Palestinian refugees near Tulkarem, West Bank, summer 1948 – (Photo:ICRC Archives)

Top ten facts you probably didn’t know about the Nakba

By Yousef, Permission to Narrate blog, Jerusalem Fund
May 2012

1. Nakba is the Arabic word for catastrophe. It is used to describe the Palestinian loss of land and property during the depopulation of Palestine from 1947 to 1949 and does not refer simply to the declaration of a state of Israel.

2. 212 localities depopulated and at least half of the refugees created during the Nakba were created prior to May 15th, which is, prior to the entry of armies of other Arab states. The largest Palestinian cities at the time,Yaffa and Haifa, were emptied of the vast majority of their inhabitants before May 15th, 1948. The idea that refugee creation happened only after, or only as a result of, the mobilization of Arab armies is patently false.

3. At every stage of the war, the Yishuv/Israeli forces were superior in training, equipment and numbers to the combined Arab armies.

4. The Zionists prepared extensive data collection efforts to map out intelligence relating to the Palestinian villages for a decade prior to the war. Detailed information about each village was kept including information on the number of inhabitants, the village’s resources, the potential activists that resided within it and what its political affiliations were.

5. Of the over 500 Palestinian villages depopulated during the Nakba, 303 were depopulated as a result of either direct expulsion carried out by Yishuv/Israeli forces or as a result of attack by Yishuv/Israel forces.

6. Of the depopulated villages, 81 have been completely obliterated which means there is no traceable sign of their existence. Rubble was identified at the site of another 140 villages. Some standing walls were apparent at another 60 villages while 74 more had few houses intact. Other villages had houses intact and occupied by Israelis.

7. Golda Meir struck a secret agreement with the King of Jordan before the war. Even though Jordan’s Arab Legion was the most formidable of the Arab armies, and even though the massacre at Deir Yassin tested this agreement, the Jordanian forces didn’t cross into territory that was designated for the Jewish State under the UN partition plan.

8. After the depopulation of towns and villages, rampant looting of personal property took place. Israeli civilians and soldiers took part in stealing from vacated Palestinian homes and shops. Israeli historian Tom Segev notes that 1,800 trucks were taken from the town of Lydda alone.

9. While 700-800,000 Palestinians were made refugees and not permitted to return by the state of Israel, 150,000 did remain inside Israel and many became internally displaced persons who still lost their property and were subjected to martial law until 1966 and various discriminatory laws since then.

10. Yitzhak Rabin, an officer during the 1948 war, included a description of orders to forcibly expel tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in his memoirs. The State of Israel prevented this description from being printed when his memoirs were published and, as far as I am aware, continues to prevent it today.*

*UPDATE: The censored passage from Rabin’s memoirs was published in the appendix of a 1996 English version published after Rabin’s death. It is unclear if the passage is permitted for inclusion within the text of the memoirs themselves or in versions published in Hebrew or in Israel. [ See New York Times: By DAVID K. SHIPLER
JERUSALEM, Oct. 22 1979--A censorship board composed of five Cabinet members prohibited former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin from including in his memoirs a first-person account of the expulsion of 50,000 Palestinian civilians from their homes near Tel Aviv during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.]

Hunger Strike Aftermath

By Stephen Lendman, Op Ed News
16.05.12

As they say, it’s not over ’till it’s over. Palestinian prisoners have been mass hunger striking since April 17. Others began earlier. Some hadn’t eaten for two months or longer.

On May 14, a deal was announced. Egypt negotiated one with the Israel Prison Service (IPS) and striker representatives. Palestine Prisoners Society head Qadura Fares confirmed it. So did Israeli authorities.

Independent verification didn’t follow. Nor did full clarification of terms. Israel’s adept at creating considerable opt out wiggle room. Deals aren’t always as they seem. Broken ones reveal charades.

Israel offered concessions. Prisoners agreed to terms. Some remain vague. The devil’s in the details. What’s ahead remains uncertain. Israel’s history reflects promises made and broken. Palestinians know well.

For decades, peace process hypocrisy betrayed them. Oslo was a Palestinian Versailles. Subsequent deals were one-way. Israel alone benefitted. Expecting hunger strikers to fare better is problematic.

Last October, Israel agreed to swap hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Shalit. After release, many are repeatedly hounded, monitored, and threatened. Others were rearrested and imprisoned. No one’s safe in Occupied Palestine. It’s a militarized armed camp.

On May 14, Bilal Diab and Thaer Halehel reached hunger strike day 77. Early reports said they’d continue unless immediately freed. Updates said both agreed to resume eating in return for release when their current detentions end.

For Thaer, it’s June 5. Bilal will be freed in August. Both will receive public hospital treatment. It’s unclear if all prisoners agreed to terms. Some strikes have been long-term. It’s unknown if issues mattering most to everyone are resolved.

It’s uncertain if Jamil Khatib was present and agreed to terms. He represents Bilal and Thaer. Israel consistently denied prisoners attorney access. Instead Jawad Boulos represented them. He arranged deals for Khader Adnan and Hana Shalabi.

Khader’s free at home in the West Bank. Hana was deported to Gaza. Boulos and PA authorities said she agreed to terms. She and her father challenged official reports. She demanded clarification of issues not explained. She never got them to her satisfaction.

Currently at issue is whether deal terms represent victory or betrayal. Bilal, Thaer, and others vowed to keep striking unless freed. They’re still imprisoned with no certainty what awaits them.

Moreover, thousands of Palestinians remain imprisoned. Virtually all are detained for political reasons. Among them are 220 children, seven women, and 27 Palestinian lawmakers.

Israel calls challenging occupation harshness illegal. So is belonging to the wrong political party. Virtually anything can be called terrorism. Life under occupation, in or out of prison, is cruel and unusual punishment.

Israel violates civil and human rights with impunity. Palestinians never got fair treatment, don’t now, and won’t easily ahead. Israel has contempt for anyone not Jewish. Even many Jews are treated harshly. Imagine how much worse Palestinians fare.

Israel wanted resolution before Nakba Day. Security force violence usually accompanies it. Concern reflected greater public passion if IPS authorities and prisoners remained deadlocked. Whether Israeli concessions match official reports remains very much uncertain.

Addameer was pleased with developments so far. At the same time, it expressed concern that Israel won’t implement policy changes.

According to Addameer attorney Ahed Abu Gholmeh, nine hunger strike committee members met Monday. The written agreement contained five main provisions.

