Egypt: Israel must halt building in East Jerusalem before talks, US denies backing down on freeze
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- Written by Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondent, and The Associated Press Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondent, and The Associated Press
- Published: 28 August 2009 28 August 2009
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Ahmed Aboul-Gheit told reporters in Stockholm on Friday that Jerusalem is Arab "and it will continue to be so."
He said the Arab world expects the area to be included in a moratorium on Israeli settlements.
The Obama administration has hinted it may be backing down on its insistence that Israel halt all settlement activity as a condition for restarting peace talks with the Palestinians.
U.S. officials have denied Israeli media reports that Washington has agreed to leave East Jerusalem out of the agreement and settle for a nine- to 12-month freeze in the West Bank.
A State Department spokesman said on Friday that the Obama administration will be flexible on pre-conditions for all parties involved in Middle East peace negotiations.
"We put forward our ideas, publicly and privately, about what it will take for negotiations to be restarted, but ultimately it'll be up to the parties themselves, with our help, to determine whether that threshold has been met," spokesman P.J. Crowley said, adding that the U.S. position on an Israeli settlement freeze remains unchanged.
"Ultimately," he added, "this is not a process by which the United States will impose conditions on Israel, on the Palestinian Authority, on other countries.
"We're asking them to meet their commitments under the Roadmap, but most importantly, we're asking them what they're prepared to do and to demonstrate the steps that that they are prepared to take that allow us to have confidence that these negotiations can be restarted," he said.
The White House said Thursday it had nothing to add to Crowley's comments.
The administration's special Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, has been pressing Israel, the Palestinians and neighboring Arab nations to take specific confidence-building measures to lay the groundwork for a resumption in peace negotiations. The administration wants to have President Barack Obama announce a breakthrough in the third week of September at or on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
Getting Arab buy-in on such a deal will be difficult, particularly since Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has refused to resume negotiations with Israel until there is a full freeze on settlements. U.S. officials said Thursday that they will continue to press Israel for as broad a suspension as possible.
But they also acknowledged that a compromise from the previous hard stance on settlements laid out by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton may be necessary due to the equally firm line taken by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent talks with Mitchell.
Clinton said in May that Israel needed to apply a freeze on all new settlement construction, including so-called natural growth in existing projects in the West Bank. It would also apply to activity in east Jerusalem, notably the eviction of Palestinian families and demolition of Palestinian homes.
Mitchell met Netanyahu in London on Wednesday for talks that both sides said made unspecified good progress but did not produce an agreement on a freeze. Mitchell will hold follow-up talks next week with an Israeli delegation in the United States, although officials downplayed chances for a breakthrough.
Crowley and other U.S. officials denied Israeli media reports that Mitchell had agreed to leave East Jerusalem out of the agreement and settle for a nine- to 12-month freeze in the West Bank only that would also allow the completion of projects already under construction.
However, diplomats familiar with talks say that the administration has signaled it might be able to accept an understanding on East Jerusalem that would entail an Israeli promise not to take any provocative actions there.
The “Elders”, Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu visit the Apartheid wall in Bil’in
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- Written by ISM ISM
- Published: 28 August 2009 28 August 2009
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27 August 2009
Bil’in village, West Bank: Former US president Jimmy Carter, Mrs. Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa visited the site of the Apartheid Wall on the land of the village of Bil’in.
The Carters and Archbishop Tutu came to Bil’in together with their colleagues from The “Elders” delegation, former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former Norwegian prime minister Gro
Brundtland, former Irish president and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, Indian human rights activist Ela Bhatt, and renowned businessmen Richard Branson and Jeff Skoll.
Former president Carter pointed to the land on the other side of the wall where the settlement of Modi’in Illit is being built: “This is not Israel; this is Palestine and settlements must be removed from Palestinian land so that justice will be restored in the area.”
Desmond Tutu encouraged the Palestinian activists: “ Just as a simple man named Ghandi led the successful non-violent struggle in India and simple people such as Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandela led the struggle
for civil rights in the United States, simple people here in Bil’in are leading a non-violent struggle that will bring them their freedom. The South Africa experience proves that injustice can be dismantled.”
