Israel lurches into fascism
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- Written by Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada
- Published: 14 February 2009 14 February 2009
- Hits: 3090 3090
This has never been true, and makes even less sense as Israeli parties begin coalition talks after Tuesday's election. Yes, the "peace camp" helped launch the "peace process," but it did much more to undermine the chances for a just settlement.
In 1993, Labor prime minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo accords. Ambiguities in the agreement -- which included no mention of "self-determination" or "independence" for Palestinians, or even "occupation" -- made it easier to clinch a short-term deal. But confrontation over irreconcilable expectations was inevitable. While Palestinians hoped the Palestinian Authority, created by the accord, would be the nucleus of an independent state, Israel viewed it as little more than a native police force to suppress resistance to continued occupation and colonial settlement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Collaboration with Israel has always been the measure by which any Palestinian leader is judged to be a "peace partner." Rabin, according to Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, "never thought this [Oslo] will end in a full-fledged Palestinian state." He was right.
Throughout the "peace process," Israeli governments, regardless of who led them, expanded Jewish-only settlements in the heart of the West Bank, the territory supposed to form the bulk of the Palestinian state. In the 1990s, Ehud Barak's Labor-led government actually approved more settlement expansion than the Likud-led government that preceded it headed by Benjamin Netanyahu.
Barak, once considered "dovish," promoted a bloodthirsty image in the campaign, bolstered by the massacres of Gaza civilians he directed as defense minister. "Who has he ever shot?" Barak quipped derisively about Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the proto-fascist Yisrael Beitenu party, in an attempt to paint the latter as a lightweight.
Today, Lieberman's party, which beat Labor into third place, will play a decisive role in a government. An immigrant who came to Israel from the former Soviet republic of Moldova, Lieberman was once a member of the outlawed racist party Kach that calls for expelling all Palestinians.
Yisrael Beitenu's manifesto was that 1.5 million Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel (indigenous survivors or descendants of the Palestinian majority ethnically cleansed in 1948) be subjected to a loyalty oath. If they don't swear allegiance to the "Jewish state" they would lose their citizenship and be forced from the land of their birth, joining millions of already stateless Palestinians in exile or in Israeli-controlled ghettos. In a move instigated by Lieberman but supported by Livni's allegedly "centrist" Kadima, the Knesset recently voted to ban Arab parties from participating in elections. Although the high court overturned it in time for the vote, it is an ominous sign of what may follow.
Lieberman, who previously served as deputy prime minister, has a long history of racist and violent incitement. Prior to Israel's recent attack, for example, he demanded Israel subject Palestinians to the brutal and indiscriminate violence Russia used in Chechyna. He also called for Arab Knesset members who met with officials from Hamas to be executed.
But it's too easy to make him the bogeyman. Israel's narrow political spectrum now consists at one end of the former "peace camp" that never halted the violent expropriation of Palestinian land for Jewish settlements and boasts with pride of the war crimes in Gaza, and at the other, a surging far-right whose "solutions" vary from apartheid to outright ethnic cleansing.
What does not help is brazen western hypocrisy. Already the US State Department spokesman affirmed that the Obama administration would work with whatever coalition emerged from Israel's "thriving democracy" and promised that the US would not interfere in Israel's "internal politics." Despite US President Barack Obama's sweet talk about a new relationship with the Arab world, few will fail to notice the double standard. In 2006, Hamas won a democratic election in the occupied territories, observed numerous unilateral or agreed truces that were violated by Israel, offered Israel a generation-long truce to set the stage for peace, and yet it is still boycotted by the US and European Union.
Worse, the US sponsored a failed coup against Hamas and continues to arm and train the anti-Hamas militias of Mahmoud Abbas, whose term as Palestinian Authority president expired on 9 January. As soon as he took office, Obama reaffirmed this boycott of Palestinian democracy.
