As international hysteria is driving the capitalist west into another islamophobic illegal, immoral and illogical military conflict with Iran, based on an Israeli campaign and perceived interests, the voices against this crminal madness are increasing, even within Israel itself. As we know, in the western democracies public opinion makes no difference, as last shown during the buildup towards the war in Iraq. Democracy is a fine things for other people to have, of course, people who are underdeveloped… we in the west are so above such primary needs… Our leaders are in touch both with God and the Truth, so fortunately do not need our views and advice.
By Zvi Bar’el,
Ehud Barak said what he had to say, Bashar Assad did not understand or maybe he did, Avigdor Lieberman uttered his usual concoction, Benjamin Netanyahu explained that “we want peace,” and life is good. Everything is all right. This week’s ruckus is over. All that remains is the media circus. Because war, we should recall, is not something Israel does in winter.
The chatter, on the other hand, works all year round and Lieberman is its strategic asset. Lieberman can babble on about the collapse of the Assad family’s rule, swear at Hosni Mubarak and ridicule Jordan. His importance at the Foreign Ministry compares only to that of the Strategic Affairs Ministry under Moshe Ya’alon or the Regional Development Ministry under Silvan Shalom. These three frustrated ministries fall under the category “we want peace” and have transformed chatter into policy.
But Lieberman is not really the problem. The root of evil is the hoax of “we want peace,” because Israel is not really interested in peace with Syria – not at the cost of withdrawing from the Golan Heights. Israel’s working assumption is that there is no rush for negotiations with Syria; our northern neighbor does not constitute a military threat and its regional position does not allow it to rally the support of other Arab countries to carry out a full-blown war. Syria can be threatened without risking damage.
Syria itself “contributed” to this Israeli approach by keeping the border calm for decades, and there is no way to convince Israelis, who understand only Katyushas and Qassam rockets, that Syria is a threat for which a single bed-and-breakfast needs to be removed from the Golan. The Syrian promise for the “fruits of peace” is also shoddy. Compared to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, Syria is not offering any real economic incentives to make peace.
But Syria holds an asset that Israel does not recognize. Peace at this time means the possibility that Israel’s strategic position in the Middle East and the world will change. Syria is a key country along a new axis being formed in the Middle East, which includes Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The backbone of this axis is economic, security and diplomatic cooperation that would replace the old axis of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
Iran’s burgeoning political influence in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, the huge amounts of oil still available in Iraq, Turkey’s influence on Central Asia and its control over a gas pipeline to stretch from Iran to Europe, as well as the new link between Saudi Arabia and Syria and Syria’s great influence on Palestinian politics and Lebanon’s Hezbollah – all these may make this axis much more wealthy and influential in the next decade. So a very important arena of interests is forming, not only for Israel.
The United States of Barack Obama has already realized that Syria, with or without peace with Israel, is a country Washington needs to preserve its position in the region and beyond. A U.S. ambassador is expected to be sent to Damascus in the near future, and Europe is negotiating with Syria, not only on economics, but also on an entry point to the entire Middle East. Our friend Silvio Berlusconi should be asked about his view on Syria when his country’s trade with Damascus stands at about $2 billion, some 20 percent of overall trade between Syria and Europe.
Israel, which is used to examining the region through a lens that counts Hezbollah’s missiles and Hamas’ explosive barrels sent to sea, and which considers the prisoner numbers in the Gilad Shalit deal the crux of the security threat, is blind to the region’s strategic developments. The expression “we want peace,” which is void of substance, cannot even begin to express the folly and shortsightedness of Israel, which is shrugging its shoulders at a chance to reach peace with Syria, if for no other reason than to prevent a damaging blow from this new axis.
To this end, we need a statesman, not a comedian. The leader who can make Israelis understand that peace with Syria does not mean eating humus in Damascus but is an existential interest, no less important than blocking Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But this is the kind of statesman we’re lacking. For the time being we have to make do with a thug who cries out – “hold me back!”
Jerusalem – Over the past four decades Israel has defrauded Palestinians working inside Israel of more than US$2 billion (Dh7.4bn) by deducting from their salaries contributions for welfare benefits to which they were never entitled, Israeli economists revealed this week.
A new report, “State Robbery”, says the “theft” continued even after the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 and part of the money was supposed to be transferred to a special fund on behalf of the workers.
According to information supplied by Israeli officials, most of the deductions from the workers’ pay were invested in infrastructure projects in the Palestinian territories – a presumed reference to the massive state subsidies accorded to the settlements.
Nearly 50,000 Palestinians from the West Bank are working in Israel – following the easing of restrictions on entering Israel under the “economic peace” promised by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister – and continue to have such contributions docked from their pay.
Complicit in the deception, the report adds, is the Histadrut, the Israeli labour federation, which levies a monthly fee on Palestinian workers, even though they are not entitled to membership and are not represented in labour disputes.
“This is a clear-cut case of theft from Palestinian workers on a grand scale,” said Shir Hever, a Jerusalem-based economist and one of the authors of the report. “There are no reasons for Israel to delay in returning this money either to the workers or their beneficiaries.”
The deductions started being made in 1970, three years after the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories began, when Palestinian workers started to enter Israel in significant numbers, most of them employed as manual labourers in the agriculture and construction industries.
Typically, the workers lose a fifth of their salary in deductions that are supposed to cover old age payments, unemployment allowance, disability insurance, child benefits, trade union fees, pension fund, holiday and sick pay, and health insurance. In practice, however, the workers are entitled only to disability payments in case of work accidents and are insured against loss of work if their employer goes bankrupt.
According to the report, compiled by two human rights groups, the Alternative Information Centre and Kav La’Oved, only a fraction of the total contributions – less than eight per cent – was used to award benefits to Palestinian workers. The rest was secretly transferred to the finance ministry.
The Israeli organisations assess that the workers were defrauded of at least $2.25bn in today’s prices, in what they describe as a minimum and “very conservative” estimate of the misappropriation of the funds. Such a sum represents about 10 per cent of the PA’s annual budget.
The authors also note that they excluded from their calculations two substantial groups of Palestinian workers – those employed in the Jewish settlements and those working in Israel’s black economy – because figures were too hard to obtain.
Mr Hever said the question of whether the bulk of the deductions – those for national insurance – had been illegally taken from the workers was settled by the Israeli High Court back in 1991. The judges accepted a petition from the flower growers’ union that the government should return about $1.5 million in contributions from Palestinian workers in the industry.
“The legal precedent was set then and could be used to reclaim the rest of these excessive deductions,” he said.
At the height of Palestinian participation in the Israeli labour force, in the early 1990s, as many as one in three Palestinian workers was dependent on Israeli employers.
Israel continued requiring contributions from Palestinian workers after the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, arguing that it needed to make the deductions to ensure Israeli workers remained competitive.
However, the report notes that such practices were supposed to have been curbed by the Oslo process. Israel agreed to levy an “equalisation tax” – equivalent to the excessive contributions paid by Palestinians – a third of which would be invested in a fund that would later be available to the workers.
In fact, however, the Israeli State Comptroller, a government watchdog official, reported in 2003 that only about a tenth of the money levied on the workers had actually been invested in the fund.
The finance ministry has admitted that most of the money taken from the workers was passed to Israeli military authorities in the Palestinian territories to pay for “infrastructure programmes”. Hannah Zohar, the director of Kav La’Oved who co-authored the report, said she believed that the ministry was actually referring to the construction of illegal settlements.
The report is also highly critical of the Histadrut, Israel’s trade union federation, which it accuses of grabbing “a piece of the pie” by forcing Palestinian workers to pay a monthly “organising fee” to the union since 1970, even though Palestinians are not entitled to membership.
Despite the Histadrut’s agreement with its Palestinian counterpart in 2008 to repay the fees, only 20 per cent was returned, leaving $30m unaccounted for.
The Histadrut was also implicated in another “rip-off”, said Mr Hever. It agreed in 1990 to the Israeli construction industry’s demand that Palestinian workers pay an extra two per cent tax to promote the training of recent Jewish immigrants, most of them from the former Soviet Union.
Mr Hever said that in effect the Palestinian labourers were required to “subsidise the training of workers meant to replace them”. The funds were never used for the stated purpose but were mainly issued as grants to the families of Israeli workers.
In one especially cynical use of the funds, the report notes, the money was spent on portable stoves for soldiers involved in Israel’s three-week attack on Gaza last year.
In response, the finance ministry called the report “incorrect and misleading”, and the Histadrut claimed it was “full of lies”. However, neither provided rebuttals of the report’s allegations or its calculations.
Mr Hever said the government body responsible for making the deductions, the department of payments, had initially refused to divulge any of its figures, but had partly relented after some statistics were made available through leaks from its staff.
Assef Saeed, a senior official in the Palestinian Authority’s labour ministry, said the PA was keen to discuss the issue of the deductions, but that talks were difficult because of the lack of contacts between the two sides
A parliamentary investigation could lead to the dismantling of some rights groups accused of undermining the legitimacy of Israel’s government by documenting alleged misconduct by Israeli forces during last year’s Gaza war.
Tel Aviv — As the United Nations prepares to decide what action to take on the Goldstone report, which alleges Israeli misconduct in last year’s Gaza war, local human rights groups and their backers are facing a rising tide of domestic criticism for fomenting international scrutiny of Israel and its military.
A center-right group, “Im Tirtzu,” issued a report last week charging that the Goldstone report relies on documentation from 16 local rights organizations that were vocal critics of Israeli conduct during the war. The report singled out a common financial thread, the multimillion-dollar New Israel Fund, which raises money among American Jews and foundations for progressive causes.
That sparked a drive in the Israeli parliament to approve an investigation to determine whether the work of those nonprofits undermines Israel’s legitimacy. The investigation could lead to the outlawing of some groups.
The sponsor of the inquiry proposal, Knesset Member Otniel Schneller from the centrist Kadima party, accused the groups of “the worst incitement possible” against Israel. “Most of the quotes in the [Goldstone] report against Israel come from Israeli organizations,” he said. “They are accusing Israel of terrorizing [Palestinian] civilians.”
The Goldstone report assigns blame to both Israel and Hamas for committing possible war crimes during the war, but accuses Israel of intentionally killing Palestinian civilians and of destroying civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.
Israel says the report reflects political bias, anti-Semitism, and an effort to rob the Jewish state of the right to self-defense against attacks on its citizens. In the coming weeks and months, the United Nations Security Council will decide whether to refer the findings to the International Criminal Court.
How much can you criticize government?
The campaign against the rights groups is sparking a debate over the limits of legitimate criticism of the government.
“We believe there are valid concerns with regard to Israel’s conduct during [the war]. We believe the Israeli public has the right to know what was done in our name in Gaza,” says Haggai Elad, the director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a beneficiary of the New Israel Fund. “If the [parliament] is intent on holding hearings in the 21st century that are reminiscent of the anti-Communist hysteria in the United States of the 1950s, then that is a sad moment for Israeli democracy.”
Im Tirtzu, which is funded by Christians United for Israel, a group founded by US evangelical John Haggee, said the New Israel Fund affiliates had a “significant influence” on the crafting of the Goldstone report, and that most of its accusations against Israel were sourced to the rights groups.
“These organizations are trying to help Hamas in [its] fight against Israel,” argues Im Tirtzu chairman Ronen Shoval. “They are slandering the State of Israel and the Israeli soldiers around the world.”
DUBAI — The Israeli prime minister would be at the top of the wanted list if the Israeli foreign intelligence service, Mossad, is behind the killing of a senior Hamas official who was found dead in a hotel in the city last month, the chief of Dubai Police said today.
Lt Gen, Dahi Khalfan Tamim told The National: “Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, will be the first to be wanted for justice as he would have been the one who signed the decision to assassinate [Mahmoud] al Mabhouh in Dubai. We will issue an arrest warrant against him.”
He did not, however, assert that Mossad was definitively responsible for the killing.
Lt Gen Tamim had said the method used to kill Mr al Mabhouh, was a “Mossad method” but did not elaborate.
He added that Mossad “has carried out operations” in the past using similar procedures. Dubai Police had also earlier said only that the involvement of Mossad could not be ruled out.
Citing “security reasons” — the ubiquitous and unanswerable catch-all phrase against which it is almost impossible to mount any defense — Israel’s Ministry of the Interior has just issued a six-month travel ban on map expert Khalil Tafakji.
Tafakji, like almost all other Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem, is a “permanent resident,” but not a citizen of Israel.
He is frequently interviewed as an expert on Al-Jazeera satellite channel, as well as on Palestinian television and other media. He said in a phone interview on 4 February that he had just returned 20 days previously from a tour of a number of countries, from Tunisia to Turkey to India, during which he spoke about the problems facing Palestinians because of Israeli policies in East Jerusalem. “You know I am not a political man,” Tafakji said today. But, this is a place where even ordinary, everyday life becomes political.
However, Tafakji has been called the Palestinian Authority’s chief geographer and said he did not know of any other person who has been handed such a travel ban.
Tafakji, surprised at the development, said that “Yesterday they [Israeli authorities] called me and said come to Moskobiyya [the “Russian Compound” security complex in West Jerusalem] — Room 4. They said ‘This is an order, sign it, you have 14 days to make an objection. It is forbidden for you to travel from today for six months.'”
[[When asked if he will contest the travel ban,]] Tafakji said that he has been in constant consultation with lawyers, who have all said that since the explanation he was given was only the generic — but all-encompassing — “security reasons,” it is almost hopeless to contest.
Tafakji was not given any other restriction, he said.
“We are trying, through relations with Jordan and Egypt, America, Britain and France, to see if we can do anything” to remove the restriction, Tafakji said. He told the privately-owned and operated Maan News Agency in Bethlehem that “I am a peace man,” and noted that he worked as a cartographic expert with Palestinian delegations to peace talks since they began in the early 1990s.
He also worked with the late PLO leader in Jerusalem, Faisal Husseini, who had set up the Arab Studies Society in 1983 and established an important center for services in the Orient House, the Palestinian headquarters in East Jerusalem forcibly closed by Israel in 2001. Tafakji heads the Arab Studies Society’s Mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Department, which has relocated to Dahiet al-Bariid, just beside Israel’s wall, but with full access to Jerusalem.
Marian Houk is a journalist currently working in Jerusalem with experience at the United Nations and in the region. Her blog is www.un-truth.com.
Israel’s vicious counter-campaign against the UN fact-based report on its war on Gaza continues as the time approaches when further action will be considered, writes Amira Howeidy
On Monday, 1 February, the Israeli media reported that the commander of the Israeli army’s Gaza division, Brigadier General Eyal Eizenberg, and the commander of the Givati Brigade, Colonel Ilan Malka, were “disciplined” for authorising the shelling of a United Nations facility with white phosphorous during Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip that started in December 2008 and lasted for 22 days.
During that onslaught the Israeli military killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, and wounded or maimed approximately 5,000. Israel destroyed at least 2,000 buildings in addition to significant sectors of Gaza’s infrastructure. Besieged by the Israeli occupation since June 2007, the Strip’s 1.5 million population is denied construction material — in addition to adequate food, medical and energy supplies — and has not been able to repair the damage since.
Known as Operation Cast Lead, the Gaza assault was Israel’s seventh and latest war in the region. It stands out for its shocking brutality. The Israeli army’s liberal use of white phosphorous munitions in densely populated areas meant that hundreds of Palestinian civilians were subject to the lethal chemical that burns flesh to the bone once in contact with oxygen.
Doctors operating in Gaza at the time also pointed to mounting evidence that Israel used DIME, an experimental explosive biological weapon created by the US air force and that is packed with tungsten dust that forms a micro-shrapnel cloud upon detonation. Gaza hospitals spoke of the “clean tearing of limbs” that DIME can cause, according to the Christian Science Monitor on 14 January 2009. Unfortunately for Israel much of the gruesome scene was captured on camera, drawing international outrage.
A year later, Israel has decided that only two military officers should be “disciplined” for the offensive, which was described by a UN fact-finding mission last September as amounting to “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity”. In fact, had it not been for the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) that formed a team of pioneering legal figures to investigate war crimes in Gaza and Israel during the 22-day military operation, it is unlikely that Israel — an occupying power with a record of brutality and impunity — would have probed its own war.
Ever since the UNHRC passed in February 2009 a resolution to dispatch an independent mission to investigate the war, Israel has continued to attack the council. The UN Goldstone Mission, named after its head, South African judge Richard Goldstone, formed in April 2009 by the UN high commissioner for human rights, was lambasted by Israel as “political”, despite Goldstone being a former member of the South African Constitutional Court, a former chief prosecutor of the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and also Jewish and a self-proclaimed “Zionist”.
When it came to the work of investigation, the Goldstone Mission was repeatedly denied entry to Israel, the latter having declared officially that it would “not cooperate” with the fact-finding effort, forcing Goldstone to work via public hearings that included Israeli and Palestinian victims alike. The outcome was a damning report submitted to the UNHRC on 29 September 2009. Although it accused both Israel and the Islamic resistance movement Hamas of “possibly” committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, the report contained an analysis of 36 specific incidents in Gaza compared to only a few in the West Bank and in Israel. In other words, the 575- page long report was mainly and primarily about Israeli, not Palestinian war crimes.
Upon release, Israel immediately mounted a vigorous campaign to defame the report’s conclusions. But an emergency meeting by the UN General Assembly in November endorsed the report’s recommendations nonetheless. It recommended that if Israel and Hamas fail to investigate the alleged violations and undertake follow-up actions that meet international standards of objectivity within six months, then the Security Council should consider referring the whole issue of Israeli and Hamas violations to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
International human rights organisations such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch both issued reports on the Gaza war, equally condemning Israel and to a much lesser degree Hamas. Now that the Goldstone deadline is approaching, the Israeli government — which refused to recognise the Goldstone Report and described it as politically motivated — has sent a 46-page report to the UN secretary-general, submitted on 29 January, explaining the Israeli judicial system. The Israeli communiqué included information on an internal Israeli inquiry into some of the accusations in the Goldstone Report, and defended the Israeli army’s performance during the war.
