EDITOR: Israel Prepares to Attack Lebanon Again
The Lebanese have every reason to worry. Israel has destroyed Beyrut more times than anybody could remember and are now preparing to do so again, under the pretext of Syria supplying Hezbollah with Scud Missiles. What is important is not the truth behind this claim, but the fact that Obama repeats this mantra. It seems that the attack is forgone conclusion – Netanyahu needs his own war – he has not fought any yet, while Olmert had two before he was impeached. Every Israeli PM has to have at least one serious war, and Netanyahu is preparing two – with Lebanon and and with Iran. Maybe also with Syria? Much fun to be awaited.
Israeli claims that Syria has enabled Hezbollah to further destabilise the region angrily denied by Lebanese government
Hezbollah supporters in Lebanon protesting against the Israeli attacks on Gaza in 2008. Photograph: Mahmoud Tawil/AP/AP
The Lebanese government today angrily denounced Israeli claims that Syria has supplied Hezbollah militia with Scud ballistic missiles, comparing it with the misinformation about weapons of mass destruction in the leadup to the Iraq war.
The prime minister, Saad Hariri, was speaking after the US state department gave credence to the Israeli allegations by summoning a senior Syrian diplomat late on Monday to explain what it called “provocative behaviour”.
Military analysts say that if Lebanese-based Hezbollah does possess Scud missiles, it would be able to target any part of Israel. The Shia militia fired 4,000 Katyusha rockets into northern Israel during the 2006 war, but Scuds are more accurate.
Hariri told Lebanese expatriates during a visit to Rome: “Threats that Lebanon now has huge missiles are similar to what they used to say about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”
He added: “These are weapons that they did not find and they are still searching for. They are trying to repeat the same scenario with Lebanon.”
The state department called in Syria’s deputy chief of mission in Washington, Zouheir Jabbour, to discuss the allegations, which were first made by the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, during a visit to France last week.
Gordon Duguid, a state department spokesman, said: “The United States condemns in the strongest terms the transfer of any arms, and especially ballistic missile systems such as the Scud, from Syria to Hezbollah.”
The statement added: “The transfer of these arms can only have a destabilising effect on the region, and would pose an immediate threat to both the security of Israel and the sovereignty of Lebanon.”
But the statement stopped short of confirmation by the US that it believed such a transfer had taken place.
The Syrian embassy in Washington also denied supplying Hezbollah with Scud missiles and accused Israel of paving the way for another attack in the region.
Ahmed Salkini, a spokesman for the Syrian embassy in Washington, said: “Syria denies this allegation of supplying Hezbollah with any weapons. In our opinion, the Israeli lies are aimed at raising the level of tension in the region and give a pretext for a possible Israeli future offensive against a party in the region.
“We don’t know whose turn it is going to be next.”
He added: “We think it is unfortunate that the US government is adopting these false allegations.” The row comes at a time when President Barack Obama’s administration is trying to improve ties between the US and Syria and is about to send a US ambassador back to Damascus for the first time in five years.
His predecessor was withdrawn in protest over the assassination of the then Lebanese prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, for which senior Syrian intelligence agents were blamed.
Syria has an ambiguous relationship with the US and Europe, at times seeking rapprochement and at others stressing its ties with Iran, which is Hezbollah’s main backer.
The Shia militia, one of the most formidable fighting forces in the Middle East, beat off an Israeli offensive in 2006, mainly thanks to its use of a network of underground bunkers.
During the war, it fired repeated salvoes of Katyusha missiles into northern Israel.
Since the war, Hezbollah has replenished its arsenal, mainly with the help of Iran, according to a Pentagon report released on Monday.
The report warned: “Iran, through its longstanding relationship with Lebanese [Hezbollah], maintains a capability to strike Israel directly and threatens Israeli and US interests worldwide.”
It also predicted that Tehran might be able to build a missile capable of striking the US by 2015, up to five years earlier than previous US intelligence estimates.
A Hezbollah spokesman, Hussein Hajj Hassan, said last week that the organisation was always arming and preparing itself, but “what we have is not their [Israel’s] business”.
Israeli press reports, citing Israeli security officials, have claimed that Syria gave Hezbollah Scud missiles in recent weeks, although without launchers.
Some experts have been sceptical. Uzi Rabin, an Israeli defence ministry consultant who has worked on anti-missile programmes, said Hezbollah had no need for Scuds and possessed other solid-fuel rockets of similar range that were easier to handle and to hide.
Syria makes no secret of its support for Hezbollah as a “resistance movement” confronting Israel, but it is coy about the military aspects of their relationship – and has flatly denied accusations that it has transferred Scud missiles across the border into Lebanon.
From President Bashar al-Assad downwards, officials in Damascus insist that Lebanon’s Shia movement has the right to confront Israel, just as Syria exercises its right to maintain a close relationship with Iran, Hezbollah’s other sponsor and regional ally.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk said on Wednesday that if Israel is a superpower that manages alone, then it can make decisions alone.
In an interview with Army Radio, Indyk said that if Israel sees itself as a superpower that does not need any aid from the United States, then it can make its own decisions. However “if you need the United States, then you need to take into account America’s interests,” said Indyk.
Indyk, who is currently the vice president and director of Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, and also serves as an adviser to Mideast envoy George Mitchell, emphasized these interests in a New York Times op-ed published on Monday.
“This is no longer just about helping a special ally resolve a debilitating problem. With 200,000 American troops committed to two wars in the greater Middle East and the U.S. president leading a major international effort to block Iran’s nuclear program, resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become a U.S. strategic imperative,” wrote Indyk.
“Given Israel’s dependence on the United States to counter the threat from Iran and to prevent its own international isolation, an Israeli prime minister would surely want to bridge the growing divide. Yet the shift in American perceptions seems to have gone unnoticed in Jerusalem,” he continued.
Speaking to Army Radio, Indyk also said that Israel’s main problem isn’t Interior Minister Eli Yishai or Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, but rather the issue lies within the Likud party.
“The shift in America’s Middle East interests means that Netanyahu must make a choice: Take on the president of the United States, or take on his right wing. If he continues to defer to those ministers in his cabinet who oppose peacemaking, the consequences for US-Israel relations could be dire,” wrote Indyk in the New York Times article.
By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff
The warning sounded by King Abdullah of Jordan last week that a regional war could break out as soon as this summer, was overshadowed here by the torch and barbecue smoke of Independence Day. But while Israel celebrates, it must pay closer attention to the concerns raised by its friends.
The Jordanian monarch joins a long list of senior figures, notably in the Palestinian Authority and elsewhere in the Arab world, warning against a renewed regional conflagration. A flare-up is most likely to erupt in the West Bank, but also between Israel and its Hezbollah adversaries on the northern border.
As things look now, if a third intifada does break out, it may be not the result of a spontaneous public outburst, but as the result of external pressure.
