Israel’s anti-boycott belligerence
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- Written by Marcy Newman Marcy Newman
- Published: 02 July 2010 02 July 2010
- Hits: 3274 3274
A bill seeking to outlaw boycotts of Israeli institutions and products – including in settlements – is diplomatically explosive
o Miri Weingarten
o guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 30 June 2010 10.00 BST
A new “anti-boycott bill”, the third in a series of proposed laws that aim to curtail the ability of civil society to criticise Israeli government policy, will punish Israelis or foreign nationals who initiate or promote a boycott of Israel.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/30/israel-anti-boycott-bill
The bill not only prohibits boycotts of legal Israeli institutions, but also of settlement activities and products. It seeks to impose fines on Israelis who “promote boycotts” and transfer the fines to boycotted organisations.
It will impose a 10-year entry ban on foreign residents engaging in boycotts, and forbid them to carry out any economic activities in Israel.
Heavy sanctions will also be imposed on “foreign political entities” engaging in boycotts. Any government promoting a boycott will be “prohibited from carrying out any action in Israeli bank accounts, in shares traded in Israel, in land or in any other property requiring registration of transfer”, and no money or property will be transferred from Israel to that government.
Since the Palestinian Authority is defined by Israel as a “foreign political entity”, its recent decision to end its economic dependence on settlements for products, jobs and services will lead to punitive measures.
According to the bill, even money or property due to Palestinians and to the PA by virtue of previous “laws, agreements or governmental decisions” will not be transferred to them.
The geographical application of the anti-boycott bill to the West Bank (“Judea and Samaria”) and the potential annulment of prior agreements will signal a de jure annexation of the West Bank to Israel and a final demise of the Oslo accords signed by the PA and Israel in the mid-1990s.
This bill, like others recently tabled, comes against the backdrop of recent analysis by the current Israeli government and its advocates, who have sought to draw a distinction between “legitimate criticism of Israel” and criticism or campaigning that “delegitimises Israel” and is therefore beyond the pale.
Alan Dershowitz has called this approach “the 80% case for Israel” – that is, the possibility of criticising specific Israeli policies, such as the settlement project, while emphatically supporting Israel as a Jewish state.
Examples of “illegitimate” activities include universal jurisdiction (the prosecution of officials suspected of war crimes overseas), BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions), and questioning the definition of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. The recent series of proposed bills in Israel echoes each of these categories by seeking to prohibit them through law and to criminalise human rights activists who engage in such activities.
This approach is deeply flawed. There is a difference between disagreeing with criticism and seeking to silence it through law. If Israel is a democracy, its activists must be allowed to voice criticism and engage in protest, however unpopular.
By failing to distinguish between a boycott of settlements and that of Israel itself, the initiators of the bill are demonstrating that they are not “protectors of Israel” but promoters of a “Greater Israel”.
For them, a boycott of all Israeli products, as such, is no longer distinguishable from alternative, more limited options: the decision of Israeli or international activists to boycott settlement products in order to end the occupation, or the decision of the Palestinians themselves to stop supporting the very settlements that are denying them their sustenance.
The settlers and their supporters thus expect Palestinians not only to accept the divestment of their land and resources, but also to support those who have robbed them by buying their produce and working (for sub-minimum wages) on the very building sites that are encroaching on their lands.
The EU, also a “foreign political entity” under the Israeli definition, is likely to disagree strongly with this bill. The EU association agreements with Israel (1995) and with the PLO (1997) have a mutually exclusive territorial scope: the EC-Israel agreement applies to the territory of the state of Israel, whereas the EC-PLO agreement applies to the territory of the West Bank and Gaza.
When challenged on the issue of settlement products from the West Bank, the European court of justice recently ruled that only the Palestinian Authority can issue origin certificates for goods originating in the West Bank.
In court, the EU advocate-general was even clearer. He said that as a matter of international law, the borders of Israel are defined by the 1947 partition plan for Palestine, and any territories outside the 1947 borders do not form part of the territory of Israel for purposes of the association agreement.
If the bill passes into law, the EU would qualify as a “promoter of boycott”, whereas Israel could be seen to be breaking the terms of the association agreement. The implications of this could be explosive.
Red Team: CENTCOM thinks outside the box on Hamas and Hezbollah.
