Tag: Obama

May 4, 2010

Targeting Iran nuclear program, by Carlos Latuff

US envoy visits Israel for ‘indirect’ negotiations: The Independent

By Jeffrey Heller, Reuters, in Jerusalem
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
President Barack Obama’s Middle East peace envoy arrived in Tel Aviv yesterday for expected indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks but Israel voiced doubt about any breakthrough without direct negotiations.

Hours before the US envoy, George Mitchell, flew into Israel, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, conferred in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh about the upcoming US-mediated negotiations. Mr Obama’s peace efforts received a boost on Saturday when Arab states approved four months of “proximity talks”, whose expected start in March was delayed by Israel’s announcement of a settlement project on occupied land near Jerusalem.
An Israeli Defence Ministry strategist Amos Gilad said on Israel Radio that the indirect negotiations would begin on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear when the envoy would hold talks with the Palestinian side. The executive committee of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was scheduled to meet only on Saturday to give the formal nod to start the negotiations.

The Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor described indirect talks as “a strange affair” after face-to-face peace negotiations stretching back 16 years.
There have been no direct talks for the past 18 months, a period that has included Israel’s Gaza war, the election of a right-wing Israeli government and entrenched rule in the Gaza Strip by Hamas Islamists opposed to the US peace efforts.

“I think it is clear to everyone that real talks are direct talks, and I don’t think there is a chance of a significant breakthrough until the direct talks begin,” Mr Meridor said.
“The talks will be held. The envoy, Mr Mitchell, will talk to us, to them. But the more we hasten to arrive at direct talks, the more we will be able to address the heart of the matter.”

Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Mr Abbas, said the negotiations would show whether the Israeli government was serious about peace and “test the sincerity” of the Obama administration in pursuing Palestinian statehood.
“The truth is we are not in need of negotiations. We are in need of decisions by the Israeli government. This is the time for decisions more than it is the time for negotiations,” Mr Rdainah said.

In an interview published on Sunday in the Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam, Mr Abbas said Mr Obama had given a commitment he would not allow “any provocative measures” by either side. Mr Abbas has long insisted Israel freeze Jewish settlement building before any negotiations resume, and he had rejected as insufficient a temporary construction moratorium that Mr Netanyahu ordered in the occupied West Bank last November.

EDITOR: Even the Right has noticed…

Moshe Arens might be right-wing, but stupid he is not. He admits some of the facts that others in the Israeli elite seems to be denying at all cost.

Let’s stop pretending: Haaretz

The administration in Washington is trying to force on Israel a peace settlement with the Palestinians.
By Moshe Arens
Tags: Israel US Israel news Middle East peace
It is almost a year now that a certain ritual has marked the public discourse between Washington and Jerusalem. Israel gets a good slap in the face and a few days later someone in Washington announces that the U.S.-Israeli relationship is rock-solid. The Israeli prime minister is demeaned in Washington and a day later he declares that the U.S.-Israeli relationship is firm as ever.

Anybody who has been involved in fostering the U.S.-Israeli relationship over the years, so important to both countries, knows that things are not as they have been for the past 50 years. The relationship, which on occasion is being described in Washington as “unshakable and unbreakable,” has for the past year been shaken up quite a bit. The administration in Washington is trying to force on Israel a peace settlement with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a settlement that would involve Israel withdrawing to the 1949 armistice lines that were established after it repelled the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, which were attempting to destroy the newborn state.

They want to set the clock back, seemingly oblivious of the many wars and acts of terror that were launched against Israel in the years since then, the serious threats that are being directed against Israel at present, the dramatic changes that have taken place in the past 61 years, and the Jewish people’s internationally recognized rights to their ancient homeland. This bitter medicine needs to be taken by the people of Israel, it is argued, because it serves the interests of the United States, and in addition, the administration in Washington believes that it is also good for Israel.

For many years the differences between the United States and Israel were discussed in intimate forums and not taken public, in the common realization that venting in public the inevitable differences even among the best of friends would only harm the interests of both countries and give comfort and encouragement to their common enemies. Not since Dwight Eisenhower demanded that David Ben-Gurion withdraw the Israel Defense Forces from the Sinai and the Gaza Strip in 1957 has the White House openly challenged Israel. Now, the administration in Washington has no compunction about publicly airing its displeasure with Israel.

The recent visit of the U.S. vice president and the routine approval during his stay by a local planning body of construction plans in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem was turned into an “insult to the United States.” It was followed by an angry telephone call by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a subsequent attack on Israel in Clinton’s appearance on U.S. television.

In the interim, soothing words were heard from Washington until Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, where he was duly humiliated. Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist close to the White House, reminded Israel in a recent interview of the generosity of the United States in granting Israel $3 billion annually for military assistance while America contends with a severe economic crisis. What for years was seen in Washington and Jerusalem as assistance that served the interests of both countries is now being depicted as largesse for which Israel needs to express its gratitude by accepting American demands.

The Netanyahu government has chosen to act as if nothing has changed, and that the occasional signs of displeasure coming from Washington can be appeased by minor or temporary Israeli concessions. The result seems to be the opposite. The Israeli government is seen in Washington as disingenuous and attempting to outsmart the White House.

The time has come to stop pretending. Whatever chance that may exist to conduct productive negotiations with Abbas is being hampered by the demands being made on Israel by Washington. They only provide excuses for Abbas to refuse to enter serious negotiations until these demands are met. He cannot be expected to be less of a Palestinian than U.S. President Barack Obama. While objective difficulties exist in any case because of Hamas’ control of Gaza and Abbas’ tenuous position in Judea and Samaria, outside pressure only makes things more difficult. Peace cannot be imposed. There is little doubt that the administration in Washington will learn this lesson sooner or later.

US envoy Mitchell returns to Middle East: BBC

George Mitchell is back in the region but it is not clear when talks will start
US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has returned to the region, attempting to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Israeli media say the proximity talks will resume on Wednesday.
However, Palestinian leaders are said to require the backing of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which will not meet until Saturday.
The Palestinian Authority has refused to attend the indirect proximity talks mediated by Mr Mitchell since March.
These were knocked off course by an announcement that Israel had approved plans for new homes in the East Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo during a visit to Israel by US Vice-President Joe Biden. The move caused deep strain in Israeli-US relations. Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been stalled since 2008.
Constructive talks
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak.
They spoke for 90 minutes in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
An Israeli government statement said the talks had been “constructive” and had taken place “in a good atmosphere”.
During their meeting, Mr Netanyahu and Mr Mubarak “reviewed Egyptian and international efforts to prepare the ground for the indirect talks aimed at a two-state solution,” the Egyptian news agency Mena said.
The Israeli prime minister’s office said they had discussed “renewing the peace process and other regional and bilateral issues”.
Mr Netanyahu later discussed the peace efforts with US President Barack Obama in a telephone call, officials said.
According to the White House Mr Obama stressed the importance of “substantive” proximity talks and the need for direct contacts to start soon.
Mending ties
The Palestinian Authority’s formal position is that it will not enter direct talks unless Israel completely halts building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In November, Israel announced a 10-month suspension of new building in the West Bank, under heavy US pressure. But it considers areas within the Jerusalem municipality as its territory and thus not subject to the restrictions.
But reports suggest that an unofficial slowdown of approvals for major projects in East Jerusalem may have been instigated by Mr Netanyahu in an attempt to help mend relations with the US strained by March’s announcement.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967. It insists Jerusalem will remain its undivided capital, although Palestinians want to establish their capital in the east of the city.
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.

Continue reading May 4, 2010

May 3, 2010

EDITOR: The Pot Calling the Kettle Black…

The report below speaks of the amazing pervasiveness of abuse of Israeli soldiers by their officers. I tend to believe this report, and one can only wonder how much more pervasive is the abuse and torture of the Palestinian population, who do not have an Ombudsman to go to, and whose complaints are, as a matter of course, always dismissed. An army, a country, a culture based on abuse, torture, theft and barbarity.

IDF report reveals serious abuse of soldiers by commanding officers: Haaretz

Annual report of the IDF Ombudsman reveals the army received 6,100 complaints from soldiers, 60% of which were justified.
The annual report of the IDF Ombudsman, which was served to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday, has revealed serious cases of mistreatment of soldiers inside the Israel Defense Forces.

The report included cases of abuse and humiliation of IDF soldiers by their commanders and inadequate medical treatment in IDF medical clinics.
The Ombudsman report revealed that 6,100 complaints were lodged by soldiers against their commanders in 2009, a decrease of 400 complaints from 2008. Of the 6,100 complaints lodged, 60 percent of the complaints were found to have merit by the IDF Ombudsman

In one incident cited in the report, a commander in one of the IDF’s combat units attacked a soldier who wasn’t feeling well by forcefully kicking him in the chest. The IDF Ombudsman found that the battalion commander knew of the incident but responded apathetically and only chose to investigate the incident two months after the fact, following inquiries by the IDF Ombudsman.

“Unfortunately, the regiment commander did not take any steps to correct the situation until the office of the Ombudsman intervened. This type of response shows his soldiers weakness and disinterest, and surely isn’t conducive to trusting relations between soldiers and their commanders,” the report read.

Another case revealed a suicidal soldier who told the deputy commander of his company that he was having a hard time in his post, and threatened to harm himself if he wasn’t transferred to a different post. The deputy commander then handed him a knife and said: “Come on, let’s see if you are able to hurt yourself.” The soldier then proceeded to cut his hand with the knife. The Ombudsman condemned the mistreatment of the soldier and said that several other similar incidents occurred.

The report also revealed defective medical services offered to soldiers.  “Unfortunately, the reality on the ground shows that soldiers are made to wait for lengthy periods of time for general and expert doctor appointments,” the report read.

The report found that soldiers typically waited between two to three weeks for a routine checkup, and in cases of emergency, soldiers would wait for many hours.

One combat soldier with a viral infection had to wait three months to see a doctor and four months to receive medication for his infection.

In another incident, a soldier was brought to the military clinic after getting bitten by a yellow scorpion. Even though orders obligate the doctor to refer the patient to the nearest hospital, the doctor instructed the paramedic to give the soldier an infusion and painkillers because the doctor was sleeping and didn’t want to get out of bed.

An IDF spokesperson said in a response that the IDF had received the report and is committed to studying its contents carefully, learning the necessary lessons and to making up for wrongdoings.

Closed Zone: New Animation film

Despite declarations that it has “disengaged” from the Gaza Strip, Israel maintains control of the Strip’s overland border crossings, territorial waters, and air space. This includes substantial, albeit indirect, control of the Rafah Crossing.

During the past 18 months, Israel tightened its closure of Gaza, almost completely restricting the passage of goods and people both to and from the Strip.

These policies punish innocent civilians with the goal of exerting pressure on the Hamas government, violating the rights of 1.5 million people who seek only to live ordinary lives – to be reunited with family, to pursue higher education, to receive quality medical treatment, and to earn a living.

The effects of the closure were particularly harsh during the military operation of Dec. 2008 – Jan. 2009. For three weeks, Gaza residents had nowhere to flee to escape the bombing.

Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement calls on the State of Israel to fully open Gaza’s crossings and to allow the real victims of the closure – 1.5 million human beings – the freedom of movement necessary to realize their dreams and aspirations.

EDITOR: Haaretz and JCall

I have reported few days ago here about JCall, and it is interesting to read Haaretz enthusiastic reception of their call. This is even more interesting in the light of the unstinting support many of those signatories have given Israel over many decades… that many now relaise that the Occupation game is up, and that it is their civic duty to say so, is a measure of the crisis Israel is finding itself in, though it hardly seems to realise this fully.

