PACBI: Intellectual responsibility and the voice of the colonized: The Electronic Intifada
Statement, Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, 17 February 2010
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has recently encountered a number of projects that while intending to empower the colonized Palestinians, in essence end up undermining their will and choice of method of struggle for freedom, justice and self-determination. The publication of a new book entitled The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories belongs to this category. The book project represents a classic example of how the collective voice of the colonized is ignored in the production of a scholarly work supposed to empower them.
While it is crucial for scholars in relevant fields to expose and analyze the colonial situation in Palestine, this academic imperative should not imply that one overlooks how scholarship engages this colonialism. That is, this book, as a collaboration of various scholars — Israeli and non-Israeli contributors — was completed with support from the Van Leer Institute. In other words, through working under the aegis of the Van Leer Institute, this project has cooperated with one of the very institutions that PACBI and an overwhelming majority of Palestinian academics and intellectuals have called for boycotting. As such, the research project which led to the production of the volume violates the criteria of the academic and cultural boycott as set by PACBI and widely endorsed in Palestinian civil society, including by the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE) and University Teachers’ Association in Palestine (UTA).
Contrary to the claims of some left-wing Israeli academics that the Van Leer institute is an incubator for cutting-edge critical thinking and oppositional politics, the institute is firmly planted in the prevailing Zionist consensus and is part and parcel of the structures of oppression and domination. It subscribes to the “vision of Israel as both a homeland for the Jewish people and a democratic society, predicated on justice, fairness and equality for all its residents,” ignoring the oxymoron presented by this inherently exclusionary vision — a “Jewish State” of necessity discriminates against its “non-Jewish” citizens. The Van Leer Institute receives financial support from other Israeli universities and state institutions that are subject to boycott. Among its financial contributors and institutional “friends” are the Cohn Institute at Tel Aviv University; the Edelstein Center at the Hebrew University; the Israel Ministry of Science; the National Insurance Institute, Israel; and the Jewish Agency for Israel.
Furthermore, Van Leer, like all other Israeli academic institutions, has never taken a stance against Israel’s policies of occupation and racial discrimination, nor against the recent war of aggression on Gaza or the ongoing illegal siege of 1.5 million Palestinians there. The Van Leer is, therefore, an institution with strong links to establishment institutions in Israel. As such, it is complicit in maintaining and entrenching Israel’s regime of occupation and apartheid against the Palestinian people.
Though intellectual projects may aim to rigorously articulate the complex matrix of control that exists in Palestine, the intellectual process has a fundamental ethical and political component. As such, it is incumbent upon all scholars to realize that any collaboration which brings together Israeli and international academics (Arabs or otherwise) under the auspices of Israeli institutions is counterproductive to fighting Israeli colonial oppression, and is therefore subject to boycott.
A project involving only Israeli academics, on the other hand, receiving support from an Israeli academic institution, may be seen as a justifiable exercise of a right or an entitlement by Israeli scholars as tax payers and, as a result, may not per se be boycottable.
As the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement gains momentum globally, an increasing number of voices are emerging in support of this strategy as the most effective, nonviolent route to bring about change towards justice and durable peace based on international law and universal principles of human rights. The endorsement by various artists and academics of specific boycott actions in the past few years is welcome and well-known. It is the responsibility of the boycott supporters to understand the broadly-accepted boycott criteria and guidelines upon which this boycott is based and adhere to it, rather than attempting to invent or suggest idiosyncratic criteria of their own, as the latter would undermine the Palestinian guiding reference for the global boycott campaign against Israel.
It is crucial to emphasize that the BDS movement derives its principles from both the demands of the Palestinian BDS Call, signed by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations in July 2005, and, in the academic and cultural fields, from the Palestinian Call for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, issued a year earlier in July 2004. Together, the BDS and PACBI Calls represent the most authoritative and widely-supported strategic statements to have emerged from Palestine in decades; all major political parties, labor, student and women groups, and organizations representing Palestinian refugees all over the world have endorsed and supported these calls. Both calls underline the prevailing Palestinian belief that the most effective form of solidarity with the Palestinian people is direct action aimed at bringing an end to Israel’s colonial and apartheid regime, just as the apartheid regime in South Africa was abolished, by isolating Israel internationally through boycotts and sanctions, forcing it to comply with international law and respect Palestinian rights.
Since the formulation of these calls, a great deal of emphasis has been placed on defining the principles of the boycott movement. Rooted in universal values and principles, the BDS Call categorically rejects all forms of racism, racial discrimination and colonial oppression. PACBI has also translated the principles enshrined in its Call into practical guidelines for implementing the international academic and cultural boycott of Israel. However intellectually challenging and avant-garde some projects may be, by being oblivious to the Palestinian-articulated boycott criteria they in effect work against the internationally-embraced Palestinian struggle for justice.
EDITOR: Fisk on the Dubai events
In a short but concise interview, Fisk makes the point that the Dubai operation could not have taken place without the collusion and active assistance of the UK authorities – he is sure that the passports are real documents produced in the UK by the proper authorities, and only the pictures were swapped. This puts a whole new gloss on the UK government pitiful and embarassing silence, followed by ritual motions. This was not an Israeli-only operation, but one conducted by the combined efforts of the usual suspects, Israel and its western allies.
Growing row over Dubai killing: Al Jazeera online
Dubai’s police chief says he is almost certain Israel was involved in last month’s assassination of a senior Hamas official.
Dahi Khalfan Tamim says, if proven, an arrest warrant should be issued for the man in-charge of Mossad, the Israeli spy agency.
Robert Fisk is the Middle East correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent.
He says if Israel is behind the assassination, then Tel Aviv could find itself in a diplomatic crisis with some of its European allies. To listen, Click here
Dubai police chief in Mossad arrest call: BBC
Dubai’s police chief has called for the head of Mossad to be arrested if Israel’s spy agency was behind the killing of a Hamas boss in the emirate.
Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan said Interpol should issue a “red notice” to approve the arrest of Meir Dagan.
Israel shrugged off the calls, saying the Dubai police chief had provided no incriminating proof.
Mahmud al-Mabhouh, one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, was found dead in a Dubai hotel on 20 January.
Several fake European passports – including six from the UK – are thought to have been used by his 11 suspected killers.
The UK government denies it had any prior knowledge of the fake British passports being used, although Shadow foreign secretary William Hague said it was “entirely possible” the government had been alerted.
And a British newspaper claimed on Friday the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and the government had received a tip-off from Israel.
Red notice call
Lt Gen Khalfan has said he was “99% certain” Israel was involved in the assassination.
In a televised interview on Thursday, said: “If the Mossad were proven to be behind the crime, which is most likely now, Interpol should issue a red notice for the head of the Mossad because he would be a killer.”
If there was proof Israel had used British passports… relations between the UK and Israel would be in a crisis
The international police agency Interpol – which has issued arrest notices for all 11 suspects although it admitted their true identities were unclear – issues red notices to seek the arrest of wanted persons with a view to extraditing them.
An unnamed Israeli official denounced the red notice “threat” as “absurd”.
“The accusations are baseless,” the official told AFP news agency.
“Police have not explained the circumstances of [Mr Mabhouh’s] death, or even any proof that he’s been assassinated. All there is are videos of people talking on the telephone,” he said.
Diplomatic tensions have been building between Britain and Israel after it emerged on Monday that six of the passports used by the 11 suspected assassins were British.
They were clones of passports belonging to men who have dual British and Israeli citizenship.
Three Irish passports were also used, along with a French and a German passport.
Dubai police are investigating US-issued credit card accounts used to purchase plane tickets, which they say the suspects obtained with the fraudulent passports, the New York Times quoted an unnamed official as saying.