Abdullah presumably is not interested in such an eventuality, but there are those who are. Just a month ago, high-level Fatah and Hamas figures failed in their efforts to stoke rage in Jerusalem over the rededication of Hurva synagogue in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter. Likewise, Ismail Haniyeh – Hamas’ prime minister in Gaza – called on Palestinians in the West Bank to step up their campaign against Israel.
Abdullah told the Chicago Tribune that without progress in Israeli-Palestinian talks, “for us as moderate countries, we’re going to be challenged by everybody else” at the July meeting of countries signatory to the Arab Peace Initiative.
But what will happen when the peace proposal expires in July? Arab leaders will goad West Bank Palestinians to wage protests, vowing to support their just struggle until the last drop of blood – Palestinian blood, of course.
The king is, of course, not alone. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad – he, too, a moderate – has announced that preparations for unilaterally establishing a Palestinian state would be complete by August 2011. And then what? A declaration of independence? Confrontation with Israel? Palestinians can only hope their leaders have a plan.
King Abdullah said that “There are sources in Lebanon that feel that war is inevitable. The threat of war exists. If we do not bring the Palestinians and Israelis to the negotiations table and if we cross the July deadline – there is a high chance of confrontation. I wouldn’t want to meet with you in six or seven months and say ‘I told you so.'”
On Monday a U.S. State Department spokesman confirmed that Syria had indeed recently supplied Scud missiles to Hezbollah, and the Syrian ambassador to Washington was subsequently summoned for a warning.
At the same time, a Pentagon report detailed the comprehensive military aid provided to Hezbollah by Iran, including materiel it used to significantly bolster its fighting capacity before its summer 2006 war with Israel.
Amid the gossip and speculation, there seems to be an enormous gap between activity on the military and political fronts. While Israel’s borders are relatively quiet – more so than at any other time in the past decade – regional circumstances are growing more complex.
The combination of the growing military power of Iran, Syria and their various terrorist satellite groups – as well as the diplomatic paralysis that has gripped the Netanyahu government and the distressing crisis with Washington – all bode ill for Israel.
The speeches delivered this week did little to lift Israelis’ spirits. President Shimon Peres touted Israel’s capabilities against Iran, and Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin’s spoke of his unwillingness to apologize for Israel’s “liberation” of Hebron and commitment to build in virtually every quarter of Jerusalem. At the start of the country’s 63rd year, Israel has ample reason to worry.
As part of the Oslo Accords, the Israelis officially accepted the concept that the West Bank and Gaza Strip represent one unit. Article IV of the agreement signed in the White House Lawn in 1993 declared “The two sides view the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a single territorial unit, whose integrity will be preserved.” The Quartet (made up of US, UN, EU and Russia) has continuously supported the concept of the unity of these geographically separated entities. But the latest military order number 1650 clearly reflects an Israeli decision to rescind that portion of the Oslo Accords. To consider Gaza Palestinians infiltrators if caught in the West Bank past their permit deadline reflects the Netanyah government’s rejection of the unity of Palestinian territories. The Israeli order also reflects an Israeli attempt to reassert itself as the sole and overriding legislative power in the Palestinian territories.
When the Israeli army occupied Palestinian lands in 1967, the Israeli military commander issued an order giving himself the sole right to legislate for the people under his army’s control. Military order #1 combined executive, legislative and judicial powers regarding Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in the hands of the Israeli military commander. Since then, thousands of laws have been issued by successive military commanders who single-handedly can amend existing laws or issue totally new laws without discussion, debate or even a public announcement. The orders are issued in Hebrew and the Palestinian public is by and large unaware of their existence. In the Oslo Accords, Israel committed to canceling the civil administration and to accepting the Palestinian Authorities rights to legislate.
This long introduction is meant to highlight the Kafkaesque legal structure that Palestinians under occupation are subject to. They have an elected Palestinian parliament whose laws are argued by civilians coming from the communities where the laws are to be implemented. Local press and electronic media cover the debates, often publish draft laws and announce the agreement on these laws once voted on. Once these laws are signed by a president, they are published in the Official Gazette and have the power of laws that local Palestinian judges can enforce using local lightly armed police, on condition that they only serve the court decisions within areas A (the highly populated cities) of the Palestinian territories.
Such was the case on October 13, 2009, when Major General Gadi Shamni, commander of the Israeli army in the West Bank, redefined who is an infiltrator (anyone without a special Israeli-issued valid permit) and what the punishment of infiltration is: up to seven years in jail, NIS 7,500 ($2,000) and deportation.
The Israeli military order number 1650 gave Palestinians six months to get their act in order. However, few Palestinians were even aware of this military order until an Israeli reporter quoted Israeli human rights organisations saying that the six months are to expire on April 13, putting tens of thousands of Palestinians in danger of imprisonment, fine and deportation.
While public deportation which are contrary to the Geneva Conventions had stopped in 1992, a much more sinister plan appears to have been implemented. The new undeclared policy is called by some “the transfer policy,” whereby Palestinians are “encouraged” to leave and not return by use of various administrative orders, such as this latest order.
Ironically, this infiltration order does not apply to Jewish settlers who are indeed infiltrating into Palestinian territories, nor does it apply to Jewish settlers residing in the so called “outposts” that have not been even authorised officially by the occupying state of Israel. This is yet one more example of the fact that Israel is applying an apartheid regime in the occupied territories with Jewish settlers living under a different set of legal codes unlike what is applied to Palestinians.
In the past few months, we have seen clear evidence that Israel is undermining peace by building Jewish settlements in occupied territories, in defiance of the road map and commitments made to the US administration.
Interestingly, the man who had the power to make laws in the occupied territories and who signed military order 1650, Major General Shamni, has been the military attaché at the Israeli embassy since November 2009.
By Zvi Bar’el
Syrian President Bashar Assad was due Tuesday night to land in Egypt “within hours,” his first visit in four years, several Arab media outlets reported. The urgency of the surprise trip stems from a fear of war between Israel and Syria.
A Syrian commentator noted that Assad, who last week denied that Syria had delivered Scud missiles to Hezbollah, would seek to make clear that this information was false. He believes that the accusations are “an Israeli excuse for warmongering,” according to the media reports.
In their meeting, Assad and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would also discuss the Palestinian reconciliation talks between Fatah and Hamas.
Assad’s visit to Egypt would be his first since the Second Lebanon War, when he called Arab leaders who did not back Hezbollah “half men.” Saudi Arabia and Egypt responded by refusing to meet with Assad and by launching a media attack on Hezbollah. This included Egyptian accusations that the Lebanese group was targeting sites in Egypt.
Saudi Arabia had already cooled relations with Syria before the war, following suspicions that it might have been involved in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
But the Saudis thawed relations last year, largely due to Lebanon’s parliamentary elections and Syria’s desire to support Hariri’s son Saad, who became prime minister. In October, the Saudi king arrived for a historic visit to Damascus, but Syrian efforts to persuade Mubarak to do the same failed; the Egyptian president refused to talk to Assad.