A welcome Jewish voice: Haaretz Editorial

Like the members of the American Jewish lobby J Street, the people behind JCall don’t believe that automatic support of Israeli policy serves Israel’s true interests.
JCall, a new leftist European Jewish group, released over the weekend a petition signed by more than 3,000 Jews calling for an end to the occupation and Israeli expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The signatories, including important French philosophers Bernard-Henri Levy and Alain Finkielkraut, say the settlement policy undermines prospects for peace with the Palestinians based on a two-state solution. They express fear for the future of Israel as a Jewish, democratic and ethical state and are concerned by the global delegitimization campaign against Israel.

Like the members of the American Jewish lobby J Street, the people behind JCall don’t believe that automatic support of Israeli policy – which advocates, for instance, Jewish construction in East Jerusalem – serves Israel’s true interests.
Just as there was criticism of J Street in the United States, the veteran Jewish organizations in Europe have borne down on the new initiative, arguing that the petition will serve Israel’s enemies. And just as Israel’s Information and Diaspora Ministry expects Israeli tourists to defend the government’s settlement policy on their trips abroad, the critics are demanding that intellectuals and ethical people in the Diaspora should be disingenuous.

It is to be hoped that the Israeli government does not join the attack on JCall. During the latest crisis with the U.S. administration, Prime Minister Benjamim Netanyahu spared no effort in getting Jewish public figures like Elie Wiesel to join the battle against pressure for a construction freeze in East Jerusalem.

Those who recruit Jews from the right to support their policies must honor the right of the Jewish left to express its views. The contribution of Jewish peace activists in Europe is a suitable response to the damage that members of the Netanyahu government, mainly Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, are doing to Israel’s interests there.

The violent conflict between Israel and its neighbors and the suspension of peace talks have contributed to Diaspora Jewish communities’ increasing alienation from Israel. That trend is particularly noticeable among the youth.

The fact that thousands of Jews around the world, including prominent intellectuals, are advocating an end to nearly 43 years of malignant occupation is welcome news. Let’s hope that the voices of Israel’s friends in Paris, London and Brussels will be heard in Jerusalem.

Strenger than Fiction / Jewish liberals from all nations, unite: Haaretz

Diaspora Jews around the world are realizing the time has come to reject the right’s dictate that being pro-Israel means that you need to support the policies of Israeli governments, no matter what they do.
By Carlo Strenger
The failure of the Camp David summit in 2000 and the onset of the Second Intifada have in stages swung the pendulum of Israeli politics to the right to the current government that includes Avigdor Lieberman – one of the most anti-democratic ministers Israel has ever had, who is moving Israel ever closer to the brink of total international isolation – and the Shas Party whose main impact is to push construction in East Jerusalem and the settlements.

This has been reflected in an amazing distortion in the Jewish voice from the Diaspora, primarily the U.S., in the last decade. Judging from the media presence, you might think that most Jews are right-leaning and support Israel’s settlement policy and foot-dragging over ending the occupation. But this has never been true: most Diaspora Jews, including most of American Jewry, is committed to liberalism.

Now the pendulum is swinging back. Diaspora Jews around the world are beginning to realize that the time has come to reject the right’s dictate that being pro-Israel means that you need to support the policies of Israeli governments, no matter what they do; that the Jewish right represents a small minority of the Jewish people. Caring about friends and family doesn’t mean that we do not criticize them, when we believe that they are harming themselves. In caring for somebody’s wellbeing, we are often required to make clear that they are going the wrong way. Hence Liberal Jews in the Diaspora firmly stand by Israel while trenchantly criticizing the occupation and settlements.

This week a delegation of J Street representatives visited Israel. They were hosted by President Shimon Peres, and they heard from central Israeli politicians like Labor MK Matan Vilnai and from opposition leader Tzipi Livni that ending the occupation is Israel’s most urgent task to safeguard it as the democratic state of the Jewish people. The Netanyahu government’s attempt to brand J Street as outside the legitimate Jewish discourse has failed, and finally, after refusing to attend J Street’s first convention, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren met them a few weeks ago.

The movement initiated by J Street is now joined by the European JCall, which includes leading Jewish intellectuals like Bernard-Henri Levy and Alain Finkielkraut, and which will present its message to the European Parliament today. Their name is short for the Jewish European Call to Reason. This development is doubly important: first, because it gives a voice to the majority of European Jews, who, while caring for Israel, are liberal in orientation. Second: because its leaders are severely critical of Europe’s anti-Israeli left, as shown in Bernard-Henri Levy’s Left in Dark Times and Alain Finkielkraut’s The Defeat of Reason.

There are those on the European (and sometimes on the American) left that have moved into a simplistic, black-and-white worldview governed by what I call SLES, short for “Standard Left Explanatory System.” SLES is a remainder of the guilt that many Europeans feel about their colonial past. Its algorithm is very simple: always support the underdog, particularly if non-Western. If the underdog behaves immorally (9/11; 7/7; Hamas hiding weaponry and fighters in civilian buildings), always accuse the West, and preferably Jews, for having pushed them to do this. Never demand non-Western groups to take responsibility for their actions, but instead masochistically look for ways to make the West responsible.

The new Jewish Liberal voice refuses to give in to the pressures of the Jewish right to support Israel’s actions when if they are wrong-headed, immoral and destructive. It is critical of Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestinians territories after 43 years, and condemns the ongoing settlement construction.

At the same time it refuses, adamantly, to cave in to the masochistic tendency of SLES to look for Western culprits only, and systematically exposes anti-Semitic undercurrents in some of the anti-Israeli rhetoric. It strongly supports Palestinians’ right to a state of their own in which they can live in dignity and freedom, but it doesn’t let them off the hook for their dreadful mistakes, starting with the rejection of the UN partition agreement in 1947 and ending with electing the explicitly anti-Semitic Hamas into power in 2005.

It firmly believes that respecting Palestinians means to hold them responsible for their actions and consistently unmasks the tendency of the Arab world to accuse Israel of its own shortcomings and backwardness; and it never loses sight of the dangers in radical Islam, while seeking cooperation with moderate and progressive Arabs and Muslims.

The new Jewish Liberals are characterized by what philosopher Susan Neiman, in a wonderful book has called Moral Clarity: a combination of moral principles that are not to be compromised combined with insistence that reason rather than religious belief or dogmatic ideology must be the guide in making up our minds on questions of fact.

I predict the new Jewish liberal voice will become the predominant presence in Jewish discourse and politics of the Diaspora. Having suffered from irrational and evil persecution, prejudice and hatred, we Jews know how important the principles of Liberalism are, and it is time for us to apply them everywhere, and of course, first and foremost, in Israel.

It is now time for Israel’s liberals, who all but disappeared politically and have left public space except for a few enclaves to the right, to pick up the lead of the Diaspora, to make our voices forcefully heard. While being intransigent in opposing Israel’s occupation, the expansion of settlement and the disenfranchisement of Israeli Arabs, we must not fall into the trap of SLES. We must make clear to the electorate, that we do not just see Palestinians as victims, but as partners to be held responsible for their actions.

We must no longer let the likes of Avigdor Lieberman, whose worldview is illiberal, be the face of our country to the world. While holding the memory of the Holocaust sacred, we must refuse its politicization by Lieberman and Benjamin Netanyahu. While not blinding ourselves to the dangers of Islamic radicalism and Iran’s striving for hegemony, we must reject the fear-mongering of the right that has no positive message and no vision for Israel’s future.

Netanyahu has said to his Likud Party that they are supposed to be liberal and democratic. We must hold him to his word and demand that he drop his illiberal coalition partners, and form a government truly committed to liberal principles, with Kadima and Labor as his main partners. And we must demand of the Labor party to finally live up to its values, and pressure Netanyahu to move Israel towards moral clarity that is at the core of the Jewish Liberal vision.

Continue reading May 3, 2010

May 2, 2010

EDITOR: Storm Clouds Gather Around Continuous Israeli Intransigence

More and more are now declaring their stand against Israeli atrocities: countries, organisations, companies and individual artists and intellectuals, with many more under moral and political pressure to join the movement to end Israeli Apartheid, occupation and injustice. This week, Gil Scott-Heron was only the latest artist to announce that he will not play in Israel. Now Volvo and Caterpillar are under intense pressure to stop trading with Israel. 3000 European Jewish intellectuals called today on the European Parliament to stop supporting Israel automatically, and UC student Governors have called upon the university to disinvest from Israeli companies and other trading or supporting the occupation. The international pressure is building up against Israeli atrocities, and is likely to further intensify; the US is reportedly acting towards passing a UN resolution towards a nuclear-free Middle East, something Israel will fight tooth and nail against, as they would against any of Obama’s limp attempts to bring about the defunct two-state solution.

While this is all excellent news, it is really a very dangerous moment; Israel is now preparing its response to this pressure, and it is the normative one – a military strike of enormous damage and destruction, against the ‘usual suspects’. Currently, the targets discussed are Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and now also Iran. While such a reaction to political pressure sounds (and is) criminally misguided, it is the only type of reaction Israel is used to, and is apt at, or feels secure with. The time of great danger is upon us.

Caterpillar equipment used in extrajudicial killing near Hebron: The Electronic Intifada

Press release, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, 29 April 2010

The following press release was issued by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights on 26 April 2010:

On Monday 26 April 2010, Israeli occupation forces killed a Palestinian man, Ali Ismael Ali Swaiti, 45, in Beit Awwa in the West Bank district of Hebron, after demolishing a house while he was inside. Israeli occupation forces claim that Ali Swaiti had been wanted for several years. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns this crime — which constitutes an extrajudicial execution — and calls upon the international community to work towards bringing to trial those Israeli politicians and commanders suspected of committing war crimes.

According to investigations conducted by PCHR and eyewitness testimony, Israeli occupation forces entered Beit Awwa town in the far south of Hebron at approximately 3:00am on Monday 26 April 2010, supported by military armored vehicles, a bulldozer and a Caterpillar digging vehicle. Israeli forces surrounded the house in which Ali Swaiti was located, using sound bombs. The home belongs to Mahmoud Abdul Aziz Swaiti and is located in Khellet al-Foulah, in the north of the town. During the operation, Israeli soldiers broke into numerous other houses in the area and turned them into observation points and firing posts.

After some minutes, Israeli occupation forces (IOF) evacuated at gunpoint the family living in the targeted one-story house as well as a family living in another two-story house, which belongs to the family of Ahmed Abdul Aziz Swaiti. The two families were detained outdoors for some time before they were taken to an adjacent house belonging to Abdul Jalil Swaiti. They were detained there with other families, all of whom were interrogated regarding the whereabouts of the targeted person.

At approximately 5:40am, an Israeli bulldozer began to destroy the fences surrounding the targeted house. It progressed towards the house and started to demolish it, but it retreated as it was fired at from inside the house. Israeli forces stationed in the neighboring houses opened fire at the house for 15 minutes from all sides before an explosion took place inside the house. Residents of the area reported that the explosion resulted from the shelling of the house.

At approximately 6:00am, the Caterpillar vehicle began to drive into and destroy the fences of the targeted house. After that, a digging vehicle continued demolishing the house, and then retreated to allow the renewed advance of the bulldozer and the search for the body of Swaiti.

At approximately 7:00am, the bulldozer lifted the body of Swaiti out of the rubble and dropped it onto a road close to the demolished house before moving it another 10 meters away. At approximately 7:30am, an Israeli soldier fired at least two shots at the body of Swaiti from a distance of three meters. At approximately 8:00am, Israeli occupation forces left the homes in which they had taken position.

