Zionism. The more it changes, the more it stays the same… While pretending to speak of a ‘two-state solution’, they steam ahead for an ever-greater control of the Ocuppied Territories of Palestine. Waiting for war criminals to reform is never a good policy.
Watchdog criticises ‘misleading’ poster showing East Jerusalem
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
A reader complained that the printed advert featured a photograph of East Jerusalem and said it misleadingly implied that it was part of the state of Israel
The Israeli tourist office has been criticised by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for including images of the Palestinian-run West Bank in an advert for a holiday in Israel.
The advert for the Israeli government’s Tourist Office stated that you could “travel the entire length of Israel in six hours”.
Images shown included the Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock – the oldest Islamic building in the world, built in the seventh century. The area in East Jerusalem is at the centre of a dispute between Palestinians and Jews, with more than 500,000 Jews living in the disputed territories.
A reader complained that the printed advert featured a photograph of East Jerusalem and said it misleadingly implied that it was part of the state of Israel. The ASA said that the advert featured various landmarks that were in East Jerusalem which were part of the Occupied Territories.
It ruled that the advert breached truthfulness guidelines and ordered that it not be used again, adding: “We told the Israeli Tourist Office not to imply that places in the Occupied Territories were part of the state of Israel.”
It said: “The ASA noted the itinerary image of Jerusalem used in the ad featured the Western Wall of the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock, which were both in East Jerusalem, a part of the Occupied Territories of the West Bank.
“We noted the ad stated ‘You can travel the entire length of Israel in six hours – imagine what you can experience in four days’, and ‘Visit now for more itineraries in Israel’, and considered that readers were likely to understand that the places featured in the itinerary were all within the state of Israel.
“We understood, however, that the status of the occupied territory of the West Bank was the subject of much international dispute, and, because we considered that the ad implied that the part of East Jerusalem featured in the image was part of the state of Israel, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead.”
Israel’s Ministry of Tourism stated that the advert provided “basic, accurate information to a prospective UK traveller who wanted to know what to expect in Israel”.
It said that it was “entirely accurate to assert that a visitor to Israel could visit Jerusalem as part of a short visit”, adding: “Had the ad omitted a reference to a visit to the city of Jerusalem, it would have been incorrect and potentially misleading.”
In response to the complaint, the ministry said that Israel “took responsibility to support the religious sites of all denominations, a commitment which also formed part of the obligations of an agreement with the Palestinian Authority signed in 1995”. The ministry added that “the agreement placed the upkeep of holy sites and the determination of tourist visiting hours under Israeli jurisdiction”.
The ministry also maintained that the present legal status of Jerusalem had nothing to do with the point at issue.
It said this was “only of relevance if there was an attempt to interpret the straightforward message of the ad in a manner that went beyond what consumers were likely to understand from the ad.”
United States administration officials have voiced harsh criticism over advertisements in favor of Israel’s position on Jerusalem that appeared in the U.S. press with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s encouragement. The authors of the most recent such advertisements were president of the World Jewish Congress Ronald Lauder and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel. “All these advertisements are not a wise move,” one senior American official told Haaretz.
United States administration officials have voiced harsh criticism over advertisements in favor of Israel’s position on Jerusalem that appeared in the U.S. press with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s encouragement. The authors of the most recent such advertisements were president of the World Jewish Congress Ronald Lauder and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel. “All these advertisements are not a wise move,” one senior American official told Haaretz.
In the advertisement, Wiesel said that for him as a Jew, “Jerusalem is above politics,” and that “it is mentioned more than 600 times in Scripture – and not a single time in the Koran.” Wiesel called to postpone discussion on Jerusalem until a later date, when there is an atmosphere of security allowing Israeli and Palestinian communities to find ways to live in peace.
The ongoing confrontation with the U.S. administration over construction in East Jerusalem was present in many of the comments made by senior Israeli officials during Independence Day.
Netanyahu himself said in an interview to ABC that freezing construction in the east of the city was an impossible demand, and refused to answer questions on the Israeli response to demands from Washington. Instead, he called on Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas to return to the negotiating table without preconditions.
Foreign Minister Lieberman, meanwhile, made Jerusalem the focal point of his speech in a festive reception for the diplomatic corps at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem. President Shimon Peres spoke first, calling for progress in the diplomatic process. Lieberman, who took the podium immediately after Peres, made diametrically opposed statements in his speech, stressing that the Palestinian Authority is no partner for peace.
“Jerusalem is our eternal capital and will not be divided,” Lieberman said. Many of the ambassadors in the audience left feeling stunned and confused, some of them told Haaretz. “The gap between Peres and Lieberman is inconceivable,” one of them said. “We couldn’t comprehend how Lieberman can say all that in front of all the international community delegates.”
Speaking at the torch-lighting ceremony on Mount Herzl on Monday, Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin said that there was “an attack on Jerusalem” and that Israel “will not apologize for the building of Jerusalem, our capital.”
The diplomatic freeze and crisis with the Americans fueled a heated meeting of Labor Party ministers on Sunday. Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, Isaac Herzog and Avishay Braverman told Defense Minister and party chairman Ehud Barak that unless there was some movement on the diplomatic front within weeks, the Labor Party should consider leaving the government or working to bring in Kadima.
Senior Labor officials, who declined to be named, said this was the first time the diplomatic freeze was being discussed between Labor ministers. “They main message coming from this discussion is that things can’t go on like this,” one senior Labor official told Haaretz. “The Labor ministers told Barak that we will be approaching a moment of political decision within weeks.”
Barak tried to calm the ministers, saying he was concerned by the state of Israeli-American relations and will travel to Washington next week for talks on the peace process. Barak appears to be set to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, special U.S. envoy George Mitchell and national security advisor General Jim Jones.
They may well believe in Washington thst they have some pull over Netanyahu, which only shows they are quite green around the ears. Netanyahu is only representing one thing – the continued control of Palestine by the IOF, with all the brutality and lawlessness that this means. If Obama either does not understand this, or worse, decides to avoid confrontation in an election year, he becomes another US collaborator of Zionist ethnic cleansing.
Benjamin Netanyahu said the demand prevented peace negotiations
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will not accept demands that Israel stop building in occupied East Jerusalem.
Demands to halt building in the part of the city that Palestinians want as the capital of their future capital “prevented peace”, he told ABC news.
The comments by Israel’s prime minister come just days after the US pressed Israel to do more to pursue peace.
Relations have been strained between the two allies recently, reports say.
Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since 1967. It annexed the area in 1981 and sees it as its exclusive domain. Under international law the area is occupied territory. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.
Let’s get into the room and negotiate peace without preconditions
Benjamin Netanyahu
Mr Netanyahu said the Israeli government would discuss East Jerusalem as part of what he called “final discussions”, but it could not be a precondition to direct talks.
“This demand that they’ve now introduced, the Palestinians, to stop all construction, Jewish construction in Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem, is totally, totally a non-starter, because what it does is prevent peace.”
He said Israel was right to refuse the demand, as Palestinians would never accept preconditions to talks demanded by Israel.
“You would rightly say: ‘Ah, Israel is trying now to load the deck. To stack the deck. It’s trying not to enter in negotiations,'” he said.
“I say let’s remove all preconditions, including those on Jerusalem. Let’s get into the room and negotiate peace without preconditions. That’s the simplest way to get to peace.” Under strain
He said direct talks were the only way to achieve peace.
But Palestinian leaders have said they will not enter any kind of negotiations with the Israelis until they show good faith by freezing the building of Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Last year Mr Netanyahu agreed to a 10-month building pause in the West Bank, but refused to include East Jerusalem.
In March the Palestinians said they would not get involved in indirect or proximity talks after new building plans in a Jewish neighbourhood of Eat Jerusalem were revealed.
While US Vice President Joe Biden was visiting Israel, it was announced that 1,600 new apartments would be built in the Jewish Orthodox district of Ramat Shlomo.
The announcement has put US – Israeli relations under strain.
On Friday US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton again called on Israel to do more to pursue peace with the Palestinians, repeating the demand that settlement building be halted.
The secretary of state said supporting the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas was the best weapon to counter Hamas and other extremists.
Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements in the West Bank, among a Palestinian population of about 2.5 million.
The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
The Middle East quartet – the US, EU, UN and Russia – has called for a halt in settlement building and immediate final status negotiations to reach a comprehensive peace deal within two years.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Monday that Israel would not accept Palestinian demands that it stop building settlements in East Jerusalem.
Appearing in an interview broadcast Monday on ABC’s Good Morning America, Netanyahu called the Palestinian demand that Israel stop building in settlements “unacceptable” and said this long-standing Israeli government position is not his alone, but rather dates to governments led by Golda Meir, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin.
Netanyahu has sought to minimize differences with U.S. President Barack Obama over the Middle East peace process. But he acknowledged on Monday that “we have some outstanding issues. We’re trying to resolve them through diplomatic channels in the best way that we can.”
During the interview, Netanyahu also urged the United States and the world to impose “crippling sanctions” on refined petroleum on Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
“If you stop Iran from importing refined petroleum – that’s a fancy word for gasoline – then Iran simply doesn’t have refining capacity and this regime comes to a halt,” Netanyahu said on the morning program.
The U.S. is leading a push in the United Nations to apply another round of sanctions against Iran in an effort to stop it from pursuing a nuclear program that Western nations believe is aimed at building atomic weapons.
Tehran says its program is designed to produce electricity for civilian use.
Calling the standoff with Iran “the biggest issue facing our times,” Netanyahu said the international community could deliver “crippling sanctions,” without the support of China and Russia, both permanent members of the UN Security Council.
“You’re left doing it outside the Security Council,” Netanyahu said. “There’s a coalition of the willing and you can have very powerful sanctions.”
Asked whether Obama had given assurances Washington would go along with refined oil sanctions and other restrictions, Netanyahu said: “What the United States has said is that they’re determined to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and I think that’s an important statement.”
The Israeli leader said his country would prefer that the international community led by the United States stop Iran’s nuclear program.
Netanyahu acknowledged that relations between the United States and Israel have gone through a bumpy patch lately, but he said the overall relationship between the two countries remained “rock solid.”
Ehud Barak was speaking as Israel commemorated soldeirs killed in action
Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak has said Israel must, eventually, allow the Palestinians to rule themselves.
In an interview with Army Radio he said in the future there would be a separate Palestinian state “whether you like it or not”.
The interview comes as Israelis mark Memorial Day, commemorating Israeli soldiers killed in action.
Mr Barak, a former top ranking soldier, leads the Labour Party which is part of the current government coalition.
“The world isn’t willing to accept, and we won’t change that in 2010, the expectation that Israel will rule another people for decades more,” he said.
