the deliveries to customers in Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank.
In its historic 2004 advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice emphasized the illegality of activity that normalizes Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. Indeed, Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Wiesenthal Center — which is building a Museum of Tolerance on a historic Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem — told the California-based Jewish weekly J. that the opening of an IKEA store in Israel “will be another chink in the attempts that are still out there to boycott Israel” (“”IKEA’s 1st Israeli store to open in spring,” 12 January 2001).
Ironically, before the opening of an IKEA store in Israel in 2001, the retailer was threatened with boycott by the Wiesenthal Center because the company’s founder, Ingvar Kamprad, was a member of the fascist New Swedish Movement in the 1940s. The Wiesenthal Center also suspected IKEA of complying with the Arab League boycott of Israel because it appeared to avoid commercial involvement in Israel despite possible opportunities. In a December 1994 letter to the Wiesenthal Center, IKEA President Anders Moberg stated that IKEA had not participated in the Arab League boycott and that company was in the process of investigating the possibility of opening an IKEA store in Israel.
Today IKEA’s empire boasts 300 stores in 35 countries, including two stores in Israel; the company intends to open a third store in Haifa in 2012. The IKEA brand survived the revelations of its founder’s links to fascism during his youth and the company demonstrated its sensitivity to a possible consumer boycott.
In yet another irony, the boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel movement is already mobilizing in Sweden. At the end of June, the Swedish Dockworkers Union began a week-long blockade of goods to and from Israel. The action by the SDU was in response to a call by Palestinian trade unionists in the context of Israel’s three-year blockade of the Gaza Strip and its attack on the Mavi Marmara aid ship on 31 May. In this context, it remains to be seen whether IKEA will rectify the racist policies of its store in Israel before such practices inspire a new consumer boycott threat.
Adri Nieuwhof is a consultant and human rights advocate based in Switzerland.