In the meantime, Palestinian civilians had left their homes and many of them hurried towards the area of the attack. They carried Swaiti’s body to take it indoors. However, some people clashed with Israeli forces as they withdrew. Israeli occupation forces fired at those people using rubber-coated metal bullets, wounding five Palestinians including a boy and a young woman. The wounded are as follows:

1. Mohammed Mahmoud Masalmah, 23, wounded by a bullet to the head;
2. Baha Mohammed Akimi al-Amareen, 20, wounded by two bullets to the legs;
3. Hussein Yusuf Swaiti, 18, wounded by a bullet to the leg;
4. Hammam Ismael Masalmah, 17, wounded by two bullets to the legs; and
5. Asma Murshed Swaiti, 19, wounded by a bullet to the right shoulder.

The IOF spokesperson said that Swaiti had been wanted by the Israeli Security Service for eight years, as he was held responsible for carrying out a number of shooting attacks against Israeli targets near Hebron, including opening fire near the Ethna-Tarqumiya intersection on 26 April 2004, i.e. exactly six years prior to yesterday’s killing of Swaiti. The said attack resulted in the death of an Israeli soldier and the injury of two others.

PCHR reiterates its condemnation of such acts and:

1. Confirms that this act constitutes part of a pattern of Israeli war crimes perpetrated in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), which reflect Israeli occupation forces disregard for the lives of Palestinians and for the requirements of international law.

2. Reiterates its condemnation of the illegal policy of extrajudicial executions carried out by IOF against Palestinian activists. It also confirms that this policy raises tension in the area and increases the likelihood of civilian victims among the Palestinian population.

3. Calls upon the international community to immediately intervene to stop these crimes which constitute violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.

4. Calls upon the international community, particularly the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, to fulfill their obligations under Article 1 of the Convention to ensure respect for the Convention in all circumstances, and their obligation under Article 146 to search for and prosecute those responsible for committing grave breaches of the Convention. PCHR also calls on the High Contracting Parties to uphold their responsibilities as signatories to the protocol Additional to the Convention, such as breaches, which constitute war crimes according to Article 147 of the convention.

3,000 European Jewish intellectuals urge end to Israeli settlements: Haaretz

A new leftist European Jewish group, JCall, has written a letter to be delivered Sunday to the European Parliament calling for a cessation of what it calls systematic support for Israeli government decisions.
JCall, which describes itself as “the European J Street” and is to be officially launched Sunday with the presentation of the letter, has raised a storm with its call to stop construction in West Bank settlements and East Jerusalem.
The letter is signed by some 3,000 Jewish intellectuals, among them philosophers Bernard Henri-Levy and Alain Finkielkraut, considered some of Israel’s strongest defenders among French intellectuals. Signatories also include Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the student protests in the 1960s and now a member of the European Parliament, as well as other Jewish members of the European Parliament.

The letter calls occupation and settlements “morally and politically wrong,” noting that they “feed the unacceptable delegitimization process that Israel currently faces abroad.”
According to Prof. Zeev Sternhell, “The French Jewish left has decided that the official institutions do not represent most French Jews, and following the example of J Street, have decided that the time has come to do the same thing in Europe.” He supports the letter but hasn’t signed it.

Richard Prasquier, the chairman of CRIF, the committee representing French Jewish organizations, harshly criticized the document, saying that the petition will serve Israel’s enemies.
The document calls on the European Union and the United States to pressure both parties “and help them achieve a reasonable and rapid solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict.”
It says that systematic support of Israeli government policy is dangerous.

Meanwhile, Israel has repeatedly protested that the PA is using money from donor countries to promote a ban on products from the settlements.
A second meeting of the Knesset Economics Committee on the matter is to take place today. In the first meeting, Foreign Ministry official Yael Rabia-Tzadok told the MKs that the campaign to confiscate goods manufactured in settlements has moved ahead since the new economics minister in the PA government has taken office, Hassan Abu-Labda. She said PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad supports the campaign

Volvo equipment: Israel’s weapons to destroy al-Walaja homes: The Electronic Intifada

Adri Nieuwhof, 29 April 2010

Palestinians in al-Walaja demonstrate against Israel's wall.

On 16 April, approximately 100 Palestinian villagers and internationals walked towards the construction site of Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank village of al-Walaja, four kilometers northwest of Bethlehem. When the protesters were leaving the village, four Israeli army jeeps and one police vehicle entered and surrounded a Palestinian home. At least 40 persons, including women and children, were trapped for two hours.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces raided several other homes, detaining three young men for allegedly throwing stones at Israeli forces. During the raids al-Walaja was closed off, and soldiers prevented the media from entering the area.

Six days later, Israeli bulldozers were working full speed deeper inside the village’s lands, leaving destruction in their wake. Ma’an news agency reported that border guards and soldiers had imposed a curfew early in the morning. A cameraman was denied entry to the village by the army, according to representatives of the village’s Popular Committee.

The following day approximately 200 villagers, together with a few internationals, came together for yet another demonstration. They walked from the mosque, which has an Israeli-imposed demolition order against it, to the lands which were bulldozed the previous day. Standing on the bulldozed lands, representatives of the village held speeches calling for more demonstrations. Youths used boulders to block the road used by the Israeli bulldozer operators.

A day later, approximately 50 Palestinians and internationals managed to stop the work of the bulldozers for several hours. The Israeli soldiers had to violently drag the villagers away one by one.

History of injustices
The residents of al-Walaja have protested the confiscation and demolition of their property for many years. The Israeli settlements of Har Gilo and Gilo, established in the 1970s, are built on land confiscated from the village. While Israeli forces try to silence the protesters with harsh measures, Volvo and Caterpillar equipment is used by the Israeli forces in the illegal construction of the wall on the village’s land.

The old village of al-Walaja was occupied and destroyed by Zionist forces in October 1948 and its 1,200 Palestinian residents expelled. The 1948 Armistice line passed through the southern lands of the village and while most of the villagers fled to Jordan and Bethlehem, some villagers stayed on the lands of the village that were unoccupied at the time and eventually rebuilt a new town.

The remains of the old village of al-Walaja are two kilometers outside the new town, on the western side of the armistice line between Israel and the West Bank. According to Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, a few stone houses still stand on the old village site. Today the old village of al-Walaja is used by Israeli settlers for picnicking and bathing.

Following the June 1967 war, Israel annexed the rest of al-Walaja’s lands, bringing them under the authority of the Israeli-controlled Jerusalem municipality. The villagers did not receive the right to live in Jerusalem, however, and they live under constant threat of expulsion. And while the villagers of al-Walaja are not allowed to build on their own lands, the settlement of Har Gilo is expanding.

After the Oslo accords of 1993, al-Walaja was designated “Area C,” giving Israel full military and administrative control. As a consequence, villagers who want to build a house on their own land have to ask permission from Israel. Israel denied 94 percent of the building permit requests of Palestinians in Area C of the West Bank from 2000 to 2007, according to Peace Now.

Villagers are facing increased pressure from the Israeli occupation forces to leave their land. The wall which is currently under construction will surround the village from all sides, isolating the villagers completely from their land, East Jerusalem and the old village.

Volvo equipment destroying homes
At the end of the 1980s Israel started to demolish Palestinian homes in al-Walaja and residents had to pay fines for their “illegally”-built homes. Since the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada, Israeli forces demolished more than 24 houses in the village, according to the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem.

On 18 March two house owners in al-Walaja found military orders in Hebrew on the front doors of their homes. The orders concern the demolition of the two houses because they are located too close to the path along which the wall will be built. The following day, volunteers from the Stop the Wall Campaign, the YMCA and other international volunteers gathered with the owners of the houses under demolition in order to show their solidarity.

ActiveStills photographer Anne Paq witnessed Volvo equipment being used to destroy a home in the nearby village of al-Khader. Two days earlier she had taken pictures of Volvo and Caterpillar equipment working between the road and the fence of Har Gilo settlement, just a few meters away from Palestinian houses in al-Walaja. There was an Israeli police car parked next to the works. When Paq asked what they were building, they refused to answer.

Two years ago The Electronic Intifada first reported the use of Volvo equipment in Israel’s violations of international law in the occupied West Bank. So far the company has taken no action to investigate the use of its equipment in Israeli violations of Palestinian rights.
Volvo Group’s vice president of media relations and corporate news, Marten Wikforss, wrote in response to The Electronic Intifada’s report: “we do not have any control over the use of our products, other than to affirm in our business activities a Code of Conduct that decries unethical behavior.”

While the villagers of al-Walaja steadfastly continue their protest against the construction of the wall, the confiscation of their land and the destruction of their property, Israeli forces are increasing the oppression. Some houses have been rebuilt three or four times. Director of the Joint Advocacy Initiative of the East Jerusalem YMCA and YWCA, Nidal Abu Zuluf, explained: “Israel’s current repressive policies aim to prevent acts of popular resistance. They don’t want the media and internationals to be around.”
Perhaps neither does Volvo, as its equipment continues to be photographed destroying Palestinian homes and violating Palestinian rights.

Adri Nieuwhof is a consultant and human rights advocate based in Switzerland.

