This opinion piece has a story behind it. When Umberto Eco’s harsh opinion piece against the cultural boycott of Israel appeared in the Italian newspaper L’espresso [1], PACBI decided that a rebuttal was in order. Two PACBI members contacted the newspaper through an Italian colleague to ask that a rebuttal be published in the newspaper. After much negotiation and many emails exchanged with one of the editors, the rebuttal was pared down to a bare minimum, and the newspaper agreed to publish it on 2 July 2010 in the letters section of the paper [2]. However, it transpired that the published version had been further cut down, and that the identities of the authors had not been included. This is indeed a sad commentary on the state of press freedom in Italy, where influential figures are allowed freedom to defend Israel and its criminal acts while those with opposing views are not accorded the space to express their opposition to these views.
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On 14 May 2010, on the pages of L’espresso [1], Umberto Eco attacked the growing efforts in Italy in support of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), arguing that “any political position, any polemic against a government, should not involve a whole people and an entire culture.” We agree. But how is that relevant to the debate on the merits of an academic boycott against Israel? Our campaign has consistently targeted Israel and its complicit institutions, not individuals.
One of the most important lessons learned from the global struggle against apartheid South Africa is that refusing to deal on a business-as-usual basis with institutions that are complicit in grave and persistent human rights violations is not only justified; it is an ethical duty for conscientious intellectuals the world over. By colluding in policies that are contrary to international law and infringe fundamental rights, institutions become responsible and therefore accountable. All Israeli academic institutions, without exception, fall into this category, making a call to boycott them imperative in the struggle for upholding Palestinian rights and ending Israel’s occupation and system of racial discrimination that fits the definition of apartheid in the UN Convention for the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.
At a time when Israel is flouting international law with utter impunity, attacking civilian ships carrying humanitarian relief to 1.5 million Palestinians suffering under years of an illegal Israeli siege, killing and injuring scores of unarmed aid workers and other activists, the silence of the Israeli academy is louder than ever. This is quite predictable, though. At no time in their history have Israeli academic institutions, professional associations, or unions of academics condemned the occupation. They never voiced any opposition to repeated Israeli military closures of Palestinian universities, sometimes for four consecutive years, let alone to the denial of the UN-sanctioned rights of the Palestinian refugees. When Palestinian students were detained during the first intifada (1987-92) for carrying textbooks or lecturers arrested for conducting “clandestine” classes, the Israeli academy remained shamefully silent, and Israeli academics for the most part continued propagating a deceptive image of Israel as an enlightened “democracy.”
Israel has, in fact, imposed a strict siege upon Palestinian institutions of higher education for the past three decades. That these institutions have survived and are flourishing is a testimony to their determination and perseverance to resist in their own way an oppressive military regime bent on silencing the voice of the Palestinian academy. In Gaza, Israel imposes a blanket academic boycott, among other forms of siege, preventing almost all scholars from entering or leaving the Strip. The latest manifestation of the siege on Palestinian universities—boycott, in fact– was the disdainful and arrogant Israeli act of denying entry to renowned scholar Noam Chomsky to speak at Birzeit University.
Understanding the entrenched collusion of the Israeli academy with the structures of oppression in that country, prominent Israeli historian Ilan Pappe stated as early as 2005 that “the boycott reached academia because academia in Israel chose to be official.” [2] Citing research by a fellow Israeli academic that revealed that “out of 9,000 members of academia in Israel, only 30-40 are actively engaged in reading significant criticism, and a smaller number, just three or four, are teaching their students in a critical manner about Zionism and so on,” Pappe concludes, “academia has chosen to be the official Israeli propaganda. … Academia is Israel’s most important ambassador in making the claim that we are the only democracy in the Middle East.”
During Israel’s war of aggression on Gaza in 2008-2009, when more than 1400 people, predominantly civilians, were killed; thousands of homes were destroyed along with tens of schools and UN shelters, hospitals and clinics were targeted and the largest Palestinian university was bombed by F-16s, the Israeli academy was not just a “neutral observer.” Several universities contributed actively to the war crimes committed against Palestinians.
For instance, Tel Aviv University (TAU) directly collaborated in developing weapons and military doctrines that were used in Israel’s massive aggression against Gaza, a war that was condemned by the Goldstone Report and the UN General Assembly as constituting war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. [3]
Other universities in Israel fared no better. A study [4] commissioned by the Israeli Alternative Information Center (AIC) documents myriad facets of academic complicity in Israel. Ariel College is built on occupied Palestinian territory, making it an illegal “academic” colony. So is one of the two campuses of the Hebrew University, built in occupied East Jerusalem, in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Technion plays a key role in developing weapons systems used against Palestinian civilians. In fact, institutional complicity with Israel’s security and military establishment is the norm in the entire academy, which takes pride, openly, in this partnership.
Even speaking out for the most basic demands of academic freedom for Palestinians is opposed by an overwhelming majority of Israeli academics. Expressing “great concern regarding the ongoing deterioration of the system of higher education in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,” four Jewish-Israeli academics in 2008 drafted a petition [5] calling on their government to “allow students and lecturers free access to all the campuses in the Territories ….” Although the petition was sent to all 9,000 plus Israeli academics, only 407 signed it – slightly over 4%.
Despite this widespread complicity, PACBI has consistently made a clear distinction between targeting institutions and individual academics; we rejected the latter, focusing all our energies on an institutional boycott. This stems from our opposition, on principle, to political tests or “black-listing.”
Inspired by the South African struggle for freedom, PACBI and the increasing number of academic boycott campaigns around the world believe that the Israeli academy should not be automatically exempted from the boycott, especially when its role in whitewashing and perpetuating war crimes is beyond doubt.
[1] http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio/boicottiamo-i-latinisti-israeliani/2127031
[2] Meron Rapoport, “Alone on the Barricades” (interview with Ilan Pappe), Haaretz. 6 May 2005
[3] http://www.electronicintifada.net/downloads/pdf/090708-soas-palestine-society.pdf
[4] http://alternativenews.org/images/stories/downloads/Economy_of_the_occupation_23-24.pdf
[5] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=792&key=407
Boycott of Israel 2, by Carlos Latuff
Editor: Preparations for another war?
It is customary for Israel to destroy South Lebanon and Beirut every couple of years, as we all know. The last time it was done for Summer 2006, so it is high time for the next madness to begin. The activities which led to this latest incident may well be part of the preparation for the next war.
Tuesday, 3 August 2010 Toops exchanged fire on the border today in a battle which started over the trimming of a tree
Four people died when Lebanese and Israeli troops exchanged fire on the border today in a battle which started over the trimming of a tree.
It was the most serious clashes in four years, the victims included two Lebanese soldiers and an Israeli army officer.
The violence apparently erupted after Israeli soldiers went to cut down a tree along the fence dividing the two countries, a sign of the level of tensions in an area where Israel fought a war in 2006 with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The UN urged “maximum restraint” and said it was working with both sides to restore calm. After an initial clash of about five minutes, intermittent shelling and gunfire went on for several hours until the fighting stopped by mid-afternoon.
A Lebanese army officer said the battle started when Israeli troops tried to remove a tree from the Lebanese side of the border.
“It was over the fence but still within Israeli territory,” a military spokesman said.
Ronith Daher, 32, a Lebanese journalist who was at the scene, said she saw a UN peacekeeper ask Israel not to allow the Israeli soldier to cross the fence and warned them the Lebanese troops would open fire. The Israelis proceeded, however, and Lebanese soldiers fired into the air. She said the Israelis fired back directly at the Lebanese soldiers.
The Israeli military’s northern commander, Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, however, accused Lebanese forces of shooting toward forces inside Israeli territory without any provocation.” He said that while soldiers were removing bushes by the fence, Lebanese military snipers shot two officers who were more than 300 yards away from the fence.
The military announced that a 45-year-old battalion commander was killed and a captain was critically wounded.
A spokesman said Israel responded with infantry, tanks and artillery fire, and later sent helicopters and artillery fire at a Lebanese army base and command centre.
Residents near the Fatima Gate, a one-time border crossing with Israel, briefly blocked a road as UN peacekeepers tried to pass, shouting: “Are you here to protect us or are you here to run away?”
Many in the area view the international force with mistrust, and there have been skirmishes between residents and the peacekeepers in the past.
Lebanese President Michel Suleiman denounced the fighting and urged the army commander to “confront any Israeli aggression whatever the sacrifices.”
A Lebanese officer said one of the Israeli shells hit a house in the Lebanese border town of Adeisseh. One civilian was wounded in the shelling, he said. A security official also said a Lebanese journalist working for the daily Al-Akhbar newspaper, Assaf Abu Rahhal, was killed when an Israeli shell landed next to him in Adeisseh.
The border has been relatively quiet since the summer 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war that left 1,200 Lebanese and about 160 Israelis dead.
EDITOR: Academic Freedom Israeli style
Academics can say anything they wish, in Israel – it is of course a Jewish democracy – a democracy for Jews only – but even Jews are to be targeted if they speak; They will still be able to say whay they wish, for the time being, but will lose their livelihood. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?
The president of Bar-Ilan University has called for Israeli professors who support an academic boycott of their country to quit or be fired.
The statement comes as Israel’s parliament debates legislation that would allow lawsuits against academics and others who support various boycotts of the Jewish state. The bill is not expected to become law, but it is generating questions about the role of scholars at public universities in Israel.
Bar-Ilan’s Moshe Kaveh, a former chairman of Israel’s Committee of University Presidents, is the first leader of an Israeli university to back the dismissal of the handful of Israeli professors who publicly expressed support for a boycott. Last year the president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev had no kind words for Neve Gordon, a professor of politics and government, for advocating an international academic boycott, but did not fire him.
“It’s easy to be brave when criticizing, but someone who has the courage to criticize the institution where he works should also have the courage to quit—and, if not, I as president will make it happen,” Mr. Kaveh told a Jewish education-and-culture festival on Thursday during a panel discussion with the education minister, Gideon Sa’ar, on the nature of Jewish identity.
“How can it be that a faculty member can stand in class and say to his students, ‘Boycott the State of Israel?’ Someone who criticizes the place where he works is ethically obliged to resign,” said Mr. Kaveh.
His remarks were greeted with warm applause from the audience and from the education minister, Israel Army Radio reported.
“When you call for an academic boycott of Israel, you don’t just do harm to the institution that pays your salary. You also harm academic freedom,” Mr. Sa’ar responded.
Menachem Klein, a professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan who is firmly opposed to a boycott, said nonetheless that Mr. Kaveh “disregards the fundamental element of academic research.”
“I wish to remind Professor Kaveh.” he said, “that university researchers’ primary responsibility and loyalty are to universal-humanistic values that direct their scientific research, not to their employer.”
3 Lebanese soldiers, one journalist killed as Israeli and Lebanese soldiers exchange fire at border; second Israeli officer seriously wounded.
One Israeli officer was killed during clashes between Israel and the Lebanese army along the border on Tuesday. 45-year-old Lt. Col. Dov Harari, from Netanya, was a reserves battalion commander in the engineering corps.
Another Israeli officer sustained severe wounds and has been admitted to Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. He is in stable condition.
Lebanese and Israeli troops exchanged fire on the border Tuesday in the most serious clashes since a fierce war four years ago, and Lebanon said at least three of its soldiers and a journalist were killed in shelling.
The violence apparently erupted over a move by Israeli soldiers to trim some hedges along the border, a sign of the level of tensions at the frontier where Israel fought a war in 2006 with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Harari, father of four, was killed by sniper fire directed at his post. The other officer at the post was captain Ezra Lakia, who was seriously wounded. The two were situated some 300 meters from the border within Israel in a position to oversee the trimming of the bushes along the border fence.
Israel Defense Forces GOC Northern Command Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot announced Tuesday that the two Israeli officers had been very seriously hit during the exchange of fire. Eizenkot said that the incident had been a “deliberate ambush.”
Eizenkot told Israeli media that “a routine operation was carried out during the afternoon near Misgav Am – an operation whose purpose was to trim some bushes near the border, in our [Israeli] territory. It was on both sides of the border but still within [Israeli] territory. Officers oversaw the operation from a permanent position. Sniper fire was directed at the officers, and two of them were wounded as a result.”
The GOC Northern Command stressed that “this was a pre-planned event, aggression by the Lebanese army who shot at soldiers inside Israeli territory without any provocation. We view this as a very severe incident.”
Saturday, 31 July 2010
There was a Nato-Israeli exercise in progress. Well, that’s OK then. Now imagine the death of five Hamas fighters in a helicopter crash in Romania this week. We’d still be investigating this extraordinary phenomenon. Now mark you, I’m not comparing Israel and Hamas. Israel is the country that justifiably slaughtered more than 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza 19 months ago – more than 300 of them children – while the vicious, blood-sucking and terrorist Hamas killed 13 Israelis (three of them soldiers who actually shot each other by mistake).
But there is one parallel. Judge Richard Goldstone, the eminent Jewish South African judge, decided in his 575-page UN inquiry into the Gaza bloodbath that both sides had committed war crimes – he was, of course, quite rightly called “evil” by all kinds of justifiably outraged supporters of Israel in the US, his excellent report rejected by seven EU governments – and so a question presents itself. What is Nato doing when it plays war games with an army accused of war crimes?
Or, more to the point, what on earth is the EU doing when it cosies up to the Israelis? In a remarkable, detailed – if slightly over-infuriated – book to be published in November, the indefatigable David Cronin is going to present a microscopic analysis of “our” relations with Israel. I have just finished reading the manuscript. It leaves me breathless. As he says in his preface, “Israel has developed such strong political and economic ties to the EU over the past decade that it has become a member state of the union in all but name.” Indeed, it was Javier Solana, the grubby top dog of the EU’s foreign policy (formerly Nato secretary general), who actually said last year that “Israel, allow me to say, is a member of the European Union without being a member of the institution”.
Pardon me? Did we know this? Did we vote for this? Who allowed this to happen? Does David Cameron – now so forcefully marketing Turkish entry to the EU – agree with this? Probably yes, since he goes on calling himself a “friend of Israel” after that country produced an excellent set of forged British passports for its murderers in Dubai. As Cronin says, “the EU’s cowardice towards Israel is in stark contrast to the robust position it has taken when major atrocities have occurred in other conflicts”. After the Russia-Georgia war in 2008, for example, the EU tasked an independent mission to find out if international law had been flouted, and demanded an international inquiry into human rights abuses after Sri Lanka’s war against the Tamil Tigers. Cronin does not duck Europe’s responsibility for the Jewish Holocaust and agrees that there will always be a “moral duty” on our governments to ensure it never happens again – though I did notice that Cameron forgot to mention the 1915 Armenian Holocaust when he was sucking up to the Turks this week.