We shouldn’t delude ourselves, the growing alienation between us and the United States is not good for Israel
Ehud Barak
“There is no other way, whether you like it or not, than to let them rule themselves,” he said, speaking about the idea of a separate Palestinian state. ‘Alienation’
He also warned of a growing rift between Israel and the United States. He said the government of Benjamin Netanyahu had “done things that didn’t come naturally to it”, like agreeing to a 10 month pause in settlement building and moving toward accepting the principle that there should be two states, one for Palestinians and one for Israelis.
“But we shouldn’t delude ourselves, the growing alienation between us and the United States is not good for Israel,” he said.
Israel’s Memorial Day commemorates some 22,600 soldiers killed in action and the 1,750 Israeli citizens killed in attacks by Palestinian militant groups.
It coincides with the celebration of Israel’s 62nd independence day.
The joy attendant on Israel’s Independence Day traditionally focused on emphasizing the growing list of the young state’s achievements and the sense that the country was progressing toward a better future – one of peace, enhanced physical and existential security, integration into the family of nations and the region, and a normalized existence. But the country’s lifespan, which was considered a great virtue in and of itself during the first few decades, has become secondary to a far more important question: Within what dynamic is Israel operating? Is time on Israel’s side? Is it setting goals for itself and working toward their realization? Has it blossomed into maturity? Are its citizens more secure and happier? Does it greet the future with hope?
Unfortunately, Israel’s 62nd Independence Day finds it in a kind of diplomatic, security and moral limbo that is certainly no cause for celebration. It is isolated globally and embroiled in a conflict with the superpower whose friendship and support are vital to its very existence. It is devoid of any diplomatic plan aside from holding onto the territories and afraid of any movement. It wallows in a sense of existential threat that has only grown with time. It seizes on every instance of anti-Semitism, whether real or imagined, as a pretext for continued apathy and passivity. In many respects, it seems that Israel has lost the dynamism and hope of its early decades, and is once again mired in the ghetto mentality against which its founders rebelled.
Granted, Israel is not the sole custodian of its fate. Yet the shortcomings that have cast a pall over the country since its founding – the ethnocentrism, the dominance of the army and religious functionaries, the socioeconomic gaps, the subservience to the settlers, the mystical mode of thinking and the adherence to false beliefs – have, instead of disappearing over time, only gathered steam. The optimistic, pragmatic, peace-seeking spirit that once filled the Israeli people, in tune with the Zionist revolution, which sought to alter Jewish fate, has weakened. And it is not clear whether the current government is deepening the reactionary counterrevolution or merely giving it faithful expression.
Advertisement
On the eve of Independence Day last year, we wrote in this space: “Stagnation has taken the place of change. Not only does this government, which was formed not long ago, not bode well for hope and change. It champions a policy of regression in a number of areas: the diplomatic front; the Palestinian question; the state’s attitude toward the settlers; issues of state and religion; its handling of Israeli Arabs; and its general behavior toward our Arab neighbors and the world. Whoever clings to the vision of ‘managing the conflict’ and despairs of reaching a solution to the conflict will find himself treading water. Instead of growing and reinventing ourselves, we will be the ones managed by crises.”
It is saddening to discover that all these fears came true this year, to an even greater degree than we expected. When the prime minister’s main message to the country is that we are once again on the verge of a holocaust, and his vision consists primarily of delving into the Bible, nurturing nationalist symbols and clinging to “national heritage sites,” it seems that Hebrew independence has become a caricature of itself. One can only hope that forces within the nation will soon arise to reshape the state and the leadership in a way worthy of us all.
Israel and its Arab neighbours disagree over scarce water resources
A row about how to name the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories has scuppered a 43-nation scheme for managing Mediterranean water resources.
The Mediterranean Union conference in Barcelona had hammered out 99% of a draft text, delegates said.
But the deal failed when Israel and Arab countries disagreed over how to describe the Palestinian territories.
Israel objected to “occupied territories”, while “territories under occupation” did not suit the Arab bloc.
The United Nations has warned that almost 300 million people in the Mediterranean region will face water shortages by 2025.
The Mediterranean Union was launched by France during its EU presidency in 2008, to foster co-operation between European states, and countries in the Middle East and North Africa bordering the Mediterranean.
In Barcelona on Tuesday the Union’s secretary-general, Ahmad Masadeh from Jordan, called for urgent action to guarantee access to water for all the region’s residents.
Spain, the conference host, warned that the Mediterranean was prone to cyclical floods and droughts that required a “common strategy for a scarce resource”.
Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have lived under Israeli occupation since 1967. The settlements that Israel has built in the West Bank are home to around 400,000 people and are deemed to be illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
Israel evacuated its settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and withdrew its forces, but Israel and Egypt maintain an economic blockade on the Palestinians living there.
Our dear friend Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahma, known to many of us as Pheel, was murdered by IOF soldiers during a non-violent protest in the Palestinian village of Bil’in on April 17th, 2009.
This film was made in his memory, which we so fondly remember and greatly miss.
Bassem’s friends
His name was Bassem, which means smile, and that is how he greeted everyone. But we all called him ‘Pheel’, which means elephant because he had the body the size of an elephant. But Bassem had the heart of a child.
He loved everyone, and because of his sweetness and ability to make us laugh, everyone loved him. Bassem was everyone’s friend: the children talk about how he would play with them, scare them and then make them laugh. He would tend the garden in the playground and bring toys and books to the kindergarten. The old ladies in the village talk about how he used to visit, to ask after them and see if they needed anything. In the village, he seemed to be everywhere at once. He would pop in to say hello, take one puff of the nargila (Shisha), and be off to his next spot. The morning he was killed he went to the house of Hamis, whose skull had been broken at a previous demonstration three months ago by a tear gas canister projectile – the same weapon that would kill Bassem.
Bassem woke Hamis and gave him his medicine, then off he went to visit another friend in the village who is ill with cancer. Then a little girl from the village wanted a pineapple but couldn’t find any in the local stores. So Bassem went to Ramallah to get a pineapple and was back before noon for the Friday prayers and the weekly demonstration against the theft of our land by the apartheid wall. Pheel never missed a demonstration; he participated in all the activities and creative actions in Bilin. He would always talk to the soldiers as human beings. Before he was hit he was calling for the soldiers to stop shooting because there were goats near the fence and he was worried for them. Then a woman in front of him was hit. He yelled to the commander to stop shooting because someone was wounded. He expected the soldiers to understand and stop shooting. Instead, they shot him too.
People came to his funeral from all the surrounding villages to show Bassem that they loved him as much as he had loved them. But those of us from Bil’in kept looking around for him, expecting him to be walking with us.
Pheel, you were everyone’s friend. We always knew we loved you, but didn’t realize how much we would miss you until we lost you. As Bil’in has become the symbol of Palestine’s popular resistance, you are the symbol of Bil’in. Sweet Pheel, Rest in Peace, we will continue in your footsteps.
— Mohammad Khatib, member of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements
EDITOR: The more it changes, the more it stays the same….
Much is changing all the time in and around the Middle East; governments and leaders come and go (but not in Egypt…) as they do in Europe and the US. News peace plans, with ever-exciting names appear and wither away, new envoys come and go – some of bodies that do not even exist, such as the Quartet – and much money and energy are spent on all of this, and gives much work to journalists and experts in research institutes, and new tomes are launched.
One thing stays the same, though. Israel continues apace, clearing Palestine of its people, day-in, day-out, without ever stopping. Meanwhile, more are killed, maimed, robbed, humiliated, not to mention being starved. Thousands of homes are destroyed, families are spread across the globe, and slowly but surely, Palestine is evacuated, emptied, ethnically-cleansed. This fervent effort is supported by the western democracies – with political and diplomatic immunity awarded to Israel, with huge sums in aid, with special status in US and EU as well as other countries, and also by buying the fruits of the stolen land from the robbers and murderers.
How many peace plans have been drawn since 1967? How many UN resolutions, Security Council resolutions? Judgments by the International Criminal Court? Is there any doubt that the occupation and all the activities is spawned are not only illegal, but also immoral and inhumane? That the daily oppression, murder and brutalities are a shame on the international community, as Apartheid once was? That the apartheid wall is there to continue the land and water theft?
More than anything – is there any doubt that Israel has made any chance of a just peace settlement totally impossible through a calculated policy combining military brutality and control, legalised land theft, and total denial of human and political right to millions of Palestinians over many decades? Is it not yet clear that the so-called Two State solution was a mere fig-leaf, covering and enabling the continuation of the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestine?
Israel seems set to see the latest of those efforts, started by Obama, to reach some settlement, and to continue the seemingly unstoppable cleansing of Palestine of its indigenous population. Though Obama would never even try to achieve a just solution, being as he is part of the US support system of Israel’s military occupation, and control of the Middle East, even his futile attempts would not be welcomed, and are likely to die like all before. Should anyone be waiting for Obama’s efforts to wither out? The international community did not wait for a US president before acting against apartheid in South Africa, so why does it wait now, with Israeli apartheid being so much worse?
The items before exemplify the movement towards emptying Palestine, taking part all over Palestine, every single day.
By Gideon Levy
Who said Ehud Barak is insensitive? Who falsely accused Gabi Ashkenazi of being the silent type? And who suspects them of not being able to work together? The defense minister and chief of staff stood united at the end of last week to prevent the destruction of illegal homes in the illegal outpost of Givat Hayovel. Some of the houses were built on private Palestinian land; in other words, stolen land, and others were built on “state lands” and “survey lands” – more misleading terms to emerge from Israel’s endless supply of tricks.
The Israel Defense Forces even pulled out from storage a particularly ridiculous reason we haven’t heard for a while: These houses are “important for security” because they are “controlling points” where the IDF’s presence is “important.” As if the IDF can’t be in a place without such homes.
Barak and Ashkenazi got together for the task because bereaved families live in two of these homes: the family of Maj. Ro’i Klein, who was killed in the Second Lebanon War, and the family of Maj. Eliraz Peretz, who was killed three weeks ago on the Gaza border. It’s unclear whether this united front at the top was meant to prevent only the demolition of these two families’ homes or the demolition of all 18 homes ordered by the High Court of Justice. Both possibilities raise serious questions. Does the blood of those who die in combat wash away their culpability? How can we discriminate between one illegal settler and another? Why should the Palestinian whose land was taken over care if one of those settlers gets killed in action? Here’s the devilish thing: Of all days, on the day Barak and Ashkenazi published an emotional letter to High Court President Dorit Beinisch asking for “consideration and sensitivity,” the IDF destroyed other houses. Civil Administration bulldozers crushed a two-story house and two shops in Kafr Hares, while demolishing a home and a factory in Beit Sahur and another home in Al-Khader. Sixteen people are now homeless, among them children and a 1-year-old baby. The people from the Civil Administration took the trouble to stress that this was just the beginning of the demolition operation.
