Thursday, 26 August 2010 12:00
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns the attack launched on Wednesday, 25 August 2010, by members of the General Intelligence Service (GIS) on staff members of ‘al-Haq’ organization in Ramallah, while documenting GIS’s attempts to stop an assembly organized by Palestinian political factions and civil society organizations in protest a decision by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to participate in direct negotiations with Israel. PCHR calls upon the government in Ramallah to respect public freedoms and to ensure respect for the work of human rights organizations and to provide protection for their personnel.
According to statements made by ‘al-Haq’ and according to Wissam Ahmed, 33, Program Officer at al-Haq, on Wednesday afternoon, 25 August 2010, a number of al-Haq’s staff members got out of their offices as they heard noise coming from the main street. They had information that GIS members were attempting to stop the assembly of political and civil society organizations which was scheduled to be organized in the hall of the Protestant Church opposite to al-Haq offices. The assembly was supposed to discuss the positions towards direct negotiations between PNA and the government of Israel. In the meanwhile, Wissam Ahmed, 33, Program Officer at al-Haq, took a video camera and went to the street to film the event, but he was beaten by a person in civilian clothes. Later, it was found out that this person was a GIS member. The camera was taken from Ahmed and thrown onto the ground. After Ahmed had managed to get his camera back, he asked why he was prevented from filming the event. In response, more than 10 GIS members surrounded him and beat him on the head and the neck. They took his camera and pushed him away.
Mrs. Nina Ata Allah, Head of the Observation and Documentation Department at ‘al-Haq’, who intervened to stop the GIS attack on her colleague, was also attacked. A GIS member stepped on her feet. She was injured in the feet as a result and was transferred to the hospital of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Ramallah for treatment. Sources from ‘al-Haq’ reported that Mr. Shaawan Jabarin, asked some police members who were in the scene about the camera. One of them told him that it was with GIS members.
It should be noted that this attack on staff members of al-Haq is part of attacks launched by the Palestinian security services in Ramallah on a peaceful march which was organized with the participation of members of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Secretaries General of a number of political parties, leaders of the civil society organizations as well as independent figures. Security forces prevented the participants in the march from organizing a press conference which was scheduled to be held in the hall of the Protestant Church. A member of the Executive Committee of the PLO was arrested as well.
In view of the above, PCHR:
Strongly condemns this attack by GIS members on staff members of al-Haq and the confiscation of their camera.
Reiterates that it is important that the Palestinian security forces respect the work of human rights organizations and to ensure protection to their personnel in all circumstances.
Points with concern to the recurrence of attacks on the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the right to peaceful assembly. PCHR stresses that these two rights are guaranteed by the Palestinian Basic Law and by international human rights instruments.
Gideon Levy: The Media in Israel is the biggest collaborator with the Occupation: MAP
This week MAP attended a CAABU organised meeting with Ha’aretz journalist and editor Gideon Levy in London.
Mr Levy spoke of the “ongoing process of dehumanization and demonizing” of the Palestinians in the Israeli media, which despite being “professional and free” chooses to turn a blind eye to the occupation.
This is particularly true when it comes to reporting on the situation in Gaza. Israeli journalists have been banned from entering Gaza since November 2006. Mr Levy described how during Operation: Cast Lead the deaths of two Israeli dogs received front page coverage whilst news of hundreds of Palestinian casualties was confined to the back pages.
He described Israel as “an Apartheid state by any criteria” and spoke of how the chances of change coming from within Israeli society “are zero’ as people are ‘in a coma’ towards the Occupation. He went on to say that as change “cannot come from within it will have to come from Washington”.
In response to the news of upcoming peace talks, Mr Levy described them as an “ongoing masquerade” as “the absence of leadership in Israel means that people are happy to negotiate forever, the danger is that the failure of the talks might initiate a more violent phase”.
The European Union has criticised Israel for convicting an organiser of weekly Palestinian protests against the West Bank separation barrier.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she was “deeply concerned” about Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, who now faces several years in prison.
She said he was a “human rights defender” committed to non-violent protest.
Israel’s foreign ministry described her statement as highly improper.
‘Legitimate right’
Jailed since December, Abdullah Abu Rahmeh was convicted by a military court on Tuesday of inciting protests in the West Bank village of Bilin and of participating in the protests without a legal permit.
Lady Ashton expressed deep concern “that the possible imprisonment of Mr Abu Rahmeh is intended to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest against the existence of the separation barriers in a non-violent manner,” her office said.
“The EU considers the route of the barrier where it is built on Palestinian land to be illegal,” it quoted her as saying in a statement.
Her statement drew a sharp rebuke from Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor, who said that any “interference with a transparent legal procedure is highly improper”.
Sentencing is scheduled for next month, after which Abu Rahmeh – a 39-year-old schoolteacher – will appeal the conviction, his lawyer has said.
Weekly protests
Activists have been protesting against the barrier for five years in what they say are mostly peaceful demonstrations. Some demonstrations have been attended by stone-throwing Palestinian youths.
Israel says it considers the protests to be “violent and illegal”. Israeli security services have fired tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and on occasion live rounds at protesters.
There have been two fatalities among protesters and an American peace activist suffered brain damage after being hit by a tear gas canister.
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 – which are illegal under international law – 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.
Baroness Ashton ‘deeply concerned’ at court’s ruling in case of West Bank protest
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Thursday, 26 August 2010
Baroness Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, yesterday issued an unusually sharp rebuke to Israel over a military court’s conviction of a Palestinian activist prominent in unarmed protests against the West Bank separation barrier.
Lady Ashton said she was “deeply concerned” that Abdallah Abu Rahma was facing a possible jail sentence “to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest against the separation barriers in a non-violent manner”.
Though acquitted on two charges – including one of stone-throwing – Mr Abu Rahma, 39, a leader of the anti-barrier protests which have taken place every Friday for five years in the West Bank village of Bil’in, was convicted on Monday on another two: “incitement” and “organising and participating in an illegal demonstration”.
He is in jail, awaiting sentencing next month. He was detained last December by troops who arrived at his Ramallah home at 2am in seven jeeps as part of what anti-barrier activists say has been an escalating wave of arrests of protesters in West Bank villages, angry about the barrier and settlements encroaching on Palestinian land.
Pointing out that the European Union regarded the barrier as “illegal” where – as at Bil’in – it was built on Palestinian land, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy said the EU considered Mr Abu Rahma, who works as a teacher at a private school, to be “a human rights defender committed to non-violent protest”.
The protest by Lady Ashton, who was yesterday accused by Israel’s foreign ministry of “interfering” in the country’s judicial process, follows mounting concern by Western diplomats over the severity of measures taken by Israeli security forces against the mainly rural protests. Officials from several European countries, including Britain, were present for the verdict in the Ofer military court on Monday.
Her intervention was partly designed to demonstrate that the EU representatives will continue closely to watch developments on the ground in the West Bank while direct peace negotiations, due to start in Washington next week, get under way.
The military judge also acquitted Mr Abu Rahma of a charge of illegal arms possession which arose from a collection of used tear gas canisters and bullet cases he had been making to demonstrate that police and troops used violence against protesters.
The Popular Struggle Co-Ordination Committee said the “absurd” charge demonstrated the lengths the military was prepared to go to “to silence and smear unarmed dissent”.
It added that the incitement charge had been upheld even though it was based on the testimonies of minors who had been arrested in the middle of the night, and which the court recognised had defects. No other evidence had been offered, despite the routine filming of the protests by the security forces. It said the charge of organising demonstrations had not been used since the first intifada, from 1987 to 1993.
In 2008 Mr Abu Rahma was given an award by the International League for Human Rights in Berlin for “outstanding service in the realisation of basic human rights”. He met “the Elders”, a group of global statesmen and women including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, when they made a solidarity visit to Bil’in last year.
The protests at Bil’in, the highest profile of several in West Bank villages, have seen clashes between security forces using tear gas and rubber bullets and stone-throwing youths. After a protester was killed there in April 2009, military prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence for an investigation.
Construction work on rerouting part of the barrier at Bil’in finally began this year after the state had twice been found in contempt by the Supreme Court for failing to implement a 2007 court order to reroute the barrier.
Yigal Palmor, Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: “In a country in which even open supporters of Hamas and Hizbollah enjoy freedom of speech, Lady Ashton’s accusations sound particularly hollow. If she thinks she can do a better job than the defendant’s lawyer, she should say so. Otherwise, interfering in a transparent legal process in a democratic country is a very peculiar way to promote European values.”
But Mr Abu Rahma’s lawyer, Gaby Lasky, said: “The international community must take a tough stand on this issue, and I am happy that the political motivation of the indictment against a human rights defender was clear to the EU from attending the hearings.”
The Co-ordination Committee, a loose body of protest organisers, said yesterday there had been a “dramatic” increase in arrests. Of 93 made at Bil’in alone in five years, 46 were made since July of last year. At the more recent flashpoint of Nabi Saleh, there had been 41 arrests in the last eight months.
Lady Ashton’s support for Palestinian Abdallah Abu Rahmah deemed highly improper by Israeli foreign ministry
Dressed as detainees, Protesters against the West Bank separation barrier sit in front of Israeli troops in the village of Bil'in. Photograph: Majdi Mohammed/AP
Lady Ashton, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, today took the unusual step of publicly criticising the conviction in an Israeli military court of a Palestinian man in connection with protests against the West Bank separation barrier.
Ashton said she was “deeply concerned” the man may be imprisoned as a deterrent to others. The intervention, a week before the start of the first direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians for more than 18 months, is likely to irritate Israeli politicians. A government spokesman described it as “highly improper”.
According to an EU source, Ashton’s statement was intended to show the EU’s support for peaceful opposition to the barrier and to demonstrate to the Israelis that the EU was monitoring events on the ground in the context of next week’s negotiations.
After an eight-month military trial, Abdullah Abu Rahmah, 39, a protest leader in the West Bank village of Bil’in, was convicted yesterday of incitement and organising illegal demonstrations. He was cleared of stone throwing and possession of arms. Abu Rahmah, who has been in custody since his arrest last December, faces a maximum jail term of 10 years when he is sentenced next month.
Bil’in has been at the forefront of largely peaceful protests by Palestinian villagers and Israeli and international activists against the route of the separation barrier in the West Bank.
However, the protests have often included stone-throwing by youths, which the military counter with teargas and rubber bullets . In April 2009 a protester was killed when he was hit by a teargas canister.
Today’s statement by Ashton, the EU high representative, said: “The EU considers Abdallah Abu Rahmah to be a human rights defender committed to non-violent protest against the route of the Israeli separation barrier … The EU considers the route of the barrier where it is built on Palestinian land to be illegal.
“The high representative is deeply concerned that the possible imprisonment of Mr Abu Rahmah is intended to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest against the existence of the separation barriers in a non-violent manner.”
The EU attended all court hearings into the case over the past eight months.
Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, said: “It is very unusual for a foreign dignitary to express views on the justice system of another country. If [Ashton] has found a flaw in the system, she should say so. Otherwise it’s unclear why she should interfere in the proceedings. The fact that she has expressed a view and has disregarded the evidence is highly improper.”
Abu Rahmah’s lawyer – “and presumably that lawyer is not Lady Ashton” – was the correct person to the promote the best interests of the accused, Palmor added.
Gaby Lasky, Abu Rahmah’s lawyer, welcomed Ashton’s statement. “Soldiers have killed and injured dozens and hundreds of protesters in the attempt to stop the Palestinian popular struggle, but have failed,” she said. “They are now trying to illegitimately use the courts and the legal system in the same way. The international community must take a tough stand on this issue, and I am happy that the political motivation of the indictment against a human rights defender was clear to the EU from attending the hearings.”
According to the Popular Struggle Co-ordination Committee, the case was the first to use Israeli military law on organising illegal demonstrations since the first intifada, or uprising, which began in 1987.
Abu Rahmah’s conviction, the committee said, was “based only on testimonies of minors who were arrested in the middle of the night and denied their right to legal counsel”. The prosecution had failed to provide documentary evidence against Abu Rahmah despite the filming of all protests by the army.
According to his supporters, Abu Rahmah was arrested at 2am after soldiers broke down the door of his house.
An Israeli military court convicted Abdullah Abu Rahmeh for incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations against Israel’s barrier in the West Bank.
The European Union’s top diplomat criticized Israel on Wednesday over the conviction of a leader of Palestinian protests against Israel’s West Bank separation barrier, calling the activist a human rights defender.
In a strongly worded statement, Catherine Ashton said she was deeply concerned by the guilty verdict against Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, one of the organizers of weekly marches from the Palestinian village of Bil’in to the Israeli-built West Bank barrier nearby.
Israel started taking a harder line against demonstrations in the West Bank late last year, arresting activists and keeping protesters from reaching the barrier. Abu Rahmeh, a 39-year-old schoolteacher, is among the most prominent of those detained in a string of arrests.
Jailed since December, he was convicted in a military court Tuesday of inciting protesters to attack Israeli troops and for participating in protests without a legal permit. The case has drawn international attention, and foreign observers and reporters attended the hearing.
The EU sees the barrier’s route as illegal and views Abu Rahmeh as a human rights defender committed to nonviolent protest, Ashton said.
Ashton suggested the conviction was intended to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest against the existence of the separation barriers in a nonviolent manner.
European Union Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton speaking in Brussels on June 17, 2010
Photo by: AP
Ashton’s statement drew a sharp rebuke from Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor, who said Israeli law guarantees freedom to protest and that the EU diplomat’s interference with a transparent legal procedure is highly improper.