But that’s not quite the point. In 1999, Britain’s arms sales to Israel – a country occupying the West Bank (and Gaza, too) and building illegal colonies for Jews and Jews only on Arab land – were worth £11.5m; within two years, this had almost doubled to £22.5m. This included small arms, grenade-making kits and equipment for fighter jets and tanks. There were a few refusals after Israel used modified Centurion tanks against the Palestinians in 2002, but in 2006, the year in which Israel slaughtered another 1,300 Lebanese, almost all of them civilians, in another crusade against Hizbollah’s “world terror”, Britain granted over 200 weapons licences.
Some British equipment, of course, heads for Israel via the US. In 2002, Britain gave “head-up displays” manufactured by BAE Systems for Lockheed Martin which promptly installed them in F-16 fighter-bombers destined for Israel. The EU did not object. In the same year, it should be added, the British admitted to training 13 members of the Israeli military. US planes transporting weapons to Israel at the time of the 2006 Lebanon war were refuelled at British airports (and, alas, it appears at Irish airports too). In the first three months of 2008, we gave licenses for another £20m of weapons for Israel – just in time for Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. Apache helicopters used against Palestinians, says Cronin, contain parts made by SPS Aerostructures in Nottinghamshire, Smiths Industries in Cheltenham, Page Aerospace in Middlesex and Meggit Avionics in Hampshire.
Need I go on? Israel, by the way, has been praised for its “logistics” help to Nato in Afghanistan – where we are annually killing even more Afghans than the Israelis usually kill Palestinians – which is not surprising since Israel military boss Gabi Ashkenazi has visited Nato headquarters in Brussels to argue for closer ties with Nato. And Cronin convincingly argues an extraordinary – almost obscenely beautiful – financial arrangement in “Palestine”. The EU funds millions of pounds’ worth of projects in Gaza. These are regularly destroyed by Israel’s American-made weaponry. So it goes like this. European taxpayers fork out for the projects. US taxpayers fork out for the weapons which Israel uses to destroy them. Then EU taxpayers fork out for the whole lot to be rebuilt. And then US taxpayers… Well, you’ve got the point. Israel, by the way, already has an “individual co-operation programme” with Nato, locking Israel into Nato’s computer networks.
All in all, it’s good to have such a stout ally as Israel on our side, even if its army is a rabble and some of its men war criminals. Come to that, why don’t we ask Hizbollah to join Nato as well – just imagine how its guerrilla tactics would benefit our chaps in Helmand. And since Israel’s Apache helicopters often kill Lebanese civilians – a whole ambulance of women and children in 1996, for example, blown to pieces by a Boeing Hellfire AGM 114C air-to-ground missile – let’s hope the Lebanese can still send a friendly greeting to the people of Nottinghamshire, Middlesex, Hampshire and, of course, Cheltenham.
Chief PA negotiator says peace proposal is more generous to Israel than the demands presented by Mahmoud Abbas to former prime minister Ehud Olmert.
The Palestinian Authority has submitted a far-reaching peace proposal to the Obama administration that is more generous to Israel than the demands presented by Mahmoud Abbas to former prime minister Ehud Olmert, the chief PA negotiator told Haaretz on Saturday.
“I presented Senator George Mitchell with a series of official documents,” Erekat said, referring to the special U.S. envoy to the Middle East. “We gave him maps and papers that clearly state our positions on all the final-status issues: borders, Jerusalem, refugees, water and security. Thus far we have not received any answer from the Israeli side.”
When asked if the Palestinian positions were similar to those presented during talks with Olmert, Erekat replied: “It’s more than that. I cannot go into details on what exactly was proposed, but Abu Mazen [PA President Mahmoud Abbas] offered more in these documents than what he proposed to Olmert in the past. Abu Mazen took bigger steps to reach peace.”
Earlier this year Erekat distributed a document to European diplomats saying the PA had offered Olmert a swap that would let Israel annex 1.9 percent of the West Bank. The document also claimed that the PA had expressed a willingness to accept an Israeli proposal to allow 15,000 Palestinian refugees to return to the country every year over 10 years.
International media outlets reported earlier this year that the PA had agreed to land swaps equaling 2.3 percent, while another report said it had accepted a swap of 3.8 percent. Erekat confirmed to Haaretz that the Palestinians have become more flexible on this issue.
He denied reports in the Arab media over the weekend that the Obama administration had threatened sanctions against the PA – perhaps even the severing of ties – if Abbas did not agree to enter direct talks with Israel over a final-status agreement.
Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian lawmaker and a member of the PLO central committee, told the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi that Washington “applied tremendous pressures on the Palestinian Authority so that it would move to direct talks.”
Ashrawi said the United States threatened to downgrade or even sever ties with Ramallah.
Another Arab language newspaper, Al-Hayat, reported that Obama had sent a special communique to Abbas last month that said Washington would not work to extend the Israeli construction freeze in West Bank settlements if the Palestinian leader continued to oppose direct negotiations. According to the report, Obama made clear to Abbas that the United States would reject any Palestinian efforts to appeal to the Security Council in lieu of direct talks with Israel.
During an Arab League meeting in Cairo on Thursday, Abbas said he had been subject to intense pressure to agree to direct talks. Erekat confirmed that many Arab leaders sought to persuade the Palestinian leader to reconsider his position, but he denied any suggestions that Washington had threatened the PA.
“[The communique] stated that if the Palestinians do not enter direct discussions, reaching a two-state solution will be even more difficult and the Americans’ ability to help in that regard will be even more limited,” Erekat said. “There were no threats.”
Erekat also denied a report by Israel Radio that Haim Ramon, a former minister and lawmaker from the opposition Kadima party, had urged the PA not to enter into direct negotiations with the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I am astounded at times to see how low these stories can go,” Erekat said. “Ramon didn’t tell me to enter direct talks or not to enter them. Such a thing never happened, and no Israeli will tell us anything along those lines.”
Erekat also denied that Ramon had been sent at the behest of President Shimon Peres. “Do not drag us into your internal politics,” he added.
“Shimon himself tells me every time we meet, ‘Go into direct talks,'” Erekat said. “I meet with many Israelis but I do not accept instructions from them or from Ramon.”
Peres is scheduled to depart for Cairo Sunday for a meeting with President Hosni Mubarak. The two leaders will discuss the latest efforts to renew direct talks between Israel and the PA.
Peres is expected to urge Mubarak to continue to press Abbas to begin direct discussions with Israel. He is expected to say Israel is serious in its intentions to advance the peace process.
Eleven others wounded as warplanes target five sites across terrirory in biggest attack since three-week offensive in 2009
A man carries a wounded young Palestinian to al-Shifa hospital after Israeli air strikes in Gaza City. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images
Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip have killed a Hamas commander and wounded 11 other people.
Warplanes fired missiles at five targets across Gaza, including Gaza City, last night for the first time since Israel’s three-week offensive in the territory ended 18 months ago.
Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the territory, said the man killed was Issa Batran, 42, a commander of its military wing in central Gaza and a rocket maker. Eight of its supporters and three civilians were also injured.
The air raids came after a Palestinian rocket attack struck the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon on Friday, causing no casualties but damaging buildings and cars in the city.
The city’s mayor said the attack was the most serious since the end of Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli offensive that left around 1,400 Palestinians dead, in January last year. Renegade militant groups have fired dozens of rockets and mortars into southern Israel since then, although most of those attack have been ineffective, with rockets mostly landing in open fields.
The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, earlier said he took the rocket attack on Ashkelon, which lies seven miles north of Gaza, “very seriously”. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The cross-border violence has raised concerns of further escalation.
A Hamas spokesman said the group would avenge Batran’s killing.
“Hamas will not be quiet over the blood of its martyrs,” said Hamad al-Rakabi. “Israel is opening all the gates of fire. This blood will cascade into rage and fire.”
The targets hit in last night’s air strike included a military training camp in Gaza City, smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border and Batran’s shack, on the outskirts of the Nusseirat refugee camp, according to Hamas security officials.
With Lieberman as prime minister, extremism would no longer need to hide. The right would be a genuine right – fascist, racist, supporting the transfer of Arabs and giving the peace process no chance.
By Zvi Bar’el
As long as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas did not agree to hold direct talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s situation was excellent. The refusenik was on the other side, as usual. The fact that Israel has refused to commit to the 1967 borders and agree to extend the freeze on settlement construction, while continuing to build in East Jerusalem, did not change Abbas’ status as a refusenik.
But Abbas is not refusing to hold direct talks, he is only refusing to accept what Netanyahu told Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos: Continuing the settlement freeze after September 26 is impossible from a political point of view and will break up the government, as will Abbas’ other demands, which Netanyahu described as “unrealistic.” So with whom exactly does Netanyahu want Abbas to hold direct talks? With a phantom prime minister? With the man afraid of his own coalition’s shadow?
On Thursday the Arab League’s Monitoring Committee decided to “permit” Abbas to hold direct negotiations. Everything, of course, based on terms Abbas has set. Nothing has changed in principle – neither the position of the Arab League nor of Abbas. What has changed is the commitment that Abbas received from Washington, the kind that will let the Arab League give a green light to direct negotiations.
The result is that the negotiations with the Palestinians are being conducted over Netanyahu’s head, on the Washington-Ramallah-Cairo-Riyadh axis. While Netanyahu is promising not to extend the settlement freeze as he approves the continued “Judaization” of Jerusalem, someone is holding genuine negotiations. While Netanyahu is dealing with the details of the show – direct or indirect negotiations – Washington and its allies are dealing with the content.
When the prime minister finds it hard to comprehend the change in the position of Abbas and the Arab League, when he says he can’t meet the conditions because of coalition problems, we can question why this government should continue. Why not go to elections and try to establish a new Israeli leadership that can really lead?
The answer so oft repeated is that elections will produce an extreme right-wing government and halt the peace process. Really? And what kind of government is currently in power? Is it really the coalition that is threatening to bring down the government if its head makes a move toward the Palestinians? Isn’t it the people furthest to the right, the more nationalist, who are setting this government’s character and policy?
Anyone who believes in Netanyahu’s good intentions cannot ignore that he has become a front – not to say a cartoon – that the extreme right is hiding behind. This impressive man, who speaks English so well, is at the receiving end of blows, not the real warmongers. Anyone who does not believe Netanyahu believes that it’s a show and that there is no difference between Lieberman’s right-wing and Bibi’s right-wing. In both cases, this prime minister cannot achieve peace and will not advance the negotiations, and because of him relations between Israel and the United States may collapse.
And what if Lieberman wins the elections? First of all we will be rid of his bluffing, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. With Lieberman as prime minister, the process could turn out faster. Pressure from the United States would be less hesitant, and the public response less ambivalent. With Lieberman as prime minister, extremism would no longer need to hide. The right would be a genuine right – fascist, racist, supporting the transfer of Arabs and giving the peace process no chance.
But then the left will somehow be able to revive, because anyone who is not from Habayit Hayehudi or Yisrael Beiteinu will be able to set up his own hostel and not be a guest at the shack set up by the right. People today in the center will not be shy about embracing their leftist leanings.
Anyone who fears elections wants to continue living a lie in which the extreme right does not dictate policy, in which Abbas, Haim Ramon or Shimon Peres are the enemies of peace, and in which salvation is possible only with direct talks. Idiocy. Until we have leaders who understand how dangerous the slope is on which Israel is racing, the slope will not disappear. Sometimes, when it’s impossible to stop the fall, it’s best to speed it up.
By Yaniv Reich, Hybrid States – 22 July 2010
Defense Minister Ehud Barak described it as “false, distorted, and irresponsible“. Information Minister Yuli Edelstein called it “anti-Semitic“. Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren said it “insidiously… portrayed the Jews as the deliberate murderers of innocents“. Foreign Minister Lieberman argued that its true purpose “was to destroy Israel’s image, in service of countries where the terms ‘human rights’ and ‘combat ethics’ do not even appear in their dictionaries“. And the US House of Representatives banded together in bipartisan harmony to pass a resolution (344–36) that called “on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration” of it.
For nearly a year now, vicious attacks on the Goldstone report and on Judge Goldstone himself have been the thing for Israel’s numerous apologists to do.
There is just one not-so-minor problem with this knee-jerk criticism of the report and infinite stream of ad hominem libel against its main author. A majority of the most damning—and damaging—war crimes that are alleged to have taken place have now been confirmed by the IDF’s own investigations into the matter, themselves only conducted in an effort to derail the Goldstone report’s referral to the International Criminal Court.
IDF confirms over 20 gravest findings of the Goldstone Report
Several of the most dramatic instances of war crimes, which previously stirred Israel’s defenders into fits, are now publicly admitted by the IDF in the recent update to its official response (which can be found here).
Some examples of war crimes include:
White phosphorous in urban areas: This one is probably the most famous admission that emerged after a series of easily disproved lies. Israel’s initial response was one of absolute denial, indeed indignation, that people would suggest it had used banned chemical weapons in densely populated areas. But the steady stream of photos and videos depicting phosphorous burns on children and buildings eventually forced Israel to admit it had used these prohibited weapons.
The murder of two unarmed Palestinians carrying white flags of surrender.
The Al-Fakhura Street incident: Israeli mortar fire at a site adjacent to a UN Relief Works Agency compound resulted in multiple civilian deaths.
The use of innocent Palestinians as human shields: The Goldstone report explains that in order “to carry out house searches as human shields the Israeli soldiers took off AD/03’s blindfold but he remained handcuffed. He was forced to walk in front of the soldiers and told that, if he saw someone in the house but failed to tell them, he would be killed. He was instructed to search each room in each house cupboard by cupboard. After one house was completed he was taken to another house with a gun pressed against his head and told to carry out the same procedure there. He was punched, slapped and insulted throughout the process.” The new Israeli report identifies this anonymous human shield AD/03 and confirms this episode. Other cases of human shield use, e.g. Abbas Ahmad Ibrahim Halawa and Mahmoud Abd Rabbo al-Ajrami, were also confirmed.
Al-Samouni family massacre: The Israelis attacked two houses of the Samouni family, killing 23 people in total. Subsequently, they prevented the Red Cross and PRCS from providing care to the wounded and dying for three days. Confirmed by Israel and the subject of a military investigation.
Firing on Al Maqadmah and other mosques during prayer time.
