EDITOR: Even the right can see this is disastrous…
Yoel Marcus is by no measure one can imagine on Israel’s political left – on the contrary, he has been on the liberal right for some decades; but even he can see that Israel is heading for another bloody war. Where I may differ from him, amongst other things, is his belief that there is a political solution now possible for Netanyahu to sign to. There is no such solution Netanyahu will sign to, no more than Olmert, Sharon and Barak before him would. No Israeli PM has been ready to deal with leaving the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories) and to agree a just peace with the PLO. Netanyahu is the least likely to do so.
A donkey and peace: Haaretz
Obama will be the one to decide if an extension of the building freeze is essential to direct talks under American sponsorship.
By Yoel Marcus
It’s been a long time since negotiations elicited as many smiles and as positive an atmosphere as the Washington-Sharm-Jerusalem round of talks. The leaders, including two presidents and one king, enter closed sessions and emerge smiling, as though the meetings have turned into joke-telling competitions. Those setting the tone are U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington and his envoy here, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Her figure somewhat fuller now than when she sweat out the contest against Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, she has hardly been photographed without a Sara Netanyahu-type grin from ear to ear.
Quite unusually, at least up until this point, there haven’t been any leaks from the long talks either – only assessments given by veteran political commentators. The optimism is dictated from above, i.e. by Obama, who has decided to take our subject in hand, demonstrating a blatant change in his almost hostile attitude toward Israel.
In light of his eroding status around the world, the impression is that it is very important to the American president, both personally and strategically, to succeed here. And when the secretary of state emerges from a meeting with President Shimon Peres and declares that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas are serious in their intentions to renew the peace process, for the time being this represents more a wish of Obama’s than a realistic impression of the round of talks thus far.
Netanyahu demonstrated leadership when he agreed to freeze construction in the territories for 10 months. Nobody believed he would dare to stick to that decision until the end. The fact is, he not only passed the decision in the cabinet, but not one of his ministers – including those from Yisrael Beiteinu – resigned.
Still, we must recall that the prime minister not only made a commitment to the Palestinians and the Americans; he also made a promise to the Israeli public that he meant 10 months, “and not one day more.” While he can be praised for doing something nobody did before him, there will almost certainly be those in his camp who won’t forgive him if he breaks his promise to the Israelis.
In addition, the Palestinians refused to enter direct talks and wasted nine months. Had they conducted negotiations during the freeze, we might now be standing in another place entirely. The talks in Washington also made clear the profundity of the gaps between the two sides. Now that the sides have begun to speak directly under Obama’s sponsorship, the entire issue of the freeze as a condition to talks is passe. It’s possible to talk face to face and not to build at one and the same time in territories that we will evacuate in any case.
Now, when rockets are being launched from Gaza on an almost daily basis and the commander of the Hamas military wing, Ahmed Jabri, is threatening us with war, the question confronting us is whether the time has not come to do everything in our power to reach an agreement with the Palestinian Authority, instead of heading downhill toward a “war for the peace of the settlements Yitzhar and Tapuah.” An extension of the building freeze is not essential to renew the direct talks under American sponsorship, based on an understanding with Obama that it will be “light” construction if any, to avoid creating chaos in the territories before we reach an overall agreement with the Palestinians. In the agreement with Egypt, we also signed first and later removed the Rafah Salient settlements.
The U.S. administration is maintaining a fog of war, but it is clear that Obama will be the one to decide whether white smoke will emerge from the White House chimney. The fact that Israel is starting to distribute gas masks at an accelerated pace implies that both we and the U.S. administration are worriedly keeping track of those same threats with which we will have to deal sooner or later.
Whether the Palestinians want to and can achieve a peace agreement is still up in the air. The same doubts exist regarding Netanyahu as well – does he have the stuff to make major decisions? Most of Likud is standing behind him, despite Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom’s threats. And if Netanyahu managed to pass the freeze, he can pass anything in his cabinet – certainly with massive support from most of the public, which aspires to peace.
On Yom Kippur 37 years ago, we buried 2,700 fallen soldiers too many, in order to reach the conclusion foreign minister Moshe Dayan reached when he signed the peace treaty with Egypt: only a donkey never changes his mind.
EDITOR: The mystery solved at last
For those of us who were wondering and worrying about the disappearance of Al Ahram Weekly from the web-waves, the mystery is at last solved; Read below about their crime and punishment…
Some years ago, a certain American female journalist of the Herald Tribune has made the mistake of telling her readers that the Egyptian Leader, Mr. Hosni Mubarak, is known popularly as La Vache qui rit (Laughing Cow, a French brand of melted cheese, known for the smiling portrait ofa laughing cow, which, incredibly, shares the features of Mubarak’s broad face…). In less than 24 hours, she was escorted to the airport and flown off, never to be allowed in again. He laughs who laughs last…
Al-Ahram newspaper defends doctored photo of Hosni Mubarak: The Guardian
Altered image in state-run paper shows Egyptian president in lead role at Middle East peace talks
Egypt’s oldest newspaper today defended its decision to publish a doctored photograph that appeared to put president Hosni Mubarak at the forefront of key figures at the Middle East peace talks in Washington.
The original photo showed US president Barack Obama walking in the lead on a red carpet, with Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah II slightly behind.