Both Saudi Arabia and Egypt seek to minimize Iranian influence among Arab countries in the Middle East and see embracing Syria as a step that might make it easier for Assad to pick a side.
However, Egypt has been waiting for a gesture of apology and reconciliation from the Syrian president. Assad’s request to visit his Egyptian counterpart after Mubarak had undergone an operation could represent a good start for a better relationship between the two men.
In the meantime, Egypt is pushing for a special conference to discuss the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, with all Middle Eastern countries attending, including Israel. The conference would aim to persuade Israel to sign the treaty.
Egyptian sources say the permanent members of the Security Council support a Middle East nuclear conference, but it is still unclear whether the conference would be empowered to negotiate with Israel.
Matthew Cassel, 20 April 2010
Dear Gil Scott-Heron,
Gil Scott-Heron I’ve always defended your track “Whitey on the Moon” to fellow white Americans who dismissed the song as racist. I argued that considering the centuries of enslavement of your African ancestors, and the continued oppression of and racism against Black Americans, it’s not unfair for a Black person to criticize the “white” system in the United States.
“Whitey on the Moon” is centered around your sister Nell, a symbolic character who represents Black communities long neglected by the US government. The same government which, as you highlight, spends billions sending rocket ships to a place that has no relevance to the lives of most Americans — the moon. Your song exposes the absurdity in devoting our resources and attention to such an endeavor while back on Earth, people are struggling.
Like most of your songs, it has a timeless message that decades later we can still draw lessons from. It’s in the spirit of your music that I understand the importance of cultural resistance against injustice. And it’s in that spirit that I came to understand the injustice in Palestine.
Around the world there are millions of Palestinian Nells. Nell is a refugee born in exile living in a refugee camp, a young girl whose father was killed while working on his farm, a student living under siege and under attack in the Gaza Strip where even schoolbooks are denied by the state that you will soon visit.
Nell could easily be compared to the Handala character created by assassinated Palestinian artist Naji al-Ali. Handala, a young boy with his back turned to the world, represents al-Ali’s childhood as a refugee forced to flee his home in Palestine for a refugee camp in Lebanon and has become an iconic symbol for the Palestinian struggle.
By performing in Tel Aviv next month, you will entertain an unjust system that denies the rights of the six million refugees who Handala represents. For more than 62 years these refugees and their descendants have been denied their most fundamental right of return. Performing in Tel Aviv, in the context of your art, would be the equivalent of you abandoning Nell on Earth and taking off for the moon.
Your scheduled concert in Tel Aviv is also in direct violation of the call by Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. A similar boycott, which you full-heartedly supported, was called for in South Africa and helped bring an end to apartheid in that country. Now, decades later, a similar system of apartheid exists in Palestine. Many of those South African activists with whom you showed solidarity are now leaders of the global boycott movement against Israeli apartheid.
When I lived in occupied Palestine a few years ago, I used to share your music with friends during times of Israeli curfew and invasions. We listened over and over to the “Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” as I did my best to explain each and every cultural reference. I’ll never forget one friend smiling and telling me after hearing your song, “The intifada will not be televised!”
Like Blacks in the US decades ago when you wrote “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” Palestinians also resist their oppression. In recent years, the intifada (meaning “uprising” in Arabic) has been brutally repressed by Israel. Thousands who have risen up have been killed and injured, and thousands of others have been imprisoned. Some of the friends with whom I once enjoyed your music are now locked away in Israeli prisons for organizing students at Palestinian universities or protesting against the massive apartheid wall that steals land and separates communities.
What message would you have sent to Blacks in South Africa struggling for justice had you played at Sun City? Playing in Tel Aviv will send that same message to Palestinians now struggling for their rights.
In the anti-apartheid anthem “Johannesburg” you sing: “I know that their strugglin’ over there ain’t gonna free me/but we’ve all got to be strugglin’ if we’re gonna be free.” It’s songs like “Johannesburg” that have made your name synonymous with solidarity with peoples’ struggles in the US and beyond. Stay with the people and on the side of justice, show solidarity with those struggling and cancel your concert in Tel Aviv.
Matthew Cassel is based in Beirut, Lebanon and is Assistant Editor of The Electronic Intifada. His website is http://justimage.org.
EDITOR: The Lie Machine Continues to Churn Out its Tired Propaganda
Ron Prosor grinds his organ in the Guardian of all places, on the occasion of the Nakba Day celebration in Israel, when nationalism is peaking to even higher heights. By asking for Arab states, all of which have recognised Israel many years ago, to now recognise it again as “jewish State’, he is actually asking them to disenfranchise the Palestinians, and also more than 2 million Israeli citizens – more than 25% of Israeli citizen are NOT Jewish, and hence can never be equal citizen in this ‘Jewish democracy’.
The refusal of the Muslim world to recognise Israel’s Jewish character is still the greatest obstacle to peace
Israel today celebrates its 62nd anniversary as the reborn sovereign state of the Jewish people. History demonstrated that Jews could not survive, let alone flourish, at the whims of majority cultures. This is not merely an academic argument but a lesson lived, learned and branded into Israel’s DNA.
While I was born in the independent Jewish state, my father and grandfather were forced to flee Nazi Germany to strive for freedom in their homeland. Their experience taught me that the rights and freedoms provided to the Jewish people through the state of Israel can never be taken for granted.
Israel’s raison d’etre is to be the “state for the Jews”. Yet the historical rationale of our quest for self-determination is often misunderstood as a religious aspiration. In 1896 the Austrian Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). Herzl, an assimilated secular Jew far more at home in Vienna’s coffee shops and opera houses than its synagogues, concluded that Jews could only achieve freedom, dignity and human rights with a state of their own.
In Israel, Judaism is woven into the fabric of even the most secular life. Our day of rest, Shabbat, is Saturday. Public holidays are determined by the Jewish calendar. Our great writers such as David Grossman and Amos Oz write in Hebrew, the language of the Torah. Our Nobel prize-winning scientists hypothesise in the revived tongue of ancient Israel.
Jewish individuals had enjoyed success before 1948. But through the state of Israel, for the first time in 2,000 years Jewishness was not an obstacle to be overcome, or a glass ceiling to be smashed, but a basic fact of life.
Jewish identity is the essence of our national character. It is also a central issue to be resolved with the Arab and Muslim worlds that surround us. The greatest obstacle to peace remains our neighbours’ refusal to recognise the right of the Jewish people to a state in our historic homeland.
Jews have been indigenous to Israel for 3,000 years. Before 1948 the only independent sovereign state there had been the ancient Jewish kingdoms. Centuries of foreign imperial occupation followed, by Romans, the Muslim conquest, Crusaders, the Ottoman empire and the British mandate. It is fitting that as the colonial era drew to a close, Israel’s original inhabitants restored their independence.
