No more make-believe in the Middle East
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- Written by Norman H. Olsen Norman H. Olsen
- Published: 29 April 2009 29 April 2009
- Hits: 3111 3111
Bibi's policies may be misguided, but at least he doesn't pretend to be a peacemaker. Such intellectual honesty could prove salutary.
Cherryfield, Maine - Let's not be so hard on Bibi.
The squealing on the Israeli and American left is making Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu out to be a minority radical, a warmonger among the majority progressives who want a just peace with the Palestinians.
In reality, the bad news – and the good – is that Mr. Netanyahu doesn't pretend to be a peacemaker.
Let's look at the record.
Settlement construction, including the massive developments encircling Jerusalem, has continued for four decades. All of Bibi's predecessors – even the "doves" – never once slowed settlement construction, despite their repeated assurances. Throughout, despite intensive US monitoring and reporting on growth, the US has always pretended to believe them.
In the early 1990s, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told the US that settlement sites such as Har Homa were merely in the planning stages. When site work began, he claimed that it was only preparatory work with no approval for construction. When ministry approvals for construction were given, he and his successors claimed that they would prevent construction. Today Har Homa stands as one of the many monuments to the success of deny, deny, deny.
The latest and final major link in the chain of Jerusalem-encircling settlements, known as E1, has followed exactly the same progression. E1 is important, because if it is allowed to become a town, it will effectively split the West Bank in two, ending hopes for a two-state solution. US observers, myself included, reported during the past six years the clear evidence of site preparation, only to be told by the highest levels of the Israeli government that roadbeds, drainage systems, terracing, and other clearly observable major works were "erosion control." Again, the US pretended to believe the official spin.
Former Israeli Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert told the US repeatedly that the separation barrier would not be used for political purposes, and that its route through the West Bank, rather than along the internationally accepted "Green Line," was to provide security "setback" for towns on the Israeli side of the Green Line. Again, the US pretended to believe them.
Today, the tens of thousands of acres of West Bank land between the Green Line and the separation barrier are the fastest-growing areas for settlement construction, all built right up against the barrier, with no security setback, ensuring Israeli facts on the ground.
The Obama-Netanyahu Showdown
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- Written by Robert Dreyfuss Robert Dreyfuss
- Published: 28 April 2009 28 April 2009
- Hits: 3310 3310
deal with Israel's Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who'll be making his
first visit to the United States as Israel's new leader in mid-May.
The Obama-Netanyahu meeting promises to be a showdown.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, the veteran strategist and hardliner -- who was
Jimmy Carter's national security adviser -- told a conference
yesterday that in the history of US peacemaking in the Middle East,
the United States has never once spelled out its own vision for what a
two-state solution would look like. That, said Brzezinski, is exactly
what President Obama needs to do. And fast.
Brzezinski was speaking at a conference on US-Saudi relations
sponsored by the New America Foundation and Saudi Arabia's Committee
on International Trade. Brzezinski, who advised Obama early in the
presidential campaign, was exiled from Obamaland after his
less-than-devout support for Israel made him a liability.
"The United States has to spell out the minimum parameters of peace,"
said Zbig. Perhaps in deference to the conference's Saudi sponsors,
Brzezinski said that there is an "urgent need for a US-Saudi alliance
for peace in the Middle East." Other speakers on a star-studded
opening panel were Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator from
Nebraska and Prince Turki al-Faisal, who served for decades as the
head of Saudi Arabia's intelligence service.
Turki, who also served as Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United
States, warned Obama to preempt Netanyahu, who intends to tell the
president that there can't be progress in the Israel-Palestine
conflict until the United States solves the problem of Iran's pursuit
of nuclear weapons to Israel's satisfaction. Obama, said Turki, should
tell the Israeli leader: "Mr. Netanyahu, you have to listen to me
first." Rita Hauser, the veteran conservative strategist on the panel,
agreed: "Netanyahu has to learn very quickly that the president means
business."
Hauser, long associated with the RAND Corporation and other
thinktanks, also said bluntly that the United States is going to have
to deal with Hamas, which she called a "central element" of
Palestinian politics. "Hamas will control Gaza," she said. She urged
the administration to take steps to encourage the formation of a
Palestinian unity government, involving Hamas and Fatah, the central
pillar of the old Palestine Liberation Organization.
Obama, said Hauser, will find it politically difficult to talk to
Hamas. (Translated: She means that the Israel lobby and its friends in
Congress would go ballistic.) So she recommends that Washington
encourage the Europeans in their dialogue with Hamas and allow Saudi
Arabia to help broker a deal. (Egypt is already trying to swing a
Fatah-Hamas deal.) The current chaos in Palestinian circles benefits
Israel, she said, and she accused former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon of deliberately splintering the Palestinians by withdrawing
from Gaza, an action that allowed Gaza to fall to Hamas.
A Hamas-Fatah accord is an important, even crucial, first step in
making any progress toward an Israel-Palestine two-state solution,
which Obama says he supports strongly -- and which Netanyahu opposes.