But the state-run Al-Ahram newspaper altered the image in its Tuesday edition to show Mubarak in the lead, with Obama slightly behind him to his right, then placed it over a broadsheet article titled “the Road to Sharm El Sheikh”, referring to the Egyptian Red Sea resort that hosted the second round of negotiations.
Egyptian bloggers and activists said the picture was an example of the regime’s deception of its own people. Critics also said the photo was an attempt to distract attention from Egypt’s waning role in the Middle East peace process.
But the newspaper’s editor-in chief, Osama Saraya defended the decision in an editorial today, saying the original photo had been published on the day talks began and the new version was only meant to illustrate Egypt’s leading role in the peace process.
“The expressionist photo is … a brief, live and true expression of the prominent stance of President Mubarak in the Palestinian issue, his unique role in leading it before Washington or any other,” Saraya wrote. The photo is still posted on the newspaper’s website.
Opponents of Mubarak’s near three-decade rule seized on the controversy to criticize the government, which is accused of widespread abuses aimed at suppressing dissent. Wael Khalil, the Egyptian blogger who first called attention to the altered photo, said it was a “snapshot” of what he called daily deception about a number of issues, including democratic change and social justice.
“They lie to us all the time,” he said. “Instead of addressing the real issues, they just Photoshop it.”
Saraya accused critics of launching a smear campaign against Al-Ahram, which was first published in 1876. The newspaper has enjoyed the widest circulation in Egypt but has faced a growing challenge in recent years from a new breed of private publications and the internet.
It is not unusual for Egyptian newspapers to retouch pictures of senior officials to improve their appearance or light.
EDITOR: Creative fiction…
Of course, Israel will refuse to speak to anyone, let alone the EU, about settlements. After all, God in person seems to have sanctioned their torture of Palestine. But what is really novel is the excuse – read below and enjoy:
Israel refuses to meet European ministers for settlement talks: NYT
Jerusalem says EU demand for discussions on eve of Yom Kippur is highly insensitive
Monday, 13 September 2010
Benjamin Netanyahu is under pressure to extend a freeze on building Jewish settlements ahead of peace talks with Hillary Clinton and Mahmoud Abbas
Israel has said it will not meet a delegation of European foreign ministers, including William Hague, this week as diplomatic pressure mounts on its government to extend a 10-month settlement freeze that ends next week.
The Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, yesterday told Tony Blair, the Middle East envoy, that current restrictions on building West Bank Jewish settlements will not remain, but there would be some limits on construction. “We will not freeze the lives of the residents,” he said.
Israel has bridled at what it calls an “insensitive” European demand to hold meetings on the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. The ministers from Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Germany had apparently proposed to hold meetings on Friday morning, hours before the start of the Yom Kippur fast.
“They showed very high insensitivity to this special date. It’s just not done,” said Yigal Palmor, a foreign ministry spokesman. “Everyone is away, no meetings are planned, all agendas are empty. We suggested alternative dates, which were refused.”
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported the meetings had been cancelled because the European ministers intended to pressure Israel over the settlements. A British embassy spokeswoman said Mr Hague’s trip was postponed because of scheduling difficulties.
The spat comes amid Israel’s growing irritation that EU countries, excluded from the US-sponsored bilateral peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, are bidding for an eleventh-hour seat at the negotiating table.
Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, Mr Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority President, are to meet for a second round of discussions in Egypt on Tuesday, two weeks after talks were launched amid much fanfare in Washington.
President Barack Obama has made achieving peace in the Middle East a key tenet of his foreign policy, and ahead of mid-term elections has staked his political reputation on bringing the reluctant partners to direct talks.
“They [the Europeans] can’t just barge into the negotiating room when they were not involved in the process that led to these talks,” said an Israeli government official. “Where were they when the process was being laboriously pushed forward?”
Europe’s sense of exclusion was underscored when the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, criticised Baroness Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, after she opted to fly to China rather than join the opening of direct peace talks at the White House two weeks ago.
Baroness Ashton responded on Friday saying she had no wish to be a second-tier participant in Washington when she could bring more influence to bear in discussions in China.
Her view was supported yesterday by at least one European diplomat in Jerusalem, who said that it was not clear what role the Europeans could play at this stage. “It’s not obvious that the EU being in the room for the direct bilateral talks makes much sense when the US has to hold the ring,” the diplomat said.
A beleaguered Mr Netanyahu is likely to come under pressure on the issue of settlements during the second round of talks, an obstacle that has loomed large over the process.
Mr Obama upped the stakes on Friday when he urged Israel to extend the settlement freeze, which expires at the end of September.
“What I’ve said to PM Netanyahu is that given, so far, the talks are moving forward in a constructive way, it makes sense to extend that moratorium,” he said in remarks that he has previously resisted making publicly.
Pushed to respond, Mr Netanyahu appeared to hang back from an extension in an apparent sop to his pro-settler coalition partners, who have threatened to leave the coalition if he calls for a new freeze. But he also said that not all of the “tens of thousands of housing units” in the pipeline would go ahead, remarks aimed at the Palestinians, who have threatened to quit the talks if settlement construction is not stopped.
The Palestinians remained adamant yesterday that they would accept nothing less than a freeze.