The 1947 UN partition plan proposed a Jewish state and an Arab state within “Mandate Palestine”. The Jews welcomed this original two-state solution, declaring statehood in 1948. Rejecting compromise, Israel’s Arab neighbours invaded. Now, 63 years since the partition plan, it seems anachronistic to question the state’s Jewish identity.
The slogans of progress are well known – land for peace; two-state solution – but the identity of those two states must be clearly defined. Israel’s existence as the Jewish state fulfils both a historic right and a historic need.
Israel shouldered responsibility for Jewish refugees from not only the devastation of Europe but across the Arab world, where Jewish lives were turned upside down through mob violence, massacres and Arab state policy; 800,000 Jews from Iraq, Morocco, Yemen and elsewhere were forced out, finding refuge in Israel. No Arab government has acknowledged an iota of responsibility for Jewish losses and suffering.
Jewish refugees included communities that had lived in the Old City of Jerusalem for generations but, in 1948, were ruthlessly expelled. Only after Jerusalem’s reunification in 1967 could Jews once again live and pray in the city they built as their eternal capital centuries before London was a Roman encampment on the banks of the Thames.
Israel successfully accommodated those Jewish refugees. Any future Palestinian state, in conjunction with neighbouring Arab countries, will need to take responsibility for Palestinian refugees within their own borders, and not within ours. We seek peace, but not at the expense of our existence.
In Israel, the full civil rights of non-Jewish minorities are entrenched by law. The declaration of independence stipulated that all Israel’s citizens can vote, stand for office and practise their faith in total freedom. For the Muslim world, however, recognising Israel’s Jewish character remains taboo.
That needs to change. Western leaders are constantly urged to press Israel to make concessions. Suggestions of how the Arab world could advance the cause of peace are thinner on the ground. As a start, Arab leaderships must be persuaded to recognise not only the existence of Israel but the realities of who we are. Israel is not a temporary inconvenience to be demonised, destroyed or wished away, but the independent, legitimate and permanent nation state of the Jewish people.
Israel Defense Forces officers have lashed out at rioters who clashed with soldiers at the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar on Tuesday.
“These people are scum,” one senior officer told Haaretz after three soldiers were wounded by stones thrown near the hilltop settlement, known for its hard-line yeshiva, or Jewish seminary.
It was seminary students who had instigated the violence, the officer said.
“They don’t even represent the settlers of Yitzhar. Most of the problems in the area stem from yeshiva students in the settlement. People think they come there to study Torah – but the only reason they come there is to incite riots and provoke the Palestinians.”
After the incident, the IDF vowed to take serious steps to curb settle violence at Yitzhar, with assistance from local police and the Shin Bet security service’s Jewish unit, set up to thwart violence by extremist settlers.
“[Yitzhar] is a focal point for violence and harassment and the time has come to put a stop to this,” the officer said. “The problem requires fundamental action by all the law enforcement agencies.”
According to Yitzhar residents, IDF troops began harassing groups of visitors who wanted to tour the area early Tuesday morning, and prevented the visitors from entering the springs near the settlement.
Yitzhar residents said that at a certain point, the soldiers tried to hold back one of the residents, which created upheaval among the settlers.
The residents said that one of the soldiers who were stationed in the area fired a warning shot into the air. The soldier refused to give his name to the residents, and they demanded that he remain in the area until he agreed to tell them his name.
According to the IDF, the soldiers asked the residents to evacuate the area because it was a closed military zone. The residents then began attacking the soldiers with stones, and as a result three soldiers were lightly hurt.
The IDF issued a statement saying that “violence against soldiers is intolerable and an action which crosses the line, especially on Israel’s Independence Day. This intolerable behavior will be addressed in accordance with the law at the necessary level of firmness.”
A soldier who was in the area told Haaretz that the army was “conducting a routine patrol, and we saw people who were in a place where they weren’t supposed to be, according to army orders.” The soldier added that the residents began attacking the IDF soldiers, sparking an altercation.
Yitzhar has been at the forefront of the settler movement’s ‘price tag’ policy, which calls for violent retaliation for government restrictions on Jewish building in the West Bank.
Residents have launched numerous attacks on Palestinians, including an arson attack on a mosque in December 2009.
Tomorrow’s 62nd birthday celebrations marred by bribery scandal and peace impasse
Blue and white Star of David flags are flying from cars and buildings all over the country as Israelis prepare to celebrate tomorrow’s Independence Day holiday ‑ their 62nd ‑ first with sombre memorial ceremonies, then barbecues, fireworks, squeaky plastic hammers and searching reflections about past and present.
It is about remembering the sacrifices of 1948 and later wars, marking national achievements, nostalgia – and having fun. But this year’s is not the happiest of anniversaries: the hottest talking point of recent days is that former prime minister Ehud Olmert is suspected of involvement in a huge corruption scandal when he was mayor of Jerusalem.
Controversy is raging too over the arrest of a young woman accused of a damaging security leak ‑ about the army’s killing of wanted Palestinian militants ‑ to the liberal Haaretz newspaper, a row that underlines profound differences between right and left over media freedoms and patriotism.
Prospects for what is still called the “peace process” with the Palestinians have never been so poor, while Barack Obama’s determination to force a resolution of the conflict is unsettling to a country long used to near-unqualified support from Washington. “Obama doesn’t understand Israelis,” is a common complaint. “He’s tough on the good guys but not the bad guys,” is another.
Binyamin Netanyahu’s grudging and temporary West Bank settlement moratorium and US and Arab fury over plans to build housing units in East Jerusalem are stark reminders that the core issues remain as intractable as ever. Even if Obama’s envoy, George Mitchell, does manage to start “proximity” talks, no one knows how direct negotiations can resume.
Many Israelis worry more about the nuclear ambitions of Iran’s Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. These are widely seen, and officially presented, as posing the greatest danger to the Middle East’s only (though still unavowed) nuclear power. “We face two cruel possibilities,” the rightwing military expert Ya’akov Amidror commented in an eve-of-holiday newspaper article. “Living with a nuclear Iran or setting the Middle East ablaze by attacking it.”
Officials and ordinary citizens complain of the “de-legitimisation” of the Jewish state. This comprises campaigns in Europe and the US for anti-apartheid-style boycotts, disinvestment and for bringing war crimes charges against Israeli politicians and generals. It all reinforces a sense of outraged victimhood that takes little account of the international impact of last year’s war in Gaza ‑ seen as self-defence against Hamas rockets by a majority of Israelis ‑ in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed.
So it’s no surprise that the mood this independence day feels a tad subdued. “Israelis are exhausted after 62 years,” argues writer Yigal Sarna, sipping latte in a Tel Aviv cafe. “People are fed up with the news. As far as most Israelis are concerned the conflict was over once the West Bank wall was built. It’s a state of total denial. But at the end of the day this conflict is destroying us.”
