Carter in new book: Obama turned back on settlement freeze: Haaretz
The former U.S. president also criticizes Bill Clinton, writing that Israeli settlement building in the West Bank was especially rapid under his administration.
In his new book, former United States president Jimmy Carter criticizes President Barack Obama over his policy on Israel’s settlement freeze, writing that the President has backed away from his initial commitment to a complete halt to building in West Bank settlements.
The Associated Press purchased a copy of Carter’s book, White House Diary, on Friday, ahead of its release Monday.
Carter also criticizes fellow Democrat and former president Bill Clinton over his policy on Israel settlement expansion, writing that settlement building was especially rapid during Clinton’s administration.
This past week, the newspaper Asharq Al Awsat reported that the Obama administration has suggested Israel extend the current moratorium on construction in West Bank settlements, which is set to expire on September 26, for an additional three months.
The expiration date for the settlement freeze has loomed over the recently re-launched direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. The Palestinians have threatened to walk away from the talks if the freeze is not extended.
On Thursday, the European Union called on Israel to extend the settlement freeze in light of the peace talks which began this month.
“The European Union deems it indispensable that both parties observe calm and restraint and refrain from actions that could affect negatively the progress of the negotiation,” the group stated following a meeting in Brussels. “In this regard, it recalls that settlements are illegal under international law and, with a view to ensure that these talks continue in a constructive manner, calls for an extension of the moratorium decided by Israel.”
The former president’s views on Israel have caused controversy in the past, such as when he likened Israeli policy in the West Bank to apartheid South Africa in his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”.
So we’re back to Oslo?: Haaretz
The goal of the current Israeli-Palestinian peace talks should be a comprehensive agreement, not an interim deal.
By Zvi Bar’el
A comprehensive and permanent solution is not possible under the current conditions, Yossi Beilin has said. His argument: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not want peace and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is unable to meet the Israeli conditions for peace. The solution, which has already become a political slogan: a long-term interim agreement.
There is a great deal of appeal to such a proposal, which dresses up as an appropriate and possible solution. What exactly is that interim agreement? To please Israel it will have to include an article allowing it to continue pouring cement and people into the West Bank and Jerusalem, refuse the return of all the Palestinian refugees and prevent the division of Jerusalem. And perhaps, if the two sides agree, it will include an empty statement about the establishment of a Palestinian state in the future. An interim agreement that does not include these elements will not reach the Knesset.
And the Palestinians? What will they gain from an interim agreement? A package of benefits that will include the lifting of checkpoints, freedom to trade and a release of prisoners – always an excellent product that is plentiful in Israeli prisons. They will also get complete control in Area B and the cities in Area C (civilian control to be more precise, since the Israel Defense Forces will retain the right for “hot pursuits” ). And of course, they will get a declaration of support for the Palestinians’ right to an independent state, but in two or three generations.
Anyone who claims that the Oslo Accords were a failure because they did not meet the Palestinians’ demands and threatened the settlements cannot honestly support an interim agreement that will be less than Oslo, or an interim agreement in general. Is it not those same opponents of the Oslo Accords who attribute the outbreak of the intifada to them? And what will be novel in the interim agreement? Another guaranteed intifada?
The supporters of an interim agreement are right in their claim that we have a real difficulty in reaching a comprehensive and final agreement at the moment. But that’s the same difficulty that has accompanied Israel and the Palestinians at least since 1992 and has made every interim agreement very dangerous. Because if an interim agreement fails – and this is certain because it would be empty of substance – a final agreement is pushed even further into the future. Such an agreement’s supporters are essentially saying that there will be an eternal interim agreement.
Of course, it may also be said that we are undergoing a permanent conflict that cannot be resolved, which like an active volcano is expected to erupt at any moment or remain dormant for 40 or 400 years. A natural disaster of sorts. At the same time it’s possible to end the direct talks and tell Abbas: Sorry, we were wrong, we thought we could reach an agreement but there’s no way around it and you’ll have to live under occupation until the end of time. Of course, we will not harm the discos in Ramallah, and we will come to the inaugurations of new factories, but you will not get a country of your own.
On the other hand, it’s possible to examine once more whether a comprehensive agreement is really such an impossibility. If there is an agreement on the principle of swapping territory, and if in principle it is agreed that the large settlement blocs will remain in Israel, why not move ahead and draw Israel’s new borders as Washington is proposing and only then deal with the issue of settlement construction? It’s true that drawing borders will not be able to ignore the question of dividing Jerusalem and will leave Ariel outside Israel, but this is precisely the purpose of the negotiations: to find points of agreement because these will not be easier to achieve in an interim agreement.
The most encouraging element in this round is the coalition of leaders involved. It’s doubtful whether the leader who succeeds Abbas will be able to reach any sort of agreement or enjoy wide support from the Arab world. Abbas is not young and he might retire at any time. Netanyahu may not be what those seeking peace had hoped for, but he still fears the United States and he is not among the blind on the right.