Prisoners would resume eating after signing. Long-term isolation will end, including for security reasons. Nineteen isolated prisoners will return to the general prison population within 72 hours. Gazan families will have visitation privileges restored.

Israeli intelligence assures that a committee will be formed to facilitate meetings between the IPS and prisoners. Improving incarceration conditions will be discussed. Details on what this means, if anything, weren’t mentioned.

Current administrative detainee terms won’t be extended when expire, unless so-called secret evidence is serious. Of course, that’s in the eye of the beholder and Israel alone will decide.

“Addameer has observed that Israel has consistently failed to respect the agreements it executes with Palestinians regarding prisoners’ issues.”

“For this reason, it will be essential for all supporters of Palestinian political prisoners to actively monitor the events of the next few months to ensure that this agreement is fully implemented.”

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) expressed similar relief and concern about whether Israel will follow through as promised.

The fullness of time will determine what mass hunger strikes gained, if anything. Until then, be skeptical.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”. He is co-author with J.J. Asongu of The Iraq Quagmire: The Price of Imperial Arrogance.Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

PCHR Welcomes the Agreement, Based on Which Palestinian Prisoners Ended their Hunger Strike, and Expresses Respect to the Prisoners’ Decision

Media Release, PHR
15.05.12

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) welcomes the agreement reached yesterday, 14 May 2012, between Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and the Israeli prisons administration. Based on this agreement, more than 1,600 Palestinians in Israeli jails ended their open-ended hunger strike in exchange for meeting many of their demands. PCHR expresses respect for the prisoners’ decision to end their open-ended hunger strike.

Almost a third of Palestinian prisoners in Israel started a hunger strike on 17 April 2012. Other individual prisoners started to hunger strike on 29 February 2012. The demands of the prisoners on hunger strike included improving detention conditions in Israeli jails and detention centers, allowing family visitations, especially for prisoners from the Gaza Strip, putting an end to solitary confinement, putting an end to administrative detention, allowing prisoners to pursue their education, and putting an end to night searching campaigns.

For many years, Palestinian prisoners could only get their rights recognized by the Israeli prisons’ administration through struggle and hunger strikes. A number of Palestinian prisoners collectively went on hunger strike for 28 days, while others individually went on hunger strike for 76 days. This hunger strike is one of the most serious hunger strikes in the Israeli jails. It is also the most complex as it was the longest. The agreement reached, which will hopefully set a standard for Palestinian prisoners’ demands, would not have been reached without the struggle and persistence of prisoners who put their lives at risk, in one of the highest forms of resistance and peaceful protest.

PCHR hopes that the articles of the agreement will be applied, and that the articles of this agreement will meet the prisoners’ demands, especially the ending of solitary confinement, allowing family visitations, especially for families from Gaza and for families denied visitations on security grounds, improving the detention conditions, and ending the use of administrative detention.

In this context, PCHR reiterates that releasing all of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails is a principal demand. Till the release of all these prisoners in Israeli jails, PCHR calls upon:

1. The international community and human rights organizations to exert pressure on Israel to improve detention conditions so that the prisoners do not go on a new hunger strike.

2. The Israeli authorities to respect the terms of the agreement, and to apply these terms, as well as to review its policies implemented against Palestinian prisoners, in a way that ensures respect for international standards relating to the treatment of detainees.

Israel’s drone dominance

If you want to know how drones will change America, look to the Jewish State — where they’re already widespread

By Jefferson Morley, Salon.com
15.05.12

Stark Aerospace of Mississippi is perhaps the only foreign-owned company with FAA permission to fly a drone in U.S. airspace. Based in the town of Columbus, not far from Mississippi State University, Stark is a subsidiary of the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries — not that you could tell from looking at the company’s website, executive leadership or affiliations. You have to go to the Mississippi secretary of state website to learn that two of Stark’s three directors are Israelis. [See below]

So too with the America’s drone industry. The Israeli influence is not visible but it is real, documented and extremely relevant to the future of drones in America. If you want to know how drones may change American airspace in coming years, just look to Israel, where the unmanned aerial vehicle market is thriving and drones are considered a reliable instrument of “homeland security.”

“There are three explanations for Israel’s success in becoming a world leader in development and production of UAVs,” a top Israeli official explained to the Jerusalem Post last year. “We have unbelievable people and innovation, combat experience that helps us understand what we need and immediate operational use since we are always in a conflict which allows us to perfect our systems.”

Israel’s drone expertise goes back to at least 1970, according to the UAV [Unmanned Aerial Vehicle] page of the Israeli Air Force. Mark Daly, an expert on unmanned aircraft at Jane’s Defense in London, notes the Israelis were the first to make widespread use of drones in Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, when the aircraft were used to monitor troop movements.

Now, as the Arab media and Western reporters such as Scott Wilson of the Washington Post have reported, the Israeli Defense Force uses fleets of constantly hovering drones to intimidate and control the Arab population in the Gaza Strip. (The residents call these drones “zenana,” which both sounds like the aircraft’s distinctive buzz and is Arabic slang for a nagging wife.) The IDF regularly uses drones for targeted assassinations of suspected militants, saying the drones enable them to use “precision strikes” to avoid hurting civilians. Yet as Human Rights Watch has documented, the drone strikes during the Gaza War killed scores of children who were nowhere near armed combatants.

Israel markets its expertise in defense to the rest of the world. Israeli academic Neve Gordon cites a glossy government brochure on drones titled “Israel Homeland Security: Opportunities for Industrial Cooperation,” which boasts, “no other advanced technology country has such a large proportion of citizens with real time experience in the army, security and police forces.” The chapter called “Learning from Israel’s Experience” notes that “many of these professionals continue to work as international consultants and experts after leaving the Israel Defense Forces, police or other defense and security organizations.”

The work has paid off when it comes to drones: The Jewish state is the single largest exporter of drones in the world, responsible for 41 percent of all UAVs exported between 2001 and 2011, according to a database compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Israeli companies export drone technology to at least 24 countries, including the United States.

In addition to exports, Israeli companies also create subsidiaries in consumer countries. “To increase sales outside Israel, Israel’s defense companies have to set up subsidiaries in target markets, rather than expand local manufacturing,” Haaretz reported in 2009. The Israelis “set up Stark in 2006 to drum up business in America,” according to Haaretz, because the U.S. prefers “to buy armaments and other defense gear from local companies.” In 2007, Stark “inaugurated its first production outfit, which makes Hunter unmanned vehicles that it sells through Northrop Grumman. In fact, the U.S. armed forces have been using [Israeli-made] Hunter drones since the early 1990s.”