In total, a quick scan through the IDF’s new report provides direct confirmation of more than 20 of Goldstone’s findings. A number of these are the subject of internal IDF investigations, which are infuriating large swaths of the military. Of course, decent people everywhere should hope that those investigations are conducted in the most unbiased and professional manner possible, and that justice is served appropriately to all those who have committed war crimes. I am not holding my breath, but it’s good to throw this wish out there.
Israel admits it did not minimize civilian casualties
The IDF report states: “IDF orders include the obligation to take all feasible precautions in order to minimize the incidental loss of civilian life or property” [emphasis added]. Israelis accept this statement as an article of faith and become unglued at the suggestion that “everything possible” wasn’t done to ensure the safety of innocent people. This expression of faith is often followed by the questions: “What? Do you think Israel wants to kill civilians?” These questions are of course answered far more accurately with data on casualties than with ideological blindness.
They are also answered, however, through inadvertent slips in the public relations machine that shapes international media coverage of Israel/Palestine. Today, we are treated to a spate of articles across the English and Hebrew-language press (e.g. here and here) about how Israel “promises” to do a better job of not killing innocent human beings next time around.
“The IDF has … implemented operational changes in its orders and combat doctrine designed to further minimise civilian casualties and damage to civilian property in the future,” it said.
“In particular, the IDF has adopted important new procedures designed to enhance the protection of civilians in urban warfare, for instance by further emphasising that the protection of civilians is an integral part of an IDF commander’s mission.”
Perhaps in a future “update” the IDF can enlighten the world as to how it was previously taking “all feasible precautions” and yet finds only now new tactics to protect civilians. Perhaps the IDF spokesperson can further explain how emphasizing to its soldiers that “protection of civilians is an integral part” of the mission is considered an “operational change” from earlier practice. One must presume that protection of civilians has not been given sufficient attention until now, and only Goldstone’s courageous and now confirmed report has forced Israel to reconsider the meaning of “all feasible precautions” and “minimize civilian casualties”. As Magnes Zionist has pointed out, Israel seems to think it can get away with a “I didn’t do it but will try harder next time” approach.
Or perhaps the IDF’s commanders and soldiers got a bit confused by all this talk of “protecting civilians” and that talk of the “Dahiya Doctrine.”
But all of this gives the IDF a bit too much credit, too much benefit of the doubt. This new report is nothing more than a desperate tactic to try and avoid criminal prosecution for war crimes and possible crimes against humanity in the ICC. Most of the IDF’s “investigations” have already been dismissed as part of this whitewash, notwithstanding all the irate IDF officers unaccustomed to the pretense of accountability.
All it teaches us is four concrete things: (1) the Goldstone report did a stunningly good job in identifying possible war crimes despite Israel’s concerted non-cooperation with the commission, (2) Israel has by its own admission failed to adequately protect civilians in war, (3) many people owe Judge Goldstone a sincere, begging apology for the disgraceful manner in which he has been treated, and (4) justice for the Palestinian victims of Israeli terrorism is still far away.
Police officials investigate the possibility that a rocket fired into Israel over the weekend is of a new, and more precise type.
The rocket which was fired into Israel early Saturday morning was not a Qassam, but may be a more advanced type of projectile which had been smuggled into the Gaza Strip, police officials told Haaretz.
The officials were referring to a rocket, which was initially reported to be a Qassam, that had failed to explode after being launched by Gaza militants into the western Negev earlier in the day.
The rocket, police said, may have been a new, more perceive standard issue rocket, as opposed to the local home-made Qassams, one which would have to have been smuggled into the Strip.
The projectile was transferred to a police laboratory in order to see if indeed it is of a different type than those fired into Israel until now.
Israel has long been claiming that Hamas has been continually arming itself with new types of weapons in anticipation for another round of violence in the wake of last years Gaza war.
In April of last year, Israeli sources said that Hamas had managed to smuggle new arsenal into the Gaza Strip that would upset the balance of power, with the Palestinian Authority saying that that Iran has smuggled a large number of weapons into Gaza by sea.
The PA had also claimed that Iranian technology has been used to increase the range of Qassam rockets Hamas is producing in the Gaza Strip to more than 20 kilometers, they said.
Earlier this year, a confident of Hamas strongman Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was assassinated in his Dubai hotel, said that Mabhouh had supplied money and arms to “the resistance,” saying that he played a key role in the arms smuggling chain, running from Iran into the Hamas-ruled Strip.
The aide, Mohammed Nassar, had been quoted at the time as saying that Mabhouh never stopped thinking about how to fight the occupation by supplying the Palestinian fighters with quality weapons.
“He participated with me in searching for weapons,” Nassar said, according to an interview he had given to Al-Aqsa radio in Gaza.
Max Blumenthal, 22 July 2010
On 13 July, the Israeli Knesset voted by a large margin to strip the parliamentary privileges of Haneen Zoabi, a member of the Palestinian Israeli party Balad. The measure was a punishment for Zoabi’s participation in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. As described in the Israeli daily Haaretz, during the raging debate, Member of Knesset (MK) Anasatassia Michaeli rushed toward Zoabi and handed her a mock Iranian passport with Zoabi’s photo on it. “Ms. Zoabi, I take your loyalty to Iran seriously and I suggest you contact Ahmadinejad and ask him to give you an Iranian diplomatic passport that will assist you with all your diplomatic incitement tours, because your Israeli passport will be revoked this evening,” said Michaeli, who is a member of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s explicitly anti-Arab Yisrael Beiteinu party (“Knesset revokes Arab MK Zuabi’s privileges over Gaza flotilla,” 13 July 2010).
The debate over revoking Zoabi’s parliamentary privileges was nearly as rancorous as her appearance at the Knesset speaker’s podium in the immediate wake of the Flotilla massacre. While Zoabi attempted to relate her experience on the Mavi Marmara, where she coaxed Israeli commandoes to stop shooting and beating passengers, Knesset members from a broad array of parties leapt from their chairs to shout her down. “Go to Gaza, traitor!” shouted MK Miri Regev of Likud. “One week in Gaza as a 38-year-old single woman and we’ll see how they treat you!” barked Yohanan Plesner of the supposedly centrist Kadima party. Finally, Moshe Mutz Matalon of Yisrael Beiteinu lamented that the Israeli commandoes “left only nine floating voters” (“MK Regev tells Zoabi: Go to Gaza, traitor!,” YNet, 2 June 2010).
I met Zoabi at her office in the bustling center of Lower Nazareth on 12 June. While preparing a spread of biscuits and chocolates for me, she told me that a reporter from Nablus who met her earlier in the day had been detained at a checkpoint and had her laptop seized. Zoabi was convinced that the Shin Bet (Israel’s General Security Service) was monitoring her communications and movements as it does with many Balad Party leaders. Despite the tense climate and violent threats against her, she spoke without restraint about her experience on the Mavi Marmara, the predicament of Palestinian members of the Knesset, and what she considered the fascist direction of Israeli society.
Max Blumenthal: Were you surprised to be greeted with such hostility when you returned to the Knesset after the flotilla incident?
Hanin Zoabi: I was not so surprised. I expected to be called traitor, to be asked, “Where are your knives?” Or to be told, “You are the one who killed them!” But they shouted at me without any political argument and such shallowness. I thought, this couldn’t be a parliament, these are just gangsters. If I gave them guns, they would shoot me. I said the soldiers on the flotilla treated me more respectfully than them. At least after the soldiers killed nine people they tried to ask me for help.
MB: What does the attack on you in Knesset say about Israeli democracy?
HZ: Israel has a general atmosphere of a fascist state that has no critical sense even of its image in the world. It used to be sensitive to its image of democracy. [Knesset Speaker Reuven] Rivlin wants a liberal state and wants others to believe Israel is a democracy. But listen to what they are saying in the Knesset: that we should only pay attention to what we want to; it’s not important to pay attention to the goyim. We must believe we are the victim as if victimhood is an ideology.
MB: Are you concerned about threats to your physical safety?
HZ: This is a dangerous time and it is dangerous for Jamal [Zehalka] and others in Balad. I am worried but what worries me more is not the personal threats but the long term political effect of this campaign because it represents a delegitimization of our party and our political platform.
MB: What about the planned measure in the Knesset to strip you of parliamentary privileges?
HZ: The three parliamentary sanctions are nothing — I mean nothing — because I can still use my civic passport.
MB: When you were attacked in the Knesset, I was reminded of an incident in 1949, when the first Arab member of Knesset, Tawfiq Toubi, took to the floor to denounce Israeli army brutality against Palestinian villagers living under military rule. Jewish members of the Knesset went crazy just as they did against you, but Toubi was defended by one of Israel’s most prominent cultural figures, the socialist poet Nathan Alterman. Did any prominent Israelis speak up in your defense, and if not, why not?
HZ: Hardly anyone spoke up for me. Jamal [Zehalka] said the Knesset is the worst we’ve ever had. The guards and the workers who’ve been around the Knesset for 30 years said it’s never been this racist before. I think when you have a government led by the likes of [Foreign Minister] Avigdor Lieberman it means that the extremists are not the margins of the Knesset, they are the mainstream. Those who shouted at me were from Kadima, not from the extreme right. Even [the traditionally left-wing party] Meretz is becoming very center. And because of this it has lost power.
[Knesset Speaker] Rivlin was more afraid of hurting the image of the Knesset than of my rights being violated. There are no limits and the famous slogan of Lieberman is now the slogan of everyone: “Citizenship depends on loyalty.” He of course means loyalty in a fascist sense. Even when [Interior Minister] Eli Yishai asked to revoke my citizenship there was only one article in the Israeli media saying that this was crazy. What kind of state is this? I read just one article about this!
[Yedioth Aharanot columnist] Amnon Levy was the only one who defended me. He said what’s happening is so absurd, you should thank Haneen that she is serving in this Zionist Knesset. You should thank the Palestinians for participating in our game.
MB: Is the anti-Arab atmosphere inside Israel a new phenomenon or the acceleration of a process than began some time ago?
HZ: This is not a new process, and it didn’t begin after the flotilla. It really began after the second intifada, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Israelis went to demonstrations not to rally about internal issues but to support the intifada. This was a clear message for Israelis that the state had failed to create the model of the new “Israeli Arab.” This is what the state was trying to do, trying to create us an Israeli Arab, someone who was not 100 percent Israeli because we were not Jews but of course not 100 percent Arab either. We were told we could preserve our language and our culture but not our historical memory, our culture, or our identity except on an emotional, romantic level. Essentially we couldn’t be Palestinian.
The second intifada was the turning point. It told Israel that it might control the schools, our history and the media but they couldn’t stop us from asserting our identity. This led directly to the declaration of Yuval Diskin, the Shin Bet director, who said in 2007, we will fight against any political activity that doesn’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state even if the activities are conducted openly and democratically. He clearly was referring to Balad when he said this. By the way, no Israeli paper was shocked by his statement.
MB: The founder of the Balad Party, Azmi Bishara, was forced into exile after being accused of spying for Hizballah. Ameer Makhoul, the Palestinian civil society leader in Israel, has been placed under administrative detention and is facing similar accusations. Omer Said and many other activists are under investigation by the Shin Bet. What is the government trying to accomplish by its crackdown?
HZ: They are trying to establish borders on our political identity and say that we cannot have relations with the broader Arab world. They want to redefine the margins of democracy to exclude any political program that calls for full equality. We are calling for equality without Zionism. This is what the Balad Party says. The fact is, to demand full civic and national equality is actually to demand the end of Zionism. So we don’t hate Zionism. Zionism hates democracy.
If the state continues in the direction it is going it will actually change the rules of the game. Balad says there are clear margins of democracy. We believe in democratic values and the system and we will utilize these margins of democracy in order to suggest our vision of full equality. If Israel wants to delete these margins so my vision can no longer be legitimate in the Israeli scene I think a totally different game will develop between us and the state. In this way, the state is pushing us to a crisis. If they disqualify Balad then no Arab party would enter the Knesset and this would provoke a huge crisis. Arabs without a parliamentary role would result in a different kind of relationship between us and the state. This would be the end of democracy. But we know this is what a Jewish state will lead to — the end of democracy is an inevitable outcome.
MB: How did your prominence after the flotilla impact the situation of Palestinians in Israel?
HZ: It is possible that the flotilla was the beginning of a new historical moment. Israel enjoys keeping us [Palestinians in Israel] out of the agenda of the world. They oppressed us behind the scenes just as they conducted the Nakba behind the scenes. They continued to limit our identity and the world didn’t treat us as part of the Palestinian issue because it believed that Israel was a democracy and we were only part of it. The world only looked at the siege of Gaza. So what the Knesset did by attacking me was they showed the world who they really are. And if the world starts to pay attention, especially the part of the world that doesn’t traditionally support the Palestinians and believes Israel should be a real democracy, I hope they see from the flotilla and its implications that Israel has a deep structural problem, not a problem of policies. The problem is not an extremist government. The problem is that the largest threat to Zionism is democracy. This is the issue.
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author working in Israel-Palestine. His articles and video documentaries have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Huffington Post, Salon.com, Al-Jazeera English and many other publications. He is a writing fellow for the Nation Institute. His book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party, is a New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller.
Michael Corcoran, Stephen Maher, 23 July 2010
Supporters of Israel often accuse Human Rights Watch (HRW), one of the most prominent human rights organizations in the world, of having an anti-Israel bias or even being anti-Semitic. For instance, a recent lengthy article in The New Republic accused the group of paying “disproportionate attention to Israeli misdeeds.” Similarly, Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz has said that HRW exhibits a “willful blindness when it comes to Israel, and its enemies have completely undermined the credibility of a once important human rights organization.” Indeed, there is no shortage of other similar critiques of the organization by supporters of Israel.
Given such strong condemnations, one might have anticipated that HRW would have been especially vocal in its criticism of Israel’s 31 May attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla that was attempting to deliver aid to Palestinians in Gaza and break Israel’s three-year old siege of the territory.
Yet despite the alarms sounded by its most staunch critics, HRW has been mostly silent on the horrific attack. When they have spoken out, they have been notably timid, essentially sharing the same positions as the US government, Israel’s closest ally. According to a search of the group’s website, the flotilla attack has only been addressed four times. By contrast, Amnesty International (the organization’s closest peer) has tackled the issue 17 times, issuing much stronger statements of condemnation than those released by HRW. The jarring difference in how these two human rights organizations have responded to the flotilla attack raises important questions about the functioning of the largest and most reputed human rights organization in the United States.