‘Outrage’
Friday’s Daily Mail quotes a British security source who claims the UK’s intelligence service MI6 and the government were told of the operation.
A Foreign Office spokesman said it was “not correct” to state Britain knew in advance about the passports.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the use of the passports was “an outrage”, and Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Ron Prosor, was summoned to the foreign office on Thursday to discuss the issue.
Israelis Share Suspicions in Hamas Leader’s Killing: The New York Times
Isabel Kershner
February 17, 2010 – 12:00am
The initial nods, winks and pats on the back here over the assassination last month of a senior Hamas official in Dubai are turning to puzzlement and concern as mounting evidence, including extensive surveillance videos, points to a remarkably clumsy operation many Israelis deem unworthy of their intelligence service, Mossad.
Officially, Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the case, as is customary in delicate matters of intelligence and national security. But since the news of the assassination broke last month, Israel has unofficially made the story its own, with newspapers blaring congratulatory headlines and government ministers praising Mossad’s director.
However, then the Dubai police released images showing some of the 17 people suspected of being in the hit squad bumbling about in poor disguises, and Britain became infuriated by the use of faked British travel documents. Now Israelis are wondering whether their once-famed spy service could have been behind such a sloppy job or, in a John Le Carré-like twist, if Israel could have been framed.
On Wednesday, a commentator for the newspaper Haaretz, Amir Oren, wrote a front-page column about the case, calling for the Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, to step down.
“What must have seemed to its perpetrators as a huge success,” he wrote, “is now being overshadowed by enormous question marks.”
Israel wanted the Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, 50, for the capture and killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989 and for smuggling weapons to Hamas in Gaza. On Jan. 19, he was killed in a Dubai hotel room.
On Monday, the Dubai police named 11 of the 17 people they suspect in the case. Among the names were those of three Irish citizens — of whom the Irish authorities have no record — and six British citizens living in Israel who appear to be victims of identity theft. The police also showed images culled from the ubiquitous closed-circuit TV system showing some of them in false beards, wigs and glasses, in almost comical attempts at disguise.
With the agents’ passport pictures now splashed across newspapers and television screens around the world, Israeli commentators said the agents, whoever they may really be, have been burned. Eitan Haber, a columnist in the daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot and a close aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the 1990s, wrote Wednesday, “They cannot even go to the grocery store.”
In a first official reaction, the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said Wednesday that Israel’s policy of “ambiguity” in such cases was “correct.”
“I don’t know why we are assuming that Israel, or the Mossad, used those passports,” Mr. Lieberman told Army Radio. “Israel never responds, never confirms and never denies.”
Three former senior Mossad officials contacted by a reporter on Wednesday refused to comment at all.
The British authorities said they believed the British passports the Dubai police had collected were “fraudulent.” Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for a full investigation.
The six British citizens living in Israel — who woke up on Tuesday to find their names linked with the assassination — do not resemble the agents’ photographs from the passports bearing their names. Among the Britons was a physiotherapist, a technical writer and a repairman who lives on a kibbutz.
The name of an American-born Israeli was used by another of the suspects, who carried a German passport. That person studies in a religious seminary near Tel Aviv.
Three of the British citizens gave interviews to the news media on Tuesday, expressing their shock and some fear. By Wednesday they appeared to have gone incommunicado and did not answer or return a reporter’s calls.
Mr. Oren, in his front-page column in Haaretz, anticipated a diplomatic crisis over the suspicions that Mossad had counterfeited British passports.
“It is as if Israeli governments had never apologized to London for using British documentation,” he wrote, “as if they had not promised solemnly, when passports of Her Majesty’s subjects were found in a certain phone booth, that this would never happen again.”
Fake passports fuel questions about Israeli role in Hamas official’s slaying: The Washington Post
Howard Schneider
February 18, 2010 – 12:00am
Pressure mounted Wednesday for Israel to respond to speculation that its Mossad spy agency killed a Hamas operative in a Dubai hotel last month, with Britain’s prime minister promising to investigate the use of forged British passports by the alleged assassins and analysts in Israel taking unusual aim at the country’s vaunted undercover organization.
Of the 11 members of the squad that Dubai authorities say carried out the killing of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, six carried apparently fake British passports bearing the names of Israeli citizens. The British Foreign Office summoned the Israeli ambassador to a meeting over the matter Thursday, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown said a full inquiry will be mounted.
“The British passport is an important document that has got to be held with care,” Brown said. “The evidence has got to be assembled about what has actually happened and how it happened and why it happened.”
Police officials in Dubai have not ruled out Mossad involvement in Mabhouh’s slaying, but they have not emphasized the possibility, either. Dubai, like the other small Persian Gulf states that make up the United Arab Emirates, does not have diplomatic ties with Israel, but it is also considered less hostile toward Israel than some other Arab countries.
In Israel, several prominent commentators engaged in surprisingly sharp criticism of an agency that in recent years has been credited with successes against militant groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as their patrons in Iran and Syria.
In the Haaretz daily, security affairs correspondent Amir Oren urged that Mossad head Meir Dagan be fired in the wake of an operation that had turned embarrassingly public — Dubai police this week released security camera video of the suspects in Mabhouh’s hotel and elsewhere. Others called for a commission of inquiry. Whether supportive or critical of the operation, virtually all commentators wrote from the assumption that the Mossad had been involved in it.
“Mabhouh was not an envoy of the Education Board of Gaza to Dubai. He was a top terrorist,” former Mossad agent Gad Shimron said in an interview. “There is no doubt about the Israeli footprints in this. The question is whether those who planned it took in the possibility that the Dubai police would be very efficient.”
Israel has a record of using foreign passports to conceal the movements of its undercover operatives and has run into diplomatic trouble with Canada, New Zealand, Britain and others over the practice. The Mossad agents who tried to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Jordan in 1997, for example, carried Canadian documents.
The Dubai case has the added wrinkle that the names and some other data on the passports match those of Israeli citizens who immigrated here from Europe — and who were shocked to find themselves mentioned in the material released by Dubai police.
That has left Israeli officials in a quandary, on the one hand trying to maintain the country’s “policy of ambiguity” — neither confirming nor denying its involvement in covert operations — and on the other, having to explain how the names of some of its citizens ended up on forged documents cited in an international murder investigation.
In Israel’s first official comments on the matter, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Army Radio on Wednesday that despite the presence of the names, there is “no reason to think that it was the Israeli Mossad and not some other service or country up to some mischief.”
Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the Israeli parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said there are no plans to try to unravel why Israelis’ names appeared on the passports. If there is suspicion of identity theft or concern about implication in a murder, those involved should consult a lawyer, Hanegbi said.
“I don’t think the government is going to have anything to do with it,” he said.
Mabhouh, who was based in Damascus along with other Hamas exiles from the Gaza Strip, was a founding member of Hamas’s military wing. He was linked to the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers in the late 1980s and more recently is thought to have been involved in supplying arms and money to Hamas militants in Gaza. Hamas has blamed Israel for his death but has not said why he was in Dubai.
In Gaza, a spokesman for Hamas’s military wing announced that the group has formed a plan to avenge Mabhouh’s death.
UAE Authorities Probe US Credit-Card Accounts in Hamas Killing: IOA
By Chip Cummins and Alistair MacDonald, The Wall Street Journal – 18 Feb 2010
Authorities in the United Arab Emirates are probing five U.S.-issued credit card accounts, which officials say were used by five of the 11 suspects in the January killing of a top Hamas leader in Dubai, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The credit cards, issued by a U.S.-based banking institution, were used to buy travel-related items, such as plane tickets, connected to the alleged assassination operation, this person said. Dubai police disclosed in a Monday press conference here that they were seeking 10 men and one women in connection with the killing last month of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior commander in the Palestinian militant group. His body was found in a Dubai hotel room on Jan. 20.