As for domestic drone uses, the Israeli example is perhaps most instructive at the U.S. border. The 5 million Palestinian Arabs living in and around Israel, like the 11 undocumented resident aliens in the United States, are ineligible for citizenship in the land they call home. Both groups are subject to monitoring, barriers to entry and rapid expulsion. Not surprisingly one of the first uses of drones by the Department of Homeland Security was to monitor the U.S.-Mexico border, where it now flies Israeli-made Hermes 450 drones.

And the Israeli example is instructive not just at the border, but also south of it, where the Mexican government has allowed the U.S. to fly drone missions as part of the drug war. Mexico has, apparently, learned a thing or two from its northern neighbor about the best country for buying drones. In March, when it allegedly purchased two new drones of its own, it knew where to go: Israel.

Officers & Directors, Stark Aerospace

Name Title(s)
__________________________________
Uzzi Rozzen
Israel Aircraft Industries International, Inc. 1700 North Moore Street
Arlington Va 22209
Director

Shannon Bowen
319 Charleigh D. Ford, Jr. Drive
Columbus Ms 39701
Secretary

Robert ‘Doc’ Foglesong
319 Charleigh D. Ford Jr., Drive
Columbus MS 39701
Other, Director

Aryeh Klein
Ben Gurion International Airport, 70100, Israel
Israel 70100
Other, Director

Tom Ronaldi
319 Charleigh D. Ford Jr., Drive
Columbus MS 39701
President

Steven Lamm
319 Charleigh D Ford Jr. Drive
Columbus MS 39701
Treasurer

Don’t buy settlement goods, says TUC

Press Release, TUC
08.04.10

The TUC and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) are today (Thursday) calling on consumers not to buy goods from illegal Israeli settlements.
Launching a leaflet – Would You Buy Stolen Goods? – and a briefing for unions to promote the campaign, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said:

‘Israeli settlements are built on stolen Palestinian land and are illegal under international law. By confiscating land and resources, and encouraging conflict, they make life a misery for ordinary Palestinian workers and their families. And as Israel’s recent announcement of yet more settlement building shows, they are the biggest obstacle to resuming peace talks.

‘It’s easy for us to feel powerless about this situation, but as consumers we can make a difference by not supporting the businesses that sustain these settlements. So next time you’re shopping, make sure you don’t buy goods labelled: ‘Product of the West Bank (Israeli Settlement produce)’.

‘This is not a call for a general boycott of Israeli goods and services which would hit ordinary Palestinian and Israeli workers. Nor should workers in Britain put their own jobs at risk by refusing to deal with goods from the settlement goods. Instead, we’re calling for targeted, consumer-led sanctions to send a clear message against the settlements.

‘And with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign we’re also calling on the UK Government to make sure that the EU bans the sale of these goods.’

- Would You Buy Stolen Goods? is available here  and the briefing for trade union officers is available here [excerpt below]

Israeli Settlement Goods: Ban Them, Don’t Buy Them!
Trade Union Briefing, excerpts

A campaign of boycotting goods from Israeli settlements is based on the illegality of the settlements. By ending economic support for the settlements, the aim is to increase pressure upon the Israeli government to abide by international law, dismantle its settlements and end its occupation.

‘To increase the pressure for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories, and the removal of the separation wall and the illegal settlements, we will support a boycott (where trade union members should not put their own jobs at risk by refusing to deal with such products) of those goods and agricultural products that originate in illegal settlements — through developing an effective, targeted consumer-led boycott campaign working closely with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.’

TUC General Council statement, September 2009

UNISON pledges support for Palestine
Press Release, Unison
20.06.07

UNISON delegates today agreed to support a campaign of sustained pressure to end Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

The union was discussing its position after a turbulent few weeks for the Palestinians, which have involved intense fighting between factions, the sacking of the Hamas prime minister and resumption of US and EC diplomatic ties.

Proposing the motion, Tracy Morgan of Wolverhampton General branch said that Palestinians were “living on tenterhooks” and that a renewed campaign would give them “a sense of hope”.

Some delegates were concerned that the move was too extreme and would penalise Israelis.

But Ms Morgan assured them that the intention was not to discriminate against the Israeli people themselves.

“The occupation needs to end so that everyone can live together. And I believe that Israelis and Palestinians do want to live together.”

The motion urges Israel to respect the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and to establish a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with its capital in Jerusalem.

Conference called on the NEC to:
continue to work with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and others, as appropriate;
continue to develop capacity building projects with the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU);
call upon the UK government to end the arms trade with Israel;
produce UNISON material on Palestine to build knowledge among members;
consider inviting a PGFTU delegation to the regions.

Palestine and Israel
Unison Briefing
2011

UNISON has clear policy on Palestine and the Middle East peace process as set out in several National Delegate Conference (NDC) motions over the past few years. UNISON supports both a viable, independent and contiguous Palestinian state and the right of a secure Israel to exist. However, UNISON believes that this can only happen if Israel withdraws from the Occupied Territories to its 1967 borders. The Palestinian people are suffering greatly from the occupation. UNISON has, therefore, a long history of solidarity with and support for the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU), including capacity building projects supported by the Unison International Development Fund – UIDF.

Relations with the Israeli labour movement
At its national delegate conference in 2010, UNISON decided to suspend normal bilateral relations with the two public service federations of the Histadrut, the Israeli trade union centre. This decision was taken in the light of the Histadrut’s support for the Israeli military attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. However, the decision was also taken given the Histadrut’s support for the military assault on Gaza, its failure to actively campaign for an end to the illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem or against the Separation Wall. This decision was reaffirmed by the 2011 conference.

In reality this means that UNISON will not invite either union to its conference or other events, will not accept invitations from either union and nor will it undertake any joint project work with either organization. We will not issue solidarity messages to either union when they undertake strike action and nor will we meet with delegations coming to the UK.

However, both UCAPSE and the Government Employees’ Union are members of Public Services International (PSI) and UCAPSE is also a member of the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU). It is inevitable, therefore, that UNISON representatives will attend meetings of PSI and EPSU at which Histadrut representatives are also present. It is also very likely that UNISON will be invited to attend conferences and meetings of sister unions where the Histadrut will also have been invited. As one of the largest and most influential affiliates to PSI and EPSU UNISON will still continue to attend such meetings despite the presence of the Histadrut. However, where it may be appropriate and where it would advance the cause of the Palestinian trade union movement and people, UNISON may chose to raise the issue of Palestine and the illegal Israeli Occupation in these meetings and challenge the Histadrut representatives to make their positions clear.