Parallel to this, an active pro-Israel (Western) media campaign surfaced during the past week that accused Goldstone of anti- Semitism, bringing Holocaust Remembrance Day (27 January) into the affair. Reuters quoted Yuli Edelstein, a minister in the Israeli cabinet, as saying he was going to meet UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on the day of remembrance to suggest that the Goldstone Report had triggered recent attacks on Jews worldwide. Recent narratives alluding to the report, such as that of Israeli political commentator Alan Dershowitz in the popular US Huffington Post newszine, claimed that Israel went to “extreme lengths to avoid civilian causalities… in a manner that put Israeli soldiers at considerable risk.”
The Palestinian Authority submitted its response to the Goldstone Report on 29 January. According to the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, Hamas will submit its 52-page long response before the deadline for doing so of 5 February.
His political credibility wagered on the peace process, Palestinian President Abbas is not coping well with Israel’s perpetual intransigence, writes Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah
With the Obama administration effectively reneging on pledges to get Israel to freeze settlement expansion in the West Bank, or even abide by the outdated “roadmap” peace plan, Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas is finding himself in an increasingly unenviable position.
Abbas had been insisting all along that he wouldn’t agree to resume talks with Israel unless the latter agreed to halt settlement expansion in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem. However, in recent weeks, the Palestinian leader has been signalling that he may return to the negotiating table virtually without conditions.
In an interview that appeared on Sunday 31 January on The Guardian website, Abbas was quoted as saying that he would be prepared to resume face-to- face talks with Israel if the latter froze all settlement construction for three months and accepted the borders of 4 June 1967. “These are not preconditions; they are requirements in the roadmap. If they are not prepared to do that, it means they don’t want a political solution.”
The Israeli government rejected the Palestinian proposal, calling it “unrealistic” and “unacceptable”. Responding to the proposal, Mark Regev, advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, resorted to red herring tactics, arguing that the Palestinians were still short of their roadmap obligations. Regev cited the issue of “incitement”, as if Palestinians were expected to sing hymns of praise whenever Israel killed their brethren and demolished their homes.
Earlier, it was reported that Abbas was considering proposals presented by US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell for “proximity” or “indirect” talks. Mitchell proposed that he travel between Ramallah and occupied Jerusalem, relaying messages between the two sides on various core issues, including borders, East Jerusalem, settlements and the refugees. The proposal was part of a “package of inducements” that would also include the release of an unspecified number of non-Islamist prisoners from Israeli detention camps.
However, the reported package contained no undertaking to freeze settlement expansion or even halt the growing pace of Arab home demolitions in occupied Jerusalem and the so-called “Area C” of the West Bank where the Israeli occupation army maintains full security and civilian authority. This area, which covers the bulk of the Palestinian countryside, constitutes more than 65 per cent of the occupied territories.
PA spokesmen are denying that Abbas is retreating from his earlier stand with regards to settlements. Ghassan Al-Khatib, a former cabinet minister and now head of the PA Government Press Office, said he didn’t think Abbas was no longer demanding a settlement freeze. Al-Khatib told Al-Ahram Weekly that Abbas was consulting with Arab leaders on the expediency of resuming the peace process with Israel in a manner that would bring maximum benefit for the Palestinian cause.
Al-Khatib defended the idea of “proximity” talks whereby the Americans would shuttle between Israel and Arab capitals to relay respective positions to the sides. “This is not necessarily a bad idea. The Americans would be witnesses and Israel wouldn’t be able to fabricate lies as to who is to blame for the failure of talks, as was the case in past failed talks.”
Some voices at the Palestinian arena have lately accused Abbas of seeking Arab cover to resume the “futile” peace process without preconditions, with one Hamas official calling these efforts “a reproduction of past failures”. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has been consulting Arab leaders on the best way to resume stalled talks between Israel and the Palestinians. While these leaders have been urging Washington to actively intervene to bring about a speedy resumption of the peace process, the US has been pressing, even pressuring, Arab capitals to cajole the increasingly vulnerable PA leadership to drop settlement related demands ahead of reviving talks.
One of the Arab states most concerned about the continued paralysis of the peace process is Jordan. King Abdullah has been warning that time is running out for peace and that extraordinary efforts must be made now in order to resolve the Israeli- Palestinian impasse. Jordan is particularly worried that the continued stalemate in the West Bank could generate tension in Jordan itself, and might even precipitate attacks on Israeli and Western targets on Jordanian soil.
The fear is not unfounded. Last week, the motorcade of the Israeli ambassador to Jordan was attacked outside Amman with a roadside bomb. While causing no injuries or serious damage, the incident rang alarm bells in the corridors of Jordan’s intelligence services, which are likely to be more nervous regarding the ramifications of the situation in the West Bank on security and stability at home.
However, notwithstanding Jordanian concerns, it seems that the Obama administration is not in a position — or doesn’t want — to force the intransigent Israeli government to allow for the creation of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state on the West Bank. Abbas himself has echoed this view, saying that continued Israeli stonewalling would lead to the creation of a unitary state in all of Mandate Palestine (Israel proper plus the occupied territories of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem). In this case, the Palestinians would form a numerical majority, which implies that Israel would lose its Jewish identity.
But Israel, especially under the extreme rightwing Zionist leadership, is unlikely to allow such a scenario to evolve, even if Palestinians gave it their backing. In the meantime, there are growing fears that Israel might launch a fresh wave of aggression against Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, with or without the acquiescence of the Obama administration, in order to further enhance its hegemonic standing vis-à-vis the PA and Syria, and also as warning to Iran.
Israeli officials calculate that the neutralisation of Hamas would allow the PA leadership (Abbas) to give significant concessions to Israel with regards to final-status issues. Other Israeli policy planners, however, argue that destroying or even weakening Hamas — assuming this is possible — would lead to Israel losing a valuable propaganda card, and that might eventually lead to increasing international pressure on Israel to return to the 1967 borders. Israel has been seriously provoking Hamas, including via the assassination of a prominent Hamas operative in Dubai, as well as the attempted assassination of a Hamas official in Khan Younis on 1 February.
Tel Aviv’s recent rhetoric is further proof that Israel cannot exist outside the cycle of perpetual war, writes Ramzy Baroud*
The Israeli military may be much less effective in winning wars than it was in the past, thanks to the stiffness of Arab resistance, but its military strategists are as shrewd and unpredictable as ever. The recent rhetoric that escalated in Israel suggests that a future war in Lebanon will most likely target Syria as well. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that Israel intends on targeting either of these countries in the near future, it is certainly the type of language that often precedes Israeli military manoeuvres.
Deciphering the available clues regarding the nature of Israel’s immediate military objectives is not always easy, but it is possible. One indicator that could serve as a foundation for any serious prediction of Israel’s actions is Israel’s historical tendency to be in a perpetual state of war. Peace — real peace — has never been a long-term policy.
“Unlike many others, I consider that peace is not a goal in itself but only a means to guarantee our existence,” claimed Yossi Peled, a former army general and current cabinet minister in Binyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government. Israeli official policy — military or otherwise — is governed by the same Zionist diktats that long preceded the establishment of the state of Israel. If anything has changed since early Zionists outlined their vision, it was the interpretation of those directives. The substance has remained intact.
For example, Zionist visionary Vladimir Jabotinsky stated in 1923 that Zionist “colonisation can… continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population — an iron wall which the native population cannot break through.” He was not then referring to an actual wall. While his vision took on various manifestations throughout the years, in 2002 it was translated into a real wall aimed at prejudicing any just solution with the Palestinians. Now, most unfortunately, Egypt has also started building its own steel wall along its border with the war- devastated and impoverished Gaza Strip.
One thing we all know by now is that Israel is a highly militarised country. Its definition of “existence” can only be ensured by its uncontested military dominance on all fronts. Thus the devastating link between Palestine and Lebanon. This link makes any analysis of Israel’s military intents in Gaza that excludes Lebanon — and in fact, Syria — seriously lacking.
Consider, for example, the unprecedented Israeli crackdown on the second Palestinian Intifada that started in September 2000. How is that linked to Lebanon? Israel had been freshly defeated by the Lebanese resistance, led by Hizbullah, and was forced to end its occupation of most of South Lebanon in May 2000. Israel wanted to send an unmistakable message to Palestinians that this defeat was in fact not a defeat at all and that any attempt at duplicating the Lebanese resistance model in Palestine would be ruthlessly suppressed. Israel’s exaggeration in the use of its highly sophisticated military to stifle a largely popular revolution was extremely costly to Palestinians in terms of human toll.
Israel’s 34-day war on Lebanon in July 2006 was an Israeli attempt at destroying Arab resistance, and restoring its metaphorical iron wall. It backfired, resulting in a real — not figurative — Israeli defeat. Israel then did what it does best. It used its superior air force, destroyed much of Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, and killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The resistance, with humble means, killed more than 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers during combat.
Not only did Hizbullah penetrate the Israeli iron wall, it had also filled it with holes. It challenged, like never before, the Israeli army’s notion of invincibility and illusion of security. Something went horribly wrong in Lebanon. Since then the Israeli army, intelligence apparatus, propagandists and politicians have been in constant preparation for another showdown. But before such a pending battle, the nation needed to renew its faith in its army and government intelligence; thus the war in Gaza late December 2008.
As appalling as it was for Israeli families to gather en masse near the Israeli Gaza border, and watch giddily as Gaza and Gazans were blown to smithereens, the act was most rational. The victims of the war may have been Palestinians in Gaza, but the target audience was Israelis. The brutal and largely one-sided war united Israelis, including their self- proclaimed leftist parties, in one rare moment of solidarity. Here was proof that the Israeli army still had enough strength to report military achievements.
Of course, Israel’s military strategists knew well that their war crimes in Gaza were a clumsy attempt at regaining national confidence. The tightly lipped politicians and army generals wanted to give the impression that all was working according to plan. But the total media blackout and the orchestrated footage of Israeli soldiers flashing military signs and waving flags on their way back to Israel were clear indications of an attempt to improve a problematic image.
Thus Yossi Peled’s calculated comments on 23 January: “In my estimation, understanding and knowledge, it is almost clear to me that it is a matter of time before there is a military clash in the north.” Further, he claimed: “We are heading towards a new confrontation, but I don’t know when it will happen, just as we did not know when the second Lebanon war would erupt.”
Peled is of course right. There will be a new confrontation. New strategies will be employed. Israel will raise the stakes and will try to draw Syria in and push for a regional war. A Lebanon that defines itself based on the terms of resistance — following the failure to politically co-opt Hizbullah — is utterly unacceptable from the Israeli viewpoint. That said; Peled might be creating a measured distraction from efforts aimed at igniting yet another war — against the besieged resistance in Gaza, or something entirely different. (Hamas’s recent announcement that its senior military leader Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh was killed late January in Dubai at the hands of Israeli intelligence is also an indication that the efforts of Israel go much further than immediate boundaries).
Will it be Gaza or Lebanon first? Israel is sending mixed messages, and deliberately so. Hamas, Hizbullah and their supporters understand well the Israeli tactic and must be preparing for various possibilities. They know Israel cannot live without its iron walls, and are determined to prevent any more from being built at their expense.
Britain’s Jews faced surge of abuse after Israel’s invasion in January 2009
The number of anti-Semitic attacks in the UK reached record highs last year as anger over Israel’s assault on Gaza led to an explosion of race hatred targeted at Britain’s Jewish community.
The Community Security Trust (CST), a charity which monitors attacks against Jews, said 924 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded last year – a 69 per cent increase on 2008 and the highest number since the charity began keeping records of anti-Semitism in 1984.
The charity said Israel’s three-week invasion of Gaza in January last year led to an unprecedented outpouring of anger directed at Britain’s Jews, with more anti-Semitism recorded in the first six months of 2009 than in any entire previous year.
Civilians ‘put at greater risk to save military lives’ in winter attack – revelations that will pile pressure on Netanyahu to set up full inquiry
A high-ranking officer has acknowledged for the first time that the Israeli army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives in order to minimise military casualties during last year’s Gaza war, The Independent can reveal.
The officer, who served as a commander during Operation Cast Lead, made it clear that he did not regard the longstanding principle of military conduct known as “means and intentions” – whereby a targeted suspect must have a weapon and show signs of intending to use it before being fired upon – as being applicable before calling in fire from drones and helicopters in Gaza last winter. A more junior officer who served at a brigade headquarters during the operation described the new policy – devised in part to avoid the heavy military casualties of the 2006 Lebanon war – as one of “literally zero risk to the soldiers”.
The officers’ revelations will pile more pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to set up an independent inquiry into the war, as demanded in the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report, which harshly criticised the conduct of both Israel and Hamas. One of Israel’s most prominent human rights lawyers, Michael Sfard, said last night that the senior commander’s acknowledgement – if accurate – was “a smoking gun”.
Until now, the testimony has been kept out of the public domain. The senior commander told a journalist compiling a lengthy report for Yedhiot Ahronot, Israel’s biggest daily newspaper, about the rules of engagement in the three-week military offensive in Gaza. But although the article was completed and ready for publication five months ago, it has still not appeared. The senior commander told Yedhiot: “Means and intentions is a definition that suits an arrest operation in the Judaea and Samaria [West Bank] area… We need to be very careful because the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] was already burnt in the second Lebanon war from the wrong terminology. The concept of means and intentions is taken from different circumstances. Here [in Cast Lead] we were not talking about another regular counter-terrorist operation. There is a clear difference.”
His remarks reinforce testimonies from soldiers who served in the Gaza operation, made to the veterans’ group Breaking the Silence and reported exclusively by this newspaper last July. They also appear to cut across the military doctrine – enunciated most recently in public by one of the authors of the IDF’s own code of ethics – that it is the duty of soldiers to run risks to themselves in order to preserve civilian lives.
Explaining what he saw as the dilemma for forces operating in areas that were supposedly cleared of civilians, the senior commander said: “Whoever is left in the neighbourhood and wants to action an IED [improvised explosive device] against the soldiers doesn’t have to walk with a Kalashnikov or a weapon. A person like that can walk around like any other civilian; he sees the IDF forces, calls someone who would operate the terrible death explosive and five of our soldiers explode in the air. We could not wait until this IED is activated against us.”
Another soldier who worked in one of the brigade’s war-room headquarters told The Independent that conduct in Gaza – particularly by aerial forces and in areas where civilians had been urged to leave by leaflets – had “taken the targeted killing idea and turned it on its head”. Instead of using intelligence to identify a terrorist, he said, “here you do the opposite: first you take him down, then you look into it.”
The Yedhiot newspaper also spoke to a series of soldiers who had served in Operation Cast Lead in sensitive positions. While the soldiers rejected the main finding of the Goldstone Report – that the Israeli military had deliberately “targeted” the civilian population – most asserted that the rules were flexible enough to allow a policy under which, in the words of one soldier “any movement must entail gunfire. No one’s supposed to be there.” He added that at a meeting with his brigade commander and others it was made clear that “if you see any signs of movement at all you shoot. This is essentially the rules of engagement.”
The other soldier in the war-room explained: “This doesn’t mean that you need to disrespect the lives of Palestinians but our first priority is the lives of our soldiers. That’s not something you’re going to compromise on. In all my years in the military, I never heard that.”
He added that the majority of casualties were caused in his brigade area by aerial firing, including from unmanned drones. “Most of the guys taken down were taken down by order of headquarters. The number of enemy killed by HQ-operated remote … compared to enemy killed by soldiers on the ground had absolutely inverted,” he said.
Rules of engagement issued to soldiers serving in the West Bank as recently as July 2006 make it clear that shooting towards even an armed person will take place only if there is intelligence that he intends to act against Israeli forces or if he poses an immediate threat to soldiers or others.
In a recent article in New Republic, Moshe Halbertal, a philosophy professor at Hebrew and New York Universities, who was involved in drawing up the IDF’s ethical code in 2000 and who is critical of the Goldstone Report, said that efforts to spare civilian life “must include the expectation that soldiers assume some risk to their own lives in order to avoid causing the deaths of civilians”. While the choices for commanders were often extremely difficult and while he did not think the expectation was demanded by international law, “it is demanded in Israel’s military code and this has always been its tradition”.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the latest revelations, and directed all enquiries to already-published material, including a July 2009 foreign ministry document The Operation in Gaza: Factual and Legal Aspects.
That document, which repeats that Israel acted in conformity with international law despite the “acute dilemmas” posed by Hamas’s operations within civilian areas, sets out the principles of Operation Cast Lead as follows: “Only military targets shall be attacked; Any attack against civilian objectives shall be prohibited. A ‘civilian objective’ is any objective which is not a military target.” It adds: “In case of doubt, the forces are obliged to regard an object as civilian.”
Yedhiot has not commented on why its article has not been published.
Israel in Gaza: The soldier’s tale
This experienced soldier, who cannot be named, served in the war room of a brigade during Operation Cast Lead. Here, he recalls an incident he witnessed during last winter’s three-week offensive:
“Two [Palestinian] guys are walking down the street. They pass a mosque and you see a gathering of women and children.
“You saw them exiting the house and [they] are not walking together but one behind the other. So you begin to fantasise they are actually ducking close to the wall.
“One [man] began to run at some point, must have heard the chopper. The GSS [secret service] argued that the mere fact that he heard it implicated him, because a normal civilian would not have realised that he was now being hunted.
“Finally he was shot. He was not shot next to the mosque. It’s obvious that shots are not taken at a gathering.”
Israel claimed it did not bomb flour mill, but 500lb explosives find proves otherwise
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Doubts have been cast on the Israeli rebuttal of the Goldstone Report, after it emerged last night that a bomb was defused last year at a Gaza flour mill that Israel had officially said did not come under air attack in the war.
The presence of a large part of the fractured Mark 82 bomb was reported to a demining team in late January 2009, and technicians were dispatched to defuse the 500lb device on 11 February.
The flour mill is the only one in Gaza, and the Goldstone Report, commissioned by the United Nations, said its destruction “was carried out for the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population”.
The discrepancy came to light on a day in which domestic and international debate over the Goldstone Report and Israel’s response was fuelled by a reprimand issued to two high-ranking officers.