The General Delegation of the PLO to the United States also condemned Abu Rahmeh’s conviction “in the strongest possible terms.”
Abu Rahmeh’s lawyer, Gaby Lasky, said the charges could carry a jail sentence of several years. Sentencing is scheduled for next month, after which Abu Rahmeh will appeal the conviction, she added.
Lasky noted that Israel’s Supreme Court has ordered the barrier be moved at Bil’in. They try a person who organized protests against a fence that is itself illegal. “This is an unfitting use of legal measures,” she said.
The barrier, which Israel began building in the midst of a wave of attacks by suicide bombers from the West Bank, runs through the village’s farmland. Palestinians view it as an attempt by Israel to seize land in the West Bank.
The Bil’in protests, attended by villagers as well as Israeli and international activists, usually involve a mix of marching, chanting and throwing rocks at Israeli troops. A Bil’in man, and five in the nearby village of Na’alin, have been killed and hundreds wounded by soldiers since the protests began in 2005.
Dozens of Israeli troops and police also have been injured.
by SHALOM BOGUSLAVSKY
“I think I will always want to stay behind the scenes. I think that’s where I have the greatest influence. When everyone else is busily thinking about what to say on stage, I’m busily building the stage, [deciding] who actually listens to you. After they start listening, then we can talk about what we’ll say.”
– Moshe Klughaft, in an interview to Israel’s Channel 7 television.
Introducing Moshe Klughaft: Forbes magazine has crowned him the second most influential strategic consultant in Israel, and one of the 300 most influential young adults. He is the man behind the campaigns against the New Israel Fund, both the one by Im Tirzu and the Arab Gas campaign. Obviously, all links between the two campaigns have been denied. Later on we’ll see just why such denial is one of the cornerstones of the system.
Klughaft was also the behind-the-scenes leader of the reserve soldiers’ struggle after the second Lebanon war, a struggle which is already known to have been hiding a separate agenda: preventing the progress of the Gaza disengagement program. Front and center to this effort was Ronen Shoval. After this struggle Shoval, and his number two, Erez Tadmor, took part in an Institute for Zionist Strategy (IZS) young leadership program run by Israel Harel. Last week both organizations (Im Tirzu and the IZS) attacked the academic world, but denied any links between the parent organization and the subsidiary one, claiming that there was merely “a certain degree of ideological congruence” between them. After completing the training program Shoval founded Im Tirzu and Moshe Klughaft became his strategic consultant.
Klughaft is a man of many talents and schemes, but it seems that the thing that most concerns him is how to convey the right wing, religious message to secular people in their own language. Here is a quote, straight from the horse’s mouth:
For religious Zionism and the right, in general, even to penetrate the public, they must move into the colorful, secular rhetoric of the playing field they are in. What you think and how you see the world is nice, but when you get to this specific playing field of politics, of public action, you have to play by the rules that suit the place you are in.
In the two years following the disengagement, which is when planning started for the coordinated attack against everything that bears even the faintest scent of democracy, this point became critical. We are beginning to feel the results on this campaign only now. The leaders of the right wing religious public, the public which sees itself following Rabbi Kook as the ‘vanguard’ and the secular public as the ‘troops’, looked back and saw that the troops were no longer with them. In demonstrations against disengagement, almost all demonstrators wore yarmulkes, which is a hallmark of identification with the religious right.
This led to a strengthening of the separatist, ultra-orthodox wing, which has stopped seeing the Zionist state as “the beginning of redemption” and instead preaches right wing post-Zionism. According to this belief, secular Zionism has finished its job and it is now time for a “faith-based revolution”. The more traditional right wing, represented in the “Yesha council” settler leadership, which believes that secular people have a role in the divine plan as “the ass on which the Messiah shall ride upon” understood that the new trend distances secular people from the right wing. If it were to continue, the right wing would stop leading the country and become a marginal faction, just another one of many religious factions. Israel Harel along with his secular disciple Ronen Shoval have both stated that the rise of the ultra-orthodox nationalist post-Zionism is what called them to action.
It is important to understand how the religious right reads reality. Most of the Israeli public leans to the right, but it is a pragmatic right. In other words, it is a right which could, following various real-world constraints, declare its support for two states for two nations, freeze construction of the settlements, et cetera. In contrast, as far as the religious right is concerned, it is not some constraint of reality that leads to this but rather “a weakness of resolve” on the one hand and subversive elements of impurity that have lodged themselves in powerful focus points: civil society organizations, the academic world, the media, and the courts, on the other hand.
They believe the Jewish nation, which Rabbi Kook portrays as a direct delegation of divine presence onto the world, was contaminated by that riffraff and exchanged Messianic zeal with a passion for the comforts of secular life. They are of the opinion that when the Nation of Israel is committed to their vision the constraints of reality will have no meaning. The leaders of this group came to the understanding that in order to salvage the religious right, secular people must be recruited, ones who are not interested in messianic theology but self-identify as Zionists and are open to the idea that the problems of Israel are not due to stupid policy but rather, to internal subversiveness.
How do you do it? Like this: “You have to make this arena into an exciting one, you just have to. You have to bring in people so that some will say one thing and some will say another. You have to have it be exciting, colorful, to get people to talk about you, to evoke arguments, to have factions leaning this way and that,” said Moshe Klughaft. He has long since developed a theory of “in disunion there is strength.” According to Klughaft, decisions like the Gaza disengagement were made possible because secular people supported parties like Shinui and the Retired Citizens Party, who did not declare a policy in matters of state, and these parties won votes due to other issues, but when it came down to brass tacks, they voted for what he saw as a left-wing policy. The religious right must deploy niche organizations and parties which are attractive to a broad secular public which would, at the moment of truth, vote for the Greater Eretz Yisrael. Pay attention to this: “Do you want to preserve Eretz Yisrael? Wipe it off your map! If it is important, shut up and don’t talk about it.”
That is why the Institute of Zionist Strategy, who established the Yesha Council, and its subsidiary, Im Tirzu, whose opinions on this matter are also well known, consistently avoid taking a stand on the matter of Greater Eretz Yisrael and object so vociferously when anyone tries to mark them as “right wing” organizations. No, they deal in “Zionist consciousness”, in strengthening the flagging national spirit, and in battling that very same riffraff (which would translate as “post Zionists”, when spoken in secular vernacular) which contaminates them: mainly democratic organizations, the academic world, the media, and the courts.
Over the past two yeas, many of us have felt that the democratic camp in Israel has been under a well-planned, coordinated attack. Factual information that has recently begun surfacing confirms that feeling: during [former Prime Minister] Olmert’s term in office, organizations from the old-style religious right, whose status has eroded continually since the eighties – the Yesha Council, the MAFDAL orthodox party, and the Hatchiya party which may be the clearest expression of this ideology – got together and planned, under the baton of one of the most talented and innovative strategic consultants in Israel, the move that would bring them back to the front of the stage as the hegemonic ideology of Israel.
Elements of the system are “laundering” the ideology of the messianic, religious right into terms which the secular public can more easily swallow, creating the appearance of a spontaneous national movement by evoking various organizations, with apparently-different agendas, led by Im Tirzu, which introduce themselves as grassroots activists while in fact they are nurtured, linked, and subsidized by the religious right and secular old boys network, where the secular messianic perception is shared (such as [Minister of Education] Gideon Sa’ar, who had been a member of Hatchiya Youth). This is all done while denying completely and untruthfully any connection between the various persons and organizations involved, and hiding the Greater Eretz Yisrael ideology, which is not shared by most of the public, until that “moment of truth.” The primary working method is an attack on the democratic forces which could call a halt on them, an attack which relies on the willingness of a besieged society to seek guilty parties and the “left wing traitor” stereotype, which has been successful inserted into public discourse.
The first stage was an attack on the institutions of civil society. The second stage, the one we are currently experiencing, is an attack on the academic world. I wager that as soon as this campaign burns itself out, the media will be attacked, and thereafter, the judiciary system. In other words, anyone who can resist, criticize, and expose the true face of this organization will be slurred, sullied, and named as suspected of subversion and treason – before even raising objections about it.
And then they’ll go into politics. Everyone knows that. It could even happen in the coming elections. Following strategic consultant Moshe Klughaft’s system, I think we can expect more than one party, all of which will run on different versions of the same message, position themselves as “center” and talk about “Zionism”, “education”, “society, and “a struggle against post-Zionism.”
On a personal note, I really don’t feel like writing very much about Im Tirzu and its friends and relations. In fact, I’d much prefer to write less about politics and more about other things. But I sense danger, and my gut feelings about what is going on in this story have – so far – all turned out exactly as I feared. I can only hope that I am wrong about the next steps. What I propose is that we stop responding only after we get slammed on the head with yet another brick. What is being exposed here, and in other places, is only the tip of the iceberg. Storm the Internet, search, dig deep, cross-reference, expose – and tell the story.
Shalom Boguslavsky was born in Russia in 1976, has been living in Jerusalem since 1981, studies history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and makes his living as a group leader, facilitating discussions about Jewish-Israeli identity, dialogue & conflict management. This article originally appeared in Hebrew on the blog Put Down the Scissors And Let’s Talk About It. It was translated with the author’s permission by Dena Shunra.
PM on upcoming talks with Palestinians: If we get security ensuring no missiles will fall on Tel Aviv, we will be able to move quickly toward a comprehensive arrangement.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intends to lead the direct negotiations with the Palestinians due to be inaugurated in Washington on September 2. Netanyahu says he plans to focus on security arrangements before addressing final borders.
Speaking behind closed doors, Netanyahu said the success of the talks will hinge on understandings between the leaders. “I will want to reach agreed principles with the Palestinian leadership and there will be no need for many teams [of negotiators] and hundreds of meetings …. If I get the security that will ensure that no missiles will fall on Tel Aviv, it will be possible to move quickly toward a comprehensive arrangement,” he was quoted as saying.
Netanyahu said during his meetings he wants to discuss security issues with the Palestinians first; only then would the two sides focus on borders of a future Palestinian state.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had announced Friday that Israel and the Palestinian Authority would resume direct negotiations for the establishment of a Palestinian state. The talks will be inaugurated at a two-day summit in Washington, which will follow an 18-month lull in the negotiations.
In addition to Netanyahu and PA President Mahmoud Abbas, U.S. President Barack Obama has invited to the summit Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, and the head of the Quartet, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Obama will hold separate meetings with each of the leaders at the White House on September 1, and will then host a joint dinner. The inauguration ceremony will take place a day later under Clinton’s auspices. The event will probably include speeches by the leaders and initial negotiations about the first round of talks, which are likely to take place shortly after.
Sources close to Netanyahu said on Saturday that most of the negotiations will take place in Israel or the region and not in the United States.
Both Clinton and U.S. special envoy George Mitchell said over the weekend that the negotiations will aim to reach a permanent settlement and the establishment of a Palestinian state in a year. They said the negotiations will focus on all core issues: Jerusalem, borders, refugees, security, settlements and water.
Clinton noted that there will be no preconditions – this is considered a major achievement for Netanyahu, who insisted that the direct talks take place unconditionally.
In her announcement over the weekend, Clinton also did not mention the September 26 expiry of the freeze on settlement construction.
The Quartet’s announcement also made no mention of the construction freeze or building in East Jerusalem. It just referred to its previous statement on the subject, which calls for a construction freeze.
The Quartet issued a statement calling for talks that “lead to a settlement … that ends the occupation which began in 1967 and results in the emergence of an independent, democratic and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors.”
The Americans offered few details at the press conference that followed, but Clinton recognized that there would be obstacles and warned that the enemies of peace would try to foil the talks.
“As we move forward, it is important that actions by all sides help to advance our effort, not hinder it. There have been difficulties in the past, there will be difficulties ahead. Without a doubt, we will hit more obstacles,” Clinton said.
“But I ask the parties to persevere, to keep moving forward even through difficult times and to continue working to achieve a just and lasting peace in the region.”
The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said the Israelis “have a choice now whether to choose settlements or peace. I hope they choose peace. I hope that Mr. Netanyahu will be our partner in peace … and we can do it.”
The Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, dismissed the direct talks as a U.S. attempt to “fool the Palestinian people.” But U.S. officials said Hamas would have no role in them.
Facebook images of an Israeli servicewoman posing with blindfolded Palestinians have caused a storm. Now two former female conscripts have spoken out about their own experiences
Israeli servicewomen train to become army instructors. Some former recruits have spoken out against the military action in the occupied territories. Photograph: IDF/Polaris Images
It was a single word scrawled on a wall at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that unlocked something deep inside Inbar Michelzon, two years after she had completed compulsory military service in the Israeli Defence Force.
The word was “occupation”. “I really felt like someone was speaking the unspoken,” she recalled last week in a Tel Aviv cafe. “It was really shocking to me. There was graffiti saying, ‘end the occupation’. And I felt like, OK, now I can talk about what I saw.”
Michelzon became one of a handful of former Israeli servicewomen who have spoken out about their military experiences, a move that has brought accusations of betrayal and disloyalty. It is impossible to know how representative their testimonies are, but they provide an alternative picture of the “most moral army in the world”, as the IDF describes itself.
Concerns about Israeli army culture were raised last week following the publication on Facebook of photographs of a servicewoman posing alongside blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinians. The images were reminiscent of the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq. But the former soldier, Eden Abergil, said she didn’t understand what was wrong with the pictures, which were described by the IDF as “ugly and callous”.