Advertisement
It didn’t occur to anyone in the IDF to check whether maybe the Sultan family in Hares or the Musa family in Al-Khader could cite extenuating circumstances justifying “consideration and sensitivity.” Might they also have lost a son? And if so, would anyone have thought to stop the demolition because of it? Don’t make the IDF, the Civil Administration, Barak, Ashkenazi and all of us laugh. Those are Palestinians, not humans.
The demolition of the homes in Givat Hayovel was decided on in 2001, when everyone in the families was still alive. They built their homes recklessly, without permits, and knew they were stealing land. There are many other settlers like them.
That is the original sin that has been followed by the sin of authorities’ foot-dragging, which in this case has gone on for around nine years in terms of implementing the ruling on Peace Now’s petition. Peace Now Secretary-General Yariv Oppenheimer now says he is giving in on the demolition of the Klein and Peretz homes. One can understand him. It’s hard to destroy a home whose inhabitants have just ended their week of mourning.
Indeed, it’s not humane. But as usual, we deal with the marginal instead of the important. While the evacuation of the outposts has never been an operative term, while the Sasson report has become a worthless archaeological artifact, why are we bothering with Givat Hayovel, of all places? Do we lack other outposts to evacuate, those without mourning families? Moreover, the whole matter of “illegal” outposts – as if even one settlement is legal – has never been the heart of the problem. It’s very convenient for everyone to turn the Givat Hayovel affair into another self-righteous and misleading fig leaf.
The settlers are waving these houses around for their own needs to squeeze out even more public sympathy and increase opposition to any evacuation at all. Barak and Ashkenazi are waving these houses around to show how much they want to enforce the law in the territories but can’t. Even the justice system occasionally seeks to prove that it is careful to uphold the law and not discriminate when it comes to the settlers. All this is nothing less than ridiculous.
Those two homes should be left alone – even the entire outpost. As long as the main settlement, Eli, remains, what difference does its offshoot make?
Clinton argued that peace talks would counter extremism
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has again called on Israel to do more to pursue peace with the Palestinians.
She urged Israel to support efforts by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank to strengthen institutions.
Mrs Clinton also called on the Palestinians to promote peace by ending incitement and fighting corruption.
Jewish settlement construction has caused deep strain in relations between the US and Israel and has hampered efforts to revive peace talks.
The secretary of state said supporting the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas was the best weapon to counter Hamas and other extremists.
The US has been trying to launch proximity talks between the two sides.
These were knocked off course by an announcement that Israel had approved plans for 1,600 new homes in the East Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo during a visit to Israel by US Vice-President Joe Biden.
‘Bold leadership’
The secretary of state called for “bold leadership” on all sides when she spoke at a dinner attended by the ambassadors of Israel and several Arab states.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu has embraced the vision of the two-state solution,” Mrs Clinton said.
“But easing up on access and movement in the West Bank, in response to credible Palestinian security performance, is not sufficient to prove to the Palestinians that this embrace is sincere.”
“We encourage Israel to continue building momentum toward a comprehensive peace by demonstrating respect for the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians, stopping settlement activity and addressing the humanitarian needs in Gaza, and to refrain from unilateral statements and actions that could undermine trust or risk prejudicing the outcome of talks,” she added.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967. It insists Jerusalem will remain its undivided capital, while Palestinians want to establish the capital of their state in the East Jerusalem.
Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements in the West Bank, among a Palestinian population of about 2.5 million.
The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
The Middle East quartet – the US, EU, UN and Russia – has called for a halt in settlement building and immediate final status negotiations to reach a comprehensive peace deal within two years.
EDITOR: H&M Protest Spreads Across Europe
After the successful action in Paris, a new action against H&M in Brusseles
Social networking websites are becoming increasingly popular in Gaza
In a busy internet cafe in the centre of Gaza City, lots of people, mostly young, are typing and clicking away.
Some of them are engrossed in the world of Facebook. “I use it 10 hours a day,” says Mohammed who owns the shop. “I have over 200 Facebook friends.”
But Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip, believes the population’s love of social networking websites is making it easier for Israel to recruit spies.
Israel has long maintained networks of informers in the West Bank and Gaza in its effort to derail the activities of militant groups.
Historically, collaborators have often been killed if discovered, and this week Hamas announced it would execute anyone caught acting as an agent for Israel. Personal problems
Facebook “is a big, big thing that the Israelis use”, says Ehab al-Hussein, a spokesman for the Hamas-run interior ministry.
“Many people don’t have security sense. They go on the internet and talk about all their personal problems such as with their wives or girlfriends,” he says.
Israel’s intelligence services can then contact people by telephone, e-mail or using existing Israeli agents in Gaza, and use the information to pressure people to become spies.
If in 50 years they open up the secret files of the Israeli secret services, the sophistication of electronics that is being used by Israel now in the Gaza Strip would put even the legendary Q from the James Bond movies to shame
Ronen Bergman
Expert on Israeli intelligence
The internet “allows them to make people feel Israel knows everything about them”, says Mr Hussein.
Ronen Bergman, an Israeli expert on intelligence and author of Israel’s Secret War with Iran, says monitoring social networking sites is the very minimum you would expect from his country’s intelligence services.
“Israel is using the personal information that is put in massive amounts on the internet to identify the people who can maybe help Israel,” he says.
“If in 50 years they open up the secret files of the Israeli secret service, the Shin Bet, and military intelligence, the sophistication of electronics that is being used by Israel now in the Gaza Strip would put even the legendary Q from the James Bond movies to shame.”
But Mr Bergman says that the intelligence community’s current thinking is that using personal information gleaned from the internet to pressure or even blackmail potential informants is not considered effective in recruiting long-term informants.
He says such threats are not often enough to get people to commit such a serious offence as collaborating.
But online detail, he says, can help intelligence services identify people who might be useful – such as those with good access to Hamas or to criminal networks.
When asked to comment, the Israeli government said it was not its practice to talk about its security services’ modes of operation. Phone fears
Even Mr Hussein admits he has a Facebook page, “but I’m careful about the information I put on,” he says. “I only say I am a Hamas spokesman.”
He is probably not the only member of Hamas communicating on Facebook and the internet.
This is partly because other forms of communication, particularly mobile phones, are easily bugged and can be used to track movements, Mr Bergman says, so the internet has become a more preferable option.
Virtually all Palestinians leaving Gaza now do so for medical reasons
One reason Israeli intelligence is watching the social networking websites to try to identify potential informants is because a historical source of collaborators no longer exists, according to Mr Bergman.
Up until the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, started in 2000, thousands of Gazans had permits to enter Israel each day to work.
These people had direct contact with Israelis and were sometimes approached by Israeli intelligence officers and asked to collaborate.
But these days the border is virtually sealed.
Virtually the only Palestinians allowed through are often in wheelchairs or bandaged up, seeking medical treatment in Israel.
Some of those say they’ve been asked for information about Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
“They asked if I knew any people in my neighbourhood who were members,” says Khaled, a young man from Gaza City, who will give only his first name. ‘Not safe’
He had to go to Israel to seek medical treatment after being injured in last year’s conflict with Israel.
He says he did not pass on any information that the Israelis would not already have known.
But he gives an insight into how intelligence officers pressure people to become informants.
“They say that they know everything about you, but actually it’s information you have already published on Facebook,” he says.
“It’s not safe to publish such information – I believe it allows Israel to keep watching our movements.”
Last year, Israel dismissed as “simply ludicrous” allegations that its security forces had told Palestinians seeking permits to exit Gaza for medical treatment that they would only be allowed to leave if they supplied information on militant groups.
EDITOR: The Clouds Gather Around Israeli Intransigence
It seems not all is going well for Israel’s newish, even more extreme government than the usual one. While they keep expanding the settlements, building the apartheid wall, and killing more and more Palestinians as if there is no tomorrow, some storm clouds have gathered around them, and others are continuously added. It seems clear that the Gaza murderous offensive has clearly changed the stakes for this brutal regime, and that its days of supremacy are numbered.
This should give us no false hopes, though. It is exactly when the failing empires are cornered, that they become totally inscrutable, wild and gung-ho, and dangerous in the extreme to anyone around them, or under their control. The following months are ones of the gravest danger in the Middle East.
Fears of conflict escalate as group refuses to discuss its arsenal with Jerusalem – or the Lebanese government
Friday, 16 April 2010
If Lebanon had a US-style colour-coded “war-fear” alert ranging from white to purple, we are now – courtesy of Israeli president Shimon Peres, the White House spokesman and the head of the Lebanese Hizbollah militia, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah – hovering somewhere between pink and red.
Has Syria given the Hizbollah a set of Scud ground-to-ground missiles to fire at Israel? Can Israeli aircraft attack them if the Hizbollah also possess anti-aircraft missiles? Can the Lebanese army take these weapons from the Hizbollah before the balloon goes up?
It is a long-standing saga, of course, and Israel has been itching to get its own back on the world’s most disciplined guerrilla movement. You can forget al-Qa’ida when it comes to Hizbollah’s effectiveness – after the Israeli army’s lamentable performance in 2006, when it promised to destroy the Hizbollah and ended up, after the usual 1000-plus civilian dead, pleading for a ceasefire. Over the past few months, Mr Nasrallah has been taunting the Israelis to have another go, promising that an Israeli missile attack on Beirut airport will be followed by a Hizbollah rocket attack on Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport.
But over the past week, a warning by Mr Peres that the Hizbollah has received Scud missiles from Damascus – or via Syria from Iran – and a refusal by the Hizbollah to even discuss its own disarmament within a Lebanese “national dialogue” chaired by the Lebanese President, Michel Suleiman, has darkened the spring skies over both Lebanon and Israel. The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said this week that the United States has expressed its concern to both the Syrian and Lebanese governments over “the sophisticated weaponry that … is allegedly being transferred”. Mr Peres started the whole thing off a day earlier when he declared that “Syria claims it wants peace while at the same time it delivers Scuds to Hizbollah, whose only goal is to threaten the state of Israel.”
These hootings and trumpetings have always had a strong element of hypocrisy about them. The Scuds – even if Hizbollah has them – are as out-of-date as they are notoriously inaccurate. In the 1991 Gulf war, Saddam Hussein’s Scuds caused fewer than a hundred deaths. The more Peres thunders about the danger they represent, the more Hizbollah’s allies in Iran – supposedly trying to build a nuclear weapon – take pride of place in public imagination over the continued and illegal Israeli colonisation of Palestinian land.