Israel said a brigadier-general and a colonel had “exceeded their authority in a manner that jeopardised the lives of others” by authorising the firing of artillery shells into the area of the main UN compound in Gaza. The Israeli military denied a Haaretz report that the two had been reprimanded over the use of white phosphorus.
UN officials had described how the attack – which destroyed the UN warehouse – scattered burning white phosphorus through the compound.
The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to decide whether to order an independent investigation into the Gaza offensive or face the possible fresh moves, threatened in the Goldstone Report, for an external war crimes inquiry to be launched.
The case of the El Badr flour mill in northern Gaza was examined in detail in the 575-page report by the Jewish South African judge, Richard Goldstone. It said the mill had come under air as well as ground attack during Operation Cast Lead, which lasted for three weeks last winter.
The official update of Israel’s own investigations – sent to the UN on Friday – says that inquiries by the military’s Advocate General had found that the mill did come under ground attack, but that he “did not find any evidence to support the assertion that the mill was attacked from the air using precise munitions”.
It said that the military’s Advocate General had “determined that the allegation was not supported in the [Goldstone] report itself, nor in the testimony to the Fact-Finding Mission by [the joint owner] Rashad Hamada, who had left the area prior to the incident in response to the IDF’s early warnings.”
But an international mines action team went to the flour mill on 11 February 2009 to take the fuse out of the unexploded front half of the bomb – the sort commonly carried by Israeli Air Force F16 aircraft – both a UN technical source and Mahmoud Hamada, brother of Rashad, confirmed to The Independent last night.
The Israeli report to the UN says that from the beginning of the Gaza operation the immediate area of the flour mill was used as a defensive zone because of its “proximity to Hamas’s stronghold in the Shati refugee camp”. It said that Hamas had fortified the area with tunnels, booby-trapped houses, and had deployed its forces to attack troops operating there. One IDF squad had been ambushed by five Hamas operatives in a booby-trapped house.
But while saying that the mill had come under fire during the engagements, Israel rejected the suggestion in the Goldstone Report that it had come under deliberate attack, and said that photographic evidence of the building was not consistent with an air attack.
Mahmoud Hamada said last night that the 110cm-long front of the bomb had mercifully not exploded but had destroyed a 4-tonne milling machine. He did not know what had happened to the other half but thought it might have exploded in the air.
Deadly and cheap: The Mark 82 bomb
Developed in the 1950s, the Mark 82 is aerodynamic, deadly and cheap. One of the most common bombs dropped in the world – Israel’s air force drops them from F-16 jets – and costing less than $300 (£190) to produce, each general-purpose 500lb bomb has a blast radius of about 40ft. In the Gaza conflict, Israel is said to have used a fin-guided version with parts made by US arms manufacturer Raytheon.
The following piece is by a serious political analyst, yet he does not shirk from repeating idiotic soundbites: “Israeli believe in peace”, that he obviously does not himself believe in… While he sees clearly the problem with attitudes of the leadership, his own chip blinds him:
Israelis believe in peace, yet the Palestinian issue is met with apathy – except by our leaders, who see it just as a PR problem
Israel’s image problem abroad is down to one issue: the stark and growing difference between how Israelis view their country, and how it is seen from outside. This explains the anger and insult that Israelis feel when they watch themselves on the BBC or CNN. It can’t possibly be us, they protest, the networks must be biased and pro-Arab.
From the outside, Israel is defined by its everlasting conflict with its Arab neighbours, the Palestinians in particular. The vast majority of international news stories reflect this perception, depicting Israel as one-half of either war or peace talks. Occupation stories like Gaza under siege, new construction in West Bank settlements, or demolition of Palestinians’ homes in East Jerusalem, are prime-time stuff.
Israel per se attracts little interest abroad, with its relatively small population of seven million. Think Denmark or Paraguay. Who bothers to cover its internal politics? Who would recognise its leaders’ names and faces? Thanks to the Middle East conflict, Israeli leaders have always been internationally recognised figures, and our political system is closely watched.
Israelis define their country as a western democracy with an advanced high-tech economy, a bastion of innovation, modernity, and technological development in a backwards region. We see the conflict as a fact of life, like the weather to Englishmen. Most people are more excited about money, sex, real estate, and travel abroad. The media makes comparisons with America, Britain, or the OECD average, and not with our immediate neighbours Egypt, Jordan, Syria, or the Palestinian Authority.
It wasn’t always like that. When I was a little kid, the conflict was all around. Children’s books described brave, good-looking Israeli heroes defeating ugly, ridiculous Arab villains. On Lag Ba’omer, a holiday celebrated with bonfires, we used to burn effigies of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s then-leader and our arch-enemy. Yasser Arafat’s figure followed. Today, few kids would bother to express similar public hatred towards Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, or the Hezbollah leader, Hasan Nasrallah.
The separation policy of the former prime minister, Ariel Sharon, who strove to isolate Israelis from the conflict through the Gaza pullout and the construction of the West Bank security barrier, paid off handsomely. The vast majority of Israelis, who live in and around Tel Aviv, don’t interact with Palestinians, or even with Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Only a small number of conscripts and reservists, deployed across the barrier as part of their military service, would go there.
To most Israelis, New York, London and even Thailand are closer to home than Palestinians towns like Nablus or Ramallah and their adjacent settlements, a mere 40-minute drive from downtown Tel Aviv. Occupation stories are barely reported in the Israeli media, which prefers to praise Israeli scientific, business, and cultural achievements or to chew on the latest political scandal.
The “demographic problem” – namely, the Palestinian threat to demand “one man, one vote” and overwhelm Israel with an Arab majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean – is widely discussed in op-ed articles, but fails to scare Israelis. After all, how can you be defeated by invisible people?
On Tuesday, defence minister Ehud Barak gave a dire public warning: “As long as in this territory west of the Jordan River there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic,” he said. “If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.” Clear as they were, his words failed to stir public debate.
First-time foreign visitors are often struck. They have heard of “Israeli apartheid” and expect to see separate toilets and buses for Jews and Palestinians. Instead, when exposed to Tel Aviv’s beaches and lively night spots, they are shocked. “I thought it would be far more religious and conservative” is a common visitor’s perception. And they never see any Palestinians around, unless they bother to drive up the hills to find them.
The government’s PR machine tries to build on this sentiment, leading an effort to “rebrand” Israel away from the image of an unpleasant fortress. Bikini-clad models and high-tech entrepreneurs demonstrate the new, post-conflict, western-lookalike Israeli society. The underlying message to North American and European audiences is “We are just like you”. The Palestinians have no Bar Refaeli or Shai Agassi (the electric car innovator), both of whom spend most of their time outside Israel.
A similar process happened in India. While Indians are still preoccupied with Pakistan, and despite the ongoing fighting in Kashmir and in India’s cities, they define their country outside the sub-continental conflict. India today is an economic powerhouse and aspiring global power, not only a belligerent in an endless postcolonial conflict. If they can do it, why couldn’t we?
In Israel, the appearance of calm – especially in the past year, which has been the quietest security-wise in a decade – has important political ramifications. Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, with its ensuing allegations of Israeli war crimes, is seen here as a PR problem rather than as a moral or legal issue. The settlement debate is seen through the prism of Israeli-American relations, which most Israelis cherish.
As a result, most Israelis are indifferent to the establishment of a Palestinian state. For several years, a stable two-thirds majority of Israelis have supported the idea in opinion surveys – while a similar majority doubted its possibility. They simply don’t care, since they fail to see how an independent Palestine would make any change in Israelis’ lives. At best, it might reduce some of the international criticism of Israel; and even that is doubtful. Israelis believe that security will be achieved by force, rather than diplomacy.
This attitude explains why the American effort to resume Israeli-Palestinian talks, despite ostensible majority support, fails to interest Israelis. It also explains why from the outside, Israel appears to be divorced from the reality of its occupation, and apathetic to peace.
The following statement was issued on 1 February 2010:
The Board of Directors of Rights & Democracy, a not-for-profit organization created by Canada’s parliament in 1988 to encourage and support human rights around the world, recently voted, with substantial objection, to repudiate grants given to Al-Haq and Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights, two well-known Palestinian human rights organizations located respectively in the West Bank and in Gaza.
The Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Rights & Democracy, Mr. Aurel Braun, was quoted (in The Globe & Mail) as criticizing both organizations for being two “of the most vitriolic anti-Israeli organizations” and for “their accusations against Israel’s human rights violations.” Further, the article reports that Braun had said that “there is no way to ensure that some of the money given to groups in Gaza does not go to the banned terrorist organization Hamas.” He also led a personal attack against Al-Haq’s general director — the well-known human rights defender Mr. Shawan Jabarin — for allegedly being an activist in a PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] faction (ibid). These remarks made by the chairperson of Rights and Democracy are extremely grave as they seem to support the Israeli government’s policy of silencing human rights defenders.
In recent years, Israel’s attempts to silence any voice of opposition regarding its human rights violations have reached alarming levels. In addition to arrests of activists and the closing down of organizations, Israel has also denied many human rights defenders the possibility of effectively advocating for human rights by the imposition of travel bans. A new tactic used by Israel, supported by right-wing groups, is to go after the funders of human rights organizations. In this context, it came as a shock to us — Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organizations — that instead of advocating for and defending human rights defenders, who work to counter Israeli violations of human rights and ensure respect for international human rights and humanitarian law, the board of Rights & Democracy has instead chosen to join the side of the violator.
The undersigned organizations contend that labeling esteemed human rights organizations such as Al-Haq and Al-Mezan as “questionable” under the aforementioned circumstances is to take sides with the violator. It seems that the board’s decision to repudiate grants to Al-Haq and Al-Mezan might well be because they have been doing their job too well, in particular their investigations of Israel’s human rights violations during last winter’s attack on Gaza. Or perhaps, it could be due to Al-Haq’s exposure of and litigation against the involvement of Canadian businesses in such human rights violations in the West Bank. Maybe it was this unexpected and apparently unwelcomed exposure that prompted Right and Democracy’s recent misguided conduct.
The contention that Al-Haq and Al-Mezan are some “of the most vitriolic anti-Israeli organizations,” because they “accuse” Israel of human rights violations on their websites is a distorted and misleading representation of the facts. Al-Mezan and Al-Haq carry out professional documentation of the human rights violations committed by all of the involved actors in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). Their documentation has been deemed reliable and precise by international bodies that apply the strictest relevant standards. Without this proper documentation by them and other human rights nongovernmental organizations, defending human rights is a mission impossible.
The two organizations receive support from a wide array of donors including governments and nongovernmental contributors who are satisfied with their work and their management due to the transparency that each organization exhibits.
The public smear campaign initiated by the Board of Directors of Rights & Democracy is intended to stop nongovernmental organizations from doing their vital work of human rights monitoring and reporting. It is equal to a call to cease altogether any meaningful promotion of respect and protection of human rights in the OPT, in clear contradiction to Canada’s declared interest in furtherance of universal values of human rights and the promotion of democracy.
In November 2009, the UN General Assembly reiterated its commitment to defend human rights defenders recognizing “the substantial role that human rights defenders can play in supporting efforts to strengthen peace and development, through dialogue, openness, participation and justice, including by monitoring, reporting on and contributing to the promotion and protection of human rights.”
Israel, recognizing that same strong role, carries out deliberate policies and practices that directly or indirectly seek to suppress, obstruct and delegitimize human rights organizations in Israel and the OPT. We denounce these policies and practices, and call on fellow human rights defenders around the world to also denounce them. We also denounce Israeli travel bans on human rights activists operating in the OPT and Israel, and especially the blanket travel ban on Gaza human rights defenders. While Israel is violating their rights, Rights and Democracy Board is trying to delegitimize them, using the same rhetoric.
We demand that we be allowed to meet, to advocate, and to struggle for what we all hold dear: human rights and social justice.
Signatories:
Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Right in Israel
Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association – Ramallah
Al Dameer Association for Human Rights – Gaza
AL-JANA – The Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts – Beirut, Lebanon
Al-Quds Human Rights Clinic
American Jews for A Just Peace
Arab Association for Human Rights – HRA
Architects & Planners for Justice in Palestine
The Association Swiss-Palestine ASP
Association for the Support of Needy, Palestinian Children – Switzerland
Association France-Palestine Solidarite (AFPS)
BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights
Boston Coalition For Palestinians Rights (BCPR)
Coalition of Women for Peace (Israel)
Defence for Children International – Palestine Section
Ensan Center for Democracy & Human Rights
Flemish Palestine Solidarity Committee
Gaza Community Mental Health Programme
Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement
Group for Justice and Peace in Palestine (JPP) – Switzerland
Habitat International Coalition – Housing and Land Rights Network
The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN)
International Committee of the National Lawyers Guild, USA
Institute for Policy Studies – Washington DC USA
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) – France
The Israeli Association for the Palestinian Prisoners
Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC)
Jewish Voice for Peace, USA
Labor for Palestine
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate
Medico International
Medico Swiss
Mopat – Movement Palestine for All – Brazil
The Netherlands Palestine Committee
New York City Labor against the War
Olive Oil Campaign Switzerland
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) – UK
Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between People
Palestine Think Tank
STW (Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign)
Palestinian Workers Union – Greece
The Peace People in Belfast
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel
Public Committee against Torture in Israel (PCATI)
Right to Education Campaign – Birzeit
Tlaxcala Translations Collective
US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC)
Women in Black Union Square in New York City
Women in Black (Vienna)
Women in Black, Maastricht, Netherlands
Adri Nieuwhof, 3 February 2010
Mohammad Zeidan (Arab Association for Human Rights) The Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA), based in Nazareth, is one of the first human rights organizations in Israel. HRA was founded during the first Palestinian intifada by lawyers and community activists to monitor human rights violations. HRA is a member of Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community Based Associations, and is involved in human rights education, research and international advocacy. The Electronic Intifada contributor Adri Nieuwhof recently interviewed Mohammad Zeidan, the general director of HRA.
Adri Nieuwhof: Can you discuss HRA’s work and what drives you?
Mohammad Zeidan: HRA is active in three fields: human rights education linked to community outreach; research and reporting on violations of human rights of Palestinians living in Israel; and international advocacy to bring the needs of our community to international attention. Without international attention Israel will not change its policies toward its Palestinian minority. I am driven by the feeling that there is a need for community action against racial discrimination in all aspects of Palestinian life in Israel. With human rights education we help our communities to know their rights and the protection of their rights.
AN: What are the major challenges concerning the rights of Palestinians in Israel ?
MZ: For the Palestinian minority, [chief concerns include] the rise of the culture of racism among the majority of Israeli society, the public support for racist ideas — for instance the transfer of the Palestinian population from Israel. [Also of concern are] proposals for new laws that restrict basic minority rights, like organizing politically and the use of our land. And it is a challenge, how can we link our issues to the broader problems of Palestinians fighting the occupation [in the West Bank and Gaza Strip]. I think in our community we are faced with the challenge to mobilize the young generation for political action. They are the future leaders. It is important they become aware of their identity, linked with the Palestinian Arab international community.
AN: Do you think the situation of Palestinians in Israel has improved over the past ten years?
MZ: There is no sign of improvement. All the change is backwards. The situation is deteriorating. We are winning small victories, but the challenges are becoming bigger. [Israeli] racism is growing. Since 1977 you can see Israeli support for the right wing is growing. Take for example the support for [Avigdor] Lieberman. The left wing is disappearing.
AN: Does HRA have allies in Israel and abroad?
MZ: The Palestinian minority in Israel is our ally. And we have allies among [Jewish] Israelis, people who are concerned about human rights issues. We challenge the Jewish character of the State of Israel, and this makes it hard for Israelis to support our work. They can support specific action. Internationally we have much better allies. We saw a rise in support abroad, especially after the war in Gaza, even in the United States. The international support is not reflected as the political level. There is a gap between the popular support and the government.
AN: Palestinian human rights defenders in the occupied West Bank are confronted with a wave of repression. How is the situation in Israel?
MZ: There is also oppression in Israel. Nongovernmental organizations have been shut down by administrative order, but not at the scale as in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Israel is not interested to put [itself] on the agenda [by bringing attention to human rights violations within its borders]. They don’t want to open another front. Getting international support gives us a kind of protection. It makes it harder for Israel to deal with us the way they deal with Palestinians in the OPT.
AN: Have the closure of Gaza and Israel’s attack on the territory last winter had an impact on the Palestinian community in Israel?
MZ: In principle the Palestinians in Israel, like most Palestinians, reacted to Gaza. The biggest demonstration in Israel ever was organized in Sakhnin in the Galilee [region in northern Israel] in December 2008. Over 100,000 people participated in a demonstration against the military attacks on Gaza. It was the first time we came out in such big numbers. In general the war made the issue of the oppression much stronger. This is strengthening our identity. We feel more and more that we are part of the Palestinian people, a process that already began before the war.
AN: What is your advice to Palestine solidarity activists and citizens abroad?
MZ: I would say that for Palestinian activists the main issue is the unity of all the Palestinians. We should work together, and mobilize all powers. And we have to rethink our strategy. Sixty years of promoting the two-state solution did not get us anywhere. The facts on the ground have made this impossible. We need a new, united strategy as one people, that takes all of us into consideration — regardless of our political affiliation or geographic distribution.
On the role of Europe and the international community I would like to say that the public support needs to be translated to political action. This is not happening right now. On the contrary, Israel is receiving more support from the European Union (EU) with talks about the upgrading of the relationship between the EU and Israel, and with Europe’s refusal to hold Israel to account by withholding support to the Goldstone report. It has an impact on the credibility of the EU and its member states as democratic states.
The Cambridge University Israel Society have cancelled a talk by former Cambridge student Benny Morris after pressure from students.
The political historian, who was due to speak at Catz, has been accused in the press of ‘Islamophobia’. The decision to cancel the talk was made by Israel Society after a letter was sent to CUSU signed by over a dozen University employees and students, including committee members of the CU Islamic Society, and English Faculty staff. The letter called on CUSU to “reassure the university’s Muslim students” by condemning the talk, asking “What would happen if a registered CU society invited someone to speak who was on record speaking like this about the ‘Jewish mentality’, or who described British descendents of Caribbean immigrants as a ‘dangerous threat’ that has ‘penetrated’ the West?”