Optimists in what remains of the Israeli peace camp see hope in the achievements of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Its prime minister, Salam Fayyad, is building a stronger economy and institutions that should be the nucleus of a future state, regardless of the political impasse. Western governments, in line with Quartet envoy Tony Blair, call this “the only game in town”. Critics sneer that propping up the PA is making it easier for Israel to maintain its 42-year occupation with Palestinian help.
Surveying the events of the past year, the veteran Haaretz newspaper columnist Yoel Marcus urged Netanyahu to bow to Obama’s pressure for substantive negotiations with the Palestinians ‑ or accept the likelihood of an internationally imposed peace settlement before Israel’s 63rd independence day.
Historian Tom Segev has spent years arguing for a two-state solution but confesses that he has all but lost hope of progress, even if the president does eventually table his own peace plan. “In principle the US can force us to do anything,” he says. “But it won’t happen. There’s no sense here that we have to make fateful decisions.”
On the Israeli right the mood is of defiance in the face of international pressure and the absence of any prospect for successful negotiations. Benny Begin, a hawkish Likud minister who Netanyahu cannot ignore, protests that the west is appeasing Iran, Syria and their allies, and that the mainstream Fatah movement is out to remove the “Zionist presence”, despite the PLO’s formal commitment to a two state-solution.
“The notion of an independent sovereign Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] that is viable and peace-seeking is an oxymoron,” Begin warns. “I don’t see the minimum military needs of Israel being met by a Palestinian state.”
Amid the celebrations, the bitter arguments about politics, peace and territory go on.
By Yossi Melman
A coalition of left-wing groups are planning on trying to reach the port of Gaza next month with eight ships containing goods and 600 passengers, including journalists, an umbrella association of the groups said.
The flagship, which is to depart from the port of Dundalk, Ireland, is an old Lithuanian ship that has recently been refitted by volunteers from Dundalk and is to be named the Rachel Corrie.
Corrie, a 23-year-old human rights activist, was killed in 2003 by an Israel Defense Forces bulldozer while attempting to block the demolition of a house in Rafah.
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The ship was purchased at auction for 70,000 euros by an organization called the Free Gaza Movement.
The organizers say the ship will be loaded with cement, paper, writing implements and medical equipment, which the IDF has prevented from reaching the Strip since the siege was imposed after the Hamas takeover in 2007.
Donated equipment is now coming in from Turkey, Norway, Britain and Ireland.
A coalition spokesman said that while Israel would probably try to stop the ship, out of eight ships that have tried to enter the Gaza port, five have been allowed in, which he said was encouraging.
By Guy Rolnik
Our situation has never been better. The prime minister promises that Israel will soon be one of the most advanced nations in the world: “Israel will establish itself as a regional economic superpower and as a global technological superpower, guided by its values and living in security and at peace with its neighbors.” So stated Benjamin Netanyahu at a press conference called shortly before Independence Day to commemorate his first year in office.
Europe is mired in recession, while in Israel economic growth has resumed. The financial crisis largely passed over our heads, causing little damage. No Israeli banks collapsed, none needed bailouts. We weren’t part of the housing and credit disasters. Most important, our unemployment is low, compared to the West.
Add to that the appreciation of the shekel, which has inflated the per capita gross domestic product, in dollar terms, and the change in our national debt, which suddenly seems reasonable by current global standards rather than horrific. Doesn’t it all look wonderful!
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Or not. If you haven’t succumbed to the thrall of the bubble in Tel Aviv stocks, if you measure the world against something besides the sky-high level of the TA-100 shares index or the self-satisfaction of Israel’s wealthiest people, then you might sense intuitively that bad things are happening in our little country.
For a decade now, Prof. Dan Ben-David of Tel Aviv University has been urging Israel’s leaders to look at the real road taken by the country’s economy. After making headlines several times during the 2001-2002 technology crisis, he disappeared from the news pages.
Now he’s back, this time as executive director of Jerusalem’s Taub Center for Social Policy Research in Israel, bearing a fat report with the pretentious name “Annual State of the Nation Report 2009: Society and Economy in Israel” as well as, wouldn’t you know it, more bad news. in fact it’s the worst yet: The Israeli economy is headed for disaster.
All societies can be measured by three main parameters, write the authors of the report, which Dan Ben-David edited: the general standard of living, the poverty rate and the extent of inequality.
When one of the parameters goes bad, the society is in danger of crisis. When all three parameters are out of whack and the problems are ignored – and in fact are growing worse all the time and have been for decades – the society is “following unsustainable trajectories,” as he puts it.
Israel’s standard of living is not catching up to that of the developed nations of the West, just the opposite, the report states. (The report was written in Hebrew; all translations given here are by TheMarker.) “Despite its high-tech, medicine and higher education, which are at the forefront of human knowledge, since the 1970s the standard of living in Israel has been retreating relative to the leading Western nations, which will only serve to exacerbate emigration.”
The rates of inequality and poverty in Israel are among the highest in the West, the professor goes on to say. “As long as the country doesn’t take systemic action to reduce inequality and poverty at source, meaning gross income, it will have to keep expanding its social safety net in order to keep more and more families from falling below the poverty line. The sums involved are growing continually, and the state cannot finance them forever.”
The main reason for the poor performance in all three parameters, the report concludes, is that a growing proportion of Israeli society cannot cope in an open, competitive, advanced economy. Worse, this non-coping segment is growing faster than the segment that can cope and that has to finance the safety net.
TheMarker: Prof. Dan Ben-David, the Western nations to which we compare ourselves have been pulling back fast in the past two years, while Israel’s figures have been impressive. Why do you insist on delivering bad news, studded with dramatic superlatives? What’s wrong with you? Did you discover something new, or is this a ploy for media attention?
“What happened is that several things came together for me,” says Ben-David. “In the last year I realized the gravity of our situation. In economics there is the absolute level, and there is the pace of change. I’ve long been aware of Israel’s bad situation regarding important parameters such as the employment rate and the quality of education. What I learned in the last year is the pace of change. I discovered that we are moving down the problematic trajectories much more quickly than I’d realized.
“A superficial glance at the data on economic growth, debt and unemployment indicates that we have cause for pride. In some areas we’re in a better state than the West, and in others our situation is worse, but near the average. But focusing on unemployment is misleading. It shows how many people are seeking work and not finding it. The main problem is those who are neither working nor seeking work, and here the figures are frightening.”
Isn’t it the usual story about the ultra-Orthodox and the Arabs?
“No, as it turns out. Nonemployment among Haredim and Arabs is indeed very high, but it turns out that among non-Haredi Jews as well it is around 25% above the average for developed nations.
“The figures on nonemployment add to astonishing data I discovered about the education system. Here, the surprise is in the direction and the intensity of the changes.
“I found that in the last decade, the number of students in the mainstream state education system dropped by 3%, while enrollment increased by 8% in the national-religious system, by 33% in the Arab education system and by 51% in Haredi schools. These are astounding figures – and that’s just in a single decade.