“Our position is very clear,” said Husam Zomlo, a Palestinian spokesman. “Should the settlement construction and expansion continue, we are out.” Palestinians, who want a state based on the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, have agreed in principle to limited land swaps, but have insisted that Israel refrain from putting “facts on the ground” before an agreement is reached.
Plastic flowers: Haaretz
Yes, the settlements are no more than plastic flowers – wedged into foreign soil and never producing anything but their own ugliness.
By Gideon Levy
A large pot stands on our windowsill, full of plastic flowers. The colors are bright and loud, but anyone coming close can see that the flowers are not real. They are rootless, lifeless, without an ounce of grace, and they obscure the real landscape. Anyone visiting our home immediately notices the plastic flowers that make our home unrecognizably ugly.
Our guests seem to be asking: Why do you need them when there are so many real flowers infinitely more beautiful? But we insist on keeping them, no matter what people say. For years we have struggled to add more plastic flowers to that flower bed; we even surround them with barbed wire lest someone try to uproot them and save us from their ugliness.
Yes, the settlements are no more than plastic flowers – wedged into foreign soil and never producing anything but their own ugliness. Artificial and out of place, they have never managed to grow anything but the damage they have caused. Consumed by the spat over the theater in Ariel, we didn’t notice the most important thing: Around 40 years have passed since the settlement project began, and the settlements still need to import art from sovereign Israel.
They haven’t managed to produce anything of their own. No theater, no museum, no music and no dance, very little literature and no meaningful creative work. To freeze or not, build or evict – the entire struggle is about a large lump of bedroom communities in the real sense of the term.
These are comatose cities in which no advanced or meaningful industry has ever grown except one bagel factory and a few workshops, most of them imported from central Israel, despite all the benefits and discounts lavished on the settlements. They’re migrant villages that haven’t established serious agriculture, except some spices and mushrooms. Ghost towns during the day, since most settlers work elsewhere, except their countless lobbyists. Their desire to spend as little time there as possible is understandable: The architecture in the settlements is best left unmentioned.
You might say, this is how it’s like in any peripheral town. Wrong. We have many peripheral towns that have produced important creative work, but not from the settlements, even though their budgets are so much richer than in any Israeli town. Holon has a museum, as do Bat Yam, Petah Tikva, Ashdod, Herzliya and Ramat Gan. Be’er Sheva has a theater, Acre, Metula and Safed have festivals, and Sderot has a cinematheque. Wonderful music has come out of Haifa’s Krayot suburbs, and the kibbutzim have produced not only impressive agriculture and industry, but real art.
The periphery produces competitive sports teams, but the settlements don’t even have that. Hapoel Ariel? Beitar Ma’aleh Adumim? Yeah, right. True, there’s one university center there, but even this is artificial. Many of the lecturers and students come from Israel proper. There are certainly many religious seminaries of all sorts, but what comes out of them but religious studies accompanied by education geared toward nationalism and hatred?
“Baruch the man,” a song praising Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Muslims in the Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994, and “Torat Hamelech,” a theological treatise licensing the killing of Gentiles, are the fruit of settlement literature. Their icons are powerful dealers who could frighten governments, and rabbis who are not considered particularly revolutionary but are radical and even somewhat insane. And not one important religious seminary has come out of there. Their contribution to society in recent years boils down to providing the Israel Defense Forces with more and more combat troops, some of whom threaten to refuse to carry out orders.
Crowded but empty, this should have been the ultimate proof of their uselessness. Such a vacuous project should have collapsed on itself years ago. But though plastic flowers don’t live a real life, they never wither, so they need to be removed. This then is the project we’re fighting for and paying for. So we’re perfectly allowed to ask: What are we fighting for? What has this project given the country and society? And above all, why do we so insist on not removing this ugly plastic flowerpot from our windowsill?
Sun, sea and grit: Israeli and West Bank women risk jail for day at the beach: The Guardian
Illegal day trips challenge laws governing the movement of Palestinians
The day starts early, at a petrol station alongside a roaring Jerusalem road. The mood among the 15 Israeli women is a little tense, but it’s hardly surprising – they’re about to break the law and with it one of the country’s taboos. They plan to drive into the occupied West Bank, pick up Palestinian women and children and take them on a day trip to Tel Aviv.
Today’s is the second such trip – another group of women went public with a similar action last month. It is hoped that these will become regular outings, designed to create awareness of the laws that govern movement for Palestinians, and to challenge the fears that Israelis have about travelling into the West Bank.
Riki is a 63-year-old from Tel Aviv who, like the other women did not want to give her surname. She said it took her time to sign up to the trips. “I was resistant to breaking the law. But then I realised that civil action is the only way to go forward, that breaking an illegal law becomes legal.”
The women take off in a convoy of cars, through an Israeli checkpoint used by settlers and into several villages around Hebron. There are dozens of Palestinian women waiting for them and each Israeli driver is allocated passengers.
As two young Palestinian women climb into the car, they remove hijabs, scarves and floor-length coats to reveal skinny jeans and long hair – a look that ensures they pass through the Israeli settler-only checkpoint without scrutiny. “I am afraid of the soldiers,” said 21-year-old Sara, nervously. But she and 19-year-old Sahar, visibly relax as the car breezes past the checkpoint.