As for Mr Nasrallah, he promised only a year ago that Hizbollah’s disarmament could not be discussed by the Lebanese government – only during the so-called “national dialogue”. And now the “national dialogue” has begun, the organisation has made it clear that it has no intention of discussing disarmament with other Lebanese political parties.
The problems are legion. Hizbollah is itself represented in the Lebanese parliament, and under the Doha agreement which followed Hizbollah’s one-day military takeover of west Beirut in May of 2008, it also has an effective veto over majority decisions taken by the Lebanese cabinet. And even if the Shia Muslim Hizbollah’s opponents in the Cabinet – they are largely Sunni Muslim with a prominent Christian contingent – ordered the Lebanese army to take weapons from the militia, they would be unable to do so for one simple reason. At least half the army – possibly two-thirds – are themselves Shia Muslims, and would obviously object to attacking the homes of brothers, sons and fathers in the Hizbollah.
A clue to the seriousness with which everyone now takes the possibility of war is contained in a remark made by an anonymous US spokesman who warned that the transfer of Scud missiles to Hizbollah would represent a “serious risk” to Lebanon. Not to Israel, mark you – but to Lebanon. There is no doubt that this is an allusion to frequent threats from the Israelis themselves that in another war with Hizbollah, the Lebanese government would be held responsible and as a result Lebanon’s infrastructure would be destroyed.
This does not sound so bad in Lebanon as it does elsewhere. For in its last Lebanese war – the fifth since 1978 – the Israelis blamed the Lebanese government for Hizbollah’s existence and smashed up the country’s roads, bridges, viaducts, electricity grid and civilian factories, as well as killing well over 1,000 civilians. Israel’s casualties were in the hundreds, most of them soldiers. What worse can Israel do now against the ruthlessness of the Hizbollah, even after the accusations of war crimes levelled against its equally ruthless rabble of an army?
Friday 16 April 2010
From every conceivable viewpoint except Tehran’s, the International Atomic Energy Agency is no closer to defusing the crisis over Iran’s continued enrichment of uranium. President Obama’s deadline has come and gone. The offer to process the majority of Iran’s enriched uranium in Russia and France is still on the table, but as Iran does not trust a US-backed process to deliver the reactor fuel it says it needs, it has begun its own production of 20% enriched uranium. This takes it closer to becoming a nuclear break-out state, capable of producing a bomb. The Senate Armed Services Committee heard on Wednesday that Iran could produce enough fuel for one bomb in a year, but would need from two to five years to manufacture a workable warhead.
The US is lumbering towards a new round of sanctions, but with China’s concerns about its future supplies of oil and Shanghai-based companies fulfilling Pakistan’s former role as a supplier of dual-use equipment, it is doubtful how effective sanctions will be. President Hu Jintao said this week he would join negotiations over sanctions, but he did not say he would back them. There is only one sign of progress. Each time US generals talk about the military option, which Israel has pushed for, they are more dismissive of it. And if Centcom really believes that enduring hostilities between Israel and its neighbours represent “distinct challenges” to the US ability to advance its interests in the Middle East, how much truer would that proposition be if you are a US soldier in southern Iraq or Afghanistan, in the aftermath of a strike by Israeli jets on Iran’s nuclear facilities? The crack that has begun to open between Israel and Washington on the stalled peace process would overnight become a canyon.
Two analysts at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) have argued that the international community should accept Iran’s current counter-offer, which is to have the fuel swap (low-enriched uranium for fuel elements) but keep it on Iranian soil. Ivanka Barzashka and Ivan Oelrich say that in haggling over details we are losing sight of the goal, which would be to make it more difficult, not easier, for Iran to build a nuclear weapon. The breakthrough was Iran’s agreement to a fuel swap, not where it should happen. Agreeing to a fuel swap on Iranian soil would be a way of stopping the Iranian nuclear countdown, provided it stopped production of 20% uranium. And if it didn’t, it would be more evidence both of Mr Obama’s commitment, and of Iran’s real intentions. Both would be useful in persuading China and Russia.
There are both political and technical problems with this approach. It would be another concession, another “final” offer, which might well induce Iran to think it could extract more – such as allowing its fuel to be handed over in batches rather than in one go. There would be contingent problems over timing and transparency. However, the longer the current impasse continues, the more it plays into the hands of those who push for extreme solutions. The US and Iran are currently engaged in an international beauty contest. After Mr Obama’s attempts to close down the channels of nuclear proliferation, Iran is to host its own conference on nuclear disarmament, entitled “Nuclear energy for everyone, nuclear arms for no one”. China, Russia, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Oman and Turkmenistan have already confirmed their participation, but it should be interesting to see at what level. The proof of US attempts to isolate Iran should come at the review conference of the non-proliferation treaty next month.
We are back to a familiar game of diplomatic brinkmanship, but one cannot help thinking that if sanity were to break out it would be in a form not too far away from the FAS’s version. The gaps are bridgeable. There is, unfortunately, much that could happen in the Middle East to derail that outcome.
Israel’s nuclear arsenal is safeguarded by the United States, while Iran is prevented from establishing its peaceful nuclear energy program, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at the opening of the First International Conference on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation in Tehran, Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported on Saturday.
The conference, meeting under the slogan “Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapons for No One,” was kicked off early Saturday, and included 10 foreign ministers, 14 deputy foreign ministers as well as nuclear experts from 60 countries.
China is to be represented at the conference by a low-ranking Foreign Ministry official and Russia by a deputy minister.
The conference is focused on disarmament, but analysts said a main aim would be another effort by Iran to persuade the international community that its nuclear projects are solely for peaceful and civilian purposes.
Referring to Israel’s alleged nuclear program, Ahmadinejad said that “the Zionist regime which has over 200 nuclear warheads and has waged several wars in the region is fully supported by Washington and its allies.”
“This is while other states are prevented from making peaceful use of nuclear energy,” the Iranian president added.
Addressing the conference’s aims, Ahmadinejad said that “wars, aggressions, occupation, threats, nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction and expansionist policies of certain countries have made the prospect of regional and international security as unclear and ambiguous.
The Iranian president also criticized the performance of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), saying that the UN nuclear watchdog has been turned to a tool for exerting pressure on those countries which have no nuclear weapons.
“Expecting those countries which have the veto right and are big sellers of weapons in the world to establish security and to disarm other states is illogical,” Ahmadinejad said according to IRNA, suggesting the formation of a new group that would supervise global nuclear disarmament.
“[That] group should suspend membership of those countries possessing, using and threatening use of nuclear weapons at the IAEA and its Board of Governors,” the Iranian President said.
Also Saturday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Islam forbade the use of nuclear weapons, saying that while the United States urged the reduction of the worldwide nuclear arsenal, it had taken no real steps toward achieving that aim.
In a statement read by aides at the opening of the nuclear disarmament conference headed by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Khamenei said that United States was still the only nation to commit what he called “atomic crimes.”
Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeid Jalili, also criticized the United States for its double-standard approach to nuclear disarmament.
“The U.S. is itself guilty of having used atomic weapons in Japan and can, therefore, not be a supervisor of countries using peaceful nuclear technology,” said Jalili, who is also secretary of Iran’s National Security Council. “The world should not allow nuclear criminals to have a supervising role.”
Jalili blamed the U.S. and its allies for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and insisted that all nuclear projects by Iran were in line with the treaty and IAEA regulations.
On Friday, Iranian IRNA news agency quoted Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Ali Shami International sa sayig that the pressure exerted by the international community on Iran’s “peaceful nuclear program” could have “drastic impacts on the Middle East peace.”
According to the IRNA report, Shami added that “contrary to Israel which has many nuclear arsenals, Iran seeks a peaceful nuclear program.”
Syria FM: Israel’s nukes are Mideast’s gravest threat
Israel’s nuclear warheads are the Middle East’s biggest threat, IRNA quoted Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Al-Muallem as saying at the onset the nuclear disarmament conference in Tehran on Saturday.
Speaking to reporters, Al-Muallem said that Israel was the biggest nuclear threat in the Middle East, alleging that the “Zionist regime” had “been stockpiling nuclear warheads.”
The Syria FM called the Terhan conference a “very good opportunity for countries to try to bring to life the mottos on the disarmament issue,” adding he hoped “the meeting will create a firm will in the world on nuclear disarmament.”
Also commenting on the subject of Israel’s supposed nuclear program Saturday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari called for inspecting Israeli nuclear installations by international bodies.
“Iraq is the victim of the past policies and ignoring international commitments,” Zebari told IRNA, adding that “Baghdad condemns making use of weapons of mass destruction and believes in combating nuclear weapons.”
The Iraqi FM reiterated that the “Iraqi government is interested in a Mideast free from nuclear weapons and calls for annihilation of weapons of mass destruction.”
On Friday, IRNA quoted Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Ali Shami International sa sayig that the pressure exerted by the international community on Iran’s “peaceful nuclear program” could have “drastic impacts on the Middle East peace.”
According to the IRNA report, Shami added that “contrary to Israel which has many nuclear arsenals, Iran seeks a peaceful nuclear program.”
The Lebanon FM urged the international community to force the United Nations Security Council to pressure Israel to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, adding that Lebanon accepted “Tehran’s invitation and will attend the highly important conference which will focus on nuclear disarmament worldwide.”
The High Court of Justice on Tuesday granted permission for Israeli Arab writer Ala Halihal to visit Beirut, despite opposition from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Interior Minister Eli Yishai.
Generally, it is forbidden for Israeli citizens to visit Lebanon, considered by Israel to be an enemy state. According to the petitioners, this High Court decision marks the “first time since 1948 that an Israeli citizen is permitted to visit a state defined as an enemy state.”
In their decision, the justices said that the there is no existing information to negate the petitioner’s claim, adding that in their refusal to approve his travel, the authorities did not weigh all the relevant considerations in this unique case, the ruling said.
The court ruled after Netanyahu on Monday refused to allow Halihal to attend an international conference of Arab authors in Beirut. The court had asked Netanyahu for his response to Halihal’s petition requesting to overturn Yishai’s refusal to allow him to travel to Beirut.
Halihal’s petition was submitted by the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. The attorneys argued that the government’s refusal to allow Halihal to travel violates his constitutional right to leave the country and his rights for freedom of employment and freedom of expression, as well as his due process rights for a fair hearing.
The petition was submitted by Adalah Attorneys Haneen Naamnih and Hassan Jabareen.
Halihal on Monday traveled to London to await the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Halihal is a Palestinian Arab citizen of Israel. He was born in the village of Jish in the Galilee in the north and lives currently in Acre.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy told the American news network CBS on Tuesday that an Israeli military attack against Iran would be “disastrous” and that Israel must understand that “we are determined to ensure its security.”
