Gaza border official says Israel has allowed a commercial shipment of shoes and clothes into the blockaded Palestinian territory for the first time since 2007.
Raed Fattouh says 10 truckloads of shoes and clothes entered the Hamas-run strip Sunday. He says many of the goods were damaged after more than two years in storage.
It was the first non-humanitarian shipment of such items, though an Israeli army spokesman says Israel allows such items into Gaza occasionally as part of UN-coordinated aid shipments.
Gaza has been under a strict Israeli and Egyptian blockade since Hamas seized control of the area in 2007. There are shortages of many basic goods and merchants rely on smuggling tunnels under the Egyptian border.
EDITOR: Call for disarmament by Blix
Though not dealing mainly or only with Israel/Palestine, this has an important bearing on the conflict.
Hans Blix, April 4, 2010 STOCKHOLM — The financial crisis and global warming have had the world’s attention in recent years. Thanks to President Barack Obama’s initiative, perhaps the season for nuclear disarmament has finally arrived.
Boycott H&M, by Carlos Latuff
On Thursday, President Obama will meet Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in Prague to sign a nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia that will reduce their arsenals by 30 percent.
The new treaty will be received positively. There will be praise for the Obama administration’s attitude toward arms control and disarmament and for Russia’s readiness to join hands with the United States.
Though not achieving the drastic cuts in nuclear arsenals and delivery vehicles that the world is longing for, the U.S.-Russian treaty is important and encouraging. Coming after Bush administration policies that nearly sent the two states into a new Cold War, the new treaty constitutes the resetting of an important button. It preserves arrangements for confidence-building mutual inspections and sets the stage for negotiating more far-reaching cuts.
We should be aware, however, that a next step of deeper reductions will hardly be attainable unless there is agreement on extensive cooperation on missile defense. Russia is deeply suspicious that the missile shield could enable the United States to launch an attack on any target in Russia while itself remaining immune to any such attacks. Further bilateral disarmament will also be impeded if Russia feels that the NATO alliance seeks to encircle it by expanding its military cooperation through membership or otherwise with more states neighboring Russia.
The signing on Thursday will take place one year after President Obama’s presentation in Prague of a detailed program for the revival of global nuclear arms control and disarmament. Later this month he will be the host in Washington of a large summit meeting that will focus on nuclear security. In May, the operation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will be the subject of review at a conference in New York in which nearly all governments in the world will take part. The review that took place in 2005 ended in acrimony and some predicted the end of the treaty.
Through adherence to the nonproliferation treaty that was concluded in 1970, states have committed themselves to stay away from nuclear weapons or to move away from these weapons. If all states had joined and fulfilled their commitments, the treaty would have led by now to a world free of nuclear weapons. This has not happened, of course. The number of nuclear weapons, which peaked at more than 50,000 during the Cold War, is still over 20,000 — most of them in the United States and Russia. The number of states with nuclear weapons has gone from five to nine since 1970.
There is also frustration at the lack of progress on many important items relevant to the treaty. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has not entered into force because the United States, China and a number of other states have not ratified it. The negotiation of a convention prohibiting the production of enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons remains blocked at the Geneva Disarmament Conference. The Additional Protocol of the International Atomic Energy Agency for strengthened safeguards inspections remains unratified by a large number of states, including Iran.
Some items are bound to attract much attention at the nonproliferation treaty review conference in May. One is that 20 years after the end of the Cold War, the obligation of five nuclear-weapon states under the treaty to negotiate toward nuclear disarmament has not led us anywhere near zero. Another grievance — especially among Arab states — is that Israel has nuclear weapons and has refrained from adhering to the treaty. A third is that the treaty has been violated by several states. Although Iraq and Libya have been brought into compliance, North Korea has not and Iran and perhaps others might be aiming to ignore the treaty.
Hans Blix was the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1981 to 1997 and chief U.N. arms inspector for Iraq from 2000 to 2003.
Targets See New Push as Effort To Discredit Legitimate Criticism
By Nathan Guttman
Published March 31, 2010,
Organizer: CODEPINK’s Nancy Kricorian says she does not aim to delegitimize Israel.
The term, used to describe a broad spectrum of anti-Israel protests, has become a major rallying point for the American Jewish community and is the up-and-coming cause for Jewish organizations.
In particular, supporters of this emerging advocacy effort point to the campaign to boycott, divest from and sanction — BDS — Israel as a primary marker distinguishing “delegitimizers” from genuine critics. It’s a campaign that has gained traction on the left in recent years. And in the past few months, pro-Israel advocates have begun to mobilize against what they perceive to be efforts to delegitimize Israel as a Jewish state, whether via BDS or other means.
“The delegitimization and BDS movement is nationally coordinated, and it requires a national response,” said William Daroff, the Jewish Federations of North America’s vice president for public policy. “We need to move forward as a community to counter this cancerous growth.”
But while supporters of Israel see the fight against delegitimization of the Jewish state as a new frontier in the pro-Israel battle, critics believe that the term is used mostly to discredit opposition to Israeli policies.
“To be frank, the ‘de-legitimization’ issue is a fraud,” historian Tony Judt, director of New York University’s Remarque Institute, wrote in an e-mail to the Forward. Judt, a harsh critic of Israel, said: “I know no one in the professional world of political commentary, however angry about Israel’s behavior, who thinks that the country has no right to exist…. ‘De-legitimization’ is just another way to invoke antisemitism as a silencer, but sounds better because [it’s] less exploitative of emotional pain.”
Judt has written that he believes Israel’s settlement policies have made a binational one-state outcome to the Israel-Palestinian conflict all but inevitable — a stand that has led Israel advocates to label Judt himself a delegitimizer.
In the past year, JFNA and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs adopted resolutions calling for communitywide action against delegitimization. And the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s executive director, Howard Kohr, outlined a plan to fight Israel’s delegitimization by demanding the state’s admission into international bodies, such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
A March 10 meeting in New York marked the most significant attempt yet to formulate a communitywide response to this perception of delegitimization. Israeli officials and participants from major Jewish organizations and federations discussed the possibility of creating and funding a mechanism to track and respond to what they see as delegitimization efforts.
As a first order of business, participants raised the need to educate the Jewish community about the issue.
“Members of our community need to be knowledgeable and need to be able to answer to these allegations,” said Martin Raffel, JCPA’s senior vice president. “There is no one-size-fits-all solution. We will have to have tailored responses for each constituency.”
But seeking a response to delegitimization requires a clear definition of the problem. An in-depth study released in March by the Reut Institute, a Tel Aviv-based think tank, identifies delegitimization as an organized movement and goes to great lengths to define the elusive term in a way that draws a line between what authors of the 92-page report see as legitimate criticism of Israel and forms of protest that fall under the delegitimization category.
“We are asking people to go into the nuances. We need to keep in mind that not everyone is an Israel hater, but not everything is Israel’s fault,” said Gidi Grinstein, Reut’s founder and president.
The think tank’s paper defines delegitimization as criticism that “exhibits blatant double standards, singles out Israel, denies its right to exist as the embodiment of the self-determination right of the Jewish people, or demonizes the state.”
But, as Grinstein pointed out, identifying Israel’s delegitimizers can be tricky, since most do not see themselves as denying Israel’s right to exist.
“The effectiveness of Israel’s de-legitimizers, who represent a relatively marginal political and societal force in Europe and North America, stems from their ability to engage and mobilize others by blurring the lines with Israel’s critics,” the Reut paper states.
Would the students who disrupted the February 9 speech of Israeli ambassador Michael Oren at University of California, Irvine be delegitimizers? For most activists in the Jewish community, the answer is clear.
“They definitely are,” said Michael Kotzin, executive vice president of Chicago’s Jewish federation. “Instead of asking [Oren] about Israel’s policy, they are denying him the right to speak.”
Kotzin said that many of those pursuing the delegitimization agenda are naive and are exploited by activists who deny Israel’s right to exist.
According to Israel supporters dealing with the issue, the key is focusing not on the protesters’ actions but on their intentions, even if they do not acknowledge these intentions publicly.
“You need to dig under the surface and see what drives them,” Grinstein said. “Most of the students who protested Oren’s speech don’t understand the subtleties and believe they are not engaged in delegitimization, but those organizing them are.”
Nancy Kricorian of CODEPINK, a women’s anti-war group, might be seen as such an organizer. Kricorian coordinates CODEPINK’s boycott campaign against Ahava cosmetic products because the products are manufactured on a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank. But she rejected the thought that she was seeking to delegitimize the state. “This is only a way of changing the subject,” said Kricorian. “All we want is [for] Israel to respect human rights and international law. I don’t see how that delegitimizes Israel.”
At the same time, the broad-based coalition of Palestinian civil society groups that launched the BDS movement in 2005 declares that one of its goals is to promote the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the homes they lost — sometimes through mass expulsion — during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. A 1948 United Nations Security Council Resolution endorsed this right, but Israel rejects it on the grounds that the flood of returnees would spell the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
Reut and advocates for Israel argue that singling out Israel and demanding that it adhere to higher human rights standards than its adversaries is another form of delegitimization.
Yet, a higher standard for Israel is something that Judt, for one, unapologetically upholds. “People will say, ‘Why are we picking on Israel? What about Libya, Yemen? Burma? China?’” he writes in the March 25 issue of the London Review of Books. “Fine. [But] Israel describes itself as a democracy, and so it should be compared with democracies, not with dictatorships.”
As a country in “a difficult relationship” with its neighbors, Israel should be allowed a “certain margin of behavior,” Judt acknowledged in his email. But Israel’s relative strength compared to other regional nations gives it “even less excuse for criminality, law-breaking or violence than they do,” he said.
Amos Guiora, a law professor and former Israeli army senior military counsel, objected that Israel is judged by double standards even when compared with other Western democracies. Guiora, noted that attacks by German and American forces in Afghanistan that caused heavy civilian deaths received less censure from the international community.
“By what standard does Israel want to be judged?” Guiora asked. His reply was, “By a standard in which you judge countries that are in a very, very special situation.”
Those seeking to distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from delegitimization cite another criterion: the labeling of Israeli policies as “apartheid.”
Yet, in recent years mainstream Israeli leaders have used the word to describe the danger the country faces if it does not resolve its conflict with Palestinians.
Recently, Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister and Labor Party leader, said bluntly, “If millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.”
Grinstein warned that fighting delegitimization must not devolve into hasbara, or public relations. The struggle, he said, is both about confronting those who question Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and making sure Israel pursues a path of seeking peace and an end to the occupation.
The Reut document states, “Clearly, an Israeli and Palestinian comprehensive Permanent Status Agreement that establishes a Palestinian state and brings about an ‘end of conflict’… would weaken the grounds of Israel’s de-legitimization.”
EDITOR: No More Rockets? Oy Vey…
Terrible news, this! If indeed there will be no rockets, it will be even more difficult to justify the next attack… but, not to worry, they will find seven different ways to do so. They always do.
Islamic Jihad on Sunday announced that it would cease firing rockets into Israel, Channel 10 news reported.
An Islamic Jihad spokesman, Daoud Shihab, made the announcement in an interview on Islamic Jihad radio, during which he reportedly said the militant group, “stopped the rocket fire into Israel for internal Palestinian purposes – first and foremost to help end the siege on the Gaza Strip.”
According to the Channel 10 report, Shihab went on to say that Islamic Jihad does not intend to reverse this decision, but clarified that “if Israel once again attacks Gaza, no one will be able to prevent the resistance operatives from responding to the attacks.”
An anonymous Islamic Jihad official later denied the attacks would stop, according to Israel Radio.
A senior Egyptian official involved in brokering past truces between Gaza militant groups and Israel said in a statement that the Egyptians had on Sunday stepped up diplomatic pressure on both parties to reduce tensions in the coastal strip.
“Egypt has conducted extensive calls at the highest level with both Israel and the Palestinian factions to contain the escalating tension in the Gaza Strip in order to prevent a deterioration of the situation,” the official said.
Meanwhile, Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha on Friday told the BBC that Hamas is working to curb rocket attacks against Israel by Gaza militants.
“The government in Gaza is in charge of the situation, and it does know clearly who launches rockets,” Taha told the BBC. “It is working hard to deter any faction from acting individually.”
Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshal to stop militants in the Gaza Strip from firing rockets against Israel.
Lavrov made his request in a telephone conversation, which, according to Russian news agencies, covered a variety of issues regarding the Middle East.
The Russian foreign minister told Meshal that the recent increase in rocket fire was unacceptable.
Meshal responded by reiterating Hamas’ declared stance that it was not interested in an escalation of tensions with Israel and would continue to try to maintain calm in the area.
However, days later, on Saturday, Meshal said that all options against Israel remain open, including war, according to Channel 10 news.
“We will do everything to obtain the rights stolen from us, including confrontation with the enemy,” said.
EDITOR: The great apologists rides again
Jacobson, a hopeless case of apologism for Israel, is again speaking of the terrible antisemitism, which he has been hoping and pining for for some time now, and at last he seems to capture it in his gun-sight… When calling Israel arrogant and speaking of war crimes is supposedly antisemitic, then surely we should all sop speaking and writing altogether, and if possible, stop thinking. For some people, no amount of Israeli brutalities will ever make the slightest difference.
Anti-Zionism of the sort that peppers letters pages has much to answer for
Taking the long view, it’s been a good few weeks for Israel. It won’t look that way, of course, to those who view the country from an extreme position – whether zealots unwilling to believe Israel can ever do a thing wrong, or zealots unwilling to believe it can ever do a thing right.
Nothing will assuage the passions of these fevered men, or deflect them from their mutual fascination; they are locked in a lewd embrace, each needing the heat of the other’s body to keep his own alive. But to the rational and the fair, it’s been a few weeks full of promise.
Call nothing certain, but Obama’s strict line with Netanyahu over the resumption of building in Ramat Shlomo appears to have woken the latter to an awareness, if not yet the practice, of realpolitik – realpolitik, paradoxically, being an acceptance that a concessionary spirit as often as not trumps principle.
The argument has been advanced that the houses in Ramat Shlomo are not to be confused with settlements on disputed land, that they are the completion of a project that has been going on for years without complaint, and in a part of Jerusalem not covered by the settlement freeze – a municipal not an international matter, in other words, a bit like the holes in the roads of Boris Johnson’s rubbish-dump London. To which the answer, since this is a family newspaper in which we ought not to resort to swearing, is “Tough!”