Most important is the U.S. president, who decided to take the matter head on and on the way slap whoever needs it. This may be a coalition that does not know how to reach an agreement, but it will know how to sell such an agreement if one is achieved. This ability should be utilized for the sake of a comprehensive agreement and should not be wasted on an interim deal.
EDITOR: Blood on whose hands – Just remember who is boss here…
In a rude reminder of who holds the power and control in the PNA, as well as the PA held areas, the IOF has again carried out another of its killing-squad operations, in the best tradition of the Mafia. Let us not forget who the terrorists are in Palestine!
Israeli forces kill West Bank Hamas commander: BBC
Israeli forces have shot dead a local Hamas military commander in the north of the occupied West Bank.
Iyad Shilbaya, a commander of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, was killed during a raid to arrest him, the Israeli military said.
Hamas’s military wing said it was responsible for the killing at the end of August of four Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
It is not clear whether Shilbaya was a suspect in these killings.
Since the killing of the four Jewish settlers, Palestinian and Israeli security forces have arrested scores of Hamas supporters across the West Bank.
Twelve other Palestinians were arrested in the overnight operation.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad criticised the killing of Shilbaya as a “dangerous escalation”.
Recent weeks have seen an increase in rocket fire from Gaza into Israel and a series of Israeli air raids on the territory.
Hamas is opposed to the US-sponsored talks, launched in Washington on 2 September, between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas.
Differing accounts of the shooting at the Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarm are emerging.
According to Palestinian reports, the brother of the Hamas militant was forced to lead the Israeli soldiers to the house Shilbaya was staying in. The brother is reported to have said that the militant was shot three times while asleep and his body taken away by the soldiers.
An Israeli military spokesperson said Shilbaya was shot “during a routine arrest raid”. Soldiers opened fire after Shilbaya came towards them despite being told to halt, the military official said.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, settling close to 500,000 Jews in more than 100 settlements. There are about 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank.
This is Army Radio: Haaretz
Many of today’s leading Israeli journalists learned their craft at Army Radio, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this week.
By Gideon Levy
These were very distant, very different days; like all olden days, these days are etched into my memory and will never be forgotten. The building, already threatening to collapse back then, is the same building, the steps are the same ruined steps. Even the same clocks hang in the studios, as if to stay: Time stopped here.
It’s the early, merry 1970s: A young man dreaming of becoming the prime minister or a journalist or whichever comes first, joins Army Radio. A journalist who would, in time, become controversial, begins to take shape in the warm, intoxicating, deceitful embrace of the establishment. This week, the Israeli anomaly of the world’s weirdest radio station is celebrating its 60th anniversary. Time for memories and lessons.
We had all kinds of strange lists back then. One list of those banned from transmission, banned from interviewing: Communists and members of Matzpen, obviously. Another list of those who we needed to confirm before going on air: Any interview with a member of Knesset or a major-general of the reserves needed to first be confirmed by the IDF spokesman. Imagine that. Any report on anything happening within the Israel Defense Forces itself also needed the approval of the spokesman: It couldn’t be transmitted without going through the censor, as well as the chief propagandist of the IDF, our landlord. But here was the worst thing of all: to us, this journalism – as a department of the military – was the most normal journalism out there.
So we played it smart. We would prepare a list of MKs confirmed for interviewing in advance. Did a scandal break? Was some kind of festival opening? We’d pull out a confirmed MK and conduct a hasty interview, something we called “a prostitute in the yard.” If we called in a rightist, we’d immediately bring a leftist, too, in the name of the holy (and silly ) balance. On Independence Day we’d interview Meir Amit, who stood somewhere in the middle.
We were so innocent, so young, so brainwashed and stupid, that we thought this was how journalism worked. We excitedly began transmitting around the clock, 24 hours a day, in those radio days when the receiver would not only be turned on in the car and when Army Radio was more than a set playlist and Razi Barkai. For many of Israel’s leading journalists today, this was our journalism school. Many of the faces staring at you from the television screen and newspaper pages grew up between Master Sergeant Nissim Badusa and Major Tami Tzur, between the omelets at Davidovitz and the chocolate-coated wafers from the canteen, between the duty officer and the station commander, who, although a civilian, was still a commander. The lines here are blurry.
Ambitious youngsters, most of them knowledgeable but not necessarily opinionated, took their first steps during our wonderful Army Radio days. Some have since tossed the decorum and officiousness imposed on them by Army Radio; others have remained just as they were back then, as we were taught in the station.
The spirit of Army Radio hovers over the Israeli media, and it’s not always benign; generations of journalists learned their craft from within that atmosphere and were corrupted by it. When Yonit Levi and Yaakov Eilon report the events of the day, when Oded Ben Ami and Rafi Reshef host news programs, and when Ilana Dayan presents investigative journalism, there’s something horrifically Army Radio-like about them. So witty, so eloquent and so state-like.