Obama and Hu
Hours before U.S. President Barack Obama opened a landmark summit of 47 nations on nuclear security in Washington, Sarkozy told CBS’s Katie Couric that “I would not want the world to wake up to a conflict between Israel and Iran, quite simply because the international community has been incapable of acting.”
“I consider the fact that Iran should get its hands on a nuclear weapon – a military nuclear weapon…dangerous and unacceptable. Unacceptable, quite simply. President Obama has wanted to stretch out his hand in order to show clearly to the Iranians that it was not they who were the target, but their leadership,” Sarkozy went on to say.
Advertisement
When asked whether he thought sanctions could really deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons, the French president replied that “I believe in the effect of sanctions, because I’ve been very impressed by the courage of the Iranian people. Those young kids, those women who went down into the streets of Tehran and major Iranian cities. What a fantastic example of courage they gave us…We can’t afford to be less courageous than they were.”
Following talks between Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, Obama’s top China adviser Jeffery Bader said that China shares U.S. concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, and that the country had agreed to direct its officials to work on a United Nations sanctions resolution against Tehran.
Bader added that Obama and Hu, meeting on the sidelines of the nuclear security summit, talked at length about Iran and discussed nuclear non-proliferation.
Obama stressed to Hu the need to act urgently against Iran’s nuclear program, and Hu agreed that Beijing would help craft a UN resolution, Bader said.
The White House had hoped the one-on-one meeting would help determine whether China was serious about moving forward with the United States, Britain, France, Russia and Germany in forging a new round of UN sanctions on Iran.
“The resolution will make clear to Iran the cost of pursuing a nuclear program that violates Iran’s obligations and responsibilities,” Bader told reporters after the meeting. “The Chinese are actively at the table in New York.”
Bader said the two presidents agreed that their delegations should work on a Security Council resolution on a new round of Iran sanctions “and that’s what we’re doing.”
Obama deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said the United States still expects a UN resolution by this spring.
Bader said Obama’s meeting with Hu “was a sign of international unity” on Iran. Western powers want to deter Iran from what they see as a drive to develop nuclear weapons, while Tehran insists its program has only peaceful, civilian purposes.
China, which holds veto power in the Security Council, had recently shown an increased willingness to pressure Iran while signaling it remained reluctant to take some of the toughest measures proposed by Washington and other Western powers.
Iran on Tuesday expressed doubts that China will back the U.S. and European drive for renewed sanctions.
Following the meeting, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said that President Hu had told Obama in “positive and constructive” talks on Monday that Beijing wanted to resolve bilateral economic friction through consultations.
China and the United States also “share the same overall goal on the Iranian nuclear issue,” Ma said in a written statement after the two leaders met on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit in Washington. Ma provided no details on the talks and repeated China’s standard call for “dialogue and negotiations” with Iran.
Speaking to reporters afterwards, Obama made no mention of his talks with Hu but said he expects the 47-nation summit to make progress toward locking down loose nuclear material.
“It’s impressive. I think it’s an indication of how deeply concerned everybody should be with the possibilities of nuclear traffic, and I think at the end of this we’re going to see some very specific, concrete actions that each nation is that will make the world a little bit safer,” Obama said.
Speaking to ABC’s Good Morning America on Monday, Russian President Dimitry Medvedev said that while he supported sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program he felt those sanctions should not harm the Iranian people.
On the subject of imitating new sanctions against Iran geared at forcing it to abandon its nuclear program, the Russian president said that “it’s not whether it’s a good thought or bad thought, I’m talking about something else.”
“The sanctions is a tricky thing which works seldomly. You yourself were busy with politics, and you know that sanctions is not without conditions,” Medvedev said, adding but sometimes you have to do that.”
“What kind of sanctions? We have spoken about that with President Obama yesterday. Sanctions should be effective and they should be smart,” the Russian President said.
“They should not lead to humanitarian catastrophe, and the whole Iranian community would start to hate the whole world. And we’re worried that there are a significant number of people which have radical opinions. Do we want that radical thought to be sent to the whole world?,” Medvedev said.
However, the Russian president did not rule sanctions altogether, saying that they “should be smart.”
“They should force or obligate the Iranian leadership to think about what’s next. What could sanctions be? It could be trade, arms trade. It could be other sanctions,” Medvedev said, adding that “sanctions should let the country understand that all who impose sanctions have the same opinion.”
Medvedev said that any new sanctions “should not be paralyzing. They should not cause suffering. Aren’t we in the 21st century? That’s why if we’re going to develop our cooperation in this direction we have a chance to succeed. Better would be to go without sanctions and achieve things politically.
Earlier Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad condemned Obama’s nuclear summit, calling it humiliating to humanity.
Tens of thousands of Israelis routinely holiday in the Sinai
Israel has issued an “urgent” warning to its citizens to leave Sinai in Egypt amid fears of a terrorist plot.
The prime minister’s office said it had “concrete evidence” that terrorists were planning to attempt to kidnap Israelis in the peninsula.
Israel took the unusual step of calling on families of the Israelis who are visiting Sinai to contact them.
It fears that Palestinian militants will transfer hostages to Gaza through tunnels under the border.
Leave immediately and return home
Israeli anti-terror office
The warning by Israel’s security agencies came after a rumour that an Israeli had been kidnapped in Sinai. The Israeli emergency service Zaka later said that rumour was untrue.
“According to concrete intelligence, we anticipate an immediate terror activity to kidnap an Israeli in Sinai,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Tuesday.
Tens of thousands of Israelis routinely take holidays in Sinai over the Passover holiday. Most have returned after the week-long festival.
A few hundred were reported to have remained.
Egyptian police have been searching Sinai for any missing Israelis but found no evidence that anyone was missing.
Past attacks
In unusually strong wording, the Israeli anti-terror office called on “all Israelis residing in Sinai to leave immediately and return home”.
Families of Israelis in the peninsula were urged to contact them and update them on the travel warning.
Israel’s anti-terror office has a standing travel advisory telling Israelis to stay out of the Sinai desert because of the threat of terror attacks.
In 2004, suicide bombers attacked Egypt’s Taba Hilton Hotel, just across the Israeli border, and several campsites popular with Israelis. Dozens of people were killed and hundreds wounded.
Israel controlled Sinai from its capture in the 1967 war until returning it to Egypt in 1982. The desert is just across the border, and its seaside resorts are popular with Israelis.
Sinai has been the scene of number of terrorist attacks, including bombings in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh in 2005 and Dahab in 2006, which killed dozens.
EDITOR: The lies and the imaginative Journalism at the JCFew days ago you may have read here that Mira Awad has given up on the concert in London after death threats were made against her. Well, it seems the death threats were only known to the Jewish Chronicle journalist, but Mira Awad never heard of those. Could it be the threats were made by someone connected to the JC, and that is why they knew about them?… It seems that the only threat which we should consider here is a threat against the truth and professional journalism.It may of course be that the JC journalist is a graduate of a Creative Writing programme?…
Claims of death threats and accusations of lies surround rift that put paid to Eurovision star’s visit. By Mark Hughes
When she became the first Arab to represent Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest last year, it was inevitable that Mira Awad would stir controversy. Her duet with a Jewish singer was held up by many as a symbol of hope between the rival communities embroiled in the Middle Eastern conflict.
But her selection was angrily opposed by extremist Arabs and Jews who demanded, unsuccessfully, that she withdraw. Now Ms Awad has found herself once again involved in a political tug of war – this time involving death threats, accusations of lies, and a controversial concert in London. It began on Friday when it was reported Ms Awad had been forced to pull out of a London concert celebrating Israeli independence after receiving death threats.
The claims were made in a press release by the Zionist Federation, the group organising the concert at which Ms Awad was due to perform with her Jewish Eurovision partner Achinoam Nini, known as Noa. Ironically, the duo’s first-ever collaboration was a cover of the Beatles classic, “We Can Work It Out”. The release said that while Noa would still perform, Ms Awad would not participate “due to death threats made against her and her family”.
The story was picked up by the media, including the Jewish Chronicle and Israeli radio. Given the strength of feeling surrounding her previous performances under the Israeli banner, it seemed entirely plausible – until Ms Awad herself said it was not true. Ms Awad – who unlike most Arab-Israelis is Christian rather than Muslim – later posted a message on her Facebook page denying that her reason for pulling out of the concert had anything to do with death threats. Rather, she said, she considered the commemoration of Israeli Independence Day an inappropriate occasion on which to perform, because of her mixed heritage. Israeli Independence Day celebrates the 1948 creation of the state of Israel.
But Palestinian Arabs in Israel and the occupied territories commemorate 1948 as the year of the Nakba – literally “catastrophe” – because of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who were forced to leave their homes in what is now Israel. Ms Awad’s message, published in the Jerusalem Post, read: “Today, on Israeli radio, they said that due to threats on my life I cancelled a show in London I was supposed to appear in. I think it’s time to tell the whole story: My manager Ofer Pesenzon was approached with a request for a concert of Noa in London, with me as a special guest.
Ofer agreed, thinking it would be a good opportunity for me to expose my music, and more importantly, spread the more-than-ever relevant message that Noa and I try to convey. Later on, the date of the show was set for Israel’s Independence Day. “The minute I heard about this concert, I asked Ofer to cancel my participation, out of consideration for the complexity of this date for me.” But Ms Awad’s comments appear at odds with those of her manager, Mr Pesenzon.
Explaining his client’s removal from the London line-up, he told Israeli Army Radio: “Mira is in an impossible position. I’ve received phone calls from Jews saying there’s no way an Arab should be performing for Israel’s Independence Day, and Arabs have called saying the same.”
An Israeli strike of Iran’s nuclear facilities could spark a nuclear conflict, which could spiral into a global catastrophe, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told ABC on Monday, adding that he supported what he called “smart” sanctions on Tehran as part of attempt to make it abandon its nuclear program.
The Russian president is in the United States for a 47-nation nuclear summit convened by U.S. President Barack Obama aimed at thwarting nuclear terrorism, and which may also center on a U.S.-back attempt to hit Iran with new nuclear sanctions.
Russia and China remain two important missing links in Obama’s drive to sanction Iran over its nuclear program.
Referring to the possibility that Israel may attack Iran if negotiations over its contentious nuclear programs fail, Medvedev told Good Morning America that “it would be the worst possible scenario,” adding that “war means lives lost.”
The Russian president also tried to estimate the meaning of what he sees as a war in the Middle East erupting as a result of such a move on Israel’s side, saying “everyone is so close over there that nobody would be unaffected. And if conflict of that kind happens, and a strike is performed, then you can expect anything, including use of nuclear weapons.”
“And nuclear strikes in the Middle East, this means a global catastrophe. Many deaths,” Medvedev said.