Where peace is the prize – and it can’t be a good few weeks for any party in which peace is not brought a little closer – such topographical niceties are not only brutally irrelevant, they are counterproductive. Never mind the rights and wrongs of it, in politics you must sometimes swallow your conviction of rectitude, just as in human relations you must sometimes accept that what looks right to you looks wrong to someone else.
Fanatical and uninformed anti-Zionism of the sort that peppers the letters pages of serious newspapers has much to answer for morally and intellectually, but the most serious charge against it is that while it satisfies the self-righteousness of its propounders, it does little to help those it calls victims, and still less to persuade those it calls oppressors.
Weary of the one-sidedness of international condemnation, successive Israeli administrations have turned away and pursued their own course, confident at least that America will go on winking at the obduracy into which it has been backed. With every misattribution of motive, with every lazy libel, that obduracy has grown stronger. As an observer one can feel it hardening one’s own heart. Malign misrepresentation leaves no room for subtle dialogue. Thus, many who would have been critical of the occupation in their own terms – which does not mean seeing it as Hamas or Ahmadinejad see it – are deflected from the real conversation and must expend their energies confuting the prejudices of scoundrels.
The recent Biden/Netanyahu spat has broken the enchantment. Never mind that the poorly taught and easily led will go on twittering about apartheid and genocide even if Israel pulls down every house it has ever built and moves its population on to Dizengoff Beach tomorrow – the argument now is between grown-ups. This is how you talk to friends. This is how you treat enemies. To gain A you must forfeit B, no matter that you think you have the paperwork to prove it’s yours. He who would win a bit in the long run must lose a bit in the long run too.
It’s far better for Israel to be in an argument with a specific country over a specific issue than to have its actual, never mind its spiritual existence, forever undermined by ideologues hunting in packs with misquotations in their pockets. So I see the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat by our Foreign Secretary as more good news.
This, too, has been couched in the language of sanctimony, the inviolability of British passports blah blah, the crime of targeted assassinations, but that’s an allowable hypocrisy. A state must say one thing while its citizens believe another. We all love targeted assassinations in our hearts, so long as it’s the right target and it isn’t our passport that’s been purloined to do it – a sophisticated parley with our consciences which we don’t require our government to reflect. From a newspaper, though, we expect a tone which at least acknowledges that we face both ways in matters such as these. So I was surprised to see a Guardian editorial reading like a 19th-century Foreign Office reprimand to a recalcitrant colony that had forgotten it was of the wrong caste and colour to be getting uppity.
“Both events in London and Washington,” the editorial said, “are the marks of an arrogant nation that has overreached itself.”
Let’s leave aside what’s arrogant and what’s not. What we call arrogance is almost always a cover for fear. And Netanyahu struts like a man whose fears run deep. But how can the rift with the American and British administrations reflect in any way on Israel as a “nation”? Did Mrs Thatcher’s taking back the Falklands make us an arrogant “nation”? Does our being in Afghanistan say anything about us as a “nation” at all? Some of us are pleased we’re there, some aren’t, and some don’t give a damn either way. We are not, as a nation, of one mind or heart in very much, if anything, we do. To imply otherwise would be to charge us with a collective flaw, and we all know what the word is for doing that.
It’s precisely because they are free of slurs of this sort, without unsavoury ethnic or socio-religious overtones, that Washington and London’s arguments with Israel are to be welcomed. They address political differences. Obama and Miliband have squared up to a country not a “nation”, they have taken issue with decisions made by the government of Israel, and not that unvariegated figment of disordered imaginations, “the Israeli people”, and thus they have liberated the entire debate from the question of what Balfour intended, whether the Holocaust has been exploited, who is and who is not a Zionist, etc, etc. And give or take the odd misguided editorial, letters from the usual suspects, and the on-line vituperation that clings like a spider web to the coat-tails of other people’s articles, such has been the liberated spirit of public commentary ever since Biden kept Netanyahu waiting for dinner.
Allowing that tomorrow is a terrifying place, we can take some hope from this. An Israel treated like other countries, held accountable for its political, not its supposed aetiological or genetic failings, is a country from which much might be expected, including peace.
Israel and the Palestinians must show restraint in the wake of a recent bout of violence, a U.K. official said Friday, just hours after Israel war planes struck the Gaza Strip in retaliation of recent rocket fire.
A spokesman for the U.K. Foreign Office said that London was “concerned by today’s strikes and the escalation of violence in Gaza and southern Israel over the past week.”
Talking to the U.K. newspaper The Telegraph, the official called “on all parties to show restraint,” adding that Britain encouraged “Israelis and Palestinians to focus efforts on negotiation and to engage urgently in US-backed proximity talks.”
Earlier Friday, a Qassam rocket was reported to have been fired by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, a report which the IDF Spokesman’s Office said was the result of a false alarm.
At least 35 rockets were fired at Israel over the course of March.
Also Friday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called on the international community must intervene in the latest cycle of violence between Gaza and Israel in order to avoid a possible escalation.
Haniyeh urged the world must stop “the escalation and aggression,” according to a Channel 10 report. He was likely referring to the Israel Air Force strikes, which destroyed what an Israel Defense Forces spokesman described as Palestinian munitions sites.
“We are contacting the other factions in order to reach an internal consensus as to the measures we may take in order to protect our people and strengthen our unity,” Haniyeh told reporters in Gaza.
Friday’s IAF air strikes were Israel’s response to a Palestinian short-range rocket that was fired across the border into Israel on Thursday, an IDF spokesman said. The attack, which went unclaimed by any Palestinian faction, caused no damage.
Four air strikes blew up two caravans near the town of Khan Younis, witnesses and Hamas officials said. There were no casualties.
A fifth missile hit a cheese factory in Gaza City, setting it on fire, witnesses and Hamas officials said. Hospital officials said two children were slightly wounded by flying debris.
Helicopters struck twice in the central refugee camp of Nusseirat, destroying a metal foundry. There were no casualties.
An IDF spokesman confirmed the attacks, saying they had targeted two weapons-manufacturing plants and two arms caches.
Last Friday, Major Eliraz Peretz and Staff Sergeant Ilan Sviatkovsky were killed while pursuing a group of Palestinian militants trying to lay mines near the border fence. Two other soldiers were wounded in the incident, and two militants were killed.
Three children injured in Israeli air strikes after Palestinian militants step up rocket attack
Palestinians walk past what Hamas officials say is a cheese factory destroyed in an Israeli air strike. Photograph: Suhaib Salem/REUTERS
Israeli jets and helicopters have attacked Gaza, injuring three children and hitting what the Israeli military said were weapons manufacturing and storage sites.
The attacks continue the escalation in violence around Gaza in recent weeks. A day earlier Israeli had dropped leaflets in southern Gaza warning of an attack.
The number of rockets fired from Gaza by Palestinian militants has begun to increase and a week ago two soldiers and two Palestinian gunmen were killed in the most serious clashes on the border for more than a year.
There were at least seven Israeli missile strikes overnight. Two caravans near the southern town of Khan Younis were hit as well as a cheese factory in Gaza City and a metal foundry in the Nuseirat refugee camp, according to reports. Hamas said a complex it built for making movies was damaged, the Associated Press reported.
The Israel defence forces (IDF) said a rocket was fired into southern Israel on Thursday and there were nearly 20 rocket and mortar attacks in March. Two weeks ago a rocket killed a Thai worker in Israel.
“The IDF will not tolerate any attempt to harm the citizens of the state of Israel and will continue to operate firmly against anyone who uses terror against it. The IDF holds Hamas as solely responsible for maintaining peace and quiet in the Gaza Strip,” the military said.
Britain today called for restraint and urged Israel and the Palestinians to renew talks. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “We are concerned by today’s strikes and the escalation of violence in Gaza and southern Israel over the past week. We encourage Israelis and Palestinians to focus efforts on negotiation and to engage urgently in US-backed proximity talks.”
Hamas, the Islamist movement that won Palestinian elections four years ago and controls Gaza, has tried in recent months to curb rocket fire. But it also said its fighters were involved in a gun battle a week ago in which two Israeli soldiers were killed and released video footage apparently taken during the fight.
Today Hamas said it had contacted armed groups in Gaza in an apparent attempt to rein in their attacks.
A statement by the Hamas government accused Israel of an escalation against the territory. But it also said the Hamas government was “making contact with the factions to safeguard internal agreement”.
Israel led a devastating war into Gaza in January last year that killed nearly 1,400 Palestinians. Thirteen Israelis died. For months afterwards the area was quiet, with both sides apparently keen to prevent further fighting.
Israel is continuing a tight economic blockade on Gaza, preventing exports and limiting imports to a small number of aid and food items.
EDITOR: Democracy of Silence
For over three months Israel has silenced this bizarre affair, in which the army and the judges operate illegally, in order to silence two journalist who have found the evidence that the IOF murders Palestinians despite a High Court order to the contrary. In this democracy, you are allowed to say what you want, until you find yourself in jail, at which point even the papers are not allowed to writye about it – the Israeli papers have not yet reported this latest news…
‘Haaretz’ writer fled to London fearing charges over exposé on Palestinian’s killing
By Kim Sengupta, Diplomatic Correspondent
Friday, 2 April 2010
An Israeli journalist is in hiding in Britain, The Independent can reveal, over fears that he may face charges in the Jewish state in connection with his investigation into the killing of a Palestinian in the West Bank.
Uri Blau, a reporter at Israel’s liberal newspaper, Haaretz, left town three months ago for Asia and is now in London. Haaretz is understood to be negotiating the terms of his return to Israel with prosecutors, according to an Israeli source, who declined to be identified, because of the sensitivity of the situation.
The news of Mr Blau’s extended absence comes just days after it emerged that another Israeli journalist, Anat Kam, has been held under house arrest for the last three months on charges that she leaked classified documents to the press while completing her military service.
Although no media outlet or journalist has been specifically named as the recipient of the classified information, there is speculation on Israeli blogs that Ms Kam gave documents to Mr Blau that formed the basis of a story he wrote in November 2008.
In his article for Haaretz, Mr Blau reported that one of two Islamic Jihad militants killed in Jenin in June 2007 had been targeted for assassination in apparent violation of a ruling issued six months earlier by Israel’s supreme court. While not outlawing assassinations in the West Bank altogether, the ruling heavily restricted the circumstances in which they were permissible, effectively saying that they should not take place if arrest was possible.
In an unusual move, Israel has placed a gagging order on national media, preventing them from reporting any aspect of the Kam case. Israel’s Channel Ten and Haaretz are expected to challenge this order on 12 April.
According to the court order, Ms Kam, 23, is being held on “espionage” charges. It alleges that she passed classified documents to a male journalist while working as a clerk in the Israel Defence Forces Central Command during her military service.
She was arrested more than a year after Mr Blau’s report, which was cleared by military censors at the time of publication, when she was working for the news service Walla, until recently owned by Haaretz.
Ms Kam denies all the charges. Her trial has reportedly been set for 14 April and she could face a lengthy prison sentence if convicted. Mr Blau did not respond to requests for comment; his friends and colleagues refused to discuss the case in detail.
Dov Alfon, Haaretz’s editor-in-chief, said in an emailed statement: “Haaretz has a 90-year-long tradition of protecting its reporters from government pressures, and Uri Blau is getting all the help we can provide him with.”
The move to gag Israel-based media has sparked fevered debate on Jewish blogs, which have freely reported the story. Bloggers have railed against the blackout, saying it represents a critical challenge to the freedom of the press.
“I do not believe that a citizen can be arrested and tried for suspected security offences right under our noses without anyone knowing anything about it,” wrote former Haaretz editor Hanoch Marmari in an eloquent cri de coeur on the Seventh Eye website.
“Trials do not take place here in darkened dungeons, nor do we have show trials behind glass or chicken wire. I have no doubt that such a strange, terrible and baseless scenario cannot take place in such a sophisticated democracy as our own.”
Woman faces treason trial after allegedly leaking documents that suggest military breached court order on West Bank assassinations
Anat Kam is accused of copying documents while she was a soldier on her national service and passing them on to Ha’aretz.
An Israeli journalist has been under secret house arrest since December on charges that she leaked highly sensitive, classified military documents that suggest the Israeli military breached a court order on assassinations in the occupied West Bank.
Anat Kam, 23, goes on trial in two weeks on treason and espionage charges and could face up to 14 years in jail. A court-imposed gagging order, proposed by the state and more recently by the defence, is preventing media coverage of the arrest and charges in Israel.
Kam is reportedly accused of copying military documents while she was a soldier on national service and then passing them to an Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. Kam denies the charges. Her lawyers declined to respond to repeated requests for comment.
A Haaretz journalist, Uri Blau, who has written several stories critical of the Israeli military and who has been linked in internet reports to the case, has left Israel and is now in London, apparently for fear he will be targeted for his reporting. Haaretz and Channel 10, an Israeli television station, will challenge the media gagging order at a hearing on 12 April, two days before Kam’s trial is due to start at the Tel Aviv district court.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which reported the story from New York this week, said the investigation into Kam was jointly conducted by Israeli military intelligence, the police and the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service. The Israeli military declined to comment on the case.
During her military service, Kam reportedly worked in the office of a senior Israeli general and is accused of copying classified documents from the office. After her time in the army she became a journalist, working for the Israeli news website Walla, which was previously partly owned by Haaretz but entirely editorially independent. Reports suggest she is accused of leaking the documents to Haaretz.
Attention has focused on an investigation Haaretz published on the Israeli military’s assassination policy in November 2008, written by Uri Blau and headlined “Licence to Kill”. He reported that the military, the Israel Defence Force, had been carrying out assassinations of Palestinian militants in the West Bank in contravention of an Israeli high court ruling, which said efforts should be made first to arrest suspected militants rather than assassinating them.
The story described meetings in the spring of 2007 in which senior Israeli generals discussed a mission to assassinate Ziad Subahi Mahmad Malaisha, a senior leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The army chief, General Gabi Ashkenazi, allegedly approved the operation but said Malaisha’s car was not to be attacked if there was “more than one unidentified passenger” in it.