True, the station is a relatively free one, certainly no less free than its sister-station – Israel Radio. True, the term “military station” is deceiving. But if these talented youngsters had gone to a different school, maybe we’d have a more combative, less opportunist, crop of journalists – made up of more courage and integrity, and less propaganda. If we had studied in a place where it was okay to be subversive – which no one can expect from Army Radio – maybe we’d have a different kind of journalism, and a different society. But why spoil the party?
I will always cherish my days at Army Radio, and no one can take away the magical memories of my four years in that house on Yehuda Hayamit Street. Interviewing, in short trousers with a broken zipper, the survivors of Entebbe, making historical first transmissions from Ismailia and Cairo, Moshe Dayan humiliating me live on air. There was talk of shutting down the station back then, and this will continue forever.
But the young, non-authoritative voices emanating from the receiver these days are much more annoying – after all, in our time they didn’t draft “kids” to the IDF. Mazal Tov, Army Radio – despite all your harm, may you live to 120.
Lieberman: Palestinians use settlement freeze as an excuse to undermine peace talks: Haaretz
Foreign Minister tells British counterpart that there is no chance Israel will extend moratorium on construction in West Bank settlements beyond Sept. 26 expiration date.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told his British counterpart William Hague over the weekend that Israel could not possibly extend the moratorium on construction in West Bank settlements beyond the agreed upon September 26 deadline.
Last November, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a 10-month freeze on construction in West Bank settlements, in efforts to jumpstart stalled peace talks with the Palestinians. Palestinian negotiators have repeatedly stressed that they would not negotiate with Israel as long as Israeli construction on land they envision for a future state continued.
Lieberman told Hague that “the Palestinians wasted nine months, and even in the tenth month they did not come to the talks out of goodwill to reach an agreement, but because they were forced to,” referring to the relaunch of direct peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on September 2.
“The settlement freeze is just a Palestinian excuse to undermine peace talks, and anyone who seeks excuses will find another excuse even if the freeze is extended,” Lieberman told the British foreign secretary.
“Israel’s government offered extensive goodwill gestures over the last year, and it is now the Palestinians’ turn,” Lieberman went on to say. “Israel would be happy to continue on the track of direct peace negotiations without preconditions, including no conditions regarding the future of the settlement construction freeze.”
Lieberman was responding to recent declarations by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other key Palestinian officials who have said that they would abandon peace talks with Israel if the construction resumes.
The foreign minister also said that the international community must understand that Israel needs to be given incentives, not just to be pressured, to achieve peace. He also mentioned that Israel has been waiting for quite some time to upgrade its diplomatic ties with the European Union.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak called a meeting this week as the settlement building freeze order nears its end in two weeks’ time. The purpose of the meeting was for the Defense Ministry to find ways to restrict building regardless of a freeze order, since it is the sovereign power in the West Bank.
According to a senior source who is privy to details of the Defense Ministry discussions on building restrictions, there are a number of legal means that can be utilized to restrict new construction for a lengthy period.
Other legal tools are also being considered to delay the building of 2,000 housing units that received all the requisite permits before the construction freeze took effect, the source said.
Contesting Past and Present at Silwan: MERIP
Joel Beinin
(Joel Beinin is professor of Middle East history at Stanford University and a contributing editor of Middle East Report. He filed this article from Jerusalem.)
On September 1, Elad — a Hebrew acronym for “To the City of David” — convened its eleventh annual archaeological conference at the “City of David National Park” in the Wadi Hilwa neighborhood of Silwan. Silwan, home to about 45,000 people, is one of 28 Palestinian villages incorporated into East Jerusalem and annexed by Israel after the June 1967 war. It lies in a valley situated a short walk beyond the Dung Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City. Elad, a militant, religious, settler organization, claims that Silwan is the biblical City of David mentioned in the second book of Samuel and that the Pool of Shiloah (Siloam) located there watered King Solomon’s garden.
The public was invited to tour recent excavations and hear a program of lectures advancing Elad’s thesis that its unearthed findings prove its historical claims. Palestinian community activists in Silwan joined with Israeli Jews from Ta‘ayush (Living Together) and “Solidarity with Sheikh Jarrah” to organize a demonstration exposing Elad’s political manipulation of archaeology. The call for the demonstration explained: “We will be there to remind everyone that the Elad Association is not a research institution interested in archaeology, but a political tool for the Judaization of East Jerusalem through the expulsion of the Palestinian inhabitants. We will remind them that they are in an occupied village called Silwan, and not in a Biblical tourist site.”
The protest organizers continued: “Various state organs that are supportive of Elad’s project, like the Israeli police, the Jerusalem municipality, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and many others, are trying…to hide from the public eye the fact that these excavations are carried out in the service of the settlements.”