On the subject of imitating new sanctions against Iran geared at forcing it to abandon its nuclear program, the Russian president said that “it’s not whether it’s a good thought or bad thought, I’m talking about something else.”
“The sanctions is a tricky thing which works seldomly. You yourself were busy with politics, and you know that sanctions is not without conditions,” Medvedev said, adding but sometimes you have to do that.”
“What kind of sanctions? We have spoken about that with President Obama yesterday. Sanctions should be effective and they should be smart,” the Russian President said.
“They should not lead to humanitarian catastrophe, and the whole Iranian community would start to hate the whole world. And we’re worried that there are a significant number of people which have radical opinions. Do we want that radical thought to be sent to the whole world?,” Medvedev said.
However, the Russian president did not rule sanctions altogether, saying that they “should be smart.”
“They should force or obligate the Iranian leadership to think about what’s next. What could sanctions be? It could be trade, arms trade. It could be other sanctions,” Medvedev said, adding that “sanctions should let the country understand that all who impose sanctions have the same opinion.”
Medvedev said that any new sanctions “should not be paralyzing. They should not cause suffering. Aren’t we in the 21st century? That’s why if we’re going to develop our cooperation in this direction we have a chance to succeed. Better would be to go without sanctions and achieve things politically.
Earlier Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad condemned Obama’s nuclear summit, calling it humiliating to humanity.
U.S. President Barack Obama is hosting the summit, which is focused on preventing nuclear terrorism but where world leaders are also set to discuss his push for new sanctions against Iran’s atomic program.
“World summits being organized these days are intended to humiliate human beings,” Ahmadinejad told delegates at a domestic tourism industry event, according to IRNA news agency.
Iran was not invited to the summit, which is being attended by leaders of China and Russia whose consent will be required to impose new sanctions which Obama wants agreed in the coming weeks.
Ahmadinejad had harsh words for politicians who claimed to represent the international community: “These foolish people who are in charge are like stupid, retarded people who brandish their swords whenever they face shortcomings, without realizing that the time for this type of thing is over.”
Iran has said it will complain to the United Nations about what it sees as Obama’s implied threat to attack it with nuclear weapons. Addressing the United States, Ahmadinejad said: “Your gift to the world is a nuclear bomb while Iran presents … humanity.”
Iran says sanctions will not force it to stop its pursuit of nuclear technology which it says is entirely peaceful. The West fears it is seeking to gain nuclear weapons.
By ISABEL KERSHNER JERUSALEM — A recently amended military order that allows Israel to remove people from the West Bank if it does not recognize their legal status could lead to the expulsion of thousands of Palestinians, Israeli human rights groups warned Sunday.
The amendment — to a 1969 order on dealings with those judged to be infiltrators of the West Bank — was signed by military officials last October and is due to take effect on Tuesday.
In the original document, issued two years after Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war, “infiltrator” was defined as a person who entered the area illegally from a neighboring Arab country. The amendment redefined the term to refer broadly to anyone who entered the West Bank “unlawfully” or who “does not lawfully hold a permit.” The permit required is not specified.
“The wide definitions are the problem,” said Elad Cahana, a lawyer for HaMoked: The Center for the Defense of the Individual, one of 10 groups appealing for a delay on the change in the order. The group estimated that tens of thousands of Palestinians could theoretically be at risk.
The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, denounced the change. “These military orders belong in an apartheid state,” he said. “Extensive in scope, they make it infinitely easier for Israel to imprison and expel Palestinians from the West Bank.”
But Capt. Barak Raz, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said that there had been no change in policy regarding the extradition of illegal residents from the West Bank, and that “anyone who has the right paperwork” allowing residency “has nothing to worry about.”
Mr. Cahana said the concern was less of a mass expulsion than of the military deporting those officially registered as residents of Gaza, as well as Palestinians or their spouses who moved to the West Bank from abroad.
When the military currently tries to remove such individuals from the West Bank, it often faces difficulties in arguing the cases before Israel’s Supreme Court. The amended order could help the military overcome those difficulties, Mr. Cahana said.
Under the revised order, a deportation cannot be carried out until 72 hours after legal papers have been issued, and until the person served has had a chance to appeal in a military court.
Those convicted under the order could now face up to seven years in jail.
In the past, deportation orders could be carried out the same day they were served, with no appeal, so Captain Raz, of the Israeli military, said the amendment could actually help those without legal residency.
“It makes it easier for people without the right paperwork to appeal,” he said.
Turkey’s Prime Minister has described Israel as the “main threat to peace” in the Middle East.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan was speaking during a visit to Paris.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded saying he regretted Turkey’s “repeated attacks” on Israel.
Relations between the two countries have been worsening since the Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip in 2009, made worse by a recent diplomatic row.
Mr Erdogan was speaking to journalists before meeting the French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
“It is Israel that is the main threat to regional peace,” he said.
“If a country uses disproportionate force, in Palestine, in Gaza, uses phosphorus bombs we are not going to say ‘well done.'”
Both Israel and Hamas, which control the Gaza Strip, have been accused by the UN of war crimes during the 22-day offensive in December 2008 and January 2009.
Humiliation
Mr Netanyahu said he regretted the Turkish prime minister’s comments.
The Turkish envoy was made to sit lower than the Israeli deputy minister
“We are interested in good relations with Turkey and regret that Mr Erdogan chooses time after time to attack Israel,” he told reporters in Israel.
The countries have been allies in the past.
But earlier this week, the Turkish ambassador to Israel was recalled by Ankara, weeks after being humiliated in public by the Israeli deputy foreign minister.
Ambassador Oguz Celikkol was called into the Israeli foreign ministry in January and rebuked over a Turkish television series that showed Israeli intelligence agents kidnapping children.
Mr Celikkol was made to sit on a low chair while being lectured by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon.
Mr Ayalon later apologised for the rebuke.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared Mr Erdogan to Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Turkey’s prime minister said Sunday that the world is turning a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear program and that he intends to raise the issue at the nuclear summit in Washington.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan remarked that Iran’s nuclear program is being scrutinized because of its membership in the International Atomic Energy Agency whereas Israel, which has not signed a nonproliferation treaty, is free to do what it wants.
“We are disturbed by this and will say so,” Erdogan told reporters before his departure for Washington on Sunday.
The Israeli government has said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called off his trip to Washington because he believed Turkey and other Muslim nations would make an issue of Israel’s nuclear program.
Israel’s policy is to neither confirm nor deny that it possesses nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday that Israel has much to contribute to this week’s nuclear security summit even though Netanyahu was skipping the Washington conference.
Clinton said the world’s biggest concern on nuclear security is that terrorists will get control of bomb-making material. She said that Israel can do much to help thwart nuclear terror.
Representing Israel at U.S. President Barack Obama’s conference will be Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor.
Clinton’s remarks came in interviews with NBC’s Meet the Press and ABC’s This Week.
On Friday, a top U.S. official said the Obama administration believed Israel’s delegation to the nuclear summit will be “robust,” despite Netanyahu’s decision not to attend.
“We obviously would like to have the prime minister but the deputy prime minister will be leading the delegation and it will be a robust Israeli delegation,” U.S. National Security Adviser General Jim Jones told reporters traveling on Air Force One.
He also said that relationships between the U.S. and Israel are “ongoing, fine and continuous.”
Obama has invited more than 40 countries to the summit, which will deal with preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to terrorist groups.
EDITOR: The Ethnic Cleansing continues
The process of ‘cleansing’ Palestine of its indigenous population, now continuing for 6 decades, is periodically shifting gear, with new actions, regulations and atrocities. The two articles below are examples of this process of ethnic cleansing – a racist, nationalistic and colonial project of Zionism, never fora moment stopped, forever moving forward to dispossess and exile as many Palestinians as possible. The means are a myriad: ‘legal’ confiscation of land, denial of services or access, physical destruction of homes, denial of water, closing off huge areas by the apartheid wall, ‘security closures’ uprooting of fruit trees, prevention of land tilling – all is kosher in order to dislodge Palestine of its people. The West has been systematically silent on all of those counts since 1967, and its only reaction was more support of the Israeli state and its atrocities.
By Amira Hass
A new military order aimed at preventing infiltration will come into force this week, enabling the deportation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank, or their indictment on charges carrying prison terms of up to seven years.
When the order comes into effect, tens of thousands of Palestinians will automatically become criminal offenders liable to be severely punished.
Given the security authorities’ actions over the past decade, the first Palestinians likely to be targeted under the new rules will be those whose ID cards bear home addresses in the Gaza Strip – people born in Gaza and their West Bank-born children – or those born in the West Bank or abroad who for various reasons lost their residency status. Also likely to be targeted are foreign-born spouses of Palestinians.
Advertisement
Until now, Israeli civil courts have occasionally prevented the expulsion of these three groups from the West Bank. The new order, however, puts them under the sole jurisdiction of Israeli military courts.
The new order defines anyone who enters the West Bank illegally as an infiltrator, as well as “a person who is present in the area and does not lawfully hold a permit.” The order takes the original 1969 definition of infiltrator to the extreme, as the term originally applied only to those illegally staying in Israel after having passed through countries then classified as enemy states – Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria.
The order’s language is both general and ambiguous, stipulating that the term infiltrator will also be applied to Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, citizens of countries with which Israel has friendly ties (such as the United States) and Israeli citizens, whether Arab or Jewish. All this depends on the judgment of Israel Defense Forces commanders in the field.
The new guidelines are expected to clamp down on protests in the West Bank.
The Hamoked Center for the Defense of the Individual was the first Israeli human rights to issue warnings against the order, signed six months ago by then-commander of IDF forces in Judea and Samaria Area Gadi Shamni.
Two weeks ago, Hamoked director Dalia Kerstein sent GOC Central Command Avi Mizrahi a request to delay the order, given “the dramatic change it causes in relation to the human rights of a tremendous number of people.”
According to the provisions, “a person is presumed to be an infiltrator if he is present in the area without a document or permit which attest to his lawful presence in the area without reasonable justification.” Such documentation, it says, must be “issued by the commander of IDF forces in the Judea and Samaria area or someone acting on his behalf.”
The instructions, however, are unclear over whether the permits referred to are those currently in force, or also refer to new permits that military commanders might issue in the future. The provision are also unclear about the status of bearers of West Bank residency cards, and disregards the existence of the Palestinian Authority and the agreements Israel signed with it and the PLO.
The order stipulates that if a commander discovers that an infiltrator has recently entered a given area, he “may order his deportation before 72 hours elapse from the time he is served the written deportation order, provided the infiltrator is deported to the country or area from whence he infiltrated.”