King’s student, Jamie Stern-Weiner led a campaign on Facebook to have the talk cancelled. The group, which today had 40 members, described the invitation extended to Morris as “offensive and appalling” and questioned why “an official student society would want to invite such an individual”.
Stern-Weiner said “This is not a political issue, it’s about making a clear stand against hateful opinions and the impact they have on the atmosphere on campus.” Such “hateful opinions” include Morris’s belief that ethnic cleansing can be justified when dealing with Muslims and Palestinians.
In an interview in 2004 he said that Palestinians should be “contained so that they will not succeed in murdering us. Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another.” Other controversial remarks include the following, printed in his book One State, Two States:
“Arabs, to put it simply, proportionally commit far more crimes… [and] lethal traffic violations than do Jews. In large measure, this is a function of different value systems (such as the respect accorded to human life and the rule of law)”.
The Israel society posted an update on their website following the cancellation, stating “We want to clarify that the intention of the Society was never to give racism a platform”. They also apologised for any “unintended” offence caused to university members and antiracism campaigners.
Excellent article by Avi Shlaim about the famous war criminal, Tony Blair, who protects the other war criminals in Israel:
It’s more than a year since Israel launched its immoral attack on Gaza and Palestinians are still living on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. So what has Tony Blair done to further peace in the region? Virtually nothing, argues the historian Avi Shlaim
Tony Blair in June 2009 speaking at a press conference in Gaza calling for a quick reconstruction. Photograph: Hatem Moussa/AP
The savage attack Israel unleashed against Gaza on 27 December 2008 was both immoral and unjustified. Immoral in the use of force against civilians for political purposes. Unjustified because Israel had a political alternative to the use of force. The home-made Qassam rockets fired by Hamas militants from Gaza on Israeli towns were only the excuse, not the reason for Operation Cast Lead. In June 2008, Egypt had brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement. Contrary to Israeli propaganda, this was a success: the average number of rockets fired monthly from Gaza dropped from 179 to three. Yet on 4 November Israel violated the ceasefire by launching a raid into Gaza, killing six Hamas fighters. When Hamas retaliated, Israel seized the renewed rocket attacks as the excuse for launching its insane offensive. If all Israel wanted was to protect its citizens from Qassam rockets, it only needed to observe the ceasefire.
While the war failed in its primary aim of regime change in Gaza, it left behind a trail of death, devastation, destruction and indescribable human suffering. Israel lost 13 people, three in so-called friendly fire. The Palestinian death toll was 1,387, including 773 civilians (115 women and 300 children), and more than 5,300 people were injured. The entire population of 1.5 million was left traumatised. Across the Gaza Strip, 3,530 homes were completely destroyed, 2,850 severely damaged and 11,000 suffered structural damage.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, tending to the needs of four million Palestinian refugees, stated that Gaza had been “bombed back, not to the Stone Age, but to the mud age”; its inhabitants reduced to building homes from mud after the fierce 22-day offensive.
War crimes were committed and possibly even crimes against humanity, documented in horrific detail in Judge Richard Goldstone’s report for the UN human rights council. The report condemned both Israel and Hamas, but reserved its strongest criticism for Israel, accusing it of deliberately targeting and terrorising civilians in Gaza. The British government did not take part in the vote on the report, sending a signal to the hawks in Israel that they can continue to disregard the laws of war. Gordon Brown’s 2007 appointment as a patron of the Jewish National Fund UK presumably played a part in the adoption of this pusillanimous position.
One year on, the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated areas on earth, continues to teeter on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza, in force since June 2007, restricts the flow not only of arms but also food, fuel and medical supplies to well below the minimum necessary for normal, everyday life. Reconstruction work has hardly begun because of the Israeli ban on bringing in cement and other building materials to Gaza. Thousands of families still live in the ruins of their former homes. Hospitals, health facilities, schools, government buildings and mosques cannot be rebuilt. Nor can the basic infrastructure of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City’s sewage disposal plant. Today, 80% of Gaza’s population remain dependent on food aid, 43% are unemployed, and 70% live on less than $1 a day.
Meanwhile, the so-called peace process cannot be revived because Israel refuses to freeze settlement expansion on the West Bank. Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently agreed to a temporary freeze of 10 months, but this does not apply to the 3,000 pre-approved housing units to be built on the West Bank or to any part of Greater Jerusalem. It’s like two men negotiating the division of a pizza while one continues to gobble it up.
Politically, the disjunction between words and deeds persists. Appeals to the Israeli government to lift or relax the blockade of Gaza were not backed up by effective pressure or the threat of sanctions. In fact, the only effective pressure was applied by the US on the Egyptian government – to seal its border with Gaza. Egypt has its own reason for complying: Hamas is ideologically allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic opposition to the Egyptian regime. The tunnels under the border separating Egypt from the Gaza Strip bring food and material relief to the people under siege. Yet, under US supervision and with the help of US army engineers, Egypt is building an 18-metre-deep underground steel wall to disrupt the tunnels and tighten the blockade.
The wall of shame, as Egyptians call it, will complete the transformation of Gaza into an open-air prison. It is the cruellest example of the concerted Israeli-Egyptian-US policy to isolate and prevent Hamas from leading the Palestinian struggle for self-determi nation. Hamas is habitually dismissed by its enemies as a purely terrorist organisation. Yet no one can deny that it won a fair and free election in the West Bank as well as Gaza in January 2006. Moreover, once Hamas gained power through the ballot box, its leaders adopted a more pragmatic stand towards Israel than that enshrined in its charter, repeatedly expressing its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire. But there was no one to talk to on the Israeli side.
Israel adamantly refused to recognise the Hamas-led government. The US and the European Union followed, resorting to economic sanctions in a vain attempt to turn the people against their elected leaders. This cannot possibly bring security or stability because it is based on the denial of the most elementary human rights of the people of Gaza and the collective political rights of the Palestinian people. Through its special relationship with the US and its staunch support for Israel, the British government is implicated in this shameful policy.
At present the British public is preoccupied with Tony Blair and the war in Iraq. What is often overlooked is that this was only one aspect of a disastrous British policy towards the Middle East, inaugurated by Blair, and which shows no sign of changing under his successor.
One of Blair’s arguments used to justify the Iraq war was that it would help bring justice to the long-suffering Palestinians. In his House of Commons speech on 18 March 2003, he promised that action against Iraq would form part of a broader engagement with the problems of the Middle East. He even declared that resolving the Israeli- Palestinian dispute was as important to Middle East peace as removing Saddam Hussein from power.
Yet by focusing international attention on Iraq, the war further marginalised the Palestinian question. To be fair, Blair persuaded the Quartet (a group consisting of the US, the UN, the EU and Russia) to issue the Roadmap in 2003, which called for the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2005. But President George Bush was not genuinely committed and only adopted it under pressure from his allies. Ariel Sharon, Israel’s hard-line prime minister at the time, wrecked the plan by continuing to expand Israeli settlements on the West Bank. Could Blair really not have realised that for Bush the special relationship that counted was the one with Israel? Every time Bush had to choose between Blair and Sharon, he chose Sharon.
Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in August 2005 was not a contribution to the Roadmap but an attempt to unilaterally redraw the borders of Greater Israel and part of a plan to entrench the occupation there. Yet in return for the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, Sharon extracted from the US a written agreement to Israel’s retention of the major settlement blocs on the West Bank. Bush’s support amounted to an abrupt reversal of US policy since 1967, which regarded the settlements as illegal and as an obstacle to peace. Blair publicly endorsed the pact, probably to preserve a united Anglo-American front at any price. It was the most egregious British betrayal of the Palestinians since the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
In July 2006, at the height of the savage Israeli onslaught on Lebanon, Blair opposed a security council resolution for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire: he wanted to give Israel an opportunity to destroy Hezbollah, the radical Shi’ite religious-political movement. One year later, in June 2007, he resigned from office. That day he was appointed the Quartet’s special envoy to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. His main sponsor was Bush and his blatant partisanship on behalf of Israel was probably considered a qualification. His appointment coincided with the collapse of the Palestinian national unity government, the reassertion of Fatah rule in the West Bank and the violent seizure of power by Hamas in Gaza.
Blair’s main tasks were to mobilise international assistance for the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, to promote good governance and the rule of law in the Palestinian territories, and to further Palestinian economic development. His broader mission, was “to promote an end to the conflict in conformity with the Roadmap”.
On taking up his appointment, Blair said that: “The absolute priority is to try to give effect to what is now the consensus across the international community – that the only way of bringing stability and peace to the Middle East is a two-state solution.” His appointment was received with great satisfaction by the Israelis and with utter dismay by the Arabs.
In his two and a half years as special envoy, Blair has achieved remarkably little. True, Blair helped persuade the Israelis to reduce the number of West Bank checkpoints from 630 to 590; he helped to create employment oppor tunities; and he may have contributed to a slight improvement in living standards in Palestine. But the Americans remained fixated on security rather than on economic development, and their policy remains skewed in favour of Israel. Barack Obama made a promising start as president by insisting on a complete settlement freeze on the West Bank, but was compelled to back down, dashing many of our high hopes.
One reason for Blair’s disappointing results is that he wears too many hats and cannot, as he promised, be “someone who is on the ground spending 24/7 on the issue”. Another reason is his “West Bank first” attitude – continuing the western policy of bolstering Fatah and propping up the ailing Palestinian Authority against Hamas. His lack of commitment to Gaza is all too evident. During the Gaza war, he did not call for a ceasefire. He has one standard for Israel and one for its victims. His attitude to Gaza is to wait for change rather than risk incurring the displeasure of his American and Israeli friends. As envoy, Blair has been inside Gaza only twice; once to visit a UN school just beyond the border and once to Gaza City. His project for sanitation in northern Gaza was never completed because he could not persuade the Israelis to allow in the last small load of pipes needed. A growing group of western politicians has publicly acknowledged the necessity of talking to Hamas if meaningful progress is to be achieved; Blair is not one of their number.
Blair has totally failed to fulfil the official role of the envoy “to promote an end to the conflict in conformity with the Roadmap”, largely for reasons beyond his control. The most important of these is Israel’s determination to perpetuate the isolation and the de-development of Gaza and deny the Palestinian people a small piece of land – 22% of Mandate-era Palestine, to be precise – on which to live in freedom and dignity. It is a policy that Baruch Kimmerling, the late Israeli sociologist, named ”politicide” – the denial to the Palestinian people of any independent political existence in Palestine.
Partly, however, Blair’s failure is due to his own personal limitations; his inability to grasp that the fundamental issue in this tragic conflict is not Israeli security but Palestinian national rights, and that concerted and sustained international pressure is required to compel Israel to recognise these rights. The core issue cannot be avoided: there can be no settlement of the conflict without an end to the Israeli occupation. There is international consensus for a two-state solution, but Israel rejects it and Blair has been unable or unwilling to use the Quartet to enforce it.
Blair’s failure to stand up for Palestinian independence is precisely what endears him to the Israeli establishment. In February of last year, while the Palestinians in Gaza were still mourning their dead, Blair received the Dan David prize from Tel Aviv University as the “laureate for the present time dimension in the field of leadership”. The citation praised him for his “exceptional intelligence and foresight, and demonstrated moral courage and leadership”. The prize is worth $1m. I may be cynical, but I cannot help viewing this prize as absurd, given Blair’s silent complicity in Israel’s continuing crimes against the Palestinian people.
Avi Shlaim is professor of international relations at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and the author of Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (Verso, 2009). His fee for this article has been donated to Medical Aid for Palestine
It is six in the morning at the main port in Gaza City and the sun’s not yet up. From the town itself the call to prayer rings out over the water. A pink sky slowly creeps out over the minarets and tower blocks.
It’s early but for the fishermen of Gaza City it’s all hands on deck. The first boats are just coming in.
Fishermen like Hamid Saleh cannot fish more than three miles from shore
Weather-worn workers unload crates of shrimps, crabs and sardines on to waiting donkeys and carts.
The trouble is, the catch is not what it used to be.
There’s virtually nothing weighing more than a kilo and lots of the fish are much smaller than that.
“Since the Israelis stopped us fishing more than three miles out, fishing has been very hard,” says Hamid Saleh, whose family has fished here for four generations.
“Fishing now is very weak. But what else can I do? It’s all I know. There’s nothing else to do here.”
In 2000 Israel introduced restrictions on the areas Palestinians could fish in.
Up until then the fishermen of Gaza used to go out into deeper waters up to 20 miles (32km) from the shore.
For the past 10 years they’ve been able to fish only a narrow stretch of water up to three miles (4.8km) out or risk being fired on by the Israeli navy boats that patrol the coast.
Israel says the restrictions are necessary to stop weapons being smuggled into Gaza.
Thousands of rockets have been fired by Palestinian militants from Gaza into Israel over the past decade.
For the fishermen of Gaza though, the restrictions have meant the limited area they can fish in is virtually fished out.
“There used to be 6,000 fishermen in Gaza catching 3,000 tonnes of fish a year. Much of it was exported to Israel. Now there are just a couple of hundred fishermen left,” says local economist Omar Shaban, director of the Gaza-based Palestinian think tank PAL-Think.
Mr Shaban says the fishing industry has been hit hard by the Israeli economic blockade that started in 2007 because Palestinians can no longer export fish out of Gaza.
It has also made it hard to import fish to make up for the lack of stocks in the sea.
Israel says the blockade is necessary to put pressure on the Islamist group Hamas, which controls Gaza.
Partial solution
Far fewer fish are now imported from Israel and many fish are having to be smuggled in through the tunnels from Egypt.
For many Gazans, with their long history of fishing, the idea of bringing fish to Gaza is a little akin to taking tea to China.
Now though, there could be at least a partial solution – fish farms.
Gazans have tried farming fish before, but many farms were destroyed during last year’s major offensive by Israel.
Through necessity they are beginning to thrive again.
“There are no fish in the sea,” says Suhail Khail, who has a small fish farm just south of Gaza City.
“I asked myself how can we solve this problem and the only answer was fish farms.”
Mr Khail is standing next to two huge tanks which each contain 10,000 fish.
He pulls out a net and plunges it into the water scooping out three or four small orange fish.
“These are red tilapia,” he beams. “They need a couple more months and then they will be ready to sell.”
Each month Mr Khail says he produces and sells around 500kg of farmed fish.
Changing tastes?
“I expect the fish farming sector to grow,” says economist Omar Shaban.
“Good fish from the sea is now too expensive because of the restrictions applied by Israel. Fish from the sea has become a luxury food and farmed fish is much cheaper,” he says.
“We need to support and invest in the fish farming sector but if the Israeli blockade continues it will be difficult because fish farming relies on lots of technology in order to succeed and it is hard for the farmers to get the equipment they need because of that blockade.”
The question is will the fish connoisseurs of Gaza be able to turn their tastes to farmed fish?
“Psychologically as a fisherman I cannot bring myself to eat farmed fish,” says Munir Abu Hassira, who owns one of the most popular fish restaurants in Gaza City.
“I like the unique taste of the ocean and seafish is better for you.”
Omar Shaban is not so sure, though.
“I prefer fish from the sea, but I can’t really tell the difference. It all depends on how your wife cooks it,” he laughs.
But Mr Shaban says the Israeli blockade limiting the amount of fish that can be imported, coupled with the restrictions on where Gazans can fish, mean that in the future “there may be no choice other than farmed fish”.
Al Jazeera TV has compiled an excellent series of reports for the first anniversary of the attack, and over the next few days I will include here a selection of those:
By Orly Halpern
Some Israelis feel the war on Gaza should not have ended without the release of Gilad Shalit [EPA]
Omri Buson says his “blood boils” every time he hears about the negotiations between Hamas and Israel over the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
From his point of view, Israel should have never ended last year’s military offensive on Gaza without Shalit’s return.
“We needed to hurt them and not have mercy … to destroy every house till [we] found that soldier,” says Buson, who dropped out of law school to open clothing shops in Jerusalem.
He admits that his views have become “very extreme in the last year because of the war”.
But he is not alone. Israeli Knesset members have expressed similar views.
Operation devastation
The Israeli military offensive named Operation Cast Lead killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, more than 1,000 of them civilians, including 400 children.
Thirteen Israelis were also killed, three of them civilians.
Its declared goals were to “Bring Gilad Home” and to stop Qassam rocket attacks on Israel. It ended after 22 days due to international pressure on Israel.
Despite the high number of civilian Palestinian casualties, most Israelis consider the operation a success because, although Shalit did not “come home”, the rockets stopped.
War against protests
Now, one year since Operation Cast Lead, not only have the so-called red lines for what you can do to your enemy moved dangerously forward, but so have the lines of what the government can do its own people.
Israeli polls and surveys reveal that Israeli society and government are less tolerant than ever of views that oppose the government stance, which is held by the mainstream.
Last month the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) revealed an alarming trend in its annual survey on the protection of human rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories – the conditioning of rights.
“The realisation of the entire spectrum of rights is now more than ever dependent on what we say or believe, what ethnic group we belong to, how much money we have, and more,” says the ACRI.
“We have the freedom to express ourselves and demonstrate – only if we don’t say anything displeasing; we have the right to equal treatment and opportunities – only if we are “loyal” to the state.”
In the streets, the Israeli security forces are waging a war against protests by Jewish left wing and human rights activists, who non-violently protest against Israel’s separation barrier or against Jewish settlers taking over Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem.
Many have been arrested and some were attacked by the security forces.
However, right-wingers protesting against the government’s decision to temporarily freeze building in settlements are accorded much more leniency by Israeli law enforcement agencies.
During Operation Cast Lead about 800 Israeli citizens, most of them Arab, were arrested, with criminal charges brought against most of them.
In a recent editorial, the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz called the arrests “an evil omen regarding the state’s attitude toward protesters” and said that as a result, “concern is growing over Israel’s image as a free and democratic country”.
‘Moral bankruptcy’
Right wing protesters have been treated more leniently than those on the left [EPA]
The infringement on the rights of Jewish Israelis comes as no surprise to Neve Gordon, an Israeli political science professor at Ben-Gurion University in the Negev.