UNISON has also begun to co-operate with and support other Israeli trade unions and labour movement NGOs that do oppose the Occupation. The UIDF is currently supporting Kav la’Oved, an NGO, to provide legal advice and representation to migrant workers in the Israeli social care sector. The UIDF is also helping fund a legal department for the Workers Advice Centre (WAC/Ma’an), an NGO that has now become a trade union that organizes Israeli Jewish, Palestinian and migrant workers. This is in line with previous conference decisions and UNISON should continue to work with Kav la’Oved and the Workers Advice Centre as well as other Israeli organizations who take a clear stance against the Occupation.

Motions passed at National Delegate Conference
Palestine 2009

Palestine 2008

Palestine 2007

Palestine and Israel 2006

This TUC boycott has morphed into bigotry

Discriminating against Israelis in the name of the Palestinian cause hurts any progressive agenda for a negotiated peace

Daniel Taub, comment is free, guardian.co.uk,
08.05.12

An NHS conference on conflict resolution for managers and union representatives has turned into a sobering lesson in how conflicts are decidedly not resolved. The guest lecturer at the conference, organised by the Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust, was to be Moty Cristal, an expert in negotiation theory and mediation. But under pressure from one of the participating unions, Unison, his invitation was unceremoniously withdrawn. The reason? He is an Israeli.

At no stage, it should be emphasised, was any concern raised about Professor Cristal himself. He is, by all accounts, an expert in his field. He has lectured around the world and in the UK, including to the Muslim Council of Britain, and has been an active participant in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and back-channel dialogue. It was his Israeli nationality alone, he was informed, which made his participation “unacceptable given Unison and TUC policy on the Middle East conflict”.

This is not the first time a supposedly political boycott has seamlessly morphed into bigotry and prejudice. When two Israeli academics were “unappointed” from the editorial boards of journals at Manchester University, – again purely on the grounds of their citizenship – one of them, Gideon Toury, observed wryly: “I was appointed as a scholar and unappointed as an Israeli.”

The surfacing of pure discrimination in the guise of a political cause is only one warning siren about boycott campaigns claiming to advance a progressive agenda. Another is the revealing selectivity with which they are applied. But the most frustrating is the troubling way in which such campaigns inevitably set out to silence the very voices that anyone truly seeking peace would want to support.

A current example is the campaign to press the Globe Theatre to withdraw an invitation to the Habima theatre company, the oldest Hebrew language theatre group in the world, from performing as part of theWorld Shakespeare Festival accompanying the London 2012 Olympics. Of the 37 participating theatre companies, Habima is the only one subject to such a call. Yet Habima, with its cast of Arab and Jewish actors, and a repertory which repeatedly challenges Israeli establishment dogmas, is precisely the kind of voice that progressives should be supporting, rather than undermining.

So, too, is the Histadrut, Israel’s trade union, which represents many thousands of Israeli Arab members. It has close relations with its Palestinian counterpart, the PGFTU, working with it to advance the rights of Palestinian workers, and on other joint initiatives to advance coexistence and workers’ rights. Yet a concerted campaign is urging the TUC to break all ties with the Histadrut, while Unison already practises such a boycott.

By their nature, boycotts target places of connection and interaction, the very arenas in which dialogue and dissent are most likely to occur. Their insistent focus on censoring academics, cultural events and professional ties target in practice the very elements of society which anyone interested in fostering understanding should be wanting to bolster.

There is, to be sure, an appealing simplicity about a boycott strategy. It requires very little effort, demands no grappling with annoying complexities, or the making of challenging distinctions between moderates and extremists. Most appealing of all, it absolves one of any need to examine possible shortcomings on one’s own side.

Yet anyone concerned about building Palestinian society, rather than simply trying to demolish Israel, realises the futility of this approach. Though a staunch opponent of Israel, Edward Said cared enough about advancing Palestinian interests to recognise this: “What have years of refusing to deal with Israel done for us?” he asked. “Nothing at all, except to weaken us and weaken our perception of our opponent.”

It is sad – and revealing – that supposed pro-Palestinian activists campaigning to prevent the Habima theatre from performing are doing nothing to support Ashtar Theatre of Ramallah, which is having difficulty selling tickets in the same festival. Those who care about building the foundations for reconciliation and peace will recognise that these are the voices they should be working to amplify, not to silence.

[British-born Daniel Taub is Israel's ambassador to the UK]

Arts boycotts, hunger strikes and the defence of Israel
Letters, guardian.co.uk,
15.05.12 (online)16.05.12 (print)

Israel’s ambassador, Daniel Taub, is right to say the Unison boycott is discriminatory (From boycott to bigotry, 9 May). That is the unavoidable crudity of all boycotts, which are usually last-resort expedients when governments do nothing. For many there is no other practical means of expressing, with any sniff of effectiveness, abhorrence at the relentless colonisation by Israel of the West Bank and East Jerusalem (appropriating so far well over 40% of their land mass by recent Foreign Office calculations). The fact that a significant minority of Israelis, and many Jews here, vehemently oppose both that colonisation and Gaza’s slow strangulation, with the oppression and humiliation that attends them, only underlines the complete failure of western (particularly US and UK) diplomacy, replete as it is with double standards. If the Israeli government were remotely interested in accommodation with Palestine, as opposed to its subjugation, they would long ago have ceased their annexation programme, as President Obama once rightly demanded they should – only to be ignominiously overridden by Mr Netanyahu with complete impunity. Mr Taub is yet another plausible apologist for Israeli policy which, ironically, is founded on the very “bigotry and prejudice” he charges Unison with. Some of us so avidly labelled as antisemites by Zionist hardliners believe passionately in the right of Israel to exist in peace and security behind its lawful borders, and are also convinced that its policies are profoundly self-damaging.
Andrew Phillips
House of Lords
[Andrew Phillips, Baron Phillips of Sudbury, is a LibDem life peer