Historical “Facts on the Ground”
The atmosphere in Wadi Hilwa was already heated. On August 26, for the third time according to Arab residents, Elad settlers attempted to break down the iron door of the mosque near the Pool of Shiloah using an acetylene torch. Wadi Hilwa resident Muhammad Qara’in called the Jerusalem police for assistance, but the duty officer hung up on him. When clashes began between Arab residents and settlers the Border Guards arrived and began shooting live ammunition and tear gas at the Palestinians. Two settler cars were torched and the windshields of several others were smashed in the melée. Police cordoned off Wadi Hilwa. But this measure did not prevent the continuation of clashes the next night, since the aggravating factors — the Elad settlers — are in the middle of the neighborhood.
Since 1994 Elad has been underwriting archaeological excavations to supply proof for its version of Silwan’s history. In the process, they are destroying evidence of the presence of many other peoples and cultures on the site – 21 strata dating from the time of the Canaanites, who established the first permanent settlement in Silwan some 5,000 years ago, and the levels of the Muslims who ruled the place from the mid-seventh to the early twentieth centuries.
Elad also began seizing Palestinian homes in Silwan in 1991 and settling Jewish families in them, using dubious legal maneuvers that were criticized by a 1992 commission of inquiry appointed by the Israeli government. But Jerusalem municipal executive authorities have done nothing to remove Elad from the Palestinian homes it has illegally occupied. Elad now controls about 25 percent of the Wadi Hilwa neighborhood as well as other properties in Silwan.
Some Israeli archaeologists accept Elad’s claims that its excavations are “scientific” and unrelated to its settlement project. Other renowned Israeli archaeologists contest Elad’s version of Silwan’s biblical history. According to Benjamin Kedar, chairman of the board of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Elad is “an organization with a declared ideological agenda, which presents the history of the City of David in a biased way.” To date, no conclusive archaeological evidence affirming the presence of King David or King Solomon or of a Jewish temple on the scale described in the Bible has been found in Silwan or elsewhere.
Policing Protest
Although the Elad tour and conference were in a national park and open to the public, police and Border Guards blocked the access of the demonstrators on the grounds that, “You are leftists,” as one officer put it. Daniel Dukarevich, a physician and an immigrant to Israel from the former Soviet Union, attempted to cross the police barrier and attend the conference. Border Guards seized him and beat him viciously. Dukarevich was immediately surrounded by a group of young women who bravely tried to protect him — and themselves after the Border Guards began beating them as well. Several demonstrators recorded the incident and later uploaded their video footage to YouTube. Others chanted, “Brave soldiers are beating [female] demonstrators,” while drummers, a regular presence at demonstrations, kept up a military cadence. Dukarevich was eventually dragged away by police with blood streaming down his face. Police can later be seen ushering a settler car through the barricade.
Veteran CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl and a crew from “60 Minutes” happened to be on the scene to do a story about Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem. Stahl’s jaw dropped and her face became visibly strained as she watched the beating. When some semblance of calm was restored, she interviewed a Wadi Hilwa resident who told her, “The Elad organization will not be successful in its attempts to falsify the history of this region and to ignore the indigenous people of the village. The collusion between Israeli authorities and ‘private’ settlement enterprises such as Elad are clear to us all — highlighted by the military’s attempts to shut down this demonstration today.” Stahl’s story has not yet aired.
Later, ten more Jewish demonstrators who attempted to enter the conference were arrested. They were taken off to the jail and courthouse complex housed in former pilgrim hostels in the Russian Compound — a picturesque plot of land in central Jerusalem originally owned by the Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox cathedral. After the British conquered Jerusalem in 1917 they expropriated the area, except for the church itself, to build a government center. The state of Israel compensated the Soviet Union for the land in 1964 with $3.5 million worth of oranges.
Five of the detained demonstrators were released at 1:30 am the next day. One of them, Matan Cohen, is a student at Hampshire College and a member of Students for Justice in Palestine on that campus. He was one of the prominent organizers of the campaign that led to Hampshire’s February 2009 divestment from six corporations with holdings in companies complicit in Israeli human rights violations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. (College administrators claim the divestment was unrelated to the activists’ demands, though the president acknowledged “the good work of Students for Justice in Palestine that brought this issue to the attention of the committee.”) Cohen had spent most of his summer break working with the renowned Israeli filmmaker, Udi Aloni, teaching film to youth in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. As a condition of his release, police officers demanded that Cohen sign a document consenting not to return to East Jerusalem for three months. Although he was due to return to Hampshire for his senior year within days, he told them, “I’m not signing anything and I’m not leaving before the others are also released.” Frustrated with Cohen’s resolute stand, the police eventually let him go without conditions.
When the court opened for business on September 2, Cohen and ten others who had participated in the demonstration were present to check on the status of those who had not yet been released. There they met Nasir Ghawi, the head of household of one of the four Palestinian families who have been evicted from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, also to make way for Jewish settlers. Further evictions are threatened. Ghawo is the most articulate spokesperson for all the Sheikh Jarrah evictees. He and his lawyer were in court to argue that someone acting for the Sephardic Community Committee, which claims to own his home, had falsified the eviction order by adding names not included on the original court document to it. “I only want basic justice,” he said. “If the document is falsified, than we should be returned to our home and the settlers removed until the case is settled.” The court postponed the hearing on the forgery question until November and the Ghawi family remains in the street. It had earlier ruled similarly with regard to the Hanun family.