“The war itself revealed the moral bankruptcy of Israel because if we look back we see the vast majority killed were citizens including hundreds of children,” said Gordon, who has been under attack for his criticism of Israel and most recently for his call for an international boycott on his country until it ends the occupation of the Palestinian Territories.
“I don’t think it’s good for the morality of the country to kill children.”
Buson disagrees: “If it were up to me I would close the water and electricity [to Gaza] until they return Gilad. Let them starve and die.”
He says he opposes a prisoner exchange deal with Hamas. “I’d rather Shalit die there than do a deal with Hamas.
“It’s not about one soldier’s life. It’s about deterrence. They need to understand with whom they are dealing. Our deterrence was damaged after the second Lebanon war. Now we got it back.”
‘Lesson through force’
Indeed many Israelis were more concerned about ‘teaching the other side a lesson’ by using overwhelming force, than with the hundreds of dead civilians and the devastating destruction of infrastructure.
For the Israeli political leadership, military and much of the Israeli public, the Gaza war, as Israelis refer to it, was about scaring the other side into submission, so that it will not dare to hurt Israel again. And, many believe, that was what Israel succeeded in doing.
Yehuda Shaul, the co-director of Breaking the Silence, the Israeli human rights organisation that collects the testimonies of soldiers about abuses committed while serving in the Occupied Territories, says: “What I find most disturbing is that the military and most Israelis perceive [the war on Gaza] as a great success. They don’t recognise the price tag.”
“And the fact that the military sees it as a great success means that the second round will be similar,” Shaul adds.
Shaul’s organisation was attacked by the office of the Israeli military spokesperson, but he nevertheless hopes that some Israelis recognise the gravity of their actions.
He points to the poll by Tel Aviv University’s War and Peace Index.
When testimonies from soldiers were published soon after the war, few Israelis believed them, according to the index. But when Breaking the Silence published its report of chilling testimonies in July, the War and Peace Index found that the numbers who believed the testimonies rose from about 20 per cent to 43 per cent.
‘Cast Lead II’
Still, the overwhelming majority of Israelis (76 per cent) saw no need to reinvestigate the operation in light of the testimonies. The pollsters believe that because of the prevailing view that the campaign was moderately or very successful (79 per cent), “the Israeli Jewish public is reluctant to deal with the question of its moral and human cost”.
Some Israelis who supported the war see it very differently.
Marek Glezerman, the director of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at Rabin Medical Center, says: “I thought it should be a short operation to stop the rockets.”
“But it turned it to be a full blown war without concern for the other side and that leaves a very bad feeling,” adds the doctor who is a friend and colleague of the Gaza doctor Ezzedin Abouelaish.
Glezerman believes that the quiet from the Gaza Strip is temporary: “The violence will come back. But at what price? It has not brought us closer to peace.”
Meanwhile, some Israelis are talking about when Operation Cast Lead II will begin.
A year after the war, many displaced families still live in tents [GALLO/GETTY]
One year has passed since the beginning of Operation Cast lead, Israel’s 22-day military assault on the besieged Gaza Strip and suspended is a word that best describes daily life in the Strip; the internal reconciliation process, peace talks with Israel, and most importantly, reconstruction being halted until further notice.
On the street, conversations shift between two topics: The first is the ‘internal peace process’ between rival parties Fatah and Hamas. The other is a possible, even partial opening of the borders by Israel to allow rebuilding to begin; a topic alluded to casually with much cynicism and little hope.
Israeli ground and air raids between December 27, 2008 and January 17, 2009 left extensive damage and mass devastation in its wake.
Factories, businesses, public service buildings, farms, mosques and schools were targeted, hundreds destroyed or damaged. About 15,000 homes were either demolished or severely damaged.
One year later and 20,000 people are still displaced, living with relatives, or in makeshift shacks. Many of them have almost resigned themselves to living in temporary accommodations permanently.
‘Help is not coming’
Abu Subhi, a resident of Beit Lahi, is one of thousands who received a tent from the Red Cross, following the destruction of his home during the war on Gaza.
Today, his tent serves as an extra room to an adjoining shack he built from wooden planks and corrugated iron sheets to house his family.
“I used to have a home and six children. My oldest son was killed in the war and I lost my home. It has been one year and all I’ve gained is the knowledge that help is not coming. The siege before the war was brutal. The siege after the war is pure evil,” he says.
And while a small number of displaced families remain in tents, shacks like Abu Subhi’s have sprung up on the sites of demolished homes all over the Strip.
The few who can afford it have rented apartments, but in one year not one single house has been rebuilt.
Nevertheless, there have been efforts on the part of international NGOs to prepare for the reconstruction of public and private buildings.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) launched a rubble removal project that discarded 600,000 tonnes of rubble left over after the war, as part of its early recovery process.
Frustration and despair
The images of the mounds of rubble in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, one of the areas most heavily hit during the war, became representative of the scale of the destruction left behind.
Today, the same areas of this neighbourhood have been cleared, and where residents hoped new homes would be built, shacks, trailers and even mud houses have been erected.
According to a report issued by the UN Conference on Trade and Development, the damage to the civilian infrastructure after the war equals four times the size of the Gaza economy.
Over $4bn were pledged by the international community for reconstruction in March.
The reconstruction process would not only put the Strip on the road to recovery, but would also provide hundreds of thousands of jobs in a multitude of sectors, and assist in decreasing the unprecedented 60 per cent unemployment rate.
But, the continued indefinite delay has created an overwhelming sense of frustration and despair among Gazans.
‘Downhill from rock bottom‘
At least 20,000 people were displaced by Israel’s war on Gaza [EPA] In the vegetable market in Gaza City vendors arrange and rearrange their produce, occasionally catering to the odd customer; a far cry from the hustle and bustle of what was once one of the liveliest areas in Gaza.
Raafat Hijazi supports a family of 15, his wife and three daughters, in addition to 11 nephews and nieces whose parents – Rafaat’s brothers and their wives – were killed during the Israeli aggression.
Raafat considers himself fortunate. Although business is slow, there will always be customers to buy his fruit and vegetables.
“Before the war we thought it could not get any worse. But despite the siege, things weren’t as bleak as they are now. You really can go downhill from rock bottom. At most only 10 truckloads of produce are allowed in through the Israeli controlled crossings,” he says.
This is compared to 70 truckloads during the two year blockade preceding the war on Gaza; already only 25 per cent of the amount required to meet the needs of the population.
Paying tunnel prices
But the tunnels between Gaza and Egypt are yet again a means to make up the shortages of produce in the market.
Items such as oranges and Guava are now being brought in through the tunnels.
But Raafat points out that the prices are so high, shoppers prefer not to waste money on what they call ‘luxury items’ such as fruit.
“By the time the produce, or any other items, make it to the stalls and shelves in the market they cost three or four times as much as they typically should,” he explains.
The same goes for items ranging from fish and cattle, to electronics, clothing and fuel, each ranging in the disparity between original price and tunnel price.
On one hand, the tunnels allow for the entry of necessities that would otherwise not be available, on the other tunnel trade is costly to both merchants and customers.
During the past 12 months the amount and range of items brought in through the tunnels has increased significantly, a development resulting directly from Israel’s tightening of the siege on the Strip.
Today, 15 per cent of food requirements in the Gaza Strip are being met by items that come in through tunnels, and yet 76 per cent of the population has become food insecure, as opposed to 53 per cent before the war.
‘Dying a slow death’
But despite ingenuity in dealing with the challenges posed by the continued blockade, Israel’s war on the Strip, resulted in billions of dollars worth of damage to the civilian infrastructure, which was already suffering major breakdowns following a two year blockade before the war.
One year later, electricity, water and sanitation systems not only fall short of providing the residents of the Strip with the minimum supply required for each household, but are also on the verge of collapse.
One fifth of the Gaza shore is polluted due to improper disposal of waste water into the sea. The waste water system sustained extensive during the war, and one year later there have been no repairs or maintenance.
A large portion of the costal area in Gaza is not fit for swimming or fishing, depriving Gazans of one of their only recreational outlets and most important industries.
But the majority of the population believes that this is the lesser of two evils.
In the town of Khan Younes in the central Gaza Strip locals are only too familiar with the occurrence of sewage water flooding their streets and even their homes.
Nabil Shakshak, a schoolteacher and father of three, lives only metres away from a sewage lake, created as a temporary holding place for the neighbourhood’s waste water until reconstruction of a waste water treatment plant can begin.
“This is a health and environment hazard,” he says. “My children are constantly sick, the ground, air and water we drink is contaminated.”
“What we don’t understand is that the resources, the funding, the workers, the skill, it’s all there. We’re dying a slow death because Israel chooses to say no repairs can be made. Someone explain this to my children.”
Nabil’s sentiments are not uncommon among the population of the Gaza Strip.
Many also believe that until the international community actively takes a stand against Israel’s collective punishment measures, Israel will never allow the rebuilding process to begin.
Army largely satisfied with fence around West Bank that will bring new decade low in number of forces deployed in territories. Soldiers in compulsory service will be given time for training and number of reservists will be reduced. Fears of terrorist infiltrations near Mount Hebron
On the one hand, many of the central sections have been completed, which will result in an additional decrease in human resources deployed in the area. On the other hand, a number of regions, mainly those near South Mount Hebron where ground has yet to be broken, are likely to become fertile ground for terrorist cells.
From the IDF’s perspective, the good news is that in the upcoming year, the fence will be built up along the western route near the Jerusalem vicinity. By the end of 2010, there will be continuous fence from Tirat Zvi from the north, through Ein Yael to Metzudat Yehuda.
A senior IDF official said Tuesday that the fence has played a significant part in the decline in IDF companies deployed against terrorism. This upcoming year will see an additional decrease when the human resources deployed in the arena will reach a decade low. This will afford the IDF much more flexibility in training soldiers in the compulsory service and a reduction of reservist operational deployments.
The less encouraging news is that the entire fence project is not slated to be completed until 2020 – in other words, 18 years after the Sharon government decided to put it into action.
This includes all parameters, from the legal controversies, the problematic sections of the fence’s route that will likely anger the US, budgetary issues, and even the understanding that a central part of the fence has already been completed – a point that is not universally agreed upon within the IDF. Will Americans delay process?
The fence’s route has undergone no small number of changes and corrections, some of which have already been made and other which are still being discussed in the High Court. Up until now, more than 500 km (about 310 miles) have been built. Another dozen or so kilometers will be completed by the end of the year.
But completing the entire length of the fence, which will stretch along some 810 km (about 503 miles), seems pretty far off.
The pace of building has slowed notably in the past two years, mainly due to budget problems and disputes with the American administration regarding sections meant to include the settlement blocs.
There are currently legal proceedings under way regarding some of the sections of the fence. Another issue on the table is the environmental one relevant to the sections near South Mount Hebron. A kind of dialogue is being conducted between the environmental organizations regarding the fence’s route and its characteristics. In addition, budgetary issues have arisen that have slowed any real progress from occurring.
The IDF believes that delaying the construction of the fence in this area (which amounts to some 60 km, or 37 miles) will result in attempts by terrorist cells to send terrorists into Israel via this section, as occurred in the terrorist attack in Dimona in February 2008 that was dispatched from the South Mount Hebron region.
Some background notes by Haim Bresheeth
The Orwellian machine never stops in Israel, demising any and every Palestinian act, action, intention and statement, a total instrument of war-mongering. The Israeli media is an integral part of this machine, in the same way that the white media was an integral and crucial part of the apartheid system in South Africa. Currently, the media in Israel is preparing the public for three military adventure:
1. Cast Lead II – a repeat performance in Gaza, making life in Gaza even more impossible, and turning gaza into a proper concentration camp
2. Iran – under the guise of destroying Iran’s nuclear capability, actually destroying Iran military and civilian infrastructure, and sending Iran, a modern and technologised nation, back to the middle ages. This will serve US interests in the middle east, where the growig power of Iran is threatening the tottering regimes of the Gulf
3. Hizbullah in Lebanon – a side swipe at Iran through its satellite in Lebanon, as it is seen by Israel. To weaken Lebanon is a major policy target of Israel since the 1970s. A strong democracy in Lebanon is bad news for Israel, as would be any other strong democracy in the middle east.
The preparations for those attacks are not only military – the media propagates in true Orwellian manner, the universities and research centers run strategic ‘studies’ and ‘seminars’, all designed to justify and contextualize such attacks, and the whole social structure is gearing up for this madness with abandon. We will ignore such preparations at our peril, in Europe and elsewhere, where our own governments are part of the master plan. This plan, despite Obama’s sham speech in Cairo, is still the Bush II plan, based closely on the Huntigton ‘Clash of Civilizations’ sickening and poisonous thesis. Below is just one example of how it is done in Israel:
Sunday’s botched terror attack shows Palestinian effort to develop new capabilities
The explosive devices uncovered Sunday on the Ashdod and Ashkelon beaches apparently got there in the framework of a test undertaken by several Palestinian groups in the aims of developing maritime warfare capabilities. Despite what a senior terror figure told Ynet, it’s unreasonable to believe that the attempted attack was a well-organized act of revenge for the assassination of senior Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. It is also hard to believe that the Palestinians indeed attempted to targeted an oil rig.
The attempted attack got underway on Friday. Navy vessels spotted two explosions at sea, about two kilometers away from Israel’s shores. Two days later, two explosive devices were washed ashore. The northern one reached Ashdod, while the southern one reached Ashkelon.
As far as we know, the explosive devices uncovered on shore had no engine. Hence, it is unreasonable to assume that the masterminds of the attempted attack intended to hit a specific target, as these “explosive barrels” lacked any navigation or homing means.
As result of the devices’ heavy weight, it would be unreasonable for a swimmer to drag them or push them ahead of him for a long distance. However, there is a possibility that Palestinian organizations were able to acquire small underwater vessels that enable them to move explosive devices weighing 80 kilograms. However, such vessels are hard to acquire, and in any case there is no information about their availability to terror groups in Gaza.
The most reasonable possibility is that the attack masterminds did not intend to hit a specific target for the time being, but rather, wanted to check whether the water current can be used at certain times in order to direct bombs to Israel’s shores or towards Israeli Navy vessels patrolling the area.
Friday’s explosions may have been meant to draw Israeli ships to the area, and the bombs that eventually washed ashore may have been meant to hit these vessels.
All of the above possibilities are being looked into, yet for the time being the maritime sabotage capabilities in the Gaza Strip are likely at a very early stage. In the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, the Fatah and other Palestinian groups had maritime forces operating from Lebanon that included commandos, ships, booby-trapped boats, and mines. Today, Hezbollah has a maritime fighting force that uses similar means. Gaza groups may now be attempting to also develop similar capabilities, possibly with Hezbollah’s assistance.
The decision to remove Said Naffaa’s parliamentary immunity, like the decision to prosecute the Balad MK to begin with, is unwarranted, harmful and smacks of political persecution based on nationality.
MK Naffaa went to Syria in 2007 at the head of a delegation of Druze clergy who wanted to make a pilgrimage to their holy sites. The grave indictment against Naffaa says that while there, he met with the deputy chairman of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (Ahmed Jibril’s group), and also visited the offices of Khaled Meshal, who heads Hamas’ political wing. As a result, he is charged with visiting an enemy country and making contact with a foreign agent. Naffaa denies that these meetings took place.
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Naffaa is not the first Arab lawmaker to go to an Arab country, and prosecuting him seems like an attempt to make him a scapegoat, in order to warn off others: Let the Druze be warned that they must not radicalize their positions, and let all Arab MKs be warned that the state is watching their actions closely and seeks to prevent them from visiting Arab countries. After all, no one suspects Naffaa of conveying security-related information to the enemy or aiding and abetting terrorist activities.
The Druze clergymen’s trip to Syria, where many of their community live, is essentially no different than any other pilgrimage, such as the one thousands of Jews routinely make to Egypt to prostrate themselves on the grave of Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira. And the handshake between MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta’al) and Syrian President Bashar Assad in Paris a year ago is no different than the handshake between Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov (Yisrael Beiteinu) and his Iranian counterpart in Spain.
Instead of calling on Arab lawmakers to act as a bridge between Israel and the Arab world, Israel puts them on trial under a law that should never have been passed in the first place. The law barring MKs from visiting Arab countries is not merely a harmful one that impedes their efforts to engage in public activity on behalf of their voters. It is also discriminatory, because it is aimed only at them.
Whether the purpose of a visit is to make contacts in Arab countries to help advance the cause of peace, to see relatives, or to make a pilgrimage, the state should give Arab MKs freedom of action and of movement, on condition, of course, that they do not commit security-related offenses.
The struggle within Israeli society about the real meanings of the carnage in Gaza is now only beginning, but it has now got going at last. Below is historian Prof. Ze’ev Tzahor, President of Sapir College facing the Gaza Strip, analysing Netanyahu’s lying discourse:
Auschwitz speech, response to Goldstone characterized by dishonesty
Ze’ev Tzahor
Two days separated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at Auschwitz and Israel’s response to the Goldstone Report. The two texts were very different in terms of their importance, length, and their intended audience. The Netanyahu speech was aimed at the Polish government, which currently holds an important EU status, while Israel’s response to the Goldstone report was meant to appease the UN.
Yet despite the differences, it appears that the same person is responsible for drafting both texts; someone who specializes in verbal deception.
Speaking at the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, the greatest extermination facility in history, which was built in Polish territory (and not coincidently) and was operated by Poles, Netanyahu managed to skip the enthusiastic role played by the Poles in the Holocaust. In terms of their dedication to persecuting Jews, turning them over to the Nazis, and their active role in the extermination industry, the Poles were second only to the Germans, and sometimes even more devoted than them to the extermination work.
The murders within Polish territory continued even after the German were defeated. According to estimates, about 1,500 Jews were murdered in independent pogroms approved by the new regime; many of them took place on city streets while an excited Polish crowd cheered on. The Righteous Gentiles among them were few, at the very margins of society.