The clearest message from Israel's election is that no Zionist party can solve Israel's basic conundrum and no negotiations will lead to a two-state solution. Israel could only be created as a "Jewish state" by the forced removal of the non-Jewish majority Palestinian population. As Palestinians once again become the majority in a country that has defied all attempts at partition, the only way to maintain Jewish control is through ever more brazen violence and repression of resistance (see Gaza). Whatever government emerges is certain to preside over more settlement-building, racial discrimination and escalating violence.
There are alternatives that have helped end what once seemed like equally intractable and bloody conflicts: a South African-style one-person one-vote democracy, or Northern Ireland-style power-sharing. Only under a democratic system according rights to all the people of the country will elections have the power to transform people's futures.
But Israel today is lurching into open fascism. It is utterly disingenuous to continue to pretend -- as so many do -- that its failed and criminal leaders hold the key to getting out of the morass. Instead of waiting for them to form a coalition, we must escalate the international civil society campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to force Israelis to choose a saner path.
Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006). A version of this article first appeared on the Guardian's Comment is Free website with the headline "No peace for Israel."
Prospects for Middle East Peace
- Details
- Written by Harry Shaw, CNI Harry Shaw, CNI
- Published: 14 February 2009 14 February 2009
- Hits: 3322 3322
Prospects for Middle East Peace
Part I: Gaza Realities
By Harry Shaw
In a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, Rashid Khalidi, Professor of Arab studies at Columbia University, stated: "Nearly everything you have been led to believe about Gaza is wrong." Indeed! There is no more appropriate launching pad for an examination of the prospects for peace in the Middle East than Khalidi's charge. Israel has avoided deserved condemnation for its conduct of the Gaza War by hiding behind a screen of misinformation and falsifications of the true story and denying access to journalists who could witness and report the truth about Israel's brutal assault on the people of Gaza.
Part I: Gaza Realities, of this three part series, reviews the background to events in Gaza and the consequences of a war of grossly disproportionate casualties: over 1,300 Gazans dead, many women and children, and some 5,500 injured and wounded, along with several billions in damage to homes and public structures, at the cost of 13 Israeli lives, a few injured and wounded, and minor damage to buildings.
Israel justifies its war on Gaza as a response to rocket attacks and on the false claim that the Islamic Palestinian movement, Hamas, is primarily a terrorist organization, beyond the law, that seized power from the legitimate Palestinian Authority (PA) when Israel withdrew its settlers and occupying troops in 2005. It is not commonly known that after
the Israeli withdrawal but before the 2006 elections, James Wolfensohn, former World Bank president, was engaged to draw up plans to bolster the Gaza Strip's isolated economy. But his plan foundered, in part because it was sabotaged by the Bush administration official in charge. Concurrently, Secretary of State Rice and her staff schemed to manipulate the 2006 election to ensure a victory for the rival Fatah movement at a time of growing Hamas popularity.
When these American schemes backfired and Hamas won the democratic elections
to the Palestinian Legislative Council, taking control of the Gaza government,
Secretary of State Rice responded by banning all contact with "terrorist" Hamas and supported Israel's economic blockade of Gaza, which clearly violates Israel's Geneva
Convention responsibilities as an occupying power for the welfare of the civil population. Israel's siege of the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza was, and continues to be, a serious violation of international law.
Although Hamas is widely represented by the press [as] a terrorist organization, Tom Segev of the Israeli daily, Ha'aretz, considers it "a genuine national and religious movement" that "cannot be bombed away." Israel and its supporters have long traded on Hamas rhetoric about destroying the Zionist state, as if a Palestine under Hamas control would be an existential threat to the strongest military power in the Middle East. As for Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel as a precondition to negotiations, it reflects a shrewd
understanding that "recognition" implies acceptance of borders which Israel declines to define while it continues to "create facts" on the West Bank that prejudice future
negotiations. Hamas insists on Israel's return to the 1967 borders and has offered to extend an Egyptian arranged truce for up to ten years if Israel accepts the 1967 borders.