During the course of the raid on the civilian convoy, the Israeli military killed nine activists, many of whom were shot in the head from close range, according to subsequent autopsies. In response, with millions taking to the streets worldwide, one government after the next, the UN and other nongovernmental organizations, human rights groups and activists condemned the raid and called for an immediate international investigation and an end to the blockade of Gaza. Even Turkey, a close ally of both the US and Israel, responded furiously to the attack, calling it an act of “state terrorism” that threatened to damage relations between the two states. Ankara also demanded that Israel lift the siege on Gaza. Indeed, in previous statements HRW said that the siege “constitutes a form of collective punishment” (“Letter to Olmert: Stop the Blockade of Gaza, 20 November 2008 ).
In the face of this international pressure, the US and Israel stood virtually alone in rejecting an international investigation. Israel not only objected to an independent investigation, but also refused to release all of the footage and photographs it confiscated from activists and journalists onboard the ship, only releasing small fragments that were heavily edited and otherwise tampered with. Instead, Washington urged Israel to conduct an investigation of its own, in the hopes that such a probe would assuage the rising chorus of international outrage without subjecting Israeli actions to independent scrutiny. Shockingly, HRW — an organization which claims to stand up to state violence and protect human rights — essentially supported the US-Israeli position by calling for an Israeli investigation.
HRW’s support for an Israeli investigation contradicted previous findings by the organization on the likelihood that such an inquiry would be successful. “Given Israel’s poor track record of investigating unlawful killings by its armed forces,” the group acknowledges in its 31 May statement on the flotilla, “the international community should closely monitor any inquiry to ensure it meets basic international standards and that any wrongdoers are brought to justice” (“Israel: Full, Impartial Investigation of Flotilla Killings Essential”). This statement again stands in stark contrast to the position of Amnesty International, which insisted on an international investigation, along with the rest of the world, demanding in a 1 June statement “an international inquiry into the deaths caused by the raid on the aid flotilla in international waters outside Gaza” (“Israeli Authorities Urged To Commission International Inquiry,” 1 June 2010).
In a further attempt to limit the damage caused to its image in the wake of its nighttime commando assault on the unarmed civilian convoy, Israel announced an “easing” of the blockade. However, in reality these cosmetic changes were intended not to end the siege but to make it more palatable to the so-called international community. The most significant difference was the shift from a positive list of what is allowed to a negative list of what is not. Though the changes might allow a few more kinds of goods in, the new measures would hardly be enough to lift Palestinians in Gaza out of the desperate poverty into which they have been thrust by Israeli cruelty, let alone develop a viable and independent economy.
Since the attack, the Israeli military spokesperson has proudly declaring the number of trucks entering Gaza each day over the social networking site Twitter. Yet these tweets only serve to prove how inadequate the “easing” of the blockade is, as the announced number of trucks permitted to enter Gaza is well below the 400 that the UN says is needed to provide residents of Gaza with even a minimal standard of living.
Amnesty International responded to the shift in policy by stating that Israel “must now comply with its obligations as the occupying power under international law and immediately lift the blockade,” adding that as “the occupying power, Israel bears the foremost responsibility for ensuring the welfare of the inhabitants of Gaza” (“Israel Gaza Blockade Must Be Completely Lifted,” 17 June 2010). By contrast, HRW offered a statement that tepidly praised Israel, calling it a productive “first step” in a 21 June release (Israel/Gaza: Easing Blockade of Imports a First Step”). This response was also dramatically different from that of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which in the wake of the flotilla massacre called the siege “a collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law,” and demanded Israel to “put an end to this closure” (“Gaza closure: not another year,” 14 June 2010). Likewise, Oxfam International called the flotilla incident “a direct result of the Israeli blockade on Gaza” (“Monday’s tragedy is a direct result of the Israeli blockade on Gaza,” 2 June 2010).
Though HRW rightly pointed out that there was little chance of Palestinians in Gaza developing an independent, sustainable economy with the continued total blockade of exports, and amorphously called on Israel to end any “unnecessary restrictions” on the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, it failed to clearly and unequivocally call for a full lifting of the illegal siege. As with its failure to call for an international investigation, HRW was once again essentially echoing the position taken by Tony Blair, the current envoy of the Quartet (the US, UK, Russia and UN), who said in a 5 July statement that the move was a “big first step.”
In its 21 June release, HRW states that some restrictions are permitted under international law provided that they are “limited to what is necessary.” In the same release, the organization balanced its criticism of Israel by vigorously calling on Hamas to release its Israeli prisoner — virtually echoing the Israeli government’s justification for the siege of Gaza.
Similarly, on 27 June, Bill Van Esveld, a Middle East researcher for [[HRW]], penned an editorial in the Los Angeles Times which attempts to shift the blame for Gaza’s suffering from the merciless siege to the strip’s elected Hamas government. “The people of Gaza are now prisoners twice over,” he writes, “from the outside, Israel and Egypt have locked down Gaza’s borders,” while “within Gaza, Hamas is forcing people to live within the confines of a harsh moral code, and punishing those who try to exercise their few remaining rights and liberties” (“Danger of an Islamized Gaza”).
Though the offenses against personal freedoms committed by Hamas are well-documented and certainly noteworthy, Van Esveld ignores that it is the desperation created by far more serious Israeli violence and suffocation, and the collaborationist nature of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, that is the ultimate source of Hamas’ empowerment. Thus, he is essentially employing the classic tactic of blaming the victims, and echoing Israeli justifications for maintaining the siege by waving the spectre of “the danger of an Islamized Gaza.” “The world is rightly focused on Gaza’s Israeli prison guards,” he concludes, “but it shouldn’t forget the confinement imposed by Gaza’s own Hamas.” Such assertions closely mirror the disingenuous claims of Israeli officials, particularly Israel’s ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, who declared in a 2 June New York Times op-ed, that “We, too, want a free Gaza — a Gaza liberated from brutal Hamas rule” (“An Assault, Cloaked in Peace”).
Thus, on two major issues related to the siege of Gaza and the raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, HRW has largely taken the same position as Israel and its supporters. In the aftermath of the flotilla attack, Israel, Tony Blair, the United States and HRW stood on one side, and virtually the entire rest of the world stood on the other.
Not all of HRW’s reports are so flawed, and the organization has produced some valuable material. However, they serve as a sharp contrast to its statements on the flotilla raid. In a 2006 report on Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, HRW calls on the UN Secretary General to create an “an International Commission of Inquiry to investigate reports of violations of international humanitarian law, including possible war crimes” (“Why They Died,” 5 September 2007). Similarly, in a 13 August 2009 statement on Israel’s 2008-09 winter invasion of Gaza HRW calls for “an international investigation into alleged laws-of-war violations by both sides,” citing “the past failure of Israel, as well as Hamas, to investigate their own forces ” (“Israel: Investigate ‘White Flag’ Shootings of Gaza Civilians,” 12 August 2009).
The organization’s pathetic display in the wake of the flotilla attack, however, does a great disservice to the cause of human rights. Unfortunately, HRW’s failures reflect a disturbing and well-documented pattern, especially regarding its work on the Middle East and the United States (the chief enabler of Israeli aggression). In 2006, journalist Jonathan Cook noticed a “shameful imbalance” in Human Rights Watch’s reportage on Israeli and Palestinian violations, “both in the number of reports being issued against each party and in terms of the failure to hold accountable the side committing the far greater abuses of human rights.” Cook concluded that such an “imbalance” had “become the HRW’s standard procedure in Israel-Palestine” (“Human Rights Watch denying Palestinians the right to nonviolent resistance,” The Electronic Intifada, 30 November 2006).
In fact, Cook’s conclusion applies more broadly to US policy and allies elsewhere around the world as well. Edward Herman, David Peterson and George Szamuely observed in a well-researched report on HRW in 2007 that “at critical times and in critical theaters [the group has] thrown its support behind the US government’s agenda, sometimes even serving as a virtual public relations arm of the foreign policy establishment.” The authors note that HRW exhibits “crude apologetics,” maintaining a steadfast “denial that the United States commits war crimes” (“Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party …,” Zmag, 25 February 2007).
Properly educating the public about Israeli crimes, and American culpability in them, is essential if Israeli policy is to be changed and a just peace established. As the only large, international human rights organization based in the United States, HRW’s weak response to these attacks, for which the US has lent strong support in the face of massive criticism from around the world, is even more outrageous. It is time for advocates for human rights to push HRW to be a more consistent and responsible voice on behalf of Palestinian human rights.
Michael Corcoran is a journalist who has written for the Boston Globe, The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor and elsewhere. He is also a master’s candidate at the John McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, where he majors in international relations.
Stephen Maher is an MA candidate at American University School of International Service. His work has appeared in Extra!, Truthout, ZNet and other publications. His blog is http://rationalmanifesto.blogspot.com.
Ali Abunimah, 21 July 2010
There has been a strong revival in recent years of support among Palestinians for a one-state solution guaranteeing equal rights to Palestinians and Israeli Jews throughout historic Palestine.
Palestinians hang their flag on a fence surrounding an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. (Luay Sababa/MaanImages
One might expect that any support for a single state among Israeli Jews would come from the far left, and in fact this is where the most prominent Israeli Jewish champions of the idea are found, though in small numbers.
Recently, proposals to grant Israeli citizenship to Palestinians in the West Bank, including the right to vote for the Knesset, have emerged from a surprising direction: right-wing stalwarts such as Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin, and former defense minister Moshe Arens, both from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. Even more surprising, the idea has been pushed by prominent activists among Israel’s West Bank settler movement, who were the subject of a must-read profile by Noam Sheizaf in Haaretz (“Endgame,” 15 July 2010).
Their visions still fall far short of what any Palestinian advocate of a single state would consider to be just: the Israeli proposals insist on maintaining the state’s character — at least symbolically — as a “Jewish state,” exclude the Gaza Strip, and do not address the rights of Palestinian refugees. And, settlers on land often violently expropriated from Palestinians would hardly seem like obvious advocates for Palestinian human and political rights.
Although the details vary, and in some cases are anathema to Palestinians, what is more revealing is that this debate is occurring openly and in the least likely circles.
The Likudnik and settler advocates of a one-state solution with citizenship for Palestinians realize that Israel has lost the argument that Jewish sovereignty can be maintained forever at any price. A status quo where millions of Palestinians live without rights, subject to control by escalating Israeli violence is untenable even for them. At the same time repartition of historic Palestine — what they call Eretz Yisrael — into two states is unacceptable, and has proven unattainable — not least because of the settler movement itself.
Some on the Israeli right now recognize what Israeli geographer Meron Benvenisti has said for years: historic Palestine is already a “de facto binational state,” unpartionable except at a cost neither Israelis nor Palestinians are willing to pay. The relationship between Palestinians and Israelis is not that of equals however, but that “between horse and rider” as one settler vividly put it in Haaretz.
From the settlers’ perspective, repartition would mean an uprooting of at least tens of thousands of the 500,000 settlers now in the West Bank, and it would not even solve the national question. Would the settlers remaining behind in the West Bank (the vast majority under all current two-state proposals) be under Palestinian sovereignty or would Israel continue to exercise control over a network of settlements criss-crossing the putative Palestinian state? How could a truly independent Palestinian state exist under such circumstances?
The graver danger is that the West Bank would turn into a dozen Gaza Strips with large Israeli civilian populations wedged between miserable, overcrowded walled Palestinian ghettos. The patchwork Palestinian state would be free only to administer its own poverty, visited by regular bouts of bloodshed.
Even a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank — something that is not remotely on the peace process agenda — would leave Israel with 1.5 million Palestinian citizens inside its borders. This population already faces escalating discrimination, incitement and loyalty tests. In an angry, ultra-nationalist Israel shrunken by the upheaval of abandoning West Bank settlements, these non-Jewish citizens could suffer much worse, including outright ethnic cleansing.
With no progress toward a two-state solution despite decades of efforts, the only Zionist alternative on offer has been outright expulsion of the Palestinians — a program long-championed by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party, which has seen its support increase steadily.
Israel is at the point where it has to look in the mirror and even some cold, hard Likudniks like Arens apparently don’t like what they see. Yisrael Beitenu’s platform is “nonsensical,” Arens told Haaretz, and simply not “doable.” If Israel feels it is a pariah now, what would happen after another mass expulsion of Palestinians?
Given these realities, “The worst solution … is apparently the right one: a binational state, full annexation, full citizenship” in the words of settler activist and former Netanyahu aide Uri Elitzur.
This awakening can be likened to what happened among South African whites in the 1980s. By that time it had become clear that the white minority government’s effort to “solve” the problem of black disenfranchisement by creating nominally independent homelands — bantustans — had failed. Pressure was mounting from internal resistance and the international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions.
By the mid-1980s, whites overwhelmingly understood that the apartheid status quo was untenable and they began to consider “reform” proposals that fell very far short of the African National Congress’ demands for a universal franchise — one-person, one-vote in a nonracial South Africa. The reforms began with the 1984 introduction of a tricameral parliament with separate chambers for whites, coloreds and Indians (none for blacks), with whites retaining overall control.
Until almost the end of the apartheid system, polls showed the vast majority of whites rejected a universal franchise, but were prepared to concede some form of power-sharing with the black majority as long as whites retained a veto over key decisions. The important point, as I have argued previously, is that one could not predict the final outcome of the negotiations that eventually brought about a fully democratic South Africa in 1994, based on what the white public and elites said they were prepared to accept (“Israeli Jews and the one-state solution,” The Electronic Intifada, 10 November 2009).
Once Israeli Jews concede that Palestinians must have equal rights, they will not be able to unilaterally impose any system that maintains undue privilege. A joint state should accommodate Israeli Jews’ legitimate collective interests, but it would have to do so equally for everyone else.
The very appearance of the right-wing one-state solution suggests Israel is feeling the pressure and experiencing a relative loss of power. If its proponents thought Israel could “win” in the long-term there would be no need to find ways to accommodate Palestinian rights. But Israeli Jews see their moral currency and legitimacy drastically devalued worldwide, while demographically Palestinians are on the verge of becoming a majority once again in historic Palestine.
Of course Israeli Jews still retain an enormous power advantage over Palestinians which, while eroding, is likely to last for some time. Israel’s main advantage is a near monopoly on the means of violence, guaranteed by the United States. But legitimacy and stability cannot be gained by reliance on brute force — this is the lesson that is starting to sink in among some Israelis as the country is increasingly isolated after its attacks on Gaza and the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Legitimacy can only come from a just and equitable political settlement.
Perhaps the right-wing proponents of a single state recognize that the best time to negotiate a transition which provides safeguards for Israeli Jews’ legitimate collective interests is while they are still relatively strong.