Continue reading May 2, 2010

May 1, 2010

Aprtheid, by Carlos Latuff

Ran HaCohen, Israel, a New Decade: Antiwar

By Ran HaCohen, Antiwar.com – 10 April 2010

I turn on the television just before dinner. Prime-time. An Israeli series: “The Pilots’ Wives” (“Meet the Women behind Our Heroes”, said the promo), interrupted occasionally by a commercial depicting a soldier missing his mother’s soup (“disclaimer: the actor is not a soldier”). After the series, a short public service broadcast showing a group of young men, each in turn boasting his military service, until they notice one of them – a violent zoom-in – keeps quiet; the message is clear. Then the news, with at least one public relations item pushed by the military: “teen-age girls eager to become fighters”, “a remote-control watch-and-shoot system on the Gaza fence”, “a unique glimpse into a top-secret air-force base” or the like. Not to mention the real news, be it about the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Iran, or even the billions of terrorists disguised as miserable African refugees allegedly waiting on the Egyptian border to inundate Israel: all these issues, and many more, are predominantly managed and framed by the military.
The military service has been made a major issue in Israeli public discourse. Not that the army is short of soldiers: on the contrary, the number of recruits requesting “to serve their country” in combat units is at record level. Nevertheless, uniting the nation around the military as the ultimate good is a goal in itself, especially when it implicitly excludes the Israeli-Palestinians, who are not conscripted. Thus the stage and screen actor Itay Tiran was removed from Israel’s official propaganda website when someone noticed he had not served; And, following the Zeitgeist, “national left-wing” playwright Shmuel Hasfari said he would refuse to work with Tiran “just like with any murderer or rapist.”
Most Israeli artists are careful not to express themselves critically about Israel’s policies, definitely not to say a word against the country’s deep militarism and racism; Scander Kobti, co-director of Ajami, nominated for an Academy Award in Best Foreign Language Film, caused a scandal just for saying he didn’t “represent Israel” in Hollywood (“I cannot represent a state that doesn’t represent me”, the Israeli-Palestinian claimed) – even that is more than the selectively sensitive Israeli ear can bear. Every Israeli is expected to be an ambassador abroad – no wonder that in a highly popular Israeli reality show just a few years ago, candidates competed on who would best represent Israeli propaganda abroad (a former Israeli army spokesman was among the judges). Remember it next time you talk to an Israeli: especially outside Israel, you might hear not the truth, but the official state propaganda. Though many Israelis sincerely believe the two are identical.
The deep racism of the Israeli psyche is on the rise. The 1990s, at least in hindsight, marked some liberalization of the public discourse; the first decade of this century crushed it, and now the mildly critical, left-liberal discourse hardly exists in the mainstream. No wonder the liberal left has just 3 seats out of 120 in the Knesset; all the other parties are various shades of right-wing, far right, or fascism (except the small outcast “Arab” parties). The racist mindset can be observed in the most trivial daily situations, like my elderly neighbor, when told I saw someone peeping at my window the other night, instinctively reacting with a single question: “Have you seen whether it was a Jew or an Arab?”
Ever more often, when I mention the Netherlands, I am told that all the Dutch were anti-Semitic and collaborated with the Nazis; my already ritualized reaction – that my grandparents and my mother owe their lives to Dutch Christians who risked their own lives to save them – is met with a shrug, expressing something like “don’t challenge my precious prejudice” or “don’t be so naïve, we all know everybody hates us.” And this is not just the case of Holland: from Sweden to Ethiopia, from Turkey to Argentina, no matter how Jewish-friendly (and Israel-friendly) a nation has been historically, Israelis are encouraged to view all non-Jews (“Goyim” is the pejorative term used uncritically by most Hebrew speakers) as inherently anti-Semitic and therefore anti-Israeli. Every criticism of Israel’s policy is automatically dismissed as yet another incarnation of an endemic, incurable hatred of Jews. Just like anti-communism was the national religion of the USA during the Cold War, the fanatic belief in an eternal world-wide anti-Semitic conspiracy is the true national cult of Israel. The voices portraying even President Obama as anti-Semitic are just one undertone in an ear-deafening choir of incitement against every dissenting voice, within or without.
The younger generation knows little else. How could it? As the Jerusalem Prof. Nurit Peled-Elhanan shows, Israeli schoolbooks – their text, maps, and pictures – are inherently racist, especially against Arabs; but whereas the racism was sophisticatedly disguised in the 1990s schoolbooks, in the last decade it’s overt and explicit. Arabs are consistently represented as primitive, threatening, and untrustworthy; the Palestinian narrative is either distorted and denied, or simply ignored. The Occupation, says Peled-Elhanan, is never mentioned, the Green Line does not exist; many Israelis no longer know what it means, let alone where it is.
Even the language retreats: if the term “occupied territories” sounded rather neutral just a few years ago, when even Ariel Sharon used the term “occupation”, now the sickening euphemism “liberated territories” has made a comeback. At the same time, hypocrisy and double-standards are cultivated: right-wing parties outside Israel are regularly termed “extremist”, “xenophobic” or “racist”, terms never applied to much more extreme Israeli parties. Official Israel is shocked and outraged by naming a street in Ramallah after a Palestinian terrorist Ayyash (assassinated by Israel in 1996); At the same time, the Israeli far-right leader Ze’evi (assassinated by Palestinians in 2001), whose main political platform was ethnic cleansing (“transfer”) of all Palestinians, has several streets, three promenades, two settlements, a highway, a bridge, and an army base named after him, and a law to commemorate him and even educate future generations with his “legacy.”
Is It Too Late?
This is the present atmosphere in Israel – one of a rising, violent nationalist self-righteousness, especially among the younger generation. A recent poll shows that while 35% of Israelis over the age of 30 said they would vote for right-wing parties, this number almost doubled for youths up to the age of 29, and stood at 61%.
Does this mean there is no chance for peace? A difficult question. Despite all of the above, polls also show 60% support among the general public for removing the majority of settlements. As always, this 60% majority of Israeli Jews overwhelmingly believes it is a minority – only a third of respondents said such an evacuation had the support of the Israeli majority. This last figure – the majority being persuaded it is actually a minority – is one of the greatest achievements of the official Israeli brain-wash, and has been consistent for many years.
One can therefore understand Zeev Sternhell’s call on Obama’s Washington to implement an imposed solution: “Were Israeli society prepared to pay the price for peace, its government would not be fanning the flames of conflict […] The conclusion is that […] the only solution is an imposed one”, writes the prominent Israeli political scientist. This is no rosy scenario either, needless to say. In clear imitation of Nazi calls to try the German politicians who signed the “humiliating” Treaty of Versailles (1919), the Israeli right-wing has already demanded to “put Oslo criminals on trial” for signing the Oslo Accords. One can recall European history and imagine how Israeli fascists would react to an “imposed peace.” Luckily, they are just a minority; but given the current atmosphere in Israel, as well as the demographic advantage of the right-wing (Orthodox Jews have much more children), it might not remain a minority for long. Time, if there still is any, is running out.

EDITOR: Another success for the BDS camp!

Gil Scott-Heron has at last joined those who boycott Israel, and refuses to go and sing there. He joins tens of committed artists, who, unlike Paul McCartney and Leonard Cohen, have chosen to takea moral, political stand on Israel and its barbaric occupation of Palestine.

Gil Scott-Heron boycotts Tel Aviv, sends powerful message to Israelis: The Only Democracy?

April 30th, 2010, by Jesse Bacon
By Noam Sheizaf
This is a translation of my article regarding the cancellation of spoken words artist Gil-Scott Heron’s gig in Tel Aviv. His show was scheduled for late May, but it was later removed from Scot-Heron’s site and though there was no official statement yet, it seems to have been canceled for political reasons.
The original Hebrew version of the article was posted Wednesday on the web magazine The Other.
A small commotion erupted this week among the public that appreciates black music in Israel upon learning that ground-breaking artist, poet and musician, Gil Scott-Heron apparently canceled his Tel Aviv show for political reasons. There was no official statement; However, following protests of some of his pro-Palestinian fans during a show in London on the weekend, Scott-Heron announced from the stage that he would not be coming to Israel. The show, planed for May 25, was removed from the line up on his site.
Scott-Heron is a political man. He came out against US presidents, preached against nuclear energy, and asked the new generation of Hip-Hop artists to write meaningful lyrics rather than merely attach words to music. His most famous piece, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” is considered the anthem of alternative culture. I assume these and similar reasons made Scott-Heron appeal to a couple of hundred Israelis. The only surprise is their ability to make a U-turn the moment that protest was directed at us.
In the last few days, Israelis who awaited the show in Tel Aviv filled Scott Heron’s website and Facebook pages dedicated to the issue with angry comments. The arguments were of the type common to such occurrences: one shouldn’t mix music and politics (”music brings people together; politics pulls them apart”); one must distinguish between the government of Israel and the citizens; it is hypocrisy and double standards to boycott Israel when there are so many more horrible governments and deadlier regimes in the world.
But beyond the usual arguments, an offended tone sneaked in: “Why should we, music lovers, who love GSH also because of the place we live in, should be blamed for the occupation or apartheid?” writes one Israeli on Facebook, and added elsewhere, “to cancel the show, it is to spit in the face of the leftists in the crowd.”
“In Israel there is a true music scene,” comments another Israeli on Scott Heron’s site. “For me, music represents peace and love, not war and hate. If you come to Israel you will see it with your own eyes”. Avi Pitshon wrote in Haaretz in relation to a similar incident, in which a few Israelis joined a call to the Pixies and Metallica to skip playing in Israel, “the radical left cannot hurt the powerful, those who shape policy, and is therefore trying to hit whoever is under the spotlight: music loving citizens.”
It seems that what hurts Pitshon and the other Israelis most is not the anti-Israeli stance of Scott Heron and others like him, but the choice to specifically boycott them, the public who is for peace, loves Soul and Hip-Hop, and sees itself more in touch with Detroit and Chicago than the Tomb of Rachel and Elkana. After all, the voice of these embittered music lovers didn’t rise when a pretty effective boycott was organized in the EU against produce from the settlements: the settlers are the bad guys in this story. But to boycott us, us who took part in three Peace Now demonstrations and two events commemorating Rabin? What is the world coming to?
The Israeli left (and yours truly included) is deeply longing to be part of some global communion. People here imagine themselves through American culture, Italian cuisine and French novels, as if we were born to a bourgeois family on Paris’ Left Bank and our life project is to confront the feelings of alienation inherent in human existence. Tel Aviv and its suburbs are arranged with their face towards the West and a wall separating their back from all the turmoil in the East: the settlers in the territories, the Ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem, and also these Palestinians. The occupation is such a boring and tedious story, the making of a stupid government and wicked right-wingers. Clearly, we are not part of this madness.
A worldview so detached leads to many disappointments. So we are shocked to discover that the Palestinians hate us just as much as the hate the right-wingers, we are insulted when the reception clerk in a Spanish hotel lets a curse out behind our back, and cannot understand why an old rapper, who has seen a few things in his life, would tell us that, on second thought, Tel Aviv doesn’t suit him right now. What the hell? We blow a fuse. What’s the connection between the Barbie Club [a Tel Aviv nightclub] and the territories? After all, they are at least a 20 minutes car ride away!
To the credit of the Israeli Right one should say that it is much more consistent and well argued. From the Right’s perspective, these conflicts with the world are the price for our clinging to parts of our historical homeland and our survival in a hostile region. The Right doesn’t try to evade taking responsibility for sitting on top of Palestinians, and if someone, whether Obama or Scott Heron, doesn’t like it, there is no choice but to bite the bullet.
In contrast, “the enlightened camp” is busy with the endless theatrical performance of their moral difficulties, whose real purpose is to create a barrier between them and all those action for which they refuse to take responsibility. Thus, when the order arrives, the leftist climbs into the tank without a second thought, but later he will do an anguished film about it for the Cannes festival. Thus the obsessive persecution of settlers. Thus Tel Aviv behaves as if it were a Mediterranean suburb of London while in a spitting distance from it eastward and southward lies an immense jail holding millions of people without rights for over half a century.
The self-pity tops itself with the absurd claim that such cancellations will benefit the occupation, because they would discourage those most in favor of two states solution. As if the role the world is to caress Tel Aviv’s residents’ back until they draw the courage and convince the right, to please stop building villas on the hills of Samaria and abstain from kicking Palestinians out of their houses in East Jerusalem. Beyond the fact that this method has been completely discredited by history–the Israeli Left doesn’t even convince itself anymore–the theory doesn’t hold water: excited or depressed, these thousands of peace and love and music lovers do not show up in Bil’in or Sheikh Jarrah, whereas the few dozens of human rights activists who do go there are begging the world for a little international pressure to save Israel from itself.
A few years ago, the dynamics surrounding Roger Waters (ex Pink Floyd) visit’s to Israel recalls somewhat the current case. Waters didn’t boycott, but he said a few words about peace and ending the occupation. Immediately, a few of the “enlightened camp” ordered him to focus on the guitar and stop lecturing us. There is something really bizarre with our ability to sing about another brick in the wall while forgetting about the miserable Farmers whose fields are behind our wall. (As it is hard to understand Israelis who return from Berlin with “an original stone from the wall” when the improved local version stands for free in our living room.) Considering the deep disconnect between the Israelis and the protest anthems that they are humming, it seems that Scott-Heron did us a favor by reminding us that in a place where pregnant women give birth at checkpoints and people are locked in their houses, even music doesn’t cross borders.

Continue reading May 1, 2010

April 30, 2010

Nasrallah: Israel should be wary of war against Lebanon: Haaretz

Israel would be taking a big risk if it decided to open war on Lebanon or on any of the other countries in the Middle East, Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said Thursday, advising Israeli politicians and generals to stay cautious regarding such a possibility.
Speaking to a Kuwait-based news channel, Nasrallah, referring to recent tensions between Israel and its neighbors to the north, said that “any war started by Israel against Lebanon or anywhere in the region would be taking a very dangerous risk on its part.”
“That kind of war would change every parameter in the Middle East,” the Hezbollah chief said, adding that his organization was not “frightened by the threat or by Israel’s psychological warfare.”
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The Hezbollah added that he knew that “Israeli politicians and generals, past and present, are very worried and very cautious and we would like them to stay that way,” saying that “the blood of Imad Mughniyeh would haunt them everywhere.”
The militant organization has vowed vengeance against Israel ever since Mughniyeh’s 2008 assassination, which it blames on Israel.
“I cannot say that it is close. Myself and brothers in Hezbollah see that all this intimidation does not hide behind it a war. On the contrary, if there was silence and quietness, then everyone must be vigilant,” Nasrallah said.