Meanwhile, Dubai’s police chief, in a series of interviews with the local press Thursday, gave flatly blamed Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad was behind the plot, after several weeks of contradictory statements from his office about Israel’s alleged involvement.
On Thursday, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim was quoted by The National, an Abu Dhabi-based, English-language paper, saying he was confident that Israeli agents were linked to the assassination.
“Our investigations reveal that Mossad is involved in the murder of al-Mabhouh. It is 99%, if not 100%, that Mossad is standing behind the murder,” he told the newspaper’s Web site.
The accusation comes as European capitals ratcheted up pressure on Israel, amid indications that the perpetrators of the crime stole the identity of citizens of the U.K., Ireland, Germany and France.
On Monday, Dubai police released photos and passport details of the 11 suspects, identifying six of them as British passport holders, three as Irish citizens, including the one woman, a German and a Frenchman. Officials have also said they have detained two Palestinians allegedly related to the plot and were trying to identify five others, who may have helped the core team of 11.
The release of the passport details set off a political furor in Europe and Israel, which continued into Thursday. The identified passport holders quickly surfaced, bearing little resemblance to the released passport photos, suggesting their identities had been stolen by the alleged killers.
The U.K., Ireland and France have all summoned the Israeli ambassadors in their countries to meetings, seeking explanations. British foreign minister David Miliband said Thursday the U.K. wanted Israel to cooperate fully in an investigation into the apparent fraudulent use of British passports in the case.
A senior U.K. foreign ministry official held a 20-minute meeting with Israel’s ambassador to London Thursday morning. The U.K. said on Wednesday the meeting would be aimed at helping Israel-based U.K. citizens, whose passports were allegedly used.
But on Thursday, officials appeared to harden their rhetoric. Mr. Miliband, who had been briefed on the meeting with the Israeli ambassador, said that it was made clear “how seriously” the U.K. takes the fraudulent use of British passports. “We want to give Israel every opportunity to share with us what they know about this incident,” he said. Mr. Miliband said he will meet and discuss the issue with the Israeli Foreign Minister on Monday in Brussels.
Mr. Miliband, and earlier Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have both said, however, said that an investigation must be completed before conclusions can be drawn. British opposition politicians continued to keep the heat up on the Israelis, when David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party, said that the Israeli government “needs to provide some answers.”
France has asked the Israeli ambassador for an explanation, a French Foreign Ministry spokesman said Thursday. The French are also co-operating with the authorities in Dubai, who are leading the investigation.
Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs met with Israel’s ambassador to Dublin Thursday morning to press for details on the use of Irish passports. “The (Israeli) ambassador said that he had no information on the matter,” a spokesman for the DFA said.
Israeli officials have declined to confirm or deny any involvement, their long-standing practice. The country’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, told Israeli Army Radio on Wednesday there is no proof Mossad carried out the killings. Israel’s ambassador to London, Ron Proser, said: “I was unable to shed any further light on the events in question.”
Several of the European passport holders appeared to be dual Israeli citizens, living in Israel. That drew alarm in Israel, seeming to add substance to suspicions in Israel and abroad that the assassination was the work of the Mossad.
Commentators in Israel, who have offered no evidence of Mossad involvement, criticized the agency nonetheless for seeming to endanger Israeli citizens by stealing their identity. Analysts, meanwhile, suggested another state’s intelligence service could be using the operation to damage Mossad’s credibility.
In addition to the 11 identified suspects, Dubai officials are trying to identify at least five others, including another woman, who were caught on video surveillance and may have been related to the operation, the person familiar with the situation said.
The five credit cards uncovered in the investigation could provide a fresh thread in the probe, leading to the U.S. The person familiar with the situation said U.S. investigators hadn’t yet joined the probe, but that the U.A.E. was getting “considerable cooperation” from several, other friendly states in the investigation. Dubai is one of seven, semi-autonomous emirates that make up the U.A.E. An official in the U.S. embassy in the U.A.E. wasn’t immediately reachable for comment on Thursday.
EDITOR:What do Israeli Jews think about the recent McArthyte campaign?
The survey described below is probably only possible in a country like Israel – where racism is so prevalent, that you do notice it anymore… while more than 25% of Israeli citizens are non-Jews (mainly Palestinians, but also many from the ex-USSR) the normal practice of surveys is to only survey the Jewish population. After all, what non-Jews think in a ‘Jewish State’ does not matter, and might swerve the results in an unacceptable way, so why ever include them? Israelis read such surveys every week, and it never occurs to anyone to question that practice. Imagine a survey of French attitudes which will only include Catholics. The results, given this skewed premise, are quite interesting – they prove the government is less successful than it wishes to be with its heightened hate campaign against critics of its policy. It is also interesting that most of those questioned are ready to give up on human rights in the case of ‘external conflict’, a phrase which covers anything and everything. So, the news is not that good…
Most Jews: National interest exceeds human rights: Ynet
War and Peace Index shows 52% of Israel’s Jewish residents believe those criticizing Israel’s policy when talking to foreign elements should not be viewed as traitors. And what do they think about Lieberman’s statements against Syria?
Some 52% of Israel’s Jewish citizens oppose the claim that those criticizing the State’s foreign and security policy abroad or when talking to foreign elements are traitors, according to the monthly War and Peace Index.
The survey was conducted on the backdrop of a campaign launched against the New Israel Fund, claiming that it provided “incriminating” evidence against Israel to the Goldstone Committee which investigated the Israeli operation in Gaza.
War and Peace Index shows majority of Jews living in Israel pleased with government’s performance in terms of security, but disappointed with its handling of social matters. Fifty-three of Jews back decision to reject Hamas’ demands in prisoner exchange deal. Arabs more optimistic than Jews on chances for progress in peace process
Nonetheless, a breakdown of the responses according to the way Israelis voted in last year’s Knesset elections points to big differences in terms of this issue. Only 8% of Meretz voters and 15% of Labor voters believe that those who deliver information to foreign elements are traitors, while a vast majority of National Union and United Torah Judaism support this claim.
The survey also revealed that 57% of Jews in Israel agree that in a case of an external conflict, human rights are less important than the security-national crisis. A breakdown of the responses to the two questions according to age and education level did not find significant differences between the various groups.
As for the source of donations to peace and human rights organizations, the public was nearly divided when asked whether there is a difference between donations from private sources and donations from governmental and international sources.
Some 48% believe there is no difference, while 40% believe there is. On the other hand, 55% think there is no difference between donations from Jewish elements and donations from non-Jewish elements, compared to 34% who think there is a difference.
Donations from Jews?
A breakdown of these data according to how Israelis voted in last year’s elections show there is no significant difference between voters of the various parties as to the question whether the source of the donations is a private or an official one.
As for the question whether the source of the donations is a Jewish or non-Jewish organization, most voters of secular and religious parties do not see a difference, but most Shas and United Torah Judaism believe that receiving donations from Jewish organizations is different from receiving donations from non-Jewish groups.
The survey’s participants were also asked about the foreign minister’s recent statements against Syria. “Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman recently slammed Syria’s policy and its president, Bashar Assad, blatantly and in a threatening manner. Do you believe that as the State of Israel’s foreign minister, he acted wisely or unwisely?”
Some 57% said that Lieberman’s move was unwise, compared to only 29% who supported his actions.
The War and Peace Index is funded by the Evens Program in Mediation and Conflict Resolution at Tel Aviv University. The telephone surveys were conducted by the B. I. Cohen Institute at Tel Aviv University in February 8-10 and included 508 respondents representing Israel’s adult population. The sampling for a sample of this size is about 4.5%.