Malaisha and another Islamic Jihad leader were killed by the military in June that year, and the military claimed at the time that the militants had first opened fire at the soldiers.
One of the generals involved in the meetings, Major-General Yair Naveh, was quoted in the story as defending the killings as legal. The AP reported that Kam served in Naveh’s office during her military service.
The Haaretz piece was accompanied by copies of military documents but it was approved by the military censor before publication, the Guardian understands. The story was published more than a year before Kam was arrested and was followed by several other articles by Blau that were similarly critical of the military.
Dov Alfon, editor of Haaretz, said: “Uri Blau is in London. He will be there until his editors decide otherwise. We are ready to continue to keep him in London as long as needed. Uri Blau published a lot of articles in Haaretz. All of them are dynamite stuff and it is clear of course that the authorities are not satisfied with these kind of revelations in a major newspaper.
“We understand this but we also understand that Israel is still a democracy and therefore we intend to continue to publish whatever public interest demands and our reporters can reveal.”
EDITOR: Breaking News – Peace agreement to be signed next month in Jerusalem!
It would of course be nice to have this headline some time soon, but unfortunately it is only an April Fool’s line… In the meantime, as expected, the whole affair of Netanyahu’s rejection of the US demands seems to have been carefully taken off the headlines. US papers avoid it like the plague, and even in Israel they moved on, as the show seems to have ended, at least this round of it, with Israel getting off scot free, as usual.
Thousands of Israelis gathered Thursday at the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron to celebrate the addition of the location to Israel’s list of national heritage sites, a move initiated by the Land of Israel caucus in the Knesset.
“The masses that have come here, including the 40 members of the Land of Israel caucus, are a guarantee and proof that no one will move us from the Cave of the Patriarchs, not even Hussein Obama,” MK Ayoob Kara (Likud) told the crowd.
“The Prime minister needs to say ‘no’ to Barack Hussein Obama, and ‘yes’ to the people of Israel, who have come here in their multitudes today. He needs to grant permits to start building in settlements and in all of Israel,” he added.
MK Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) responded to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent comments comparing construction in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, saying, “We love Tel Aviv, but it is 101 years old, while Jerusalem is 3,000 years old and Hebron is 4,000 years old.”
“On this holiday, which marks our passage from slavery to freedom, we need to maintain our freedom and not let anyone dictate to us where we can and cannot build,” she added.
Bus loads of people arrived at the controversial site in Hebron from the early hours of the morning, including several right-wing members of Knesset.
A U.S. State Department official on Thursday said, “We understand that tensions are high [in Hebron].”
“We continue to urge all parties to act responsibly and do whatever is necessary to maintain calm,” the official added.
MK Gila Gamliel (Likud), who joined in the celebration, said that Jerusalem will forever remain the capital of Israel, and Hebron has always been a part of Israel.
Earlier on Thursday, an Israeli woman was lightly hurt after Palestinians hurled stones at the tour bus she was riding on in Hebron.
The bus, which was bringing the tourists to the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, mistakenly entered the Palestinian part of the city and was stoned by school students.
Israel Defense Forces soldiers deployed to the area to disperse the crowd. The injured woman was taken to Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem, for treatment.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced last month that the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem would both be added to the list of national heritage sites that the government plans to promote.
The move drew protests from the Palestinians, who said it could ignite a religious war, and criticism from the United Nations and United States, who said the designation of the two sites could harm efforts to renew peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
MKs who worked toward having the two shrines declared heritage sites were to receive special certificates of appreciation and a musical program was scheduled for Thursday’s ceremony.
The Cave of the Patriarchs was to be open only to Jews for the day.
IN the face of rising tensions between the United States and Israel over housing construction in East Jerusalem, the Obama administration has rushed to reassert what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently called the “unshakable bond” between the two countries.
No doubt, that relationship rests on enduring foundations, including broad American public sympathy for a besieged democracy, a mutual strategic interest in resisting Arab extremism and a sense of moral duty to preserve the Jewish people after the Holocaust.
But if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tries to push his luck on settlements or the peace process, he would do well to remember an unnerving precedent: Israel’s loss, in 1967, of what had been a robust alliance with France.
The French-Israeli relationship began in the mid-1950s, when Israel became a major customer for the French arms industry. But the bond was not merely commercial: at the time France was trying to quash a rebellion in Algeria, and it shared with Israel a strategic interest in combating radical Arab nationalism. In 1956, France and Israel even fought together against Egypt in the Suez crisis.
The tacit alliance, championed by Israel’s deputy defense minister, Shimon Peres, deepened during the late ’50s and early ’60s through military cooperation and cultural exchanges. French technical assistance helped Israel get nuclear weapons, and France supplied the advanced military aircraft that became the backbone of the Israeli Air Force.
The relationship only grew warmer when Charles de Gaulle, the World War II hero, took over as French president in 1959. He recognized the historic justice of a Jewish “national home,” which he saw “as some compensation for suffering endured through long ages,” and he heaped praise on David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding prime minister, as one of the “greatest leaders in the West.”
The bilateral bonds ran outside the government, too, with strongly pro-Israel public opinion, both among French Jews and non-Jews. But with the end of the Algerian war in 1962, de Gaulle began mending France’s ties to the Arab world and the relationship came under strain. For a while, France tried to balance its relationships: Israeli officials were heartily welcomed in Paris, and de Gaulle continued to speak of Israel as “the ally and friend” of France.
This double game, however, ended when the Six-Day War in 1967 forced France to pick a side. In a shock to its Israeli allies, it chose the Arab states: despite aggressive moves by Egypt, France imposed a temporary arms embargo on the region — which mostly hurt Israel — and warned senior Israeli officials to avoid hostilities.
When Israel launched a pre-emptive strike on June 5, France condemned it — even as Israel’s nearly immediate aerial victory was won largely with French-made aircraft.
A few months later de Gaulle bluntly told reporters that France had “freed itself … from the very special and very close ties” with Israel, nastily adding that Jews were “an elite people, sure of itself, and dominating.”
This was not a sentimental stance: de Gaulle had made a strategic decision to bolster France’s stature in the vast Arab world, which in 1967 meant largely abandoning Israel. France proceeded to make the arms embargo on Israel permanent, sought oil deals with the Arab states and adopted increasingly anti-Israel rhetoric.
Of course, American public support for Israel is even more deeply ingrained than it was in France, and it is hard to imagine that anyone in President Obama’s staunchly pro-Israel White House is contemplating anything like de Gaulle’s sudden reversal.
Still, there are potentially disquieting similarities. Like de Gaulle after Algeria, President Obama understands the strategic importance of improving relations with the Arab and Muslim worlds after years of bloodshed in Iraq and Afghanistan. And so long as the Israeli-Palestinian peace process remains stalled, Washington’s relationships with Israel and the Arab states may look to some in the administration like a zero-sum game.
In the same way that many French officials tried to balance France’s relationships in the Middle East after the end of the Algerian war, Mr. Obama undoubtedly hopes that he can reach out to the Arab world without damaging ties with Israel. But this history suggests that Mr. Netanyahu would be wise to ease the strain on the alliance before any words are uttered that cannot be unsaid.
Gary J. Bass is a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton and the author of “Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention.”
By Naomi Klein – March 31st, 2010
On March 18, continuing a long tradition of pioneering human rights campaigns, the Senate of the Associated Students of the University of California, Berkeley (ASUC) passed “A Bill In Support of UC DIVESTMENT FROM WAR CRIMES.” The historic bill resolves to divest ASUC’s assets from two American companies, General Electric and United Technologies, that are “materially and militarily supporting the Israeli government’s occupation of the Palestinian territories”—and to advocate that the UC, with about $135 million invested in companies that profit from Israel’s illegal actions in the Occupied Territories, follow suit.
Although the bill passed by a vote of 16-4 after a packed and intense debate, the President of the Senate vetoed the bill six days later. The Senate is expected to reconsider the bill soon; groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace are asking supporters of the bill to send letters to the Senators, who can overturn the veto with only 14 votes.
Here is the letter I just sent:
Dear members of the ASUC Senate,
I am writing to urge you to reaffirm Senate Bill 118A, despite the recent presidential veto.
It comes as no surprise that you are under intense pressure to reverse your historic and democratic decision to divest from two companies that profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. When a school with a deserved reputation for academic excellence and moral leadership takes such a bold position, it threatens to inspire others to take their own stands.
Indeed, Berkeley—the campus and the wider community—has provided this kind of leadership on many key issues in the past: not only Apartheid in South Africa but also sweatshops in Indonesia, dictatorship in Burma, political killings in Nigeria, and the list goes on. Time and again, when the call for international solidarity has come from people denied a political voice, Berkeley has been among the first to answer. And in virtually every case, what began as a small action in a progressive community quickly spread across the country and around the world.
Your recent divestment bill opposing Israeli war crimes stands to have this same kind of global impact, helping to build a grassroots, non-violent movement to end Israel’s violations of international law. And this is precisely what your opponents—by spreading deliberate lies about your actions—are desperately trying to prevent. They are even going so far as to claim that, in the future, there should be no divestment campaigns that target a specific country, a move that would rob activists of one of the most effective tools in the non-violent arsenal. Please don’t give into this pressure; too much is on the line.
As the world has just witnessed with the Netanyahu government’s refusal to stop its illegal settlement expansion, political pressure is simply not enough to wrench Israel off its current disastrous path. And when our governments fail to apply sanctions for defiant illegality, other forms of pressure must come into play, including targeting those corporations that are profiting directly from human rights abuses.
Whenever we take a political action, we open ourselves up to accusations of hypocrisy and double standards, since the truth is that we can never do enough in the face of pervasive global injustice. Yet to argue that taking a clear stand against Israeli war crimes is somehow to “discriminate unfairly” against Israelis and Jews (as the veto seems to claim) is to grossly pervert the language of human rights. Far from “singling out Israel,” with Senate Bill 118A, you are acting within Berkeley’s commendable and inspiring tradition.
I understand that there is some debate about whether or not your divestment bill was adopted “in haste.” Not having been there, I cannot comment on your process, though I am deeply impressed by the careful research that went into the decision. I also know that in 2005 an extraordinarily broad range of Palestinian civil society groups called on activists around the world to adopt precisely these kinds of peaceful pressure tactics. In the years since that call, we have all watched as Israeli abuses have escalated dramatically: the attack on Lebanon in the summer of 2006, a massive expansion of illegal settlements and walls, an ongoing siege on Gaza that violates all prohibitions on collective punishment, and, worst of all, the 2008/9 attack on Gaza that left approximately 1,400 dead.
I would humbly suggest that when it comes to acting to end Israeli war crimes, the international response has not suffered from too much haste but from far too little. This is a moment of great urgency, and the world is watching.
With planned indirect Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on hold after a row over settlement building in East Jerusalem, Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank give their views on the prospects for peace.
ADEL HASSAN RASHED, 81, UNEMPLOYED, NABLUS
We should never go back to negotiations. The solution is always in the hands of the US, but we expect nothing from them. They are the only power in the world – and the Israeli have no-one standing against them.
The idea of the two-state solution is like morphine [ie used to anaesthetise the Palestinians]. There is nothing called a solution. They just keep taking the land from us and building for themselves. Israel took everything from us and the Americans are backing them up, even with weapons.
The only option we have is to take back with force what they took from us. When we have the real power to fight, we will – but not now, we have no power.
KHADER SAMARITAN, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH CENTRE, 55, NABLUS
I think it’s better for us to have direct negotiations with Israel, because there is no-one to talk on our behalf in indirect ones.
Face to face talks are better, but the condition for these should be to stop the settlement activity. – and not just for eight months.
East Jerusalem is internationally known as the capital of the future Palestinian state and west Jerusalem is the capital for the Israelis – this should be the two-state solution.
Peace is the key to everything. I’m not convinced about military resistance. The people are already suffering from the economic situation and the first and second intifidas. The people of the world have heard our voices, and all the world is standing behind us – to have a third intifada now would just hurt our own people.
RUBA ZAGHMOURI, 24, ARTS CENTRE WORKER, RAMALLAH
It’s not about whether Mahmoud Abbas should go into talks or not. Whether he does or doesn’t go into them, I don’t think the result will satisfy the Palestinian people.
I don’t want a two state solution. Definitely not. A two-state solution could be done when we have equal grounds, both the Palestinians and Israelis, but without us Palestinians having basic rights, you can’t discuss a two-state solution.
I have never believed in a two-state solution. I want to be free. I want to live in peace. I want to be able to live here in Ramallah without going back and forth to Jerusalem for my ID problems. I don’t want to have to go to Amman just to use an airport. I don’t want anyone to be killed, and I don’t want anything to be stolen from us.
What I want is so confused at the moment. I feel like Palestinian and Israeli leaders are all lying to us. It’s becoming really difficult for the new generation to weigh what’s right and wrong and what we actually want out of all of this. We know we want peace, but how it could be achieved – this is what we don’t know.
AYMAN AL-NAZER, DENTIST, 48, RAMALLAH
I believe that all the negotiations with Israel should be stopped. The Arab street should take a different way. We’ve been negotiating for 20 years now, for nothing.
I still support peaceful resistance, but everyone knows what the other option is, and the other option will happen if the Israelis don’t sit down for real negotiations.
Unfortunately the Jewish people don’t want peace.
You can see the facts on the ground. The whole world can see what’s going on on the ground. There is no way to achieve peace with these people.
AMINA AL-HASANAT, SALES DIRECTOR, 22, GAZA
I believe that negotiations are the only solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, but must be done in the right way.
To take steps to improve the conditions for negotiations, the Arab leaders should maintain pressure on Israel to accept negotiations based on international legitimacy and United Nations resolutions. Israel must stop settlement activity in Jerusalem and the West Bank and recognise the rights of the Palestinian people.
I dream of a two-state solution which is based on a viable independent Palestinian state, side-by-side with Israel. We must find a unified Palestinian strategy to support the position of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, because Israel is taking the division between the Palestinians as an excuse to stop negotiations and continue attacks against the Palestinian people.
MOHAMMED OMAR TAHA, ACCOUNTANT, 32, GAZA
Negotiations would be a waste of time. We have negotiated for more than 15 years, but we got nothing but siege and settlements, killing and destruction.