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- Written by MARK PERRY MARK PERRY
- Published: 01 July 2010 01 July 2010
- Hits: 3320 3320
While it is anathema to broach the subject of engaging militant groups like Hizballah* and Hamas in official Washington circles (to say nothing of Israel), that is exactly what a team of senior intelligence officers at U.S. Central Command -- CENTCOM -- has been doing. In a "Red Team" report issued on May 7 and entitled "Managing Hizballah and Hamas," senior CENTCOM intelligence officers question the current U.S. policy of isolating and marginalizing the two movements. Instead, the Red Team recommends a mix of strategies that would integrate the two organizations into their respective political mainstreams. While a Red Team exercise is deliberately designed to provide senior commanders with briefings and assumptions that challenge accepted strategies, the report is at once provocative, controversial -- and at odds with current U.S. policy.
Among its other findings, the five-page report calls for the integration of Hizballah into the Lebanese Armed Forces, and Hamas into the Palestinian security forces led by Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The Red Team's conclusion, expressed in the final sentence of the executive summary, is perhaps its most controversial finding: "The U.S. role of assistance to an integrated Lebanese defense force that includes Hizballah; and the continued training of Palestinian security forces in a Palestinian entity that includes Hamas in its government, would be more effective than providing assistance to entities -- the government of Lebanon and Fatah -- that represent only a part of the Lebanese and Palestinian populace respectively" (emphasis in the original). The report goes on to note that while Hizballah and Hamas "embrace staunch anti-Israel rejectionist policies," the two groups are "pragmatic and opportunistic."
The report opens with a quote from former U.S. peace negotiator Aaron David Miller's book, The Much Too Promised Land, which notes that both Hizballah and Hamas "have emerged as serious political players respected on the streets, in Arab capitals, and throughout the region. Destroying them was never really an option. Ignoring them may not be either." The report's writers are quick to acknowledge that the two militant groups "are vastly different," and that treating them together is a mistake. Nevertheless, the CENTCOM team directly repudiates Israel's publicly stated view -- that the two movements are incapable of change and must be confronted with force. The report says that "failing to recognize their separate grievances and objectives will result in continued failure in moderating their behavior."
. . .
Charting The Road To Middle East Peace
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- Written by Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP
- Published: 30 June 2010 30 June 2010
- Hits: 3868 3868
Charting The Road To Middle East Peace
Today, however, there does exist a plausible way to advance peace, democracy, and prosperity in the Middle East; and one that does not involve fighting protracted wars in the Muslim world: Solve the Palestine Question.
The real catalyst for peace and democracy in the region is not to be found on the rocky road through Tehran or Baghdad, but rather on the road through Jerusalem. Were the U.S. to once and for all apply its full weight on Palestine-Israel, peace in the region as a whole would become more attainable. It’s not a magic bullet, not all regional problems would be solved, but a just Israeli-Palestinian peace would help considerably.
U.S. General David Petraeus grasped the import of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he addressed the Senate Armed Services Committee in March. He noted that "enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the area of responsibility." And, he added, "Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples [in the region]."
Petraeus is on to something that for too many years American policy has sought to downplay: the urgency of Palestinian aspirations for freedom and the frustration of people in the region with American backing for Israeli actions at odds with American principles of freedom, equal rights, and liberty, not to mention international law. Palestinians also wonder why the traditional American call for democracy, separation of powers, freedom of expression and rule of law seems to bypass them.
Time is now of the essence. Due to Israel’s willingness to ignore international law, to place illegally more than 500,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and to avoid implementing previous peace agreements, the two-state solution is on the brink of disappearing forever. If so, it is either one state with equal rights for all or apartheid. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said as much. So, too, has former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Unlike these Israeli officials, I believe we have already reached an apartheid reality. There is a dual system of Israeli law operating in the West Bank, one applying to Jewish settlers and a discriminatory one imposed on Palestinians. Israel’s illegal settlement activity and separation Wall (which is three times longer than the Berlin Wall and in places twice as tall) squeeze us into ever-smaller Bantustans. On average, a Palestinian uses 50 cubic meters of West Bank water yearly, while an Israeli settler consumes an unfair and vastly disproportionate 2,400 cubic meters.
While President Obama rightly seeks to rein in Israeli expansionism and thereby save the two-state solution, the Israel lobby is racing to undercut him with "pro-Israel" letters from American congressional leaders. These acts harm the future of both Palestinians and Israelis.
Congress, however, could play a responsible role in expediting a just settlement to the conflict. First, tax-deductible contributions to Israeli settlements in the occupied territories should be halted. Settlers are violently implanting themselves in our midst in violation of international law and private property rights. The most extreme among them attack us, intimidate Palestinian farmers, uproot olive trees and, most recently, set fire to mosques. They are very rarely prosecuted. American tax policy should not facilitate settlers’ efforts to wreck the prospects for regional peace and to destroy the last chance for the two-state solution.