“Now let’s see what happens if we extrapolate this pace of change 30 years ahead, to when our children are the age that we are today. If we continue down our present path, in 2040 we will find that 78% of Israel’s children will be studying in the Haredi or Arab education systems.
“Now let’s get back to the issue of nonemployment. Here too the trends are terrifying. Ostensibly, there’s nothing new in the non-participation by Haredim in the workforce. But when I checked the data I found that 30 years ago, when we were a normal country, the rate of nonemployment was about the same as in the West. A far greater proportion of the ultra-Orthodox worked then.
“People say that Haredim don’t work, that it’s a religious or a cultural thing. But that isn’t true. Thirty years ago they did work. Then, the rate of nonemployment among the Haredim was 21%. Now it’s 65%. It grew threefold.”
OK. The pattern there is clear. But Israel’s economic data, GDP per capita and economic growth, look better today.
“That isn’t so. Productivity is most important determinant of growth in GDP per capita. What we find is that in the 1970s, productivity in Israel was growing rapidly. Since then it’s been growing very slowly relative to the world. We have a tremendous yoke around our necks, and it’s growing all the time. (See the chart.)
To what degree does this yoke depend on the ultra-Orthodox population?
“Less than you might think. When you analyze the deterioration of education in Israel, you find that Israel’s children place lowest in most test criteria. Remember that these figures don’t include the Haredim because they don’t participate in these tests. The education system is in decline. In the Arab sector, the level of education is Third-World, and in the Jewish sector it’s among the lowest in the West.”
But our path in the past two years, in terms of GDP, growth and unemployment, looks better than that of other nations.
“We indeed weathered the financial crisis relatively well,” Ben-David agrees. “But that’s also because our real crisis was at the start of the last decade. When the global economic crisis hit, we had the momentum from exiting our previous crisis. The past year, when we were in relatively good shape, was just a continuation of the correction from the bad years we had in 2001 and 2002. But from the long-term perspective we do not see any change in the trend. We’ve been on the same slow-growth, low-productivity track for the last 35 years.”
But in recent years the poverty rate has dropped, after rising very rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s.
“There have been improvements, and certainly they are encouraging. But there is no reason to think they will continue or that the situation has changed. It seems to be nothing more than a correction after protracted, rapid deterioration. Our levels of poverty and inequality remain very high. Some of the improvement is due to the very good five years we had, and I see no reason for them to continue because none of the economy’s fundamental ills has been cured.
“Aside from maintaining budgetary discipline, which is important, we did nothing significant to improve the infrastructure of the economy, human or physical. Ostensibly we have more higher education in Israel, but how good is it?”
Is there no chance that the development of recent years attest to a change in the trend?
“No. We did nothing to initiate change. We reduced welfare payments in order to motivate people to work, but that’s just half the story. What we need is a comprehensive, system-wide program, because if you don’t give people the tools to work in modern society, what exactly are they supposed to do after you take away their welfare payments? Tell the Haredim to work, but where can they do so? Who would hire them? What tools do they have? And it isn’t just the Haredim. The performance overall of Israeli schoolchildren is declining.
“Our education system is in a state of anarchy, which is not unique only to it. There is no enforcement of the law in Israel, neither with regard to minimum wage nor education.
“It is said that the [official] nonemployment rate is inflated, that many people work ‘off the books.’ That’s even worse, in my opinion, because these are people who aren’t sharing the national burden but are part of the taxpayer’s burden.”
There’s been a lot of talk about the need to reform the Israeli education system.
“That’s just part of the story. We need a comprehensive plan. Incentives are just a small part of the story, reform is just a small part. We need law enforcement. We need budgetary transparency. We need constant debate of all these issues. Who talks about these issues, apart from [Haaretz-TheMarker]? Who even knows how to read the national budget? There is a systemic failure. People get incentives to work, but where exactly are they supposed to work? Where will their children work?
“I am a great believer in market forces. That’s the only way to solve things. But I also believe that there are great market failures here, that only the government can solve. The state must step in and fix things.”
Can you point to another state, one that has managed to jack up its productivity, that you think we should emulate?
“No. I don’t think there’s a model for Israel. We are an anomaly in the Western world. On one hand our nonemployment, poverty and inequality rates are among the highest in the world. On the other hand we have some of the most important institutions of human knowledge. This isn’t South America or Central Asia. We don’t have to import solutions from other places. We aren’t a homogenous country. We have to find unique solutions for different populations. We are also a small nation, and therefore we can make big changes. What are we, after all – a country the size of Greater Philadelphia. This isn’t America, with a population of 300 million.”
What are the barriers to change?
“The political system, of course. There is no political ability here, no governance. The greatest danger is that our demographic changes will only make it more difficult to change things in the future. Today it’s difficult but not impossible. In 10 or 20 years it will be impossible.”
Is there any good news in your report? “Our health care system is still among the best in the world. Our life expectancy is rising, infant mortality is dropping. But that, too, isn’t guaranteed forever. There is a dangerous process of Americanization, of privatizing health care, which gradually makes health care less accessible to all. It’s a problem throughout the world and is beginning to develop here, too. Just as in the academic world, the question is how to keep the best doctors here, when they could earn more overseas.”
Are you in despair?
“On the contrary. We have terrific potential. Israel is a young country, while the nations of the West are growing old fast. They have a problem of supporting all the old people. Who will be the next generation? Who will work? They need foreign workers.
“We are a young country with excellent, creative people who can think outside the box. Our abilities are astonishing. The sky is the limit, if we come to our senses. But we must come to our senses. There is a demographic point of no return. If we cross it, we reach a point that isn’t sustainable, with all that entails.”
What does it entail?
“We see examples of nations that stumble into crisis, that fall, rise and stumble into crisis again. That won’t be the case with us. We live in a very bad neighborhood, and if we fall we only get an opportunity to rise again once every 2,000 years. Falling is not an option for us. We can’t be like Greece or Argentina or Turkey, which fall due to mismanagement then get up again.”
History shows that Israeli governments kick into action only in financial crisis. Without crisis, there’s no change.
“We are apparently far from a financial crisis. We have a reasonable debt-GDP ratio, compared to the rest of the world. But the paths we are taking in education and in employment are clear. Look at the gap between gross and net income in Israel, which we plug with budget transfers. How long can these gaps be bridged with taxpayer money, if the poor, non-working portion of the population keeps growing? Eventually it will lead to gargantuan budget deficits because the part of the population financing the budget is shrinking. It can’t end well.”
Not many politicians seem to share your view.
“Yes. We’re like the frog dropped into a pot of water that is heated gradually on the stove. If put in a pot of boiling water, he’d jump out to save himself. But when put into a cold pot, he doesn’t recognize the implications of his continuously warming environment until it’s too late. By the time we realize the pot is boiling, it will be too late.”