They pull CDs out of bags and are soon listening to loud Arabic dabke music as the car heads along a road that joins the main highway to Tel Aviv. “It’s like we are using the tools of the occupation,” said Irit, one of the drivers. “It just wouldn’t occur to the soldiers at the checkpoints that Israeli women would want to do this.”
As Tel Aviv nears, the Palestinian passengers silently survey the tall buildings and outdoor cafes and seem especially taken with the ubiquitous motorcycles and mopeds that speed around the city. “I would like to ride on one, like that,” said Sara, pointing to a woman in shorts perched on the back of a bike. But all the Palestinian women have just one request: to go to the sea. For most, it’s their first trip to the seaside, even though it is a short drive from home.
The passengers join another carload and head to the promenade in Jaffa, the mixed Arab-Israeli city stuck to the tail-end of Tel Aviv, where the Palestinian women race to greet the waves crashing against the bright rocks. “It is so much more beautiful than I thought,” said Nawal, watching her gleeful seven-year-old daughter skipping backwards to avoid being sprayed by the waves. “It is more beautiful than on TV, the colour is amazing.”
Fatima, 24, gazes out at the horizon. “I didn’t know that the sound of the sea is so relaxing,” she said. Sara asks for a sheet of paper, speedily folds it into a paper boat and writes her name on it, intending to set it out to sea. “So that it will remember me,” she said.
The group convenes at a Jaffa restaurant – about 45 of them in total, including seven children. They are a cheerful party stretched across two long tables. From afar they seem just like any other restaurant party, as the women chat about children, weight gain and health.
But the excursion is far from ordinary. All Palestinians need permits to enter Israel and the penalties for not doing so can involve imprisonment. It is also against the law for Israelis to “smuggle” Palestinians without a permit across the Green Line.
A few months ago Ilana Hammerman, an Israeli journalist, wrote an account of her day trip to Tel Aviv with West Bank Palestinians in Haaretz newspaper. That prompted a criminal investigation against her, for violating Israel’s law of entry. But it also inspired a group of women to take the same trip and then take an advertisement in the newspaper to publicise the fact. Since then, there have been hundreds of signatories to a petition of support and many women, on both sides, ready to defy the law.
That’s one of the purposes of the action, said Esti, who has been on both trips. “We want more Israelis to realise that there is nothing to be scared of. We want more people to refuse to accept the ideology that keeps us apart – and to just refuse to be enemies.”
Restrictions
Before 1991, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza could move freely and restrictions on travel into Israel were the exception.
Then Israel began a permit regime, whereby Palestinians cannot travel without a permit issued by Israel’s civil administration, set up by military decree to operate in the West Bank.
The permit system wasn’t seriously imposed until the mid-90s, as response to a wave of terrorist attacks inside Israel. Since then, Israel has introduced increasingly restrictive criteria for obtaining a permit and constructed physical barriers – such as the separation wall – that have made enforcement of the system more effective.
West Bank Palestinians granted permits include a quota of workers, who must be over 35 and married; medical patients; students, although under restrictive circumstances; and older persons for religious reasons, such as to pray or to visit family during religious holidays. Some traders and VIPs are also given permits to travel into Israel.
Gisha, the legal centre for freedom of movement, estimates that around 1% of Palestinians are given permits to enter Israel. Some 24,000 Palestinian workers are permitted to enter Israel from the West Bank.
From Gaza, entry for Palestinians to Israel is exceptional and mostly for medical or humanitarian cases.
Aluf Benn / In Israel, a criminal conviction doesn’t mean an end to political favors: Haaretz
The cosy relationship between a minister awaiting sentence for perjury, the defense minister and the chief of the Mossad.
The following scene is completely imaginary: Mossad chief Meir Dagan appears before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to report on the Dubai assassination, which was attributed to Israel. He offers his explanation, the meeting ends, and Chairman Tzachi Hanegbi turns to him. “Meir, can you stay for a moment? I have to ask you something.”
“What can I do for you, Tzachi?” Dagan asks.
“Can you write a letter to the judges asking them not to add moral turpitude to the list of offenses?”
“No problem, Tzachi, whatever you want.”
“Thanks, Meir. I’ll see you next week at the meeting on the Mossad budget.”
Sounds unlikely? Perhaps. But even if such an exchange did not literally take place, the outcome is the same. Dagan and the Mossad are under the authority of the committee headed by Hanegbi. The subcommittee for intelligence and secret services, which is subservient to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, approves the Mossad’s budget and plans.
So while it is true that Hanegbi cannot of his own accord stop Mossad operations, cut funding to Dagan’s office or cut his car allowance, he can pester the Mossad for explanations or initiate investigations that would embarrass the organization. He could even propose legislation to limit its freedom of movement. And when the Mossad gets into trouble, it’s good to have politicians like Hanegbi around to protect it on the radio or during background briefings.
In this case, though, it was Hanegbi who got into trouble and Dagan wanted to save him from the moral turpitude charge that would end his political career.
Earlier this week, Dagan was in no hurry to supply the Turkel committee investigating the raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla in late May – and only did so after the committee reprimanded him and released the reprimand to the press. Hanegbi, by contrast, needed no such pressure to obtain Dagan’s recommendation letter. Now he owes the Mossad chief a favor.