Second, a congressional resolution could back President Obama’s June call in Cairo for nonviolent Palestinian resistance to the occupation. Such a resolution would insist Israel cease its violent repression of a growing nonviolent protest movement. We are in the midst of vigorous advocacy for nonviolence and have created informal coalitions including Palestinians, Israelis, and international citizens intent on peacefully resisting Israel’s West Bank land grabs. American calls to end violence would resonate more strongly here if members of Congress were staunchly upholding the right of Palestinian and Israeli peace activists to protest nonviolently against decades of oppression.
Third, Congressional hearings ought to be called that feature a wide range of Palestinian-American experts. The United States has enormous expertise it can tap into, but the exclusion of most Palestinian-American voices results in members of Congress not being exposed to important viewpoints on the conflict.
The failure to hear a range of voices risks congressional shock when Palestinians and others give up on the two-state solution and declare support for a South Africa-like struggle for equal rights and one person, one vote in one democratic state. This day is drawing nearer. Congress, if it wants to help the president achieve the two-state solution more than it wants to placate AIPAC, should take up these three moderate proposals – rule of law, support for nonviolence, and open debate – that Palestinian democrats have advocated for years.
This article was first published on: http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/97...
Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi is secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative and a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. He was a candidate for the Palestinian presidency in 2005 and is a nominee for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize
Lieberman plan to strip Palestinians of citizenship
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- Written by Jonathan Cook in Jewish Peace News Jonathan Cook in Jewish Peace News
- Published: 30 June 2010 30 June 2010
- Hits: 5038 5038
resolve the Israel / Palestine conflict by means of ethnic cleansing.
He wants to strip Palestinian citizens of Israel of their citizenship
and to relocate them outside the future borders of Israel, borders that
would be redrawn to include Jewish West Bank settlements.
These ideas are not new, but as Jonathan Cook argues below, it is
significant that Lieberman's plans are reappearing at this point in the
public debate. Given Israel's currently low standing in the
international community (at least as far as diplomatic language is
concerned), and the Netanyahu government's failure to engage in the sort
of diplomatic charade known as the peace process, Lieberman apparently
sees an opening for his radical solutions. But also, as Ben White has
argued in a recent Al Jazeera article, Israel's deteriorating
international standing is being accompanied by increasing state violence
and displays of racist hatred against Palestinian citizens in Israel. As
Janan Abdu, wife of imprisoned Palestinian NGO leader Ameer Makhoul has
said: "They are afraid of us, of our identity, and how the youth are
proud to be Palestinian. I think we are entering a tough period and the
people will pay the price."
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/06/201062211432729531.html
Judith Norman
Jonathan Cook: Lieberman plan to strip Palestinians of citizenship
28/06/2010
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=295288
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's far-right foreign minister, set out last
week what he called a "blueprint for a resolution to the conflict" with
the Palestinians that demands most of the country's large Palestinian
minority be stripped of citizenship and relocated outside Israel's
future borders.
Lieberman warned that Israel faces growing diplomatic pressure for a
full withdrawal to the Green Line, the pre-1967 border. Lieberman said
that, if such a partition were implemented, "the conflict will
inevitably pass beyond those borders and into Israel."
He accused many of Israel's 1.3 million Palestinian citizens of acting
against Israel while their leaders "actively assist those who want to
destroy the Jewish state."
Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party campaigned in last year's elections
on a platform of "No loyalty, no citizenship" and has proposed a raft of
loyalty laws over the past year targeted at the Palestinian minority.
True peace, the foreign minister claimed, would come only with land
swaps, or "an exchange of populated territories to create two largely
homogeneous states, one Jewish Israeli and the other Arab Palestinian."
He added that under his plan "those Arabs who were in Israel will now
receive Palestinian citizenship."
Unusually, Lieberman, who is also deputy prime minister, offered his
plan in a commentary for the English-language Israeli daily newspaper
Jerusalem Post, apparently in an attempt to make maximum impact on the
international community.
He has spoken repeatedly in the past about drawing the borders in a way
to forcibly exchange Palestinian communities in Israel for the Israeli
settlements in the West Bank.
But under orders from Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, he has
kept a relatively low profile on the conflict's larger issues since his
controversial appointment to head the foreign ministry more than a year ago.
In early 2009, Lieberman, who lives in the West Bank settlement of
Noqedim, upset his own supporters by advocating the creation of "a
viable Palestinian state," though he has remained unclear about what it
would require in practice.
Lieberman's revival of his "population transfer" plan - an idea he
unveiled six years ago - comes as the Israeli leadership has understood
that it is "isolated like never before," according to Michael
Warschawski, an Israeli analyst.