Israel is unique in enlisting women at the age of 18 into two years of compulsory military service. The experience can be brutalising for the 10% who serve in the occupied territories, as Michelzon did.
“I left the army with a ticking bomb in my belly,” she said. “I felt I saw the backyard of Israel. I saw something that people don’t speak about. It’s almost like I know a dirty secret of a nation and I need to speak out.”
Michelzon, now 29, began her military service in September 2000, just when the second intifada was breaking out. “I joined the army with a very idealistic point of view – I really wanted to serve my country.” She was posted to Erez, the crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, to work in the radio control room.
“There was a lot of tension, a lot of shootings and suicide bombings,” she said. “Little by little you understand the rules of the game. You need to make it hard for the Arabs – that’s the main rule – because they are the enemy.”
She cited a routine example of a Palestinian woman waiting at the crossing. Michelzon called her officer, asking permission to allow the woman through. She was told to make such a request once the woman had been kept waiting for hours. “I felt very alone in the army. I couldn’t talk about the things I felt were misplaced,” she said. “I didn’t have strong views but I felt uncomfortable about the talk, about soldiers hitting Arabs and laughing. I thought everyone else was normal and I was the one who wasn’t. I felt an outsider to the group experience.”
At the end of her service, in June 2002, Michelzon said she felt the need to escape and took off to India. “I went through a breakdown little by little,” she said. It was only when she returned to enrol in university, and two years of therapy, that she began to consider her “duty” to speak out. She also came across Breaking the Silence, an organisation of army veterans who publish testimonies from former soldiers on life in the occupied territories to stimulate debate about the “moral price” of the occupation.
Michelzon gave evidence to the group and two years ago appeared in a documentary, To See If I’m Smiling, about the experiences of young women in the army. The film, she said, was criticised by all sides. The left focused on “the bad things we did and not on the fact that we wanted to start a discussion. We wanted to put up a mirror and tell Israeli society to look itself in the eyes.
“From the right, the reaction was, why are you doing this to your own people? Do you hate your country? But I did it because I love my country. We had to fight to say we want to talk about the political situation.”
The psychological impact of military service on women is undeniable, according to the testimonies of Michelzon and others, particularly those who serve in the occupied territories. “If you want to survive as a woman in the army, you have to be manly,” she said. “There is no room for feeling. It’s like a competition to see who can be tougher. A lot of the time girls are trying to be more aggressive than the guys.”
Her experience is echoed by that of Dana Golan, who served in the West Bank city of Hebron in 2001-02 as one of about 25 women among 300 male soldiers. Like Michelzon, Golan only spoke out after finishing her service. “If I had raised my anxieties, it would have been seen as a weakness,” she said.
Golan, now 27, said the “most shaky moment” of her military service came during a search for weapons in a Palestinian home. The family were awoken at 2am by soldiers who “turned their whole house inside out”. No weapons were found. The small children of the house were terrified, she recalled. “I thought, what would I feel if I was this four-year-old kid? How would I grow up? At that moment it occurred to me that sometimes we’re doing things that just create victims. To be a good occupier, we have to create conflict.”
On a separate occasion she witnessed soldiers stealing from a Palestinian electronics shop. She tried to report it, only to be told “there were things I shouldn’t interfere with”.
She said that she also saw elderly Palestinians being humiliated on the streets, “and I thought these could be my parents or grandparents”.
Israel is discomfited by these testimonies, she said, partly because of the universality of military service. “We grew up believing the IDF is the most moral army in the world. Everyone knows people serving in the army. Now when I say we are doing immoral things, I am talking about your sister or your daughter. People do not want to hear.”
The IDF is proud that 90% of its roles are open equally to men and women. “Serving in a combat unit where you have daily contact with people who might do you harm is not easy – you have to be tough,” said Captain Arye Shalicar, an army spokesman. “It’s not only a female thing, it’s the same for everyone. In the end, a combat unit is a combat unit. Sometimes things happen, not every deed is 100% correct or fair.” The army, he said, has procedures for reporting misdeeds which soldiers are encouraged to follow.
Both Michelzon and Golan have no regrets about speaking out. “For two years I saw people suffering and I didn’t do anything – and that’s really scary,” said Michelzon. “At the end, it felt like the army betrayed me – they used me, I couldn’t recognise myself. What we call protecting our country is destroying lives.”
Fundamentalist rabbis have approved murder, attacks on Arabs, illegal land seizures and racist segregation, and have ignored the murder of a prime minister.
By Zvi Bar’el
First, the daily lesson: “A soldier who takes part in the war against us, but does so only because he is forced to by threats, is an absolute villain …. We are referring to any sort of participation in the war: a combat soldier, a support soldier, civilian assistance or any form of encouragement and support.” And: “Even if civilians are tied up or imprisoned and have no choice but to stay and serve as hostages, it is possible to kill them.”
Also: “In discussions on the killing of infants and children … it is reasonable to harm children if it is clear they will grow up to harm us. Under such circumstances they should be the ones targeted.” And finally: “There is no need to discuss the question of who is and is not innocent, just as when we are defending against evil we do not hesitate to strike at limbs that were not actually used in actions against us.”
These are quotes from the book “The King’s Torah” (“Torat Hamelech” ) by rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur; it was published by Hamercaz Hatorani, near Od Yosef Hai Yeshiva. Many important rabbis have supported the two rabbis, and these quotes are part of the reason they are being investigated for suspected incitement and racism. Their refusal to be questioned allegedly was based on the fact that no one should be questioned or tried for his opinion.
In essence, their refusal places the law of the Torah above the law of the state. Rabbi Dov Lior, who backed the book, explained his opposition to their being interrogated as follows: “The harassment of the rabbis because of their halakhic views stands in direct opposition to the principles of freedom of religion and expression that are accepted by the state.” Indeed, is it possible to accuse someone of hating gentiles? In a Jewish state?
Nothing new, so far. Fundamentalist rabbis have approved murder, attacks on Arabs and their property, the illegal takeover of land, racist segregation between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi female pupils, and have ignored (at least ) the murder of a prime minister. After all, the source of authority of those same rabbis, the book of books, is full of hair-raising descriptions of the vengeance exacted by the Children of Israel on the peoples of this land.
As for the humanity of “the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate Me,” killer of the Egyptian firstborn, we can hold a seminar or two. Thumbing their noses at the law of the state is not an invention by Lior or similar rabbis. As far as disrespecting the law is concerned, Lior is an excellent pupil of Rabbi Moshe Levinger. Only naivete or pretending can explain the surprise at the spitting in the face of the police as they try to investigate the rabbis who provided a wall of defense to abomination.
What is new is that these are no longer “hilltop rabbis,” “wild weeds” or “fence hoppers” who are turning their backs on the instructions of great rabbinical figures and the law. They and their supporters are transforming zealous fundamentalism and the shameful “The King’s Torah “into the mainstream.
After all, what were the critics upset about? Not the content of the book some say they oppose (“of course I don’t support it” ), but rather the state’s audacity to undermine the freedom of expression of the source. No religious protest movement stood against the content; no one wrote a text to counter this Jewish Wahhabism. Suddenly, that same community that sanctifies rabbinical hierarchy, the absolute obedience to the rabbis, is shocked by this affront to freedom of expression.
But these fundamentalists, responsible for the training of tens of thousands of yeshiva students who become soldiers, wash their hands when their followers and students carry out the rabbis’ orders. No rabbi has been tried for an illegal act by a civilian or soldier because of his teachings. After all, they are only tutors, and then “permission has been granted.” In “properly functioning” states like Saudi Arabia or Egypt it has long been understood that the responsibility of a religious figure is no less than that of a terrorist. They arrest and imprison, exile or silence in different ways the preachers who raised generations of murderous zealots. Turkey removes from the military anyone who expresses excessive religious fervor.
In Israel, on the other hand, former chief military rabbi Avihai Rontzki initiated a meeting of intelligence soldiers with Rabbi Lior, the backbone of “The King’s Torah.” The following was said about the Israel Defense Forces’ ethics code: “When there is a conflict between orders based on the ethics code and a halakhic instruction, of course one must follow halakha” – Jewish law. It’s not incitement that’s dangerous, but rather its transformation into the accepted and central form of discourse.
After announced delay in departure of women’s flotilla, Defense Minister speaks with foreign ministers of U.S. and France, stresses that flotilla is an “unnecessary provocation.”
Defense Minister Ehud Barak spoke on Saturday with U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, U.S. National Security Adviser General Jim Jones, and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, and asked them to act to prevent the launch of the Lebanese flotilla setting for Gaza.
The Defense Minister emphasized that Israel permits the import of civilian materials into Gaza after it is checked at the port of Ashdod. Therefore, he said, “The flotilla’s attempt to reach Gaza is a needless provocation.”
Earlier in the day, the organizers of the women’s flotilla from Lebanon to Gaza announced that the ships would not set sail on Sunday. Apparently, the reason for the delay is Cyprus’s refusal to allow the ships to pass through its territorial waters or to drop anchor in one of its ports.
“We will not set sail tomorrow,” Samar Al Haj, one of the flotilla organizers, said to the Reuters news agency. “We have encountered difficulties. We will try to set sail from another port, we won’t give up so easily.”
On Thursday, the Israeli delegation to the United Nations submitted a complaint to the general secretary of the organization and to the head of its security council. The complaint stated that the flotilla is a needless provocation, and that there are acceptable ways of transferring aid to Gaza.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that all of the other states in the region, including those that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel, understand that any such flotilla will only cause damage to the whole region. “We hope that this understanding will lead to cooperation to prevent the provocations,” Lieberman said.
Earlier Friday, Defense Minister Barak said that the women’s flotilla intends to aid terror groups. “The flotilla planning to set sail from Lebanon has nothing to do with humanitarian goals, it is a hostile irritation,” he said in a Defense Ministry statement.
Jewish-American Emily Henochowicz recalls how she lost an eye at a protest in Israel after the storming of the Gaza aid flotilla
Ed Pilkington
Emily Henochowicz lost an eye when she was hit by a tear gas cannister fired by Israeli troops at a pro-Palestinian protest. Photograph: Tim Knox
As a student artist, Emily Henochowicz has always been fascinated by the way the brain processes visual signals to form images of the physical world around us. That has been a theme of her work at the prestigious New York art college, Cooper Union, which she joined three years ago.
In her first term she made a costume out of papier-mache for the inaugural freshman’s parade that neatly expressed that fascination. It was meant to be a monster cyclops, but the way it came out it resembled a giant eyeball with her arms and legs sticking out of it.
For more than a year she has used a photograph of that eyeball as the icon of her art blog, thirsty pixels. It is all too ironic, she laughs now. The irony is that in May Henochowicz became – in her own words – a cyclops. She lost her left eye as she was demonstrating against Israeli government policy in the Palestinian occupied territories.
With her loss, she became yet another casualty of the ongoing Israeli occupation. But what makes Henochowicz’s story singular was that her experiences were filtered through the lens, the eye, of an artist.
It was art that took her to the Middle East in the first place. She signed up to an animation course in Jerusalem that suited her passion for drawing.
Her choice of Jerusalem had little to do with the fact that she was the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, or that her father was born in Israel and that she herself was Jewish and an Israeli citizen. It had even less to do with any political beliefs she might have on either side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, though she had been disturbed by Israel’s conduct in the Gaza war of 2008-9.
It was all about art. But a month after she arrived in Jerusalem, an Israeli friend and peace activist took her into Palestinian East Jerusalem. That day changed everything.
“It was a little bit shocking,” she says, recalling the event in a Manhattan cafe. “Suddenly a huge group of Hassidim came down the street. These little Palestinian kids – just five or six years old – linked arms and were standing in the middle of the street. The Hassidim were on the other side, singing prayers at them. It was such a powerful image for me: that line of children, so strong and defiant, this huge group of adults in front of them.”
The next day Henochowicz captured the moment in a dramatic painting that shows the children in front of a swirl of black-clad Jewish men. And then she acted on impulse – something that as an artist she says she is wont to do. She went to Ramallah on the West Bank and joined the protest campaign the International Solidarity Movement.
Over the next few weeks Henochowicz threw herself into the fray, protesting outside Israeli settlements in the West Bank and along the separation wall. She was aware of the dangers, not least because it was with the ISM that fellow-American Rachel Corrie had been demonstrating in 2003 when she was crushed to death by a bulldozer.
“I had a fear the whole time I was going to get hit with tear gas,” Henochowicz says. “I knew the way that it was used. Forget UN regulations, this is Israel, the rules don’t apply here – tear gas is fired directly into crowds.”
At first she kept what she was doing from her parents, certain that they would disapprove. But eventually she told them.
“They were incredibly upset, particularly my dad. He had been to Yeshiva, Jewish school, and speaks Hebrew.’ How could you do this to me?’ he said, but I wasn’t doing it to him.”
Paradoxically, shortly before the incident in which she lost her eye, Henochowicz decided, partly out of concern for her parents, that she would avoid demonstrations and dedicate herself instead to teaching art to Palestinian children. But on the morning of 31 May she awoke to the news that a Turkish flotilla attempting to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza had been raided and nine activists killed.
Mayhem and confusion ensued. She was swept along by the reaction, and found herself at a protest rally at the Qaladiya checkpoint, facing Israeli soldiers. “I was scared in a way I’d never been before.”
It was so quick, maybe just a minute from the first stones being thrown to the tear gas canister striking her in the face.
“I remember a weird crunch feeling and thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve been hit!’ Then there was the thought: ‘Hey guys, my brain’s ok! My brain’s ok!”