The Arab leaders should take a decision to stop negotiating and go for the military option against Israel, which knows only the language of force.
The two-state solution is a big lie. We must end the division [between Palestinians] first and then take a clear decision to stop the negotiations and security co-ordination with Israel, and go to the option of resistance by all means – popular resistance and armed resistance if necessary.
Palestinian detainees in Israel’s Ketziot prison in the Negev have decided to unite in order to secure better conditions, the Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported on Wednesday.
The protest, which will start on April 7, marks the first time since 2006 that prisoners from all factions would unite in a demonstration.
The prisoners have been unhappy with the restrictions placed on some of their families so they decided to protest and halt all family visits for one month. They have also decided to mark the protest by a hunger strike.
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A detainee in Ketziot prison, Mahmud Da’is, told Ma’an that “the prisoners were united in their determination to secure fair treatment for Palestinians.
While in Washington the U.S. administration is trying to reduce tensions with Israel, in Jerusalem they go out of their way to depict in war paint the demands President Barack Obama put to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Political sources in Jerusalem told Haaretz’s Ari Shavit this week that hiding behind the American demands is an intention to impose a permanent settlement on the two sides in less than two years. This is being presented as a troubling change in U.S. policy toward Israel, while the Americans issue veiled yet serious threats about the risks that allegedly loom for them if their credibility in the Middle East is lost.
The top U.S. political officials and that country’s defense establishment recently made it clear that the continued Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the perpetuation of the occupation in the territories undermine the strategic interests of the United States (and Israel as well). The stern demands made of the Israeli government reflect Obama’s willingness to invest a significant effort in defense of these interests. It seems he concluded that the endless dialogue with the Israeli government does not push forward anything unless an American peace plan is formulated.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. The possibility that the United States will propose a plan of its own and seek to convince the sides to accept it, or even impose it, is not the worst of all possibilities.
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However, it is obvious that a settlement reached through negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians is preferable to an imposed settlement, where not accepting it would involve an especially intense confrontation with the international community and deepen Israel’s isolation. The only way to prevent an imposed settlement must be through a realistic Israeli peace plan that is similar to that of the United States and based on agreements and understandings reached by previous governments. It must be based on principles that, obvious to everyone, are imperative for a settlement.
A government that seeks to prevent an imposed settlement must not only bring to the fore serious propositions and demands of its own, it must avoid at all costs unilateral steps that signal an intention to foil all chances for an agreed settlement. An imposed settlement may prove to be the least worst alternative when compared with no settlement and a continuation of the situation. Those who fear an imposed solution must immediately present an Israeli peace plan.
A four-month halt to building in East Jerusalem may be brokered by encouraging Palestinians to enter direct peace talks
The US administration is pressing Israel for a four-month freeze on settlement construction in East Jerusalem and in return will encourage Palestinians to enter direct peace talks, the Ha’aretz newspaper reported today.
The report, which cited an unnamed Israeli official in Jerusalem, said Washington believed this would be enough to restart peace talks for the first time since Israel’s war in Gaza more than a year ago. A number of senior Israeli ministers have said publicly they will not halt settlement construction in the city, but Ha’aretz said a “tacit agreement” with the US might be possible.
“According to this idea, Israel would make it clear to the United States that during the coming four months no massive construction in East Jerusalem neighbourhoods would be planned or carried out, enabling Israel to be seen as meeting the American and Palestinian demands,” the report said.
Palestinians have refused to return to direct talks with Israel without a full freeze on construction in Israeli settlements, in line with the road map of 2003. Washington too made an identical demand of Israel for most of last year, but in the end Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu put instead a partial, temporary freeze on construction in West Bank settlements. Netanyahu insists in public that he will continue to allow building in East Jerusalem, which Israel regards as sovereign territory. The international community does not recognise Israeli sovereignty in the east of the city and all settlement on occupied land is illegal under international law.
Israel and the Palestinians had been due to start a new programme of “indirect” proximity talks earlier this month, but they were scuppered when Israeli authorities gave approval for 1,600 new homes in an ultra-Orthodox settlement in East Jerusalem.
Ha’aretz reported earlier this week that Barack Obama had presented Netanyahu with several other demands during their meeting in Washington last week including the opening of a Palestinian commercial interests office in East Jerusalem, an end to demolitions of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem, and a commitment to discuss all the core issues of the conflict during the next round of talks.
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, said the demand for a freeze of settlement construction in East Jerusalem was “completely unreasonable”. He said none of the top seven ministers – known as the forum of seven – agreed to it. “I have not seen anyone in the forum of seven who has consented to this,” Lieberman told the Ma’ariv newspaper in an interview published on Monday. “The past few days have taught me that there is no point to further concessions … I am certain that we can convince the US that this demand is unreasonable … There will be no choice but to insist. To pay the price, even if it is high.”
Benny Begin, another of the forum of seven ministers, said on Monday that US demands were “bothersome and certainly worrying”. “This change will definitely bring about the opposite to the declared objective. It will bring about a hardening in the policy of the Arabs and of the Palestinian Authority,” he told Israel Radio.
EDITOR: The trend is now setting, and gaining pace!
A number of international moves to limit dealing with Israel is signaling the growing disenchantment with Israel, and a more robust attitude towards its illegal occupation and its iniquities. More action is taken daily against it, not just by political organisations on the left, but now also on behalf of governments which are on the whole supportive of Israel. This is likely to continue and deepen, as Israeli atrocities worsen.
A group of British lawmakers are expected to call Tuesday for the reevaluation of arms deals with Israel after a recently published report claimed that British weapons were “almost certainly” used in Operation Cast Lead in December 2008, The Guardian reported.
“It is regrettable that arms exports to Israel were almost certainly used in Operation Cast Lead,” the U.K. daily The Guardian quoted the Commons committee on strategic export controls report.
“This is in direct contravention to the U.K. government’s policy that U.K. arms exports to Israel should not be used in the occupied territories,” the report said.
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In April 2009 Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that the U.K. would review all its weapons exports to Israel, in the wake of the Israel Defense Forces’ recent offensive on the Gaza Strip.
According to the report, U.K. arms deals with Israel in 2008 totaled at over £27.5 million, and over £4 million worth of government exporting licenses, the Guardian reported.
The equipment the U.K. sold to Israel which probably included components in cockpit displays in United States F-16 combat aircrafts and other parts installed in the U.S. Apache helicopters purchased by Israel and used during the Gaza offensive, the report concluded.
Miliband told the British Parliament shortly after the war in Gaza that all export licenses would be reviewed in light of the war in Gaza, which ended in mid-January.
A cross-party group of MPs will call today for a review of the way arms sales are approved after the government admitted British equipment was “almost certainly” used in the assault on Gaza last year.
“It is regrettable that arms exports to Israel were almost certainly used in Operation Cast Lead [the attack on Gaza],” the Commons committee on strategic export controls says in a report published. “This is in direct contravention to the UK government’s policy that UK arms exports to Israel should not be used in the occupied territories.”
The MPs say they welcome the government’s subsequent decision to revoke five export licences for equipment destined for the Israeli navy but “broader lessons” must be learned from a review to ensure British arms exports to Israel are not used in the occupied territories in future.
After the attack on Gaza, David Miliband, the foreign secretary, told the Commons that all future applications for arms-related exports to Israel “will be assessed taking into account the recent conflict”. He said Israeli equipment used in the attack on Gaza “almost certainly” contained British-supplied components included in cockpit displays in US F-16 combat aircraft sold to Israel, and components for the fire control and radar systems, navigation equipment and engine assemblies for US Apache helicopters.
The equipment also included armoured personnel carriers adapted from Centurion tanks sold to Israel in the late 1950s and components for the guns and radar in Israeli Sa’ar-class corvettes which took part in the operation.
Miliband said the government was looking into all existing licences to see whether any of them needed to be reconsidered. He added that he believed British export controls were amongst the strongest and most effective in the world.
Government-approved arms exports to Israel were worth more than £27.5m in 2008, according to the the report. Government departments approved nearly £4m worth of export licences for weapons and equipment with dual military and civil uses in the nine months after the Gaza attack, according to official statistics.
Though this suggests a significant drop, the figures show Britain was continuing to sell Israel a wide range of military equipment, including small-arms ammunition and parts for sniper rifles.
Most of the equipment was components for large items, including parts for ground-based radar, military aircraft engines, military aircraft navigation equipment, military communications and unmanned drones.
Among approved exports were remote ground-sensor systems, electronic warfare equipment “components for sniper rifles”, “small arms ammunition” and “test equipment for recognition/identification equipment”.
The report also reveals that the government decided to revoke a number of licences for arms sales to Sri Lanka. It says it regrets British arms were sold to Sri Lanka during ceasefire periods in the conflict with Tamil Tiger rebels.
Amnesty International called on the government to act swiftly to close loopholes allowing “brass-plate” companies registered in the UK to trade arms to countries where human rights violations were committed.
It backed the committee’s call for a robust international arms trade treaty. Amnesty International’s arms programme director, Oliver Sprague, said: “World leaders and campaigners have worked far too hard on the treaty for it to become a worthless piece of paper that will do little to protect people from armed violence.”
The biggest Swedish pension fund has barred Israeli defense electronics company Elbit Systems from its investment portfolios on ethical grounds, Israel Radio reported Monday.
Following the lead of Norway’s state oil fund, the Första AP-Fonden pension fund said it had banned investment in Elbit because the Israeli company had built and is operating a surveillance system for the much debated West Bank separation barrier.
Critics of the controversial barrier argue that it is an illegal attempt to annex Palestinian land under the guise of security and that it severely restricts Palestinians who live nearby, particularly their ability to travel freely within the West Bank and to access work in Israel. Proponents, however, argue that the barrier has greatly reduced the incidence of suicide bombers coming from the West Bank and carrying out terror attacks within Israel.
According to the Swedish website the Swedish Wire, the pension fund said in a statement that “the Ethical Council recommended that Elbit Systems Ltd. should be excluded from each portfolio because it deems that the company can be linked to violations of fundamental conventions and norms.”
In its annual report, the ethical council wrote that “the Council has noted that both the European Union and the Swedish government consider the part of the separation barrier being built on West Bank to be illegal under international law. This position is also supported by the advisory opinion from 2004 by the International Court of Justice regarding the separation barrier.”
Israel has so far completed 413 kilometers (256 miles) of the planned 709-kilometer (435-mile) barrier, according to UN figures.
The Swedish fund, which only had small investments in Elbit according to its ethics council chairwoman Annika Andersson, said that Grupo Ferrovial, PetroChina, Thales and Yahoo had successfully addressed its concerns about ethics violations.
Last September, Norway’s state pension fund, one of the world’s biggest investors, also banned Elbit from its portfolio, prompting the Israeli Foreign Ministry to summon Norway’s ambassador in protest at the move.
Well, we all know Passover id supposed to be about freedom. Or so were are told. Now many Jews will sit tonight and sing lovely songs about freedom, end to slavery and suffering, and what not. Most of them will not for a moment think that it is not the Jews today who are in slavery, but the Palestinians; It is not the Jews who will go short on food, medicines, water, housing, gas, electricity, but again, the people of Gaza. It is not the Jews whose children will be taken by the soldiers to the many prisons, but again, the Palestinian children.
So, if there was some humane message in the Passover myth, it is lost on the very people who should know better, who should know that any nations which occupies, brutalizes and oppresses another nation, is not itself free. There no freedom to the occupied, or the occupier.
By Akiva Eldar
One of the harshest of the 10 plagues has smitten the children of Israel this Passover, and they are stumbling about in pitch darkness, bumping blindly into anyone in their way as they head toward the edge of the precipice. Warm friends, cool friends, icy enemies: Jordan and Turkey, Brazil and Britain, Germany and Australia – it’s all the same.
And if that’s not enough, the myopic Jewish state also has gone and collided head-on with the ally that offers existential support. Israel has become an environmental hazard and its own greatest threat. For 43 years, Israel has been ruled by people who have refused to see reality. They speak of “united Jerusalem,” knowing that no other country has recognized the annexation of the eastern part of the city. They sent 300,000 people to settle land they know does not belong to them. As early as September 1967, Theodor Meron, then the legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, said there was a categorical prohibition against civilian settlement in occupied territories, under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Meron – who would become the president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and is now a member of the Appeals Chamber for both that court and a similar one for Rwanda – wrote to prime minister Levi Eshkol in a top-secret memorandum: “I fear there is great sensitivity in the world today about the whole question of Jewish settlement in the occupied territories, and any legal arguments that we try to find will not remove the heavy international pressure, from friendly states as well.”
It is true that for many years, we have managed to grope our way through the dark and keep the pressure at bay. We did so with the assistance of our neighbors, who were afflicted with the same shortsightedness.
On Sunday, however, the Arab League marked the eighth anniversary of its peace proposals, which offer Israel normalization in exchange for an end to the occupation and an agreed solution to the refugee problem, in accordance with UN Resolution 194. But Israel behaves as if it had never heard of this historic initiative. For the last year, it was too busy realizing its dubious right to establish an illegal settlement in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, turning a blind eye to reality, has tried to persuade the world that what applies to Tel Aviv also applies to Sheikh Jarrah. He simply refuses to see that the world is sick of us. It’s easier for him to focus on his similarly nearsighted followers in AIPAC. Tonight they’ll all swear “Next year in rebuilt Jerusalem” – including the construction in Ramat Shlomo, of course.
Hillary Clinton is not Jewish, but it was she who had to remind the AIPAC Jews what demography will do to their favorite Jewish democracy in the Middle East. A few days earlier, she had come back from Moscow, where she took part in one of the Quartet’s most important meetings. Israeli politicians and media were too busy with the cold reception awaiting Netanyahu at the White House. They never gave any thought to the decision by the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations to turn Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s state-building plan from a unilateral initiative into an international project.
The Quartet declared that it was backing the plan, proposed in August 2009, to establish a Palestinian state within 24 months. This was an expression of the Palestinians’ serious commitment that the state have a just and proper government and be a responsible neighbor. This means Israel has less than a year and a half to come to an agreement with the Palestinians on the permanent borders, Jerusalem and the refugees. If the Palestinians stick to Fayyad’s path, in August 2011, the international community, led by the United States, can be expected to recognize the West Bank and East Jerusalem as an independent country occupied by a foreign power. Will Netanyahu still be trying to explain that Jerusalem isn’t a settlement?