That proposals for a single state are coming from the Israeli right should not be so surprising in light of experiences in comparable situations. In South Africa, it was not the traditional white liberal critics of apartheid who oversaw the system’s dismantling, but the National Party which had built apartheid in the first place. In Northern Ireland, it was not “moderate” unionists and nationalists like David Trimble and John Hume who finally made power-sharing under the 1998 Belfast Agreement function, but the long-time rejectionists of Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party, and the nationalist Sinn Fein, whose leaders had close ties the IRA.
The experiences in South Africa and Northern Ireland show that transforming the relationship between settler and native, master and slave, or “horse and rider,” to one between equal citizens is a very difficult, uncertain and lengthy process. There are many setbacks and detours along the way and success is not guaranteed. It requires much more than a new constitution; economic redistribution, restitution and restorative justice are essential and meet significant resistance. But such a transformation is not, as many of the critics of a one-state solution in Palestine/Israel insist, “impossible.” Indeed, hope now resides in the space between what is “very difficult” and what is considered “impossible.”
The proposals from the Israeli right-wing, however inadequate and indeed offensive they seem in many respects, add a little bit to that hope. They suggest that even those whom Palestinians understandably consider their most implacable foes can stare into the abyss and decide there has to be a radically different way forward.
We should watch how this debate develops and engage and encourage it carefully. In the end it is not what the solution is called that matters, but whether it fulfills the fundamental and inalienable rights of all Palestinians.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. This article first appeared on Al-Jazeera English and is republished with permission.
By Catrina Stewart In Jerusalem
Saturday, 17 July 2010 New Israeli citizens may soon be required to swear an oath of loyalty to a “Jewish and democratic” state, a step that has drawn harsh criticism from human rights groups.
Israel’s Cabinet, which meets tomorrow, is expected to approve this and extend a raft of existing measures that make it harder for Palestinians to achieve citizenship.
The wording of the oath, which would apply to new applicants for citizenship, was slammed by Arab advocacy groups, who accused Israel of “racist” policies that attempt to link citizenship to ideology.
“It’s another step in the direction of getting the Arabs out of Israel,” said Uri Avnery, a former MP and founder of the Israeli Gush Shalom peace movement. “Parliament has become a lynching mob.”
The move comes on the back on a series of strikes against Palestinians seeking citizenship and Israeli Arabs who already have it. The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, voted this week to strip Hanin Zuabi, an Israeli Arab politician, of her parliamentary privileges for taking part in the Gaza flotilla aimed at breaching Israel’s sea blockade.
The new oath of allegiance, which would replace an existing oath to the “State of Israel,” appears to represent a watered-down version of legislation enthusiastically promoted by Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s Foreign Minister. His law, which failed to clear parliament, was aimed at stripping Israeli Arabs of their citizenship if they failed to swear allegiance to the Jewish state.
Yisrael Beitenu, Lieberman’s ultra-nationalist party, vaulted to third place in last year’s elections on a platform that played on the electorate’s distrust of Israeli Arabs and their perceived disloyalty to Israel.
Israeli Arabs, who comprise 20 percent of the population and live in some of the country’s most under-privileged communities, have resisted such a loyalty oath on the grounds that only a state defined by all its different ethnic groups would make them feel equal.
Adalah, a prominent Israeli Arab advocacy group, said the new policy “requires all non-Jews to identify with Zionism and imposes a political ideology and loyalty to the principles of Judaism and Zionism”.
In recent months, the Knesset has introduced a number of bills that have drawn criticism from liberals, not least legislation that would ban anyone from promoting or even supporting boycotts against Israel.
“There’s a steady deterioration of Israeli democracy and a steady rise of right-wing ideologies in the Knesset,” said Avnery. “Parliament is turning into a danger for Israeli democracy.”
The time has come that all of us, irrespective of whether we are Jews or Muslims, ultra-Orthodox or secular, declare our loyalty to the only Jewish democracy in the world. On one condition: the declaration ceremony would take place in the courtyard of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, following a tour of the center of Hebron.
By Akiva Eldar
HEBRON – Why is the government requiring only those seeking citizenship to have to declare their loyalty to a Jewish and democratic state? I want to do it too!
The time has come that all of us, irrespective of whether we are Jews or Muslims, ultra-Orthodox or secular, declare our loyalty to the only Jewish democracy in the world. On one condition: the declaration ceremony would take place in the courtyard of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, following a tour of the center of Hebron.
Every Israeli citizen will then know what his country is doing in his name in the city of the patriarchs. Every Hebrew mother will know “where the only democracy in the Middle East” is sending its sons. Those who like what they see will sign the declaration. Those who will not find in Hebron proof of Jewish values and principles of democracy will refuse.
Before embarking on an educational tour in the center of Hebron, we should take a refresher course: the Hebron Agreement, which was signed in 1997 between the Netanyahu government and the Palestinian Authority, divided Hebron into an Arab area controlled by the PA (H1 ), and a Jewish area controlled by the IDF (H2 ). In the Arab area live 120,000 Palestinians, and in the Jewish area, which includes the old city and the city’s commercial center, there are 500 Jews and 30,000 Arabs. In order to prevent friction, Israel has imposed tough rules of physical separation between the two populations and harsh limits on the movement of the Palestinian population in most of H2.
A pack of panting dogs met us at the beginning of Shuhada Street, which cuts through the old quarter of Hebron toward the Tomb of the Patriarchs. The doors of the shops were shut and the market was empty.
Someone covered racist graffiti with smiling faces on a pink background.
A survey of the area around Jewish settlement in the city conducted by B’Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel in late 2006 found that 1,829 Palestinian businesses (more than 75 percent of all businesses in the area surveyed ) had been closed in recent years. More than 1,000 housing units (42 percent ) in the area surveyed were abandoned.
Yehuda Shaul, founder of Breaking the Silence, says that more than 40 percent of the Palestinian residents have left the area.
Bored soldiers peered at the visitors, and once they were sure that they were “ours” they moved on (perhaps for dance practice ). Even though the IDF told the High Court of Justice two years ago that the ban on Palestinians movement in the streets was lifted, they do not dare come close to this area.
They know that at every street corner they will be asked to show their identity cards and they will be searched. Eran Efrati, who served at the Abu Snuneh post in 2007, says that instructions in the briefing room contained an order to make the residents “feel persecuted.”
In the Breaking the Silence database there are testimonies of soldiers who describe creative ways for creating such a feeling. For example, holding a population survey in the middle of the night (the IDF calls it “mapping” ), or banging on pots.
A skinny youth, fringes hanging from under his shirt, is galloping through a field on a white horse. At the bottom of Beit Hadassah, Shaul fixes his black kippa and points to the Palestinian girls’ school.
He says that he has a video clip in his office which shows the customary way the neighboring Jewish kids kill their boredom over Shabbat, by throwing stones at the girls.
In an alley leading to the wholesale market, closed following the massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in early 1994, a group of young Jews pushes a cart loaded with building materials. Behind the barred doors of the shops, under the noses of the soldiers, another small settlement is staring.
At the entrance to the Tomb of the Patriarchs our path was blocked by six Border Policemen. Their commander, who was rushed to meet us says that we had been barred from entering the site with Yehuda Shaul, because he belongs to a group with a “political character.” The officer confirmed that one or two days earlier, Noam Arnon, the spokesman for the Jewish community in Hebron, accompanied a group of visitors into the Tomb of the Patriarchs on behalf of the Foreign Ministry. The settlers in Hebron, as is well known, are a group without “political character.”
The actions of the state in the city where the Patriarchs of the nation are buried, in Sheikh Jarrah, in the Jordan Valley and in the Gaza Strip, have nothing to do with Judaism or democracy. So long as this is the face of the Jewish democratic State, I refuse to declare my loyalty to it.
Cynthia McKinney, 19 July 2010
In response to Israel’s deadly attack on the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla, more than 800 labor and community activists picketed America’s sixth largest port in Oakland last month. The result was a historic blockade of a large Israeli cargo ship for 24 hours. Across the world, dockworkers and activists engaged in similar actions. In Sweden, the Dockworkers Union completed a week-long boycott of Israeli ships and containers, resulting in the blocking of 500 tons of goods to and from Israel.
Turkish dockworkers’ union Liman-Is also announced that their workers would refuse to handle Israeli ships. In South Africa, Durban dockworkers blocked Israeli ships in February 2009 in response to Israel’s 22-day war of aggression on the Gaza Strip. The Union of South African Municipal workers announced last month their intention to declare all South African municipalities as “Israeli Apartheid-Free Zones.” The message behind all these courageous actions worldwide was clear: Israel should no longer be allowed to act with impunity. Israel should be held accountable to universal principles of human rights.
The worldwide wave of protests against Israel’s assault in international waters and the killing of at least nine activists, including one Turkish American, is accompanied with a growing sense of revulsion at the double standards the US government and its allies apply to Israel. Its persistent lawless actions are jeopardizing America’s public image, where it is becoming more difficult than ever to justify Israeli crimes without harming our relationships with other ally countries. More importantly, this blind support for Israel’s policies is creating vigorous grassroots opposition, largely expressed through the global campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.
This movement is taking upon itself what governments have failed to do: to hold Israel accountable for its crimes. The dockworkers’ refusal to deal with Israeli ships is part of this vibrant movement and comes in response to the appeal in 2005 from Palestinian civil society. Other initiatives include campaigns for the boycott of Israeli products, divestment from companies aiding Israeli war crimes, and cultural isolation, so as to not entertain Israeli apartheid, demonstrated by the cancellation of concerts in Israel by renowned artists like Elvis Costello and Gil Scott-Heron.
Israel’s latest massacre, sadly, does not come as a surprise, but rather constitutes a progression of Israel’s continued abuse of power as the world turns a blind eye to its aggression. In 2003, and again in 2007, I was ejected from the US Congress after being targeted by the pro-Israel lobby in this country for daring to veer from standard political operating practice by actually believing that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights applies to all human beings, including Palestinians. It was this first experience that gave me a true picture of the ruthlessness of Israel’s supporters in this country and the silence of those in a position to object.
In December 2008, I joined activists aboard the pleasure boat, Dignity, in an attempt to break the siege of Gaza. We left Cyprus heading for Gaza, carrying with us badly needed medical supplies among other necessities. It was when we got to what Israel deemed a “closed military zone” that the Israeli navy attacked us. Our boat was rammed, disabled and forced to dock in Lebanon rather than deliver aid to those in need because of Israel’s violent onslaught against Gaza, the 22-day Operation Cast Lead. In late June 2009, I again attempted to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza by boat and the Israeli navy, in international waters, commandeered the boat, kidnapped 21 of us onboard and imprisoned us in an Israeli prison for seven days. Despite the parallels with the recent Freedom Flotilla attack, my own government completely disregarded these illegal actions, and the media deliberately misled the public, as is too often the case.
All of this has an undeniable historical parallel with the South African anti-apartheid struggle — one that we must all learn from. The apartheid regime enjoyed wide support from Western governments, and it was only in 2008 that the US begrudgingly removed travel restrictions on Nelson Mandela. He, too, had been vilified for standing up for the rights of black people. In 1963, just four years after the anti-apartheid movement was formed, Danish dockworkers refused to offload a ship with South African goods, and Swedish workers followed suit. Dockworkers in the San Francisco Bay Area and, later, in Liverpool also refused to offload South African goods.
The Palestinian BDS movement, which seeks to end discrimination in Palestine, is inspired by the South African anti-apartheid struggle. The Palestinian civil society call for BDS has been answered by thousands of people of conscience around the world. The Oakland dockworkers’ boycott brings back memories of a time when we dared not to be silent and refused to be complicit with US human rights crimes in Vietnam, the segregated US south, and in apartheid South Africa.
The struggle for freedom and justice for the Palestinian people has become the litmus test of our time (Gaza today has become the test of our universal morality and our common humanity). The US Congress in 1986 imposed a comprehensive boycott of apartheid South Africa, at a time when the citizen-led boycott movement deemed US government collaboration with the racist regime impossible to sustain. As Israel continues to commit massacres, and citizens of conscience respond vigorously to isolate what is now a pariah state, the US government will be forced into a similar position.
I was targeted and kicked out of the Congress because I believe in justice and peace. It is only a matter of time before voters of conscience turn what happened to me on its head by making it clear that elected policy-makers who collaborate in America’s unconditional partnership with Israel will be exposed as shameful; and by making it clear to policy-makers that such shameful behavior is unsustainable because collaborators in injustice will be ejected from office by the people. When this moment comes, Palestinians will finally see justice and be allowed to live freely in their homeland.
Cynthia McKinney is a former member of the United States House of Representatives, 2008 Green Party presidential nominee, and a human rights activist.
European Union’s FM says ahead of three-day visit to the region that the organization has been calling for ‘fundamental’ changes of policy regarding Gaza blockade.
The European Union urges Israel to open all Gaza border crossings, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton said Friday, ahead of her planned three-day visit to the region.
“The European Union has been calling for an urgent and fundamental change of policy regarding the closure of Gaza,” Ashton said before departing for Israel.
Referring to a recent cabinet decision to lift the ban on some of the products which Isrtael previously prohibited from entering the Strip, Ashton said the EU “welcomed the announcements made by Israel following the flotilla incident and are now awaiting their implementation.”
“We stand ready to support the opening of the Gaza crossings for the traffic of goods to and from Gaza,” she continued.
During her visit, Ashton will meet with Israeli and Palestinian leadership – including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, as well as the Quartet’s special envoy to the Middle East, Tony Blair.
Ashton also reportedly plans to visit UNRWA projects sites in Gaza on Sunday.
In its statement the PMO emphasized that the change would not counter Israel’s policy “to defend it citizens against terror, rocket fire or any other hostile activities from Gaza.”
Late last month, Israel approved a loosening in its blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, with the highlight of the new policy being the fact that only weapons or “dual-use” materials that could be used to manufacture weapons will be on the list. Any item not on the list will be permitted into Gaza.
Large quantities of building materials are to be brought in for projects with PA approval such as schools, clinics and water and sewage infrastructure. Building materials for homes in Khan Yunis and other Gazan towns will also be allowed in.
All construction projects are to be under close UN supervision to ensure that Hamas does not use the building material for fortifications and bunkers.
“Israel seeks to keep out of Gaza weapons and material that Hamas uses to prepare and carry out terror and rocket attacks toward Israel and its civilians,” Netanyahu said. “All other goods will be allowed into Gaza.”