“And then I remember falling back and being held, and cameras rushing to me and clicking away and me thinking ‘Oh, I’ve become one of those images’.”
She was treated in a hospital in Ramallah and Jerusalem before returning to Maryland in the US. She has had multiple operations for a fractured skull as well as losing the eye.
The Israeli government has refused to pay thousands of dollars in medical costs, on the grounds that Henochowicz chose to put herself at risk and that she was hit by mistake by a ricochet.
“That’s preposterous,” she says. “A ricochet? From what wall? Where? How? This was no ricochet.”
Henochowicz is now preparing for term to start at Cooper Union. She wears a pair of glasses, the left lens of which she has painted with swirls to obscure the empty socket behind it.
She says she has adapted with amazing speed to the loss. “I go through a lot of my days not even thinking that I’m seeing only through one eye. I’m so fine in other ways, I’m perfectly healthy.”
She stresses how unfair she thinks it is that she gets so much attention, while Palestinians who are injured with depressing frequency go without notice. “I’m white, I’m Jewish, I’m an Israeli citizen and American. When I’m hit by tear gas there are articles, the Israeli government gets involved. When Palestinians are hit, who gives a shit?”
She doesn’t know what the longer-term impact will be on her art. She remembers telling the doctor who informed her she had lost an eye: “But I’m an artist, that’s not supposed to happen!”
“I’ve been sad because this is a moment in my life I can never escape, and that’s what gets me more than the loss of my eye,” she says. “Twenty years from now I will still carry this moment, and I desperately don’t want it to be the end of my story.”
Iran begins fueling its first nuclear power plant which it refers to as ‘start-up of the largest symbol of Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities.’
The United States does not see the fueling of Iran’s first nuclear power plant in Bushehr as a “proliferation risk,” State Department spokesman Darby Holladay said Saturday.
“We recognize that the Bushehr reactor is designed to provide civilian nuclear power and do not view it as a proliferation risk,” Holladay said, adding that “It will be under IAEA safeguards and Russia is providing the fuel and talking back the spit nuclear fuel, which would be the principal source of proliferation concerns.”
Iran began fueling its first nuclear power plant on Saturday, a potent symbol of its growing regional sway and rejection of international sanctions designed to prevent it building a nuclear bomb.
“Russia’s support for Bushehr underscores that Iran does not need an indigenous enrichment capability as its intentions are purely peaceful,” Holladay said. “Russia’s supply of fuel to Iran is the model we and our P5+1 partner have offered to Iran. It is important to remember that the IAEA access to Bushehr is separate from and should not be confused with Iran’s broader obligations to the IAEA. On this score as the IAEA has consistently reported Iran remains in serious violation of its obligations.”
Iranian television showed live pictures of Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi and his Russian counterpart watching a fuel rod assembly being prepared for insertion into the reactor near the Gulf city of Bushehr.
“Despite all the pressures, sanctions and hardships imposed by Western nations, we are now witnessing the start-up of the largest symbol of Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities,” Salehi told a news conference afterwards.
Iranian officials said it would take two to three months before the plant starts producing electricity and would generate 1,000 megawatts, a small proportion of the nation’s 41,000 megawatt electricity demand recorded last month.
Russia designed, built and will supply fuel for Bushehr, taking back spent rods which could be used to make weapons-grade plutonium in order to ease nuclear proliferation concerns.
Saturday’s ceremony comes after decades of delays building the plant, work on which was initially started by German company Siemens in the 1970s, before Iran’s Islamic Revolution.
The United States criticized Moscow earlier this year for pushing ahead with Bushehr given persistent Iranian defiance over its nuclear program.
Moscow supported the latest UN Security Council resolution in June which imposed a fourth round of sanctions and called for Iran to stop uranium enrichment which, some countries fear, could lead it to obtain nuclear weapons.
“The construction of the nuclear plant at Bushehr is a clear example showing that any country, if it abides by existing international legislation and provides effective, open interaction with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), should have the opportunity to access peaceful use of the atom,” Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, told the news conference.
The fuelling of Bushehr is a milestone in Iran’s path to harness technology which it says will reduce consumption of its abundant fossil fuels, allowing it to export more oil and gas and to prepare for the day when the minerals riches dry up.
Following the ceremony, Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the country’s semi-official Fars news agency that his country would continue to enrich its own uranium.
Iran’s neighbours, some of whom are also seeking nuclear power, are wary of Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and its growing influence in the region, notably in Iraq where fellow Shi’ites now dominate and Lebanon, where it is a backer of Hezbollah.
While most nuclear analysts say Bushehr does not add to any proliferation risk, many countries remain deeply concerned about Iran’s uranium enrichment.
EDITOR: We cannot talk to whoever is representing the Palestinians
Ron Prosor, the typically aggressive Israeli ambassador to the UK, is repeating the age-old argument – the same one Israel has used for decades about the PLO and Arafat. The dominant political force in Palestine is always taboo – this is also why Israel has supported the creation of Hamas , so as to destabilise the PLO. Haven’t they just succeeded beyond their wildest dreams? They must feel a little like Dr. Frankenstein, seeing the Creature tear down the neighbourhood…
Israel always preferred to speak about peace to everyone other than the Palestinians – they would love to have peace with Sweden or Micronesia, for example, and somehow, unfairly, are denied the pleasure of such peace talks…
No missiles means no blockade. When Israelis feel secure, concessions will follow. It’s that simple
Ron Prosor
Groucho Marx famously quipped: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them … well, I have others.” The International Quartet (the US, the UN, Russia and the EU) has long applied three principles Hamas must adopt to take part in negotiations. It must renounce violence, recognise Israel and abide by previous agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. At no point has Hamas satisfied these conditions – or indicated any intention to do so.
Those who advocate talking to Hamas are urging a Groucho-Marxist policy in a complex, unstable region. If Hamas is too extreme to accept these principles, they argue, we must tailor our principles to match Hamas’s extremism.
The Hamas charter advocates the destruction of the state of Israel, the genocidal slaughter of Jews and the imposition of an Islamic state governed by sharia law. When an organisation’s constitution venerates your murder, it is difficult to know how negotiations should begin – perhaps with a discussion of the flowers for one’s funeral.
This week marks the fifth anniversary of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza. We withdrew every Israeli soldier and citizen, gambling on the formula of land for peace. Instead of peace and progress we received missiles and misery. Hamas made Gaza a terrorist enclave, launching thousands of missiles at Israeli civilians.
In 2006 it kidnapped Gilad Shalit, holding him in isolation for four years without a single visit from the Red Cross. In a bloody coup in 2007 Hamas attacked its own people, chasing Fatah out of Gaza and hurling its Palestinian brothers from the rooftops. It imposed an Islamic penal code along with the routine torture and execution of political opponents. Simultaneously it relentlessly attacked Israelis and, with Iranian support, stockpiled weapons that today can hit Tel Aviv.
After years of missiles, the bombardment became unbearable. We targeted the terrorist infrastructure through Operation Cast Lead. Israel has tried to stop the flood of weapons through a naval blockade. When Hamas supporters attempt to break the blockade, as occurred with the Turkish IHH flotilla, Israel’s defensive measures must be understood in context. Hamas recently fired a Grad missile at Ashkelon and dispatched a terror cell from Gaza into Sinai that fired missiles at Eilat in Israel, and Aqaba in Jordan: Hamas threatens not only Israel but also Egypt and Jordan.
Some in the west fondly refer to Hamas as the elected representatives of the Palestinians. While Hamas won the Palestinian council elections in 2006, it was not a mandate to violently overthrow the Palestinian Authority. Nor does it justify terror against Israel. Hamas’s concept of democracy fits that of all democratically elected dictatorships – “one man, one vote … once”.
Gaza was a golden opportunity tragically missed. Instead of building a Mediterranean Dubai, Hamas diverted every resource to enslaving its people while attacking ours. In contrast, Israel and the PA have made significant progress in the West Bank, reducing roadblocks, easing access and stimulating economic growth of 8%. The PA should be encouraged to build on these developments at the negotiating table.
Israel has offered direct talks, recognised a two-state solution and introduced an unprecedented moratorium on settlement construction. President Abbas has declined talks, preferring to campaign against Israel internationally. In Palestinian classrooms and civil society incitement against Israel continues.
Our experience following the Gaza pull-out has scarred the Israeli public. Hamas’s missiles wounded the concept of land for peace, increasing Israeli fears and scepticism. Of the same voters who elected governments that signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan and initiated the Oslo Accords, only 32% believe talks with the Palestinians will lead to peace. More than ever, Israelis require confidence-building measures.
When Israelis feel secure concessions follow. Last weekend Israel dismantled the security barrier in Gilo, a Jerusalem suburb that came under heavy Palestinian sniper fire during the second intifada. If in Gilo no sniper fire means no wall, so in Gaza no missiles would mean no blockade. It is that simple.
Sadly Hamas has always torpedoed peace efforts through suicide bombings, kidnappings and missiles. If further steps towards peace are to win Israeli hearts and minds, the price cannot be missiles and mortars in the heart of Israel.
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Friday, 20 August 2010
The first direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for more than 18 months were in prospect last night after successful diplomatic efforts to find a formula designed to allow the talks to start.
The international Quartet of the US, EU, UN and Russia is expected to issue a statement today paving the way for the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to open political negotiations with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A draft of the statement is understood to say that direct bilateral negotiations which “can be completed within one year” should resolve “all the core issues dividing the two sides and should “lead to a settlement, negotiated between the parties, that ends the occupation… and results in a [Palestinian] state at peace with Israel”.
The Quartet statement is intended to provide Mr Abbas with the internationally endorsed political cover he has been seeking to enter the talks. Mr Abbas had been seeking an affirmation that the talks would be based on Israel’s pre-1967 borders and that it would continue not to build in Jewish West Bank settlements after the present partial freeze on settlement building ends late next month.
The statement will not specifically articulate those points but will make clear its “full commitment to its previous statements” – including those at its meetings in Moscow and Trieste in March and June of this year. The Moscow statement made clear that the negotiations should end “the occupation began in 1967” and repeated earlier calls for Israel to freeze all settlement activity, dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001, and refrain from house demolitions and evictions in Arab East Jerusalem.
The delicate construction of the statement is designed to meet Mr Abbas’s demands without making newly explicit what Israel has been arguing would be unacceptable “preconditions” for the negotiations. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian sources commented on the imminent developments yesterday, with an Israeli official simply reiterating that the government had repeatedly called for direct talks to start.
Earlier yesterday the US State Department spokesman P J Crowley said: “We think we are very, very close to a decision by the parties to enter into direct negotiations. We think we’re well positioned to get there.”
Mr Crowley said that the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, had called the Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, late in the day yesterday and also spoken with the Jordanian Foreign Minister, Nasser Judeh, and the former British prime minister Tony Blair, the special representative of the “Quartet”.
While today’s expected move is a breakthrough in the long and tortuous “talks about talks” that have taken place since the indirect “proximity” negotiations mediated by the US Presidential envoy George Mitchell began earlier this year, there remains scepticism in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories that even direct negotiations will have the positive outcome envisaged in the Quartet draft.
There is uncertainty about whether Mr Netanyahu is seriously prepared to make concessions on the core issues – including the future status of Jerusalem, the Eastern sector of which the Palestinians want as the capital of a future state but which Israel regards as under its own sovereignty. However the statement from the Quartet meeting in March of this year explicitly recalled that “the annexation of East Jerusalem is not recognised by the international community”.
Public pessimism appears to be increasingly shared by US voters, according to a new poll for the Israel Project published yesterday. Only 45 per cent of Americans surveyed in the July poll said they felt Mr Netanyahu was committed to the peace process. Only 51 per cent of Americans thought the US needed to support Israel, compared with 63 per cent a year ago.
World powers will invite Israelis and Palestinians to begin direct peace talks on September 2 in Washington, diplomatic source says.
World powers will invite Israelis and Palestinians to begin direct peace talks on Sept. 2 in Washington, a diplomatic source said on Thursday.
Envoys from the so-called Quartet of powers – the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations – agreed to the details on Thursday, the source told Reuters. A formal statement is due to be issued on Friday.
“They’ve got an agreement that the talks will start on September 2 in Washington,” said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Israelis and Palestinians were expected to agree to attend, and President Barack Obama would be present at the talks, the source said.
Earlier, diplomatic sources said the Quartet was discussing a draft statement inviting Israel and the Palestinians to embark on direct talks intended to conclude a treaty in one year.
The Quartet said in June that peace talks would be expected to conclude in 24 months. The new draft says 12 months. The Palestinian Authority government intends to have established all the attributes of statehood by mid-2011.
Diplomats say the idea that a unilateral declaration of statehood could win support if talks do not start or collapse in the next 12 months is gaining interest.
The peace process resumed in May after a hiatus of 19 months but is stalled over the terms of an upgrade from indirect talks mediated by U.S. envoy George Mitchell to direct negotiations.
Israel insists it is ready for direct talks provided there are no preconditions. The Palestinians are ready provided there is a clear agenda. Israel says an agenda means preconditions.
The White House declined to comment. Obama is currently on vacation in Massachusetts.
As education minister and chairman of the Council for Higher Education, Sa’ar must go beyond his feeble condemnation of the attempt to sabotage the universities’ balance sheets.
Presenting his plan for NIS 7.5 billion in additional funding for higher education on Wednesday, Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar described the reform program as “putting higher education back on the right track.” Sa’ar’s comment came at a critical juncture in relations between civil society and the higher education system: Right-wing groups that presumptuously claim to be defending the Zionist ethos are threatening to derail academia from its proper track.