Last year, Hanegbi published a booklet detailing the functions of the committee he heads. Among its powers, it states, is “to supervise and monitor the activities of the executive authority in a variety of areas of security, intelligence and foreign relations. The committee, both through its plenary and its subcommittees, thoroughly examines the conduct of all the security branches under the direction of the government: the army, the Shin Bet security service, the Mossad, the Atomic Energy Commission and the National Security Council. At the same time, the committee closely follows the actions of the Foreign Ministry, Israel’s embassies throughout the world, and the Center for Political Research.”
Hanegbi’s booklet goes on to explain the regulations and orders the committee authorizes – from the drafting of the reserves to determining work procedures in the Shin Bet to setting the format for inscriptions on tombstones in military cemeteries. It also approves the budgets of the defense establishment (together with the Knesset Finance Committee ).
Three of the people under Hanegbi’s supervision, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Dagan, wrote to the judges in support of Hanegbi, stressing his positive qualities.
It is interesting to note those people under Hanegbi’s supervision who did not write such letters: IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin, Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin, Israel Atomic Energy Commission Director General Shaul Horev, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Yossi Gal, the director general of Hanegbi’s ministry.
The letters from the senior officials demonstrate that Hanegbi is the same Tzachi from the Likud Central Committee, who knows how to do favors for friends and get favors in return. After all, this is precisely what got him into trouble in the political appointments affair. The letters also reveal the double standards at the top: Brig. Gen. Moshe Tamir and Brig. Gen. Imad Fares were dismissed from the army for giving false reports about car accidents, much less serious than the perjury and false swearing of which Hanegbi was convicted.
But for Barak and Netanyahu, perjury is no reason to stop advancement when it comes to a political colleague and a potential future coalition partner. In fact, they explained to the judges that Hanegbi has a great future in senior public posts.
Gaza left out in the cold: The Guardian CiF
The US-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and Israeli policy seek to exclude residents of the Gaza Strip
Laila El-Haddad
Ask any resident of Gaza what their thoughts are on the US-sponsored “direct talks” between Israel and Mahmoud Abbas’s Ramallah government, and you’re likely to hear one of three responses:
1) Surely, you jest;
2) Something’s rotten in Ramallah;
3) Negotiations?
There is very little patience in Gaza for this latest set of talks. They are not only being conducted without a national consensus by what is broadly considered an illegitimate government, but they also completely marginalise the Gaza Strip and overlook the blockade and asphyxiation it has suffered for more than four years.
“When people started to talk about negotiations and going back to the peace process and all, I thought, wait a minute, who took our opinion before going there?” said Ola Anan, 25, a computer engineer from Gaza City. “I mean, Mahmoud Abbas is now a president who’s out of his presidential term. So in whose name is he talking? In the name of Palestinians? I don’t think so.”
Abu el-Abed, a 30-year-old fisherman who sells crabs in the coastal Gaza enclave of Mawasi said: “We hear about the negotiations on television, but we don’t see them reflected on the ground. They’re not feasible. Gaza’s completely marginalised as far as negotiations go. There’s no electricity, there’s no water. There’s no movement. Living expenses are high. And the borders are all closed.”
Ultimately, Gazans know very little or care very little about what is happening in Washington, because what’s happening in Washington cares very little about them, says Nader Nabulsi, a shopkeeper in Gaza City’s Remal neighbourhood: “These negotiations don’t belong to us, and we don’t belong to them.”
Nabulsi, like many others here, feels the negotiations are farcical given the fractured nature of the Palestinian leadership, but also given the fact that most consider Abbas’s government illegitimate and his term expired.
“Today, Abbas should be talking about creating a new government with legitimacy, one that takes into account the voices of the people, and makes decisions with them. He should not just be negotiating on his own volition, based on whatever pops into his head and the [heads of the] Ramallah gang.”
Bashar Lubbad, 22, a Gaza-based community activist and blogger, agrees. Writing in his latest Arabic post, he says: “I really don’t understand what kind of strange political muddle we are in that has Abbas agreeing to negotiations without preconditions with the Israelis, and yet refusing to negotiate under the same circumstances with Hamas.”
Lubbad says that attempts to “normalise” the negotiations through TV ads that aired during the popular Ramadan drama Bab il-Hara, were even more bizarre than the actual talks. “This is the time for a national dialogue, for national reconciliation, for negotiating and agreeing amongst ourselves.”
Beyond this, residents here cannot comprehend why, after nearly 20 futile years, the Palestinian Authority (referred to in Gaza as hukoomit Ramallah – “the Ramallah government”) is negotiating with Israel in the same manner as before.
Gaza journalist Safa Joudeh summed it up on her Facebook page like this: “The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Oslo, Wye River, Camp David, Arab peace initiative, road map, Annapolis, direct peace talks …”
Though Israeli disengaged from Gaza in 2005, access and movement of goods and people in Gaza as well as airspace, sea space and population registration remain under Israeli control – all a critical part of any discussion on Palestinian statehood.
Amjad al-Agha is an agricultural engineer who oversees a mushroom farm in the “liberated lands” – the former settlements of Gush Qatif in southern Gaza. “Negotiations have been ongoing for two decades now and they’ve brought the Palestinian people nothing at all – neither in the Gaza Strip nor in the West Bank.