“But when you see all this American and Israeli noise, this means they want to use this noise to achieve political, psychological and certain security advantages without resorting to the step of war,” Nasrallah added.
Referring to an alleged long-range surface-to-surface- missile deal, reported by Israel to have taken place between Syria and Hezbollah, Nasrallah said that the “Israeli allegations on the transfer of Scud missiles from Syria to Hezbollah, in spite of Syrian denials and the quiet from the organization only strengthens Lebanon’s confidence in itself and in the ability of the resistance to defend Lebanon.”

“My comments from a month ago speaking of how we will reach anywhere in Israel are supported in the eyes of the Lebanese and Arab peoples when Israel and the United States discuss the transfer of Scud missiles from Syria to Hezbollah,” Nasrallah said.
On whether such a deal took place, the Hezbollah leader said: “Today it’s Scuds, yesterday other kinds of rockets … the aim is one, and that is to intimidate Lebanon, to intimidate Syria and to put pressure on Lebanon, Syria, the resistance movement and the Lebanese and Syrian people,” Nasrallah said.
“Regardless of whether Syria gave Hezbollah this type of rockets … of course Syria denied, and Hezbollah as usual does not comment.

Four Palestinians die in Gaza-Egypt ‘tunnel collapse’: BBC

The tunnels provide a lifeline for those living in the impoverished Gaza Strip
Four Palestinians have died in a smuggling tunnel under Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical officials say.
The men died because of an explosion near the Egyptian side, the head of emergency services in Gaza said.
Some Gazans accuse Egypt of using dynamite and pumping gas into the tunnels to end Palestinian attempts to beat the Israeli-Egyptian blockade.
However, flammable items such as petrol are frequently transported underground.
Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza, accused Egypt of “spraying poison gas” into the tunnel.
Egyptian security officials have denied the allegation they used poison gas.
An unnamed security source told the Associated Press that Egypt routinely blows up the mouths to the tunnels to seal them off, and that the blast and an ensuing fire could quickly use up all the oxygen in the confined space causing people caught inside to suffocate.
French news agency AFP quoted unnamed officials as saying Egyptian security forces had destroyed four tunnels but were unaware of any casualties.
Egypt is building a huge underground barrier along the Gaza border to stop smuggling.
The structure – made of bomb-proof steel – will be 10-11km (6-7 miles) long and extend 18m (59ft) below the surface.
Under the blockade, Israel allows only limited humanitarian goods into the strip, saying it wants to pressure Hamas and stop it smuggling in weapons, including the some of the rockets that Gaza militants fire into southern Israel.
The tunnels are used to smuggle in arms, fuel and goods from Egypt, but cave-ins are frequent.
Egypt keeps its pedestrian border crossing with the Gaza Strip closed most of the time.
In a separate incident, a Palestinian man died after being shot during a protest near Gaza’s border with Israel.
Palestinian medics said Ahmed Salim, 20, died after being shot by Israeli forces in the thigh.
The Israeli military said live rounds were fired as “warning shots” in response to a “riot”, where about 50 Palestinians were throwing stones and starting fires.
It said the incident had taken place 50m from the border fence with Israel, but that it considers the area 300m from the fence to be a “combat zone”.
Adie Mormech, an activist with the International Solidarity Movement group, said that although stones were being thrown, none reached the fence, and there was no warning fire before the shot that hit Mr Salim.
Palestinian and international demonstrators have increased protest activity in the buffer zone in recent months. Israel maintains a policy of firing at anyone present in the area.
Israel says the zone is necessary for security, as militants frequently approach the fence to try to plant explosives and attack Israeli forces.
But Palestinians complain that the buffer zone renders swathes of agricultural land unusable.

Lieberman: Proximity talks to resume in 2 weeks: Haaretz Service

Proximity talks, geared at renewing negotiations toward a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, are expected to launch within two weeks, Army Radio quoted Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman as saying on Thursday.
Speaking to reporters, Lieberman added, however, that he was skeptical of the Palestinians’ willingness to engage in peace talks, saying it was “unreasonable” to talk peace while perpetuating terror through naming squares after blood-thirsty terrorists.
Earlier Thursday, Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom also voiced his belief that Israel and the Palestinians were nearing renewed negotiations, saying he felt “it was time to stop letting the United States doing the Palestinians’ work for them.”
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“It’s time that [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] decides to sit with Israel and conduct real negotiations,” Shalom said, adding that “Jerusalem is out of any talks and is Israel’s eternal capital.”
Referring to the possibly of a flare up between Israel and Lebanon, Lieberman told reporters Thursday that Israel would not attack its neighbor to the north despite recent reports alleging that Hezbollah had received long-range Scud surface-to-surface missiles from Syria.
“Israel has no intention to create a provocation or engage in irrational acts,” Lieberman said

One Laptop Per Child reaches Gaza Strip: BBC

The laptops are designed for use by children in the developing world
The UN in the Gaza Strip has begun distributing thousands of laptop computers to children in its schools.
The rugged laptops are made by the non-profit organisation One Laptop Per Child, which aims to give a computer to every child in the developing world.
One Laptop Per Child say computers are a good way of improving the education of children living in poverty.
Humanitarian conditions have deteriorated in the Gaza Strip in the last three years, the UN says.
Israel and Egypt maintain a blockade on Gaza, which was tightened in 2007 after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, and all but humanitarian supplies are prevented from entering.
Unrwa, the UN agency for refugees, began distributing 2,100 laptops on Thursday in Rafah, a town in the south of the strip.
This is part of a wider ambitions to distribute 500,000 laptops to children in Gaza by 2012.
Connected
One Laptop Per Child has built the energy efficient XO laptop especially for children in developing countries.
“The XO laptop has a special place in children’s education in regions that are disrupted by ongoing violence,” said Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the organisation.
“With the XO the children can continue to stay connected and gain the skills and knowledge required to participate fully and thrive in the 21st century – even when getting to school is impossible.”
The UN agency which looks after Palestinian refugees, UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) provides housing, health services, education and emergency food supplies to more than four million refugees in five countries.
The computers are to be loaded with textbooks and teaching aids that cover the primary school curriculum, a statement from UNWRA said.

EDITOR: New Recruit for the One-State Solution

A rather unexpected recruit to the camp of the One-State argument… but an interesting admission that the Two-state solution requires to relinquish the Occupied Territories of Palestine!

Israel official: Accepting Palestinians into Israel better than two states: Haaretz

Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin said Thursday that he would rather accept Palestinians as Israeli citizens than divide Israel and the West Bank in a future two-state peace solution.

Speaking during a meeting with Greece’s ambassador to Israel Kyriakos Loukakis, Rivlin said that he did not see any point of Israel signing a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority as he did not believe PA President Mahmoud Abbas “could deliver the goods.”
Referring to the possibility that such an agreement could be reached, Rivlin said: “I would rather Palestinians as citizens of this country over dividing the land up.”
Late last year, Rivlin said in a Jerusalem address that Israel’s Arab population was “an inseparable part of this country. It is a group with a highly defined shared national identity, and which will forever be, as a collective, an important and integral part of Israeli society.”

In a speech given in the president’s residence, the Knesset speaker called for a fundamental change in relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel, urging the foundation of a “true partnership” between the two sectors, based on mutual respect, absolute equality and the addressing of “the special needs and unique character of each of the sides.”

Rivlin also said that “the establishment of Israel was accompanied by much pain and suffering and a real trauma for the Palestinians,” adding that “many of Israel’s Arabs, which see themselves as part of the Palestinian population, feel the pain of their brothers across the green line – a pain they feel the state of Israel is responsible for.”
“Many of them,” Rivlin says, “encounter racism and arrogance from Israel’s Jews; the inequality in the allocation of state funds also does not contribute to any extra love.”

EDITOR: The New Antisemitism

In the age-old  antisemitic tradition, the settlers are out on a pogrom against Palestinians every time they feel tetchy. No one seems to be able or willing to stop them, of course, and no one is ever prosecuted for the hundreds of local pogroms against Palestinian villages and towns. The only Jewish Democracy is only democratic for Jews, of course.

Israeli border police unit to tackle settler violence: BBC

Cars have been burned and a mosque vandalised in the north West Bank
Israel’s border police are to post a special task force in the northern West Bank to stop settler violence against Palestinians, the military says.
It said the decision followed what the military dubbed a “riot” by settlers in the area last week.
The force was to prevent “retributional violence” by settlers against Palestinians and to prevent damage to property, the military said.
Palestinians mosques, cars and trees were recently attacked in the area.
The decision to deploy the new task force “was made due to violent confrontations during Independence Day,” the Israeli military said.
Last Tuesday, the military called “intolerable” an incident in which it said about 100 settlers threw rocks and attacked soldiers as they tried to stop the settlers entering a Palestinian village.
One soldier was injured in the face by a thrown bottle.

Residents of the nearby settlement of Yitzhar were quoted by Israeli media as saying the soldiers harassed them as they tried to visit the area.
The previous week a mosque was vandalised with Jewish grafitti, cars were burned and olive trees uprooted in the village of Hawarra, also near Yitzhar settlement.
Some hard-line settlers advocate a “price tag” policy under which they attack Palestinians in retaliation for any Israeli government measure they see as threatening Jewish settlements.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to limit building in the settlements for 10-months to help restart peace talks with the Palestinians has angered many in the settler movement.
Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967, settling close to 500,000 Jews in more than 100 settlements.
There are about 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank.
Israel’s military has dubbed as “intolerable” what it described as a “riot” by settlers in the West Bank.
The military said about 100 settlers threw rocks and attacked soldiers as they tried to stop the settlers entering a Palestinian village.
One soldier was injured in the face by a thrown bottle.
Residents of the settlement of Yitzhar were quoted by Israeli media as saying the soldiers harrassed them as they tried to visit the area.
Israeli citizens from the area of Yitzhar tried to enter the nearby village of Madma in the northern West Bank on Tuesday evening, the military said in a statement.
Soldiers tried to set up a military zone, but more settlers arrived and pelted them with rocks, it said.
“Violence and raising hands up against IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] soldiers is crossing the line in an intolerable manner,” the statement said.
The incident occurred on Israel’s independence day, which the military said made it “all the more serious”.
Settlers quoted by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said the military had been trying to prevent them from hiking in the area all day, and that a soldier had fired in the air during the confrontation – a charge the military denied.
‘Spate of attacks’
Last week a mosque was vandalised with Jewish grafitti, cars were burned and olive trees uprooted in the village of Hawarra, also near Yitzhar settlement.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned what he described as a recent spate of attacks on Palestinian property by settlers.
He said Israeli state policy had given rise to “a culture of violence, hatred and extremism in which Israeli settlers, often accompanied by Israeli soldiers, run riot across the West Bank”.
Israeli rights groups say the military often does not do enough to prevent attacks on Palestinians and their property.
Some hard-line settlers advocate a “price tag” policy under which they attack Palestinians in retaliation for any Israeli government measure they see as threatening Jewish settlements.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to limit building in the settlements for 10-months to help restart peace talks with the Palestinians has angered many in the settler movement.
Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967, settling close to 500,000 Jews in more than 100 settlements.
There are about 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank.