Yet the Netanyahu speech aimed to blur this terrible story. The address sought to turn the central theme – that is, the lively popular anti-Semitism – into the margins, while turning the margins of the Righteous Gentiles into the central theme.
No wrongdoing
Israel’s response to the Goldstone Report is premised on the very same verbal juggling act. Israel has declared that it adheres to universal war conventions, but according to these conventions Israel agreed not to use white phosphorous bombs. Were such bombs used in Operation Cast Lead? It’s a trivial question, as all of us saw these bombs being fired, and the results, on television. We saw them time and again even in photos released by the IDF spokesman.
And were hundreds of Palestinian children killed? This time, Israel did not deny. How could it? However, “we found no evidence that would justify a criminal investigation.” The same was true in respect to cases where the IDF fired at medical teams. According to Israel’s response, the judge advocate general launched dozens of thorough investigation, but somehow everything and everyone turned out to be fine.
According to the judge advocate general, thus far authorities have not uncovered even one affair where the army misbehaved. After all, we are the world’s most merciful and most just army and we take the greatest precautions not to hurt civilians. No wrongdoing was found even in the case of the inexplicable fire directed at the home of Gaza doctor Abu al-Ayash and the killing of three of his daughters.
However, in the interest of accuracy and to prove that the IDF indeed does everything to maintain its purity of arms, authorities did uncover one severe case of wrongdoing. They found that a soldier stole a Palestinian’s credit card during the operation. The soldier was tried and punished; apparently, this soldier is our atonement.
At last, Fayyad has woken up from his long hibernation, it seems. It is pity he is speaking at what is Israel’s leading right wing forum. Who is he speaking to? He should speak to the world, not appeal to Israeli generals:
Palestinian prime minister addresses Herzliya Conference despite death threats, says Palestinians planning to establish independent state by 2011. Defense Minister Barak speaks before him, says ‘Israel has a silent majority for peace, which leans to the right at the polling stations’
Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Tuesday attended a rare joint discussion about the peace process at the Herzliya Conference at the Interdisciplinary Center.
Fayyad stressed in his address that “the state being built here is Palestinian, and who should build it rather than us? A peace process is needed, because this will lead to the end of the occupation.
In Herzliya conference address, president lauds Palestinian prime minister for his efforts to establish state, slams those calling for bi-national state. ‘There is no country that can hold two nations,’ he says
“We want to be ready for a state which is about to be established, and we are ready to establish it by 2011. We are encouraged because we have made progress in creating an infrastructure in the past two years.”
According to the Palestinian prime minister, “We did not get our rights from the Israelis. I believe it is important that the process of recognizing the Palestinian state will be accepted by the international community. There cannot be peace unless the perception that the Palestinians must have a state is fully accepted.”
He hinted that he expects additional gestures: “Too much time has been invested in issues between the lines and not on the actual matter. We are currently in a situation of political deadlock. There is not practical dialogue. There have not been negotiations for the past 16 years and we have lost a lot of time.
“Instead of returning to the Oslo Accords, we must be led by a way which will make us understand that the occupation is about to withdraw. We need a political horizon which will result in a Palestinian state. We, the Palestinians, want to live next to you, in peace, security and welfare.”
Fayyad addressed the Palestinian Authority’s demand for a complete settlement freeze, clarifying that Israel must evacuate the settlements as part of a permanent agreement.
“The Palestinian state must be built in the areas where the settlements are today. One of the main ways to move forwards towards an implementation of the Road Map is by stopping Israel’s infiltration into territories slated to be part of our state.
“People ask why the Palestinians are making so much noise when it comes to the settlements. The issue is presented in a very materialistic manner, and they are trying to present it in a very simplistic manner. The Palestinians declare that their state must be built exactly on the territories you are building on.”
He left no room for doubt on what those territories include, saying that “east Jerusalem is an integral part of the future state of Palestine.”
Addressing Barak’s remarks as to Israel’s demand for sufficient security arrangements, Fayyad called on the Jewish state to hand over to the PA the security responsibility for additional areas in the territories.
“Security is also a Palestinian interest, not just an Israeli one,” the Palestinian prime minister said. “It’s time to stop the IDF raids. The Palestinians can have an official security presence outside Area A as well.”
He also said that he does not agree with Barak’s statement that the Middle East is a “tough neighborhood”.
“Today this situation has changed,” he said. “If the Palestinians have the right to live in a state of our own alongside the State of Israel, we will be able to guarantee security. I agree with Mr. Barak that there must be stability, security and peace, but I believe that this will not happen unless a Palestinian state is established.”
As for the Hamas control of the Gaza Strip, Fayyad said that “the Palestinian state must be united, and the separation between Gaza and the West Bank must end. I believe that our people must enjoy a sovereign right to hold elections.
He criticized Israel’s policy towards Hamas in Gaza, saying that “the blockade on the Strip is a mistake that must be stopped, and this will help the dynamics in reuniting the state. Continuing the siege will not lead to a positive solution.”
Fayyad concluded by saying that “the people in Israel have a long history of pain and aspirations. We respect that, because we too have experienced pain and suffering throughout history, and our aspiration is to live beside you in peace and harmony.”
Earlier, Defense Minister Barak said in his speech that during his term as prime minister, he had told then-PA Chairman Yasser Arafat and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that “the toughest decisions must be made while facing your people, and (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu will also have to make tough decisions with our public.
“The decisions are tough. Israel has a silent majority in favor of peace, although it leans to the right in the voting station,” he said.
According to Barak, “Under the surface, there has been a change on the Palestinian side as well. Salam Fayyad has brought about a Palestinian entity, concrete and practical thinking about building an economy, institutions and more, and a demand to recognize their results.
“I am a great believer in cooperation and in reaching out when possible. We have a responsibility for the security issue. The settlers are also saying that the security situation is better than ever, and that is thanks to the work of both sides.”
The defense minister went on to call on the Palestinians to return to the negotiation table, saying that the Hamas rule in the Strip cannot continue. “We have several challenges. Hamas controls Gaza and this has to change. And in the security challenge, we don’t want to be left without security arrangements when we reach an agreement. The negotiations will take time, but it’s time to reach them.”
Despite some ministers’ objection to the two-state solution, Barak clarified that “our government’s stand is clear. It has adopted the Road Map and accepted the two states for two people principle. The goal is to end the conflict and establish a Palestinian state.”
Nonetheless, he concluded his speech in a pessimistic tone, saying that “a reality of a peace agreement, today, looks far away.”
Before taking the stage, the defense minister shook hands with the Palestinian prime minister. Sources in Fayyad’s entourage said he had received death threats following his decision to attend the conference.
The head of the Military Advocate General’s international law department during Operation Cast Lead said Monday that it may be necessary to establish a commission of inquiry to respond to the Goldstone report on Israel’s conduct during the conflict in Gaza last winter.
“It is possible that, in hindsight, it would be have been correct to cooperate with the Goldstone Commission,” Col. Pnina Sharvit-Baruch said in a private closed-door meeting in Tel Aviv. “It’s possible that had we cooperated with the commission, its report wouldn’t have been as bad. I don’t think anyone thought the report would be so severe.”
Sharvit-Baruch said she believes the report’s harsh condemnation of Israel’s conduct and its wide distribution on the Internet have been “very, very damaging” to Israel’s international standing.
Sharvit-Baruch found herself at the center of a highly publicized academic storm a year ago, after it emerged that officers in her bureau had granted permission to army units to carry out a number of operations that resulted in civilian casualties, such as striking a police officers’ course linked to Hamas. Several lecturers at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law wrote letters to the department head asking that Sharvit-Baruch not be appointed a lecturer in international law there.
Sharvit-Baruch said she was concerned by the Goldstone report’s negative effect on Israel’s legitimacy in the global arena, and that Israel could potentially turn into “a kind of South Africa or Serbia” or a “criminal” or “racist” state in international opinion.
Sharvit-Baruch said she is less concerned with government reactions than international opinion. “The British government is influenced by public opinion, and cannot act against the views of its own population. Public opinion is important to democracies,” she said.
Asked whether Israel should establish a commission of inquiry to respond to the Goldstone report’s findings, Sharvit-Baruch said such a panel could provide “friendly countries” with the means to counter calls for Israeli officials to be tried in foreign countries or the International Criminal Court over alleged violations of international law.
“There is not necessarily a need for a commission of inquiry because we essentially know more or less what happened in terms of decision making, orders and targets,” she said. “As for the top brass, we have the protocols of government meetings.”
Nonetheless, she added, “We are now in a situation in which we need to give our friends – who don’t want to see lawsuits filed against us in their own courts – the tools to do away such claims, along with other charges against us,” she said.
“If they need a commission of inquiry then that’s what we’ll give them,” she added. “I really don’t think we have anything we need to hide.”
On the original choice over whether to cooperate with the Goldstone Commission, Sharvit-Baruch said Israeli decision makers felt that on the one hand such cooperation could lend legitimacy to the commission. They were concerned that “if we cooperate and a very bad report comes out, that basically means that they heard us, but ruled that we are war criminals. Then it’s harder to distance ourselves from its conclusions,” she said. On the other hand, cooperation with the panel “might lead to a less severe report. I don’t think anyone thought the report would be so severe.”
“In terms of orders and targets prepared in advance, I don’t think war crimes were committed,” she concluded.
Sharvit-Baruch added that had the Goldstone Commission released a less damning report, it’s likely that British authorities would not have issued arrest warrants against former foreign minister Tzipi Livni or Defense Minister Ehud Barak based solely on provisions within U.K. law to try suspected violators of international law.
Another success of the BDS campaign, just as Elton John is asked to refrain from going to Israel:
Sources in Israeli production team claim guitarist received messages that ‘it’s better’ not to perform in Israel
Guitarist Carlos Santana reportedly received messages that “it’s better” that he not perform in Israel, according to what a senior official in the Israeli music production market involved in producing Santana’s show told Yedioth Ahronoth on Saturday.
Over the weekend, the legendary guitarist’s team announced the cancellation of his show scheduled for early June at Bloomfield Stadium in Jaffa. Santana was to be brought to Israel by producer, Shuki Weiss. A few thousand tickets had already been sold to the show. Production agents have promised the tickets would be refunded immediately.
In light of the healthy rate of ticket sales, the Israeli production company was considering adding another show, but was surprised to receive news over the weekend from Santana’s team that the show would be delayed to an unknown date. According to the artist’s official site, he will give a concert in Lisbon, Portugal on May 25, a week before the show planned in Israel.
“Our clarifications revealed that he received messages from anti-Israel figures who pressured him to cancel the performance. Of course, no one there claimed that any connection between these pressures and the show’s
cancellation, but we are certain there is a very close connection,” said the production figure.
Pressures placed on artists from abroad performing in Israel by anti-Israeli groups and individuals are nothing new. Paul McCartney, for instance, was exposed to similar pressures leading up to his concert in September 2008, as was Leonard Cohen before his show this past summer. Ultimately, however, both of them decided to perform in Israel.
Sources in Israel’s music industry hope that Santana’s cancellation does not create a chain reaction. As published in Yedioth Ahronoth, Elton John , Rod Stewart , Rihanna, and The Pixies are all slated to perform in Israel over the summer.
Producer Shuki Weiss responded: “We have been aware for a few days of the difficulties that arose in everything surrounding the production of Santana’s concert in Israel. We apologize to the thousands of ticket holders and hope that they will continue to attend and enjoy the other cultural shows slated to arrive in Israel throughout 2010.”
Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Santana Management Michael Vrionis said in an official statement: “We are sorry that our schedule has forced the postponement of certain dates previously scheduled.”
The following is an excellent report on the ‘Never Again’ evening organised by IJAN on Holocaust Memorial Day, January 27th, written by Yael Kahn. A Gaza activist, Dr, Haidar Eid, was invited to the meeting but was not allowed to leave by Israel. Throughout the meeting, Zionist were aggressively trying to sabotage it, and the police had to remove many of them by force. The fact that they were also anti-semitic towards a rabbi is of interest:
I was fortunate to attend the packed meeting on “Never Again: For Anyone” at Parliament in Portcullis House on 27 Jan 10, on Holocaust Memorial Day. This was one of the best meetings I have ever attended in nearly 40 years of
being an activist. I was inspired by the courage and resolve of 85 year old Holocaust survivor, Dr Hajo Meyer.
I was moved by the Palestinian speaker, Dr Haidar Eid, who spoke live from Gaza via telephone. The fact that he was prevented from attending this important event was a poignant reminder of the strangulating siege imposed by Israel. Not only did the Israeli nightly attacks on Gaza prevent him from speaking live via video link, but the telephone line was unavailable for the first part of the event. After a few failed attempts to connect by phone, the speaker schedule had to be quickly rearranged. When, eventually, a phone link was established the Boothroyd Room fell silent. I noticed the pain on many faces, hearing Dr Haidar Eid speaking calmly about the horrific suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, inflicted by Israel.
Hearing other speakers gave a glimpse to understanding how other genocides were planned, implemented and denied.
This event was by no means the only one on Holocaust Memorial Day, yet it attracted Zionist lead figures, among them: Louise Ellman MP [Vice Chair of Labour Friends of Israel], Jerry Lewis [Vice President, Board of Deputies]
and Jonathan Hoffman [Co-Vice Chair of the Zionist Federation]. Even Christian Friends of Israel came to the event organised by IJAN [International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network]. The presence of these Zionists was a confirmation of the significance they attributed to this event.
The conduct of many of the Zionists in attendance showed their purpose was not to learn from it, especially not from Holocaust survivor, Dr Meyer. Was it fear from his words that drew them into the Boothroyd Room? Most of the Zionists clearly came to silence the Holocaust survivor, Dr Meyer. As soon as he started talking they shouted at him. The first to shout was Jonathan Hoffman. He was also the first to be escorted out by police. This was after Hoffman’s repeated shouting at the 85 year old Holocaust survivor, preventing Meyer from giving his talk. The police gave him a number of warnings. The two MPs who chaired the meeting were eventually forced to ask for his removal.
Similarly, a bearded Zionist man repeatedly shouted at the 85 year old Holocaust survivor. When eventually he was escorted out by police, his conduct was most shocking. He stunned us when he made the Nazi salute and shouted the Nazi obscenity, “sieg heil”. We could only speculate on his motives.
A couple more Zionists were eventually escorted out by police, before Dr Meyer was able to complete his talk. There were other Zionists who also joined in the shameful and disruptive conduct of shouting at the speaker. They tried to silence the Holocaust survivor from speaking about his memories and lessons from the Holocaust. Even when Dr Meyer was talking about the extremely painful period of his life, under the anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany and Auschwitz the shouting of obscenities at him did not stop. Some of the shameful attacks were when Dr. Meyer spoke positively about Judaism.
I have never witnessed such contempt and disrespect to a Holocaust survivor. It is inconceivable that such conduct would have not been labelled anti-Semitic by the same people who were doing the attacking, had Dr Meyer not been anti-Zionist. It was a personal reminder of an attack on my father, who, like Dr Meyer, grew up in Nazi Germany. My father, Michael Kahn, escaped Nazi Germany in 1937. In 1988 my father joined us at a weekly protest at Dizengoff Circle [in Tel Aviv] against Israeli attacks on Palestinians. He was singled out by Zionist Israelis, who told him in Hebrew: “shame the Nazis didn’t finish you off”. The hateful remarks and lack of compassion for the Holocaust survivor, Dr Meyer, by the Zionists was compounded with their lack of interest in the Holocaust itself!
Despite the obscenities shouted at Dr Meyer, by the Zionist thugs, he did not give up delivering his talk. The 85 year old continued with his powerful and thoughtful talk, in spite of being interrupted many times, which forced him to stop his talk more than a dozen times. Meyer, who was a freedom fighter against the Nazis, until he was captured and sent to Auschwitz, demonstrated an amazing spirit. Clearly, the courage he had when joining the resistance against the Nazis has not faded over the years, and even at 85 he did not allow the Zionist attackers to intimidate him.
During and after the meeting Zionist thugs also singled out a Jewish Rabbi, Jacob Weisz. They were aggressive towards the Jewish Rabbi, who was in traditional Jewish garb and came to listen to Dr Meyer. The thugs were heard making disrespectful comments to the Jewish Rabbi at his traditional Jewish appearance… Other Jews were also attacked by Zionist thugs, including physical threats.
Yael Kahn
Below, you can read about Barak’s blunt admission that the Israeli policy which he was responsible for, with others since 1967, has not worked, and cannot work! A bit late to realise this, isn’t it? He seems to dislike the face staring at him from the mirror…
Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, last night delivered an unusually blunt warning to his country that a failure to make peace with the Palestinians would leave either a state with no Jewish majority or an “apartheid” regime.
His stark language and the South African analogy might have been unthinkable for a senior Israeli figure only a few years ago and is a rare admission of the gravity of the deadlocked peace process.
There have been no formal negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in more than a year, but Barak was speaking at a rare joint event with the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, as part of an annual national security conference in the Israeli city of Herzliya. The pair shook hands and both were warmly applauded.
Barak, a former general and Israel’s most decorated soldier, sought to appeal to Israelis on both right and left by saying a peace agreement with the Palestinians was the only way to secure Israel’s future as a “Zionist, Jewish, democratic state”.
“As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic,” Barak said. “If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.”
He described Israel and the Palestinian territories as the historic “land of Israel” to which Israelis had a right.
“We have to demarcate a border within the land of Israel,” he said.
“We have a linkage, we have a right, but the reality of standing on the stage of history in realistic terms requires us to pay attention to international constraints.” Barak is in a delicate political position. He leads the Labour party, supposedly a centre-left movement, but accepted a position in a rightwing coalition under Binyamin Netanyahu, a decision that split his party.
Though Barak articulates a willingness for peace talks, he represents a government that has defied US and Palestinian calls for a full settlement freeze as a prelude to any negotiations. He was also defence minister during last year’s Gaza war in which nearly 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.
The Herzliya conference has echoed Israeli concerns about growing international criticism, particularly in the year since Gaza. Barak himself alluded to the danger that Israel might lose legitimacy if no peace deal was forthcoming. “The pendulum of legitimacy is going to move gradually towards the other pole,” he said.