Palestinian hopes that U.S. President Barack Obama will bring an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory have significantly declined in recent months, a public opinion poll published Wednesday has found.
Only 9.9 percent of Palestinians now believe that Obama’s policies will increase chances of achieving a “just peace,” down from 23.7 percent in October last year and 35.4 percent in June.
The poll also found that over 78 percent of Palestinians interviewed believe the U.S.-Israel dispute over the issue of West Bank settlements is “not serious.”
The U.S. has strongly criticized Israeli settlement policy, which it says has sabotaged efforts to revive stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
While more than 32 percent of poll respondents now believe the peace process is dead – compared to 19 percent who believed so in February 2006 – almost 44 percent think peaceful negotiation is the best way to achieve Palestinian goals of ending the Israeli occupation and establishing a Palestinian state.
The number of those who saw armed struggle as the best way of ending Israel’s occupation of the West Bank stood at close to 30 percent, while 22 percent preferred “peaceful popular resistance.”
The poll, of a random sample of 1,198 Palestinian adults in the West Bank and Gaza Strip between April 10 to April 15, had a 3 percent margin of error.
EDITOR: Loss of Faith in the Messiah of Washington
And who can blame them for losing faith in Obama? The rest of us have already done so some time ago. His gestural politics has led nowhere in the Middle East; promising without delivering, is worse than not promising in the first place, as it devalues the political discourse, assists extremism, and drives groupss to desperate deeds, as thery lose hope in the political machinery.
The siege of Gaza continues to destroy lives as the struggle to end it continues, says Saleh Al-Naami
Some Palestinians held candles, others turned their fingers into candles during a protest calling for the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, in front of the Red Cross headquarters in Gaza City
Dr Moawya Hassanein, head of Emergency Medicine at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, warns that the lives of thousands of patients with kidney failure who require dialysis three times a week are at risk because of power failures. “There is little we can do at hospitals for patients with heart disease, cancer, in the ICU or premature babies,” Hassanein declared. “We have power generators but no one can guarantee that they are enough or will not run out of fuel.”
There is concern in Gaza about deteriorating environmental conditions, since water treatment stations could shut down because currently they rely solely on power generators. Several have already stopped operating, resulting in sewage water flooding some streets and refugee camps.
Walid Sayel, the executive director of the Palestine Electricity Company and chairman of the Gaza Power Generation Station, called on all Arab, international and Palestinian parties to swiftly find a solution for the power outage in Gaza. “The blackout is a critical development which requires everyone to shoulder their responsibility in saving the residents of Gaza, first and foremost, for humanitarian reasons,” Sayel asserted. “The need for electricity is tantamount to the need for water and air. We are facing a serious humanitarian crisis and no one knows how it will end.”
Although some Palestinian officials claim that a partial solution has been reached to resolve the crisis, thanks to $3 million from the EU to buy fuel, it is a temporary answer which will generate electricity to some areas in Gaza for only 12 hours a day. At the same time, there are no guarantees that more funds will be available to provide electricity in Gaza, even if only partially.
The power outage has resulted in a war of words between the governments in Gaza and Ramallah. In the beginning, the government in Ramallah stated that the power cut is a result of the EU not transferring the necessary funds to buy fuel. The EU vehemently denied this, saying that it regularly and routinely sends money for fuel. The Brussels-based European Campaign to End the Siege of Gaza (ECESG) confirmed that the EU had transferred the necessary funds. In a recent statement, ECESG called on the Ramallah government “to stop using unrealistic excuses to evade its responsibility, and direct the needed funds to Gaza, as provided by the EU, to pay for electricity fuel in Gaza.”
The statement continued that “we have received messages from several EU foreign ministers assuring us that funds are transferred to the Fatah authorities in Ramallah, and that they have clearly pledged that they will pay for the heavy fuel needed for the power station.” ECESG condemned “manipulating the humanitarian needs of 1.5 million Palestinians in political bickering, since this could cost hundreds of Palestinians their lives, including the sick, and threatens severe humanitarian disasters.” The statement further denied claims that the EU has halted or reduced funds for fuel at the main Gaza power station, saying that payments for Palestinian service sectors are made regularly to Salam Fayyad’s government.
Meanwhile, the government in Ramallah gave different reasons why the power station has halted operations, including that the electricity company in Gaza is unable to collect fees from residents. Ghassan Al-Khateeb, director of the media office for Fayyad’s government, further accused the electricity company of pocketing the fees it does manage to collect. Al-Khateeb blamed the authorities in Gaza for not supporting or giving the electricity company enough security coverage, which curtails its ability to collect fees from the public.
For his part, Ziyad Al-Zaza, deputy prime minister and minister of economy in Ismail Haniyeh’s cabinet in Gaza, accused the government in Ramallah of “stealing” the funds needed for Gaza’s power station. “Salam Fayyad’s government is embezzling the funds for Gaza’s electricity and sends limited amounts of solar fuel, only a third of what is needed,” stated Al-Zaza.
He asserted that his government is in consultations to import industrial solar, gasoline, regular solar and natural gas energy through the Rafah border crossing. “We do not wish to remain hostage to the occupation and its agents,” Al-Zaza retorted. “The Rafah crossing must be opened to people and commodities. We want to rely on the Arab and Muslim world, not Israeli occupation.” He further argued that the blackout is caused by a “conspiracy” against the Palestinian people in Gaza “in order to bring them to their knees and break down their willpower”.
Meanwhile, the power outage is claiming more lives. Buying a power generator is no guarantee of improving standards of living, but could result in the opposite. For instance, the three Boshr children were playing at their home in Abssan, southeast of Gaza, happy that their power generator was working at a time when the entire area was in pitch darkness. Shortly afterwards, the generator exploded, instantly killing all three. Thus, their family joined a long list of Palestinian families who have lost loved ones to exploding generators.
For many in Gaza, power generators have become time bombs at home. In Gabalaya Refugee Camp, a mother and three of her children died when the generator at their family home blew up. In other instances, gases from the generators have killed residents. Three members of the same family living in Khan Younis died after inhaling exhaust fumes containing carbon dioxide from their generator.
According to statistics by the Civil Defence Authority in Gaza, 82 fires occurred in the past three months as a result of faulty usage of power generators. Several died or suffered from burns and asphyxiation in the fires. Salem Abu Ouda, a technician who specialises in generators, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the biggest problem is that the majority of generators being smuggled into Gaza are of poor quality. Abu Ouda, who repairs tens of generators in his workshop, stated that long operating hours and substandard quality are the reasons behind these disastrous accidents.
On another plane, it was announced that the Ship Intifada will relaunch soon as a sign of intensified efforts to lift the siege on Gaza. Gamal Al-Khodari, the chairman of the Popular Committee for Confronting the Siege, revealed that some 10-20 vessels will participate in this effort, including ones from Malaysia, Turkey and Europe. Ship Intifada is scheduled to begin at the end of April or early May, depending on weather conditions.