Clearly, events in Gaza, including Israel's recent military assault there, are intimately
linked to the broader Palestinian-Israeli conflict over the division of land and the terms of a two-state solution of that conflict. The ultimate purposes of the bombing and attempt to break Hamas's hold there are sensed by Gazans, like the Fatah member who character-
ized the Israeli attack as "War on the Palestinian state, not against a Party." Israel's Gaza War was not about Hamas rockets but about larger issues.
Israel has blamed Hamas for breaking a six-month ceasefire agreed to last June. But
Israel failed to honor its own commitment to ease the blockade it had imposed on Gaza since Hamas's 2006 election victory, a regime that has inflicted grievous harm on the people of Gaza: denial of electricity, fuel, medical supplies; serious sanitation problems, such as pollution of the water supply; economic collapse accompanied by widespread unemployment, malnutrition, and depression. The result: a humanitarian crisis of serious proportions.
When, in November, 2008, Israel violated the truce with an attack across the border that killed six Hamas people, Hamas resumed rocket attacks which Israel used as the pretext for a long-planned massive assault on Gaza, carefully timed to take place during the last days of the feckless Bush Administration and before the January 20 Inauguration. But it
might have been a different story if Israel had not been so determined to teach Hamas and the Palestinian people a lesson, instead following a different script as described by Brigadier General Shmuel Zakai, former commander of the IDF's Gaza Division, in a column by Roger Cohen in the January 15 New York Review:
We could have eased the siege over the Gaza Strip, in such a way that the Palestinians,
Hamas, would understand that holding fire served their interests. But when you create
a tahadiyeh [truce]. and the economic pressure on the Strip continues, it's obvious that
Hamas will try to reach an improved tahadiyeh, and their way to achieve this is re-
sumed Qassam fire.
We now know from Robert Pastor, who accompanied former president Jimmy Carter in a Dec, 14, 2008, meeting in Damascus with Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal that Hamas offered to resume the ceasefire in return for Israel's lifting the siege of Gaza and that Pastor promptly conveyed that offer to the Israeli military. There was no answer from the Israelis who launched the Gaza War two weeks later.
Part II of this series will examine how the situation in the West Bank is likely to affect prospects for Middle East peace.
Harry Shaw, PhD., has taught international law at the University of Virginia and George
Washington University. He lives near Easton.
Published February 11, 2009, by The Star Democrat, Easton, Maryland
KEEP OREGON'S GUARD IN OREGON ACTION ALERT: CALL NOW, CALL AGAIN FEB 26
- Details
- Written by Dan Handelman Dan Handelman
- Published: 13 February 2009 13 February 2009
- Hits: 3305 3305
KEEP OREGON'S GUARD IN OREGON ACTION ALERT: CALL NOW, CALL AGAIN FEB 26
As you know, half of the Oregon National Guard troops are slated to
deploy to Iraq in late March/early April. Our state campaign is going well so far--legislation has been introduced in the Oregon legislature to keep them here (HB 2556, HR 4 and SR 1), but we need your help to push it along. We are on a very tight timeline, so every day that goes by without forward movement is critical. We need you to act now!
There will also be a call-in day on Thursday, Feb. 26 to contact your legislators about the bills and resolutions, and to also call Senate President Peter Courtney and Speaker of the House Dave Hunt.
The next step in the process is getting hearings before the House Rules
Committee, so we are asking you to get on the phone to press for this.
Here are the people to call, and a sample script is below:
Speaker of the House, Representative Dave Hunt (D-40): 503-986-1200
(can make sure the measures get scheduled for a hearing)
Chair of the House Rules Committee: Representative Arnie Roblan (D-9):
503-986-1409
Vice-Chair Rules Committee: Representative Vicki Berger (R-20):
503-986-1420
Rules Committee Member: Representative Tobias Read (D-27): 503-986-1427
Rules Committee Member: Representative Mary Nolan (D-36): 503-986-1900
Rules Committee Member: Representative Bill Garrard (R-56): 503-986-1456
Rules Committee Member: Representative Bob Jenson (R-58): 503-986-1458
Rules Committee Member: Representative Sara Gelser (D-16): 503-986-1416
"Hello, my name is Concerned Citizen (if applicable, add "and I am a
constituent.") and I am one of the 7200 people who signed a petition to keep
our Oregon National Guard at home (or: I belong to one of the 56
organizations that supports the Keep Oregon's Guard in Oregon campaign, or I am a supported of the Campaign's goals). The State Legislature responded to our petition with HB 2556 and HR 4, but unless hearings are scheduled immediately, it may be too late. Please give this legislation a chance by giving it high priority. Schedule the hearings and let the people testify. There is no time to waste."