He acknowledged that Washington was pushing the two sides towards “proximity talks” but said this was “only an initial stage” before any return to full negotiations.
Fayyad, who has a limited political following among Palestinians, called on Israel to stop settlement building in the occupied territories and to halt military incursions in Palestinian cities as a sign of seriousness about negotiations.
“Things have to begin to happen in order to give the suggestion that this occupation is going to end,” he said. “That Palestinian state is supposed to emerge precisely where settlements are expanding.” Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has refused to start fresh negotiations with Israel unless settlement construction stops, in line with the 2003 US road map. Nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers live in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, even though settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law.
“How confident can we all be that once relaunched that political process is going to be able to deliver that which needs to be delivered, the permanent status issues and the key question of ending the occupation?” Fayyad asked.
Syrian president meets with Spanish foreign minister in Damascus, tells him Jewish state ‘is not serious about achieving peace and all facts point to it being the one pushing the region towards war’
Syrian President Bashar Assad on Wednesday accused Israel of “pushing the region towards war”. During a meeting with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos in Damascus, Assad said that the Jewish state “is not serious about achieving peace”.
The SANA news agency reported that the two officials spoke of regional issues and the “standstill peace process”. Assad told Moratinos, whose country is the current EU president, that “Israel is not serious about achieving peace and all facts point to it being the one pushing the region towards war and not peace”.
Moratinos arrived in Syria after a visit in Israel, during which he addressed the Herzilya Conference.
Assad spoke just hours after his foreign minister, Walid Moallem, said that “Israel knows that if it declares war on Syria, such a war will reach its cities as well.”
The Syrian minister was responding to remarks made by Defense Minister Ehud Barak earlier this week. Speaking at a forum of senior IDF commanders, Barak said a full-blown war with Syria was possible in case a peace agreement is not reached.
Opposition Chairwoman Tzipi Livni criticized Barak’s remarks on Wednesday, saying that his “muscle flexing” is causing a deterioration in Israel’s security.
“On my way here, I heard the statements made by the Syrian foreign minister who said that if Israel is talking war then we will fight back – he is responding to statements made here. For us, whenever someone dealing with security flexes a muscle, then the other side flexes its muscle, and the situation deteriorates,” said Livni at the launch of “Desert Queen 2010” in Ness Ziona.
It is behavior well known to every police investigator: First the suspect denies everything, then attacks his interrogators, then admits to a small portion of the accusations (saying he merely did what everyone does), and finally breaks down and confesses. The Israel Defense Forces returned from Operation Cast Lead and, of course, denied everything. The people applauded it for its bogus victory and no one paid much attention to the awful price paid by the Palestinians. But after the smoke (in this case, white phosphorus) cleared a bit, the blood began crying out from the ground. Foreign journalists and human rights groups investigated and reported their findings. The United Nations said the IDF intentionally targeted its facilities, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International accused the army of illegally using phosphorous bombs, the International Red Cross reported on the injured being denied medical attention and strikes on medical crews, officers at a premilitary course spoke of civilians killed, and Amira Hass wrote for Haaretz about the killing of people flying white flags, the use of flechette shells and the annihilation of entire families. The ground began trembling beneath Israel’s feet when it started attacking the emissaries of these organizations. The country’s gates were closed to the UN fact-finding mission headed by Jewish South African Richard Goldstone, as if it were Zimbabwe or North Korea, as if it had much to hide. The president brusquely rebuked the UN’s Ban Ki-moon and suggested he visits Auschwitz, until eventually the secretary general was forced to shrink from supporting his organization’s damning report. Anyone who dared investigate and report was branded anti-Semitic. Little has changed since the early-1970s report by a group of American lawyers on the Shin Bet security service’s alleged torture methods. These attorneys were immediately labeled anti-Semites. We deny, repress, lie, attack and compare ourselves to others, and our conscience remains clear. Even when the IDF admits to killing 300 civilians – 90 of them children, 50 women and 160 whose identities the army says is unclear – our story remains the same: the most moral army in the world. Not the third most, not the second – the most. After all, Yedioth Ahronoth gave that view its seal of approval in a special propaganda supplement entitled “The most moral in the world.” But let’s assume Amnesty is lying, Human Rights Watch is fabricating, B’Tselem is embellishing, the UN is anti-Israel and the media is full of hatred against us – isn’t there enough in the IDF’s own figures to shake us to the core? Three hundred civilians killed, including 90 children – isn’t that enough to expose the propagandistic lie of “the most moral” army? How many innocent people must be killed for that to happen? The IDF conducted five “investigations” (in which, naturally, only soldiers’ actions were examined), lamented one family’s tragedy, and the military correspondents applauded again. The IDF Spokesman’s Office sent battalion commanders to recite declarations on their own lofty battle ethics – with faces concealed, of course, as suspects often are – and the media didn’t burden them with questions. No one believes this war should be subjected to a serious investigation because in this war, unlike its predecessors, not enough soldiers were killed to justify that. But the truth cries out even from the collapsed and perforated rubble of what was once a home: The soldiers who were in Gaza know, as do their friends, that something terrible happened there – just as those who served in the West Bank know. Ask your sons; they know the truth – the truth is sitting in your own home. And ask the friends of your sons, and the sons of your friends – they know. Many of them are brainwashed, and for now are keeping mum. Israel is holding back the tide of reports and investigations, and putting its head in the sand of propaganda and victimization, but in the end the truth will emerge. Even the excuse “everyone does it” will not do any good, as it does no good for a driver caught speeding. The Americans kill more? The French slaughtered more? That may do for the Foreign Ministry’s automatic statements. We deserve more, we deserve the full truth – what exactly our soldiers did in our name, each of our names, on the streets of Gaza, imprisoned and bleeding for the 22 days of a useless war.
Forty years ago, I was enraptured by Israel’s courageous sense of mission. For me today, as for many, that idealism has palled
I first visited Israel in 1969. It was a time when much of the western world was still passionately enthused about the country’s triumph in the 1967 six-day war. President Nasser had for years promised to sweep the Israelis into the sea. Instead, the tiny Jewish state, less than 20 years old, had engaged the armies of three Arab nations, and crushingly defeated them all. The Israelis successively smashed through Nasser’s divisions on the western front, scaled and seized the Golan Heights, and snatched east Jerusalem and the West Bank in the face of Hussein’s highly capable Jordanian army. Sinai was left strewn with the boots of fleeing Egyptians. The Israeli victory was an awesome display of command boldness, operational competence and human endeavour.
There was a euphoria in Israel in those days, which many visitors shared. We watched Jews from all over the world gathering to pray at the Wailing Wall for the first time in almost 2,000 years; Israelis of all ages revelling in the sensation of being able to work the kibbutzim of the north free from Syrian shells. From inhabiting one of the most claustrophobic places in the world, suddenly they found themselves free to roam miles across Sinai on a weekend. The soldiers of the Israeli army, careerists, conscripts and reservists alike, walked 10ft tall – the image of an exulting soldier made it on to the cover of Life magazine. They had shown themselves one of the greatest fighting forces of history, expunging almost at a stroke the memory of Jewish impotence in the face of centuries of persecution, of six million being herded helpless into cattle trucks for the death camps.
In the years that followed, I gazed across the Suez Canal during the artillery bombardments of the 1970 war of attrition with Egypt. I was a correspondent there in October 1973, during the Yom Kippur war. It was an extraordinarily moving spectacle, to behold the people of Israel rallying to meet what they perceived as a threat to their national survival. One morning I stood on the Golan Heights and watched Israeli tanks duelling with the Syrians, amid pillars of smoke and flame. A few nights later I bivouacked in the Sinai passes, talking for hours under the stars to Israeli reservists about their hopes and fears. With a colleague from the Financial Times, having thinly disguised ourselves as Israeli soldiers, we made an illicit night crossing of the Suez canal, to report Ariel Sharon’s stunning encirclement operation which trapped the Egyptian army on the east bank. In those days I loved those people, and boundlessly admired their achievement. I wrote in one of my less temperate dispatches, expressing faith in Israel as a bastion of western civilization in the Middle East: “These last three weeks, I am proud to have shared the Israelis’ camp fires in Sinai. They are a very great people who three weeks ago came closer to destruction than blind Europe seems willing to recognise.”
U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday he had renewed sanctions against Syria because it posed a continuing threat to U.S. interests. Obama, in a letter to Congress notifying it of his decision, accused Damascus of “supporting terrorism, pursuing weapons of mass destruction and missile programs, and undermining U.S. and international efforts with respect to the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq.” “For these reasons I have determined that it is necessary to continue in effect the national emergency declared with respect to this threat and to maintain in force the sanctions,” Obama said in the letter to Congress. Renewal of the sanctions is required each year by Congress. The announcement came following the visit of two U.S. envoys to Damascus this week to try to improve ties. The sanctions, imposed by former President George W. Bush, prohibit arms exports to Syria, block Syrian airlines from operating in the United States and deny Syrians suspected of being associated with terrorist groups access to the U.S. financial system. While the United States has made clear it wants better relations with Syria, a nation it has long accused of supporting terrorism, the renewal of sanctions shows Washington is not yet ready for a dramatic improvement in relations.
Thank you, O’Bomber, for punishing the victims of occupation, rather than those who perpetrate war! This will make you supporters really happy... Below you can also read about the real background for this announcement:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a group of Russian-language reporters Thursday that Israel will never withdraw from the Golan Heights. “Remaining on the Golan will ensure Israel has a strategic advantage in cases of military conflict with Syria,” Netanyahu said during a briefing he gave to the reporters. His comments were published Friday on several Russian-language Israeli Web sites. A week-and-a-half out from Netanyahu’s scheduled visit to Washington, the prime minister stressed that he is ready to stand up to U.S. President Barack Obama and that he would not give up on matters that in his opinion are critical to Israel’s security.
Netanyahu said that he intends to emphasize to Obama the need to deal with Iran and its “nuclear program, which is a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East.”
“If Iran turns into a nuclear power they will force all Arab states to ally with it, and the extreme Iranian regime that revealed its plan to eliminate Israel will not allow Arab states to normalize relations with Israel,” Netanyahu said. Netanyahu also told the reporters that he would not present preconditions for negotiations with the Palestinians and would not accept preconditions from them.
The UN has accused Israel of restricting development of the Bethlehem region in the West Bank.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) said just 13% of land around Bethlehem was open for use by the Palestinian population. It said the traditional birthplace of Jesus Christ was hemmed in by Israeli settlements and military zones as well as Israel’s West Bank barrier.
An Israeli foreign ministry official said the issue was beyond Ocha’s remit. Next week, Pope Benedict is due to celebrate Mass in Bethlehem , a Palestinian governorate which is home to 175,000 inhabitants, including many Christians. Two-thirds of the governorate’s 660 sq km (255 sq miles) has been under Israeli control and about 86,000 Israelis live in settlements and outposts in the governorate, Ocha says. Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 war and its settlement activity is regarded as illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this. Cut off
“Israeli measures have radically reduced the space available to the inhabitants of Bethlehem, compromising the future economic and social development of the governorate,” the Ocha report says. The report says that in addition to the land put under Israeli control under past interim agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), 20% of the remainder is an Israeli-controlled “nature reserve”. Meanwhile, the West Bank barrier cuts through Bethlehem’s western edges blocking off grazing and agricultural land, the report says. “As a result, Bethlehem’s potential for residential and industrial expansion and development has been reduced, as well as its access to natural resources,” the report said. Israel says the barrier is needed to keep out Palestinian attackers, including suicide bombers. Palestinians call it a land grab since it juts into the West Bank. Yigal Palmor of the Israeli foreign ministry said he had not seen the report but accused past reports by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of containing “distorted information”. Settlement drive
Separately, information released by an Israeli anti-settlement group, Yesh Din, said settlement activity in the West Bank had been accelerating at the fastest rate since 2003. It cited more than 20 cases of new Israeli building on occupied territory since January, on both sides of the barrier, including a number of outposts built without Israeli permits. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised the previous US administration that he would evacuate all unauthorised outposts built after March 2001, but critics say evacuations are carried out intermittently and without rigour. The international peace plan known as the road map called on Israel to halt all construction in the settlements, although observers say construction has never ceased. Israel says it is not building new settlements, but claims the right to foster “natural growth” within the confines of existing communities.
If the UN fails to further investigate crimes committed during the conflict it will ensure stalemate, and more suffering for civilians
The Israeli government and its supporters have lashed out at the report of the UN board of inquiry into Israeli attacks on UN installations during Israel’s latest offensive in Gaza. The report, they say, is biased, tendentious and inaccurate. According to Robbie Sabel, writing in Comment is Free, the “unbalanced report” does “little to bring understanding or justice to the conflict in Gaza”.
The full report has not been published, but there’s little in the summary that UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon sent to the security council on Tuesday to support such claims. On the contrary, it provides careful but compelling evidence that Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) violated the laws of war during their military operations around UN installations in Gaza.
According to the summary, the board of inquiry concluded that “IDF actions involved varying degrees of negligence and recklessness with regard to United Nations premises and the safety of United Nations staff and other civilians within those premises, with consequent deaths, injuries and extensive physical damage and loss of property”. The board also holds “Hamas or another Palestinian actor” responsible for one attack on a UN installation – a World Food Progamme warehouse hit by a Qassam rocket.
The terms of reference of the UN inquiry were extremely narrow. Its job was to look at attacks on eight UN installations and one UN convoy during the period of Israel’s military offensive. As far as one can tell from the summary, the board has been meticulous in sticking to these terms of reference.
However, the conclusions of the inquiry, as represented in the summary (which, it should be noted, was not written by those who wrote the full report), raise broader questions about the use of force by the IDF during the conflict. It appears the authors of the UN report felt these questions should not be ducked. The summary notes that the board of inquiry was “deeply conscious” that the attacks on UN installations investigated in its report “are among many incidents during Operation Cast Lead involving civilian victims”.
The board therefore recommended that “these incidents should be investigated as part of an impartial inquiry, mandated and adequately resourced, to investigate violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza and southern Israel by the IDF and by Hamas and other Palestinian militants”.
Inquiry finds Israel responsible for deaths, injuries and damage to UN buildings
A fire at the UN building in Gaza City after Israeli strikes Photograph: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty
A UN inquiry accused the Israeli military today of “negligence or recklessness” in its conduct of the war in Gaza. The summary of the UN report, commissioned by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, censured the Israeli government for causing death, injuries and damage to UN property in seven incidents involving action by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). It said: “The board concluded that IDF actions involved varying degrees of negligence or recklessness with regard to United Nations premises and to the safety of United Nations staff and other civilians within those premises, with consequent deaths, injuries, and extensive physical damage and loss of property.” However, in a blow to human rights campaigners, Ban said there would be no further investigation despite the report calling for a full impartial inquiry.
Although the full, 184-page findings of the UN board of inquiry will not be made public, the 27-page summary emphasised that UN premises are inviolable, and that inviolability cannot be set aside by the demands of military expediency. “UN personnel and all civilians within UN premises, as well as civilians in the immediate vicinity of those premises, are to be protected in accordance with the rules and principles of international humanitarian law,” the summary says.
The next report explains the incredible move by the UN Secretary General, against a proper UN investigation of the killings outside the narrow confines of its own buildings in Gaza. It seems, according to the SG, that the UN is only mandated to defend itself, but not the rest of humanity, in which it has little interest, especially in those without a powerful army behind them…
One of the more striking features of today’s UN inquiry into the Gaza war is the secretary general’s prompt rejection of one of its key findings.
In its 11th and final recommendation, the board of inquiry said the killings and injuries that happened beyond its narrow remit, outside the walls of the UN compound in Gaza, “should be investigated as part of an impartial inquiry mandated, and adequately resourced, to investigate allegations of violations of international humanitarian law”. In his covering letter, however, Ban Ki-moon, said he did not “plan any further inquiry”, opting not to use the secretary general’s prerogative to order his own inquiries into allegations of serious human rights abuses.
Ban’s predecessor, Kofi Annan, set up such an inquiry in April 2002 after the shelling of the West Bank town of Jenin, but had to abort it in the face of Israel’s refusal to co-operate with an investigation it saw as biased from the outset. A UN official said today Ban’s decision had not been influenced by the failure of the Jenin enquiry, but added that Ban had stressed the desire to co-operate with Israel in further investigation of the shelling of the UN compound. In his remarks Ban made no reference to a UN investigation of the Gaza violence that has already been set in train by the UN human rights council. The council has in the past been rejected as ideologically anti-Israel by the west, and an inquiry under its auspices carries less weight than one ordered by a UN secretary general. But the selection of Richard Goldstone, a South African judge with strong human rights credentials (he was chief prosecutor for international war crimes tribunals on Yugoslavia and Rwanda), gives this inquiry greater clout than would otherwise be the case. And unlike the Jenin enquiry, an investigation focused on Gaza does not necessarily require Israeli cooperation, as entry is possible from Egypt.
“Goldstone has a lot of integrity and a wealth of experience in international justice,” said Tom Porteous, London director of Human Rights Watch. “We think his investigation should be given a chance, and we think Ban should have used this occasion to put his full weight behind it.”
Report claiming deliberate targeting of UN civilians and institutions is biased, Israel says
Israel has dismissed as “tendentious” and “patently biased” an unpublished UN inquiry into Israel’s conduct during the January war in Gaza.
The UN investigation is the first into the war and looked only at deaths, injuries and damage caused at UN sites in Gaza during the three-week conflict. Some of the findings may be released today. According to Israeli media reports, a senior foreign ministry official has already received a draft copy of the report. One newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, was briefed on some of its contents and reported that it accuses Israel of “grave offences”, including “disproportionate shooting and deliberately hitting UN civilians and institutions”. The paper said the report “determined unequivocally: Israel deliberately fired at UN institutions even though it knew it was forbidden”. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, was due to send his response to a summary of the report to the security council, Israel’s foreign ministry said. Yedioth said the report’s main recommendation was to call for an independent investigative committee to look more deeply into the war and to determine whether Israel violated international law. Israel’s foreign ministry said it believes Ban will not take up that recommendation.