The ships will be carrying several parliamentarians, politicians and media people from around the world, as well as much needed supplies. These include construction materials such as steel and cement, supplies to meet medical, humanitarian relief, school and children’s needs, as well as power generators. Al-Khodari hoped that the campaign would result in lifting the siege and establishing a route by sea between Gaza and the rest of the world, which would allow freedom of movement. Several vessels have already arrived in Gaza, while many were prevented by occupation forces from approaching the coast of Gaza as a result of the last war.
The U.S. has ruled out a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program any time soon, hoping instead negotiations and United Nations sanctions will prevent the Middle East nation from developing nuclear weapons, a top U.S. defense department official said Wednesday.
“Military force is an option of last resort,” Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy said during a press briefing in Singapore. “It’s off the table in the near term.”
The U.S. and its allies fear Tehran is using its nuclear program to build arms. Iran denies the charges, and says its program only aims to generate electricity.
“Right now the focus is a combination of engagement and pressure in the form of sanctions,” Flournoy said. “We have not seen Iran engage productively in response.”
Iran has rejected a 2009 U.N.-backed plan that offered nuclear fuel rods to Tehran in exchange for Iran’s stock of lower-level enriched uranium. The swap would curb Tehran’s capacity to make a nuclear bomb.
Iran has proposed variations on the deal, and Foreign Minister Manouchehr
Mottaki said Tuesday that a fuel agreement could be a chance to boost trust with the West.
Earlier this week, he said Iran wants direct talks about the deal with all the U.N. Security Council members, except one with which it would have indirect talks – a reference to the United States, which with Tehran has no relations.
The U.S. is lobbying heavily in the Security Council for sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.
Earlier Wednesday, Iran’s supreme leader denounced U.S. “nuclear threats” against the Islamic Republic, and its elite military force said it would stage war games in a waterway crucial for global oil supplies.
The Revolutionary Guards’ exercises in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz this week take place at a time of rising tension between Iran and the West, which fears Tehran’s nuclear program is aimed at developing bombs. Iran denies the charge.
Iran has also reacted angrily to what is sees as U.S. President Barack Obama’s threat to attack it with nuclear arms.
Obama made clear this month that Iran and North Korea were excluded from new limits on the use of U.S. atomic weapons -something Tehran interpreted as a threat from a long-standing adversary.
“The international community should not let Obama get away with nuclear threats,” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday.
“We will not allow America to renew its hellish dominance over Iran by using such threats,” he told a gathering of Iranian nurses, the semi-official Fars News Agency reported. Iran was a close U.S. ally before its 1979 Islamic revolution.
Brigadier General Hossein Salami, also quoted by Fars, said three days of maneuvers would start on Thursday and would show the Guards’ naval strength.
“Maintaining security in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, as the world’s key economic and energy routes, is the main goal of the war games,” he said. “This war game is not a threat for any friendly countries.”
Naval, air and ground forces from the Guards would take part, Fars said. The Islamic Republic’s armed forces often hold drills in an apparent bid to show their readiness to deter any military action by Israel or the United States, its arch foes.
Nicole Stracke, a researcher at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, said that with the “current threat to Iran increasing” the Guards were showing their capability and strength.
“The Revolutionary Guard is sending a message that we are ready and able to counter the threat,” Stracke said in an e-mail to Reuters. But she added the force regularly held such drills and they were unlikely to increase regional tension.
Washington is pushing for a fourth round of UN sanctions on Tehran over its refusal to halt sensitive nuclear activities as demanded by the U.N. Security Council, including moves against members of the Guards.
Israel, widely believed to have the Middle East’s only atomic arsenal, has described Iran’s nuclear program as a threat to its existence. Although it says it wants a diplomatic solution, Washington has also not ruled out military action.
Iran, a predominantly Shi’ite Muslim state, has said it would respond to any attack by targeting U.S. interests in the region and Israel, as well as closing the Strait of Hormuz. About 40 percent of the world’s traded oil leaves the Gulf region through the strategic narrows.
Salami made no reference to this in his comments, stressing Iran’s “efficient and constructive role” for Gulf security.
“Peace and friendship, security, tranquility and mutual trust are the messages of this war game for neighboring countries in the Persian Gulf region,” the general added.
Sunni-led Arab countries in the Gulf are concerned about spreading Iranian influence in the region and also share Western fears about Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
Cliff Kupchan, a director of Euroasia Group, said in a note on Wednesday that he still believed that Israel was unlikely to strike Iran, but “the risk will grow as prospects for successful sanctions diminish”. China and Russia, veto-wielding Security Council members, are reluctant to back tough sanctions on Iran
The Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah on Wednesday described a biannual United Nations report on the implementation of a militia-disarmament resolution as “biased” and serving the interests of Israel, according to media outlets.
“The report is a Zionist report which aims to cause sedition in Lebanon,” Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general, was quoted by the Hezbollah-run Al Manar television network as saying.
“The report is clearly biased, and casts doubt over the work of the Security Council and the UN,” Qassem added.
On Monday, the United Nations released the 11th report on the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559, which was adopted in 2004 and calls for “the disbanding and disarmament” of all militias in Lebanon, including Hezbollah.
The UN report, which was prepared by Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN secretary general’s special envoy for the implementation of Resolution 1559, said Hezbollah’s arms posed “a key challenge to the safety of Lebanese civilians and to the authority of the government.”
It said the UN has information that “appears to corroborate the allegation of smuggling of weapons across the land borders.”
But Qassem said the “comments on arms smuggling [to Hezbollah] lacked viable sources.”
He also criticized the report’s description of Hezbollah as a militia.
“Hezbollah is not a militia, as the [UN] new-old report describes it, but a Lebanese resistance movement that defends its territory and deters aggression,” the organization said in a statement.
The UN report called on the Lebanese Shiite group, which is backed by Iran and Syria, to “complete the transformation … into a solely Lebanese political party.”
Hezbollah currently has a 13-member parliamentary bloc in the Lebanese House of Representatives and two ministers in the national unity government, which is headed by Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri.
The UN report came days after Israel and the United States said they suspected that Syria was supplying Scud ballistic missiles to Hezbollah, warning that the trade could bring war to Lebanon.
Syria and Lebanon have denied any such arms transfer.
On Tuesday, Hariri compared Israel’s charges of Scud missile transfers to Hezbollah as “similar to those which were made of the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”
According to the Lebanese daily newspaper An Nahar, Hariri’s comment has angered U.S. officials.
The paper on Wednesday said U.S. officials believe that Hariri’s comment implicitly accused Washington of knowing that the reports are unfounded, yet blaming Syria to cause tension in the region.
In 2003, the U.S. and Britain accused former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein of possessing weapons of mass destruction, leading to the invasion of Iraq. No such weapons were ever found in Iraq.