The order also allows for criminal proceedings against suspected infiltrators that could produce sentences of up to seven years. Individuals able to prove that they entered the West Bank legally but without permission to remain there will also be tried, on charges carrying a maximum sentence of three years. (According to current Israeli law, illegal residents typically receive one-year sentences.)
The new provision also allow the IDF commander in the area to require that the infiltrator pay for the cost of his own detention, custody and expulsion, up to a total of NIS 7,500.
Currently, Palestinians need special permits to enter areas near the separation fence, even if their homes are there, and Palestinians have long been barred from the Jordan Valley without special authorization. Until 2009, East Jerusalemites needed permission to enter Area A, territory under full PA control.
The fear that Palestinians with Gaza addresses will be the first to be targeted by this order is based on measures that Israel has taken in recent years to curtail their right to live, work, study or even visit the West Bank. These measures violated the Oslo Accords.
According to a decision by the West Bank commander that was not backed by military legislation, since 2007, Palestinians with Gaza addresses must request a permit to stay in the West Bank. Since 2000, they have been defined as illegal sojourners if they have Gaza addresses, as if they were citizens of a foreign state. Many of them have been deported to Gaza, including those born in the West Bank.
One group expected to be particularly harmed by the new rules are Palestinians who moved to the West Bank under family reunification provisions, which Israel stopped granting for several years.
In 2007, amid a number of Hamoked petitions and as a goodwill gesture to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, tens of thousands of people received Palestinian residency cards. The PA distributed the cards, but Israel had exclusive control over who could receive them. Thousands of Palestinians, however, remained classified as “illegal sojourners,” including many who are not citizens of any other country.
The new order is the latest step by the Israeli government in recent years to require permits that limit the freedom of movement and residency previously conferred by Palestinian ID cards. The new regulations are particularly sweeping, allowing for criminal measures and the mass expulsion of people from their homes.
The IDF Spokesman’s Office said in response, “The amendments to the order on preventing infiltration, signed by GOC Central Command, were issued as part of a series of manifests, orders and appointments in Judea and Samaria, in Hebrew and Arabic as required, and will be posted in the offices of the Civil Administration and military courts’ defense attorneys in Judea and Samaria. The IDF is ready to implement the order, which is not intended to apply to Israelis, but to illegal sojourners in Judea and Samaria.”
Palestinian Bedouins are protesting against discrimination by the Israeli government [GETTY]
On this year’s Land Day, tens of thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel marched in Sakhnin, an Israeli city in the Lower Galilee, to protest against past and present systematic discrimination. But with the focus on Israel’s policies of land confiscation, there was significance in a second protest that day.
”]In the Negev (referred to as al-Naqab by Palestinian Bedouins), over 3,000 attended a rally at al-Araqib, an ‘unrecognised’ Palestinian Bedouin village whose lands are being targeted by the familiar partnership of the Israeli state and the Jewish National Fund.
The historical context for the crisis facing Palestinian Bedouins today is important, as the Israeli government and Zionist groups try to propagate the idea that the problems, so far as they exist, are ‘humanitarian’ or ‘cultural’.
Even the category of ‘Bedouin’ is historically and politically loaded, with many disputing what they see as an Israeli ‘divide and rule’ strategy towards the Palestinians.
Alienated and ‘unrecognised’
During the Nakba, the vast majority of the Palestinian Bedouins in the Negev – from a pre-1948 population of 65,000 to 100,000 – were expelled. Those who remained were forcibly concentrated by the Israeli military in an area known as the ‘siyag’ (closure).
The military regime experienced by Palestinian citizens until 1966 meant further piecemeal expulsions, expropriation of land, and restrictions on movement. Ultimately, only 19 out of 95 tribes remained.
The defining dynamic between the Israeli state and its Palestinian minority has been the expropriation of Arab land and its transfer to state or Jewish ownership.
Israel refused to recognise the land rights of the Palestinian Bedouins, who today are alienated from almost all of their land through a complex combination of land law and planning boundaries.
An estimated 70,000 to 80,000 Palestinian citizens in the Negev live in dozens of ‘unrecognised villages’ – communities that the state refuse to acknowledge exist despite the fact that some pre-date the establishment of Israel and others are the result of the Israeli military’s forced relocation drives.
These shanty towns are refused access to basic infrastructure.
One approach the Israeli state has taken is to create, or ‘legalise’, a small number of towns and villages in the hope that more Palestinians will move into these areas.
Yet even this policy, often presented as a ‘humane’ response to ‘Bedouin’ needs, highlights a disparity: Jewish regional authorities and individual farms enjoy a massively lower population density compared to the space allotted by the state to Palestinian townships, which are ranked among the most deprived communities in the country.
‘Developing the Negev’
The Israeli government, meanwhile, along with agencies like the Jewish National Fund and Jewish Agency, are preoccupied with the idea of ‘developing the Negev’, and boosting its population.
In March, the ‘Negev 2010′ conference was held in Beir al-Saba’ (Beersheva), drawing hundreds of politicians and business people, with the focus being attracting 300,000 new residents to the area.
Speakers included Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, Silvan Shalom, the Negev and Galilee development minister, and Ariel Atias, the housing minister.
Last year, Shalom held a joint press conference with religious Zionist rabbis to outline plans for increasing the south’s population, with one of the rabbis stressing the need for a “Jewish majority” in the region.
Atias, for his part, has previously expressed his belief that it is “a national duty to prevent the spread” of Palestinian citizens.
It is not, therefore, hard to read between the lines when Israeli policy makers and Zionist officials from organisations like the Jewish National Fund talk about ‘developing the Negev’.
Zionist frontier
The Negev is the location for classic, unfiltered Zionist frontier discourse.
The Jewish National Fund in the UK talks about supporting “the pioneers who are bringing the desert to life”, while an article in the Zionist magazine B’Nai B’Rith called the Negev “the closest thing to the tabula rasa many of Israel’s pre-state pioneers found when they first came to the Holy Land”.
The idea of the ’empty’ land sits uncomfortably alongside another important emphasis – ‘protection’ or ‘redemption’.
As the Jewish National Fund’s US chief executive put it in January 2009, “if we don’t get 500,000 people to move to the Negev in the next five years, we’re going to lose it”. To who, he did not need to say.
There were no illusions about the meaning of this discourse, and its consequences, at a February conference which brought together academics and experts specialising in issues facing the Bedouins of the Negev.
Through the seminars and discussions, one theme clearly came through: The relationship between the Palestinian Bedouins and the Israeli state was rapidly deteriorating.
A number of the organisers of, and speakers at, ‘Rethinking the Paradigms: Negev Bedouin Research 2000+’ were themselves from the Negev, where overcrowding, home demolitions, and dispossession are features of everyday life for Palestinians.
The conference was one of the first of its kind in the UK, sponsored by the British Academy and Exeter University’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies and Politics Department.
Excluded from discourse
Western media coverage of the structural discrimination and discriminatory land and housing policies experienced by Palestinian Bedouins has generally been poor.
In a discourse shaped by Zionist and Orientalist tropes, the Negev is a vast, wild, desert; a frontier to be civilised. The ‘Bedouin’, meanwhile, are either invisible or exotic savages, objects of benevolent philanthropy.
Furthermore, the international ‘peace process’ has meant that the question of Palestine has become the story of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian citizens of Israel have been left out, a situation exacerbated by the media mentality of ‘if it bleeds it leads’. Core issues facing Palestinian Bedouins – land control, zoning, bureaucratic and physical boundaries of exclusion – are not considered suitable fare.
This nonexistent or weak coverage is regrettable, particularly as Israel’s policies in the Negev towards the Palestinian Bedouin minority are highly illuminating for understanding the state’s position vis-à-vis the Palestinians in a more general sense.
Moreover, tension is building in the Negev over Israel’s continued apartheid-like policies. Palestinian Bedouins continue to resist the strategies of the Israeli state and Zionist agencies, through legal battles, and grassroots organisation, like the Regional Council for the Unrecognised Villages.
Perhaps one of the main kinds of resistance being offered by the Palestinians in the Negev is their determination to stay. This steadfastness is a direct refusal of a strategy of home demolitions, dispossession and Judaisation.
The recent protest in al-Araqib could only be a foretaste of things to come, as Palestinian Bedouins demand equality from a state seemingly unwilling to change.
Ben White is a freelance journalist and writer specialising in Palestine/Israel. His articles have appeared in publications like the Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’, New Statesman, Electronic Intifada, Middle East International, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and others. His first book, Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide, was published in 2009 by Pluto Press.
When creating a monster, one knows how it all starts, but hardly where it will end, as Dr. Frankenstein has found out. Now, after five years of careful incitement by Israel, and especially by Netanyahu, the Iran Nuclear Monster is alive and well, and is actually biting back at it unamused creator. By fanning the flames of this particular fire, and helping to make it such a central issue of the West’s agenda, all of a sudden Netanyahu finds himself being asked by his dinner-table partners: “so how is your nuclear bomb this morning?”. Not fair, is it? After all, all he wanted is to discuss the Iranian future nuclear capacity, so why would anyone wish to discuss Israel’s current nuclear capacity, unless they were antisemitic? Do Jews not have eyes? Can they not have bombs, sentiments, feeelings…
Well, it all went haywire very badly, like that other issue of the day, the Anat Kam story. All Israel wanted is to put on trial the ones who tell of its murders, and instead, the Internatiuonal Elders of Antisemitism, those horribhle people sourounding poor little Zionism , have made this a discussion of Israel’s continuing crimes! Is there no justice for the poor little war criminals?
Saturday, 10 April 2010
Given his determination to focus the world’s attention on the perils of Iran’s nuclear programme, Benjamin Netanyahu must have had very powerful reasons to pull out of next week’s nuclear security summit in Washington. In fact, the Israeli Prime Minister had two of them.
The lesser one, probably, was his desire to avoid another meeting with President Obama – one that might have highlighted not Tehran’s suspected drive to build a bomb, but the damaging rift with the US over Israel’s continuing settlements expansion in East Jerusalem. More important however, we suspect, was Mr Netanyahu’s fear that the 47-nation conference would have turned an unwelcome spotlight on Israel’s own undeclared nuclear arsenal.
By all accounts, Turkey and Egypt planned to raise the issue of Israel’s refusal to subscribe to the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This enables it to avoid international inspections, and thus maintain ambiguity about whether it has nuclear weapons. Israel is presumed to have anywhere between 80 and 200 such warheads, as an ultimate insurance policy against aggression.
But open acknowledgement would change the entire diplomatic equation in the region. Egypt and Turkey are leading a campaign for the Middle East to be declared a nuclear-free zone by the United Nations, not least because of their irritation with the double standards implicit in Israel’s non-participation in the NPT.