The “Elders” placed symbolic stones on the monument commemorating Bassem Abu Rahme, a non-violent activist who was shot dead on the 17th April 2009 while attempting to speak with Israeli soldiers during a non-violent demonstration.
(A video can be seen on http://palsolidarity.org/2009/04/6185)
The Bil’in popular committee and their friends including Luisa Morgantini, the former vice president of the European Parliament, and Israeli activists welcomed the delegation and invited them to participate in Bil’in’s annual conference for non-violent popular resistance. The delegation met Raja Abu Rahme, the daughter of Adib
Abu Rahme, a leading non-violent activist from Bil’in. Adib was arrested on 10th July during a non-violent demonstration and is being held in Ofer military prison (see: http://palsolidarity.org/2009/07/7652).
Raja told them about her father’s arrest and about the night raid arrests that the Israeli military began in Bil’in on 23rd June 2009.
Bil’in will be holding its weekly demonstration tomorrow, on Friday, the 28th August at 1:00 PM. The Palestinian village of Bil’in has become an international symbol of the Palestinian popular struggle.
For almost 5 years, its residents have been continuously struggling against the de facto annexation of more then 50% of their farmlands and the construction of the apartheid wall on it. In a celebrated decision, the Israeli Supreme court ruled on the 4 September 2007 that
the current route of the wall in Bil’in was illegal and needs to be dismantled; the ruling however has not been implemented.
Time for Churches to Embrace BDS
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- Written by James M. Wall James M. Wall
- Published: 27 August 2009 27 August 2009
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By James M. Wall
This is not the time for U.S. denominations to keep debating inadequate, diluted, compromised resolutions on “peace in the Holy Land”.
It is rather, kairos time, the moment to move against Israel’s apartheid dominance over four million Palestinians by embracing the non-violent strategy of BDS, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.
Christian denominations have spent far too many years trapped in dreary hotel conference rooms working to “get along” with one another by approving meaningless resolutions that fooled few and excited none.
Resolution time has far outlived its expiration date. It is time to join a growing number of justice-oriented communities and take direct action against Israel’s oppressive actions against an oppressed people.
I can hear all those denomination legislative purists out there reminding me that church legislative procedures are as cumbersome as the U.S. Congress, which has mastered the art of delay, delay, delay.
I also know that BDS cannot be implemented into action projects until deliberative bodies bless the action through legislation.
I was in grade school at the time, but I remember December 7, 1941, when Franklin D. Roosevelt asked the Congress to declare that a “state of war has existed” against Japan.
The Congress did not delay. There were no long speeches nor haggling over details. They just did it. We must understand BDS as a declaration of non violent action against a major injustice. No more speeches, no more haggling.
And no more listening to those who claim they oppose BDS because they do not wish to harm”fragile” relations with their Jewish neighbors. No more singing Cum Ba Ya instead of fighting injustice.
The BDS train is leaving the station while United Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, UCCs and the rest of the NCCC crowd, sit huddled back in their conference hotel rooms, thinking they will catch a later train, “when our people are ready”.
Not all of them, of course, remained huddled in their rooms. Some found soul mates, and started groups like the Israel/Palestine Mission Network, which was created to work on projects that would “help Presbyterians understand the facts on the ground” in Palestine and Israel.
This network focused on the gospel and justice. Most recently, its members have produced a remarkable four-color, illustrated, study publication, Steadfast Hope: The Palestinian Quest for Just Peace, complete with a DVD which may be used in church classes along with Steadfast Hope.
Walt Davis, a Presbyterian clergyman who teaches at San Francisco Theological Seminary, is the Project Coordinator. He has worked with a staff of talented writers, designers, and photographers to create a book that will start a congregation down the straight path of hope, steadfast hope.
MLKThis study project reaches far beyond the Presbyterian tradition to embrace all who want to shake their faith communities out of their “go slow” lethargy. It is a project that prepares the way for action like BDS.
This book confronts the stultifying grip the fear of offending our fellow Jewish religionists has over mainline Christians. The book uses “facts on the ground” to attack the ”go slow” strategy which blocks actions against injustice.
Martin Luther King, Jr., confronted this “go slow until our people are ready” religious mindset when he sat in a Birmingham, Alabama, jail cell, writing a letter on April, 16, 1963, to Protestant, Catholic and Jewish leaders in the city.