• I agree with Daniel Taub that we who want justice for Palestine should support the constructive and creative voices – as many of us do (notably British Shalom-Salaam Trust). An unfortunate aspect of boycott is that it may indeed segue into bigotry; certainly to withdraw the invitation to Moty Cristal seems to illustrate that potential, as does the boycott of the Habima theatre company. But there may be some different aspects to this that could be considered. One problem with the notion of conflict resolution or negotiation between Israel and Palestine is the huge imbalance of power between the two. There is of course very effective work done at grassroots level, but nonetheless the power differential must affect the process, however well-intentioned the more powerful participants might be. This effect is vastly multiplied at the higher political level. So to condemn the boycott of any representatives of that power, or blithely talk about negotiations between the two sides, as things stand, misses the point. Although Habima is commendable for the reasons Taub outlines, the boycott is proposed because it has performed to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, thus collaborating with and in some ways legitimising illegal appropriation of occupied land. Boycott is one of the few non-violent means of protest and resistance left to a disfranchised people. True, it might perhaps be slightly more nuanced in its implementation, but it is always going to sweep over people or organisations that do not on the face of it deserve to be caught in its net. Anyone working and hoping for justice for Palestine will surely understand the necessity for its use.
Sylvia Cohen, London

• It is strange to read Daniel Taub, defending what he calls the voices speaking for peace against being boycotted, when he is representing and defending one of the most vindictive and oppressive governments in the Middle East. Faced with thousands of Palestinians imprisoned for long periods without trial, many in their teens, assassinations of suspects not proven guilty, and appropriation of hundreds of acres of land through illegal evictions alongside the building of many illegal settlements, and all in the name of defending Israel, Taub’s comments are hardly credible. It’s true, boycotts are not always the most sensitive of political actions but, for instance, their use helped remove apartheid in South Africa. Boycotts can and do work in raising moral issues; perhaps that is why so many pro-Israeli establishment figures are critical of their use. As I understand it, Habima has chosen, in the past, to perform at illegal settlements, thereby giving support to their land-grabbing presence. That, for me, at this moment, is reason enough to boycott its performances here in England.
Ernest Rodker, London

• I’m not sure how Daniel Taub knows that “supposed pro-Palestinian activists … are doing nothing to support Ashtar Theatre of Ramallah”. I was at the Globe when the theatre was at least three-quarters full at a matinee, which is not bad for a play in Arabic with minimal subtitles. And if Taub thinks that the boycotts of Israel have done “nothing at all”, why is he so exercised about them? It would be surprising if the Israeli government were not concerned about the recent successes of the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, including the Olympia Food Co-op in the US refusing to stock Israeli products, the loss of contracts worth billions of dollars by two corporations, Veolia and Alstom, which were complicit in the Israeli illegal occupation, and the pullout by Deutsche Bahn from a rail project on Palestinian land.

Taub may say he is concerned on behalf of the Palestinians, but there are plenty of Palestinians – I am one of them – who cheer every victory of the boycott movement as a sign that there are limits to Israel’s power to have things its own way.
Karl Sabbagh, Newbold on Stour, Warwickshire

Latest lunacies from the Only Democracy in the Middle East ™
Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam
15.05.12

Today’s news brings two new lunacies from our friends in the Only Democracy in the Middle East™ . In the first instance, the Israeli tax authorities impounded a shipment of copies of the Arabic language edition of Yehuda HaLevy’s seminal work of medieval Jewish philosophy, The Kuzari. They did so because the books had been printed in Lebanon, one of the few places in the Middle East that prints Arabic books. The Israeli authorities claimed that allowing the books into Israel would constitute “trading with the enemy.”

The book, originally written in Judeo-Arabic, a medieval version of Arabic written using Hebrew characters (similar in concept to Yiddish), was translated as a seven-year, uncompensated labor of love by an Israeli-Palestinian PhD student at Ben Gurion University. He explained to Akiva Eldar that Israel often looks the other way when Arabic books are imported from nations in the region with whom Israel has strained relations, including Lebanon. In this case, they decided to make an example of poor Yehuda HaLevy. Why? Who knows. It may be precisely because it was a labor of love by an Israeli Palestinian and the police wish to make an example of him. It may be because they don’t like books in general. History is full of regimes which liked to make examples of books.

Or maybe it was this particular book. After all, it tells the famous tale of the Khazar king who was persuaded by a Jewish scholar to convert to Judaism. There are those among anti-Zionists who like to argue that contemporary Jews don’t trace a direct lineage back to ancient Israel, but rather to the Khazars. This is part of the ongoing battle between Zionists who feel the need to prove such a connection in order to justify the Jewish claim on Israel; and between those who feel that severing that historical connection of the Jews to the land of Israel will weaken their historical claims.

It’s entirely possible that some Shin Bet agent has studied a little too much medieval philosophy (not enough to understand the true power of the work, but too much to ignore it), and decided that the Kuzari is part of the Palestinian project of delegitimization of Israel. As a result, Israel appears to be engaging in a cultural boycott not only of Arabic language books, but of one of the great Jewish medieval poets and philosophers.

Another terrible irony of this entire mess is that the original book and author represented the pinnacle of medieval Jewish learning and intellectual achievement. This achievement happened in good part because of the environment in which Ha-Levi lived, which allowed Jews and Arabs to co-exist peacefully, even fruitfully. Could this be yet another unconscious reason Israel feels the need to suppress an Arabic-language edition? It needs to stamp out the historical example of a Jewish book written within an Arab society and in a language that combined both Arabic and Hebrew. That much peaceful co-existence and cultural interchange could be scary to Israeli officials who prefer their state to be Arab-rein.

If this weren’t so insane it would actually be mordantly funny.

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Ministry of the Environment has taken the pro-active step of commissioning scientists to examine the effect that climate change will have on Israel and the Middle East. So far so good. Until you recognize that the minister is Gilad Erdan, the very same Likud henchman who tried to skewer Meir Dagan in New York by calling him a political hack for questioning Bibi’s threats of war against Iran. Knowing that Erdan is such a lap dog will explain the mockery that his ministry has made of the science of climate change.

In this country, red-neck anti-science Republicans have similarly made a political football out of climate change. But at least they’ve made a pretense of arguing scientific principles. The Israeli report dispenses with science altogether and views climate change through the prism of the national security and the Israeli-Arab conflict:

In order to combat increased waves of illegal migration that will likely accompany climate change, Israel must secure its borders through impassable barriers, including “sea fences” along the Mediterranean and Red Sea, experts have concluded.

