The Jewish Agency, architect of Israel's birth faces extinction
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- Written by Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor, The Observer Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor, The Observer
- Published: 23 March 2008 23 March 2008
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One of the pillars on which the state of Israel was born, it encouraged successive waves of immigration, raised funds and acted as a powerful advocate for international Zionism.
Now, however, the Jewish Agency - founded in 1929 by the World Zionist Organisation - is facing the greatest crisis of its existence, amid proposals that it should no longer be involved in its traditional business of encouraging immigration, but function only as an educational body.
The agency, which raises most of its donations in dollars, is facing an acute financial crisis. The drop in the value of the US dollar has led it to consider closing down its operation organising aliyah - the return of Jews to Israel - regarded as one of Zionism's overriding historic priorities. At present almost half the agency's $320m budget goes on encouraging aliyah. The agency has also been struck by a drop in funds from its largely American pool of donors concerned that it is over-politicised.
The background of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, which after the Second World War became known as the Jewish Agency for Israel, is synonymous with the controversial history of the foundation of Israel itself.
Recognised internationally as the official representative of world Jewry after the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, it helped organise the escape of 50,000 German Jews in the 1930s under the Transfer Agreement negotiated with the Nazis. Later, as the plight of European Jews worsened, and faced with tightening immigration restrictions to Palestine under British Mandate rule, the agency continued to rescue European Jews by organising illegal immigration.
After the war it became a key organisation in the fight for a Jewish state, with its leadership arrested for resistance to British Mandate rule. Following independence, the agency's head, David Ben-Gurion, became the country's first Prime Minister.
Since then the agency has acted as the focus of successive mass immigrations, including the 1951 evacuation of 110,000 Iraqi Jews and the airlift of Ethiopia's Jews in 1991.
The disclosure of problems and divisions within the agency, emerged last week in a leak to Haaretz newspaper, which revealed that the agency was planning to close one of its most historically important branches, the Immigration and Absorption Department, as part of a radical restructuring.
According to the newspaper, efforts to find alternative sources of funding have not succeeded. A $50m donation from Russian-born Israeli billionaire Arcadi Gaydamak collapsed just as another promised pledge of $45m from the evangelical International Fellowship of Christians and Jews appears also to be in difficulty. 'The new plan can either give it a new identity, or signal the end of the road. In any case, we have no choice,' a Jewish Agency official said, commenting on plans for swingeing budget cuts
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov: Ease on Gaza, Stop Settlements
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- Written by DALIA NAMMARI, AP DALIA NAMMARI, AP
- Published: 21 March 2008 21 March 2008
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RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - Russia's foreign minister called on Friday for an end to the blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and demanded that Israel halt settlement activity in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Sergey Lavrov said it was ``unacceptable'' for Gaza to be afflicted with the blockade, which was imposed by Israel and Egypt after the Islamic militants of Hamas seized control of the coastal territory last June from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement.
``The siege should stop so the Palestinian people in the strip could lead normal lives,'' Lavrov said at a news conference in Ramallah with Abbas, whose Palestinian administration governs the West Bank.
The international isolation of Hamas's Gaza regime, which is sworn to pursue Israel's destruction, has dramatically worsened hardship there. A coalition of rights groups recently said 80 percent of Gaza's residents depend on food aid and unemployment is close to 40 percent.
Read more: Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov: Ease on Gaza, Stop Settlements
Israel demolishes Palestinian homes in West Bank
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- Written by Agencies Agencies
- Published: 20 March 2008 20 March 2008
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The Israeli military said the houses were demolished because they had been built without construction permits.
Israeli human rights groups say few building applications are ever granted. That forces Palestinians to build without approval.
The houses razed Wednesday in the village of Deirat, south of Hebron, were home to 38 adults and children. 65-year-old Abed Abu Aram said it was the second time his home has been knocked down, but he had no intention of leaving.