For 43 years, the Israeli public – schoolchildren, TV viewers, Knesset members and Supreme Court judges – have been living in the darkness of the occupation, which some call liberation. The school system and its textbooks, the army and its maps, the language and the “heritage” have all been mobilized to help keep Israelis blind to the truth. Luckily, the Gentiles clearly see the connection between the menace of Iranian control spreading across the Middle East and the curse of Israeli control over Islamic holy places.
Monday night, when we read the Passover Haggadah, we should note the plague that follows darkness. That may open our eyes.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Monday warned that Hamas that Israel would react harshly to any escalation along its border with the Gaza Strip.
“The enemy in the Gaza Strip has paid and will continue to pay a heavy price if it tries to shake the equilibrium along the border,” Barak said.
His comments as he visited troops from the Israel Defense Forces’ Golani Brigade who took part in an exchange of fire that killed two of their comrades at the border this weekend.
Likud minister Gilad Erdan Also called for Israel to react strongly to the incident.
“There must be a clear and decisive response, although at this stage there is not a need for a wide-ranging operation on the scale of Cast Lead,” Erdan told Israel radio on Monday, refering to Israel’s three-week offensive in Gaza last year, in which some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued his own warning on Sunday, saying Israel would retaliate against any attack on its citizens or soldiers and that Hamas would be made to be held accountable for actions.
The two deaths in Gaza clashes on Friday have increased concern in the IDF that Hamas is trying to alter the situation along the Gaza Strip border fence, possibly by targeting of Israeli patrols.
“Israel’s policy of retaliation is forceful and decisive,” Netanyahu said during the weekly government meeting in Jerusalem, asserting that Israel would “retaliate decisively against any attack on our citizens and soldiers.”
“This policy is well-known and will continue. Hamas and the other terror organizations need to know that they are the ones that are responsible for their own actions,” Netanyahu said.
MI6 suspects that airline staff working for Mossad may have copied passports of Britons flying to Israel, News of the World reports, adding authorities also concerned about security searches carried out on British officials attending terrorism conference in country last September
The British secret intelligence service (MI6) suspects that airline staff working for the Israeli secret service Mossad may have copied thousands of British passports, some of which were used in the assassination of senior Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, the News of the World tabloid reported Sunday.
According to the report, British authorities are also concerned about security searches carried out on British officials attending a terrorism conference in Israel last September.
MI6 believe that Britons flying to Israel have been targeted for months and their documents have been cloned, the newspaper said, adding that the Foreign Office held top level talks last week on whether to issue a warning against travelling with certain airlines.
The forging method was already revealed last week in a statement made by the British government to the parliament after the use of British citizens’ identities in the Dubai assassination was revealed. According to the statement, 12 passports used by the assassins were cloned in different airports while the British nationals were on their way to Israel. They were taken away for “examinations” which lasted 20 minutes each.
In addition to the investigation into the falsification of British passports, the United Kingdom authorities are also checking whether Israeli intelligence elements took advantage of a visit to Israel by British security officials in order to clone their passports.
British police sources said the officials had undergone strict security checks upon arriving in Israel.
“It was said to be routine but the searches did not apply to all nations,” a source told the newspaper. “There is now a real concern that some of these high-ranking officers and officials have also had documents cloned.”
The UK expressed its discontent after Dubai authorities revealed that British identities were used in the assassination and launched an investigation into the matter. One of the moves taken against Israel was the decision to expel an Israeli diplomat serving in the kingdom, which was said to be the Mossad representative in London.
It was also reported that Israel would not be allowed to replace its Mossad representative in London should it not provide Britain with a public assurance that UK citizens’ passports will never be used again for secret operations.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told lawmakers last week that Israel’s actions had put British nationals at risk and showed a “profound disregard” for Britain’s sovereignty. He said the fact that Israel is a longtime ally with close business, personal and political ties to Britain “adds insult to injury” in this case.
Miliband noted that a thorough British investigation concluded that Israel was behind the forging of British passports used by the alleged assassins in Dubai.
There was talk in the Israeli media on an attack planned for the spring for along time now, at least since the summer of 2009. The pundits seem to differ about its location, arguing the toss between Gaza and Lebanon, with some speaking of both. The events of the weekend in which the IOF lost two of its soldiers to Hamas, seem to be confirming such rumours; it was the IOF which moved across into Gaza on this occasion, seeking a conflict actively, and following it with tanks, artillery air-force and navy bombardments. Even the US in Vietnam has not used such force to crack a nut, and in pure military terms the whole episode is bizarre, and bears the signs of a trap set by Hamas into which the IOF was lured. While it is difficult to see what more can be achieved by another full scale attack on Gaza, this is not something which might hold Israel back from executing such a folly, with its cost to the Palestinian population being even more devastation than the 22 Day invasion last year. While Steinitz is on the extreme right of the Israeli Knesset, Like Lieberman, he is at the heart of Netanyahu’s government, and used as his speaker on many occasions.
Israel will retaliate against any attack on its citizens or soldiers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, adding that Hamas would be made to be held accountable for actions.
The PM’s comments come following the death of two soldiers in Gaza clashes on Friday, which increased concern in the Israel Defense Forces that Hamas is trying to alter the situation along the Gaza Strip border fence, which will result in their targeting of Israeli patrols.
“Israel’s policy of retaliation is forceful and decisive,” the PM said during the weekly government meeting in Jerusalem, asserting that Israel would “retaliate decisively against any attack on our citizens and soldiers.”
“This policy is well-known and will continue. Hamas and the other terror organizations need to know that they are the ones that are responsible for their own actions,” Netanyahu said.
A statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office on Sunday also referred to recent anonymous quotes reportedly originating from Netanyahu aides attacking U.S. President Barack Obama’s policy in the Middle East.
“The prime minister emphatically rejects the anonymous quotes about President Obama that a newspaper attributed to one of his confidants, and he condemns them,” the statement said.
Netanyahu was at pains to hammer home the message, telling reporters at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting: “I have heard over recent days anonymous and improper remarks in the media about the U.S. administration and American president.”
“I want to say clearly, these comments are unacceptable to me. They do not come from anyone representing me. The relations between Israel and the United States are those of allies and friends, and are based on tradition spanning many years.”
On the stalled peace talks with the Palestinian Authority the PM said that Israel continued to see a “Palestinian lack of flexibility. There are no signs of them becoming more moderate.”
“I don’t expect the discussions and declarations in the Arab League will make the process any easier,” Netanyahu added, saying that nonetheless Israel would “maintain a restrained framework for negotiations and continue our dealings with the American administration in an attempt to renew talks.”
Netanyahu’s statement came after Likud Minister Yuval Steinitz told Israel Radio earlier Sunday that Israel would reoccupy Gaza if it felt it had no other choice.
Finance Minister Steinitz said that Israel must deal with Hamas, and may have to reenter Gaza to destroy the regime.
“Israel won’t allow Hamas to arm with long-range missiles,” Steinitz said.
Major Eliraz Peretz and Staff Sergeant Ilan Sviatkovsky were killed Friday while pursuing a group of Palestinian militants trying to lay mines near the border fence. Two other soldiers were wounded in the incident, and two militants were killed.
Any change along the fence may present Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government with the first military challenge of its tenure. For the past year the situation has been calm, in great part as a result of the two wars conducted by the Olmert government: the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead.
Intelligence sources in Israel have recently raised the question whether Hamas was turning a blind eye to the rocket attacks, a possible change of tactics. Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Channel 2 on Saturday that Hamas is trying to change the “rules of the game” in Gaza, and will have to pay the price for this.
Spokesmen on behalf of Hamas claimed Friday evening that their gunmen acted defensively after an IDF force entered their area. In this they hinted that there was no change in policy from the point of view of Hamas. Responsibility for the incident was also claimed by three smaller factions in the Gaza Strip, including Islamic Jihad.
It is possible that Hamas was involved in the incident, in the mortar fire that was used to support the Palestinian gunmen during the exchanges of fire.
The incident comes at a convenient time for Hamas, on the eve of the Arab League summit, but for Netanyahu the timing is terrible, with pressure from the Americans and the international community on the need to alleviate the Israeli siege on the Strip.
In the interivew with Israel Radio, Steinitz also slammed the U.S. administration, saying the pressure it is putting on Israel is just worsening the situation.
“American pressure isn’t conductive and isn’t fair, because the Netanyahu government made two enormous gestures toward the Palestinians: The opportunity to improve the Palestinian economy, and the settlement freeze,” he said.
“The United States needs to understand that the atmosphere it created in the Middle East, that Washington is now less friendly to Israel, isn’t making the Palestinians more willing to compromise, it further adds to their rejection of the peace process.”
Stenitiz also stressed that it is necessary to make it clear to the Americans that they must focus on solutions to the Iranian nuclear threat.
The future of Jerusalem is one of the most emotive issues in the Middle East
By Jeremy Bowen
The Middle East is full of talk of war. Not today, tomorrow or perhaps even next year but the horizon is dark, and people who have to live with the Middle East’s grim collection of smouldering problems are finding it hard to look ahead with anything other than foreboding.
By the end of this year, if sanctions have not persuaded Iran to stop what many countries insist is a nuclear weapons programme, the war party in Israel will be pushing for military action.
South Lebanon is once again looking like a tinderbox.
Insults and threats have been bandied back and forth between Syria, Israel and Hezbollah.
In Washington DC, where I have been this week, analysts say Syria has been shipping bigger and better weapons to Hezbollah, its Lebanese ally. ‘Disastrous visit’
Israel assumes that there will be another war in Lebanon, and has been training its army to win it, which it could not do last time in 2006.
TIMELINE: ISRAEL-US ROW
9 Mar: Israel announces the building of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem during visit by US Vice-President Joe Biden.
Mr Biden condemns the move
11 Mar: Mr Biden says there must be no delay in resuming Mid-East peace talks, despite the row
12 Mar: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the Israeli move is “deeply negative” for relations
15 Mar: The US says it is waiting for a “formal response” from Israel to its proposals to show it is committed to Mid-East peace
16 Mar: The US envoy to the Mid-East postpones a visit to Israel
17 Mar: President Obama denies there is a crisis with Israel
22 Mar: Hillary Clinton tells pro-Israel lobby group Aipac Israel has to make “difficult but necessary choices” if it wants peace with Palestinians.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu tells Aipac Israel has a “right to build” in Jerusalem
23 Mar: Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu meet behind closed doors with no media access
23 Mar: Jerusalem municipal government approves building of 20 new homes in East Jerusalem
24 Mar: Mr Netanyahu ends Washington trip talking of a “golden” solution amid US silence
And then there is the crisis between the United States, Israel and the Palestinians.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s disastrous visit to Washington DC has exposed just how bad this crisis and current US-Israeli relations are.
What is even more serious is that it is centred on the future of Jerusalem, which is about the single most emotive issue in the entire Middle East.
Mr Netanyahu returns home weakened, though his ministers are declaring their support. US President Barack Obama seems to see him as part of the problem.
The precise details of what happened in Washington between Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu are emerging only slowly.
But it is clear that the Americans want Israel to freeze building for Jews in those parts of the holy city that Israel occupied and annexed in 1967.
The Obama administration has concluded that it will be impossible to negotiate peace while Israel continues to settle its people on occupied land.
Mr Netanyahu insists, long and loud, that he wants a peace deal if it guarantees Israeli security.
The Americans agree with that, but not with his insistence that Israel has the right to build whatever and wherever it wants in Jerusalem.
Israel’s claim that that the city is its sovereign capital is not accepted by its allies. Political vacuum
The Americans want to start peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Their plan was to wring concessions out of Mr Netanyahu while he was in Washington that they could take to the Palestinians to persuade them to take part.
The president of the Palestinian authority, Mahmoud Abbas, pulled out after the Israelis announced a big building project at the Ramat Shlomo settlement in occupied East Jerusalem.
The US Vice-President Joe Biden was in Jerusalem at the time to get the talks going. Embarrassed and angry, he condemned Israel’s plans.
Mr Netanyahu’s visit to Washington – far from ending the crisis between Israel and its most important ally – seems to have made things worse.
What is now forming around the row over Jerusalem is an old-fashioned Middle Eastern political vacuum.
When there is no political process to absorb some heat and give people even a glint of hope for the future, the result tends to be violent.
King Abdullah of Jordan, whose father made peace with Israel in 1994, has told newspapers in Amman that Israel needs to decide between war and peace. American pressure
If it wants peace, he says it has to stop settling Jews on occupied land.
The US State Department and the White House employ many Middle East experts who know that even if they manage to start negotiations the chances of success are low.
They are trying anyway, because the alternatives seem much worse.
But the reality is that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are in good shape to negotiate, even assuming that they want to try (in fact they have only dabbled with the idea because of American pressure).
Mr Netanyahu’s coalition government depends on the votes of nationalists who want no compromise with the Palestinians.
Mr Abbas is isolated and weak. It is hard to see how he could deliver any agreement he made when the Palestinian national movement is split down the middle between Fatah, his faction, and Hamas, which controls Gaza.
Mr Obama has declared that Middle East peace is a strategic priority for the United States.
But just glance across the region, from Jerusalem to Beirut, then on to Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran and further east to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Never mind making peace, just avoiding war in the places that are not already fighting is going to be hard enough, and perhaps impossible.
Israel prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu ran into a storm of criticism over his dispute with the White House.
Israeli PM under fire from press at home after dispute with US over new settlements in East Jerusalem Photograph: Cliff Owen/AP
The last week must rank as the worst of Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s second term as Israeli prime minister. It produced headlines no leader would want to read, even allowing for the sometimes excitable tone of the Israeli press: “Ambush in the White House”, “A hazing in stages” and “With his back to the wall.”
Netanyahu flew to Washington a week ago hoping to mend fences after an extraordinary rupture in relations but found only a frosty reception. Then Britain expelled an Israeli diplomat from London in anger at the “intolerable” forging of British passports for the hit squad who assassinated a Hamas man in Dubai. Hours later Netanyahu had a low-key meeting with Barack Obama that ended in serious disagreement and without the usual courtesy of a photographed handshake.