Neither wants Iran to acquire nuclear weapons – a development that, if unchecked, would almost certainly set off a nuclear arms race in the region. This would make the Middle East even more dangerous than it is now, and increase the risk of weapons technology, even an actual weapon, falling into terrorist hands. This risk is at the top of the Washington summit agenda.
But it understandably rankles the entire Arab world that the West turns a complaisant eye to Israel’s status as an undeclared nuclear power, while pressing other countries in the region to refrain from developing such technology. Not surprisingly, Iran makes this very argument to justify its own nuclear programme. One way and another, the crisis with Tehran will not be resolved without addressing Israel’s own capability.
By ETHAN BRONNER and ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: April 8, 2010 JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has canceled his plans to attend the Nuclear Security summit meeting in Washington next week and will send a minister in his place, Israeli and American government officials said Thursday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will send his minister for intelligence affairs to a meeting.
Russia and U.S. Sign Nuclear Arms Reduction Pact (April 9, 2010)
The official declined to explain the last-minute cancellation. But Israeli news media reported that the prime minister feared that Muslim states were planning on using the occasion to raise the question of Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear armed power in the Middle East, but it refuses to discuss the issue and has declined to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
The official said that Dan Meridor, the minister for intelligence affairs, would attend the meeting, which starts Monday.
In Washington, an administration official confirmed that Mr. Netanyahu had canceled his plans to attend. The official said the United States believed that the cancellation was linked to Israeli concerns that the meeting would be used by some countries to focus on Israel’s nuclear program and its refusal to sign the nonproliferation treaty.
Leaders of nearly four dozen countries are scheduled to attend the meeting, where President Obama is hoping to reach an agreement on securing vulnerable nuclear stockpiles in an attempt to keep them safe from terrorists. But that issue could be further complicated if attending leaders insist on broadening the conversation to include Israel’s reported arsenal. Many Muslim countries, while acknowledging their concern over Iran’s nuclear program, have insisted that the entire region must be made nuclear free.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Friday quoted a senior Israeli official as saying, “In the last few days, we have received reports about the intention of several participant states to depart from the issue of fighting terrorism and instead misuse the event to goad Israel” over the treaty.
The summit meeting is not supposed to focus on individual nations, but the weapons of North Korea and the nuclear program of Iran, as well as possible sanctions against Iran, are expected to be discussed. Meanwhile, work on possible wording for new sanctions resolutions began at the United Nations on Thursday, where the five permanent members of the Security Council, along with Germany, met to begin discussions.
The Israeli prime minister’s cancellation also comes against the background of recent tensions between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government over the terms for restarting peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. The United States has asked Israel to take certain steps, and Mr. Netanyahu has yet to respond. The main disagreement is over Israel’s building in contested East Jerusalem.
Focus on Iran has boosted demands for a regional approach to disarmament of nuclear weapons in the Middle East
Ian Black, Middle East editor
Israel is estimated to have 150-200 atomic bombs, deliverable by aircraft, missile or submarine. Photograph: Havakuk Levison/Reuters
Binyamin Netanyahu’s decision not to take part in next week’s nuclear security summit in the US will be seen as a victory for mounting Arab and Muslim pressure on Israel over its most controversial and secret weapon.
Egypt has long campaigned on the issue of Israel’s atomic arsenal. Last month the Arab League called on the UN to declare the Middle East a nuclear-free zone. Saudi Arabia has been active too. Turkey also backs this demand as it offers to mediate between the west and Iran over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
Israel, constantly highlighting the danger from Iran, is estimated to have 150 to 200 atomic bombs, deliverable by aircraft, missile or submarine. Its programme was developed after France built a nuclear reactor at Dimona in the Negev desert in the 1950s. The so-called Samson option was seen by Israel’s first generation of leaders as designed to prevent another Holocaust – its bombs reportedly bearing the slogan “never again”.
Israel, unlike Iran or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, never signed the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), which allows countries to develop civilian nuclear power in exchange for forgoing weapons – supposedly the preserve of the five permanent members of the UN security council.
India, Pakistan and North Korea have swelled the ranks of the weapons states, but unlike them, Israel has never come out of the closet, preferring a policy of so-called nuclear ambiguity – keeping its enemies guessing. Israel’s official line has always been that it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
Fears about Iran’s nuclear ambitions have reinforced domestic support and perhaps international tolerance for Israel retaining its arsenal. In diplomatic terms, this has long been a no-go area for the US, Britain and other western countries. But the focus on Iran has also boosted Arab demands for a regional approach to disarmament.
Last September, for the first time in 18 years, Israel, the US and other powers failed to prevent passage of a resolution by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) calling on Israel to sign the NPT and open up Dimona to international inspectors.
Egypt played a key role in negotiating the NPT in the 1960s and tried but failed to link the renewal of the treaty in 1995 to the creation of a nuclear-free zone. Syria, an ally of Iran, denies harbouring nuclear weapons ambitions, a issue that was dramatically highlighted in 2007 when Israeli warplanes destroyed an alleged reactor on the Euphrates.
“There is widespread resentment in the region towards the NPT and what it seeks to achieve, its double standards and lack of political will,” Egypt’s UN ambassador, Hisham Badr, said recently. “We in the Middle East feel we have, short of better word, been tricked into giving concessions for promises that never materialised.”
Israel has never confirmed or denied that it possesses atomic weapons
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has cancelled a visit to the US where he was to attend a summit on nuclear security, Israeli officials say.
No more nice guy...
Mr Netanyahu made the decision after learning that Egypt and Turkey intended to raise the issue of Israel’s presumed nuclear arsenal, the officials said.
Mr Obama is due to host dozens of world leaders at the two-day conference, which begins in Washington on Monday.
Israel has never confirmed or denied that it possesses atomic weapons.
Israel’s Intelligence and Atomic Energy Minister Dan Meridor will take Netanyahu’s place in the nuclear summit, Israeli radio said.
More than 40 countries are expected at the meeting, which will focus on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to militant groups.
Iran’s issue
According to Israeli officials, Turkey and Egypt are planning to call on Israel to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“These states intend to exploit the occasion in order to slam Israel,” said a senior Israeli source.
ANALYSIS
Paul Wood
Mr Netanyahu’s decision is on the face of it quite odd. After all, he must have expected some focus on Israel’s own nuclear programme at this conference.
Indeed, he acknowledged this possibility two days ago when he announced he would attend. He said that since Israel was not a terrorist or a rogue state, he had nothing to fear.
Certainly Israel is worried about pressure to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT. That is something which will increasingly become an issue since the Israelis have also announced their intention to build a civilian nuclear power station to deal with a severe electricity shortage.
But what about Israel’s nuclear weapons? The former US President, Jimmy Carter, who is certainly in a position to know, has said the Israelis have at least 150 warheads.
Mr Netanyahu has said his main priority in office is dealing with Iran’s supposed intentions to develop both warheads and long range missiles capable of hitting Israel. In these circumstances, Mr Netanyahu thinks it more vital than ever to protect his own weapons programme.
“The prime minister expressed his displeasure over these intentions, and he will therefore not be travelling to the summit.”
Mr Netanyahu has said his main priority is dealing with Iran’s supposed intention to develop both warheads and long-range missiles capable of hitting Israel.
Along with India, Pakistan and North Korea, Israel is one of just four states that have not signed up to the NPT, which has 189 signatories.
Earlier this week, President Obama unveiled the new Nuclear Posture Review – which narrows the circumstances in which the US would use nuclear weapons – outlining his country’s long-term strategy of nuclear disarmament.
On Thursday, the US president and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, signed a landmark nuclear arms treaty in the Czech capital, Prague.
That treaty commits the former Cold War enemies to reduce the number of deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 each – 30% lower than the previous ceiling.
The BBC’s Kim Ghattas in Washington says the cancellation of Mr Netanyahu’s Washington visit comes at a time of frosty relations between the two states.
The Israeli premier failed to see eye-to-eye with Mr Obama during his most recent US visit last month on the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, our correspondent adds.
Washington criticised the building of Jewish homes in East Jerusalem, which prompted the Palestinians to pull out of US-brokered indirect peace talks.
There were also reports that one of Mr Netanyahu’s confidants called Mr Obama a “disaster” for Israel.
Barack Obama considers plan B for Middle East settlement as relations between Israel and US deteriorate
Binyamin Netanyahu has cancelled his trip to Washington next week. Photograph: Sebastian Scheiner/AP
Relations between Israel and the US took another turn for the worsetoday after the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, cancelled a trip to Washington next week amid reports that Barack Obama’s administration is seriously considering a Plan B for a Middle East peace settlement.
An Obama administration official said that the preference is still for talks between Israel and the Palestinians but admitted that if that failed, it will look at alternative options, including Obama setting out his own Middle East proposal for a comprehensive peace deal.
A group of senior foreign advisers, including former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who give informal advice to the White House at regular meetings, recommended recently that if the attempts to get the Israeli-Palestinian talks under way continued to be stalled, the US should impose its own plan.
Netanyahu had been dithering over whether to attend a 47-nation summit in Washington next week to discuss nuclear weapons proliferation. His office announced in the middle of the week that he would be attending but on Thursday reversed this. His deputy, Dan Meridor, is to attend in his place.
An Israeli official said it was because Turkey and Egypt and other Muslim nations intended to raise questions about Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Relations between Netanyahu and Obama have been tense because the Israeli prime minister refuses to provide concrete assurances that Israel will stop building Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian pre-condition for beginning talks.
Obama’s national security adviser, General Jim Jones, briefing reporters yesterday on a flight back to Washington from the Prague nuclear treaty signing, expressed disappointment that Netanyahu would not be present but said he understood that he had other commitments related to Holocaust Day events.
Asked about a US Plan B for an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, Jones said no decision had been taken and the White House remained committed to trying, firstly, to get indirect talks – “proximity” talks – under way that would, hopefully, lead to direct talks.
When a reporter said it sounded as if Plan B was under consideration, Jones said: “The idea of a US plan has been talked about for years. It’s not something new. But there will be no surprise to any of the participants at all. So we’re focused on the resumption of the talks. The best way to help us in our collective goals is to restart the peace talks. It will also help us in what we’re trying to achieve with Iran.”
An Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was a genuine reluctance to go down the route of presenting a US peace plan because it was difficult to impose a deal on two antagonists. He said there was a problem because some Palestinians and Arab countries assumed that Washington was going to do this and had discounted going into proximity talks.
Avner Cohen, author of Israel and the Bomb, interviewed on RT America, criticised Netanyahu for not attending the summit. “I think it is silly, an unfortunate decision,” he said, adding that the prospect of Muslim nations raising Israel’s nuclear capability was not a reason not to attend.