He addressed them as “My Dear Fellow Clergymen” since they were all duly recognized as clergy leaders (five of them were bishops) and they were all male. In his letter, he wrote:
I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid. . . .
I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. . .
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.
“Go slow; our people are not ready”. The church mantra of the 1960s was immoral then; it is immoral in 2009.
King used demonstrations. They put him in jail. Later he would be killed, shot down by an assassin while the man of peace stood on a hotel balcony. Fifty years later, some church members, joined by allies who are Jews, Muslims, and non-believers, have also used demonstrations.
They don’t go to jail; they are just ignored. Now they have begun to act in harmony on BDS.
Divestment draws the greatest cry of “go slow” because it works. To withdraw investment funds from corporations that are supporting the Israeli Occupation is painful to the Occupiers and their supporters, because it is a reminder of the effectiveness of the same tactic once used in South Africa. It carries with it the awful tag of “apartheid”.
The Occupiers have spent enormous sums convincing the media and members of Congress of the truth of their narrative that must include a Benign Occupation if it is to survive the scrutiny of history.
A Benign Occupation is an oxymoron of such magnitude that for anyone to accept it as a Truth is to guarantee a visit to the Penalty Box for anyone guilty of committing the foul of Believing False Oxymorons That Do Bodily Harm to God’s Children.
Divestment confronts the lie of the Benign Occupation, with its bulldozers tearing down family homes and building prison walls that run for hundreds of miles. Are you listening Caterpillar, down there in your Peoria, Illinois headquarter?
Divestment confronts the anguish and death of a young woman named Rachel Corrie, crushed to death by a bulldozer destroying a family home in Gaza, a death reluctantly “investigated” by Israeli authorities and dismissed as a an accident, a death ignored by the U.S. Congress which is normally agitated into swift action by the death of an American citizen in a foreign land.
It is time for American churches to act against Occupation by boycott, divestment and sanctions. That means no buying of products made on Occupied soil, no more church investment in corporations guilty of supporting Occupation, and sanctions against the Israeli economy if the lighter penalties of boycott and divestment fail to end the Occupation.
Look outside the church windows, fellow believers. Pay attention to the recent essay in the Los Angeles Times, by Neve Gordon, a young Israeli scholar who is the author of Israel’s Occupation. He teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel.
Gordon includes “faith based organizations” in his direct call for boycott action. He writes:
Israeli newspapers this summer are filled with angry articles about the push for an international boycott of Israel. Films have been withdrawn from Israeli film festivals, Leonard Cohen is under fire around the world for his decision to perform in Tel Aviv. . . . Clearly, the campaign to use the kind of tactics that helped put an end to the practice of apartheid in South Africa is gaining many followers around the world.
In a clear indication that economic pressure is an effective tactic often used to defend Israel, Ha’aretz, a Jerusalem newspaper, reported:
Members of the Los Angeles Jewish community have threatened to withhold donations to an Israeli university in protest of an op-ed published by a prominent Israeli academic in the Los Angeles Times on Friday, in which he called to boycott Israel economically, culturally and politically.
Dr. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University in Be’er Sheva, a veteran peace activist, branded Israel as an apartheid state and said that a boycott was “the only way to save it from itself.”
Gordon, a political scientist, said that “apartheid state” is the most accurate way to describe Israel today.
No official word on what impact the Los Angeles threat had on Ben Gurion University, but the President of the university, Rivka Carmi, told the Jerusalem Post that the “university may no longer be interested in his [Gordon's] services.” She added that “Academics who feel this way about their country, are welcome to search for a personal and professional home elsewhere.”
In a letter he is circulating to supporters of BDS, Sydney Levy, of Jewish Voice for Peace, called for support for Gordon through letters to President Carmi:
Is Prof. Carmi really calling on Professor Gordon to leave his country? Several [Israeli] Knesset members from the right called upon Carmi and the Minister of Education to sack Neve Gordon, while Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar called the article “repugnant and deplorable.
Jewish author and activist Naomi Klein posted on her blog, January 8. 2009, her case for “Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction”:
On July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups . . . called on “people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era.” The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions—BDS for short—was born.