“Both areas are still completely separated from one another. There is no link between these two parts of our nation. Movement across the borders and crossings is still very poor. The airport is closed. There’s no freedom of movement.”
One day Gaza could specialise in cultivating mushrooms, says local economist Omar Shaban. But for now they are mainly sold to local restaurants or distributed to income-generation projects. Israeli bans nearly all exports from Gaza now as part of its blockade.
For others, the talks don’t register on their radar because they are simply too busy worrying about everyday life under siege. “They are thinking about how to solve their problems, their daily difficulties, such as the cutting of electricity, their economic problems, how to get their income, how to raise their children, and about the closure and the siege that they suffer from on a daily basis. They don’t regard negotiations as a big issue in their life overall,” explained Alia Shaheen, 32, a project manager at a women’s empowerment NGO in central Gaza.
The US Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, has said that Hamas will have no role in the negotiations, leading many here to question how Gaza fits into the equation.
“Do they plan to get Gaza outside the Palestinian territories?” Anan, the computer engineer, asked.
In fact, a new Israeli policy document shows Israel intends to do just that. In a recent presentation from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) before the Turkel committee, the official goals of Israeli policy regarding Gaza were laid out in no uncertain terms: “Upholding civilian and economic limitations on Gaza, limiting people from entering or exiting the strip”, and critically, “to separate the West Bank from Gaza”.
It was the first time an official Israeli document had publicly declared that the policy objective is to create two separate Palestinian political entities, according to Noam Sheizaf, an independent Israeli journalist who first wrote about the document on the group blog 972mag.
According to Gisha, the Israeli NGO for the freedom of movement of Palestinians: “While a Palestinian state is being negotiated and people are already discussing ‘a trainline between Gaza and Ramallah’, in reality Israel is working to separate Gaza from the West Bank even further than the separation already caused by the split in the Palestinian leadership.”
Praying with sinners: Haaretz
By Yossi Sarid
Before Kol Nidre this evening, congregants will recite three times: “By authority of the Heavenly Court and by the authority of this earthly court – with divine consent and with the consent of this congregation – we hereby declare that it is permitted to pray with those who have sinned.”
This saying always seemed too sweeping and decisive; always in danger of someone misusing it to enlarge the loophole – not only to pray, and not only on Yom Kippur. Now now this fear has been realized.
Gidi Weitz’s Pulitzer-deserving expose, published in Haaretz last week, sheds a searing light on the important people’s ties with the more important people, whose eyes roll skyward like dice in games of chance. Not only on this holy day but every day of the year, for the heaven and the earth is theirs. God is a dealer, they are the gamblers and we are merely the dice and cards for them to play with. With them, those good, warm Jews, we will be praying tonight in the casino/synagogue.
We will pray with great purposefulness with the underworld bosses, whose deep involvement in the gas business was also exposed this week. Even before one small barrel has been produced, before the great royalty-heist has been uncovered, they’re already raking in the chips.
The earthly court in the don’s mansion was the first to gain the spoils. Great treasures still await them – them and not us – at the bottom of the sea. Underworld figures have already earned their seal of legitimacy as honest brokers for our business leaders.
And we’ll be praying with all the advocates and defenders, who rose as one to restore falsehood’s honor and shake the shameful taint of turpitude off it. And the liar himself will turn into a cantor and have the privilege of opening the Ark and taking out the Torah scrolls. Never, it seems, has such a broad national consensus been achieved. Military leaders and intellectuals alike are urging the court not to decry a not-so-white lie, which was calculated and planned.
Are they asking for his sake, or for themselves?
The day after tomorrow, on Sunday, we’ll continue praying for peace-upon-us-all in the church of the Geneva Initiative, which will host a former prime minister who strived for peace through two wars. He is still considered innocent, despite the skeletons in his closet.
The reality of life in Israel has been moving in recent years on two parallel tracks. And yet the tracks meet. The charges-and-convictions track and the back-slapping-barbecuing-bonhomie-around-the-camp-fire track, which even a conviction cannot shake.
We must not let peace – even that – replace patriotism as the last refuge of a suspect. It cannot be used like cotton-wool wrapping a damaged citron that has lost all flavor and aroma. The poet was right when she refused to accept redemption money from a leper. Even peace does not justify all means, or all people, or purify all sins.
Peace will be achieved, if ever, only with clean hands, guaranteeing a clean mind. Peace from false motives is tainted. It won’t be established because it will not be credible and if it is established, it won’t last.
Next week is Sukkot. Every sukkah is supposedly a “shelter of peace.” Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov, Joseph and Moses, Aharon and David will arrive, peek inside, see all the who’s-who under the same thatch and decide to skip out this year. They too have been forced to pray with the offenders, but they have no intention of spending time with them.
The regime can fix the elections – but it can’t fix the Egyptian people: The Guardian CiF
Against a background of fraud and thuggery, opposition is mounting. And our anger can defeat our divided rulers
Ahdaf Soueif
As Egypt moves towards its parliamentary elections in November, each day brings fresh evidence of the profound problems now endemic in our political life. Adorning Egyptian newsstands morning was the photograph of the MP Mohamed Abdel Alim Daoud holding his right shoe up to the cameras with the caption: “My shoe is more honourable than any accusation (sic) the National Democratic party or any government official can aim at me”. Daoud is accused (with 15 others) of the misuse of 1.5bn Egyptian pounds and illegal trading in state-funded medical treatment. He claims he’s being scapegoated for tabling a question in parliament last year that implicated the health minister, Hatem al-Gabali (owner of some of the biggest hospitals and health centres in Egypt), in the scandal.