The relationship between the Jews who had participated in the Silwan demonstration and Nasir Ghawi was warm, familiar and mutually supportive. All of the Jews present were regular participants in the weekly demonstrations held at Sheikh Jarrah since November 2009 to protest the eviction of Palestinian families from the neighborhood. Ghawi knew most of them by name or face. He speaks fluent Hebrew, which makes it easier for those who do not speak Arabic to get to know him well. (Ta‘ayush has members who are Palestinian citizens of Israel, but the Jerusalem branch is an entirely Jewish group today, although they work closely with Palestinians in both Sheikh Jarrah and the south Hebron hills.)
Since most East Jerusalem Palestinians speak at least some Hebrew, there is less pressure on Jewish activists there to learn Arabic. Sara Benninga, who was prominent in the demonstration at Silwan (and also in the Sheikh Jarrah demonstrations), due to her extraordinary stamina in leading chants in Arabic, Hebrew and English, said: “We know we should learn Arabic. I have tried to do it several times. But it is hard to find the time while working, going to school and maintaining political activity.” The language dynamics are somewhat different in the West Bank, where many of the prominent young Jewish activists speak at least enough Arabic for basic communication and several, like Matan Cohen, are totally fluent. Many West Bank men, of course, speak Hebrew because of their extensive experience in Israeli jails. But for Cohen and his peers in Anarchists Against the Wall, the language of communication whenever possible is Arabic.
More surprising than the cordiality between Arab and Jewish protesters is the intimacy between Jewish protesters and the police. The police and the protesters recognize each other and address each other by name. It is obvious who the police commanders are; the officers imagine that the demonstrators have a similar hierarchy, although this is far from the case. At the Silwan protest, the police commander asked Asaf Sharon, a Ph.D. student in political philosophy at Stanford University, to step aside and speak to him one on one. Sharon later reported that the officer told him, “If you calm your people down, there won’t be any more arrests. If you don’t, I will start arresting more of you” (Dukarevich had already been taken away). Sharon held up his wrists as though they were already handcuffed and said, “Take me first.” He was later arrested for trying to enter the conference area.
A New Protest Generation
At Sheikh Jarrah and in Silwan, as in the villages of the West Bank, the Jewish protesters demonstratively disregard the authority of the Israeli state, although Palestinians must be more circumspect since they would likely suffer grave consequences for openly challenging the occupation authorities. The Jewish protesters aim to make the police and the army pay as high a price as possible for continuing the occupation. Every demonstration requires the deployment of extra police or soldiers to a place where they would not normally be. Every arrest requires the time and energy of the court system, whether or not detainees are eventually charged. Every instance of gratuitous police brutality — and there have been many in East Jerusalem, even according to Israeli courts — delegitimizes the police, exposes their political bias and draws more establishment personalities into the movement.
Intense direct confrontation with the authority of the Israeli state is a considered strategy, according to one of the influential behind-the-scenes organizers of the Jewish participation in the protests in Sheikh Jarrah. It is designed to produce “a transition from protest to struggle…. We are there to struggle in a subversive way.” The protest organizers are consciously striving to create a conflict between the many “left Zionists” among whom it has become fashionable to attend the weekly demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah — people like prestigious Hebrew University professors Menachem Brinker, Moshe Halbertal, Avishai Margalit and Zeev Sternhell, novelist David Grossman, and former speaker of the Knessset Avraham Burg, who typically function as a loyal opposition — and the Israeli state apparatus. But the young organizers are not concerned with ideology as such.
Some call themselves Zionists; some do not. Some are secular; some are modern Orthodox or formerly observant but respectful of religion. As such, the new protest generation has a very different social makeup than the mostly older and resolutely secularist “left Zionists” of Peace Now, the nearly defunct Meretz party and the Labor Party. The protests are animated by social networks that have been formed over the last decade in struggles against Israel’s separation barrier and efforts to protect the Palestinians of the south Hebron hills from the depredations of violent, radical settlers. The Arab and Jewish protesters regard the creeping Judaization of East Jerusalem — which is now most aggressive in Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah — as a mortal threat to Palestinian-Israeli peace. Rather than ideology, the glue that binds the Jewish protesters together and the Jews and the Palestinians of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan to each other is moral outrage over blatant injustice and discriminatory application of Israeli law.
However many states there may or may not be on the horizon in Israel and Palestine, the new generation of Israeli protesters see themselves as building a culture of peace and living together with Arabs in opposition to the segregationist version of peace — “us here, them there” — long promoted by the “left Zionist” peace camp. This approach to peace remains marginal in Israeli society, although it has many Palestinian proponents, even among those who remain committed to a two-state solution. It is surely more hopeful than the diplomatic exercise now underway.
Where has the hypocrisy gone?: Haaretz
No one thinks to ask about the consensus among the residents of Palestinian cities and villages on whose land the settlements have been built. The millions of Palestinians don’t count at all.