“The lack of water, warming and sea level rise, even if it will occur on a different schedule, will bring migration movements from all impoverished regions to every place where it is possible to escape this,” wrote a team of academics, led by Prof. Arnon Soffer and Dr. Anton Berkovsky of the University of Haifa’s Geography Department…

Among its suggestions for how to handle the geo-strategic implications of climate change, the team…called for a complete enclosure of Israel from all directions, including establishing sea fences along the Mediterranean and Red seas. In addition, the experts said that additional law enforcement will be required to deal with the ramifications of securing the Egyptian and Jordanian borders, as economic crisis might ensue for Negev Beduins who trade across these turfs. While securing Israel from all sides, however, the authorities must ensure for the safe passage of animals and plants.

…Soffer explained that the most troublesome spot in terms of migration to Israel is the Nile basin area, where a mixture of drastic climate changes and demographic explosions are pushing people to move northward. Meanwhile, they recognize that “Europe is completely under siege by the navvies,” so they cannot move in that direction.

…“I am one that fights for building fences all around Israeli borders,” he said. “We are an island – we don’t belong to this region, and we have to defend Israel from waves of migration from Egypt from Jordan and maybe from Syria. If we want to keep Israel a Jewish State, we will have to defend ourselves from what I call ‘climate refugees,’ exactly as Europe is doing now.”

After reading a passage like this you begin to wonder whether Soffer is a Stephen Colbert pseudo-scientist parody:

While the fences around Israel are necessary, according to Soffer, so too are corridors to allow the free passage of animals. Such passages, he said could be guarded by groups of soldiers for days at a time to allow the animals, such as snakes, to cross both ways.

So Israel will seal itself off from human aliens, but bestow mercy on the animals (non-human ones, that is).

Think of the psychological profile of a supposed learned scholar who thinks in such deeply paranoid ways of those surround Israel. Think of the delusional thinking that allows him to believe that the solution to an epidemic is to turn Israel into a battleship that can fight off those who threaten it. This, in effect is a transference of Israeli security policy into the realm of climate science. Just as security policy is bankrupt so is this approach to a coming major catastrophe.

Note that Soffer doesn’t propose that Israel contribute scientifically so solving the problems of climate change. He doesn’t suggest decreasing Israel’s carbon footprint or devising ways of lessening the world’s carbon emissions, all of which would help avert the crisis. Instead, he merely suggests who to weather the human storm it will cause. Soffer gives his nation, his discipline and science in general a bad name. How can such racism infect someone who’s earned a position at a major Israeli university?

Encountering Peace: Observations, thoughts and questions
By Gershon Baskin, JPost
14.05.12

Summer is here, ergo I demonstrate. Summer is back and with it the middle class uprising, or the “Hebrew Spring” as some now call it. I really debated with myself on whether or not to join the parade this past Saturday evening. It’s not that I don’t support the calls for social justice. I do. Nor am I in favor of the continued privatization of public services in Israel. The cost of living is too high in Israel, the wages are too low, there is too much abuse of public funds, the government is too big, the wealthy are taxed too leniently. Israel really should be the exemplary compassionate social democracy.

So why the hesitation? I don’t want to continue through another summer of protest to be partner to the lie. There can be no social justice while we continue to control another people and deny them their basic freedom and liberation as a people, and I am not willing to enter the tent of denial. I am not willing to be part of those who even suggest leaving these issues of peace and security out of the tent because they are unpopular. It may indeed be completely true – who wants to hear, once again, about the “political” issues? Not many for sure, but that does not belittle this very basic truth.

So in Jerusalem on Saturday evening I went out to demonstrate. There were some new slogans (Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies, equality for all), some new T-shirts (Peace and Social Justice – one struggle!), there was a young Ethiopian woman lawyer speaker who spoke openly about racism in Israel and the crowd chanted “Equality for All!” These were all encouraging.

Then there was the chant “money for neighborhoods not for…” and I waited to hear “settlements,” but instead came “seats in the government.” How disappointing.

When we marched towards Independence Park and walked along the high white metal barrier surrounding the area where more than 2,000 Muslim skeletons were removed in order to build a museum of tolerance in the name of Simon Wiesenthal, the crowd started banging hard on the four-meter wall, making a lot of noise – enough to wake the dead.

Maybe some in the crowd thought for a moment about the irony of calling for social justice in a city like Jerusalem without protesting against what was happening behind that wall. But this was not part of the demonstrators’ agenda.

As these demonstrations in Israel were taking place, demonstrations were being held all over Palestine in solidarity with more than 1,500 prisoners who have been on a hunger strike already for weeks. At least two of them had been hospitalized in critical condition.

The demands of the prisoners: end administrative detentions which allow the state to arrest without charge, to imprison without trial, without a need to present any evidence of wrongdoing – not an unreasonable demand to the only democracy in the Middle East; end solitary confinement which for some prisoners has lasted years; return the right of education in prison, allow family visits for prisoners from Gaza who have not seen their families for six years – since the abduction of Gilad Schalit – and to end strip searches of prisoners.

Many of these demands now appear within a new law on the rights of prisoners which was passed in the Knesset just last week. Of course, in Israel, at the demonstrations in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and in the other main cities, not one word was spoken about this issue. Prisoners’ rights are not on the agenda of the social protest movement of Israel’s middle class. Their situation doesn’t touch us, doesn’t affect our pocket and besides, they are the enemy, so who really cares about them? With the second largest government in the history of Israel, real changes could take place. As US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, there are no more excuses. The coalition will not fall; the government of Israel can be bold and can take courageous, historic steps.

Miri Regev, a very right-wing back bencher in the Likud, understood the momentous occasion and tried to get the government to support legislation that would annex the Israeli settlements to Israel – unilaterally annexing about 60 percent of the West Bank.

Almost at the last moment Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman woke up to the imminent danger and alerted the prime minister to the fact that such a move would be a disaster for the State of Israel, and that even Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir had not ventured into this right-wing fanaticide (fanatic national suicide wish).

No, Miri Regev, Hillary Clinton was not speaking about that kind of boldness, thank you very much.

Yes, she was saying that it is time Israel became a state with defined borders, but she was suggesting that it be the outcome of negotiations with the Palestinians and not as a result of opening a new political war between Israel and the world.

So back to the summer of discontent – no, Hillary Clinton should not have to tell us what to do, we should be doing that ourselves. All of the middle class demands, economic restructuring, ending privatization of public services, providing affordable public housing, bringing down the cost of living, taxing the wealthy, free education, creating a just and democratic welfare state – a social democracy can only be achieved in conjunction with ending our control over the Palestinian people and making peace with our neighbors.