Getting it done won't be easy, however. At the conference, Turki
pointed out that "the popularity of Hamas skyrocketed" after the
December-January invasion of Gaza by Israel. "In the eyes of the
Palestinians,
might be a lot harder to convince Hamas to make concessions.
But both Saudi Arabia and Egypt, of course, are suspicious of Hamas,
not only because of its radicalism but because of its ties to Iran.
According to the Egyptians, who are sponsoring talks in Cairo between
the two Palestinian factions, Iran is pressing Hamas to resist a deal.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal today, Abdel Monem Said Ali of
Egypt's premier thinktank said:
After the war [in Gaza] ended, Egypt resumed its efforts to reach
a long-term cease-fire. Iran pressured the Hamas leadership to resist.
Cairo's ongoing effort to build a Palestinian unity government, by
bringing together Fatah and Hamas, has also been undermined by intense
Iranian pressure on Hamas.
Obama needs to tell Netanyahu, in public or privately, that he
supports a Hamas-Fatah accord and that the United States will deal
with a Palestinian unity government. He needs to explain to Netanyahu
that he won't be diverted by Israel's alarmist cries about Iran,
instead maintaining the focus on the two-state solution. And, as
Brzezinksi says, Obama needs to outline his vision for a deal. The
world knows what it means: the removal of Israel's illegal settlements
in the West Bank, the withdrawal of Israel to its '67 borders, the
partition of Jerusalem in some fashion to allow the Palestinians to
have their capital in East Jerusalem, and an equitable deal over the
Palestinians right-to-return to the former Palestine, involving a
hefty financial compensation to those who were forced to flee their
homes in 1948 and 1967. The world knows it. Now, Obama has to say it.
Not an analogy: Israel and the crime of apartheid
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- Written by Hazem Jamjoum, The Electronic Intifada Hazem Jamjoum, The Electronic Intifada
- Published: 27 April 2009 27 April 2009
- Hits: 2987 2987
Many of the writings stemming from this analysis work to detail levels of similarity and difference with apartheid South Africa, rather than looking at apartheid as a system that can be practiced by any state. To some extent, this strong emphasis on historical comparisons is understandable given that boycott, divestment and sanctions is the central campaign called for by Palestinian civil society for solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle, and is modeled on the one that helped end South African apartheid. However, an over-emphasis on similarities and differences confines the use of the term to narrow limits. With the expanding agreement that the term "apartheid" is useful in describing the level and layout of Israel's crimes, it is important that our understanding of the "apartheid label" be deepened, both as a means of informing activism in support of the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle, and in order to most effectively make use of comparisons with other struggles.
Jerusalem settlement 'extended'
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- Written by BBC News BBC News
- Published: 27 April 2009 27 April 2009
- Hits: 2815 2815
Construction has begun on approximately 60 new homes in a Jewish settlement in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, the Israeli campaign group Peace Now says.
The work, in East Talpiot settlement, is aimed at creating a belt around East Jerusalem that would sever it from the rest of the West Bank, the group says.
Settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law.
Israel disputes this and also argues that East Jerusalem is not subject to its pledge to freeze settlement work.
Israel's claim is based on its annexation of East Jerusalem, unrecognised by the international community, which it captured along with the West Bank and other Arab territory in the 1967 war.
'Not one centimetre'
Peace Now's Hagit Ofran said the work in East Talpiot in south-east Jerusalem aims to build "housing units for Orthodox religious Jewish families right next to the Palestinian neighbourhood of Arab al-Sawahra".
The housing complex is made up of three blocks of flats containing about 60 homes, Peace Now says.
"We are against this project, which is harming the hopes for peace," Ms Ofran said in remarks to AFP news agency.
Jerusalem municipal officials declined to comment about the building work, which Peace Now said began two months ago.
Successive Israeli governments have asserted that East Jerusalem is an "eternal, indivisible" part of Israel.
In a speech in Ramallah, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he would not give in to Israeli or international pressure to resume negotiations if settlement construction continues.
"All I know is that there is the state of Israel, in the borders of 1967, not one centimetre more, not one centimetre less. Anything else, I don't accept," Mr Abbas said.
About 200,000 Israeli Jews live in homes in East Jerusalem, with a further 250,000 settlers living in other parts of the West Bank, on land Palestinian negotiators have sought as part of a future Palestinian state.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/8020825.stm
Published: 2009/04/27 13:02:36 GMT
© BBC MMIX
The killing of Bassem Aburahma
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- Written by Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
- Published: 27 April 2009 27 April 2009
- Hits: 2851 2851
In this video tape, Bassem Aburahma (nick named ElFeel, the elephant, for he was always thought of as a giant among his peers) is seen pleading with Israeli soldiers to wait (saying Raiga in Hebrew) as Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals protested the land confiscation and building of the apartheid fence on vilage land. The soldiers then shoot Bassem point blank with a high velocity gas grenade which kills him within five minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlbzuZ_50mU
and here is a video of the funeral the next day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F91H8sR64Ro