Netanyahu's government has all but stopped paying lip service to
US-sponsored "proximity talks" with the Palestinians after outraging
global public opinion with attacks on Gaza 18 months ago and on a
Gaza-bound aid flotilla four weeks ago in which nine civilians were killed.
Israel's relations with the international community are likely to
deteriorate further in late summer when a 10-month partial freeze on
settlement expansion in the West Bank expires. Last week, Netanyahu
refused to answer questions about the freeze, after a vote by his Likud
party's central committee to support renewed settlement building from
late September.
Other looming diplomatic headaches for Israel are the return of the
Goldstone Report, which suggested Israel committed war crimes in its
attack on Gaza, to the United Nations General Assembly in late July, and
Turkey's adoption of the rotating presidency of the Security Council in
September.
Warschawski, a founder of the Alternative Information Centre, a joint
Israeli-Palestinian advocacy group, said that, faced with these crises,
Israel's political elite had split into two camps.
Most, including Lieberman, believed Israel should "push ahead" with its
unilateral policies towards the Palestinians and refuse to engage in a
peace process regardless of the likely international repercussions.
"Israel's ruling elite knows that the only solution to the conflict
acceptable to the international community is an end to the occupation
along the lines of the Clinton parameters," he said, referring to the
two-state solution promoted by former US president Bill Clinton in late
2000.
"None of them, not even Ehud Barak [the defence minister and head of the
centrist Labour Party], are ready to accept this as the basis for
negotiations."
On the other hand, Tzipi Livni, the head of the center-right opposition
Kadima party, Warschawski said, wanted to damp down the international
backlash by engaging in direct negotiations with the Palestinian
leadership in the West Bank under President Mahmoud Abbas.
Lieberman's commentary came a day after he told Livni that she could
join the government only if she accepted "the principle of trading
territory and population as the solution to the Palestinian issue, and
give up the principle of land for peace."
Lieberman is reportedly concerned that Netanyahu might seek to bring
Livni into a national unity government to placate the US and prop up the
legitimacy of his coalition.
The Labor Party has threatened to quit the government if Kadima does not
join by the end of September, and Livni is reported to want the foreign
ministry.
Lieberman's position is further threatened by a series of corruption
investigations.
However, he also appears keen to take the initiative from both
Washington and Livni with his own "peace plan." An unnamed aide to
Lieberman told the Jerusalem Post that, with a vacuum in the diplomatic
process, the foreign minister "thinks he can convince the government to
adopt the plan."
However, Warschawski said there were few indications that Netanyahu
wanted to be involved in any peace process, even Lieberman's.
Last week Uzi Arad, the government's shadowy national security adviser
and a long-time confidant of Netanyahu, made a rare public statement at
a meeting of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem to attack Livni for
"political adventurism" and believing in the "magic" of a two-state
solution.
Apparently reflecting Netanyahu's own thinking, he said: "The more you
market Palestinian legitimacy, the more you bring about a detraction of
Israel's legitimacy in certain circles. [The Palestinians] are
accumulating legitimacy, and we are being delegitimized."
Warschawski doubted that Lieberman believed his blueprint for population
exchanges could be implemented but was promoting it chiefly to further
damage the standing of Israel's Palestinian citizens and advance his own
political ambitions.
In his commentary, Lieberman said the international community's peace
plan would lead to "the one-and-a-half to half state solution": "a
homogeneous, pure Palestinian state," from which Jewish settlers were
expelled, and "a bi-national state in Israel," which included many
Palestinian citizens.
Palestinians, in both the territories and inside Israel, he said, could
not "continue to incite against Israel, glorify murder, stigmatize
Israel in international forums, boycott Israeli goods and mount legal
offensives against Israeli officials."
International law, he added, sanctioned the partition of territory in
which ethnic communities were broken up into different states, including
in the case of the former Yugoslavia. "In most cases there is no
physical population transfer or the demolition of houses, but creating a
border where none existed, according to demographics," he wrote.
Surveys have shown that Palestinian citizens are overwhelming opposed to
"population transfer" schemes like Lieberman's.
Critics note that Lieberman has failed to show how the many Palestinian
communities inside Israel that are located far from the Green Line could
be incorporated into a Palestinian state without expulsions.
Legal experts also point out that, even if Israel managed to trade
territory as part of a peace agreement, stripping Palestinians of their
Israeli citizenship as a result of such a deal would violate
international law.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. A
version of this article appeared in The National published in Abu Dhabi.