By Jeremy Bowen
BBC Middle East editor Sometimes you can see just why it is so difficult to make peace in Jerusalem.
This city excites strong passions.
Not only is it holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians. It is also a national symbol for Israelis and Palestinians.
No piece of ground on the planet is more contested. It has changed hands violently many times.
On a dusty, narrow and steep street on the Israeli occupied eastern side of the city stands a battered seven-storey building. Scorch marks smudge the stonework around some of the windows.
When cars pull up, security guards wearing flak jackets emerge from the building’s heavy door to escort the passengers inside.
Quite often patrols from Israel’s paramilitary border police trudge past, wearing combat helmets, carrying M-16 assault rifles, with rubber clubs shoved inside their backpacks.
‘Just business’
The building’s name is Beit Yonatan, Hebrew for Jonathan House. It is named after Jonathan Pollard, who has served 23 years in an American prison for spying for Israel.
I was given a tour of the building by Daniel Luria, an Israeli who works for a Jewish group called Ateret Cohanim. He said the marks round the windows were made by petrol bombs.
Ateret Cohanim is an organisation that helps Jews buy houses, flats and land from Palestinians. Usually they pay well over the market rate.
The newly rich Palestinians who sell often have to disappear – usually abroad – because they are considered traitors.
Mr Luria said it was just business.
“An Arab wants to sell, a Jew wants to buy. It’s that simple. We help them do it.”
The building’s residents call their section of Israeli occupied East Jerusalem the Yemenite Village, after a small group of Jews who lived there until 1938.
The district, which is overwhelmingly Palestinian, is more commonly known as Silwan.
The Israelis who live there, including families with young children, are highly motivated religious nationalists.
They believe that they are doing God’s will. They want Beit Yonatan to be the beginning of a Jewish community in Silwan.
Mr Luria said that if local Palestinians didn’t like that, they should leave.
State backing
The Israeli state has worked long and hard, and spent a great deal of money, to make the walled Old City and the territory it captured in and around Jerusalem in the 1967 war more Jewish.
Its project started as soon as the shooting stopped in 1967, and it continues. Ateret Cohanim regards itself as a vital player in a national struggle.
I asked Mr Luria if he was fighting house-by-house to control the place he says is no longer Arab Jerusalem. He said it was inch-by-inch.
The state helps in all sorts of ways.
The vehicles that pull up outside Beit Yonatan are armoured. The government pays for the private security company which shuttles the residents in and protects the building.
In a court petition, government lawyers justified the expense by saying their lives were in danger.
An order was issued more than two years ago for the Jews who live in Beit Yonatan to leave and for the building to be sealed, as it was built illegally. But the police have never carried it out.
Settlers who go to live in the heart of Palestinian communities in Jerusalem are regarded as trouble-makers by many Israelis who believe in making peace. Their presence raises the tension considerably.
Palestinian story
But Mr Luria, sat in an armoured land rover as we were driven through streets he regards as hostile, dismissed the idea, insisting that his views were shared by most Israelis.
“Land for peace doesn’t work… The world has to wake up to reality that Jerusalem, it’s impossible to divide.
“Jerusalem is the centre of the Jewish world. For a Jew, for generations, the best thing they could do is to sing ‘next year in Jerusalem’ on Passover. Today they have the opportunity to live close to God’s house, near Temple Mount.
“Every Jew wants a piece of the action, wants to be here, close to God in the heart of Jerusalem,” Mr Luria said.
Just down the road from Beit Yonatan, behind a dented steel gate, is the home of the Palestinian Abu Nab family.
Three brothers and their wives and children live there, 45 people in all. The family has rented the property since 1948.
Ateret Cohanim, which is eyeing the property, says the building once was a synagogue.
Abdullah Abu Nab, one of the brothers, said that a year ago they were offered $1m (£647,306) to move out. They refused.
“I told him that even if you pay for every single centimetre in gold I won’t agree to leave. I’ll only leave my home dead – or they’ll have to throw me out in the street,” Mr Abu Nab said.
“Those who have no religion will sell, but those who have faith won’t give up their land – the land of our Palestinian grandfathers. Money isn’t tempting, because money comes and money goes.”
His family have now been served with an eviction notice. The Palestinian community in that part of Silwan reacted with fury and there were serious clashes with Israeli security forces. The area is still tense.
Even though some Palestinians have taken the money that is on offer from Ateret Cohanim and its wealthy supporters, many others have not. The Palestinians have learnt over the years that if they leave their land, Israel is not likely to allow them back.
Mr Luria says his side is winning. But there is no chance of peace in Jerusalem if Israel ignores Palestinian rights in the holy city that both sides believe is their birthright.
EDITOR: A voice in the wilderness
David landau, ex-editor of Haaretz, who cannot be described as a lefty by any stretch of imagination, calls in a courageous article to boycott the Israeli parliament, the Knesset! Evena year ago, this could only happen in Science Fiction rather than in the realities of the Israeli polis.
I am hastening to call for this boycott because I want to earn a footnote in Jewish history: He tried, Canute-like, to stand against the wave of fascism that engulfed the Zionist project.
By David Landau
I hereby call for a boycott of the Knesset.
A bill proposed by coalition chairman Ze’ev Elkin (Likud ) and the chairwoman of the Kadima faction, Dalia Itzik, together with MK Aryeh Eldad of the National Union, would punish any Israeli calling for a boycott of any Israeli individual or institution, whether in Israel or in the territories. The fine is NIS 30,000, plus any damages that can be proven. The bill passed its preliminary reading on Wednesday.
I therefore call for a boycott of Ze’ev Elkin and Dalia Itzik as individuals (no point in boycotting Dr. Eldad; he would thrive on it ), and of the Knesset as an institution. I call on parliaments throughout the democratic world, and interparliamentary associations, to boycott Israel’s parliament, once the pride of the Jewish people, until it buries the bill and recovers its democratic heritage.
That would also, of course, require revoking the infamous vote, also taken on Wednesday, in which MK Hanin Zuabi was deprived of parliamentary privileges because she took part in May’s flotilla to Gaza (believing it would be nonviolent ).
I am hastening to call for this boycott because I want to be the first person prosecuted under the new bill when it becomes law. This article will still be out there on the Internet, and I ought therefore to qualify. I want to earn a footnote in Jewish history: He tried, Canute-like, to stand against the wave of fascism that engulfed the Zionist project. I’m ready to pay NIS 30,000 for that.
Beyond that little vanity, perhaps a call to boycott the Knesset, if it gained any traction, could puncture that most smug and pernicious piece of propaganda: that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East.”
Israel is a democracy for Jews. “We’ll deal with your presence in the Knesset later,” MK Ofir Akunis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s longtime aide, informed Arab MK Ahmed Tibi ominously, unashamedly. True, he was admonished by the Knesset Speaker, Reuven Rivlin. But Rivlin the democrat is a mere fig leaf now, a holdover from another age.
Meanwhile, at any rate, Tibi’s still there. But four million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation have no political rights at all. Plainly, as was predicted decades ago by the peace camp, it is the occupation that is eroding democracy inside Israel.
The settlers got it right, too. “Yesha zeh kaan” – “Judea and Samaria are right here.”
This article would not be complete without the ritual, required – and actually completely true – addendum: I deprecate and despise the people calling for boycotts of Israeli universities. I most especially disdain them if they themselves remain faculty members of those same universities. Israeli universities do not deserve to be boycotted.
I know that “deserve to be boycotted” opens up a whole other can of worms. Do settler wines, for instance, deserve to be boycotted? I was in a restaurant recently where a salesperson from Barkan Winery was promoting her products. When someone muttered something about “boycott,” she smoothly replied that the winery had long ago moved to inside the Green Line. It was not a settler business, and there was no reason, therefore, for anyone to boycott it. So boycotts work, apparently.
But things are not always all that simple, given the complicated lives we lead here, in the fifth decade of the occupation. My darling grandchildren live in a settlement (albeit within one of the “blocs” ). Do I call for a boycott of them? I had better not, or they’ll call for a boycott of me.
EDITOR: BDS is taking a hold and dictating the new agenda
Not a day passes without some major news on the BDS issue, from all parts of the globe. This rising movement, with supporters in most countries, and with growing effect, is now assisting the isolation of the Israeli regime of militarised, brutal colonial settlement. While Israel’s universities and colleges do all they can to support the coniued occupoation, there are many academics who are increasingly voicing their opposition to the regime and its war crimes. This struggle is likely to intensify, as the regime is moving to stop all crticism by using the legal machinery to silence academics. This vert act is a proof on the increasing efficacy of the BDS campaign.
Backlash over threat to outlaw supporters of boycott movement aimed at ending the continued occupation of the West Bank
An academic backlash has erupted in Israel over proposed new laws, backed by the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, to criminalise a handful of Israeli professors who openly support a campaign against the continuing occupation of the West Bank.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel has gained rapid international support since Israeli troops stormed a Gaza-bound flotilla of aid ships in May, killing nine activists. Israeli attention has focused on the small number of activists, particularly in the country’s universities, who have openly supported an academic boycott of Israeli institutions.
A protest petition has been signed by 500 academics, including two former education ministers, following recent comments by Israel’s education minister, Gideon Saar, that the government intends to take action against the boycott’s supporters. A proposed bill introduced into the Israeli parliament – the Knesset – would outlaw boycotts and penalise their supporters. Individuals who initiated, encouraged or provided support or information for any boycott or divestment action would be made to pay damages to the companies affected. Foreign nationals involved in boycott activity would be banned from entering Israel for 10 years, and any “foreign state entity” engaged in such activity would be liable to pay damages.
Saar last week described the petition as hysterical and an attempt to silence contrary opinions. While the vast majority of the signatories do not support an academic boycott of Israel, they have joined forces over what they regard as the latest assault on freedom of expression in Israel. The petition states: “We have different and varied opinions about solving the difficult problems facing Israel, but there is one thing we are agreed on – freedom of expression and academic freedom are the very lifeblood of the academic system.”
Daniel Gutwein, a history professor at Haifa University who is one of the signatories, described the minister’s intervention as an attempt “to make Israeli academia docile, frightened and silent”.
Although the BDS campaign – in various forms – has been running for over half a decade, it has become an increasingly fraught issue inside Israel in the past year since a small number of academics publicly declared support for a boycott, including Neve Gordon, author of Israel’s Occupation and a former paratrooper who was badly injured while serving with the Israeli Defence Force.
Speaking to the Observer last week, Gordon said that many Israelis saw support for the BDS as “crossing a red line”. Adding that he had received recent death threats, he said: “I am worried about what is happening to the space for debate in Israel. I find that there is a proto-fascist mindset developing. One of the slogans you hear a lot now is no citizenship without loyalty. It is an inversion of the republican idea that the state should be loyal to the citizen.”
Israeli campaigners believe the Gaza flotilla incident represents a tipping point in raising support for boycotts. Musicians including Elvis Costello, Gil Scott Heron and the Pixies have cancelled shows in Israel. Hollywood actors also snubbed Jerusalem’s international film festival and internationally acclaimed writers have supported the BDS movement, which is gaining support in dozens of countries.
“It’s a different world to what it was even a month ago,” says Kobi Snitz, member of an Israeli BDS group. “Suddenly, all sorts of people are supporting it – people that you wouldn’t expect.”
What is most interesting, however, has been the impact in Israel itself. Israeli journalist and blogger Noam Sheizaf wrote recently that such actions are now forcing Israelis “to think about the political issues and about their consequences… For a country in a constant state of denial regarding the occupation, this is no small thing.” Sheizaf does not promote the boycott, but says: “I will gladly return concert tickets if that is the price for making Israelis understand that the occupation cannot go on.”
Adi Oz, culture editor on the Tel Aviv weekly Ha’ir, appeared on Israeli national radio explaining her support for recent boycott activity. “When the Pixies cancelled their concert here I was disappointed,” she says. “But I was not critical of the Pixies, I was critical of our government, because they are responsible for Israel’s isolation.” She adds that, post-flotilla, the cultural boycott is “something that everyone has a stand on – and some people are realising that they are in favour of it, without having thought about it before.” There has also been a spate of boycott-related discussion in the financial press. The daily business newspaper Calcalist ran an uncritical profile of the Israeli campaigners behind Who Profits, an online database of Israeli and international companies involved in the occupation of the West Bank.
The project’s co-ordinator, Dalit Baum, of the Coalition of Women for Peace, says: “Every day there is an article about this issue in the Israeli media, which creates a discussion about the economy of the occupation and raises the fact that there’s a problem.”
The head of the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon has appealed for calm, following recent incidents in which villagers attacked soldiers.
Locals were angered by what they saw as plans by the UN force to undermine the Hezbollah militant group in the event of a renewed conflict with Israel.
The area is a Hezbollah stronghold.
In an open letter to residents, Maj Gen Alberto Asarta Cuevas said the best way to deal with any concerns was through dialogue, not by beating peacekeepers.
In the latest of the clashes, villagers on Saturday disarmed a French patrol of UN peacekeepers in the village of Tuline and attacked them with sticks, rocks and eggs before the army intervened.
Residents have complained that Unifil has stepped up its patrols in southern Lebanon, which has been under the de facto control of Hezbollah since the withdrawal of Israeli forces in 2000.
Open letter
“As you all know, some recent incidents have cast a shadow on the positive environment in which Unifil peacekeepers have been working, in close co-ordination with the Lebanese army, for your safety and security,” Maj Gen Cuevas said in a rare open letter released on Thursday.
The UN commander said Unifil respected the privacy and property of the villagers in the south, and that problems should be resolved by discussion “not by obstructing the work of the peacekeepers or by beating them”.
Tensions in southern Lebanon have increased after recent Israeli claims that weapons were flowing in to Hezbollah fighters.
On Wednesday, the Israeli military published an aerial photograph purporting to show Hezbollah weapons caches in the southern Lebanese village of al-Khiam.
Following the recent clashes, Hezbollah – which fought a devastating 2006 war with Israel – urged the peacekeepers to stick to their mandate.
“Unifil should always carry out its role… in a way so as not to arouse mistrust and worry of citizens as was the case during the latest exercises,” Hezbollah’s number two, Naim Qassem, said in a newspaper interview.
The UN Security Council is due to meet later on Friday, at France’s request, to discuss the confrontations and reaffirm the peacekeeping force’s right to free movement.
The UN force was originally formed in 1978 after Israeli troops entered southern Lebanon and began a 22-year occupation.
Security Council Resolution 1701, that ended the 2006 war, expanded the mandate of Unifil and paved the way for the Lebanese army to deploy in the sensitive border area.