By Amira Hass
In the late 1970s or early 1980s, Professor Asa Kasher spoke at a conference of some kind about the differences between Labor Party governments and Likud governments. The Labor governments were hypocritical, and there is something positive about hypocrisy, Kasher said. At least the hypocrite knows there is a binding system of values, and that he is not acting according to them. As a result, he disguises his actions.
It was understood from Kasher’s comments that Labor governments knew that ruling over another people against that people’s will was an impermissible act. The Likud, Kasher said at the time, as memory permits to reconstruct after the passage of 30 years, doesn’t feel at all bound by those values. The impermissible had become legitimate.
By that measure, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has become a Laborite who is playing the hypocrites’ game, whereas Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is the 2010 version of a Likudnik, by Kasher’s definition. Lieberman is someone who tells it straight while his prime minister blurs and obscures to make it easy for the American allies to feign progress while we mark time in the realm of deja vu.
Lieberman the non-hypocrite knows what he’s talking about when he says no peace agreement will be signed, even in another generation. A peace agreement is not a business contract. It requires a change of values of a kind that does not exist within the vocabulary of the democratic Jewish state, which elevates the system of double standards to a level of virtuosity. The people of this state are incapable of imagining themselves departing from the privileges that this system confers. And who cares if the flip side of those privileges is dispossession, suppression of freedoms and the risk of regional conflagration?
The day before yesterday, Science and Technology Minister Daniel Hershkowitz (Habayit Hayehudi ) was interviewed on Army Radio’s morning broadcast, and argued that it was impossible to continue the construction freeze in the West Bank settlements while the Palestinians went on building and building.
One cannot expect an interviewer on Army Radio or Israel Radio to surprise and ask, for example: “Since the principle of equality is suddenly so important to the settlement lobby, why then residents of Nablus and East Jerusalem cannot have a housing project in Haifa or live in Ashkelon or in a panoramic neighborhood in the Galilee, while residents of Haifa and kibbutz Hazorea are allowed to build in Nablus Heights or in the East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan?
But the interviewer didn’t even correct a distortion of the facts and didn’t tell the listeners that the Palestinians cannot build at will. In the 62 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli control, known as Area C, Israel has frozen Palestinian construction for the past four decades.
It can be assumed that the interviewer, despite numerous reports, is unaware of the building freeze beyond the pale of settlement allocated to the Palestinians. Natural growth only applies to Jews. In Area C, schools, kindergartens and water are only for Jews. The Mekorot Water Company’s wells in the Jordan Valley supply quantities of water to the settlements and their orchards. The water flows from the Palestinians’ land, and the pipes are fenced off. And the land is parched, because the Palestinians are not allowed to draw their own water from those pipes, as Israel imposes on them a quota which is not set to human beings’ needs. In the democratic Jewish state, within its virtual borders, it’s as clear as the sun rising in the east.
If the American partner had wanted to, it would have demanded to begin evacuating the settlements, not only to continue the construction freeze. But the territory robbed by the separation barrier – Ariel, Givat Ze’ev, Ma’aleh Adumim, Efrat in its Anglo-Saxon elegance and East Jerusalem – are all within the consensus. Whose consensus? The people of the democratic Jewish state and evangelical Christians, of course.
No one thinks to ask about the consensus among the residents of Palestinian cities and villages on whose land the settlements have been built. The millions of Palestinians don’t count at all. And hundreds of thousands of Liebermans, if not more, don’t feel the need to be hypocritical.
Washington peace talks: democracy need not apply: The Electronic Intifada
Matthew Cassel, 15 September 2010
It was an image for the history books. At least that’s what the five world leaders would like to have thought as they strutted down the red carpeted hall of the White House recently with their heads held high. Forming a well-choreographed and symbolic flying “V,” the US president led the way, flanked by his counterparts representing Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Egypt. These men in suits wanted to show the world that they’re ready to plow through any and all obstacles that stand in the way of peace in the Middle East.
It’s a picture that bears a striking resemblance to one taken a decade and a half earlier when then US President Bill Clinton led the same nations’ representatives down the the same red-carpeted hall at the White House. All one needs to do is replace those leaders with their successors, save the Egyptian president who was present in both. Another historic image — although one most have probably forgotten — that also sought to send the message that peace is on its way.
And yet here we are, 16 years later, with the highly anticipated peace still on its way, or so we’re told. A closer look at the five representatives in the picture should help explain why it’s yet to arrive.
Spearheading the group is Barack Obama. Despite running a campaign built around the slogan of “change,” the US president has shown that when it comes to the Middle East his policies barely differ, if at all, from those of his predecessors. Not only has he continued the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan while arming and supporting the most brutal and undemocratic autocracies around the region, but he has also been sure to maintain the US’ “special friendship” with Israel regardless of the ongoing injustices the latter commits on a daily basis.