Continue reading April 30, 2010

April 29, 2010

Fooling the world again, by Carlos Latuff

Settlement ban fear of Palestinian labourers: BBC

Many Palestinians don’t see they have any other choice but to work on Israeli settlements
By Tim Franks
It may only be April, but on the exposed hillside settlement of Har Gilo it already feels very hot.
Perhaps for that reason not many people are out and about in this small, middle-class, Jewish enclave in the West Bank between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
And most of those who are walking around have, perhaps surprisingly, Palestinian faces.
They are a group of construction workers, who laugh when you mention the Israeli government’s self-declared “freeze” on building in settlements.

Najah Saadi operates a pile-driver.
He has worked in Har Gilo five days a week for the last two years, commuting from his home in Ramallah.
“I’m not happy about working here,” he says. “But I don’t feel I have a choice.”
He says he has a large family to support. “If I work in Ramallah I get a quarter of what I earn here on the settlements.”
Mr Saadi has little time for the talk from the Palestinian Authority of a ban on Palestinians working in settlements.
“They can’t do that,” he states baldly.
“The PA doesn’t care about its people. If they don’t want us to work in the settlements, they should invest in us instead.”
Cheap labour
A little further down the road Ilia Saditsky, an Israeli construction manager, is poring over blueprints with a Palestinian worker for eighteen new cottages which he plans to start building in the next few months.
All of his builders will be Palestinians from the West Bank, he says.
Mr Saditsky describes them as “hungry for work”.
“Even if they weren’t so cheap, we’d still want to use them because they work so hard.”

Dilemma of Palestinian settlement builders
Were a ban to come into effect Mr Saditsky says he would have no choice but to bring in workers from Jerusalem.
That, in turn, would mean the price of houses would go up.
It is difficult to know precisely how many Palestinians work in the approximately 120 settlements dotted across the West Bank.
One estimate puts it around 30,000.
And those Palestinians are coming up against an increasingly concerted campaign, led by the PA, against the settlements.
On Monday Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas signed a law banning settlement produce from Palestinian shops in the West Bank.
Traders who break the law face prison and a heavy fine.
And now senior officials in the PA have told the BBC that, come the end of the year, Palestinians will be breaking the law if they work in the settlements – despite the considerable economic pain this might cause.
Palestinian Economy Minister Hasan Abu-Libdeh is helping to lead the drive.
“The process we are embarked on will clean the Palestinian economy and society from any association with settlements,” he says from his modest office in Ramallah.
He has little sympathy for those who say that they have no choice but to work in the settlements.
“It is a shame to be part of the lifeline of settlement activity,” he says. “No Palestinian should.”

Sarkozy: Netanyahu’s foot dragging on peace process is unacceptable: Haaretz

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz – 28 April 2010
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has told his Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres that he is disappointed with Benjamin Netanyahu and finds it hard to understand the prime minister’s diplomatic plan. Sarkozy made his comments at the Elysee Palace two weeks ago.
The latest criticism follows the diplomatic crisis between Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama and the subsequent fallout between Netanyahu and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
High-level Israeli officials briefed on the Peres-Sarkozy meeting called it “very difficult.” The officials, who asked to remain anonymous, said Sarkozy began criticizing Netanyahu at the start of the discussion and continued for around 15 minutes.
Sarkozy’s remarks were only slightly more measured than the condemnation he expressed over Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman last summer. “You must get rid of that man,” Sarkozy told Netanyahu at the time.
Sarkozy met with Obama the week before in Washington; the effect of the encounter was evident in the French leader’s discussion with Peres. Sarkozy expressed frustration at the continuing stagnation of the peace process and assigned much of the responsibility to Netanyahu.
“I’m disappointed with him,” he reportedly told Peres. “With the friendship, sympathy and commitment we have toward Israel, we still can’t accept this foot-dragging. I don’t understand where Netanyahu is going or what he wants.”
After listening to his host’s remarks in full, Peres reportedly replied, “I’m aware that trust between Israel and the Palestinians has been undermined, but Israel has reached out its hand in peace and adopted the two-state principle, and Israel is working to strengthen and develop the Palestinian economy. There is no alternative to returning to the negotiating table as soon as possible.”
The Israeli officials described Sarkozy’s remarks as part of a broader trend among Israel’s European and American allies amid the lack of diplomatic progress in the region.
Amid the tension with the U.S. administration, even Israel’s European allies have begun criticizing the Netanyahu administration. Merkel, widely viewed as one of Israel’s most solid supporters in Europe, recently issued a public condemnation of Netanyahu and Israel’s wider policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians.
Last month Merkel accused Netanyahu of distorting the nature of a telephone discussion they had had following the uproar over Israel’s authorization of construction in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo.
Meanwhile, Italian diplomats have said Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s unqualified support for Israel on the Palestinian issue has also begun to wane. “Netanyahu spoke with Berlusconi twice recently by phone, and each time said he would surprise him on the Palestinian issue, but this doesn’t seem to be in the offing,” one of the diplomats said.
In Washington, Obama continued to assert this week that his administration aims to push both parties back to the negotiating table. On Monday, he told a Washington summit of entrepreneurs from Muslim-majority countries that “So long as I am president, the United States will never waver in pursuit of a two-state solution that ensures the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians.”
In an op-ed yesterday in the New York Times, Roger Cohen quoted U.S. special envoy George Mitchell as saying, “There has never been in the White House a president that is so committed on this issue.”
He quoted Mitchell, who is currently visiting Israel, as saying, “I believe Netanyahu is serious, capable and interested in reaching an agreement. What I cannot say is if he is willing to agree to what is needed to secure an agreement.”

Is the Middle East on a peace process to nowhere?: The Guardian

Israeli iconoclast Meron Benvenisti says negotiations for a Palestinian state are an illusion that perpetuates the status quo

A Palestinian demonstration in the West Bank. Meron Benvenisti is convinced that a two-state solution in the Middle East is doomed to fail. Photograph: Oliver Weiken/EPA

Meron Benvenisti has been talking, writing and arguing about the Israel-Palestinian conflict for much of the last 40 years. Now aged 76 he is as forceful, articulate and unconventional as ever – and convinced that President Barack Obama is doomed to fail in his attempt to cajole the two sides to hammer out a solution at the negotiating table.
Benvenisti, the Cassandra of the Israeli left, has long held the view that the occupation that began after the 1967 Middle East war is irreversible and that Israelis and Palestinians need to find an alternative to the elusive two-state solution that has dominated thinking about the conflict in recent years. Controversial and iconoclastic when he first advanced it, his thesis is gaining ground.

“The whole notion of a Palestinian state now, in 2010, is a sham,” he told the Guardian at his Jerusalem home as the US intensified efforts to get the long-stalled peace process moving again. “The entire discourse is wrong. By continuing that discourse you perpetuate the status quo. The struggle for the two-state solution is obsolete.”
George Mitchell, the US envoy charged with launching “proximity talks” between Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas – in the absence of direct negotiations – does not agree. Nor do Israelis who believe that without an end to the occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state the Jewish majority and democratic character of their own state cannot survive. Abbas and his technocratic prime minister, Salam Fayyad, are working towards independence, though Palestinian opinion seems increasingly sceptical about the prospects.

Benvenisti’s book, Sacred Landscapes, is one of the very best written on the conflict, interweaving the personal and the political. It is also deeply sympathetic to the Palestinians and their attachment to the land. He defines the Zionist enterprise bluntly as a “supplanting settler society” but also warns that using labels is a way of shutting down debate. He is wary of Holocaust-deniers and antisemites who try to recruit his dissident views to serve their anti-Israel goals.
Benvenisti, a political scientist by training, served as deputy mayor of Jerusalem after the 1967 war and was heavily influenced by his academic research on Belfast, another bitterly divided city. In the 1980’s his West Bank Data Project collated and analysed the information that showed how the settlers were becoming fatefully integrated into Israeli society – under both Likud and Labour governments.

Israel’s domination, he says, is now complete, while the Palestinians are fragmented into five enclaves – inside Israel, in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the diaspora.
In this situation, the concept of two states is misleading. “What does it mean, a state? It’s a solution for less than one quarter of the Palestinian people on an area that is less than 10% of historic Palestine.” Palestinian leaders who are ready to accept this “are a bunch of traitors to their own cause”. Ramallah, prosperous headquarters of Abbas’s Palestinian Authority and the recipient of millions of dollars in foreign aid, is a “bubble in which those who steal the money can enjoy themselves”.

Benvenisti’s territorial assumptions are not based on the 2000 “Clinton parameters” which Yasser Arafat turned down, nor proposals submitted by Ehud Olmert to Abbas – which talk of Israel withdrawing from some 97% of the West Bank with compensating land swaps – but a far smaller area hemmed in by Jewish settlements, settler-only roads and military zones.

“For the last 20 years I have questioned the feasibility of the partition of Palestine and now I am absolutely sure it is impossible,” he says. “Or, it is possible if it is imposed on the Palestinians but that will mean the legitimisation of the status quo, of Bantustans, of a system of political and economic inequality which is hailed as a solution by the entire world – unlike in South Africa.
“The entire paradigm is wrong. We are doing this because it is self-serving. It is convenient for us to stick to the old slogan of two states as if nothing has happened since we began advocating it in the 1980s.”

Taken the salience of the settlement issue in the peace process – rows over Netanyahu’s temporary freeze in the West Bank and new building in East Jerusalem triggered the recent crisis in US-Israel relations – it is startling to find that Benvenisti is so dismissive of it.
“Israel’s domination of the West Bank does not rely on the numbers of settlers or settlements,” he argues. “The settlements are totally integrated into Israeli society. They’ve taken all the land they could. The rest is controlled by the Israeli army.”

Benvenisti relishes overturning conventional wisdom. “The Israeli left would like to make us believe that the green line (the pre-1967 border) is something solid; that everything that is on this side is good and that everything bad began with the occupation in 1967. It is a false dichotomy. The green line is like a one-way mirror. It’s only for the Palestinians, not for Israelis.”

He avoids speculating about future scenarios and makes do with the concept “bi-nationalism” – “not as a political or ideological programme so much as a de facto reality masquerading as a temporary state of affairs … a description of the current condition, not a prescription.” And he sees signs that the Palestinians are beginning to adjust to the “total victory of the Jews” and use the power of the weak: demanding votes and human rights may prove more effective than violence, he suggests.

“The peace process,” Benvenisti concludes, “is more than a waste of time. It is an illusion and it perpetuates an illusion. You can engage in a peace process and have negotiations and conferences – which have no connection whatsoever to reality on the ground.”

No fines for Palestinian settlement workers: Y Net

Palestinian Authority grants grace period to workers who violate ban on working in Israeli settlements to allow them to search for employment elsewhere

Palestinians who violate a ban by their government on working in Israeli settlements will be given time to find other employment before facing punishment, a senior official said Wednesday, reflecting how hard it will be to enforce the measure in the job-strapped West Bank.
The law, which also prohibits the sale of Israeli settlement products in the West Bank, was signed this week by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Violators face up to five years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines.

Other Side of the Fence
Palestinians view the more than 120 settlements that Israel has built across the West Bank as a key obstacle to setting up their own state. Supporters of the tough new legislation say it is the least Palestinians can do to stop helping settlements flourish.
Palestinian security forces have confiscated about $5.3 million worth of settlement goods since the Palestinian government announced a crackdown several months ago, Economics Minister Hassan Abu Libdeh said.
However, enforcing a ban on work in Jewish settlements could prove more difficult.
About 21,000 Palestinians work in the settlements. Despite a modest economic recovery, nearly a quarter of the West Bank’s labor force remains unemployed.
Abu Libdeh said the workers would not face immediate punishment. “We will give (them) a grace period, and then we will implement (the law),” he said. He would not say how much of a grace period is being offered.
Israeli officials denounced the law.