Klein confronts a typical stalling tactic to the use of BDS with a sharp rebuttal to the argument that “punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis”.
“The world has tried what used to be called “constructive engagement.” It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures—quite the opposite. The weapons and $3 billion in annual aid that the US sends to Israel is only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies.
A carefully researched case for BDS has been made in the Americans for Middle East Understanding (AMEU) publication, The Link, in its September-October 2009 issue. The essay, “Ending Israel’s Occupation”, was written by Link editor, John Mahoney.
At one point in his essay, Mahoney describes the death of Rachel Corrie, (referenced above), and then follows the Corrie family’s journey through the U.S. legal system:
Rachel’s parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, filed a lawsuit against the American company, Caterpillar, the manufacturer of the armored bulldozer that crushed their daughter. In it they alleged that Caterpillar sold the D9 bulldozers to Israel knowing full well that they would be used to unlawfully demolish homes and endanger civilians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The case was dismissed in November 2005.
The Corries appealed and, in July 2007, they argued before a judge in a Seattle, WA court that corporations must be held accountable for their corporate behavior. Lawyers for Caterpillar argued that Israel’s home demolitions were legal and that American judges do not have the jurisdiction to pass judgment on the state of Israel.
Lawyers for the Corries countered that the U.S. Government has publicly condemned Israel’s policy of building settlements, and that their case was not about the U.S. Government. Instead, they said, the suit was about a corporation’s selling equipment to a foreign country that was known to use that equipment in human rights abuses.
In August 2007, the federal appeals court rejected the Corrie’s appeal.
Meanwhile, Caterpillar has continued to sell armored bulldozers to Israel, and Israel continues to use them to demolish Palestinian homes, to destroy ancient olive gardens and to build Jewish-only roads, Jewish-only settlements, and an apartheid wall, all on confiscated Palestinian land.
The U.S. court system refused to move against Caterpillar. The Israeli army and the Israeli court system blocked attempts by Cindy and Craig Corrie, to secure justice in the death of their 23-year-old daughter.
This leaves the task to groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, courageous scholars like Neve Gordon, and writers like Naomi Klein, to fight for justice from within the Jewish tradition. And from the Christian side of the aisle? There are strong voices, to be sure. But at the higher official levels?
The church leaders who received the Letter from the Birmingham Jail from Martin Luther King, Jr., were victims of the blindness of their own past, a blindness that plagued them to the end.
What then, may we expect from the Christian community today? More lukewarm resolutions, more stalling, more Cum Ba Ya? More waiting for President Obama to persuade the Israelis to “freeze” settlement building? Or will there be a stirring of the Christian spirit, rising up in anger against an oppressive Occupation?
If that stirring fails to emerge soon, then we face a replay of that overwhelming sense of shame that burdened those church leaders and church members, who ignored Dr. King’s message in the 1960s that “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly”.
Why Israel will thwart Obama on settlements
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- Written by Walter Rodgers in The Christian Science Monitor Walter Rodgers in The Christian Science Monitor
- Published: 26 August 2009 26 August 2009
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The idea that the Obama administration can advance the Middle East peace process by having Israel freeze its construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank stretches credulity.
Does any serious observer of the region believe that Israel's appetite for land – owned and occupied for generations by Palestinians – is going to abate?
The Israeli land grab has continued for four decades, in defiance of international law and most US presidents. US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has been trying to secure a halt, but his efforts follow a well-worn path that typically ends in charade.
Just weeks ago, the Israeli government evicted two extended Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem, clearing the way for more houses for Jews in traditionally Palestinian neighborhoods.
Barack Obama on brink of deal for Middle East peace talks
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- Written by Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Julian Borger Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Julian Borger
- Published: 25 August 2009 25 August 2009
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Barack Obama on brink of deal for Middle East peace talks
• US to adopt much tougher line over Iran's nuclear ambitions
• Israel to freeze construction of settlements on West Bank
• France and Russia offer to host Middle East peace conference
* Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Julian Borger
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 25 August 2009 20.00 BST
* http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/25/barack-obama-middle-east-peace
Palestinians walk through a door in a section of the barrier between Jerusalem and the West Bank
Palestinians walk through a door in a section of the barrier between Jerusalem and the West Bank. Photograph: Muhammed Muheisen/AP
Barack Obama is close to brokering an Israeli-Palestinian deal that will allow him to announce a resumption of the long-stalled Middle East peace talks before the end of next month, according to US, Israeli, Palestinian and European officials.