Next to him is Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. As leader of the country who receives the most aid from the US, Netanyahu has not only continued the occupation and the siege of Gaza, but he refuses to slow down — not to mention end — the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land in the West Bank through settlement construction and land theft. If left unchecked, Netanyahu’s aggressive rhetoric and actions toward nearby nations will most likely spark another regional Israeli-led conflict before he leaves office.
But more importantly than understanding these two nations whose roles in the Middle East should come as no surprise to anyone by now, is understanding the “other” side represented in Washington: the Arab governments.
At the forefront is the supposed representative of the Palestinian people, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. In recent years, the PA’s most notable governing role has been its repression of an already oppressed people in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. To quell any popular protest by Palestinians against the Israeli occupier, the PA has used its American-supplied and Israeli-approved weaponry and riot gear, and arrested and beaten Palestinians who voice their dissent. This was most clear during Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza in the winter of 2008-09 and after the more recent attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla when Palestinian protestors in Ramallah and elsewhere were prevented from taking to the streets. Only two weeks ago, after a car full of Israeli settlers were killed in the occupied West Bank, the PA waged an arrest campaign rounding up hundreds of Palestinians in the occupied territory in a move that has been condemned by numerous Palestinian human rights organizations.
More importantly than the above, is the question of the Abbas government’s legitimacy. Recently, the Israeli daily Haaretz quoted Abbas’ spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudaineh as saying: “President Mahmoud Abbas came to power through free, democratic and authentic elections supervised by more than two thousand international and Arab monitors.”
One has to first wonder how “free” and “democratic” elections can be when held in a territory under foreign military occupation. Moreover, the majority of Palestinians are living in a forced state of exile and were not invited to cast their ballots. But for the sake of argument, let’s take Abu Rudaineh at his word.
Abu Rudaineh seems to contend that those elections, held in January 2005, somehow granted the PA president with an unlimited mandate. However, the term was limited, and Mahmoud Abbas was elected by voters to serve four years in office, meaning that his elected mandate as president of the PA expired more than a year and a half ago.
In a move out of the autocratic ruler playbook, Abbas’ term was extended by the PA’s “emergency powers” out of fear that he would be replaced by someone from a rival party — most likely from the more popular Hamas movement — should new elections be held. Ironically, the most recent “free” and “democratic” elections held in Palestine were in 2006, when Hamas defeated Fatah, taking the majority of seats in parliamentary elections. It’s no surprise that Abu Rudaineh made no mention of this event in his statement.
Despite being elected by the Palestinian people living under occupation, Hamas has been subjected to boycott by the US and the PA and the area of governance it has been confined to laid siege to by Israel and Egypt. While Hamas hasn’t been ideally democratic in its governing of the besieged Gaza Strip, its continued ostracism by Washington, Israel and the PA sends the message that when it comes to peace talks, democracy need not apply.
This message was reinforced through the presence of the two other Arab leaders at Abbas’ side.
On one end is Hosni Mubarak who has ruled Egypt under suffocating “emergency laws” (sound familiar?) since 1981 when he became president. Although friendly with the US and Israel, Mubarak runs one of the most brutal and corrupt dictatorships in the region. With a leadership dependent on — and one of the main beneficiaries of — US aid, Mubarak’s mukhabarat (intelligence service) tolerates no dissent. Many of those who have tried to challenge his rule have joined the tens of thousands of political prisoners in Egypt’s jails, where torture and abuse are well-documented and commonplace.
Pictured opposite Mubarak is Jordan’s King Abdullah II bin al-Hussein. Although Jordan is often hailed in the US as a “modern” and “moderate” state, there is little democracy to speak of there. Parliament, which has very little power, was dissolved last year half way through its term without any explanation, and elections delayed until this November will be held under a law widely criticized by opponents and passed by cabinet decree under “emergency provisions.” Draconian laws on the press and nongovernmental organizations severely limit freedom of speech and association, and political activists carry out their work in the ubiquitous shadow of the country’s security services.
It’s no coincidence that both of these men are considered two of the US’ strongest allies in the Middle East. Both continue a US-backed policy of “peace” with Israel despite that policy having little to no support from their populations.
That said, the image of the five men at the White House can easily be dissected as the following: a dictator, a monarch, a puppet and two heads of government responsible for the region’s only military occupations — not the best ingredients for making world peace.
Although not invited to the White House, the numerous grassroots movements across the Middle East present the best hope for bringing peace and justice to this region. And it’s those increasingly popular movements that people around the world concerned with the fate of the Middle East should support. In the meantime, let the puppets and their masters walk on red carpets in Washington while the real change is made by those with their feet on the ground.
Matthew Cassel is based in Beirut, Lebanon and is Assistant Editor of The Electronic Intifada. His website is http://justimage.org.
East Jerusalem housing plans cast new shadow over Israel-Palestinian peace talks: Haaretz
As Israeli and Palestinian leaders wrap up Egypt summit already marred by row over West Bank settlements, Jerusalem council announces plan to debate building 1,362 housing units beyond Green Line.