Bilin marks five years of West Bank barrier protest: BBC
Despite the barrages of Israeli tear gas, sound grenades, foul-smelling spray and sometimes bullets – rubber coated and occasionally live – the protesters at the Palestinian village of Bilin keep going back for more.
And as they mark five years since their first protest against the barrier Israel has built on their doorstep in the occupied West Bank, they seem as determined as ever.
The villagers – together with Israeli and international activists – see their weekly Friday demonstrations as a leading example of Palestinian non-violent, grassroots protest.
They march to the wall, chanting slogans and carrying flags, and have even tried dressing up as characters from the film Avatar, and kicking around a football to mock an Israeli mobile phone advert.
But they say the protests are marred – it is hotly debated how often – as masked Palestinian teenagers use slingshots to hurl rocks at Israeli security forces.
The barrier, here a tall wire fence, snakes over a rocky hillside covered in olive trees, cutting the villagers off from – according to their lawyer – about 2 sq km (200 hectares or 500 acres) of their land.
Barrier moved
Last week, Israel finally began implementing a court order dating back more than two years to reroute the barrier near Bilin.
But the new route puts only a third of the land the villagers claim as their own on the Palestinian-controlled side.
Some of the remainder had previously been designated Israeli state land and allocated for the expansion of a Jewish settlement.
Mahmoud Samarra, 64, says he will get only a tiny fraction of his 93 dunums (9 hectares or 23 acres) of land back.
He points over the hill beyond the coils of barbed wire and the towering mesh of the fence.
Ritual barrier protests draw an Israeli security presence and sometimes Palestinian stone-throwing
“It was like paradise,” he says, describing how he planted olive trees with his children and watched them grow over 17 years.
Bilin residents are allowed to access their land during the daytime, through a pedestrian gate in the fence. But Mr Samarra has been only once.
The direct road for cars is long gone. Mr Samarra needs a stick to walk, and says he can barely cover the 1.5km to his land on foot.
And anyway, he says, much of the land is surrounded by the Jewish settlement of Matityahu. He says that his trees were uprooted when it was built, and now he is too afraid of the settlers to visit.
The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the fence’s route could not be justified purely on security grounds.
This settlement and the land around it was part of the controversy.
“I feel really, very sad,” says Mr Samarra. “To whom we can complain?”
Despite the Supreme Court ruling, as he sees it, “the judge and the enemy is the same”.
‘Sacrifice’
Back in the village, Subhiyeh Abu Rahma, 55, uses her headscarf to wipe away the tears that start to flow as she talks about her son, Bassem, who died last year, aged 31, after he was hit in the chest by a tear gas canister during a protest.
“I miss him every minute,” she says, sipping coffee in a small, bare concrete house, adorned with posters of her dead son.
He had brushed aside her suggestions that he renovate his house and look for a wife, focusing instead on the demonstrations, week after week.
“One has to sacrifice everything for his homeland – even if it’s a high price,” she says.
Bassem’s brother Ahmad says he believed in peace and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He even once suffered criticism among the villagers for choosing to wear a T-shirt showing the Israeli and Palestinian flags side by side, Ahmad adds.
‘Violent riot’
Israeli military spokeswoman Avital Leibovich said his death took place during “a violent riot”. But there is no obvious stone-throwing taking place in video footage of the incident, which can be seen on YouTube.
Palestinians say Bassem was hit by a high-velocity tear gas canister – a type which has been blamed for severe injuries at other protests.
Ms Leibovich would neither confirm nor deny that they are used.
She insists that these are not quiet protests “in which protesters come and sit on the ground”.
“Those rocks they’re throwing can kill people,” Ms Leibovich says.
Damage costing hundreds of thousands of shekels has been done to the fence and 77 Israeli soldiers have been injured in the past two years, she adds.
“They go to the fence and tear it down, then we have no choice but to show up and defend the fence. And then they start throwing rocks.”
Live ammunition is used only “rarely”, in cases of “life and death for our forces”, she said.
But the Bilin organisers deny trying to damage the fence, although a few sympathetic blog posts mention the use of wire cutters.
Suicide bombers
They say they try to discourage young protesters from hurling stones, and this happens only infrequently as a reaction, when the soldiers fire tear gas and rubber bullets first.
“We don’t have planes or tanks or rifles, all we have is the rock. And they are afraid of the rock,” says Mrs Abu Rahma.
Israel says the barrier was established to stop Palestinian suicide bombers entering from the West Bank.
But Palestinians point to its route, winding deep into the West Bank around Israeli settlements, and say it is a way to grab territory they want for their future state.
In 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an advisory ruling that the barrier was illegal and should be removed where it did not follow the Green Line, the internationally recognised boundary between the West Bank and Israel.
Ratib Abu Rahman, a protest organiser and university lecturer in social work, says the rerouting of the barrier is just a partial victory.
“We hope it will be all our land. If the wall is destroyed, that will be a big achievement,” he says.
He says he has been injured about 10 times, and his brother, another organiser, is still in an Israeli prison. Some 1,200 protesters have been hurt, and 85 arrested, he says.
“We pay a big price,” he says, “but we are in the right, this is Palestinian land.”
Bilin protestors dismantle part of fence: Ynet
Some 1,200 demonstrators gather in village west of Ramallah to mark fifth anniversary of their protest activities. Some manage to damage parts of separation fence and hurl stones at security forces, who try to keep distance and avoid clashes
Protestors mark fifth anniversary of anti-fence rallies: Some 1,200 people arrived in the West Bank village of Bilin, west of Ramallah, in order to protest against the separation fence being built in the area.The Palestinians reported that two protesters were injured in the demonstration.
Even before the rally began, its organizers pledged to bring many protestors in honor of the fifth anniversary of the village residents’ struggle against the fence.
No injuries reported during clashes with security forces in rallies against construction of West Bank security barrier; leftist leader Pollak arrested
Full story
Some of the demonstrators dismantled parts of the fence. Defense establishment officials said that the fence was badly damaged and that many stones were thrown at the security forces stationed in the area. The forces prepared for the rally in advance and were ordered to keep their distance and avoid a direct clash with the protestors.
Palestinians reported that during the rally they had managed to take control of a military post in the area, but army officials explained that the facility was only used as a canopy for the security forces.
The rally was also attended by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and politicians Mustafa Barghouti and Taysir Khalid.
The wives of Palestinian prisoners Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Saadat were also present.
Fayyad and the other leaders said they support the popular struggle, and urged the international community to intervene and have the fence removed.
Defense establishment officials said this wasn’t the first time the fence in the area had sustained damage, and that the damage caused by protestors in 2009 was estimated at NIS 400 million (about $107 million).
About 10 days ago, measurements commenced ahead of the anticipated changes in the route of a 1.7 kilometer (about a mile) section of the West Bank security barrier, which was built on land belonging to the village of Bilin.
It is estimated that it will be some time before the actual paving of the new route begins.
In 2007 the High Court of Justice ordered the State to partially dismantle and rebuild the fence so that it would not cut through Bilin. The barrier has been the focus of weekly demonstrations in the village for the past five years.
Britain denies advance knowledge of Dubai killing: The Guardian
Foreign Office dismisses reports it was told beforehand about Israeli plan to assassinate Hamas official
Britain has flatly denied having any advance knowledge of Israeli plans to assassinate a senior official of the Palestinian group Hamas in Dubai last month.
Whitehall sources today dismissed as “nonsense” a report claiming that Israel’s secret service, Mossad, had informed the UK of possible complications arising from the use of British passports in an unspecified “overseas operation”.
Today’s Daily Mail reports that “a member of Mossad … said the Foreign Office was also told hours before a Hamas terrorist chief was assassinated in Dubai. The tip-off did not say who the target would be or even where the hit squad would be in action.”