Here are similar points in list form
**The authorizations for our Guard to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan are not valid and the Governor should keep the Guard in Oregon.
**In January at the Capitol, a campaign of 56 organizations delivered the names of over 7000 people from across the state who want legislation to keep our Guard home.
**The Legislature responded by introducing HB 2556, HR 4 and SR 1. I
support these measures, but all the energy will be wasted unless the system moves quickly.
**The Guard is set to leave Oregon at the end of March/early April-- there is no time to waste.
**We want Speaker Hunt to schedule hearings so that the people can testify.
We believe the hearings will build support for the legislation.
**21 states plus Washington DC are now pariticipating in the nationwide effort to keep the Guard home. In Maryland, Senate Committee has already agreed to hold a hearing sometime before the end of February just days after the bill was introduced.
The legislators who are co-sponsoring the Orgeon bill and resolutions are: Representatives Bailey, Dembrow, C. Edwards, Greenlick, Kahl, Thompson, Tomei and Shields. The Senators are: Monnes-Anderson, Monroe, Morrisette, Rosenbaum, Walker and Schrader.
If your representative or senator is not on this list, call or
write and ask them to co-sponsor! The more co-sponsors we have, the easier
it will be to move this through the system. To find your legislator's info, go to http://www.legislatorpro.com/oregon .
Again, look for more information as February 26 comes up but in the meantime, let's be sure our bill gets a hearing! Keep phones ringing all over the Capitol!
--Dan Handelman and Leah Bolger
for the Campaign to Keep Oregon's Guard in Oregon.
http://www.pjw.info/guardhomecampaign08.html
As you know, half of the Oregon National Guard troops are slated to
deploy to Iraq in late March/early April. Our state campaign is going well so far--legislation has been introduced in the Oregon legislature to keep them here (HB 2556, HR 4 and SR 1), but we need your help to push it along. We are on a very tight timeline, so every day that goes by without forward movement is critical. We need you to act now!
There will also be a call-in day on Thursday, Feb. 26 to contact your legislators about the bills and resolutions, and to also call Senate President Peter Courtney and Speaker of the House Dave Hunt.
The next step in the process is getting hearings before the House Rules
Committee, so we are asking you to get on the phone to press for this.
Here are the people to call, and a sample script is below:
Speaker of the House, Representative Dave Hunt (D-40): 503-986-1200
(can make sure the measures get scheduled for a hearing)
Chair of the House Rules Committee: Representative Arnie Roblan (D-9):
503-986-1409
Vice-Chair Rules Committee: Representative Vicki Berger (R-20):
503-986-1420
Rules Committee Member: Representative Tobias Read (D-27): 503-986-1427
Rules Committee Member: Representative Mary Nolan (D-36): 503-986-1900
Rules Committee Member: Representative Bill Garrard (R-56): 503-986-1456
Rules Committee Member: Representative Bob Jenson (R-58): 503-986-1458
Rules Committee Member: Representative Sara Gelser (D-16): 503-986-1416
"Hello, my name is Concerned Citizen (if applicable, add "and I am a
constituent.") and I am one of the 7200 people who signed a petition to keep
our Oregon National Guard at home (or: I belong to one of the 56
organizations that supports the Keep Oregon's Guard in Oregon campaign, or I am a supported of the Campaign's goals). The State Legislature responded to our petition with HB 2556 and HR 4, but unless hearings are scheduled immediately, it may be too late. Please give this legislation a chance by giving it high priority. Schedule the hearings and let the people testify. There is no time to waste."