Haaretz revealed earlier this week that the Council for Higher Education gave university heads the Institute for Zionist Strategies’ report on the “post-Zionist” curricula prevalent in sociology departments. In response, Tel Aviv University’s president asked sociology lecturers to provide him with their course syllabi. Following an uproar from within and without the university, this order was retracted.
Also this week, the president of Ben-Gurion University revealed a letter she had received from the Im Tirtzu organization threatening to urge foreign donors to withhold contributions unless the university took action “to correct the anti-Zionist tilt” of its politics and government department. The education minister, who once praised a report the group had drafted on what it termed the “post-Zionist” bent of political science departments, is now railing against Im Tirtzu’s threat to intimidate donors, “independent of any arguments about pluralism.”
The higher education system is not immune to external criticism over the quality of its academics or the proficiency of its administration. But a pluralistic, democratic society is incompatible with external interference in course curricula or lecturers’ political views.
As education minister and chairman of the Council for Higher Education, Sa’ar must go beyond his feeble condemnation of the attempt to sabotage the universities’ balance sheets. No financial assistance can preserve Israeli academia’s prestige or ensure its excellence if the government, including the prime minister, does not unequivocally censure this attempt to undermine the independence of higher education.
Granting even tacit legitimacy to an internal boycott of institutions and lecturers that espouse “unpatriotic” narratives will merely legitimize a foreign boycott of Israeli academia.
Cyprus Lebanon envoy says ship will not be allowed to dock; crew, passengers will be deported to their country of origin.
A Lebanese ship carrying aid and women activists hoping to break Israel’s Gaza blockade will set sail Sunday from Lebanon despite warnings that they will not be allowed to make it past Cyprus, organizers said Thursday.
The ship cannot travel directly to Gaza from Lebanon because Beirut is still technically at war with Israel, forcing the vessel to pass through a third country – in this case, Cyprus – before heading for the blockaded Palestinian territory.
Lebanese Gaza-bound aid ship 'Julia' awaiting green light to set sail. Photo by: AP
But on Thursday, the Cypriot ambassador to Lebanon told The Associated Press that the boat, the Mariam, will be turned back when it reaches Cyprus.
“We decided that such a ship will not be allowed to enter Cyprus and if such a Gaza-bound ship docks in a Cypriot port the crew and the passengers will be deported to their country of origin,” Kyriacos Kouros said.
Kouros said Cyprus has a moral and legal responsibility to those allowed into its waters, and that a blockade-busting ship could endanger lives along with regional peace and stability.
But organizer Samar al-Hajj was undeterred Thursday, and said the ship, named after the Virgin Mary, will set out with between up to 75 female activists on a mission to deliver cancer medication, books and toys.
“We are not children who can be told to stay home,” al-Hajj told the AP after a chaotic news conference outside the port in Tripoli, where security forces prevented the group from speaking to the media from the ship.
Sending blockade-busting ships has become a highly charged issue since Israeli naval commandos boarded a flotilla of Gaza-bound ships on May 31, killing nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists.
Israel says its troops opened fire after coming under attack by activists wielding clubs, axes and metal rods. The activists said they were defending their ship after it was attacked by Israeli soldiers in international waters.
The raid sparked an international outcry and forced Israel to ease its blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza. Israel, along with Egypt, imposed the embargo in June 2007 after Hamas militants took control of the area.
Israel has lifted virtually all restrictions on food, medicine and consumer goods, but still maintains its naval blockade, saying that Hamas could sneak weapons into Gaza.
Asked whether sending the Mariam is a provocation given that medicine is now allowed into Gaza, al-Hajj said the ship was symbolic with the aim of lifting the blockade entirely.
The Israeli army would not say whether it would intercept the vessel, saying only it is monitoring the situation and preparing accordingly.
Daniel Zonshine, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Israel has no objections to delivering humanitarian aid, but that any shipments must be coordinated through Israel.
Al-Hajj said Lebanon’s president, prime minister and parliament speaker did not respond to her requests to meet, which appeared to signal the government’s lack of support for the venture.
EDITOR: Saving Zionism at any price…
Times are hard. Gadi Taub, not exactly on the left, is trying hard to save Zionism from itself… This is no more than whistling in the dark. Zionism is going through the convulsions of its terminal crisis, and many doctors are prescribing bitter pills…
Op-ed: To save Zionism, we can make do with unilateral withdrawal, long-term truce
Gadi Taub
Israel feels paralyzed. Many people around here understand that the status quo is an express route to Zionism’s demise. We slowly sink into the bi-national swamp, and if we fail to partition the land Israel shall end up sinking in it.
However, it appears that there is no way to partition the land. Israelis’ faith in partition in the framework of a peace deal had been greatly eroded, and that’s no wonder. The Palestinians are unwilling to forego their demand for what they refer to as “the right of return” (in practice, international law recognizes no such right) – this means there will be no deal.
However, Israelis’ faith in unilateral partition is also eroding, in the wake of the Gaza withdrawal experience. Yet this erosion is unjustified: A unilateral move does not have to look like the Gaza withdrawal. Indeed, even a Gaza-style pullout from Judea and Samaria is better than the continuation of the status quo, yet many people believe it would be impossible to evacuate about 70,000 people for anything that is short of comprehensive peace.
So how can we nonetheless partition the land without peace? If you will it, it is certainly no dream. Moreover, even if we do not have a partner for peace, we may have a partner for a unilateral move. The Palestinians are working on their own unilateral maneuver – Salam Fayyad’s pledge to declare independence unilaterally may serve as a complementary move to an Israeli withdrawal, yet even that is not a must.
Seemingly, the key here is to detach the question of partition from the issue of evacuation: There is no need to turn the evacuation into a condition for partition.
Enlist world to the cause
Firstly, Israel can finally pass an evacuation-compensation law for the West Bank. We can assume that such law would drastically minimize the scope of the settlement problem.
Secondly, Israel can declare that “Zionists of land” – as opposed to “Zionists of state” – are permitted to stay at their place of residence and forego their Israeli citizenship. They can continue to live there under Palestinian rule. After all, a large Arab minority lives in Israel, so it’s not unthinkable to have a small Jewish minority living in Palestine. If necessary, we’ll come to rescue them and bring them back home. For that, we have the Law of Return. They would be able to return and get their Israeli citizenship back whenever they want.
Thirdly, also as opposed to the Gaza model, the withdrawal itself can be coordinated with the Palestinian Authority in an orderly and gradual manner. An orderly handover of power is a clear interest for Fatah. They too saw the results of the unilateral Gaza withdrawal and the murder of their people by Hamas; they fear Hamas more than they fear us, and rightfully so.
Fourthly, as opposed to Sharon’s solo style, this time around we can undertake the move under international auspices. The United States, European Union, United Nations, and the Russians – and possibly even the Arab League – can certainly enlist for the cause of ending the occupation, and even grant economic guarantees and possibly military ones too, in the form of an international force.
Red lines that meet nowhere
An unpleasant fact of life in this conflict is that its full resolution hinges on resolving questions of justice that appear absolute to both sides, on top of deeply held convictions and aspirations on both sides.
Hence, the negotiating positions adopted by both parties are characterized by absolute “No’s” and by red lines that meet nowhere.
However, should these questions of eternal justice be separated from the practical problems, we would be able to start with partitioning the land and postpone the end of the conflict to another time.
We’ll be able to deal with questions of justice in the future, and also modify the borders if necessary; for the time being, we shall make do with a ceasefire that would be premised on common interests rather than mutual love.
Most importantly, two nation-states shall prevail, and Zionism will not keep rushing towards the abyss.
5 Nahal Haredi soldiers suspected of taking their photographs alongside bound detainees, as well as two cases of drug use.
Five Israel Defense Forces soldiers were arrested by military police Thursday, following suspicions of mistreatment of Palestinians detainees, which included taking improper photographs.
The soldiers, members of the Nahal Haredi combat unit, were arrested following information received by their battalion commander, which claimed that two of the five soldiers were involved in drug use, while the rest are suspected of taking photographs of themselves alongside cuffed and blindfolded Palestinian detainees using their cellphones.
Four of the five IDF soldiers were remanded by military police by four days, with the fifth due to appear before a remand hearing on Friday.
The arrest came after earlier this week a storm erupted over the Facebook images of a former IDF soldier, Eden Abergil, who had taken photographs of herself alongside bound Palestinian detainees.
Photographs uploaded by Abergil and labeled “IDF – the best time of my life,” depicted her smiling next to Palestinian prisoners with their hands bound and their eyes covered.
A comment attached to one of the photos of the soldier smiling in front of two blindfold men and posted by one of Abergil’s friends read “That looks really sexy for you,” with Abergil’s response reading: “I wonder if he is on Facebook too – I’ll have to tag him in the photo.”
On Thursday, a comment allegedly added by Abergil to her Facebook page saying that she would “gladly kill Arabs – even slaughter them.”
“In war there are no rules,” Abergil allegedly wrote on the wall of her profile page on the social network Facebook.
Reacting to Abergil’s initial upload of the controversial images, the IDF spokesman issued its response Thursdays, saying “on the face of it the behavior exhibited by the soldier is base and crude.”
In new bid to defend publishing controversial images, former IDF soldier Eden Abergil writes on Facebook ‘In war there are no rules.’
Eden Abergil, the former Israel Defense Forces soldier who has been criticized for publishing controversial images on Facebook, allegedly wrote on her Facebook page on Thursday that she would “gladly kill Arabs – even slaughter them.”
“In war there are no rules,” Abergil allegedly wrote on the wall of her profile page on the social network Facebook.
Photographs uploaded by Abergil from Ashdod and labeled “IDF – the best time of my life,” depicted her smiling next to Palestinian prisoners with their hands bound and their eyes covered.
A comment attached to one of the photos of the soldier smiling in front of two blindfold men and posted by one of Abergil’s friends read “That looks really sexy for you,” with Abergil’s response reading: “I wonder if he is on Facebook too – I’ll have to tag him in the photo.”
Since the photos were published by blogger Ido Keinan earlier this week, dozens of people have uploaded images on to their own Facebook pages depicting similar situations.
Abergil responded on Facebook to an image in which a women was pasted instead of the Palestinian prisoners in the original images, saying that it was not funny and that she would not let anyone ruin her “perfect life.”
“I can’t allow Arab lovers to ruin the perfect life I lead,” she allegedly wrote. “I am not sorry and I don’t regret it.”
“I am in favor of a Jewish-Zionist State,” she added. “I defend what has been rightfully mine for ages,” she wrote.
During an Army Radio interview on Tuesday, Abergil repeatedly said that it had never occurred to her that “the picture would be problematic,” asking interviewer Ilana Dayan whether the media asked for detainees permission when they film them.
Referring to the possibility that the images could injure Israel’s image in the international arena, Abergil said: “We will always be attacked. Whatever we do, we will always be attacked.”
On Monday, the IDF spokesman issued its response to the photographs, saying that “on the face of it the behavior exhibited by the soldier is base and crude.”
The head of the Public Committee Against Torture, Ishai Menuchin, also commented, saying that “these terrible photographs reflect a norm in the way Palestinians are viewed, as an object and not as humans. It is an attitude that ignores their feelings as humans and their individual rights.”
An academic institution does not belong to the state, but to all of mankind.
By Menachem Mautner
The Institute for Zionist Strategies sent a position paper to the heads of Israel’s universities that examines the degree to which campus activity is Zionist in orientation. Allow me to propose a response.
Your position paper is based on an underlying assumption that is unacceptable to me, one which posits that the level of support for Zionism is the standard by which to judge a university. The university does not belong to the state, nor does it belong to the Zionist movement that created the state. It belongs to mankind, and it pursues three primary goals: generating academic knowledge that is likely to provide human beings with intellectual enrichment and a better understanding of the human condition; preserving the academic knowledge of the past; and disseminating knowledge to mankind.
The university is an institution that the liberal state must fund without taking any interest in the content of the research it produces or the material it teaches, even if this content is unsavory in the eyes of the state’s leaders or even contradicts the foundations on which the state was established. The only criterion by which content should be judged in a university is the humanist one – namely, whether the content is intended to advance the welfare of mankind.
Allow me to discuss the content produced by universities – a question more difficult than another often raised in this context, that of the opinions faculty members express as citizens.
In a university, it is permissible to write, and even to teach, that in the 19th century, the Jewish people had better options than establishing a national movement that aspired to political sovereignty; that at the present moment in history, Israel needs to bring an end to the Zionist worldview that lies at the foundation of its existence; that the founding of Israel dealt a harsh blow to Arab inhabitants of the Land of Israel; that Israel needs to cease viewing itself as a Jewish and democratic state and begin characterizing itself as a state of all its citizens; that Israel needs to be a binational state; or that Israel needs to be incorporated into a Middle Eastern federation.
It is permissible to write and teach all these things, on condition that these ideas are founded upon concern for the welfare of Israel’s citizens and their spiritual enrichment; and on condition that they meet the standards of the university’s relevant research paradigms.
Content that does not meet the humanist criterion has no place in a university. Material that does not meet the standards of the relevant academic paradigms also has no place in a university, but that is because it constitutes shoddy academic work. Universities have institutions that are tasked with ensuring that academic work complies with the relevant academic paradigms and is done at an appropriate academic level.