Perhaps it was inevitable that an American president who gave such a firm commitment to tackling the Middle East conflict so early in his term would eventually run up against one of the most rightwing coalition governments in Israel’s history.
Some in Israel are encouraged by the Obama administration’s strong words and its continued pressure for a halt to Jewish settlement-building in East Jerusalem. In its weekly newspaper advert on Friday, the peace group Gush Shalom pleaded with Obama: “Now heal us please from the malignant occupation. Many in Israel will be grateful.”
But this is not a majority view. More common is the sense that the world does not understand or sympathise with Israel, a feeling summed up by one Israeli newspaper columnist who wrote: “The US is abandoning us and effectively turning into Europe. From now on, we are completely alone.” Two opinion polls suggest many Israelis want their government to continue building settlements in East Jerusalem, even if it brings a rift with the Americans.
For years US governments have called on Israel to stop expanding its Jewish settlements in occupied territory – a settlement freeze is even a key plank of the roadmap introduced during the Bush presidency. But it is the Obama administration that has pushed hardest on it, so far without success. Netanyahu has introduced a partial, temporary curb on building in the West Bank, but insists building will continue in Jerusalem. “Jerusalem is not a settlement. It’s our capital,” he said. It is not the view of the international community, which does not recognise Israel’s occupation and annexation of East Jerusalem in the wake of the 1967 war.
Netanyahu’s position, together with his heavily circumscribed vision of a future Palestine, has meant no return to peace talks. But the more settlements are built and serious negotiations avoided, the less possible any conflict-ending, two-state peace deal becomes. And the fate of Jerusalem in particular is crucial to a broader agreement.
For now Netanyahu’s coalition is in robust form, unusually so for an Israeli government, and is backing its prime minister. But soon, like others before him, he may find himself forced to choose between maintaining the relationship with Israel’s greatest ally, the Americans, or maintaining the loyalty of his coalition, without whom he would be lost.
Opposition chairwoman tours Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon, uses opportunity to slam PM on various issues. ‘We have a prime minister who succumbs to every political whim,’ she says
Kadima Chairwoman Tzipi Livni toured the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon Sunday along with other faction members, following the decision to relocate the hospital’s emergency room due to the discovery of ancient tombs in the site.
“My visit here is part of a battle for Judaism and not against it, as well as for the values of Israel as a Jewish and democratic country.”
Livni further added, “The story is not about the bones found here, but the decision-making process. We have a prime minister who succumbs to every whim of every political partner, and the entire public is paying the price for it.”
Livni also used the opportunity to slam Netanyahu for mounting tensions between Israel and the US and the government’s conduct in the international arena. “This Passover eve, every person should ask himself what has changed: The status of the State of Israel and Jerusalem, the status of women pushed to the back of the bus and the rights of patients, which have been pushed aside.
“We need different leadership and different policy as well as an organized point of view with which to go to the US – instead of pushing Israel into a corner and say that the whole world is against us.”
In the backdrop of calls to add Kadima to the government in order to help solve the crisis with Washington Livni said, “The prime minister has chosen his natural partners for survival. He has no vision and for this reason his government is not trusted by the public and by the world.” The Kadima chairwoman also stressed she has no intention of joining the government in order to stabilize it. “For that to happen one needs different leadership and different policy.”
State responds to petition
Following attempts to change the government’s decision regarding the Barzilai hospital, the State Prosecutor’s Office filed its response with the High Court of Justice Sunday to a petition by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel.
The State rejected the claim suggesting biased conduct on the part of the examination team tasked with addressing the tombs affair.
“The factual infrastructure at the base of the petition is inaccurate. The movement did not exhaust all procedures before filing the motion and was quick in doing so before being given a response from the Prime Minister’s Office to a letter issued a day earlier,” the State’s response noted.
March 27th, 2010, by Carol Sanders
In the West Bank, there is a two-tiered system of justice, including for minors. For settler children, justice is administered according to Israeli domestic law, with all the due process protections that affords. They cannot be charged as adults until they reach 18, in accordance with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Israel is a signatory. For Palestinian children, military law applies, and that pretty much means due process, and the tenderness of their years, is irrelevant. Their childhood itself is cut short, both by the circumstances of the Occupation and the letter of military law. Until recently, they could be charged as adults as young as 12 years of age. A recent military order “reformed” that anomaly by setting their age of majority at 16 –still two years earlier than their settler counterparts, and two years younger than required by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. But the reality is that children as young as 12 continue to be arrested and imprisoned in adult military jails. In the majority of cases the soldiers who arrest them say that the children were throwing stones, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.
Defence of Children International-Palestine reports that arrests of children have been increasing . Presently approximately 350 West Bank children under 17 are being held in Israeli prisons. Defence of Children provides testimonies of the children, detailing the brutal circumstances of their detention and interrogation, and their confinement with adult prisoners. Urgent appeals on behalf of the children are issued by Defence of Children, including in the case of masse arrests (17 children taken in a night raid from Al Jalazun Refugee Camp near Ramallah), and the transfer of children to prisons within Israel, where family members cannot visit because of restrictions on movement of people under Israel’s military Occupation.
If there’s a photo the White House should issue after Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit, it’s a group portrait of the prime minister, his Iraqi counterpart and the president of Afghanistan embracing Barack Obama together.
They are all heads of governments attached to the U.S.’s umbilical cord. They all experience insecurity in the region, and the world is concerned about each of the three’s security. Washington manages domestic policy for each of them, since each poses a danger to American foreign policy. In Iraq, Washington is involved in disagreements among Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds. In Afghanistan, Washington dictates conditions to the president to help advance its war against Al-Qaida. And when it comes to Israel, the United States showed clearly last week that it will not allow domestic Israeli politics to interfere with American foreign policy.
The group photo is a fitting picture of how Israel’s situation has deteriorated during Netanyahu’s short term in office. We’re not talking about yet another clumsy Israeli foreign minister whom no one wants to meet, or irksome building permits. Netanyahu poses a threat to Israeli security because he tips the balance of U.S.-Israeli relations, which are essential for our survival. And not only these relations. If Washington gives Israel the cold shoulder, it will be showing the way for other important countries, from Britain to Egypt and Brazil to Turkey, to do the same. Israel is no longer an exotic citron, but has been exposed as just another lemon.
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We may mock Netanyahu for the impolite reception he received in Washington; we can snipe about the late hour of his meeting with Obama, past Israeli television’s prime time, and ask why Obama abandoned the talk for dinner with his children. But then we remember that this isn’t some other country’s prime minister who is being kicked around; this danger on wheels is our own.
In a properly-run country, concerned about its own survival, thousands would have met the prime minister on his return, calling for his resignation. In such a country, gangs of squatters who steal land and buildings in Jerusalem would be considered organizations opposed to the nation’s security interests. They would be taken to court, at least. In Israel, they are a symbol of national pride.
This arrogant government is sure that ever since it annexed the occupied territory in Jerusalem, it granted Israel control for all eternity. Jordan’s King Abdullah can tell the lovers of eternity what happened to the so-called legal annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Jordan. This is the same Jordanian East Jerusalem that Washington will recognize as the capital of Palestine.
For generations the settlers have been blamed for posing an obstacle to peace, for acting against the policy of the government, which, poor soul, can’t stand up to these bullies. And so, while Washington believed that the Israeli government wanted to take action against such subversive organizations but had problems, it showed restraint, gave in a little about the construction freeze, patted Netanyahu on the shoulder and granted extensions to the government so it could manage its own affairs.
There is no longer any basis for this approach. The Israeli government, and the seven wonders in charge of it, are inseparable from the bullies. And so Washington had to conclude that the government and prime minister were simply lying.
Washington’s main interest is no longer whether the peace process will advance, because there are no guarantees that even direct talks with the Palestinians will end in an agreement. Washington’s interest is to preserve its standing in the world against a small state and its crafty government, which made it a laughing stock. This will be a true test of the United States’ ability to apply foreign policy. What is good for Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington figures, will also suit Israel now, because if Israel rebuffs Washington, Iraq and Afghanistan will, too.
And so the American formula is the same for all three. The United States will take care of the security of Israel/Iraq/Afghanistan, but security will not be measured only in the number of weapons sold to them, but also in the creation of conditions that will avoid the need to use them. To a certain extent, it will also be measured by these countries’ willingness to agree to U.S. policy. In this way, a new condition has been created that should have been applied a long time ago. According to it, any country that is willing to harm the international standing of the United States is gambling on its own security. This is not a threat, but a clarification.
Israel denies that the new homes are being built illegally
Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu has moved to ease tensions with the US, describing the two countries’ relations as those of “allies and friends”.
Mr Netanyahu also dismissed reports one of his confidants called US President Barack Obama a “disaster” for Israel.
The US has criticised the building of Jewish homes in East Jerusalem, which prompted the Palestinians to pull out of US-brokered indirect peace talks.
The row has caused one of the worst crises in US-Israeli ties for decades.
In the wake of a controversial visit to the US, Mr Netanyahu said on Friday that his policy on East Jerusalem would not change, despite US pressure on Israel to announce a freeze on building Jewish homes there.
A best-selling Israeli newspaper then quoted an unidentified aide as saying: “You could say that Obama is the greatest disaster for Israel – a strategic disaster.”
But the prime minister, speaking before he briefed the cabinet on his US trip, condemned these comments as “unacceptable”.
“They do not come from anyone representing me. The relations between Israel and the United States are those of allies and friends, and are based on tradition spanning many years.”
Re-occupy Gaza?
Tension has also been mounting in Gaza in recent days, with two Israeli soldiers and two Palestinian militants reportedly killed in the worst clashes for more than a year.
At the cabinet meeting, Mr Netanyahu stressed that Israel would provide a “firm and decisive” response to any attack from the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Israel pulled out in 2009 after a which left hundreds of people dead.
Israel insists that Jerusalem will remain its undivided capital.
Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
They are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
The Middle East quartet – the US, EU, UN and Russia – has called for final status negotiations to reach a comprehensive peace deal within two years.
Editor: Wishful thinking?
While Gideon Levy is, as usual, totally accurate about the Israeli lie-machinery and obfuscation tactics, he is rather wishful about Obama, I feel. He writes as if he wished Obama to take his advice, but how likely is that? To see the Obama move in the the terms describd here, is to give him credit he has not earned, and is unikely to justify.
By Gideon Levy
If Israel had a real peace camp, if the silent majority had broken its sickly silence, if more Israelis approached the situation as a collective rather than individuals yearning for the next holiday or car, if more Israelis refused to accept blindly the deceptions of Israeli diplomacy and propaganda, Rabin Square would have been filled with demonstrators yesterday. Among the banners and flags, one sign would have stood out in this hour of risks and fateful decisions: “Thank you, friend.” Thank you, Barack Obama, friend of Israel.
The tidal wave of slurs and slanders, the unitary portrayal of Obama as someone trying to subjugate and humiliate Israel should have been answered with a dissenting voice saying that Obama was doing exactly what a true friend would do. Yes, it’s unpleasant, but after 43 years there’s just no other way. After a regrettable one-year delay and despite constant doubts and question marks, there now seems to be a chance that the 44th president of the United States will prevail where all his predecessors failed. There’s a chance Obama will pull Israel out of the crisis it created and work to achieve a better future, a future where it will claim what’s its own, but only what’s really its own.
The first step is encouraging and hope-inspiring. Among Obama’s modest demands – a construction freeze in Jerusalem and extending the freeze in the settlements, two basic conditions for “negotiations without preconditions” and for anyone who really wants a two-state solution – there’s a demand that the Israelis themselves should have made long ago.
Obama is asking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and through him every Israeli, to finally speak the truth. He’s asking Netanyahu and the rest of us: What on earth do you actually want? Enough with the misleading answers; the moment of truth is here. Enough with the tricks – a neighborhood here, a settlement expansion there. Just tell us: Where are you heading? Do you want to go on receiving unprecedented aid from the United States, do you want to become part of the Middle East, do you want to achieve peace?
If you do, please start behaving accordingly, including halting all construction in all settlements, everywhere, for all time, and begin evacuating them instead. Any action by Israel would be reminiscent of the three no’s of Khartoum: No to ending the occupation, no to peace, no to friendship with America.
Obama’s demands are minimal. Not just continuing the construction freeze, but dealing with the core issues, a two-year deadline to reach a solution and the demand that Israel speak the truth to others and itself. All these things should have been obvious if Israel were really aiming for a solution. Earlier presidents let Israel off and did not press for answers. Obama, faithful for the time being to the great promise he made when he was elected, is no longer willing to put up with the deceit. We now need to see if he’ll withstand the pressure and keep up his pressure on Israel.
The Israelis should be thankful to Obama for holding a mirror in front of them and saying that this is how your continuous deception looks. The Israelis should be just as thankful to Obama for being the first president ready to make Israel pay for its responsibility in maintaining the status quo. This is an American innovation supported by a shifting mood in world politics.
Take heed: The world is beginning to demand that Israel take responsibility for its actions in Dubai and Sheikh Jarrah, in Operation Cast Lead and Ramat Shlomo. From America and Europe, the time of responsibility and payback has arrived.
After 43 years of a vicious occupation, these, too, are minimal demands. Obama didn’t humiliate Israel. Israel humiliated itself for a generation, thinking it could do whatever it wanted – talk peace and build settlements, entrench an occupation and still be considered a democracy, while living on American support and rejecting its requests. Since all of Obama’s demands should have come from Israel itself, Obama is merely acting the way a friend should act. And for that he deserves those three words, from the bottom of our hearts: Thank you, friend.
International agencies, inspectors and western intelligence officials believe Tehran is planning to build more nuclear enrichment sites in defiance of international demands, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
Quoting anonymous sources from several governments and international agencies, the Times reported that United Nations inspectors were looking for evidence of two such sites.
The Times reported that inspectors were tipped off by an interview given by Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, who told the Iranian Student News Agency in recent weeks that construction could start on two new enrichment sites after Iranian New Year on March 21.
“God willing,” Mr. Salehi was quoted as saying, “we may start the construction of two new enrichment sites” in the Iranian new year, the Times reported.
U.S. President Barack Obama in September revealed evidence of a hidden enrichment site at Qum.
The Times went on to report that American officials had disclosed that Israel has pressed the case in talks with the U.S., saying that evidence points to what one senior official called “Qum look-alikes.”