Key to bringing Israel on board is a promise by the US to adopt a much tougher line with Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons programme. The US, along with Britain and France, is planning to push the United Nations security council to expand sanctions to include Iran's oil and gas industry, a move that could cripple its economy.
In return, the Israeli government will be expected to agree to a partial freeze on the construction of settlements in the Middle East. In the words of one official close to the negotiations: "The message is: Iran is an existential threat to Israel; settlements are not."
Details of the breakthrough deal will be hammered out tomorrow in London, where the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is due to hold talks with the US special envoy, George Mitchell. Netanyahu met Gordon Brown today in Downing Street, where the two discussed both settlements and the Iranian nuclear programme.
Although the negotiations are being held in private, they have reached such an advanced stage that both France and Russia have approached the US offering to host a peace conference.
Obama has pencilled in the announcement of his breakthrough for either a meeting of world leaders at the UN general assembly in New York in the week beginning 23 September or the G20 summit in Pittsburgh on 24-25 September.
The president, who plans to make his announcement flanked by Netanyahu and the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas – plus the leaders of as many Arab states as he can muster – hopes that a final peace agreement can be negotiated within two years, a timetable viewed as unrealistic by Middle East analysts.
Obama had hoped to unveil his plans before the start of Ramadan last weekend but failed to complete the deal with the Israelis or the Arab states in time.
As well as a tougher US approach to Iran, which the Israelis see as their top priority, the deal would see Israel offering a temporary and partial moratorium on the expansion of settlements on the West Bank in return for moves by Arab states towards normalisation of relations. This would allow Obama to announce talks on the bigger Israeli-Palestinian issues – borders, the future of Jerusalem and the future of Palestinian refugees – with the US sitting in as a mediator.
After the meeting at No 10 today, Netanyahu said he was hopeful that a compromise would be reached to allow the peace process to restart while Israeli settlers could "continue living normal lives". Brown said he emerged from the talks more optimistic about Middle East peace. He also pledged that if there were no immediate progress on the Iranian nuclear impasse, further sanctions would be "a matter of priority".
Although Netanyahu told his cabinet before leaving Israel that the deal would not be sealed in London tomorrow, he and Mitchell are now down to the fine detail.
Israel is offering a nine- to 12-month moratorium on settlement building that would exclude East Jerusalem and most of the 2,400 homes that Israel says work has already begun on.
Ian Kelly, a US state department spokesman, on Monday reflected the increasing optimism within the Obama administration, saying "we're getting closer to laying this foundation" for the resumption of talks.
Another official closely involved in the discussions said: "It has been pretty hard going but we are getting there. We are closer to a deal with the Israelis than many think. The Arabs are more difficult to pin down."
If Iran does not respond to UN demands that it stop enriching uranium by time of the UN and G20 summits, the US, Britain and France are to lead a UN security council push to expand sanctions, expected to target Iran's dependence on imports of refined petroleum products and its reliance on foreign technology to develop its oil and gas industry.
Russia and China are expected to object to such punitive measures, and any western attempt to enforce a partial embargo threatens to breach the broad international consensus on handling Iran.
A report on the Iranian programme by the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), due to be published by the end of this week, will be crucial in setting the scene for such sanctions, and the outgoing IAEA director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, has come under intense western pressure to make the report sharply critical of Tehran.
Israel, in return for a deal on settlements, is seeking not only a tougher line over Iran but normalisation of relations with Arab states, such as overflight rights for its airline El Al, establishment of trade offices and embassies, and an end to the ban on travellers with Israeli stamps in their passports.
Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco have so far tentatively agreed. Saudi Arabia has refused, saying Israel has had enough concessions.
But the US is taking comfort from the fact that, crucially, Saudi Arabia has not tried to block other Arab states from signing up. "They may come on board last, but they will come on board," a European official said.
A coalition of Arab states, thought to include the Saudis, has been in secret contact with Israel to discuss what they see as a common threat posed by Iran.