Rabbis are exploiting fears and inflaming emotions under pretense of enforcing Jewish religious law.
The letter circulated by three rabbis in south Tel Aviv in which they direct residents not to rent their apartments to migrants and refugees trying to settle in the city makes a pretense of concern for the welfare of the residents and compassion for asylum seekers. But it hardly manages to conceal the blatant racism lurking between the lines.
The rabbis warn residents not to give access to their homes to “illegal workers,” but it is clear that maintaining the rule of law is not their concern, inasmuch as they are not demanding similar treatment for Israeli citizens. As for the argument that the presence of the foreigners is causing a rise in crime and intermarriage, the rabbis are even taking the law into their own hands and bypassing city hall and the police.
The weaker population groups living in south Tel Aviv find themselves pressed to take in refugees, migrant workers and collaborators. This situation creates troubling friction that aggravates the residents’ sense of unfair treatment and alienation. It’s hard to ask the inhabitants of these deprived neighborhoods to take in the outcasts of the world with open arms without feeling threatened. In this complex reality, the role of religious and secular leaders is to try to bridge the gaps and find creative ways of living together.
The rabbis who signed the letter are not civil servants. However, the public is greatly influenced by their opinions. The Tel Aviv municipality has expended more than a little effort in taking care of migrant workers and could have used the rabbis’ help in making contact with the migrants and their leaders and attempting to integrate the newcomers into the neighborhood in the ways that have been done in many other countries. The rabbis, however, prefer to exploit residents’ fears and inflame emotions in the name of halakha, Jewish religious law.
Over the weekend, a courageous leader, Rabbi Yehuda Amital, who founded the Meimad political movement, passed away. His party carried the banner of tolerance, humanism and the search for peace in the name of religious faith, and though the members of his movement were always a minority, they provided an important alternative to ultra-Orthodox-nationalist radicalization.
In recent years, Rabbi Amital’s students and followers have fallen silent, and the status of rabbis such as those who wrote the letter about the migrants has grown stronger. It can be hoped that the municipality will understand the damage they are doing and will publicly disassociate the city from their questionable activities and instead provide the option of an alternative, one of coexistence for all of the city’s residents – both temporary and permanent – a coexistence free of fear and racism.
What more can Assad say that he hasn’t already? How long must he knock in vain on Israel’s locked door?
By Gideon Levy
It couldn’t have been spelled out more explicitly, clearly and emphatically. Read and judge for yourselves: “Our position is clear: When Israel returns the entire Golan Heights, of course we will sign a peace agreement with it …. What’s the point of peace if the embassy is surrounded by security, if there is no trade and tourism between the two countries? That’s not peace. That’s a permanent cease-fire agreement. This is what I say to whoever comes to us to talk about the Syrian track: We are interested in a comprehensive peace, i.e., normal relations.”
Who said this to whom? Syrian President Bashar Assad to the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir last week. These astounding things were said to Arab, not Western ears, and they went virtually unnoticed here. Can you believe it?
What more can Assad say that he hasn’t already? How many more times does he have to declare his peaceful intentions before someone wakes up here? How long must he knock in vain on Israel’s locked door? And if that were not enough, he also called on Turkey to work to calm the crisis with Israel so it can mediate between Israel and Syria.
Assad’s words should have been headline news last week and in the coming weeks. Anwar Sadat said less before he came to Israel. In those days we were excited by his words, today we brazenly disregard such statements. This leads to only one conclusion: Israel does not want peace with Syria. Period. It prefers the Golan over peace with one of its biggest and most dangerous enemies. It prefers real estate, bed and breakfasts, mineral water, trendy wine and a few thousand settlers over a strategic change in its status.
Just imagine what would happen if we emerged from the ruins of our international status to sign a peace agreement with Syria – how the international climate regarding us would suddenly change, how the “axis of evil” would crack and Iran’s strongholds weaken, how Hezbollah would get a black eye, more than in all the Lebanon wars. And maybe even Gilad Shalit, held by the Damascus-based Hamas, would be freed. Sound too good to be true? Maybe, but Israel is not even trying. A prime minister who ignores this chance is no less than a peace criminal.
Instead of the Shalit march that has just ended, a different march should have set out this week, one more massive and determined, calling on the Israeli government, the peace refuser, to do something. Hoarse shouts should have gone up: Peace with Syria now. But this march will not go forward this week. Apparently it will never happen. Singer-songwriter Shlomo Artzi, Zubin Mehta and the respectable demonstrators who marched on behalf of one soldier will not do so to support a move that could save the lives of many soldiers and civilians. Why? Because that takes courage. Why? Because Assad was right when he told La Repubblica in Italy: “Israeli society has tilted too far to the right, and it is not capable of making peace with Syria.”
True, they say the Mossad chief thinks that Assad will never make peace because the whole justification for his regime is based on hostility toward Israel. Our experts are never wrong, but similar things were said about Sadat. True, Assad also said other things. Other? Not really. He said that if he does not succeed through peace, he will try to liberate the Golan through resistance. Illogical? Illegitimate? Not a reason to try to challenge him? What do we have to lose but the chance? Even the latest fig leaf a few prime ministers have used here – the assessment that the U.S. opposes peace with Syria – is absurd. Does anyone see U.S. President Barack Obama opposing a peace move with Syria? What a pity that he is not pressing Israel to move ahead with it.
And then there is the old refrain: “Assad doesn’t mean it.” When Arab leaders make threats, they mean it; when they talk peace, they don’t. And also: “We’ll return the Golan and end up with a piece of paper and missiles.” Remember how that was said about Egypt? But we persist: The prime minister is criminally missing a historic chance for peace, and we yawn apathetically. Sounds logical, right?
Foreign Ministry announced earlier that organizers of Gaza-bound mission agreed to dock in Egypt rather than violate Gaza naval blockade.
A Libyan aid ship will head to Gaza’s port and will not be diverted, Palestinian Legislative Council member Jamal Al-Khudari and Israeli Arab MK Ahmed Tibi told the Palestinian news agency Ma’an on Saturday.
Al-Khudari, head of the Popular Committee Against the Siege, told Ma’an that he had been in constant contact with the organizers of the ship, who are expected to bring 2,000 tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza despite an Israeli naval blockade on the Hamas-ruled territory.
Earlier Saturday, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said that the Moldavian-flagged ship would not dock in Gaza, but would instead dock in Egypt’s el-Arish on the coast of the Sinai Peninsula.
According to the ministry, the change in destination was agreed to by the ship’s captain. It reportedly followed talks between Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and his Greek and Moldavian counterparts.
A spokesman at the Greek Foreign Ministry said the ship would head for El Arish. An official from ACA Shipping, which owns the ship, told Reuters ahead of the ship’s departure that “the ship will leave in a few minutes for Gaza. If they don’t let us reach there [Gaza] we will head to El Arish harbor in Egypt.”
The ship – named the “Amalthia” – was set to depart Saturday from the Greek port of Lavrio with 12 crew and 15 activists and supporters on board, and about 2,000 tons of humanitarian aid supplied by the Gadhafi International Charity and Development Association, headed by Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi, the second-born son of the Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi.
Tibi, of Israel’s Ra’am Ta’al party, confirmed that the ship had set sail and would arrive in Gaza some 40 hours after the departure. The Israeli Arab MK had told Israel Radio earlier that “sailing to Gaza is a political and humane act. I don’t know what Israel will do, because it has vowed to stop the ship, but Gaza remains the destination.”
“Sailing [the aid ship] is a form of passive resistance, which is preferable to any other form of resistance,” Tibi added.
Tibi had assisted the ship’s Libyan organizers, providing them with a list of items needed by residents of the Gaza Strip.
In an interview with Army Radio, Tibi confirmed a report in the Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper that the list included medicines, generators for hospitals and a type of children’s milk not available in Gaza.
On Friday, Israel launched a diplomatic move at the United Nations in efforts to enlist the international community to help prevent the Libyan aid ship from sailing to Gaza.
In an official letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Israeli ambassador to the UN Gabriela Shalev wrote that “Israel calls upon the international community to exert its influence on the government of Libya to demonstrate responsibility and prevent the ship from departing to the Gaza Strip.”
Shalev’s letter to Ban went on to clarify that “Israel reserves the right under international law to prevent this ship from violating the existing naval blockade on the Gaza Strip.”
Israel imposed the blockade on Gaza in 2007 following a bloody Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip. Israel recently eased the terms of the land blockade on the territory, following a deadly raid of a Turkish aid ship, but the naval blockade has so far remained in place.
In the letter, Shalev further urged the international community “to discourage their nationals from taking part in such action,” adding that Israel “expects the international community to ensure that this ship does not sail.”
“The declared intentions of this mission are even more questionable and provocative given the recent measures taken by Israel to ensure the increase of humanitarian aid flowing into the Gaza Strip,” the letter went on to say, adding that Israel has taken upon itself the responsibility of ensuring the transfer of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory.
Copies of the letter were also submitted to the current president of the UN Security Council as well as the president of the General Assembly, a Libyan national who previously served as Libya’s foreign minister.
E-mail this to a friendPrintable version The Amalthea is carrying 2,000 tonnes of food, medicine and other items
A ship with supplies for Gaza will dock at el-Arish in Egypt, officials say, after Israeli pressure to stop the vessel breaking its Gaza blockade.
The Moldovan-flagged ship chartered by a charity run by the son of Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi, left a Greek port on Saturday.
Israel asked for help from the UN, and had talks with Greece and Moldova. But organisers insist they will go to Gaza.
An Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound ship in May killed nine Turkish activists.
Israel insisted its troops were defending themselves but the raid sparked international condemnation.
Israel recently eased its blockade, allowing in almost all consumer goods but maintaining a “blacklist” of some items.
Israel says its blockade of the Palestinian territory is needed to prevent the supply of weapons to the Hamas militant group which controls Gaza.
Diplomatic drive
The Amalthea, renamed Hope for the mission, set off from the Greek port of Lavrio, loaded with about 2,000 tonnes of food, cooking oil, medicines and pre-fabricated houses.
It has been chartered by the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation. Its chairman is Saif al-Islam Gaddafi.
The organisation said the 92m (302ft) vessel would also carry “a number of supporters who are keen on expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people”.
The BBC’s Malcolm Brabant in Lavrio says the Libyans clearly believe the time is right to test Israel’s resolve to maintain the naval blockade.
We are heading to Gaza for purely humanitarian reasons, we are not out to provoke anyone or to seek media attention
Youssef Sawwan
Director, Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation
Israel carried out intense diplomatic activity to prevent the Amalthea reaching Gaza.
A foreign ministry statement said that Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman had spoken with his Greek and Moldovan counterparts on the issue.
The statement said: “The foreign ministry believes that due to these talks, the ship will not reach Gaza.”
And Libya has now told the Greek government that the ship will now dock in Egypt’s el-Arish on the coast of the Sinai Peninsula.
“We confirmed their destination in talks with the Libyan ambassador and the ship’s agent,” foreign ministry spokesman Grigoris Delavekouras told Associated Press news agency.
Israel also lobbied the UN to take action.
Israel’s UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev said in a letter: “Israel calls upon the international community to exert its influence on the government of Libya to demonstrate responsibility and prevent the ship from departing to the Gaza Strip.”
Ms Shalev also warned: “Israel reserves the right under international law to prevent this ship from violating the existing naval blockade on the Gaza Strip.”
She said the motives of the operators were “questionable and provocative”.
However, the director of the Libyan charity told the BBC the vessel was heading for Gaza.
“We have not cut deals with anyone,” Youssef Sawwan, told the BBC Arabic service.
“We are heading to Gaza for purely humanitarian reasons, we are not out to provoke anyone or to seek media attention,” Mr Sawwan said.
Israel offered evidence of what it says is a growing threat from Hezbollah in southern Lebanon; Hezbollah says wants to avoid confrontation, Asharq al-Awsat reports.
Hezbollah warned on Saturday that Israel was preparing “something” in Lebanon and that the organization has been on high alert since Israel released aerial images to highlight the militant group’s activities close to the Israeli border earlier this week, the London-based Arabic language daily Asharq al-Awsat reported.
On Wednesday, Israel offered evidence of what it says is a growing threat from Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
In a briefing to journalists, Israel Defense Forces Colonel Ronen Marley revealed previously classified photographs to show what he said was a unit of 90 Hezbollah militants operating in the village of Al-Hiyam, where they were storing weapons close to hospitals and schools.
The Hezbollah official told Asharq al-Awsat that they were concerned that Israel was “preparing something for us” and added that they would act with restraint.
“We want to avoid heated political debates because we want the summer season to be perfect for the Lebanese despite Israeli attempts to execute what it failed to achieve in 2006,” Asharq al-Awsat quoted the Hezbollah official.
“We are sensing suspicious international activity, especially after Israeli chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi’s recent statements, all aimed at pressuring the Resistance,” the sources stressed.
As President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet, a report reveals 42 per cent of territory is controlled by settlers
By Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem and David Usborne
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Jewish settlers, who claim a divine right to the whole of Israel, now control more than 42 per cent of the occupied West Bank, representing a powerful obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state, a new report has revealed.
The jurisdiction of some 200 settlements, illegal under international law, cover much more of the occupied Palestinian territory than previously thought. And a large section of the land has been seized from private Palestinian landowners in defiance even of an Israeli supreme court ruling, the report said, a finding which sits uncomfortably with Israeli claims that it builds only on state land.
Drawing on official Israeli military maps and population statistics, the leading Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, compiled the new findings, which were released just as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, arrived in Washington to try to heal a gaping rift with US President Barack Obama over the issue of settlements.
“The settlement enterprise has been characterised, since its inception, by an instrumental, cynical, and even criminal approach to international law, local legislation, Israeli military orders, and Israeli law, which has enabled the continuous pilfering of land from Palestinians in the West Bank,” the report concluded.
Mr Obama’s demand for a freeze on illegal building has caused months of friction between his administration and the Israeli government. But the US president, facing mid-term elections in November, appeared eager to end the dispute with Israel yesterday.
He said the country was making “real progress” on improving conditions in the Gaza Strip and was serious about achieving peace.
The two men made a joint public appearance, carefully choreographed to convey mutual ease and friendship.
When Mr Netanyahu last visited the White House, in March, US anger at his refusal to end construction meant the Israeli premier was denied a joint appearance with Mr Obama before the cameras. This time the photo-op was granted and the two men afterwards shared a meal – although not a state dinner but a working lunch.