The paper quotes an unnamed “British security source” as saying: “This is a serving member of Israeli intelligence. He says the British government was told very, very briefly before the operation what was going to happen. There was no British involvement and they didn’t know the name of the target. But they were told these people were travelling on UK passports.”
But a Foreign Office spokesman said today: “Any suggestion that the government knew anything about the murder before it happened is completely untrue, including the use of UK passports.”
The Foreign Office has said it received details of the British passports last Monday “a few hours before the press conference [by police in Dubai]. We were able to respond to the Dubai authorities on the authenticity of the passports the next day.”
Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim, the head of Dubai police, admitted that the relevant embassies had not been contacted until shortly before the identities of the suspects were revealed. “We wanted to complete the investigations and be sure of everything before we contacted the embassies,” he said.
The Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, killed on January 19, is said by Israel to have been responsible for the killing of two Israeli soldiers as well as being in charge of the Islamist organisation’s clandestine relationship with Iran.
EDITOR: The murder in Dubai was not just an action to remove someone Israel saw as an important leader of the Hamas resistance against its continued brutal occupation, but also an iconic operation, a vengeful example of Israeli Chutzpah, cocking-a-snook at the world, clearly demonstrating Israeli gross disregard for international law, norms of diplomatic behaviour, and morality. As such it is but one example of Israeli exceptionalism – “other people’s rules, such an international law, international treaties, the Geneva convention – all those silly rules do not apply to us, because as the Chosen People, as the Jewish State, we are not covered by any rules bar our own.” The episode below is another example of this sick notion.
Israeli Embassy boasts Peer’s ‘hit on Dubai target’: Ynet
On backdrop of mounting tensions opposite London, embassy in Britain issues online Twitter message pertaining to Israeli tennis player’s win in Dubai quarterfinals
Hagit Klaiman
LONDON – It was a strange coincidence that the exposure of the hit squad which assassinated Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, an act attributed to the Mossad, coincided with an impressive winning streak by Israeli star tennis player Shahar Peer in the Emirate. More astonishingly the hit squad members were caught by Dubai security cameras disguised as tennis players. Sports reporters feasted over the concurrence.
However, the coincidence led to more embarrassing consequences. On Thursday, following Peer’s win over Danish opponent Caroline Wozniacki in the Dubai championships which qualified her for the semifinals, Israel’s UK Embassy posted a puzzling message on its Twitter account.
The post read “You heard it here first: Israeli tennis player carries out hit on Dubai target,” and was linked to a report informing of Peer’s victory on the International Jewish Press website.
Sources at the embassy told Ynet that the message was indeed posted by its official Twitter account, however minutes later it was removed from the page.
The clumsy report comes at a most inopportune time in terms of Israel-Britain relations which have been strained recently over the Dubai assassination affair.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that he expects clarifications from Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on the use of British passports in the hit operation.
Earlier this week Israel’s Ambassador to Britain Ron Prosor was summoned for a meeting in the British Foreign Office during which he noted he had no information on the matter.
It should be noted that the Twitter message was posted on Thursday at around 12 pm prior to Prosor’s meeting and was reported by the British Guardian newspaper’s website.
The Israeli Embassy in the UK issued a statement in response reading, “Naturally, messages on the Twitter network are characterized with a great deal of creativity. In this case the creativity was undoubtedly inappropriate. The ambassador told off the employee who wrote the message and it was removed.”
EDITOR: British display of surprise is seen to be what it is – a criminal coverup
Surprise, surprise… While Brown and Miliband, responsible for many of the war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, are going through the motions of shock and disgust, it becomes clear that the whole thing is a sham – the UK government were told in advance, and may indeed have collaborated on this murder.
Britain ‘knew Mossad was using fake passports for Dubai hit’: Haaretz
U.K. denies Daily Mail claims Israeli spies tipped off MI6 before killing Hamas’ Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
Israeli agents tipped off British intelligence that they were going to carry out an ‘overseas operation’ using fake British passports before assassinating a Hamas official in Dubai, the Daily Mail reported on Friday.
A Mossad operative said the U.K. Foreign Office was also told hours before Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was murdered in his hotel room by a hit squad the had entered the United Arab Emirates using fake foreign documents, the British newspaper said.
The tip-off did not say who the target would be or even where the hit squad would be in action. A British security source who met the Mossad agent was quoted by the Mail as saying:
“This is a serving member of Israeli intelligence. He says the British Government was told very, very briefly before the operation what was going to happen.”
The source added: “There was no British involvement and they didn’t know the name of the target. But they were told these people were travelling on UK passports.”
According to the paper’s source, the tip-off was not a request for permission to use British passports but more a “courtesy call” to let the security services know “a situation” might result from the operation. The Mossad man said Israeli intelligence chiefs understood British authorities would have to “slap them on the wrist” and added:
“The British government has to be seen to be going through the motions.”
U.K. officials had said previously they knew nothing of the affair until shortly before the Dubai authorities released details of the assassination earlier this week.
Britain, which on Thursday summoned Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor to ‘clarify’ the affair, could now face claims it condoned on extra-judicial killing.
A Foreign Office spokesman insisted last night it was “not correct” to claim that Britain knew in advance about the passports, the Mail said.
He said: “We received the details of the British passports a few hours before the press conference [by police in Dubai]. We were able to respond to the Dubai authorities on the authenticity of the passports the next day.”
EDITOR: ‘soul searching’ by Israeli Zionist pundit
The following is important, not in and of itself, but as evidence of the deep disaffection spreading across the bows of the Zionist state and polity. While the sentiment is clearly that of a passionate Zionist, who cannot and would not face reality, or, if you wish, look in the mirror, as he does not like what he sees, it is nontheless informative of a wide-ranging disgust felt by whole sectors of the Jewish society; it is also clear evidence of the political and social immaturity, a certain inability to act towards radical change, and a tendency to navel-gaze. The language used, of Israel-hating, is a throwback to the land of Zionist propaganda, of the tired stereotypes, showing an inability to get to a real analytical and critical stance, but always hover on the aesthetics of the conflict (“we do not look so good!”) rather than the ethics of it. The change will not come from such quarters, for sure.
I envy the people who hate Israel: Haaretz
By Bradley Burston
At times like these, I envy the people who passionately, frankly, with all their hearts, despise Israel.
Hate Israel enough, and the Jewish state’s failings and blunders, its self-satisfied blindness and its resultant self-destructive policies, cause not pain, but delight.
Hate Israel enough, and you’re spared all inclination to try to fix what’s wrong, to work to set it right. On the contrary, hate Israel enough, and you may come to believe not only that that the country deserves to be punished to the point of replacement by a different state – Israel may well do the job all by itself.
This is one of those times.
I have made my peace with the fact that this is not the same country I moved to, so long ago. I learned when I first came, that Israel was not the country I’d thought I was moving to.
But this is different. This time is a test for every Israeli, and so far, we are failing.
There was once a time when Israel longed to be a member in good standing of the community of nations. There was a time when one of its fondest goals was to end its status as a nation in quarantine, boycotted, unrecognized, unwanted, kept firmly at arm’s length.
No longer. Without asking its people, without a second thought, Israel, at its highest level, has taken an executive decision. Unable to beat the forces who want to see Israel as one of the world’s primary pariah states, it has resolved to join them.
Determined to take our fate into its own hands. Israel, at its highest level, has decided that the job of delegitimizing the Jewish state must not be left to foreigners and amateurs. Showing itself desperate to be a pariah state, Israel will now get it done on its own.
What the far-left from Britain to Berkeley has been been unable to bring off – a sense among Israel’s allies that Israel has become a heartless, morally heedless aggressor state worthy of sanction and shunning – the far-right in Israel’s own government, and in particular, its Foreign Ministry, seems determined to inculcate to the full.