Stories like this have ensured that few people still respect the house. Even though a small number of brave MPs try against huge odds to take their work seriously, in the main a seat in the house has become a conduit for corruption. The words now most commonly paired with “MPs” describe the areas from which their gains have been ill-got. We, the Egyptian people, are represented by “Loans MPs”, “Real Estate MPs”, “Drugs MPs” and more.
And we need change: in our parliament, in our government, in our constitution, in our politics and in our economy. But no change will be possible while the current regime, and the NDP which is its instrument, is in power; this is a regime that maintains a stranglehold on the country while it sucks it dry. It has no intention of letting go because to let go would be to die. And so, while the upcoming elections could be the peaceable way to effect change, word is that the elections are already fixed.
In 2005, in the last round of parliamentary elections, the most serious opposition was the Muslim Brotherhood: running as independents, they won 88 of the 150 seats they contested (from a total of 444 elected seats). The NDP learned its lesson: it has used the last five years to develop techniques of taking control of the top posts in the institutions of civil society: from changing the regulation of universities and city councils, to deal-making with small opposition parties against bigger ones, offering immediate services in return for votes, and arbitrarily disallowing candidates for certain boards. It has filled the important posts of the country with acquiescents.
Now it is poised to do the same to parliament. One friend tells me he was warned by a big wheel in the NDP that no candidate would even get to stand without its say-so. The incoming parliament will have 514 seats. The NDP can afford to play with 170 of these, fill them with loyalist non-NDP deputies, preserve a ‘”democratic” facade and still have a stranglehold on even the proposal of any new legislation.
But the overall political scene has changed since 2005. Opposition parties and movements (Kifaya, the Campaign for Change, etc) have been experimenting with forming coalitions. None has quite worked, but it’s a positive trend.
Mohamed ElBaradei appeared on the scene with demands for constitutional reforms that would allow serious contenders to run in the presidential elections next year and, even though he’s not the charismatic saviour some hoped he would be, this bespectacled, man-of-the-law, Nobel-winning figure has provided many with a rallying point. His demands have so far collected around 800,000 supporting signatures.
But possibly the most significant development is the split within the regime as it seeks to perpetuate itself. The younger faction of businessmen/politicians surrounding the president’s son see their best hope of continuity in shoehorning him into the presidency; the old guard, who’ve been controlling the country for 30 years and understand the distaste Egyptians feel for the idea of a “hereditary” system, think it safer to put forward a president from among themselves.
These developments have forced the NDP to show its hand. Too pressed for time now to stick with traditional methods of political wheeling and dealing, it is resorting to outright intimidation. On Tuesday, Shadi al-Ghazali, a liver transplant specialist and lecturer at Cairo University, was detained at passport control in Cairo airport on his way to London to sit his Royal College of Surgeons exam. He has not been heard from since.
Ghazali is active in the campaign against Gamal Mubarak for president and is a supporter of ElBaradei. Ghazali’s uncle, a powerful figure in Egyptian politics, has assurances from state security that they do not have him. And yet Ghazali was taken from within the controlled area at the airport. Two of his fellow workers, taken earlier and since released, have told of unmarked cars with tinted windows, of blindfolded interrogations and being released on a highway in the Nile delta. If not state security, who is kidnapping these young democracy activists?
Against this backdrop of fraud and thuggery, some actors on the political scene – including ElBaradei last week – have called for a boycott of the elections. The argument for a boycott is that it exposes the regime and deprives it of legitimacy. But in whose eyes? The regime has no legitimacy in the eyes of the Egyptian people anyway.
So the boycott spectacle is aimed at the international community. But any hope of international pressure – if it is ever a good idea for the people of a sovereign state to court outside interference – must have been dashed by the supine performance of the west with regard to the elections in Sudan and Afghanistan. For Egypt there’s also the Israel factor; the many ways in which the Egyptian regime is now serving Israel’s interests were well summed up by veteran journalist David Ottaway’s comment, on Voice of America, that President Obama will probably see that pushing for democracy in Egypt would have an adverse effect on the “peace” talks.
Most of the opposition is reluctant to boycott. The few genuine independents who have actually won seats and formed constituencies do not want those thrown away – why hand the country to the NDP on a plate?
We Egyptians need to act, by ourselves and for ourselves. The regime can only fix the results; it can’t fix the process – though it can make it cost. And the process counts: candidates putting themselves forward and talking to the people, voters voting, the opposition placing its cadres in the stations, insisting on the right of everyone to vote in seclusion, publishing contact numbers to report fraud or intimidation.
In 2005 we saw people climbing through windows to access polling stations blocked by state security. We saw polling officers dragged into open-mawed police vans clinging to their ballot boxes. We saw an active insistence on the right of the people to true representation. Since then we’ve had five years of street protests and civil unrest; the opposition’s task is to channel that unrest into the democratic process.
If the NDP gets its fixed parliament it should come at a price. And part of that price should be the mobilisation of the people: that the country, after the elections, should not be despondent. It should be angry – in time for the 2011 presidential elections.