This very unpopular truth cannot be hidden, it cannot be ignored and it will not go away by wishful thinking. So I invite the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets last summer to come out once again – not for an evening of entertainment with popular singers but for a real political struggle that will not be a passing illusion of accomplishment, but the real thing. We can recapture the hope and we can overcome despair. Let us be honest with ourselves and reconnect the obvious – social justice – YES, end the occupation – YES, peace with our neighbors – YES.

The writer is the co-chairman of IPCRI, the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information, a columnist for The Jerusalem Post, a radio host on All for Peace Radio and the initiator and negotiator of the secret back channel for the release of Gilad Schalit.

U.N.’s oldest refugee camps look at sensitive upgrades

By Noah Browning, Reuters
09.05.12

BETHLEHEM – Three generations of Palestinians displaced by the founding of Israel in 1948 know only life in U.N. refugee camps, going to schools beneath the blue-and-white U.N. flag and drawing their food stocks from U.N. warehouses.

For these Palestinians whose long-cherished goal is “right of return” to the lands they lost 64 years ago, the camps must be seen as temporary no matter how permanent they might seem to others.

Which explains why the latest programme by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) to upgrade the camps’ dilapidated facilities is such a delicate operation.

The United Nations and other agencies have been providing essential services in the camps for decades without implementing permanent institutions, but say the time has come to do more for the growing populations of residents.

“People have a right to be proud of where they are…,” said Sandi Hilal, the director of UNRWA’s carefully named “camp improvement program” in the West Bank, adding that providing just basic needs “is not enough when we consider people have been living in a place for 60 years”.

“Improving the daily life of refugees doesn’t jeopardize their right to return back home. Living in dignity is the main goal of the improvement program,” she said.

Some 700,000 people fled or were driven from their homes when Israel was created after the 1948 war, but now as many as five million refugees and their descendants live in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, many of them in squalid camps.

Founded in 1949, UNRWA is almost as old as the U.N. itself. Given that prospects for a resolution to Israel’s disputes in the Middle East continue to be dismal, it appears to have a long future ahead.

With the help of German government funding, the agency is improving health clinics, sanitation and advanced education in coordination with local committees in five camps in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and two in Jordan.

Clinging to hope
The 13,000 residents of Bethlehem’s Deheishe camp, a warren of cinder block hovels clogged with traffic and electrical wires, are a focus of UNRWA’s efforts.

The agency leased the site months after some 2,000 original refugees quit towns and villages around Jerusalem in 1949.

The fate of refugees clinging to the right of return has been one of the toughest issues facing negotiators in two decades of on-off talks aimed at creating an independent Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.

Israel says the demand for a right to return is a deal breaker in any peace accord, arguing that allowing the refugees into Israel would increase the proportion of Palestinian Arabs living within its borders and thus undermine its nature as a Jewish state.

It also disputes the legal basis of the right of return set out in a U.N. resolution of December 1948 and says the world has not taken into account the plight of Jews forced from their homes across the Arab world in the last 65 years.

Peace talks have been frozen since 2010, with the Palestinians saying they will not re-engage until there is a halt to Jewish settlement building in the occupied territories.

The dejection found in Deheishe has not been reversed by the UNRWA plan to improve it or by the work of 20 non-governmental organisations in its one-km-square area.

As walls turned from felt to cinder block over decades, houses squashed together, pushing community life out into the surreally narrow streets. With no parks for children to play in and few jobs to keep youths busy, people of all ages mingle in its crowded alleyways.

“Standards of living here are plunging,” lamented part-time labourer Othman Abu Omar, puffing idly on a cigarette.

“We hope one day to be done with dependence. Everybody should depend on himself,” he said.

Hoping “to disappear”
Some residents complain that the decades of U.N. sponsorship have amounted to nothing more than charity, without addressing the underlying political cause of their plight.

“We’ve gotten health and basic services, but there is no end to the crisis,” said Habis al-Aisa, a camp dweller whose family hails from Zakariyya, a town in what is now central Israel.

“We’re refugees, and the U.N. should be totally responsible for our needs and our situation, because our status is an international political issue.”

The United Nations recognises as refugees those who registered with UNRWA after fleeing their homes and their descendants. They are covered by the U.N. resolutions and eligible to receive the agency’s services even if not resident in the camps, but not if they attain citizenship or asylum in another country.

Historically weak and cash-strapped governments in Palestinian-governed Gaza and the West Bank have provided little in the way of infrastructure or subsidies to the camps or their inhabitants. Many remain in the camps for lack of better options.

UNRWA is the only U.N. organization devoted to the refugee problem of a single people. Its spokesman, Chris Gunness, said it has no set policy on where the refugees are to go, or how the Middle East crisis might end.

“UNRWA would like nothing more than to disappear and not be needed anymore. It provides services pending a just and durable solution to the conflict,” he said.

The agency’s current improvement scheme, subsidized by 19.5 million euros from the German government, stresses close coordination with local parties.

A gleaming new clinic aims to provide services to sufferers of diabetes and hypertension, which afflicts around a sixth of refugees in the West Bank, who previously had few options for treatment.

Living conditions will be improved by shoring up collapsing houses, mending roofs and improving sewage and trash collection.

In a college-level education program, dubbed the “House of Wisdom” after a Baghdad library in the Islamic golden age, young camp dwellers choose their own curriculum and are visited by guest lecturers in small, Socratic learning circles.

“194, 242, 338,” student Alaa al-Homuz rattles in staccato, naming U.N. Security Council resolutions dealing with Palestinian refugees which he is studying in a class on international law.

These students disagreed that improving the conditions in the camps would interfere with the concept of the right of return or dull their determination to return to their ancestral homes.

“When you live better and have your essential needs met, it leads to a better way of thinking and to finding better strategies to get our rights,” al-Homuz said.

EU and Arab League demand support for UNRWA’s work engaging Palestine refugee youth in the Middle East

UNWRA
19.03.12

Brussels —At a major international conference convened by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), there have been high-profile calls on the international community to support the UN agency that works for Palestine refugees.

At a two-day meeting in Brussels, Catherine Ashton, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union, said, “We are gathered here because we have recognised the potential of the youth of Palestine. Against all the odds, they continue to learn, to work, to dream and aspire to a better future.”

The conference in Brussels was attended by over 400 delegates who heard speeches on behalf of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas. The Belgian Foreign Minister, Didier Reynders, and his Jordanian counterpart, Nasser Judeh, also spoke. Ronan Farrow, the youth adviser of US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, also participated.