We should have known that something like the Dubai assassination debacle was going to happen. The process of de-legitimizing Israel from within was going too slowly.
It was not enough choose a pathetic side issue, a Turkish television show with anti-Israel scenes, as grounds to humiliate with infantile malice the highly respected ambassador of Turkey – a nation whose relationship with Israel, though troubled, remains crucial from every strategic and diplomatic standpoint.
It was necessary for Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, who as the recently returned former ambassador to Washington certainly knows much better, to compound the insult on the eve of a fence-mending visit to Turkey by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, by declaring diplomatic war on the rest of the world:
Referring to the bellicose, confessed and convicted disgrace who is his foreign minister and superior, Ayalon told Channel Two, “His policy is proving to be effective. We will not allow a situation where every country will kick us. If there will be an attack [even if verbal or cultural] on Israel, we will leave all options open, including the expulsion of ambassadors.”
It wasn’t enough to threaten our relations with the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Austria and the whole of the European Union, as well as the emirates and other moderate Muslim states, by apparently violating the basic conventions of all civilized states in the Dubai murder.
It was necessary to stage a quick follow-up, for the sake of balance, perhaps, in going after our relations with Israel’s indispensable ally. In a gratuitous move breathtaking in its haughtiness, its ignorance of and disrespect for the United States and the American Jewish community, the Foreign Ministry – spearhead of Israel’s campaign against boycotts abroad – elected this week to boycott a meeting with five U.S. Congressmen visiting Israel.
Why? The representatives were visiting under the auspices of J Street. J Street, in the ministry’s eyes, is guilty of the crime of explicitly calling itself pro-Israel, while not agreeing wholeheartedly with everything the government of Israel says and does.
I have come to envy the people who hate Israel. They’ve got every reason to smile.
There was a time when you could reasonably blame Israel’s execrable public relations officials for much of Israel’s bad press. No longer. No one can defend this anymore. There’s too much that looks bad, and much too much of it is true.
Like so many of Israel’s recent actions, the motives for the Dubai assassination are debatable. The negative impact is inarguable.
My heart goes out to the people who care about Israel. My wife, who cares about this country as deeply as anyone, was singing this morning, but with a smile I have come to recognize as a sign of pain. ” … And they call the wind Pariah.”
All those years of isolation, of quarantine, are coming home to haunt us. Now it turns out that the contempt for the rest of the world that it bred in Israeli Jews, extended to contempt for immigrant Jews as well.
The response of many Israelis to what appears to be officially sanctioned theft, exploitation, and ruin of the identities of immigrants to Israel, was terrifying in its good humor, with morning talk-show hosts making fun of their Hebrew, even as they made light of their plight.
There are times when I envy the people who hate Israel. There is no sense of betrayal, not a tinge of loss. Only simhah la’ed, a vengeful joy in our sorrow.
This is what I have learned about the government of this place, and many of the voters who put it there. Intelligent people who are too smart to be able to see themselves clearly, render themselves stupid.
And countries which cannot bear to look, even if they have good reasons, render themselves dangerous – first of all, to themselves.
This is not the country I first came to. But I still care about it, even if I know it may care much less than I would like, about me.
I have come to envy the people who hate Israel, because they cannot feel the tragedy in the phenomenal possibility, the depth and breadth of humanity that is going to waste here.
Someday soon, if only because Avigdor Lieberman is indicted for money-laundering in countries which hate us, this is going to begin to turn around. I believe that.
I have to.
My father did not flee the Soviet Union just so his son could one day have the chance to live in a place just like it.
Dubai police call on Interpol to help arrest Mossad head: The Guardian
The father of Palestinian militant Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was killed recently, holds up a photograph of his son. Dubai police say they are virtually certain Mossad was behind the murder. Photograph: Hatem Moussa/AP
Interpol should help arrest the head of Mossad if Israel’s spy agency was responsible for the killing of a Hamas commander in Dubai, the emirate’s police chief said today.
In comments to be aired on Dubai TV, Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim called for Interpol to issue “a red notice against the head of Mossad … as a killer in case Mossad is proved to be behind the crime, which is likely now”.
International pressure intensified against Israel’s spy service as official “wanted” notices were released for the suspected team of Israeli secret agents accused of participating in the assassination. The faces of an 11-strong alleged hit squad appeared on the Interpol website this morning, 48 hours after authorities in the United Arab Emirates issued arrest warrants for the killing last month of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
Their offences are listed as “crimes against life and health”. The group stands accused of entering the emirate state using forged or stolen European identities, murdering the militant in his hotel and then fleeing the country on 19 January. The red wanted notices are not international arrest warrants, but allow details of fugitives to be released worldwide with the request that the wanted person be arrested and extradited.
Tamim said that the Dubai authorities were virtually certain that Mossad was behind the assassination of Mabhouh, as the incident threatened to turn into a diplomatic row between Israel and Britain over the use of false British passports.
“Our investigations reveal that Mossad is involved in the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. It is 99%, if not 100%, that Mossad is standing behind the murder,” Tamim told the National newspaper in the United Arab Emirates.
The Israeli ambassador, Ron Prosor, was at the Foreign Office this morning for a brief meeting to “share information” about the assassins’ use of identities stolen from six British citizens living in Israel, as part of the meticulously orchestrated assassination of Mabhouh at a luxury hotel last month.
“After receiving an invitation last night, I met with Sir Peter Ricketts, deputy-general of the British foreign minister,” Prosor said after the meeting. “Despite my willingness to co-operate with his request, I could not shed new light on the said matters.”
Britain has stopped short of accusing Israel of involvement, but to signal its displeasure the Foreign Office ignored an Israeli plea to keep the summons secret. “Relations were in the freezer before this. They are in the deep freeze now,” an official told the Guardian.
David Miliband, the foreign secretary, insisted he was determined to “get to the bottom of” how fake British passports were involved in the killing. He said he “hoped and expected” that Tel Aviv would co-operate fully with the investigation into the “outrage”.
Gordon Brown launched an investigation yesterday into the use of the fake passports, which will be led by the Serious Organised Crime Agency. The British embassy in Tel Aviv is also contacting the British nationals affected in the plot “and stands ready to provide them with the support they need”, the Foreign Office said last night.
“The British passport is an important part of being British and we have to make sure everything is done to protect it,” Brown told LBC Radio yesterday.
A UAE official said the number of suspects in the assassination had widened to at least 18. The official said the list included 11 people identified this week, two Palestinians in custody and five others. Two women were among the suspects.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz named the two Palestinians as Ahmad Hasnin, a Palestinian intelligence operative, and Anwar Shekhaiber, an employee of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. They were arrested in the Jordanian capital, Amman, and extradited to Dubai. Both worked for a property company in Dubai belonging to a senior official of Fatah, the political faction headed by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, the paper reported.
Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said there was no proof that Mossad was involved in Mabhouh’s killing in a Dubai hotel last month, but added that Israel had a “policy of ambiguity” on intelligence matters.
There were calls in Israel for an internal government inquiry into whether Mossad was responsible for identity theft from dual nationals, and criticism of its chief, Meir Dagan, for what critics described as a clumsy operation that risked alienating European allies.
“What began as a heart attack turned out to be an assassination, which led to a probe, which turned into the current passport affair,” a columnist, Yoav Limor, wrote in Israel Hayom, a pro-government newspaper. “It is doubtful whether this is the end of the affair.”
Yesterday more details emerged about the assassination plot:
• The Guardian learned that a key Hamas security official is under arrest in Syria on suspicion of having helped the assassins identify Mabhouh as their target.