He said: "We are staying, even if we have to live in a cave or a tent."
Iraq: Five years on: A war of utter folly
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- Written by Hans Blix, former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, former UN weapons inspector
- Published: 20 March 2008 20 March 2008
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Responsibility for this spectacular tragedy must lie with those who ignored the facts five years ago
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a tragedy - for Iraq, for the US, for the UN, for truth and human dignity. I can only see one gain: the end of Saddam Hussein, a murderous tyrant. Had the war not finished him he would, in all likelihood, have become another Gadafy or Castro; an oppressor of his own people but no longer a threat to the world. Iraq was on its knees after a decade of sanctions.
The elimination of weapons of mass destruction was the declared main aim of the war. It is improbable that the governments of the alliance could have sold the war to their parliaments on any other grounds. That they believed in the weapons' existence in the autumn of 2002 is understandable. Why had the Iraqis stopped UN inspectors during the 90s if they had nothing to hide? Responsibility for the war must rest, though, on what those launching it knew by March 2003.
By then, Unmovic inspectors had carried out some 700 inspections at 500 sites without finding prohibited weapons. The contract that George Bush held up before Congress to show that Iraq was purchasing uranium oxide was proved to be a forgery. The allied powers were on thin ice, but they preferred to replace question marks with exclamation marks.
They could not succeed in eliminating WMDs because they did not exist. Nor could they succeed in the declared aim to eliminate al-Qaida operators, because they were not in Iraq. They came later, attracted by the occupants. A third declared aim was to bring democracy to Iraq, hopefully becoming an example for the region. Let us hope for the future; but five years of occupation has clearly brought more anarchy than democracy.
Increased safety for Israel might have been an undeclared US aim. If so, it is hard to see that anything was gained by a war which has strengthened Iran.
There are other troubling legacies of the Iraq war. It is a setback in the world's efforts to develop legal restraints on the use of armed force between states. In 1945 the US helped to write into the UN charter a prohibition of the use of armed force against states. Exceptions were made only for self-defence against armed attacks and for armed force authorised by the security council. In 2003, Iraq was not a real or imminent threat to anybody. Instead, the invasion reflects a claim made in the 2002 US national security strategy that the charter was too restrictive, and that the US was ready to use armed force to meet threats that were uncertain as to time and place - a doctrine of preventive war.
In the 2004 presidential election campaign, Bush ridiculed any idea that the US would need to ask for a "permission slip" before taking military action against a "growing threat". True, the 2003 Iraq invasion is not the only case in which armed force has been used in disregard of the charter. However, from the most powerful member of the UN it is a dangerous signal. If preventive war is accepted for one, it is accepted for all.
One fear is that the UN rules ignored in the attack on Iraq will prove similarly insignificant in the case of Iran. But it may be that the spectacular failure of ensuring disarmament by force, and of introducing democracy by occupation, will work in favour of a greater use of diplomacy and "soft power". Justified concerns about North Korea and Iran have led the US, as well as China, Russia and European states, to examine what economic and other non-military inducements they may use to ensure that these two states do not procure nuclear weapons. Washington and Moscow must begin nuclear disarmament. So long as these nuclear states maintain that these weapons are indispensable to their security, it is not surprising that others may think they are useful. What, really, is the alternative: invasion and occupation, as in Iraq?
· Hans Blix was head of UN inspections in Iraq in 2003 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Life in the 'open prison' of Gaza
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- Written by Aleem Maqbool, BBC News Aleem Maqbool, BBC News
- Published: 20 March 2008 20 March 2008
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This is a tiny strip of land and its life is being drained out of it.
For years, the spirit of those living here has taken a pounding, not only from the frequent Israeli military attacks but also by fighting between the various Palestinian factions here.
But now the territory's near-complete isolation - brought about by the blockade - may be delivering the final blows to hope.
"It's like being on death row," I am frequently told and almost every Gazan you speak to talks of his land being an "open prison".