Based on your mode of thinking, it would be possible to demand that the university teach only material that serves the immediate and practical interests of the state. Such an approach would place departments like business management, law, engineering and medicine at the center of the university. Such an approach would turn the university into a technical school.
Yet the university should give pride of place to the humanities, social science and natural science, fields where knowledge is sought for its own sake, without any considerations of how that knowledge might be put to immediate use. And once this material is produced by a university, it is no longer available solely to the citizens of Israel, but to all human beings the world over.
At the basis of your position paper lies the assumption that the State of Israel has one task: the exercise of political sovereignty and the nurturing of national culture. I disagree. The state is a tool for advancing a diverse set of human interests.
Aside from a national culture, human beings also need effective health services, quality education, housing, art and culture. Thus Israel does not only need to be a Zionist state; it must be a state that works to promote all the different types of well-being its citizens need. The production and dissemination of enriching academic knowledge is one of them.
You must cease judging the universities by the criteria of Zionism. The question of what specific content should be infused into Zionism today is an important one. I suggest that you focus on that instead.
Israeli attacks on Gaza and the Lebanese border in recent weeks, together with increasing repression in the West Bank, may suggest a larger offensive is in the offing, writes Stephen Lendman*
Perhaps suggesting the planning of a larger-scale offensive, violent Israeli attacks have hit Gaza, the West Bank and the Israeli-Lebanese border recently, these being the first at the latter flashpoint since the summer 2006 war.
Like Operation Cast Lead in the 2008 Gaza war, it was Israeli aggression — violent, lawless and unrelenting, a scorched-earth blitzkrieg inflicting vast destruction, causing billions of dollars’ worth of damage, killing over 1,000 Lebanese, injuring thousands more, and displacing around a million others (about one-fourth of the country’s four million- strong population), including over 300,000 children fleeing north for their lives — that characterised the 2006 war.
Yet, in the end, Hizbullah handed Israel a humiliating defeat. Perhaps revenge is now being planned.
On 4 August, the Ma’an News Agency reported that Israeli and Lebanese troops had clashed, killing four Lebanese citizens, including three soldiers. One Israeli soldier was also killed. Reports said the violence had erupted after Israeli soldiers had crossed the border, trying to uproot a tree to install a surveillance camera and equipment in a chain of events that left five dead. An Israeli Defence Force (IDF) spokesman said that Israeli soldiers had not entered Lebanon, but had been operating between the UN-administered Blue Line and Israel’s border fence.
This was contradicted by Lebanese accounts, which described Israeli soldiers in the area removing trees to install surveillance equipment. Israel called this “routine maintenance”. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri condemned what he called Israeli violation of Lebanese sovereignty, and Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri called for a complaint against Israel to be filed with the UN Security Council.
Israel may yet file its own complaint in response, its Foreign Ministry saying that, “Israel sees the firing on an IDF force which acted in coordination with UNIFEL [the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon] in the border region as a blunt violation of Resolution 1701.” For his part, Al-Hariri wants the UN to demand that Israel implement Resolution 1701, which calls for the demilitarisation of the area within the Blue Line where UNIFEL troops are stationed.
However, throughout its history Israel has spurned all UN resolutions criticising its actions and policies.
On 3 August, commentator Jack Khoury headlined an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz with the words, “Nasrallah: Hizbullah will respond if Israel attacks Lebanon’s army”, writing in the piece that followed that in a speech marking four years since the end of the 2006 war, the Hizbullah leader had said that, “anywhere where the Lebanese army is assaulted, and there’s a place for the resistance and it is capable of doing so, the resistance will not stand silent, quiet or restrained.”
“Israel’s aggression against Lebanon has not stopped, and what happened today only proves that. Since the ceasefire until today, Israel has blatantly violated [the UN Security Council Resolution] more than 7,000 times, and no one has lifted a finger, not even the Security Council.”
Nasrallah praised the Lebanese army and said that Hizbullah has been on a high state of alert during the incident. “I was personally in contact with [Hizbullah] commanders in the area, and I asked them not to act before receiving a direct order. We announced that we would not initiate any activity as long as we had not received authorisation from the highest command of the Lebanese army.”
On 5 August, Haaretz writer Gideon Levy, in an article headlined “Only we’re allowed”, wrote that “after Tuesday’s border clash, Israel will continue to ignore UNIFEL and the Lebanese army… Those bastards, the Lebanese, changed the rules. The scandalous fact is that they have a brigade commander who’s determined to protect his country’s sovereignty.”
In Gaza, Levy wrote, a “fence is a fence”. Getting near it is enough to get killed. In the West Bank, nearly the entire apartheid wall ignores the Green Line, and Palestinians are forbidden to cross it. In Lebanon, however, things are different. There, Israel makes its own rules, ignoring “fences” and crossing the border illegally and invading Lebanese air space, at times aggressively.
“We’re allowed” to be there, Levy wrote. The Palestinians “aren’t allowed” to resist. “We’re allowed” to enter Lebanon. “They’re forbidden” to react. If they do, “Lebanon must be taught a lesson, and we will teach it. And what about us? We don’t have any lessons to learn. We’ll continue to ignore UNIFEL,” UN resolutions and the rule of law, as well as “the Lebanese army and its new brigade commander, who has the nerve to think that his job is to protect his country’s sovereignty.”
In Gaza meanwhile, six days of Israeli air strikes left several people dead and dozens wounded. In addition, IDF shellfire killed one Palestinian and wounded two or more others. The attacks are the latest in a series of provocations that have occurred without warning.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reported the air strikes, one against Hamas member Eissa Al-Batran at the Al-Boreij Refugee Camp, the other against the Gaza City Airport, targeting security vehicles near the presidential compound. Neighbouring homes and buildings were damaged and local residents terrified. At the same time, tunnels on the Gaza-Egypt border were attacked, though no casualties were reported.
Near the Erez crossing Israeli snipers shot three workers collecting materials from rubble stockpiles without provocation. Israel maintains a 67-km2 “no-go zone” in this agricultural area, regularly shooting Palestinians who enter, including farmers on their own land.
The PCHR called the attacks “part of a series of Israeli war crimes that reflect Israel’s disregard for the lives of Palestinians.”
On 2 August, a massive explosion rocked Gaza’s Deir Al-Balah Refugee Camp, injuring 58, including 13 children and nine women, one suffering a miscarriage as a result of the blast. It also destroyed seven houses and damaged 30 others. The Ezzeddin Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, issued a statement on 3 August, which confirmed “that what happened resulted from a Zionist security operation intended to assassinate field leaders” from the Brigades.
Eyewitnesses said bombs placed in a house belonging to senior Hamas official Alaa Al-Danaf had exploded, contradicting initial reports that Israeli missile strikes had caused the blast in which Al-Danaf himself was unhurt. The PCHR also launched a “serious and comprehensive investigation” in order to determine what had taken place at Deir Al-Balah, with Israeli involvement being suspected as days of air strikes had preceded the blast.
On 4 August, in part of a series of daily attacks, an Israeli air strike killed one Palestinian and wounded another east of Khan Younis, reminding residents of Operation Cast Lead as they again saw the dead and wounded all about them, together with the destruction caused by the attacks, all part of Israel’s traumatisation campaign.
Before the latest attacks, Haaretz reported rockets having been fired at Israel’s southern port city of Eilat. No casualties were reported. Another rocket struck Aqaba in Jordan, killing one civilian and wounding four others. Israel blamed Hamas, but Jordanian security forces claimed that the rocket had come from the Sinai in Egypt, or southern Jordan, and not Gaza. Hamas strongly denied any involvement.
Since Operation Cast Lead ended in January 2009, Hamas has maintained a unilateral ceasefire even as Israel has repeatedly violated it, with its air and ground attacks being countered by Palestinian resistance factions unaffiliated with Hamas firing one or more Grad-type rockets and hitting an area around Ashkelon in Israel. No deaths or injuries have been reported.
On 1 August, the Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights, a Palestinian NGO, condemned the Israeli attacks, warned of the risk of a new escalation, and asked the international community to intervene “to ensure that civilians and their property are protected in the occupied Palestinian territories.”
Among the regular incursions and repression carried out by Israel on the West Bank, the PCHR has reported that Israel has continued to impose restrictions on free movement throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including access to the city. Currently, 630 permanently manned and unmanned checkpoints are maintained, with 60-80 “flying” (temporary) ones being erected each week.
Moreover, the construction of the annexation wall continues, nearly all of it on confiscated Palestinian land, or around 12 per cent of the West Bank when completed. At least 65 per cent of the roads leading to 18 Palestinian communities are closed or fully controlled by Israeli forces, and around 500km of roads are restricted. One third or more of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is inaccessible to Palestinians without hard-to-get permits.
Peaceful demonstrators are regularly assaulted, arrested, and at times killed. Over the course of one week, Israeli forces conducted 25 incursions into West Bank communities and five others in Gaza.
The West Bank incursions included entry into the village of Al-Mazraa Al-Gharbiya near Ramallah, the village of Anata near Jerusalem, the village of Jayous near Qalqilya. the Al-Fawar Refugee Camp near Hebron, the villages of Allar and Baqa Al-Sharqiya near Tulkarm, the villages of Dura, Ethna, Bani Naim, Sair, Nouba and Beit Oula near Hebron, the town of Salfit, the village of Al-Shawawra near Bethlehem, the village of Al-Zawia near Salfit, the villages of Anabta and Kufor Al-Labad near Tulkarm, the city of Tulkarm, the city of Qalqilya, the suburb of Shwaika near Tulkarm, and the villages of Jalbourn and Deir Abu Daif near Jenin.
On 5 August, the Al-Frahen area near Khan Younis in central Gaza was attacked with bulldozers and tanks, which fired on farmers and other civilians. No injuries were reported.
In all of these incursions excessive force was used. Streets were patrolled, homes invaded and searched and their contents damaged or destroyed, arrests made, and civilians shot. One death was reported, together with reports of other civilians being injured. Such events happen regularly throughout the occupied territories in violation of international law, which Israel has neither recognised nor obeyed for over six decades, targeting the people it is supposed to safeguard.
For these reasons the PCHR and other human rights organisations want the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to fulfil “their legal and moral responsibility [to] ensure Israel’s respect for the Convention in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, [and to] take effective steps” to demand compliance.
This must happen with or without the High Contracting Parties’ support as pressure builds, but it will happen neither easily nor quickly.
* The writer is a research associate of the Centre for Research on Globalisation.
Efforts to expel from the Knesset the Arabs who are representing their voters, in addition to racist laws the current Knesset is promoting, are liable to turn Israel into a new model of apartheid state.
By Zuheir Andreus
During the visit by leaders of the Palestinian community to Libya a few months ago, MK Hanin Zuabi (Balad ) stood out in particular – the only woman in the “Arabs of 1948” delegation invited to visit Muammar Gadhafi. When we met with Gadhafi in his tent in the town of Sert, this remarkable woman showed courage that is rare in these parts.
The leader preached to us and advised us to practice one of the tenets of Islam – marry four women and bring many children into the world to fight the Israelis. Zuabi, who is known for her struggle for the rights of Palestinian women in Israel, did not hesitate and pointed out to Gadhafi that his philosophy was not acceptable to her because it oppresses women. The tent went silent. It’s not customary to interrupt the leader, we had been told in the briefing before the meeting. Gadhafi listened and simply went on with his speech.
This story proves that Zuabi is cut from tough and unyielding cloth – an uncompromising fighter for her party’s principles both domestically and abroad.
It’s only natural the targeted assassination campaign led by members of the Knesset, which transcends party lines and opinions and is aimed at expelling Zuabi from the Knesset, would gain momentum. Zuabi, like most Arab MKs, is a nuisance to the various racists, and the delegitimization campaign against her is an inseparable part of the official efforts, with a tailwind from the obsequious Hebrew-language press, to declare Balad illegal.
The remnants of what is called “Israeli democracy” are getting lost in the name of protecting the Jewish State of Israel. It’s the Israelis’ right to think what they want, but it’s our obligation to defend our principles, even if this entails a high individual and collective price. The Palestinians in Israel will not agree to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The Palestinians, the authentic owners of the land here, are an inseparable part of the Arab nation. They were here before Israel, they are not transients and they are certainly not guests in their native land.
The efforts to expel from the Knesset the Arabs who are representing their voters, in addition to the racist laws the current Knesset has promoted, are liable to turn Israel into a new model of apartheid state, like the despicable one that once reigned in South Africa.
Most of the anger toward Zuabi stems from her participation in the flotilla to the Gaza Strip. But in a properly run country they would have opened an investigation not against her but against the “anonymous individuals” who set up a Facebook group calling for her execution. Moreover, the Israelis must understand that Zuabi took part in the flotilla for breaking the blockade of Gaza because she believes that no law in the world gives an occupier the right, moral or otherwise, to put 1.5 million people in prison because of a soldier captured by the Palestinian resistance forces.
On the flotilla she represented the Palestinians in Israel, not only herself and her party. The Palestinians’ Higher Monitoring Committee, the only body that faithfully represents them, chose her to represent more than a million Palestinians in Israel. So the campaign against her is a campaign against all the Palestinians in the Jewish state – hence the danger in it.
Astonishingly, Israel’s knights of human rights are not speaking out, which is dangerous for both Israeli and Palestinian society in this country. If you support expelling Zuabi from the Knesset, we are sending you a razor-sharp message: We are all Zuabi.
The writer is editor of the Arabic newspaper Ma-Alhadat, published in Tamra in the Lower Galilee.