• Authorities in Vienna have begun an investigation into whether Austria was used as a logistical hub for the operation. Seven of the mobile phones used by the killers had Austrian sim cards.
• Three of the killers entered Dubai with forged Irish passports that had numbers lifted from legitimate travel documents.
It is not the first British-Israeli row over the misuse of British passports. British officials are particularly angry because the Israeli government pledged that there would be no repeat of an incident in 1987, in which Mossad agents acquired and tampered with British passports.
Israel remains silent over use of forged British passports in Dubai assassination: The Guardian
Britain sends investigators to emirate as local police chief points finger at Mossad over killing of Hamas official
Britain today declared its “outrage” at the use of forged British passports by a hit squad that killed a Hamas official in Dubai, and dispatched police investigators to the Gulf emirate to collect evidence.
The officers from the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) arrived in the United Arab Emirates as the investigation focused increasingly on Israel. The Dubai police chief declared that he was “99%, if not 100% certain” of Mossad’s involvement, and called on Interpol to issue an arrest warrant for the Israeli spy chief, Meir Dagan. While SOCA is concentrating specifically on the misuse of British passports, it is understood that MI6 is conducting a broader, parallel probe into Israeli involvement.
Britain, Ireland and France stepped up diplomatic pressure on Israel, demanding explanations on the use of forged European passports by the assassins who targeted Mahmoud al-Mabhouh on 19 January.
However, the initial response from the Israeli envoys in London and Dublin was that they had nothing to say about the affair, bringing closer the prospect of a high-level diplomatic row. The Israeli embassy made no comment on its meeting at the French foreign ministry, which “expressed its deep concern about the malicious and fraudulent use of these French administrative documents.”
The US also looked likely to be drawn into the affair for the first time, after the Wall Street Journal reported that Mabhouh’s assassins had used American-registered credit cards to buy plane tickets.
The foreign secretary, David Miliband, said the Israeli ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, had been asked to shed light on how the identities of six British citizens living in Israel had been stolen and used by the assassins. The foreign secretary said any tampering with British passports was “an outrage”. Miliband said: “We wanted to give Israel every opportunity to share what it knows about this incident and we hope and expect that they will cooperate fully with the investigation.”
Prosor, however, said he was “unable to add information” on the matter, and his counterpart in Dublin, Zion Evrony, delivered a similar response to a top Irish diplomat. “I told him I don’t know anything about the event – beyond that it is not customary to share the content of diplomatic meetings,” Evrony said.
Ireland’s foreign minister Michael Martin revealed that a further two Irish passports were used in the assassination, bringing the total number of Irish travel documents involved to five as speculation grew that the size of the hit squad was bigger than the 11 originally reported.
British diplomats in Israel have been meeting the six British nationals caught up in the assassination plot when their identities were used by the hit team. Foreign office officials said that none of the six had reported their passports stolen so the documents used by the killers appeared to be sophisticated clones. SOCA said the numbers on the fake passports were the same as the genuine ones. It confirmed the photographs and signatures on the passports used in Dubai do not match those on passports issued by British authorities.
Miliband is to meet in Brussels on Monday with his Israeli counterpart, Avigdor Lieberman, who has insisted there is no proof of Israeli involvement, and stressed that his government employed a “policy of ambiguity” on intelligence matters.
In Dubai, however, the emirate’s police chief, Dahi Khalfan Tamim, called on local television for Interpol to issue “a red notice against the head of Mossad … as a killer in case Mossad is proved to be behind the crime, which is likely now.”
British officials said last night it was too early to speculate on what measures Britain might take against Israel if the government remained uncooperative.
One possible consequence could be Britain’s response to an Israeli request to change its ‘universal jurisdiction’ law on war crimes, under which a London magistrates court issued an arrest warrant in December for Israel’s former foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, for her role in the Gaza offensive a year earlier.
Livni cancelled her planned visit to London as a result, leading Miliband to promise the law would be changed. “Israel is a strategic partner and a close friend of the UK. We are determined to protect and develop these ties,” Miliband said.
However, there have been growing calls for the relationship to be reassessed if Israel is proved to have been involved in the forging of British passports in the Mabhouh assassination. Sir Richard Dalton, Britain’s ambassador to Iran from 2003 to 2006 said: “All this just says how pathetic and ludicrous the claim is that Israel is Britain’s strategic partner.”
The Conservative leader, David Cameron, said Israel must provide assurances it would ban Mossad from using UK travel papers. He also called on the government to make clear when it knew about the use of falsified British passports.
The Dubai authorities said they had asked Britain for assistance at the end of January, but the foreign office insists it was only informed of the British connection hours before it was made public.
EDITOR: Is Lieberman right, and the whole thing will blow away, with no effect on Israeli relations with other countries?
In a typical take on the whole affair, Israelis seem to deny the core issues behind the events, and stick with the presentational aspects. “is it good for the Jews?” seems to be the only concern, and the answer, as usual, is that it will make no difference what the “Goys are saying” (to paraphrase a famous saying by Ben Gurion). Who is to say that they are wrong, when the evidence of UK collusion is coming out as we speak?
Israel believes Dubai passport row won’t cause major crisis: Haaretz
Government officials estimate affair will pass unless new evidence emerges implicating Israel.
Israel’s government believes that a row over forged French, British, German and Irish passports used by the suspected assassins of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai is not likely to develop into a major diplomatic crisis.
Mabhouh was found dead in a Dubai hotel room in January, and the tiny emirate has named 11 people it believes carried out the killing. Charges that Israel’s Mossad spy agency was behind the assassination have been strengthened in recent days by revelations that seven of the suspects entered Dubai on British passports bearing the names of British-born Israelis.
“At this stage, there is no evidence linking Israel to the incident, and if that continues, the affair will subside quickly,” one senior Israeli official predicted. Nevertheless, he added, Israeli diplomats and intelligence personnel will hold additional conversations about the case with their British counterparts over the next few days.
Dubai police have accused Mossad of being behind the assassination, which Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has declined to confirm or deny, citing Israel’s policy of ambiguity on such matters.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal, citing sources in the United Arab Emirates, has reported that five of the suspects used credit cards issued by an American bank to buy plane tickets, among other outlays. However, the U.S. State Department has not yet demanded any clarifications from Israel, unlike the four European countries whose passports were forged by the assassins.
The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem is trying to cope with the diplomatic fallout. But though the Israeli ambassadors in both London and Dublin were summoned for clarification meetings Thursday, and France and Germany have also asked Israel for any information it has about who was behind the forged passports.
The Israeli citizens who identities were stolen are also still trying to deal with the fallout. One of them, Melvyn Adam Mildiner of Beit Shemesh, has been hiding at home since the news broke, and his wife said that their children are feeling very pressured, bewildered by the sudden interest in their father.
Another, Paul Keeley, decided to leave his home on Kibbutz Nachsholim for a few days and visit relatives in the center of the country in order to escape the journalists who have been besieging him for the past two days.
On Thursday, when one journalist entered the kibbutz and asked for Keeley’s house, an angry resident responded, “leave him alone. Give the poor man a little quiet.”
A friend said that Keeley’s father still lives in England, and that is how he found out that his identity had been used – when his father read it in the paper.
“I understand that he [Paul] is now afraid to leave the country,” the friend added.
“I’ve heard that Paul is planning to sue the state, and rightly so,” said another kibbutz member. “How can it be that a person sits at home, lives only to support his family, and they accuse him of an assassination overseas? We on the kibbutz all laughed over it, but for Paul, it’s a nightmare.
West turns diplomatic screw – but Israel refuses to crack: The Independent
‘We know nothing’, say ambassadors called for talks over how assassins who killed Hamas leader were holding foreign passports
Dubai yesterday explicitly accused Mossad of assassinating Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh on its soil, as David Miliband declared the use of British passports in the plot “an outrage” and demanded “full co-operation” from Israel in finding out what had happened.