It is reprinted here with the author's permission.
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Gen Petraeus tells senators Afghan fighting may worsen
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- Written by BBC NEWS BBC NEWS
- Published: 30 June 2010 30 June 2010
- Hits: 3325 3325
The man chosen to take charge of the US military in Afghanistan, Gen David Petraeus, has warned of an escalation of violence in the coming months.
"The going inevitably gets tougher before it gets easier," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee, which backed his nomination to lead the war.
The general said troops were engaged in a contest of wills with the Taliban and promised a more co-ordinated approach.
President Obama chose Gen Petraeus after sacking Gen Stanley McChrystal.
The outgoing general and his aides criticised senior administration officials in a Rolling Stone magazine article. He has since announced his retirement.
Rules of engagement
In written answers to the Senate committee on Tuesday, Gen Petraeus described the security situation in Afghanistan as "tenuous" and insurgents as "resilient and still-confident", particularly in the south of the country.
However, he did say that he believed progress was possible.
At a time when Washington craves reassurance that the strategy in Afghanistan is working and that the right mix of generals and diplomats is carrying it out, the appearance on Capitol Hill of America's most celebrated soldier is just what everyone needs.
But a number of senators wanted to know whether the deadline of July next year for the start of an American withdrawal wasn't creating an unrealistic set of expectations.
Gen Petraeus said it only marked the beginning of a process. America's commitment to Afghanistan was, he said, an enduring one.
Amid the polite exchanges, only South Carolina's Republican Senator, Lindsey Graham, expressed any real frustration with the general's answers. Someone, he said, needs to get it straight what the hell we are going to do come next July.
"They can sense concern in various capitals around the world and of course they want to increase that concern," he said.
"My sense is that the tough fighting will continue; indeed, it may get more intense in the next few months," he added. "As we take away the enemy's safe havens and reduce the enemy's freedom of action, the insurgents will fight back."
The general said he supported the president's plan to begin withdrawing troops in July 2011, but emphasised that there would be "certain tweaks, refinements, perhaps significant changes" after the White House's year-end review.
Senator John McCain said the US could not "afford to have a stay-the-course approach to starting our withdrawal in July 2011 when the facts on the ground are suggesting that we need more time".
Later, Gen Petraeus warned that raising the standards of the Afghan army and police was a "hugely challenging" task, he said, comparing it to "building an advanced aircraft while it is in flight, while it is being designed and while it is being shot at".
He also said he would look very hard at the current rules of engagement for US ground and air forces, which were drawn up to reduce civilian deaths but have been criticised for putting units at unnecessary risk.
"Those on the ground must have all the support they need when they are in a tough situation," he told the committee.
Mounting unease
Gen Petraeus, 57, was nominated by President Obama last week to replace Gen McChrystal as commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan.
The widely-lauded soldier has formidable political and diplomatic skills. He has been credited with having turned around the military situation in Iraq with a "surge" there.
Continue reading the main story
We cannot afford Afghanistan to lapse back into a failed state, which will create a security vacuum, contaminate the region and threaten the national security of the UK and its allies
Dr Liam Fox UK Defence Secretary
There is a broad consensus among lawmakers that there is not a better man for the job, the BBC's defence correspondent Nick Childs says.
But his confirmation hearing is also likely to be become a platform for the airing of mounting unease in the Congress over the administration's Afghan strategy, our correspondent says.
Republicans are expected to question Gen Petraeus about whether Mr Obama's strategy of commencing a troop drawdown in July 2011 will hamper his leadership of the war effort.
The leading Republican on the Armed Services Committee, Senator John McCain, has been a vocal critic of setting a date for withdrawal.
Some in Washington political circles also question the reliability of the Afghan government as a partner and the quality of Afghan forces.
The Obama administration is stressing that Gen Petraeus represents continuity and reassurance, and that he is in many ways the father of the strategy to which the US and its allies are wedded.
US soldier on patrol in Gorgan, Dand district, Afghanistan (28 June 2010) Gen Petraeus described the security situation in Afghanistan as "tenuous"
In December, President Obama ordered 30,000 extra troops into Afghanistan, an announcement that received support from both parties.
Meanwhile, Defence Secretary Robert Gates held talks at the Pentagon with his UK counterpart, Dr Liam Fox.
During their meeting, Dr Fox stressed the need to keep focus on ensuring that the necessary security conditions are met before transition to the Afghan authorities can take place.
"We cannot afford Afghanistan to lapse back into a failed state, which will create a security vacuum, contaminate the region and threaten the national security of the UK and its allies. That is why we are there and that is why we stay," he said.