The U.S., France and Britain are pushing Russia and China to back a new round of United Nations sanctions against Iran, which they suspect is developing nuclear weapons. The issue will be at the top of the agenda of foreign ministers from the G8 countries – U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Germany and Russia – in Ottawa Monday and Tuesday.
Published: March 26, 2010
After taking office last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel privately told many Americans and Europeans that he was committed to and capable of peacemaking, despite the hard-line positions that he had used to get elected for a second time. Trust me, he told them. We were skeptical when we first heard that, and we’re even more skeptical now.
All this week, the Obama administration had hoped Mr. Netanyahu would give it something to work with, a way to resolve the poisonous contretemps over Jerusalem and to finally restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. It would have been a relief if they had succeeded. Serious negotiations on a two-state solution are in all their interests. And the challenges the United States and Israel face — especially Iran’s nuclear program — are too great for the leaders not to have a close working relationship.
But after a cabinet meeting on Friday, Mr. Netanyahu and his right-wing government still insisted that they would not change their policy of building homes in the city, including East Jerusalem, which Palestinians hope to make the capital of an independent state.
President Obama made pursuing a peace deal a priority and has been understandably furious at Israel’s response. He correctly sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a factor in wider regional instability.
Mr. Netanyahu’s government provoked the controversy two weeks ago when it disclosed plans for 1,600 new housing units in an ultra-orthodox neighborhood in East Jerusalem just as Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. was on a fence-mending visit and Israeli-Palestinian “proximity talks” were to begin.
Last year, Mr. Netanyahu rejected Mr. Obama’s call for a freeze on all settlement building. On Tuesday — just before Mr. Obama hosted Mr. Netanyahu at the White House — Israeli officials revealed plans to build 20 units in the Shepherd Hotel compound of East Jerusalem.
Palestinians are justifiably worried that these projects nibble away at the land available for their future state. The disputes with Israel have made Mr. Obama look weak and have given Palestinians and Arab leaders an excuse to walk away from the proximity talks (in which Mr. Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, would shuttle between Jerusalem and Ramallah) that Washington nurtured.
Mr. Obama was right to demand that Mr. Netanyahu repair the damage. Details of their deliberately low-key White House meeting (no photos, no press, not even a joint statement afterward) have not been revealed. We hope Israel is being pressed to at least temporarily halt building in East Jerusalem as a sign of good faith. Jerusalem’s future must be decided in negotiations.
The administration should also insist that proximity talks, once begun, grapple immediately with core issues like borders and security, not incidentals. And it must ensure that the talks evolve quickly to direct negotiations — the only realistic format for an enduring agreement.
Many Israelis find Mr. Obama’s willingness to challenge Israel unsettling. We find it refreshing that he has forced public debate on issues that must be debated publicly for a peace deal to happen. He must also press Palestinians and Arab leaders just as forcefully.
Questions from Israeli hard-liners and others about his commitment to Israel’s security are misplaced. The question is whether Mr. Netanyahu is able or willing to lead his country to a peace deal. He grudgingly endorsed the two-state solution. Does he intend to get there?
For Israel’s hawkish premier, the issue is not halting illegal settlement expansion, but increasing it less conspicuously, writes Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah
Netanyahu addressed the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference in Washington this week
While claiming to have a genuine desire for the resumption of “peace talks” with the Palestinian Authority (PA), Israel has been murdering Palestinian civilians in the streets of the West Bank in a clear overreaction to recent Palestinian protests against Israeli transgressions against Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem.
Eyewitnesses reported that trigger-happy Israeli troops shot had killed two young Palestinians who were trying to access their land near the northern West Bank town of Nablus. Initially, the Israeli army claimed the two tried to attack heavily armed soldiers with pitchforks, a claim rejected by the Ramallah- based Palestinian government that described the killings as “cold-blooded murder”. An Israeli army spokesman later said the circumstances surrounding the two deaths were vague and that an investigation into “the incident” would be carried out.
Ghassan Al-Khatib, head of the Palestinian Government Press Office, accused the Israeli occupation army of murdering Palestinians in order to provoke a new uprising — or Intifada — that would divert the world’s attention from the belligerent discourse adopted by the Netanyahu government. “We look at this as part of the Israeli escalation. It could have been treated in a completely different way. But the Israelis have been escalating, and this is something the prime minister [Netanyahu] has been warning.”
More ominous remarks came from Mahmoud Al-Alul, a senior Fatah leader based in Nablus. He told some 2,000 mourners that, “nobody can imagine that we can stand with our hands tied vis-à-vis what is happening.” A day earlier, two more Palestinians were killed and others injured when Israeli troops opened fired on Palestinian youths protesting against Israeli provocations at Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest shrines. The Israeli army claimed it used rubber bullets, though they can also prove fatal.
The latest killings in the West Bank coincided with visits to the region by EU Foreign Policy Director Catherine Ashton and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- Moon. Both visited Israel and the occupied territories, including the blockaded Gaza Strip, voicing their solidarity and sympathy with tormented Gazans, many of whom are homeless having had their houses destroyed during Israel’s brutal onslaught against the coastal enclave last year.
Hoping that the two important visitors would not submit a “negative” report when they return to their respective bases in Brussels and New York, the Israeli government decided to allow them to travel to Gaza via the Beit Hanoun border terminal, also known as the Erez Crossing. Israel previously blocked repeatedly foreign officials from travelling to Gaza via Erez.
In the West Bank, Ban, escorted by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, saw firsthand how the proliferation of Jewish colonies is seriously inhibiting prospects for the creation of a viable Palestinian state. He called for a total freeze on Jewish settlement expansion, a call ignored by the Israeli government notorious for its disregard of and contempt for the UN.
In Gaza, Ban inspected destruction caused by massive Israeli bombing. He called on Israel to allow building materials to get through to Gaza, acknowledging the fallacy of the Israeli argument that Hamas could use building materials for illegitimate purposes. Ban had earlier met with the family of an Israeli prisoner, captured by Palestinian fighters near Gaza. The UN secretary-general made no mention of the thousands of Palestinians languishing in Israeli prisons and detention camps.
Both Ban and Ashton left Israel-Palestine with a negative impression about the extent to which the Netanyahu government is willing to engage in a genuine peace process that would end the military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Prior to his departure for the US in order to address a major conference of the Jewish lobby and to attempt to mend fences with the Obama administration, Netanyahu told his cabinet and party caucus that settlement expansion would continue unabated. He added that Israel would have to carry out its settlement schemes “quietly, stealthily, and without making a big noise”.
As to recently declared plans to build 1,600 additional settler units in Arab East Jerusalem, Netanyahu vowed to keep building, regardless of what Washington says or does. “Our policy on Jerusalem is the same policy followed by all Israeli governments for the past 42 years. Building in Jerusalem is the same as building in Tel Aviv.”
Netanyahu’s remarks on Jerusalem were rejected by European foreign ministers meeting in Brussels this week. Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn was quoted as saying that the EU was very disappointed by the position of the Israeli government. “I think I can say very clearly that Jerusalem is not Tel Aviv,” he said.
Faced with an uncharacteristically determined American stance on the issue of settlement building, and dismayed by a growing negative impression in Europe — including with close allies such as Germany — about his government’s true intentions, Netanyahu is expected to undertake a number of “goodwill gestures” towards the PA in order to enhance his government’s image in Washington and Europe.
According to Israeli media, Netanyahu might agree to “discuss” all outstanding issues with the Palestinians, release a few hundred Fatah-affiliated prisoners, and allow the entry into Gaza of a limited shipment of building materials as demanded by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Nonetheless, the Israeli premier has refused to revoke plans to build 1,600 settler units in the Ramat Sholomo colony in East Jerusalem. To avoid the kind of embarrassment accompanying the recent visit to Israel by US Vice- President Joe Biden, when Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yeshai announced the new settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian town, Netanyahu promised a better “oversight system” for the future.
Netanyahu’s tactics suggest he is convinced that the recent tension with Washington is over the timing, not the content, of the settlement expansion announcement. In addition, Netanyahu is trying to achieve two tactical goals. First, return the proverbial ball to the Palestinian court; second, replacing the “Iranian subject” on the top of US agenda while relegating the “Palestinian subject” to a secondary status. Netanyahu may even be harbouring further ambitions, including the acquisition of laser-guided bunker-busters from the US, which Israel could use in an attack on Iranian nuclear installations.
As Netanyahu headed for Washington, US Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell — who returned to the region this week — urged “both sides to show restraint”. Mitchell was evasive and noncommittal about the issue of settlements, stressing that the important thing was to resume peace talks, even without clear guidelines. Recently, General David Petraeus, head of US Central Command in the Middle East, was quoted as criticising Mitchell’s mission in the region, suggesting that the American diplomat was “too old, two slow and too late”.
Obama Still Doesn’t Have the Stomach to Confront Israel
By JONATHAN COOK, Counterpunch, March 25, 2010
Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in the United States this week armed with a mandate from the Israeli parliament. A large majority of legislators from all of Israel’s main parties had supported a petition urging him to stand firm on the building of Jewish settlements in occupied East Jerusalem — the very issue that got him into hot water days earlier with the White House.
Given the Israeli consensus on Jerusalem, there was no way Mr Netanyahu could have avoided rubbing that wound again in his speech on Monday to the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the powerful pro-Israel lobby group.
He told the thousands of delegates: “The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital.”
Citing his own policy as inseparable from all previous Israeli governments, he added: “Everyone knows that these neighbourhoods will be part of Israel in any peace settlement. Therefore, building them in no way precludes the possibility of a two-state solution.”
Mr Netanyahu’s speech appeared consistent with the new approach agreed byboth sides to end this particular debacle. According to the US media, a policy of “Don’t ask and don’t tell” has been adopted to avoid making East Jerusalem an insurmountable obstacle to negotiations.
It will be telling how the US administration responds to the latest approval by Israeli planning authorities of a housing project at the Shepherd’s Hotel in East Jerusalem – this time in the even more controversial area of Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian community slowly being taken over by Jewish settlers backed by the Israeli courts.
The White House has eased its stance chiefly because Mr Netanyahu has climbed down on two issues of even greater importance to the administration.
First, he has agreed to make a “significant gesture” to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, probably in the form of a prisoner release. That is the carrot needed to bring Mr Abbas to the peace talks overseen by George Mitchell, the US special peace envoy.
And second, Mr Netanyahu has conceded that Israel will discuss the “core issues” of the conflict – borders, Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees – ensuring that the negotiations are substantive rather than formal, as he had intended.
Those concessions – if Mr Netanyahu delivers on them – should be enough to break up his far-right coalition, a prospect the White House craves. The US administration wants Tzipi Livni, the leader of the centrist opposition, to join Mr Netanyahu in a new, “peacemaking coalition”.
If Mr Netanyahu could wriggle out of this bind, he would do so. But his ace in the hole – harnessing the might of AIPAC and its legions in Congress to back him against the White House – looks to have been disarmed.
Comments last week by Gen David Petraeus, the head of the US Central Command, linked Israel’s intransigence towards the Palestinians to the spread of a hatred that endangers US troops in the Middle East. That left the AIPAC hordes with little option but to swallow their and Mr Netanyahu’s pride, lest they be accused of dual loyalties.
In the words of Uri Avnery, a former Israeli legislator: “This is only a shot across the bow, a warning shot fired by a warship in order to induce another vessel to follow its instructions. The warning is clear.”
And the warning is that Mr Netanyahu must come to the negotiating table to help to establish a Palestinian state whatever the consequences for his coalition.
But it would be unwise to assume that the crisis over settlement building in East Jerusalem indicates that the Obama administration plans to get any tougher with Israel on the form of such statehood than its predecessors.
Ms Livni, unlike Mr Netanyahu, may wish to find a solution to the conflict – or impose one – but her terms would be far from generous. The White House knows that she, too, is an ardent advocate of settlements in East Jerusalem. When she broke her silence on the crisis last week, it was to emphasise that, by “acting stupidly” in stoking a row with the US, Mr Netanyahu had risked “weakening” Israel’s hold on Jerusalem
Instead, the signs are that Barack Obama could be just as ready to accommodate the Israeli consensus on East Jerusalem as the previous Bush administration was in backing Israel’s position on keeping the overwhelming majority of West Bank settlers in their homes on occupied Palestinian land.
Shimon Peres, the Israeli president who is much favoured in Washington, has outlined a “compromise” to placate the Americans. It would involve a peace deal in which Israel keeps the large swaths of East Jerusalem already settled by Jews, while the Palestinians would be entitled to the ghettos left behind after four decades of illegal Israeli building.
In her own AIPAC speech, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, hinted that such a solution might yet be acceptable to the administration. The recent US condemnation of settlement building, she said, was not “a judgment on the final status of Jerusalem, which is an issue to be settled at the negotiating table. This is about getting to the table, creating and protecting an atmosphere of trust around it — and staying there until the job is finally done.”
Having lost patience with Mr Netanyahu’s lip service to Palestinian statehood, the White House appears finally to have decided its credibility in the Middle East depends on dragging Israel — kicking and screaming, if needs be — to the negotiating table.
Mr Obama may hope that the outcome of such a process will make US troops safer in Iraq and strengthen his hand in the stand-off with Iran. But it remains doubtful that the US actually has the stomach to extract from Israel the concessions needed to create that elusive entity referred to as a viable Palestinian state.
Regional leaders meeting in Libya have been united in their condemnation of Israel’s settlement activity in occupied Palestinian land.
The Arab League summit began on Saturday in the Libyan city of Sirte, with Amr Moussa, the Arab League chief, warning that continued Israeli settlement building would end efforts to revive the Middle East peace process.
“We have to study the possibility that the peace process will be a complete failure,” Moussa said in his opening speech to the two-day annual summit.
“It’s time to face Israel … We have accepted an open-ended peace process but that resulted in a loss of time and we did not achieve anything and allowed Israel to practise its policy for 20 years.”
Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as a joint capital for a future state, has been a particular point of focus for delegates.
Jerusalem’s significance
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, reiterated that Israel’s settlements were illegal under international law, and called for Jerusalem to be part of peace negotiations.
“Jerusalem’s significance to all must be respected, and it should emerge from negotiations as the capital of two states,” he said at the meeting’s opening session.