The Foreign Secretary’s comments came after an apparently fruitless meeting in London between the Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor and Sir Peter Ricketts, the permanent secretary who heads Britain’s diplomatic service, which lasted just 14 minutes with no sign of any intelligence being shared. As the Israeli envoy left Whitehall, he said: “I was unable to add any information. I could not shed new light on the said matters”.
There was a similar outcome in Dublin where the Israeli ambassador, Zion Evrony, had an hour’s meeting with a senior Irish diplomat over how three Eire passports were used in the assassination. “I told him I know nothing about the event,” Mr Evrony said afterwards.
The international fallout into Mabhouh’s death showed no sign of abating. In Paris, the French government also summoned an Israeli diplomat, and Germany – often seen as one of the West European countries most sympathetic to Israel – called on Israel to “provide any information it had which might help explain the circumstances” of the Hamas militant’s death.
In Dubai, police chief Lt General Dahi Khalfan Tamim told the government-owned National newspaper that it was “99 per cent if not 100 per cent” certain that the Israeli intelligence agency was behind Mabhouh’s killing in a luxury hotel room last month.
In comments due to be aired on Dubai TV last night, he also called on Interpol to issue “a Red Notice against the head of Mossad… as a killer in case Mossad is proved to be behind the crime, which is likely now”.
Red Notices are a step short of an international arrest warrant but allow Interpol “to assist national police forces in identifying or locating those persons with a view to their arrest and extradition”. There was no immediate comment from Israel in response to the Dubai police chief’s claims.
Yesterday Interpol published Red Notices for the 11 suspects wanted in connection with the slaying at the Al Bustan Hotel, along with their photographs and “fraudulently used” names on the passports used in order “to limit the ability of the accused murderers from travelling freely using the same false passports”, the international anti-crime agency said. Interpol said the notices were not meant to stigmatise those whose identities were stolen, but to help clear them of suspicion by helping police apprehend the true suspects, whose offences are listed as “crimes against life and health”.
Meanwhile, Hamas leaders yesterday identified the two Palestinian suspects being held by Dubai authorities in connection with the assassination as members of security forces loyal to the Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, implying but not explicitly saying that Fatah collaborated with Israel in carrying out the killing.
They named the two as Ahmed Hasanein and Anwar Shehaybar, saying they were Gazans who left the Strip after Hamas seized power from Fatah there in 2007. One of the two is said to have been in contact with a member of the hit squad, “Peter”, in the days before the assassination, and both are believed to have been arrested in the Jordanian capital, Amman, before being extradited to Dubai. Responding to the Hamas allegations, Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib said: “We’re confident the PA was not involved.”
In London, Mr Miliband, stressed that the Israeli government had been told of the depth of British concern and insisted that an inquiry by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency ordered by Prime Minister Gordon Brown was not merely “going through the motions”.
“What the Permanent Secretary made clear is that we hope and expect Israel will co-operate fully with the investigation and to send back to his government the seriousness with which we are addressing this situation. There has obviously been a very serious incident involving British passports and British passport holders who woke up yesterday morning extremely worried. The most important thing is to get to the bottom of the misuse of fraudulent British passports.”
The Foreign Secretary is expected to discuss the issue with his Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman on Monday when the pair will be in Brussels.
Security sources have confirmed that the threatened end to the intelligence sharing between the UK and Israel was yet to materialise.
The officials stressed that normal service would continue, unless it was conclusively proven that Mossad had used forged British passports in the murder.
Scandanavian financial institutions drop Elbit due to BDS pressure: The Electronic Intifada
Adri Nieuwhof, 19 February 2010
Despite Israel’s oppressive tactics against it, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement has marked additional victories with many institutional investors divesting from or blacklisting Israeli military contractor Elbit Systems. One of the largest Dutch pension funds told The Electronic Intifada today that it is selling off its shares in Elbit.
The wave of divestment follows campaigning by Palestinian organizations and international solidarity activists to divest from companies profiting from the Israeli occupation.
A crucial role was played by the Palestinian Stop the Wall Campaign in convincing the Norwegian State Pension Fund to divest from Elbit Systems last September. In response, Israel detained campaign activist Mohammad Othman after he returned from a trip to Norway where he met Minister of Finance Kristin Halvorsen. Subject to office raids and its activists arrested, Stop the Wall has become a key target of Israeli attempts to suppress the nonviolent movement BDS. However, these repressive tactics haven’t stopped the BDS momentum.
In early September, Norway’s Minister of Finance Kristin Halvorsen announced that the Norwegian State Pension Fund had sold its shares in Elbit, worth $5.4 million. The pension fund’s Council on Ethics assessed that investments in Elbit constitute an unacceptable risk of contributing to serious violations of fundamental ethical norms because of the company’s involvement in the construction of Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank. “We do not wish to fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international humanitarian law,” Halvorsen explained.
According to the Who Profits from the Occupation? website, a subsidiary of Elbit also supplies the Israeli army with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to the Israeli army. These UAVs, better known as drones, are used during Israeli military attacks in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Following the decision by the Norwegian State Pension Fund, Kommunal Landspensjonkasse (KLP), one of the largest life insurance companies in Norway, also divested from Elbit. The move by heavyweights Halvorsen and KLP to divest led Danwatch, the Danish financial watchdog, to add last month Elbit to its blacklist of 35 companies that are disqualified from investments due to ethical considerations.
The largest bank in Denmark and a leading player in the Scandinavian financial markets, Danske Bank followed suit a week later. “We handle clients’ interests, and we do not want to put customers’ money in companies that violate international standards,” said Thomas H. Kjaergaard, the staff member responsible for socially responsible investment at Danske Bank. The bank also blacklisted Africa-Israel, a company led by diamond mogul Lev Leviev which has been involved in the illegal construction of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Kjaergaard noted that the bank is determining whether other companies with activities in the Israeli settlements qualify for exclusion.
In yet another blow to Elbit, Danske Bank’s decision was followed by PKA Ltd., one of the largest Danish pension funds, selling its shares in Elbit worth $1 million. The PKA’s investment director Michael Nelleman was quoted by the Stop the Wall campaign explaining that “the International Court of Justice stated that the barrier only serves military purposes and violates Palestinian human rights” (“Two Danish funds exclude Wall-building companies,” 27 January 2010).
Other major institutional investors in Scandinavia have also excluded Elbit from their portfolios due to ethical concerns. Folksam, Sweden’s largest asset manager, responded to an inquiry regarding its investments in either Elbit or Africa-Israel, that the fund did not have holdings in either company. Folksam’s Head of Corporate Governance Carina Lundberg Markow wrote to The Electronic Intifada: “We have a strict policy regarding activity on occupied land.” She noted that KPA Pension, a leading Swedish pension company in the public sector, also did not have holdings with either Elbit or Africa-Israel. Lundberg Markow also referred to discussions with Swedish company Assa Abloy about these policies and the company’s decision to remove a factory from the occupied West Bank in October 2008. Folksam influenced Assa Abloy’s decision to remove the factory.
The movement by Scandinavian institutional investors to divest from or exclude Elbit Systems will influence other European investors to do the same. The two largest Dutch pension funds, ABP and PFZW are the focus of a coalition of Palestine solidarity activists, organizations and concerned citizens who are currently pressuring the two pension funds to follow the Scandinavian example and divest from Elbit and other companies profiting from the Israeli occupation.
This pressure seems to be paying off. ABP informed The Electronic Intifada today that it has sold its US $2.7 million shares in Elbit Systems.
Adri Nieuwhof is a consultant and human rights advocate based in Switzerland.