IDF kills West Bank Hamas strongman amid rising tensions: Haaretz
Incident comes as Shin Bet issues warning that the Islamist organization issued ‘an organizational directive’ to foil recently restarted peace talks.
The Israel Defense Forces killed a Hamas military commander in the West Bank, Israel Radio reported on Friday, in the latest of recent violent clashes between Israel and the Islamist organization.
Hamas has declared its objection to the recent relaunch of direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, saying that Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas does not represent the Palestinian people and is not authorized to negotiate on its behalf.
Speaking to the cabinet earlier this week, Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin said that Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and which is believed to have operatives working in the PA-ruled West Bank, has issued “an organizational directive to foil the talks.”
According to the IDF, an Israeli army unit had been conducting a raid for wanted Palestiniains in a village east of Tul Karm, when one of the wanted men, named by Israel Radio as Hamas West Bank strongman Iyad Shilbayeh, began “running suspiciously toward the [IDF] force, refusing to heed the soldiers’ request to stop.”
“The unit, feeling threatened, opened fire, killing the suspected,” the IDF Spokesman’s office said, adding that “the incident was being investigated.”
Family members told the Palestinian Ma’an news agency that, contrary the the IDF’s statement, Shilbaya was shot three times in the neck and chest in his bed.
One eyewitness told Ma’an that he heard his brother Iyad calling his bedroom when the soldiers entered the home, asking “who is it? Who is it? Who is it?”
“He asked the question three times, and that was followed by three bullets. He was alone sleeping in the house, his wife was visiting family in Jenin,” he claimed.
Hamas has condemned the attack and sworn that Shilbaya’s blood will be avenged.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad issued a statement condemning the killing, saying it increases the weakness of the credibility of the peace process, which is already shaken.
In an escalation of tensions on Wednesday, militants fired two phosphorous mortar shells into Israel from the Hamas-ruled Strip. A total of nine mortar shells were fired on Wednesday, all falling in fields in the Eshkol Regional Council, causing no casualties or damage.
Israel responded by sending jets to bomb a smuggling tunnel in the Philadelphi Route. Palestinian sources said one person was killed and two injured in the attack.
Israel says it won’t extend settlement curbs: GoogleNews
JERUSALEM — Israel reiterated on Friday its refusal to to extend curbs on settlement building that expire this month, despite US pressure and Palestinian threats to walk out of peace talks.
“The prime minister has not changed his position on this issue, there is no question of extending the moratorium,” a senior government official told AFP, asking not to be named.
The 10-month measure to curb construction of settler homes in the Israeli-occupied West Bank concludes at the end of this month.
The decision not to renew the partial moratorium, which does not cover annexed east Jerusalem, was taken this week by the Forum of Seven top cabinet ministers, according to the daily Israel Hayom, which is close to the government.
The decision was communicated to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was in the Middle East this week in a bid to push forward the peace process, the newspaper said.
The issue of settlements is among the thorniest in Middle East peace negotiations, which Israel and the Palestinians restarted this month after a 20-month hiatus.
The two sides remain deeply divided on the renewal of settlement construction, a senior Palestinian official said after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Clinton met for two days of trilateral talks this week.
The official said the negotiations held in Egypt and Jerusalem had failed to resolve the row which threatens to derail the peace process.
Abbas told Netanyahu during the talks that he would walk out of the negotiations if Israel does not renew the moratorium, according to an aide.
In a bid to resolve the row, the Americans have suggested a three-month extension in which the two sides could agree on borders, which could bring a “final halt to settlement on the lands of the future Palestinian state,” a Palestinian official said.
The official added that US negotiators wanted a complete halt to settlements while Israel was insisting on continuing to build in major settlement blocs it hopes to keep in any final peace accord.
The killing Friday of a local commander of the Ezzedine al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas in the West Bank, highlighted the continuing tension in the region despite the renewed peace efforts.
Israeli soldiers shot dead Iyad Shilbaya, 38, during a raid on the Nur Shams refugee camp in the northern West Bank.
“The assassination is a dangerous escalation that further weakens the credibility of an already shaky political process,” Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad said in a statement.
Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip and is committed to the destruction of Israel, called Shilbaya “a martyr.”
“The murder was the fruit of the negotiations,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.
US envoy George Mitchell was meanwhile in Beirut to meet with Lebanese President Michel Sleiman as part of the renewed push by Washington to broker a comprehensive Middle East peace accord.
He travelled to south Lebanon, where he visited the headquarters of the United Nations peacekeeping force deployed there.
Asked by AFP whether Mitchell’s discussions with senior peacekeeping officials addressed the sensitive issue of Hezbollah’s weapons, deputy spokesman Andrea Tenenti said they concerned “only the issues related to activities on the ground.”
Israel, which fought a devastating war with Hezbollah in 2006, has repeatedly accused the Shiite militant group of stockpiling weapons.
Syria and Lebanon are still technically at war with Israel and Washington is hoping to convince both states to enter into negotiations with the Jewish state and to support the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Mitchell travelled to Lebanon from neighbouring Syria.
In Damascus, he said a peace deal meant an “agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, between Israel and Syria and between Israel and Lebanon and the full normalisation of relations between Israel and its neighbours.”