Ban also called for Arab leaders to support US-led efforts to facilitate indirect “proximity” talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
The Palestinians pulled out of the talks in reaction to Israel’s announcement it would build 1,600 settlements on occupied land.
The Israeli move has also caused a rift between Israel and Washington as it came during a visit to Israel by Joe Biden, the US vice-president.
“I urge you to support efforts to start proximity talks and direct negotiations. Our common goal should be to resolve all final status issues within 24 months,” Ban said.
But Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, ruled out taking part in the talks unless Israel stops building settlements.
“We cannot resume indirect negotiations as long as Israel maintains its settlement policy and the status quo,” he said in his speech.
The warnings over Jerusalem were echoed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, who called Israel’s policy of considering Jerusalem as its united capital “madness”.
“Jerusalem is the apple of the eye of each and every Muslim … and we cannot at all accept any Israeli violation in Jerusalem or in Muslim sites,” he said.
Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, called the declarations coming out of the summit “aggressive”, saying that the arguments put forward were based on “very selective opinions”.
“We say strongly and firmly that we have a legal right to build in Jerusalem and those that seek to enshrine the 1949 Armistice Lines, the so-called ‘Green Line’ as a border have not understood history nor legal precedence,” he said.
“We call on the Palestinian Authority to cease living in delusions of forcing Israel to the pre-1967 lines and to come and join us at the negotiation table without preconditions.”
‘Playing with fire’
Many Arab leaders have been angered by the opening of a restored 17th century synagogue near the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, home to Islam’s third holiest site.
They see such acts as a clear intention by Israel to “Judaise” Jerusalem and undermine chances for a peace agreement with the Palestinians who consider East Jerusalem the capital of their future state.
Holy Land Grab
Jordan’s King Abdullah warned that Israel was “playing with fire” and trying to alter the identity of Jerusalem.
Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, described tensions with Israel as a “state of no-war, no-peace”, and said his country was ready if “war is imposed” by Israel.
Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, opened the summit with an unusually short speech in which he said that Arabs were “waiting for actions, not words and speeches”.
The Libyan leader, whose country is hosting this year’s summit, has said he wants the meeting to be one of unity and the issue of Jerusalem has proved a unifying factor.
“The whole issue of Israeli actions has been under intense discussions, particularly in light of what has happened in that region in recent days,” Mike Hanna, Al Jazeera’s correspondent reporting from Sirte, said.
“Very clearly the issue of Jerusalem has been brought up and focused on because it is the one issue that would be very difficult for the international community as a whole to ignore.
“If, for example, resolutions would go to the UN General Assembly or the Security Council … on the question of East Jerusalem and Israeli occupation, it is very difficult for international bodies – or countries such as the US – to veto or abstain over something they’ve already condemned.”
Arab leaders are expected to ratify an agreement drafted by their foreign ministers to raise $500m in aid to improve the living conditions for Palestinians in Jerusalem as part of a “rescue” plan for the city.
A senior Palestinian official said the money would go towards improving infrastructure, building hospitals, schools, water wells and providing financial support to those whose houses have been demolished by Israeli authorities.
The leaders are also due to discuss a number of strategies, including keeping a record of what they consider to be Israeli “violations” in Jerusalem to refer them to higher bodies such as the International Criminal Court, based in the Hague in the Netherlands.
The last Arab League summit, held two years ago, was hosted by Qatar.
Tim Franks
As relations between Britain and Israel continue to unravel, in Jerusalem many Israelis feel that the outside world still fails to understand the problems – and threats – their country is facing.
Uzi Arad is a very important man. He’s now the director of Israel’s National Security Council, and National Security Adviser to the prime minister – a position he’s held since Benjamin Netanyahu took office.
Uzi Arad has a reputation for fighting fiercely and territorially among the sharp edges that exist at the height of the Israeli power pyramid.
He was always hospitable whenever I, on occasion, used to visit him at home – before he took up his current job.
He’d spent more than 20 years in Mossad – Israel’s secret intelligence service, and before he was appointed one of its directors, he was stationed for a time in London.
Once, at his house, he took me into his expansive library. He reached onto a shelf and extracted a book called Mandarin – the memoirs of the British diplomat Sir Nicholas Henderson.
Uzi Arad opened the inside front cover. There, in green ink, was an inscription: “To Uzi, with the thanks and appreciation of your British friends for your co-operation and help and best wishes for the future.”
The message was signed C – the initial that has always denoted the head of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service.
‘Doesn’t look good’
Such cordiality evaporated this week with the expulsion of a senior Israeli London-based diplomat who, by common consent, appears to have been the Mossad London station chief.
The Government’s anger was stoked by the apparent use of fake British passports in the assassination of the top Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January.
In the careful language of the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, the Serious Organised Crime Agency “was drawn to the conclusion that the passports used were copied from genuine British passports when handed over for inspection to individuals linked to Israel, either in Israel or in other countries”.
It doesn’t take much for the gales of public opinion to blow in Israel – and barely had David Miliband finished his statement in Westminster than the gusts a continent away began whipping.
A right-wing Israeli Member of Parliament reached into strangely Maoist terminology, and called the British “dogs”.
A commentator in a right-of-centre newspaper argued that “millions of Muslims live in Britain, and Gordon Brown needs their votes in the upcoming elections”.
At the other end of Israel’s brightly coloured political spectrum, a resident of one of the country’s most stalwartly socialist kibbutzim, or rural collectives, e-mailed me to say that “if Israel was directly or indirectly involved in the Dubai incident then there’s no limit, apparently, to the arrogance and stupidity of this regime/administration”.
But between the howls and harrumphs there were quieter noises. Some dwindled quickly into silence, and I found the voices I normally turn to in the Israeli intelligence community politely declining to speak or hanging up after the briefest of “it doesn’t look good” comments.
One diplomat with a close connection to London did allow himself to be slightly more phlegmatic. “This is a standard dance the British have to go through,” he told me.
“Of course, they won’t admit it. They’ll sell it hard. But I see no reason for them or for us to shift gears over bilateral co-operation.” Fundamental point
What is clear is that few Israelis are shedding tears for Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
On a street-corner in Jerusalem, half-way between the prime minister’s residence and the official home of the president, Eitan was drawing heavily on a cigarette, outside his shop.
“Personally, I don’t like violence,” Eitan told me. “But the thing is, Hamas doesn’t want to talk. And if someone is going to hit you, then sometimes you have to hit them first.”
Behind Eitan’s shrug is a wide belief in Israel that the rest of the world doesn’t quite get it – that Israel is the only homeland the Jews have, that it’s small and that it’s trying to survive in a hostile neighbourhood.
It’s that feeling which fuels the declamation “Jerusalem is not a settlement”, repeated this week in Washington by Benjamin Netanyahu – and that the Israeli government will carry on building in the city wherever it chooses, even if that means the occupied territory of East Jerusalem, amid growing American displeasure.
And that is the much more fundamental point here.
There may be a moment of iciness between Britain and Israel over the forged passports.
Mossad London station chiefs may not, in the near future, receive cosy book inscriptions from the boss of MI6.
But Israel’s belief in its exceptionalism, and the impatience currently shown by two of its closest allies, may point to a deeper rupture.
Editor: Achitofel’s advice – The voice of unreason
Somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun, stands proud Alan Dersowitz, untouchable by events, rising among the hard liners of AIPAC, forever ready to have a fight with anyone around, supporting Israel to the bitter end of Palestine. His advice is sure to get the whole world intoa quagmire which only he knows how to get out of… this is the true voice of Israeli politics of confrontation, and he is a better Amabassador than the official one.It is interesting that even Dersowitz is against the settlements, according to himself… so who in his right mind supports the ocupation and settlements in the US, you wonder?
The American administration has been paying for this colonial effort, indirectly, giving Israel over 3 Billion dollars in ‘civilian aid’ every year. That’s who.
By Akiva Eldar
Law professor Alan Dershowitz, a well-known attorney in the American legal world, has made a name for himself representing celebrity clients such as O.J. Simpson, Jonathan Pollard and Mike Tyson. His lectures are seen as some of the most fervent speeches made in Israel’s defense, while his books, including “The Case for Israel,” have become bestsellers – particularly among Israel’s supporters. He also played a pivotal role in attacking Justice Richard Goldstone’s report on last year’s Israeli offensive into Gaza.
Dershowitz traveled last week from Harvard University to Washington to participate in the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He also followed the clash unfolding between Barack Obama, his president, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of his favorite client, with concern.
How do you interpret the cool to frosty reception Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received at the White House?
It’s clearly part of the Obama administration’s strategy to increase pressure on Israel. After all, they praised Netanyahu’s offer to end building in the West Bank, without him committing to ending building in parts of Jerusalem certain to remain an integral part of Israel under any agreement. In the White House they think they can have more influence on Israel than on the Palestinians. But this seems to be backfiring, because the Palestinians now believe they can demand more and more pre-conditions for starting talks. What Obama has to realize is that he is dealing with Israel, a democracy to which you can not always dictate specific terms. Israel can’t make peace without the clear support of the United States. The Israeli voters supported Ehud Barak’s very generous offers in 2000/2001 largely because they trusted Bill Clinton. Mistrust of Barack Obama will make it more difficult to persuade Israelis to take risks for peace.
Obama is surrounded by Jewish advisors who understand how Israel works, and even has a senior advisor with an Israeli background.
The fact that Obama has advisors who are Jewish simply gives him a better cover to be tough on Israel. On the other hand, he doesn’t have close Palestinian advisors who are familiar with the other side. I’m afraid this is bringing the parties further apart rather than closer together.
Could the rift between the administration in Washington and the Israeli government cause a split in the Jewish community, between Obama’s supporters and supporters of Israel?
No – the Jewish community is solidly behind Israel on security issues and largely behind Israel on building in Jewish neighborhoods in North Jerusalem that will remain part of Israel in any agreement. On the other hand, the issue is lessening support for Obama among Jewish supporters of Israel.
If you were Netanyahu’s attorney, how would you advise him to end this crisis?
I would suggest that he make the following announcement: “We do not believe that new building in Jewish sections of Jerusalem is a barrier to peace. We believe that the Palestinian’s unwillingness to engage in unconditional direct talks, coupled with their unwillingness to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, is the primary barrier to peace. To prove our point, and without waving any rights in Jerusalem, we will announce a three-month suspension of all building permits in all disputed areas of Jerusalem in order to see whether that brings the Palestinians to the peace table and whether they are prepared to engage in good faith direct negotiations. If the Palestinians will then be prepared to engage in good faith direct negotiations, the suspensions will continue until the negotiations are complete. If not, we will return to the status quo.”
That would be a test of the Palestinians’ good will – a test I hope they will pass, but believe they will fail.
How would you advise Obama?
I would tell him that the process cannot be unilateral and that there must be mutual concessions. For example, the Obama administration has falsely blamed the naming of a Ramallah square after a terrorist who murdered Jews on Hamas, rather than on the Palestinian Authority. The Obama administration has to make as substantial demands of the Palestinians as it does of the Israelis. If you think this crisis is severe, you should know it is nothing compared to what could happen with regard to the Iranian issue at some future date. I’m afraid [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad is one of the happiest men these days thanks to the many incidents between the United States and Israel. [PA Authority President] Mahmoud Abbas, by the way, is also pretty happy.
Would you disagree that this crisis – along with earlier ones and ones that will likely follow – stems from the Israeli settlement policy?
I believe that if Israel were to put an end to the settlements in the West Bank tomorrow, as it did in Gaza, there would still be reluctance on the part of the Palestinian Authority to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish secular democracy. Accordingly, the settlements should not be a major cause of disagreement between Israel and the United States, despite their differences over this issue. Nonetheless, I hope Israel will stop building in the West Bank and in those sections of Jerusalem which are likely to become part of a Palestinian state.
I am deeply concerned that, without peace and a two-state solution, the Jewish and democratic nature of Israel is in danger. That’s why I have opposed Israel’s settlement policy since 1973, and that’s why I have favored a two-state solution since 1967.
Do you believe that Obama is a friend of Israel and is truly committed to his promise not to allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons?
I believe Barack Obama is committed to Israel’s security. He is also committed to the two-state solution and the peace process.
I hope he understands that unless Israelis – and the rest of the world – believe that he will do whatever it takes to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, many Israelis will be unwilling to take significant risks for peace. I will remain committed to Obama so long as he continues to support Israeli security unequivocally. Obama’s historic legacy will be based on whether he succeeds in preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. If such weapons are obtained on his watch, history will remember him as it remembers Neville Chamberlain, despite anything else he might achieve in terms of domestic American policy.
You’ve made no secret about your criticism of the left-wing Jewish organization J Street. Why are you so disturbed by Jews who support peace?
I am a peace supporting Jew. I think J Street performs an important function, as it represents many left-leaning young Jews. My criticism is that it would be better if they work within the context of AIPAC. The pro-Israel lobby could then speak with one voice, especially during a time of conflict between the United States and Israel, and especially on undisputed issues – like Iran, responding to rocket attacks, anti-terrorism measures, etc. I myself have had significant disagreements with the Israeli government on a number of issues, such as the settlements. At the same time, I emphasize the 80 percent of Israeli policies that have widespread support across the political spectrum. When I wrote “The Case For Peace,” my book received endorsements from prime minister Ariel Sharon and [writer] Amos Oz, because I dealt with the agreed 80 percent. J Street, on other hand, tends to focus on the 20 percent, where there is significant disagreement. That is perfectly okay for an Israeli newspaper, like Haaretz, or for Israeli domestic organizations. But it weakens pro-Israel advocacy considerably, particularly at a time when the pro-Israel community in the United States must continue to pressure the Obama administration to de-escalate this conflict.
Can you describe what happened when you debated the representative from J Street at the AIPAC conference?
Here is what happened: I was standing with professor Irwin Cotler, the former attorney general of Canada, having a conversation. A gentleman asked me if I would like to be interviewed by the correspondent from Haaretz. I said yes. He then went over to the correspondent and asked her whether she wanted to interview professor Dershowitz. She said yes, asked me several questions, and wrote down the answers on her notepad. She then turned to the J Street representative and asked him whether he had any response, which he then provided. Following that, a polite debate ensued, I did not break into a conversation. The entire episode was videotaped and witnessed by over 100 people.