The document has been compiled by a board of inquiry – a team of four led by Ian Martin, a Briton who is a former head of Amnesty International and a former UN special envoy to East Timor and Nepal. It is still unclear if the full report will be made public.
Israel’s foreign ministry attempted to pre-empt the report today, saying the Israeli military had already investigated its own conduct during the war and “proved beyond doubt” that it did not fire intentionally at UN buildings. It dismissed the UN inquiry.
“The state of Israel rejects the criticism in the committee’s summary report, and determines that in both spirit and language the report is tendentious, patently biased, and ignores the facts presented to the committee,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
It said the inquiry had “preferred the claims of Hamas, a murderous terror organisation, and by doing so has misled the world”.
International human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have accused both Israel’s military and Palestinian militant groups of serious violations of international law and possible war crimes during the conflict. The UN board of inquiry report has a limited scope. It is confined to investigating death or injuries or damage at UN buildings or during UN operations. The UN human rights council is also to dispatch a fact-finding mission to Gaza, but Israel has already suggested it will not co-operate, saying the council is biased.
• Move breaks US tradition of discretion over Israeli arsenal
• NPT comes up for review in 2010
A diplomatic row broke out today between the US and Israel after Washington’s chief nuclear arms negotiator called on Israel to sign the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), breaking a US tradition of discretion over Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
Israeli officials said they were puzzled by a speech to an international conference in New York by Rose Gottemoeller, an assistant secretary of state, who said: “Universal adherence to the NPT itself – including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea – also remains a fundamental objective of the United States.”
By including Israel on a list of countries known to have nuclear weapons. Gottemoeller broke with normal US diplomatic practice. Since 1968 when the CIA reported Israel had developed a nuclear weapon , Washington has pursued a policy of not demanding transparency from its close ally, and in return Israel agreed not to test a bomb or declare its nuclear capability – a policy of “strategic ambiguity”.
“As far as we are concerned, there is no change to the close dialogue we have with Washington,” Yossi Levy, Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, told Reuters. Privately, Israeli officials played down the importance of the NPT as a means of controlling proliferation.
Attempts to stop spread of nuclear weapons face a critical moment over the next year before the NPT comes up for review in 2010, at a time when North Korea has declared the resumption of its nuclear weapons programme, and fears over Iran’s intentions threaten to trigger a Middle East arms race. Gottemoeller’s speech was made at a meeting to prepare the way for next year’s critical NPT review conference.
Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, said that Gottemoeller had not changed the long-held US position – that all states should join the NPT. However, she spelt that position out more explicitly in relation to Israel.
The toughest meeting of Barack Obama’s young presidency is approaching. In the next few weeks, he will have to sit down with Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu. The difficulty is not just that the prime minister refuses to accept the right of a Palestinian state to exist and thereby shows the Palestinians have no partner for peace.
Far more burdensome are the ghosts of US policies past. If Obama is sincere in wanting to break the stalemate of the Middle East’s core conflict, he will have to launch the US relationship with Israel on to radically new lines. Israel must be treated as a normal country. It cannot enjoy permanent licence to escape criticism for practising policies that would be condemned if carried out by any other country’s government. Even if Israelis, through their complex coalition arrangements, had anointed a more progressive and enlightened leader, this would be necessary. It is doubly essential now that Israel has chosen a man of aggressive and narrow vision.
The day of the blank cheque must be over. The day of the huge cheque must be over, too. Why should a country with one of the world’s highest per capita incomes receive around $3bn annually, or roughly a third of the US foreign aid budget (not including extra support from the Pentagon)? Why should it not have to account for its purchases like every other recipient country – a conscious lack of oversight that allows Washington to turn a blind eye to the fact that US tax dollars are financing illegal settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank and helping to build the so-called apartheid wall? Unless Obama ends America’s special relationship with Israel, this omission will be the achilles heel of his foreign policy. America’s standing in the Middle East, its influence in the Gulf, its image in the Muslim world, its relationship with Iran, and even its support in Europe are all linked to the way it treats Israel. Obama’s fulsome comments about Israel before his election already suggested that this was likely to be his most dangerous weakness. His first 100 days in power have done nothing to negate that. His speeches in Turkey, which were directed at Muslim audiences, showed no recognition of the fact that most Turks, Arabs and Iranians see US policy towards Israel as unfair and partisan.His resounding appeal in Prague for a nuclear-free world contained no reference to Israel’s nuclear arsenal or the need for all nuclear countries (including India and Pakistan) to join the non- proliferation treaty. If Iran, a signatory of the NPT, is rightly pressed to adhere to the requirement for transparency, it is hypocrisy not to press the non-signatories to be as honest. To argue that countries which have not signed up are exempt from the rules may be legally right, but is politically absurd. Obama’s admirable wish to reduce the world’s nuclear stockpile cannot stop at the gates of Dimona and the sites where Israel’s nuclear warheads are kept. Only a dramatic break from previous US policy on Israel can end the Middle East deadlock.
Aipac urges Congress members to sign letter to Barack Obama calling for Israel to set pace of negotiations with Palestinians
US congressional leaders and the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in the US are attempting to forestall a significant shift in the White House’s Middle East policy.
The move comes amid growing signs that the US president, Barack Obama, intends to press for urgent efforts to be made towards the creation of a Palestinian state. The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is visiting Washington later this month amid growing expectations that Obama is preparing to take a tougher line over Israel’s reluctance to actively seek a two-state solution to its conflict with the Palestinians. It will be the first time that Netanyahu and Obama have met since both were elected. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) this week sent hundreds of lobbyists to urge members of Congress to sign a letter to Obama. The letter, written by two House of Representatives leaders, calls for Israel to be allowed to set the pace of negotiations. The lobbying came despite critics saying Netanyahu has consistently failed to commit himself to the creation of a Palestinian state. The letter calls for the maintenance of the status quo, with an emphasis on Palestinian institution-building before there can be an end to Israeli occupation. It says the US “must be both a trusted mediator and devoted friend of Israel”. Aipac’s move to put pressure on members of Congress came at the end of its annual conference in Washington this week.
Some of the loudest applause at the gathering came in response to calls for military attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities – something Netanyahu has attempted to portray as a more urgent issue than the Palestinian question.
But Aipac delegates were told by the US vice-president, Joe Biden, that the administration favours “mutual respect” in dealing with Iran.
Biden said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict strengthened Iran’s strategic position and Israel must take concrete steps – including fulfilling often-broken commitments to stop the expansion of Jewish settlements – towards the creation of a Palestinian state.
Last week, General James Jones, Obama’s national security adviser, told a European foreign minister that the new administration would be “forceful” with Israel, according to a classified Israeli memo reported by the Ha’aretz newspaper.
Jones was quoted as saying that Obama believes Washington, the EU and moderate Arab states must define “a satisfactory endgame solution”.
“The new administration will convince Israel to compromise on the Palestinian question,” he was quoted as saying. “We will not push Israel under the wheels of a bus, but we will be more forceful toward Israel than we have been under Bush.” During his election campaign, Obama alarmed Israel’s hardline supporters by saying he regarded the lack of a resolution to the conflict as a “constant sore” that “infect[s] all of our foreign policy”. Netanyahu dare not openly defy Washington, and yesterday told the Aipac conference by satellite that he was ready for negotiations with the Palestinians.
But Aipac has moved to counter any new White House initiative by trying to mobilise Congress against it through the letter, written by two people seen as extremely close to the lobby group – Steny Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader in the House of Representatives, and Eric Cantor, the Republican whip. The two men addressed an Aipac banquet attended by more than half the members of Congress on Monday, each standing in turn at a “roll call” of support for Israel. On the face of it, the letter is a call for a peace, but its specifics urge Obama to maintain years of US policy that has tacitly accepted Israeli stalling of peace negotiations. The letter says that “the best way to achieve future success between Israelis and Palestinians will be by adhering to basic principles that have undergirded our policy”.
These include “acceptance that the parties themselves must negotiate the details of any agreement” as well as demanding that the Palestinians first “build the institutions necessary for a viable state” before gaining independence.
Jeremy Ben-Ami, the leader of J-street, a pro-Israel lobby group that favours the swift establishment of a Palestinian state, said that, while Aipac claims it supports a two-state solution, the letter is an attempt to prevent the White House from putting pressure on Israel to make that happen.
“They don’t come right out and say we don’t want Israel to make concessions, we don’t want Israel to leave the West Bank,” he said.
“They’ll say, ‘Of course we believe there should be peace’. But then they’ll do what this letter does. “They’ll say, ‘When the Israeli government decides it is ready to have a two-state solution, then there’ll be a two-state solution’.” Aipac wields considerable influence in the US Congress. Its critics say that what amounts to bullying pressure tactics has narrowed the room for debate about Israel, and claim the group has played a leading role in unseating some members of Congress who were critical of the Jewish state’s policies.
Of course there will be an inquiry. And in the meantime, we shall be told that all the dead Afghan civilians were being used as “human shields” by the Taliban and we shall say that we “deeply regret” innocent lives that were lost. But we shall say that it’s all the fault of the terrorists, not our heroic pilots and the US Marine special forces who were target spotting around Bala Baluk and Ganjabad.
When the Americans destroy Iraqi homes, there is an inquiry. And oh how the Israelis love inquiries (though they rarely reveal anything). It’s the history of the modern Middle East. We are always right and when we are not, we (sometimes) apologise and then we blame it all on the “terrorists”. Yes, we know the throat-cutters and beheaders and suicide bombers are quite prepared to slaughter the innocent.
But it was a sign of just how terrible the Afghan slaughter was that the powerless President Hamid Karzai sounded like a beacon of goodness yesterday appealing for “a higher platform of morality” in waging war, that we should conduct war as “better human beings”.
And of course, the reason is quite simple. We live, they die. We don’t risk our brave lads on the ground – not for civilians. Not for anything. Fire phosphorus shells into Fallujah. Fire tank shells into Najaf. We know we kill the innocent. Israel does exactly the same. It said the same after its allies massacred 1,700 at the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila in 1982 and in the deaths of more than a thousand civilians in Lebanon in 2006 and after the death of more than a thousand Palestinians in Gaza this year.
And if we kill some gunmen at the same time – “terrorists”, of course – then it is the same old “human shield” tactic and ultimately the “terrorists” are to blame. Our military tactics are now fully aligned with Israel.
The reality is that international law forbids armies from shooting wildly in crowded tenements and bombing wildly into villages – even when enemy forces are present – but that went by the board in our 1991 bombing of Iraq and in Bosnia and in Nato’s Serbia war and in our 2001 Afghan adventure and in 2003 in Iraq. Let’s have that inquiry. And “human shields”. And terror, terror, terror. Something else I notice. Innocent or “terrorists”, civilians or Taliban, always it is the Muslims who are to blame.
This week, for the first time since he took office, Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu has been looking worried. People who have spoken with him found him short-tempered, almost testy. The problems piling up on his desk are burying the sweet victory of his return to the Prime Minister’s Bureau: His approaching visit with U.S. President Barack Obama is looking less and less like cause for rejoicing amid the ill winds emanating from Washington. Before that he has Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to deal with, and in between, a budget that skimps on education, welfare and health, and is cruel to children at risk, the unemployed, demobilized soldiers, widows and new mothers.
After the draft budget was submitted to government ministers Wednesday night – proposing cuts in funds for Holocaust survivors, the elderly and the disabled – Netanyahu’s bureau sent out a hysterical beeper notice to reporters retracting the cuts. Labor Party ministers who just a week ago were singing Netanyahu’s praises boycotted the Knesset session on Monday, when the plenum voted to split various ministerial portfolios.
However, the one who blew Netanyahu’s fuse this week was his protege and right-hand man, who put together his coalition: Gideon Sa’ar, the new education minister. This week, for the first time, Netanyahu found out what it means to be in Sa’ar’s sights, when the latter decided to fight for the education budget, which has already been cut numerous times over the past decade. It began at the meeting of the Likud ministers last Friday, when Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz presented the budget. At the end of the discussion Netanyahu said something along the line of: Okay, we’re deciding that we support the government’s budget.
By Gideon Levy
Cancel the new Information and Diaspora Ministry, let the new foreign minister go, and we may as well shut down the information departments at Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu – we have a new propaganda minister. We’ve had better and worse presidents, but we’ve never had a president who served as government propagandist. Now we do: Shimon Peres has appointed himself to the unworthy task. Since the new government formed – the most right-wing government in Israel’s history – the (seemingly) left-wing (former) peace man has become its public relations agent.
Indefatigable as always, he has launched a worldwide campaign consisting of phone calls to statesmen, media interviews and visits overseas. His goal – slapping the kosher stamp of approval on what the world sees as an abomination. Instead of the real picture, he is giving them another masquerade.
First he legitimized Avigdor Lieberman (who said on Tuesday in Italy that “nothing has come from this whole peace industry,” which Peres cogenerated), then Benjamin Netanyahu – both men of peace par excellence in our president’s eyes. On what basis exactly? Trust Peres. It culminated of course during his visit in Washington, when Peres told his hosts: “Netanyahu is seeking a historic peace,” and “Since he was elected I haven’t heard him speaking against a two-state solution … peace is at the top of his priorities.” No less. Netanyahu’s spokesmen couldn’t have done it better. Do we have to ask who put him in that role? Is the president’s job to act as the prime minister’s spokesman? Is it appropriate for the president to reward Netanyahu this way for arranging him a visit to the White House?
And let’s assume Peres thought otherwise – that Netanyahu is the obstacle to peace and that Lieberman is no less than a declared racist – would he have dared to say so? And if he had, what a scandal that would have erupted over the state president’s forbidden involvement. But to praise in vain is permitted. Peres did not skip even the perverse comparison of Iran to Nazi Germany. The Israeli president may cheapen the Holocaust’s memory like this; he is allowed to compare. But when Israel’s critics dare draw such a parallel, they are automatically branded as Israel haters and anti-Semites. Peres, the statesman who firmly objected to the Begin government’s bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor, is now the lead vocalist in the national intimidation choir against Iran, conducted by maestro Netanyahu. This, too, is inexplicable. Peres also hasn’t forgotten the shopworn, hollow old slogans about Israel’s yearning for peace, slogans for which one might still find dubious buyers only occasionally in America.
Interior Minister Eli Yishai has announced he intends to begin proceedings to revoke the citizenship of four Arab citizens suspected of hostile activity against the State of Israel. Yishai says he is seeking to reassert his authority to revoke citizenship by changing the law delegating that authority to district courts. The amendment made to the Citizenship Law last August transferred authority to revoke citizenship to district courts sitting as courts for administrative affairs, so that such action could not be taken by a politically-motivated official such as the interior minister.
Revoking citizenship is a tremendous responsibility, the use of which is supposed to be made only in rare or extraordinary circumstances so as to prevent unnecessarily compromising a legally-enshrined right. The law, however, defines the right to revoke citizenship broadly – if the suspect has committed a breach of trust against the state through an act of terrorism, active participation in a terror group, an act of treason or espionage, or acquisition of citizenship or permanent residence in an enemy country – but even then, it is clear it should be a last resort, implemented when there is no alternative.
The interior minister is authorized to file a petition to a court toward revoking citizenship, but only with the written consent of the attorney general. In 2002, before the Citizenship Law was amended, Yishai sought to revoke the citizenship of several Arab citizens. Then-attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein said it would be a “grave and far-reaching step,” as committing an act of breach of trust could be interpreted so broadly that intelligence indicating hostile activity towards the state would be enough to revoke citizenship, even if there were not sufficient evidence for even a criminal conviction. The decision to revoke citizenship can be upheld from a legal perspective only if it can be proven that taking such drastic action towards an individual is necessary, and the goal of enhancing security cannot be met through lesser means. The prime minister, defense minister and justice minister – and not only the interior minister – must consider the political and diplomatic damage likely to be caused by taking such extraordinary measures. All the more so during the term of an administration in which a central faction is seeking to obligate Israeli citizens to take an oath of loyalty.
Like the Third Reich, the Israeli regime does everything legally… this is an obvious Nazi move against the people of Palestine, and should be understood and explained as such.
This issue of the blog is heavily peppered with Electronic Intifada article. This excellent website is a must for all who are interested in Palestine and has been doing a most admirable job over many years, led ably by Ali Abunimah. You are well advised to use its RSS feeds, hence always being informed of the latest articles.
Spanish National Court judge Fernando Andreu announced Monday that he will pursue his investigation into a 2002 Israeli bombing in the Gaza Strip, despite contrary advice by prosecutors at the court. The prosecutors had argued that the attack, which killed Hamas leader Salah Shehade and 14 others, was still under investigation by Israel. Andreu said that did not appear to be the case and, even if it were, the Spanish judiciary could simultaneously investigate the charges because they could be classified as war crimes. The National Court has become known for its inquiries into alleged human rights abuses in other countries, ranging from Chile and Argentina to Tibet and Western Sahara. The suspects named by Andreu include former Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and six current or former army officers or security officials. The probe is based on a complaint lodged by a Palestinian human rights group at the National Court. The case has created some tension between Spain and Israel. The Spanish government told Israel that it planned to limit the possibilities of Spanish courts to investigate possible human rights abuses in other countries.
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams says he believes there can be progress in the Middle East after talking to Gaza’s Hamas prime minister.
Mr Adams had an hour long meeting with Ismail Haniya on Wednesday night. Hamas, which rules Gaza, is listed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US and EU. Mr Adams said he was encouraged by the dialogue. “Mr Haniya told me that Hamas wants a peace agreement,” he said.
The meeting came at the end of a day in which Mr Adams met with civic, political and business leaders in Gaza. He also toured parts of northern Gaza devastated by the Israeli operation in the Palestinian territory in January.
He said: “I welcome the opportunity to engage with so many people. “I was pleased to speak directly with Mr Haniya. I outlined to him Sinn Féin’s view that there should be a complete cessation of all hostilities and armed actions by all sides. “The fact is that the people of Palestine and the people of Israel are destined to live side by side. I believe that most people want a peaceful accommodation. “Following my meeting with Mr Haniya I believe that progress is possible.