Caught between Washington and his own people, the PA president has no meaningful room for manoeuvre, writes Khaled Amayreh from the West Bank
The prevailing disputation over the right of Muslim Americans to build a community centre and mosque a short distance from the site of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks has garnered plenty of headlines in the past few days. The controversy calls for an honest reappraisal of the precise position of Muslim Americans in the United States. The altercation has polarised US public opinion and raised tension in the Arab and Muslim world.
“It saddens me to think that people don’t understand what building this mosque on hallowed ground really represents,” pontificated Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, infamous running mate of 2008 Republican Party presidential candidate John McCain, and an iconic figure of the war-mongering neoconservatives and discredited Republican far-right.
Another icon of the bellicose right, Newt Gingrich, was quoted in Fox News as lambasting the construction of an Islamic centre “right at the edge of a place where, let’s be clear, thousands of Americans were killed in an attack by radical Islamists.”
The irony, wrote Anthony DiMaggio, author of Permanent War and who taught Middle East politics at Illinois State University, is that the brouhaha is “a manufactured controversy”. DiMaggio dismissed the fracas a “racist uproar” and denounced the right-wing radio and television campaign in America for framing Islam as “radical, fundamentalist and a threat to national security”.
Worse, US President Barack Obama was denigrated as a “closet Muslim terrorist” for publicly lending support to the construction of the Islamic centre so close as it is to Ground Zero in New York. “Obama is a non-citizen,” his detractors contended. This latter accusation strikes at the very heart of the concept of citizenship rights and national identity.
The complexities of belonging cannot be relegated to the realm of academic treatises. The vast majority of Muslim Americans are law- abiding citizens intent on exercising their right to freely exercise the tenants of their own religion. This particular right lies at the heart of the perceiving identity — including religious identity — as a political problem in a nation that prides itself in the secular dispensation of its constitution and raison d’être.
Moreover, this particular fundamental right is in accordance with the First Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights that has constituted the foundation of American freedom for over 200 years. Be that as it may, religion from the inception of the US has been a major marker of identity.
Gender and race have traditionally been the key prerequisites of identity politics in the US. Since 9/11 religion has become the primary focus of political identity in the US. Shifting criterion for eligibility to a notion of “American belonging” is underway.
An African-American candidate has, theoretically at least, as much a chance of winning a presidential election as an Irish American. The possibility of a Muslim American winning a landslide victory in any presidential election in the near future is slim, to say the least.
The pertinent question is why? According to Moataz Abdel-Fattah, associate professor of Middle East Studies at Central Michigan University, Obama’s comments must be viewed in context of the forthcoming congressional elections. The growing schism between conservatives and liberals in the US undermines the political stability of the country, the world’s superpower. “The impediments to the rights of Muslims in the US tend to be cultural rather than political or legal. The curtailment of the freedoms of Muslims is two-fold. First, the theological bias of the Judeo-Christian tradition prevalent in the US perpetuates the myth that Islam is an exotic religion, alien to the American people and culture and there is a widespread belief that Mohamed is not a prophet,” Abdel-Fattah told Al-Ahram Weekly.
“Moreover, Muslims tend to adopt more conservative lifestyles and rarely intermingle with non-Muslims. This insular aspect of Muslim culture in predominantly non-Muslim America, coupled with taboos on preaching Islam has traditionally worked to isolate Muslims in America and perpetrate stereotypes about Islam.”
Abdel-Fattah, however, noted that one positive side effect of 9/11 was the increased curiosity of ordinary Americans about Islam. “I personally meet hundreds of people who ask me about Islam as a religion and there has been an increase in the number of Muslim faculty members at Michigan University. Indeed, Muslim Studies departments in institutions of higher learning have replaced the Black Studies departments as the new novelty in American academia.”
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the American Muslim community was in disarray. Their reticence was only part of the problem. Into the breach stepped President Obama, the first African-American to hold America’s top job. He was also the first US president whose father was a Muslim and whose sister is a practising Muslim. His middle name is Hussein.
It is not unusual for Americans to speak frankly about their presidents’ foibles. Obama isn’t quite the secular saint of legend. Nor is he a liberal per se. Obama’s defence of building a Muslim community centre in lower Manhattan was applauded as a “brave step”.
It is astonishing to recall how little was known publicly about Islam as a world religion, or about America’s Muslims before 9/11.
Far from undermining the myth of Muslim Americans as fifth columnists, Muslims in America were dismissed as self-serving, conniving and exploitative.
This year, Eid Al-Fitr coincides with the ninth anniversary of 9/11. This brings the story up to date through the post-Bush years when the Obama administration set the tone of the new face of America. An African-American president of partially Muslim familial background led America from the front and championed the rights of the underdog, or so he was celebrated. “We understand that he wants to change the agenda. We also understand the constraints, tremendous pressures and limitations he must labour under,” noted Abdel-Fattah. “Obama’s message that America is not at war with Islam was well-received.”
They never do, do they? The French in Algeria, the Americans in Vietnam, and now the UK and US in their assorted neo-colonial wars. Israelis could never do anything wrong, of course – it is against their constitution and principles. The wrong-doing in the Middle East is the specialty of the Palestinians, of course, who excel at it.
So here is another Israeli who did nothing wrong, and if she reminds you of Ms Lindy England of the US at Abu Ghraib, well, that is your problem, not hers.
The pictures were later removed from public view on Ms Aberjil's profile
A former Israeli soldier who posted pictures of herself on Facebook posing with blindfolded Palestinian prisoners says she did nothing wrong.
Eden Aberjil, 26, said she had had death threats over of the images and was surprised at the backlash.
She said the pictures had been taken to “remember the experience” in the army.
Speaking to the BBC, an army spokesman condemned what he called “shameful behaviour by a young soldier”.
“It’s a compulsory army and part of the soldiers do not understand the seriousness of the situation they are in and the duty they are given in the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces],” Capt Arye Shalicar told BBC World Service.
Israeli anti-torture activists said more needed to be done to teach soldiers respect.
Ms Aberjil said the pictures were not intended to be a political statement and the prisoners had been treated well.
It had “never occurred to her”, she told Army Radio, that there might be a problem with the pictures, and she insisted had been a “model soldier”.
Ms Aberjil has already been discharged from the army having completed her mandatory military service.
The pictures show her in uniform, smiling next to three bound and blindfolded prisoners.
Pictures removed
“There’s no violence or intention to humiliate anyone in the pictures,” she said.
A great many young Israeli soldiers have photograph albums quite similar to Eden Aberjil’s “The army: the best days of my life”.
The only difference is that they do not post them on Facebook.
That explains her remark that she still did not “understand what was wrong” and the comment of Dr Ishai Menuchin of the Committee Against Torture in Israel that “she is a bad apple, but all the box are bad apples”.
The IDF likes to think of itself as the most ethical army in the world and so condemned the photographs in strident terms. (They are also no fools when it comes to public relations).
For most young conscripts, and young Israelis who have completed their military service, I suspect the reaction will not be outrage but a simple shrug of the shoulders.
Anger at Israel Facebook photos
“I just had my picture taken with them in the background. I did it out of excitement, to remember the experience.”
Ms Aberjil had put the images in a Facebook album named “The army: the best days of my life” several weeks ago.
Their existence was reported by media on Monday, and they have now been taken down.
“I find it astounding that there are so many people who want peace and I’m the one ruining it for them,” she said, adding that she had received “loads of death threats” but was not scared.
She said she was disappointed by the army’s response to the pictures.
Condemning the photos, another army spokesman, Barak Raz, said they did not “reflect the spirit of the IDF, our ethical standard to which we all aspire”.
Capt Shalicar said that one of the aims of the IDF was educational, teaching young conscripts what was right and wrong.
If Ms Aberjil was serving in the IDF today, he suggested, “most probably her commander would give her the right punishment and they would maybe put her behind bars for a few weeks”.
‘Humiliating’
Palestinian groups said the images were humiliating and revealed the “mentality of the occupier”.
“This shows the mentality of the occupier, to be proud of humiliating Palestinians,” Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib told the Associated Press news agency.
“The occupation is unjust, immoral and, as these pictures show, corrupting.”
A spokesman for the campaign group the Israeli Committee Against Torture, Ishay Menuchin, said the Israeli military needed to do more to stop the abuse of Palestinian prisoners.
“The problem is that they can condemn her, but they need to work and educate these soldiers that Palestinians are civilians with human rights and they should treat them as human beings, not as a background for a pose,” he said.
Israeli land seizure and ethnic cleansing should be met with arrest warrants – not arms sales and diplomatic games
Ben White
Tuesday 17 August 2010 09.59 BST
The Jordan Valley, stretching all the way down the West Bank’s eastern side, is a microcosm of Israel’s discriminatory policies of colonisation and displacement. For 40 years, settlements have been established, military no-go areas declared, and Palestinians’ freedom of movement restricted. There are now 27 colonies in the Jordan Valley – most of them had been established by the late 1970s under Labour governments. There are also nine “unauthorised” outposts. In the 1990s, the size of territory afforded to the settlements increased by 45%.
As we watch yet another bout of periodic, though tempered, enthusiasm about “direct negotiations”, Israel is doing as much as possible to determine the Bantustan borders – policies exemplified in the Jordan Valley, a substantial area of the West Bank almost isolated from the rest of the occupied territories. In 2006, B’Tselem noted how the Israeli military “made a distinction between the ‘territory of Judea and Samaria’ (ie the West Bank) and ‘the Jordan Valley’, indicating that Israel does not view the two areas as a single territorial unit”.
While there are areas of the West Bank that have witnessed the removal of some checkpoints, according to a senior UN official in June, “it hasn’t improved at all when it comes to moving towards the east” and the Jordan Valley. Without a special permit, Palestinians who are not registered as Jordan Valley residents are prohibited from crossing the four key checkpoints controlling the area north of Jericho in their private vehicles.
The presence of the valley’s Palestinians is a “problem” that Israel approaches with the tools of evacuation orders and bulldozers. Amnesty International, among others, has noticed an intensification of home demolitions and evictions, while B’Tselem sees “the current wave” as “part of Israel’s ongoing efforts to remove” Bedouin Palestinians from the Jordan Valley. As Luisa Morgantini, former vice-president of the European parliament, put it recently, “an area cleansed of its inhabitants today is more easily annexed tomorrow”.
Israel’s strategic objectives mean disaster for the lives of Palestinians on the ground. Sitting next to his wife and children, Omar described to me a visit from the Israeli military to his community of al-Fasayil. “They arrived at 10 in the morning, with around a dozen jeeps and a bulldozer. They wanted to demolish everything immediately, and we were begging for a little time to get things out.”
Other people came running to help, he said, but the soldiers only allowed his two brothers-in-law to help him move out his animals and possessions. “We wanted to save the metal door but the soldiers said, ‘No, it is part of the demolition order’.”
In that particular raid, the Israeli army targeted one structure used for farming and storage. But not far away, other Palestinians last month were left to survey the damage after around 70 structures were demolished, displacing 100 Palestinians. When I visited two days later, all around were piles of debris: heaps of twisted metal, plastic fragments and broken pots and pans. In the words of one Oxfam official, the scene resembled the aftermath of “a natural disaster”.
This is a stark example of Israeli apartheid. Across the Jordan Valley, thriving Jewish settlements – whose very presence is illegal under international law – produce vegetables and fruits for export, their communities integrated into the main infrastructure and communications network of the Israeli state. Afforded generous “master plans” for development by the Israeli state, all around these settlements are Palestinians whose very livelihoods are threatened by the occupation.
Perhaps the main method of making normal life impossible for the Palestinians is to prevent “legal” construction. Back in April, Amnesty International cited an Israeli army spokesperson who said in 1999 that “our policy is not to approve building in Area C” (an Oslo Accords classification applying to almost all of the Jordan Valley). These restrictions, along with the settlements and the 44% designated as an Israeli “military area” or “nature reserve”, mean that “in almost the entirety of the Jordan Valley, Palestinian construction is prohibited”.
These are the realities that persuade many groups who work on the ground to draw disturbing conclusions about Israel’s objectives. Amnesty International has expressed its concern that the home demolitions are “part of a government strategy to remove the Palestinian population from the parts of the West Bank known as Area C”. B’Tselem suggested that Israel’s motive “is not based on military-security needs, but is political: the de facto annexation of the Jordan Valley”.
From the faces of Palestinian families picking over the ruined remains of their simple properties and the prospering Jewish settlements next door, to the declared intentions of leaders such as Binyamin Netanyahu, the Jordan Valley is Israeli rejectionism distilled. Land seizure and ethnic cleansing should be met with arrest warrants and sanctions, not arms sales and diplomatic games.
Governmental inaction makes it even more imperative for citizens to take action: through solidarity with Palestinians defending their community in the Jordan Valley to boycotting products and resisting corporate complicity in a regime of separation and inequality. Once more, the response of civil society shames our elected representatives.
Israel was responsible for the 2007 death of a 10-year-old Palestinian girl, a court in Jerusalem has ruled.
Abir Aramin was shot in the head by a rubber bullet during a clash between border guards and stone-throwing youths in the West Bank town of Anata.
A judge in the civil case brought by her family ruled the killing was “unjustified” and the guards had either been negligent or had disobeyed orders.
The state has been ordered to pay compensation to Abir’s family.
Abir was killed shortly after leaving a sweet shop with her sister and two other girls in the West Bank town of Anata, north of Jerusalem, in January 2007.
The family – including her father who is a prominent peace campaigner – had brought the civil case after Israel’s high court ruled against a criminal trial, saying Abir might have been hit by a rock thrown by Palestinian protesters.