By Nir Hasson
In a move that could strike a blow at already fragile peace talks, Jerusalem city planners will in the coming weeks discuss a scheme to build over a thousand housing units beyond the Green Line, Haaretz learned on Tuesday.
At a U.S.-mediated summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, aides to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said talks were being conducted in a “good atmosphere”.
But news of the Jerusalem debate, scheduled for early October, could be seen as a provocation by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has repeatedly vowed to quit peace talks over Israeli settlement construction.
The latest negotiations, which kicked off in Washington earlier this month, have been dogged from the outset by the question of whether Israel will restart settlement construction in the West Bank when a self-imposed 10-month freeze expires in late September.
On October 7, the Jerusalem District Planning and Construction Committee will discuss plans for 1,362 new homes in Givat Hamatos, between the suburbs of Talpiot and Gilo. The hilltop area is currently the site of a caravan village populated mostly by Arabs and Ethiopian immigrants.
Although Givat Hamatos is not covered by the freeze, which excludes East Jerusalem, the timing of the debate could have significant diplomatic consequences.
In April, an Israeli announcement of plans for 1,600 housing units in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo coincided with a visit to the country by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, leading to a high-profile row between Israel and the United states.
Responding to news of the upcoming debate, Ir Amim, a non-profit group, said:
“Sadly, East Jerusalem is once again being used as a battleground for provocative and irresponsible activities on the part of the authorities, and once again it’s especially horrible timing.”
‘All or nothing’
Ahead of the talks, Israeli officials warned that the Palestinians’ “all or nothing” strategy of insisting on a total freeze on West Bank construction risked paralyzing negotions in their infancy.
“This attitude of all or nothing has over the past year led to a stagnation, with the result that in nine months of construction freeze, there were no negotiations,” one high-ranking official told Haaretz.
But chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat on Tuesday refused to adjust his position, saying: “Choosing to continue with settlements in any form means destroying the negotiations.”
New Israel Fund issues the guidelines: grantees must support Jewish self-determination: The Only Democracy?
September 17th, 2010, by Jesse Bacon
We reported on Richard Silverstein’s initial fears of New Israel Fund’s new guidelines, that they would bar funding to those who opposed Israel as a Jewish state. Then it looked like compromise language was in the works. Finally, the guidelines are out, and they call instead for grantees to support Jewish self-determination within the state of Israel.
Groups that work to “deny the right of the Jewish people to sovereign self-determination within Israel” will not be eligible for New Israel Fund moneys.
In new guidelines issued to JTA on Thursday, the progressive pro-Israel olutfit, which has come under fire for funding groups that are sharply critical of Israel and that have promoted a binational state instead of a Jewish one, reiterated its well known principles upholding minority rights and promoting equal rights for all.
The language about Israel’s Jewish character was new, but consistent with NIF’s objectives, which derive from Israel’s Declaration of Independence, NIF director Daniel Sokatch told JTA.
Pressed, he said the language would prohibit proposals for a binational constitution of the kind that two NIF grantees submitted several years ago.
“If we had an organization that made part of its project, part of its mission an effort to really genuinely organize on behalf of creating a constitution that denied Israel as a sovereign vehicle for self-determination for the Jewish people, a Jewish homeland, if that became the focus of one of our organizations, we would not support that organization,” he said.
He added, however, that NIF would not deny funds to grantees that had philosophical disagreements. The difference, he suggested, was in a grantee’s activism, not in the views of its directors.
Silverstein is highly displeased with the compromise language, and Sokatch’s statement that he would not support a group proposing a binational constitution,
Sokatch is referring to Adalah’s Democratic Constitution, a proposal for a new Israeli constitution that would guarantee equal rights for Israel’s Arab and Jewish citizens. The Constitution is NOT a proposal for a binational state. In fact, the document itself calls for a “multicultural and bilingual” state, not a binational one. Rather, it is a proposal for a unitary state in which the rights of all ethnic groups are respected and equal.
This is the same Palestinian political activism which caused Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin to announce that he would treat such Palestinian nationalism as akin to undermining the state. Further he announced that whether political activity on behalf of the project was legal or not, he would treat it as criminal–and he has been true to his word.
So, in effect, NIF has been cowed and bowed to the will of the state’s security apparatus and defined Palestinian nationalism as unworthy of its financial support.
It is unclear to me from Sokatch’s statement what the actual financial implication would be: if they are talking about any existing grantees or some hypothetical future one. It seems that there is no inherent conflict between supporting self-determination for Jewish Israelis and Palestinian equality, and I hope that New Israel Fund agrees. I will attempt to get more clarification.
Related posts:
Audrey Farber, intern, from Mada Al-Carmel on New Israel Fund and Democracy
An Open Letter by Jeff Halper to the Israeli Jewish Public: Support the Gaza Flotilla
Rabbis for Human Rights defend New Israel Fund from anti-democratic attacks
New Shopping Mall opens in Gaza: Al Jazeera
Israeli blockade limits what goods are available in new air-conditioned centre