‘Damages chances for peace’
“While Israel is making great efforts to promote and improve the Palestinian economy, this order damages the chances of both economic and political peace,” said Silvan Shalom, Israel’s minister for regional cooperation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promoted the idea of “economic peace,” including closer economic cooperation with the Palestinians. He has done more than his predecessors to ease restrictions on Palestinian trade and movement, but Palestinians have dismissed Netanyahu’s plan as a poor substitute for real independence.
The Palestinians also took aim at four Israeli cell phone companies they said are operating illegally in the West Bank, without licenses or paying taxes to the Palestinian Authority.
Authorities are confiscating prepaid phone cards of these companies, Palestinian Communications Minister Mashour Abu Daka said.
Israel’s communications ministry gave no details on market penetration but said Israeli mobile operators are permitted in the West Bank under previous agreements.

Hard hand against Hamas
Palestinian authorities are also cracking down on their Hamas rivals. In the West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinian police arrested a local businessman suspected of trying to smuggle $2.7 million worth of Viagra pills and other sex-boosting drugs hidden in tennis balls. Some of the drugs were destroyed publicly.

West Bank police spokesman Adnan Damiri said the businessman faces charges of tax evasion, selling unlicensed drugs and laundering money for Hamas.
Damiri said Hamas has been using West Bank importers in a money-laundering scheme by paying for their merchandise, usually from China. The Palestinian security forces have been cracking down on Hamas activities in the West Bank since 2007, when the Islamic militants seized the Gaza Strip in a violent takeover.
In Gaza, meanwhile, medical officials said a 20-year-old Palestinian died at a hospital after being shot by Israeli soldiers during a protest near a border crossing with Israel.
The Israeli military said Palestinians were rioting violently and threatening to damage the security fence at the border. The military said troops fired warning shots to disperse the rioters and was investigating reports of a casualty.

Palestinian militants often use the area to carry out attacks against Israel.

Big Think: The impending Israel-Palestine disaster: The Independent

Tuesday, 27 April 2010
The more unwilling Binyamin Netanyahu is to take a historic leap, the more dangerous it’s going to get, says David Remnick, Editor, The New Yorker.
USE LINK ABOVE TO VIEW
(For more on world politics and The New Yorker, see David Remnick’s full Big Think interview .)

Egypt sentences ‘Hezbollah cell’: BBC

Hezbollah had confirmed one of the men was a member of the group
An Egyptian court has convicted 26 men of planning terrorist attacks on ships and tourist sites.
The 22 men given prison sentences – some with hard labour – were accused of working for the Lebanese Islamist group Hezbollah.
Sami Shihab, a Lebanese citizen who Hezbollah had confirmed was a member, was given a life sentence.
The sentences were issued by the State Security Court in Cairo and cannot be appealed, reports say.
Another four men, who are still on the run, were convicted in absentia.
The sentences on the other defendants ranged from six months to 25 years.
‘Intelligence’
Last year Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah confirmed Shihab was a member of the group and in Egypt to help its Palestinian allies Hamas get weapons across the border into the Gaza Strip.
But Egypt said it was holding the group on suspicion of planning attacks.
Prosecutors said Hezbollah had told the men to collect intelligence from villages along the Egypt-Gaza border, tourist sites and the Suez Canal.
The group had received equipment from Hezbollah, and had also been tasked with spreading Shia ideology in the predominantly Sunni country, the Egyptian government said.
At the start of the trial it was reported that at least one of the accused said he had been tortured while in Egyptian custody.
Hezbollah has said the charges are politically motivated and in revenge for the movement’s stance on Egypt’s support for the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
Hezbollah supports Hamas – the Islamic movement which controls the coastal enclave – and has strongly criticised Egypt for not opening its border with Gaza to relieve the Israeli-imposed blockade on the territory.

Continue reading April 29, 2010

April 27, 2010

EDITOR: What they think in the Israeli Defence Ministry

Just read the following comment in Haaretz from a former Defence Ministry Adviser – see at bottom of this piece what his area of responsibility was…

Gaza is the fuel for Muslim world’s anti-Israel struggle: Haaretz

By Haggai Alon
The events of the past few days have created two illusions. One is that Israel and the United States are equal; the other is that the problem is Jerusalem. These illusions are dangerous for Israel, in that they create a dangerous diplomatic perception and self-image.

The United States is a superpower; it is doubtful whether Israel is even a regional power. And the problem is not Jerusalem, or even the holy places, but Gaza. Finally, it is in Israel’s best interest that the Quartet’s decision to promote the establishment of a Palestinian state within two years not be implemented unilaterally.

Gaza is Israel’s big problem. Because of the political, security and civic failure of the disengagement, the road to a solution of the problem of Gaza runs through Ramallah and Jerusalem. In Ramallah, it is in the hands of one man – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. But Benjamin Netanyahu’s government refuses to accept that fact. So Abbas is preparing a surprise for it in the form of a “no-partner” declaration.

American bayonets will not bring Abbas back to Gaza, and the Israel Defense Forces certainly will not. He will resume ruling in Gaza – just as he proved, to the chagrin of many in the defense establishment, that he could in the West Bank – on the shoulders of the Arab world, and perhaps also of a joint NATO-Arab force. Such a force would first establish itself in the West Bank, after the IDF evacuates that territory, and at the border crossings with Jordan in the Jordan Valley.

In this way, without negotiation and without the need to explain why there are no negotiations, Abbas could dispel the charges that he is a “pet Palestinian” and get around his domestic problem with his prime minister, Salam Fayyad.

Gaza is the fuel for the anti-Israel struggle. It is the symbol of that struggle throughout the Arab and Muslim world, even among those who live in Western countries. And it is up to us to uproot the anti-Israel cells the flourish there. Gaza’s hunger is the fuel of the struggle. We must dry up this fuel. It is not a tool for getting Gilad Shalit back, or for toppling Hamas.

Perhaps we acted like a responsible power in Haiti, and we deserve praise for that. But in the Middle East, it would be best for us to simply behave as a responsible country. For its own security, and to protect its own interests, Israel must seek negotiations that will deal with the issues of borders and security as a single unit, with the involvement of a multilateral Arab military force and with major involvement by NATO.

Not so long ago, such a formula would have drawn disparagement from the security establishment and even accusations of “internationalizing” the conflict – that is, forfeiting Israel’s security. When senior reserve officers raised the idea of such a force as part of a solution to the problem of Gaza’s northern border, both during the serious clashes that preceded the disengagement and thereafter, they received chilly telephone calls from “the establishment.” Meanwhile, the American force in Sinai was ignored, as was the high quality of the UN force on the Syrian border, and the fact that while the IDF is not satisfied with UNIFIL’s performance in Lebanon in the wake of UN Resolution 1701, no one has come up with a better solution.

The defense establishment is beginning to understand that it is better to redeploy. We need the world, including the Arab world. Several think tanks are thoroughly studying the insertion of a force of this type.

The road to the Arab world will require Israel to treat itself like a country that is not a world power and not one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, but rather a regional or a local power. It was that road that led to Israel’s previous victories. We must not give it up. We are getting closer to a situation in which if we do not act, Abbas will invoke his no-partner thesis.

The writer was a political adviser in the Defense Ministry, responsible for the Palestinians’ “fabric of life”

Gilad Shalit video from Hamas pushes for release deal: Haaretz

Israel condemns animated clip depicting father of captured soldier waiting in vain for his release
Hamas has produced an unusually sophisticated animated film apparently pressing for a deal that would bring about the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured near Gaza nearly four years ago.

The Israeli government reacted angrily to the film, describing it as “deplorable” and blamed Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement, for the failure to agree a deal for the release of Shalit, who was captured in June 2006. He is alive and believed to be held somewhere in Gaza.

The three-minute film depicts Shalit’s father, Noam, walking empty streets clutching a photograph of his captured son. He passes advertising hoardings that show several Israeli leaders promising to arrange Shalit’s release and then finds a newspaper discarded in a rubbish bin showing on its front page a $50m reward for information on his son’s case.

As time passes without his son’s release Shalit’s father grows old, with a beard and a cane. Eventually the soldier is returned, delivered in a coffin draped in the Israeli flag at the Erez checkpoint at the entrance to Gaza. Shalit’s father then wakes up from his dream to find himself sitting at a bus stop. The words “There is still hope” appear in Hebrew and English.

It is the latest product of an increasingly sophisticated Hamas media operation, including a movie studio of sorts on the site of a former Jewish settlement in Gaza.

The animation was broadcast on Israeli television to an audience that is by now familiar with Noam Shalit, the dignified father who has long campaigned for his son’s release and has urged both Israel and Hamas to make a deal.

In a statement, Noam Shalit dismissed the film as “psychological warfare”.

“Hamas leaders would do better if instead of producing films and performances, they would worry about the real interests of the Palestinian prisoners and the ordinary citizens of Gaza who have been held hostage by their leaders for a long time,” he said.

A deal between Israel and Hamas, negotiated by German intelligence officials, appeared close at the end of last year but fell through at the last minute. Each side blamed the other. Hamas was to release Shalit and in return Israel would free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. About 6,600 Palestinians are held in Israeli jails, more than 200 of them without charge.

Shalit was last seen in a video released by his captors in October. He appeared tired but unhurt.

Last week the Israeli authorities allowed the daughter of a Hamas interior minister, Fathi Hamad, to leave Gaza through Israel to reach a hospital in Jordan for urgent medical treatment. She was allowed out reportedly after the intervention of the Jordanian monarch, King Abdullah.

In a separate incident on Sunday night Israeli troops killed a Hamas militant in Hebron on the occupied West Bank. Ali Swaiti was suspected of shooting dead an Israeli border policeman in 2004. The Israeli military said Swaiti was killed when he refused to surrender.

Why does the IDF allow officers to live in illegal outposts?: Haaretz

By Akiva Eldar
The death of Maj. Eliraz Peretz, who was killed in an action in an operation in the Gaza Strip, brought the Givat Hayovel saga back into the spotlight.

As in the story of the heroism of his neighbor in the illegal outpost in the settlement of Eli, Roi Klein, who was killed in the Second Lebanon War while saving his troops, his settler friends and his patrons on the right have enlisted the Peretz family’s tragedy in the fight to save his widow’s home from demolition.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak was required to inform the High Court of Justice by May 1 of last year about when he intends to demolish the houses in the outpost (which Palestinians claim is built on private land). He has now announced he will ask the court to postpone the execution of the order.
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, the officers’ supreme commander, has also promised to lend a hand. Even the left-wing Peace Now movement has evinced the appropriate sensitivity and has agreed to cooperate.

Strangely, in all this no one has wondered how it is possible that the IDF, the body charged with imposing the law on the West Bank, never lifted a finger against its officers who settled in an illegal outpost in the first place.

Moreover, how can an officer in the career army who breaks the law and ignores a court order serve as a model for his soldiers? How should a private deal with an order to evacuate an illegal outpost from a colonel who has made his home in a similar community? And what can anyone expect of an officer who is squatting on property when his commander, who is himself a squatter, orders him to evacuate his own home?

After it emerged that dozens of career army officers are living in outposts, I sent these questions to the military spokesman. I wanted to know what the army’s policy is with regard to officers who are living in outposts.