Here are similar points in list form
**The authorizations for our Guard to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan are not valid and the Governor should keep the Guard in Oregon.
**In January at the Capitol, a campaign of 56 organizations delivered the names of over 7000 people from across the state who want legislation to keep our Guard home.
**The Legislature responded by introducing HB 2556, HR 4 and SR 1. I
support these measures, but all the energy will be wasted unless the system moves quickly.
**The Guard is set to leave Oregon at the end of March/early April-- there is no time to waste.
**We want Speaker Hunt to schedule hearings so that the people can testify.
We believe the hearings will build support for the legislation.
**21 states plus Washington DC are now pariticipating in the nationwide effort to keep the Guard home. In Maryland, Senate Committee has already agreed to hold a hearing sometime before the end of February just days after the bill was introduced.
The legislators who are co-sponsoring the Orgeon bill and resolutions are: Representatives Bailey, Dembrow, C. Edwards, Greenlick, Kahl, Thompson, Tomei and Shields. The Senators are: Monnes-Anderson, Monroe, Morrisette, Rosenbaum, Walker and Schrader.
If your representative or senator is not on this list, call or
write and ask them to co-sponsor! The more co-sponsors we have, the easier
it will be to move this through the system. To find your legislator's info, go to http://www.legislatorpro.com/oregon .
Again, look for more information as February 26 comes up but in the meantime, let's be sure our bill gets a hearing! Keep phones ringing all over the Capitol!
--Dan Handelman and Leah Bolger
for the Campaign to Keep Oregon's Guard in Oregon.
http://www.pjw.info/guardhomecampaign08.html
I am to Blame!
- Details
- Written by A Gazan confesses A Gazan confesses
- Published: 13 February 2009 13 February 2009
- Hits: 2505 2505
Gaza to export Valentine's blooms
- Details
- Written by BBC News BBC News
- Published: 13 February 2009 13 February 2009
- Hits: 3033 3033
Gaza to export Valentine's blooms
Israel has granted permission for 25,000 flowers from the Gaza Strip to be sent to Europe for Valentine's Day.
The flowers will be Gaza's first exports for a year, as Israel has intensified its blockade of the strip since Hamas took control in June 2007.
The blockade allows in aid but exports are banned with few exceptions.
The move was made after a request by the Dutch government and Gaza farmers. Israel says this does not mean any overall change of policy.
Israeli military spokesman Maj Peter Lerner said the flowers would leave Gaza through an Israeli cargo crossing and were due to reach the European market by Valentine's Day on Saturday.
Income
The 25,000 carnations allowed out this time are a fraction of what farmers produce and many say they have no choice but to feed the crop to sheep.
Although many of the Gaza Strip's 1.5 million residents do not celebrate Valentine's Day, viewing it as a Western and Christian holiday, some shops in Gaza do sell red flowers and heart-shaped gifts.
GAZA BLOCKADE
# Only basic humanitarian items have been allowed in since June 2007
# Virtually no exports permitted
# Some 750,000 people rely on food aid
# All factories making construction materials have shut down
Cut flowers, along with strawberries, were some of Gaza's main exported raw goods, providing a valuable source of income to thousands of families in the Gaza Strip.
Since June 2007, only a small number of lorries with strawberries and flowers have left the territory.
Before that time, around 750 trucks of furniture, food products, textiles and agricultural produce would leave Gaza each month. This was worth half a million US dollars a day.
Israel and Hamas are negotiating a longer-term truce through Egyptian mediators, following a 22-day war that ended last month.
Senior figures from Hamas, who are in Cairo for further talks, are expected to give their response to the truce proposals.
Hamas say there will not be agreement unless a deal involves lifting the blockade of Gaza and opening its border crossings.
Israel has said it will not reopen the crossings fully unless Hamas frees a captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7885412.stm
Published: 2009/02/12 13:33:01 GMT
© BBC MMIX
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