A group of youths had been involved in a clash with border guards nearby over the building of a section of Israel’s controversial West Bank barrier.
But Judge Orit Efal-Gabai dismissed that claim, saying there was “no debate” that Abir had been hit by a rubber bullet and that the shooting “occurred out of negligence, or in violation of the rules of engagement”.
“Abir and her friends were walking down a street where there were no rock-throwers, therefore there was no reason to shoot in their direction,” Haaretz quoted the judge as saying.
“It is clear that Abir’s death, caused by a rubber bullet shot by border guards, was due to negligence by the defendant .”
Palestinian man claims he has two hostages and will blow up building
Israeli security forces were tonight in place around the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv where a Palestinian man was reported to be holding hostages after shots were fired.
Details of the incident were unclear but the Israeli foreign ministry confirmed there was a “hostage situation.”
According to Israel Radio, Turkish officials at the embassy were refusing to allow Israeli forces to enter the building. Relations between Israel and Turkey have been under severe strain since the Israeli attack on a Turkish flotilla heading for Gaza on May 31, when nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed . Tonight’s incident has the potential to further inflame a delicate diplomatic situation.
The Palestinian man reportedly arrived at the embassy in a state of undress, saying he was being persecuted by Israeli intelligence services and demanding asylum. He called an Israeli paper, identifying himself as Nadam Injaz, and saying he had previously sought asylum at the British embassy in Tel Aviv four years ago.
Shots were apparently fired in the vicinity of the Turkish embassy todayand police closed surrounding roads to traffic.
According to some reports, the Palestinian was shot in the legs and then taken inside the embassy. His lawyer, who was in contact with him by phone, said he was armed with pistol and a knife.
An Israeli TV channel played a recording of a phone call it said came from the attacker. “I have two hostages,” he said. “I will blow up the embassy.”
Eli Binn, the director of the ambulance service, who was at the scene, said: “We were called to scene after being informed that someone was barricading himself at the embassy. When we arrived, a Turkish representative said there is no need for us to come in and did not allow us to enter. We know with certainty that there is one gunshot victim but we don’t know his condition.”
“While we were at the site, more shots were fired, but at this time we don’t quite know what’s going on inside the embassy and are waiting outside, along with other security forces, until we get our orders,” he said.
The Palestinian was reported to be demanding to be taken to Ankara. Police said they believed he was mentally ill.
Work starts to remove concrete barrier at Gilo built in 2002, later becoming one of the enduring symbols of the Second Intifada.
Work began in East Jerusalem Monday morning to remove one of the city’s enduring symbols of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, a two-meter-high concrete barrier built to separate the Jewish neighborhood of Gilo from the Arab district of Beit Jalla.
A section of the concrete barrier separaing Gilo from Bait Jalla Photo by: Alex Livak
The army’s home front command began the demolition at the request of Jerusalem’s municipality, after security checks suggested that the wall, designed to protect Gilo residents from sniper fire, was no longer needed.
Gilo was sealed off from Beit Jalla eight years ago, when the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising saw violence flare across the West Bank. In response, the Israel Defense Forces launch Operation Defensive Shield, the largest military deployment in the Palestinian territories since 1967.
“The wall was built at the time of Defensive Shield and right now we don’t see a problem in getting rid of it,” said Lt. Col. Hezi Ravivo, a military engineer in charge of the demolition.
During the two years between the start of the intifada in 2000 and the construction of the wall two years later, Gilo was hit regular sniper and machine gun fire, with one attack seriously wounding a Border Guard.
Today Gilo is quieter. “I don’t expect the gunfire to resume,” Ravivo said.
“If the need arises we can put it up again,” he said, adding that in the current security climate, it would even be safe for Israeli tour guides and groups to enter Bethlehem, a major Palestinian city that lies just south of Jerusalem.
But the demolition has angered local residents, who say the army has left them exposed.
“It gave us a certain feeling of security,” said Aviva Klein, who lives nearby. “I didn’t feel the wall was shutting me in – I felt safe.”
The army said in a statement: “The IDF will continue to protect the citizens of the State of Israel continuing to assess the changing security climate.”
EDITOR: BDS takes off in a big way
The next stage of the BDS campaign is here, and no one in particular is responsible for it! Groups form all over Europe, totally independently, and add their particular campaign to the struggle against Israel’s atrocities. The BDS campaign has become a chain-reaction, each new act starting other in its wake!
Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign signs artists to pledge saying they will refrain from performing in Israel as long as it abuses Palestinian human rights.
More than 150 Irish artists and intellectuals have declared Saturday a boycott of Israel, saying they would not perform or exhibit in Israel until Israel ceases what they call its abuse of Palestinian human rights.
The artists signed a statement, pledging that they refrain from engaging in cultural activity with Israel “until such time as Israel complies with international law and universal principles of human rights”.
Speaking to the Irish Times, the head of the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), Raymond Dean, said that artists that perform in Israel are backing it whether they like it or not.”
“You can’t really pin this down…at least an end of the occupation of Palestine; dismantling or at least stopping the settlements; and Israel negotiating in good faith with the Palestinians,” Dean said.
The statement comes as more and more artists scheduled to perform in Israel, such Elvis Costello, The Pixies, Jill Scott Heron, Santana, The Klaxons and the Gorillaz Sound System, have canceled their shows, in what appeared to be a response to Israel’s raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla last May, which resulted in the death of 9 flotilla activists.
Only last month, British electronica duo Leftfield announced that they would be canceling their scheduled performance in Israel on August 31st due what they referred to as production problems.
“Unfortunately Leftfield will not be able to perform at the Heineken Music Conference on the 31st August due to unforeseen production problems,” the duo wrote on the Facebook fan page dedicated to their current tour.
Meanwhile, on the duo’s official Facebook page they published a letter sent to them by the organization Boycott Israel calling for them to “postpone your planned concert in Israel this summer, indefinitely.”
The letter, scanned and posted on their page, stated that in light of Israel’s deadly raid on the Gaza flotilla in May, they urged the musicians to take a stand and protest Israel’s actions by canceling the show.
“Performing in Israel today means crossing an international picket line,” the letter said, adding that, “your visit here will be construed as a vote of confidence in Israel’s oppressive policies.”
In their cancellation statement the group made no reference to the letter, despite the fact that they had made it public by posting it on their Facebook page.
Leftfiled joined a growing list of artists and musicians who have recently canceled their shows in Israel due to political reasons, among others.
Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators expected to announce resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, call for Palestinian state within two years.
Israel will reject any preconditions set forth by the Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators in regard to scheduled resumption of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians, a forum of seven senior cabinet ministers, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, decided Sunday evening.
The Quartet – the U.S., the United Nations, the European Union and Russia – was expected to make an announcement regarding the resumption of direct talks on Monday.
U.S. sources said Sunday that the Quartet would call for the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders within a year or two.
A senior government source said Sunday that “the Quartet announcement could serve as camouflage for Palestinian preconditions, and that is unacceptable.”
He added that the U.S. administration will issue another announcement later in the week, defining the terms of the negotiations and serving as a compromise between the Israeli and the Palestinian viewpoints.
Meanwhile Sunday, a senior official in the Obama administration told Haaretz that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would announce the start of direct peace talks in only “a matter of days.”
A number of minor details still need to be clarified with Abbas and Netanyahu that will open the way for direct talks, the official added.
Joint statement comes ahead of a possible round of direct peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Eleven militant Palestinian groups based in Syria warned on Sunday against a “concession and compromise” policy ahead of a possible round of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
The message from the groups, which include Gaza rulers Hamas as well as the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine factions, appeared directed at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas is under pressure to enter direct negotiations with Israel, after months of U.S.-brokered proximity talks between the two sides.
Damascus-based Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshal said Sunday that the factions’ representatives issued the statement after discussions held at his house in the Syrian capital and that they rejected all forms of compromise with Israel.
The U.S. and the “Zionists,” the statement said, were “aiming to wipe out the national rights of the Palestinians and to cover up the practices of the occupation, settlement expansion and Judaizing the land.”
Abbas has said he will not agree to direct talks with Israel without a complete halt to settlement building, agreement on final borders and a timetable for a deal.
Despite settlement construction freeze and Defense Ministry opposition, 23 new structures to be erected in violation of law to meet settlers’ educational needs.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday approved the erection of 23 mobile classrooms in West Bank settlements, even though there is no official construction plan that would allow this move.
Netanyahu declared a 10-month freeze on construction in West Bank settlements in November of last year in efforts to relaunch stalled peace talks with the Palestinians. The Palestinian leadership has demanded a complete halt to Israeli construction on land slated for a future Palestinian state.
The prime minister’s decision comes in the wake of an aggressive debate between the Ministry of Justice and the Defense and Education ministries.
The Education Ministry has announced that there is a need for 23 new buildings, in 12 different West Bank settlements, to cater to the needs of the local education authorities. The Defense Ministry has confirmed these needs, but the deputy attorney general ultimately rejected the request due to the absence of proper construction authorization. He explained that even the most dire of educational needs mustn’t circumvent the law.
Consequently, Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar approached the prime minister in his office on Saturday in a meeting with Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman, and the three decided that 23 caravans will be dispatched to the settlements and that the prime minister will simultaneously push for legal authorization.
The Defense Ministry opposed the erection of the classrooms, saying that the educational needs of the settlers could not trump the law. Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s stance was taken into consideration, as it was decided that in the smaller illegal outposts no classrooms would by built, regardless of the education needs of the settlers there.
The heads of the Eretz Yisrael lobby, MKs Ze’ev Elkin and Aryeh Eldad, lauded the prime minister for “stepping in to solve the problem.” In a statement they released, the lobby wrote that “we’re glad that common sense overpowered bureaucracy and dullness and the students of Judea and Samaria will get to study under the same conditions as the rest of Israel’s students.”
Ignoring U.S. warning, Arab League pushes for international inspections of Israel’s nuclear program.
Ignoring a U.S. warning, Arab nations are urging Washington and other powers to end support of Israel’s nuclear secrecy and to push for international inspections of Israel’s nuclear program, diplomats told The Associated Press Sunday.
Islamic nations have long called for Israel – which is widely believed to have nuclear arms – to open its program. But the fact that the Arab League has directly approached Washington and other Israeli allies for support at the September meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency is significant, considering that U.S. President Barack Obama last month warned against using that forum to single out Israel.
Obama then suggested that such a move would likely kill hopes of breakthrough talks on a Mideast nuclear-free zone, as proposed by the United Nations’ 189-member Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty conference three months ago.
Over Israeli objections, the planned 2012 talks were backed by the U.S. and other nuclear powers for the first time since Arab nations pushed for such a gathering 15 years ago.
The Arab appeal to pressure Israel to open its nuclear program to inspectors also threatens to deflect attention from Iran, which Washington and its allies now consider a grave nuclear proliferation threat, even though Tehran insists it is not developing nuclear weapons.
The Arab appeal is contained in an Aug. 8 letter signed by Arab League chief Amr Moussa. It asks for backing of a resolution that Arab nations will submit to the September assembly of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
A draft of the resolution expresses concern about Israel’s nuclear program and urges it to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and to open its atomic activities to outside inspection. A cover note asks the Belgian Embassy in Cairo to transmit the letter and the draft to Belgian Foreign Minister Steven Vanackere, who now holds the rotating European Union presidency.
Diplomats accredited to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency and familiar with the issue told the AP that the letter was also sent to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the foreign ministers of Russia, China, Britain and France – the four other permanent UN Security Council members.
All the diplomats who agreed to discuss the issue with the AP asked for anonymity because of the confidentiality of their information.
Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed in a statement last month to work together to oppose efforts to single out Israel at the 150-nation International Atomic Energy Agency conference.
On the proposed Mideast nuclear-free zone talks, their statement warned that any efforts to single out Israel will make the prospects of convening such a conference unlikely.
But the Arab letter argues that singling out Israel is not the aim: “Singling out a state assumes that there are a number of states in the same position and only one state was singled out,” the letter says. Referring to the Nonproliferation Treaty, it says: “The fact is that all the states in the region have acceded to the NPT except Israel.”
Israel is commonly assumed to have nuclear weapons but refuses to confirm or deny the assumption.
The latest pressure puts Israel in an uncomfortable position. It wants the international community to take stern action to prevent Iran from obtaining atomic weapons but at the same time brushes off calls to come clean about its own nuclear capabilities.
Passions have grown since September when the International Atomic Energy Agency assembly overrode Western objections to pass a resolution directly criticizing Israel and its atomic program for the first time in 18 years.
The result was a setback not only for Israel but also for the United States and other supporters of Israel.
Because the resolution passed by only a four-vote margin, lobbying by both sides has intensified ahead of next month’s meeting.
Three diplomats from International Atomic Energy Agency member nations said the EU and the U.S. were meeting or planning to meet with possible undecided nations to seek their support of Israel, even as the Arab bloc continues pushing for support for its resolution.
The U.S. and its allies consider Iran the region’s greatest proliferation threat, fearing that Tehran is trying to achieve the capacity to make nuclear weapons despite its assertion that it is only building a civilian program to generate power.
They also say Syria – which, like Iran is under International Atomic Energy Agency investigation – ran a clandestine nuclear program, at least until Israeli warplanes destroyed what they describe as a nearly finished plutonium-producing reactor two years ago. Syria denies these allegations.
But Islamic nations insist that Israel is the true danger in the Middle East, saying they fear its nuclear weapons capacity.