After a thorough clarification, according to the spokesman, with the Military Advocate General’s Office, he sent the following response:

“In the unapproved outposts, for many years now thousands of citizens have been living, among them state employees including army people. As of today, to the best of our knowledge, there exists no general policy concerning state employees, including military people, living in the outposts.”

Obviously the absence of a policy means a policy of tacit agreement. When they are in uniform, the officers are charged with enforcing the law. When they take off their uniforms, they are breaking the law.

The military prosecutor’s acceptance of this phenomenon shows something about the special relations that have developed in recent years between the cat and the cream.

Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer, a specialist on military and constitutional law, was also surprised to hear the IDF’s response. The absence of a policy with respect to officers living in illegal outposts, he said, is blatantly unreasonable and also encourages the phenomenon.

“The IDF is the sovereign and charged with enforcing the law in the territories,” explained Kremnitzer, who in the past was a military judge. “Therefore, the army must have an unambiguous policy against breaking the law in those territories.”

According to him, it is impossible to be a member of an organization responsible for the rule of law and to break the law without that having a negative effect on the organization’s status. Kremnitzer says the IDF has a clear policy concerning members’ conduct even when they are not in uniform.

The Civil Administration has responded that none of their people live in an outpost and they do not accept lawbreakers into their ranks.

Four years ago the police investigations department summoned a police officer who had built a house in the Mitzpeh Yair outpost in the southern Hebron Hills. After it was made clear to him that he had to decide on which side of the law he chose to stand, the officer called a moving company.

A police spokesman said that in the wake of this, a policy was established to the effect that a lawman cannot live in an illegal outpost.

The Shin Bet, which is also charged with enforcing the law and security in the territories, told Haaretz that it is not their intention to answer the question of their policy with regard to their people settling in outposts.

How much do they really love Zion?

Before Independence Day, the Emek Yezreel College commissioned a survey of the attitude of young Jewish Israelis (Hebrew-speakers aged 20 to 30) toward the national anthem, “Hatikvah.”

A large majority (82 percent) reported they know how to recite the anthem in full. Another 17 percent said they know just part of it and about only 1 percent admitted they don’t know the words to the national anthem at all.

A larger majority (85 percent) said the anthem represents them to large or very large extent.

Prominent among those who said the anthem does not represent them were people with low incomes (8 percent) and religious respondents (11 percent), as compared to 2 to 3 percent among people with average and high incomes and 1 percent among people who define themselves as traditional.

The vast majority of the respondents are interested in keeping the national anthem as it is; only 14 percent would prefer to replace it or modify it.

The initiator of the survey, Dr. Ruth Amir, head of the interdisciplinary studies department at the college, asked the Teleseker company to examine the percentage of Israelis who would be prepared to leave the country and move to the United States to live if they were able to obtain a residence visa quickly and easily.

The finding revealed a considerable gap between the “yearning Jewish soul” in the anthem and the desire for a green card. No less than 60 percent at all income levels responded in that they would take off if given the chance.

The title Amir chose for her study: “I love you, homeland, but I want to leave.”

April 26, 2010

Obama to Barak: I am committed to Israel’s security: Haaretz

U.S. President Barack Obama held an impromptu meeting with Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Monday, during which Obama affirmed his country’s “unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security.”

According to a White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, Obama “dropped by” a Monday morning meeting between Barak and U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones.

Obama also reasserted his administration’s determination to achieve regional peace, “including a two-state solution with a secure Jewish state of Israel living side by side in peace and security with a viable and independent Palestinian state.”
Barak and the American leaders discussed challenges to regional security,
how to deal with threats faced by both the U.S. and Israel and how
to move forward toward a comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians.
Municipal officials in Jerusalem said Monday that the government had effectively frozen construction of settlements in disputed East Jerusalem despite its public posture that building would continue. U.S. officials had no immediate comment.

Settlement building has been a large sticking point since Israel infuriated Washington last month by announcing a major new housing development in East Jerusalem during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley would not discuss what Israel was telling the United States about construction.
“We have asked both sides to take steps to rebuild trust and to create momentum so that we can see advances in the peace process,” Crowley told reporters.
“We’re not going to go into details about what we’ve asked them to do, but obviously this is an important issue in the atmosphere to see the advancement of peace.
U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, on Sunday said he held “positive and productive talks” with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in an effort “to improve the atmosphere for peace and for proceeding with proximity talks.

Mitchell is expected back in the region next week.
Obama last June also unexpectedly dropped by a meeting between Barak and Jones, despite it not having been on his official schedule.
Last year’s unplanned encounter came after senior American officials harshly criticized Netanyahu and his policies, causing tension between the Obama administration and Israel’s government.

Palestinians ban settlement goods: Al Jazeera online

The move is part of a campaign to discourage trade with companies in the West Bank settlements [AFP]
Palestinian officials have passed a new law outlawing the sale of goods made in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The law, under which offenders could face up to five years in jail or a fine of up to $14,000, was signed by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, on Monday.

The move is part of a campaign launched earlier this year to clear Palestinian markets of settlement goods and encourage other countries to ban trade with companies in the settlements, which are considered illegal under international law.
“There’s an international consensus that the settlements are illegal and therefore it is unacceptable to support them,” Hassan al-Awri, Abbas’s legal adviser, told the Reuters news agency.
The campaign does not include products from Israel proper, which Palestinians rely on.
Palestinian government officials estimate the annual sale of goods from Israeli-run companies in the settlements totals up to $500 million per year.

Palestinian boycott
Monday’s ban came nearly six months after the Palestinian Authority called on the public to boycott several large supermarket chains in the West Bank for carrying Israeli products.
The decision targeted upscale markets in the West Bank city of Ramallah, in an attempt to pressure the stores to discontinue the sale of fruits and vegetables grown and processed in Israeli settlements.

Palestinians consider these settlements the most serious threat to their aspirations for statehood.
In December of last year, Britain called on UK supermarkets selling goods from the West Bank to state explicitly on labels whether the content had come from Israeli settlements or Palestinian-owned farms.
The recommendation, issued by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), is not a legal requirement.
But Israeli officials and settler leaders reacted angrily to the decision, saying it would lead to a boycott of their goods.

Until now, food has been labelled “Produce of the West Bank”, but Defra’s voluntary guidance said labels should give more precise information, like “Palestinian produce” or “Israeli settlement produce”.
Products from the Israeli settlements include cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, fruit and textiles.
European Union law already requires a distinction to be made between goods originating in Israel and those from the occupied territories, though pro-Palestinian campaigners say this is not always observed.

Abbas: I don’t want to declare unilateral statehood: Haaretz

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday said he opposes the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, in an exclusive interview on Channel 2 news.
Abbas’ remarks contradict comments made by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who told Haaretz earlier this month that Palestinians would have an independent state by August 2011.

“We stand by agreements,” Abbas said regarding the unilateral declaration of statehood.
In the Channel 2 interview, the Palestinian leader also extended his hand in peace to the Israeli people, asserting that he is prepared to work with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is committed to returning to the negotiating table next month. Abbas said he hopes to get Arab League approval for indirect talks on May 1.
Abbas said it his duty to work with Netanyahu who was “chosen by the Israeli people and elected by the Knesset.”

Netanyahu responded by saying he “commends any willingness to resume peace talks.”
U.S. special envoy to the Mideast, George Mitchell, was in the region over the weekend in a push to restart indirect talks between the two sides, which are scheduled to resume by mid-May.
Abbas also addressed Israeli construction in East Jerusalem, saying that a building freeze has always been a precondition for talks with Israel.
He insisted in the interview that Palestinians would not be able to force the right of return for Palestinian refugees on Israelis within the context of a peace agreement, but that he seeks a “just solution.”

The two sides should abide by what has been outlined in the road map for peace regarding the refugee issue, Abbas said.
Abbas also spoke about captive IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, saying he opposes the imprisonment of the Israeli soldier just as he opposes the imprisonment of 8,000 Palestinian prisoners.
He added that he has offered for Hamas to transfer Shalit to the Palestinian Authority in order to broker a deal that would be acceptable to both sides.

EDITOR: Israel continues its extrajudicial murders

The Israeli murder squads never stop; one day they are in Dubai, another in Gaza, then in the West Bank. The killing goes on, illegal, immoral and also illogical, as this produces more militants and more militancy. But maybe that is what they want?

Israel troops kill Hamas militant: BBC

Mr Suweiti was accused of attacking Israeli forces in the West Bank
Israeli troops have killed a senior Hamas militant in a raid on a house in the West Bank.
Ali Suweiti, 42, was killed during a gun battle in the village of Beit Awa, the Israeli military said.
Troops from the Israel Defense Forces, Border Guard and security service Shin Bet surrounded the house and militants opened fire on them, a spokesman said.
Mr Suweiti was wanted for his alleged role in a 2004 gun attack on a border patrol in which a soldier was killed.
“A force surrounded the building in which Suweiti was hiding and called on him to surrender,” a statement from the Israeli Defence Force said.
“Suweiti refused and opened fire at the forces, who then used engineering tools in addition to firing at the building’s exterior wall, in order to cause him to surrender. The terrorist continued to fire at the force, and was ultimately killed.”
The building he was in was demolished by the Israeli forces.

Israeli soldiers raid the house in which Ali Suweiti was said to be hiding

Mr Suweiti’s uncle, Mahmoud, told the Associated Press news agency that Israeli soldiers surrounded the house before dawn on Monday.
He said his nephew ignored calls by the troops to surrender and soldiers opened fire on the building.
Mr Suweiti was involved in five attacks on Israeli border guards between 1999 and 2004, the Israeli military said.
In 2004 he took part in an ambush on a border patrol jeep, killing 20-year-old policeman Yaniv Mashiah, the IDF said.
The IDF said they had tried to arrest him in 2007 but he escaped.

Netanyahu: Israel not planning military action against Syria: Haaretz

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said that Israel is not planning military action against Syria, despite rumors to the contrary.
“There is no truth to the suggestion that Israel is planning a military move against Syria,” Netanyahu said at the Likud party meeting, adding that the rumors were likely spread by Iran and Hezbollah as an attempt to distract the international community from the bid to impose sanctions on Iran.
“Iran is continuing its race to attain nuclear weapons,” the prime minister said. “The international community is formulating an agreement to impose sanctions against Iran, but I don’t see it happening in the coming month.”
Earlier this month, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Israel was preparing a military strike against Syria by accusing Damascus of supplying Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon with long-range Scud missiles.

“Israel aims from this to raise tension further in the region and to create an atmosphere for probable Israeli aggression,” the statement said, adding that “the Syrian Arab Republic denies these fabrications.”
Netanyahu added that he hoped sanctions against oil exports would be implemented, as they would “create a real problem for the Iranian regime and force it to rethink whether it wants to continue developing its nuclear program.”

Netanyahu also said he believes the United Nations Security Council will not approve sanctions in their current formula, but said, “the U.S. is capable of doing it [passing sanctions] in an effective manner outside of the UN, and I am convinced that major other countries will join them.”
Meanwhile, a top Syrian official said earlier Monday accused Israel of trying to undermine Syria’s ties with the United States by claiming that Damascus is supplying Hezbollah with Scud missiles.
Presidential adviser Buthaina Shaaban said “the missiles are too big to be moved undetected in a tiny country like Lebanon where Israeli reconnaissance planes fly overhead on daily basis.”

In an article published Monday in the daily Tishrin, Shaaban described the allegations as “ridiculous.”
Syria has denied the charges, as has Lebanon’s Western-backed prime minister.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said the Obama administration is still committed to improving ties with Syria despite its deeply troubling moves to aid Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrilla group.

Continue reading April 26, 2010