“Reports about the demise of the special US-Israel relationship aren’t premature, there are just flat wrong,” Mr Netanyahu said, in response to a reporter’s question about the perceived tensions. Playing to the same script, Mr Obama said that the “bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable”.
But the revelations in the B’Tselem report suggest that despite Mr Netanyahu’s stated desire for peace, his policy on settlements remains a dangerous obstacle to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and therefore to a durable peace.
They cast an uncompromising spotlight on Israeli practices in the Palestinian territories that have long drawn international criticism for establishing “facts on the ground” hampering the creation of a viable Palestinian state.
While most of the Jewish settlement activity is concentrated in 1 per cent of the West Bank, settler councils have in fact fenced off or earmarked massive tracts of land, comprising some 42 per cent of the West Bank, B’Tselem said.
And despite the outlawing by Israel of settlement expansion on private Palestinian land, settlers have seized 21 per cent of land that Israel recognises is privately-owned.
B’Tselem alleged that Israel had devised an extensive system of loopholes to requisition Palestinian land.
At the same time, Israel has built bypass roads, erected new checkpoints, and taken control of scarce water resources to the benefit of the settlers. The measures have effectively created Palestinian enclaves within the West Bank, the report said.
Under international law, any Jewish settlements built on occupied territory are illegal. These include all the settlements in the West Bank, and thousands of Jewish homes in East Jerusalem, the Arab-dominated sector of the city annexed by Israel after the 1967 Six Day War. The international community still regards East Jerusalem as occupied territory. Despite firm commitments from successive Israeli governments to dismantle illegal outposts built after 2001 and to cease expansion of the settlements, Israel has provided millions of dollars worth of incentives to encourage poorer families to move into the West Bank. Some 300,000 settlers live in the West Bank.
Settlers immediately attacked the report, claiming it was timed as a spoiler to the Washington meeting.
In Washington, no concrete breakthroughs were announced but Mr Obama said that he believed the Israeli leader was ready to move towards direct talks with the Palestinians. Indirect talks began earlier this year, mediated by special US envoy George Mitchell.
Mr Netanyahu showed signs of responding to the pressure. “Peace is the best option for all of us and I think we have a unique opportunity to do it,” he said. “If we work together with [Palestinian] President [Mahmoud] Abbas then we can bring a great message of hope to our peoples, to the region and to the world.”
The Palestinians continue to refuse direct talks with Israel while new settlement construction is allowed. Settlement activity continues in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians aim to include in a new state.
With US-Israel ties already frayed, Mr Netanyahu postponed a visit to the White House last month in the aftermath of Israel’s deadly raid on a Turkish-led flotilla trying to deliver humanitarian goods to Gaza.
For Mr Obama, the danger is clear that any long-lasting record of animosity towards Israel could translate into lost votes at the mid-term elections.
EDITOR: Name change required in order to bring peace to the Middle East!
Obama has at last worked out what is wrong with Israelis. No, it is not the fact that they feel the need to kill Palestinians and other Arabs, neither their brutal occupation. It is their deep suspicion of his middle name! So as his first name is already a Hebrew one, why not change his middle name to a Hebrew one also? Maybe Benjamin? Shimon? Avigdor? Just think how esteemed a US president will be with a name like Barack Avigdor Obama… on second thoughts, it will not work; he needs also to change Obama, it seems, in order to really increase the appeal. Go for it – Barack Avigdor Peres sounds so much better! Even the pictures look better!
U.S. president tells Channel 2 Israel is unlikely to attack Iran without coordinating with the U.S.
U.S. President Barack Obama told Channel 2 News on Wednesday that he believed Israel would not try to surprise the U.S. with a unilateral attack on Iran.
U.S. President Barack Avigdor Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walking at the White House, on July 6, 2010. Photo by: Reuters
In an interview aired Thursday evening, Obama was asked whether he was concerned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would try to attack Iran without clearing the move with the U.S., to which the president replied “I think the relationship between Israel and the U.S. is sufficiently strong that neither of us try to surprise each other, but we try to coordinate on issues of mutual concern.”
Obama spoke to Channel 2’s Yonit Levy one day after what he described as an “excellent” meeting with Netanyahu at the White House. The two leaders met alone for about 90 minutes Tuesday evening, during which time they discussed the peace process with the Palestinians, the contested Iranian nuclear program, and the strategic understandings between their two countries on Tehran’s efforts to achieve nuclear capabilities.
Netanyahu promised Obama during their meeting that Israel would undertake confidence-building measures toward the Palestinian Authority in the coming days and weeks. These steps are likely to include the transfer of responsibility over more parts of the West Bank over to PA security forces.
During the interview Wednesday, when confronted with the anxiety that some Israelis feel toward him, Obama said that “some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion.”
“Ironically, I’ve got a Chief of Staff named Rahm Israel Emmanuel. My top political advisor is somebody who is a descendent of Holocaust survivors. My closeness to the Jewish American community was probably what propelled me to the U.S. Senate,” Obama said.
“I think that sometimes, particularly in the Middle East, there’s the feeling of the friend of my enemy must be my enemy, and the truth of the matter is that my outreach to the Muslim community is designed precisely to reduce the antagonism and the dangers posed by a hostile Muslim world to Israel and to the West,” Obama went on to say.
Obama added that he believed a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians could be achieved within his current term. “I think [Netanyahu] understands we’ve got a fairly narrow window of opportunity… We probably won’t have a better opportunity than we have right now. And that has to be seized. It’s going to be difficult.”
The American President entirely sidestepped the question of whether the U.S. would pressure Israel to extend a current 10-month moratorium on construction in West Bank settlements, failing to give a clear answer. The moratorium is set to expire in September, and Netanyahu has announced that he would not extend the timeframe. The U.S., however, views continued Israeli settlement construction as a serious obstacle to peace efforts.
When asked whether he thought Netanyahu was the right man to strike a peace deal with the Palestinians, the U.S. President said that “I think Prime Minister Netanyahu may be very well positioned to bring this about,” adding that Israel will have to overcome many hurdles in order to affect the change required to “secure Israel for another 60 years”
In a separate interview with another Israeli media outlet, Obama proclaimed that he was not “blindly optimistic” regarding the chances of a Middle East peace agreement.
Israel is right to be skeptical about the peace process, he said in another yet-to-be-aired interview that was taped on Wednesday. He noted during the interview that many people thought the founding of Israel was impossible, so its very existence should be “a great source of hope.”
Meanwhile on Wednesday, Netanyahu told U.S. Jewish leaders that direct Palestinian-Israeli talks would begin “very soon”, but warned that they would be “very, very tough.”
Netanyahu told his cabinet earlier this week before flying to Washington that the time had come for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to prepare to meet directly with the Israelis, as it was the only way to advance peace.
Israelis and Palestinians have been holding indirect talks mediated by Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell. Aides to Obama sounded a hopeful tone regarding the negotiations last week, telling reporters that the shuttle diplomacy between the two sides had paid off and the gaps have narrowed.
At a meeting with representatives of Jewish organizations at the Plaza Hotel late Wednesday, Netanyahu discussed the efforts to promote Middle East peace. “This is going to be a very, very tough negotiation,” he said, adding “the sooner the better.”
“Direct negotiations must begin right away, and we think that they will,” he said.
Case of four men with affiliation to Hamas is first in which Israel has cited political grounds for expulsion from city
Mohammed Abu Tir, of the Palestinian Legislative Council, is in police custody for failing to leave the city by the end of June. Photograph: Stoyan Nenov/Reuters
Israeli authorities have threatened four Palestinian politicians with expulsion from Jerusalem because of their affiliation to Hamas in a case which could have wide ramifications for others deemed undesirable by the Jewish state.
Mohammed Abu Tir, 59, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), is in police custody for failing to leave the city by the end of last month. Instantly recognisable for his dyed orange beard, Abu Tir was released from an Israeli prison in May after almost four years, and was immediately told he must abandon political activity or leave Jerusalem.
Two other members of the PLC and a former Palestinian minister have moved into the grounds of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent in East Jerusalem in protest at the deportation orders.
The men’s cases are to be heard by the supreme court in September. However the court rejected a plea to prohibit deportation in the interim, so the men are at risk of being expelled from the city at any time.
The threatened deportations are part of a wider pattern of revoking the Jerusalem residency permits of Palestinians from the city. In most cases, Israel claims that the people it strips of the right to live in Jerusalem have voluntarily relocated to the West Bank or abroad. This is often contested by the individuals concerned and human rights groups representing them.
In 2008, more than 4,500 Palestinians were excluded from Jerusalem.
However the case of the four Hamas politicians is the first time Israel has cited political grounds for expelling people from the city.
“For the first time Israel is using a claim of disloyalty to revoke residency,” said Hasan Jabarin, director of the Israeli human rights group Adalah. “The consequences for Palestinians in East Jerusalem are dangerous. This case could open a new window to revoking residency on purely political grounds.”
Abu Tir was imprisoned with dozens of Hamas politicians and activists after the Palestinian election in January 2006, which was won by the Islamic militant party.
“The election was legal and transparent. They found themselves in jail simply because they were elected,” said Jabarin.
The men’s case has been raised in the past week in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Labour MP Andrew Slaughter asked whether the British government had raised the issue with the Israeli government.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, urged Israel to “stop these sort of actions”. Ahmad Bahar, the deputy speaker of the Palestinian parliament, described the revocation of residency permits as a “massive ethnic cleansing campaign”.
More than 270,000 Palestinians live in East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied and annexed in 1967.
In a separate development, Israel’s supreme court has rejected a petition on behalf of Gazan lawyer Fatima Sharif to be allowed to travel to the West Bank to begin a masters degree in human rights, citing the “current political-security situation”.
The Israel Defence Forces made it clear in the court hearing yesterday that there would be no relaxation of the policy restricting the movement of Palestinians in and out of Gaza except in the most extreme circumstances, despite Israel’s decision to ease its blockade of the territory.
EDITOR: Good news! Fewer war criminal to travel in Europe this year!
Bureau issues travel advisory warning of likely revenge attacks against Israelis by Iran or Hezbollah.
Israel’s Counter Terrorism Bureau on Thursday issued a travel advisory calling for Israelis to keep their wits about them in all parts of the world, suspicious of revenge attacks by Iran and Hezbollah.
According to the warning, Hezbollah continues to blame Israel for the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, the Lebanese militia’s former operations officer, and Iran blames Israel for the death of a nuclear scientist in Tehran.
The bureau statement reads “according to our intelligence, there continue to be threats of revenge killings or kidnappings of Israelis traveling outside the country, especially businesspeople and high-ranking ex-government officials.”
The bureau advised Israelis traveling abroad to take precautions, completely avoid visiting countries mentioned in travel advisories and refuse all unexpected or tempting business or social offers and refuse all unexpected invitations to meetings, especially in remote areas and after dark.
The bureau further advised Israelis to refrain from entering a hotel room or place of residence and from receiving suspicious or unexpected visitors.
On extended stays abroad, the bureau advised altering one’s personal habits by varying traffic routes, restaurants, entertainment venues and hotels frequented.
Two statesmen met in Washington on Tuesday who are looking smaller and smaller, who are taking smaller and smaller steps.
By Gideon Levy
It really was an excellent meeting: The chance that a binational state will be established has improved as a result; relations between Israel and the United States are indeed “marvelous.” Israel can continue with the whims of its occupation. The president of the United States proved Tuesday that perhaps there has been change, but not as far as we are concerned.
If there remained any vestiges of hope in the Middle East from Barack Obama, they have dissipated; if some people still expected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lead a courageous move, they now know they made a mistake (and misled others ).
The masked ball is at its peak: Preening each other, Obama and Netanyahu have proved that even their heavy layer of makeup can no longer hide the wrinkles. The worn-out, wizened old face of the longest “peace process” in history has been awarded another surprising and incomprehensible extention. It’s on its way nowhere.
The “warm” and “sympathetic” reception, albeit a little forced, including the presidential dog, Bo, the meeting of the wives, with the U.S. president accompanying the Israeli prime minister to the car in an “unprecedented” way, as the press enthused, cannot obscure reality. The reality is that Israel has again managed to fool not only America, but even its most promising president in years.
It was enough to listen to the joint press conference to understand, or better yet, not understand, where we are headed. Will the freeze continue? Obama and Netanyahu squirmed, formulated and obfuscated, and no clear answer was forthcoming. If there was a time when people marveled at Henry Kissinger’s “constructive ambiguity,” now we have destructive ambiguity. Even when it came to the minimum move of a construction freeze, without which there is no proof of serious intent on Israel’s part, the two leaders threw up a smoke screen. A cowardly yes-and-no by both.
More than anything, the meeting proved that the criminal waste of time will go on. A year and a half has passed since the two took office, and almost nothing has changed except lip service to the freeze. A few lifted roadblocks here, a little less blockade of Gaza there – all relatively marginal matters, a bogus substitute for a bold jump over the abyss, without which nothing will move.
When direct talks become a goal, without anyone having a clue what Israel’s position is – a strange negotiation in which everyone knows what the Palestinians want and no one knows for sure what Israel wants – the wheel not only does not go forward, it goes backward. There are plenty of excuses and explanations: Obama has the congressional elections ahead of him, so he mustn’t make Netanyahu angry.
After that, the footfalls of the presidential elections can be heard, and then he certainly must not anger the Jews. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is pressuring Netanyahu now; tomorrow it might be Likud MK Danny Danon, and after all, you can’t expect Netanyahu to commit political suicide. And there you have it, his term in office is over, with no achievements. Good for you, Obama; bravo Netanyahu. You managed to make a mockery of each other, and together, of us all.
Netanyahu will be coming back to Israel over the weekend, adorned with false accomplishments. The settlers will mark a major achievement. Even if they don’t not admit it – they are never satisfied, after all – they can rejoice secretly. Their project will continue to prosper. If they have doubled their numbers since the Oslo Accords, now they can triple them.
And then what? Here then is a question for Obama and Netanyahu: Where to? No playing for time can blur the question. Where are they headed? What will improve in another year? What will be more promising in another two years? The Syrian president is knocking at the door begging for peace with Israel, and the two leaders are ignoring him. Will he still be knocking in two years? The Arab League’s initiative is still valid; terror has almost ceased. What will the situation be after they have finished compromising over the freeze in construction of balconies and ritual baths?
Two statesmen met in Washington on Tuesday who are looking smaller and smaller, who are taking smaller and smaller steps. They have decided not to decide, which in itself is a decision. When the chance of a two-state solution has long since entered injury time, they have decided on more extra time. Get ready for the binational state, or the next round of bloodletting.