“Over the coming years,” Ashton continued, “the EU will continue providing support to UNRWA’s General Fund as the Agency makes progress in its reform process. We believe that UNRWA is essential to the development and well-being of all the Palestine refugees and we believe that it needs strong support, financial support from all the parties that are able to do that.”

Echoing Ashton’s call, Nabil El-Araby, Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, urged the international community to pay attention to the rapidly-shifting reality of Palestine refugees by investing in youth.

If current trends continue, there will be 1.5 million young Palestine refugees between the ages of 15 and 29 by 2020, about one-quarter of whom are likely to be unemployed.

“There is no doubt that we are at a critical juncture. The intersection of forces — political uprisings, conflict, the rise of social media, the unprecedented numbers of young people, economic uncertainty — have all created volatility, and at the same time, great potential,” said UNRWA Commissioner-General, Filippo Grandi.

“For refugee youth, the broader transformations amplify the profound stresses of the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian situation, of the continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, of rights often violated or not granted, of the vulnerability and anxiety generated by lives in exile in a region plagued by repeated conflicts, even as we speak. At the same time, young people across the region have proven that they are not ready to give up – that in spite of all odds — they have hope.

Background information
UNRWA provides assistance, protection and advocacy for nearly five million registered Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the occupied Palestinian territory, pending a solution to their plight. The Agency’s services encompass education, primary health care, poverty alleviation for the poorest of the poor, camp infrastructure and improvement, community support, microfinance, and emergency and humanitarian response, including in times of armed conflict.

Palestinian refugees and the U.N.

By Jennifer Rubin, Right Turn, Washington Post
14.05.12

There are many reasons to detest the United Nations. It treats proponents of genocide as legitimate world leaders. It is among the most anti-Semitic institutions on the planet. By inaction it has contributed to mass atrocities in Rwanda, Srebrenica and now Syria. Its oil for food program made Bernie Madoff look like a Boy Scout and feathered the nest of human rights abuser Saddam Hussein.

Now Cliff May alerts us to another reason for wondering if we (the Western world) would be better off without the U.N.: It perpetuates the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Palestinians’ misery. May explains that unlike other refugees (whom the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees oversees), Palestinians were assigned to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which deals exclusively with the Palestinians. As one might imagine, bad things ensued :

In 1950, UNRWA defined a refugee as someone who had “lost his home and his means of livelihood” during the war launched by Arab/Muslim countries in response to Israel’s declaration of independent statehood. Fifteen years later, UNRWA decided — against objections from the United States — to include as refugees the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of those who left Israel. And in 1982, UNRWA further extended eligibility to all subsequent generations of descendants — forever.

Under UNRWA’s rules, even if the descendant of a Palestinian refugee has become a citizen of another state, he’s still a refugee. For example, of the 2 million refugees registered in Jordan, all but 167,000 hold Jordanian citizenship. (In fact, approximately 80 percent of Jordan’s population is Palestinian — not surprising, since Jordan occupies more than three-fourths of the area historically referred to as Palestine.) By adopting such a policy, UNRWA is flagrantly violating the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which states clearly that a person shall cease to be considered a refugee if he has “acquired a new nationality, and enjoys the protection of the country of his new nationality.” . . .

According to UNHCR projections, by 2030 UNRWA’s refugee list will reach 8.5 million. By 2060 there will be 25 times the number registered by UNRWA in 1950 — even though not one of those who actually left Israel is likely to still be breathing.

The point of this charade is clear. May observes, “By increasing the number of refugees, by maintaining that population in poverty, dependence, and anger, by understanding that the ‘right of return’ will be demanded by some Palestinian leaders, UNRWA is helping the extremists to prevent peace and continue to wage a war of annihilation against Israel. This anti-peace policy is being funded largely by Americans: We’ve always been the largest donor to UNRWA, contributing about $4.4 billion since 1950.”

As May notes, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) is trying to do something about it. A Kirk spokesman explained to me, “Senator Kirk believes U.S. taxpayers deserve to know whether their money is being used to provide relief to actual Palestinian refugees or to perpetuate a conflict narrative while subsidizing a welfare society in the West Bank and Gaza. As a long-time advocate for UNRWA accountability, Senator Kirk’s proposal seeks basic truth in accounting from Foggy Bottom.”

Kirk has therefore requested language in the State Foreign Operations Appropriations bill that would do two things. First, it would, as a matter of U.S. policy, define a Palestinian refugee as a person whose place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who was personally displaced as a result of the 1948 or 1967 Arab-Israeli conflicts, who currently does not reside in the West Bank or Gaza and who is not a citizen of any other state. Second, it would require the secretary of State to report on the number of Palestinian refugees (as defined above) eligible to receive UNRWA services; the number of residents of the Palestinian Authority living in the West Bank and Gaza who are expected to become citizens of a future Palestinian state and who are eligible to receive UNRWA services; the number of citizens of other countries eligible to receive UNRWA services; and steps being taken to incorporate U.S. policy into the annual Framework for Cooperation between UNRWA and the United States government.

In essence, Kirk wants to call an end U.S. taxpayer-funded welfare in the West Bank and Gaza that directly undermines the objectives of building a Palestinian state capable of providing basic services for its own citizens. If Palestinian leaders want to undertake “statehood building,” (a big “if”) they need to be held accountable for their residents who should, but do not now, receive basic services from the Palestinian Authority rather than UNRWA. And taxpayers should stop helping to magnify and indeed exaggerate the Palestinian refu¬gee problem.

You have to wonder why this has been allowed to go on for so long. Might it be that the Islamic states and their partners in the nonaligned movement (who combined hold the majority of seats in the General Assembly) don’t want a resolution of the Palestinian issue? Hmm. It just might be that perpetuation of that conflict and using it to beat the U.S. and Israel over the head are their real aims. In that, they are certainly “succeeding.”¬

India’s ‘lost tribe’ dreams of ‘return’ to Israel
Dawn/ AFP
30.03.12

CHURACHANDPUR (India): In a synagogue in northeast India, a group of men pray for the chance to “return home” to a country they have never seen and which their ancestors fled nearly 3,000 years ago.

“India is not our country,” says Haniel Reuben, 72, one of the eldest members of a tiny community that claims to have descended from the Manasseh — one of the biblical “lost tribes” of Israel exiled in 720 BC by Assyrian conquerors.

“Our forefathers migrated and settled here. Our home is Israel and we will be reunited with our people one day or another,” Reuben said.

The Bnei Menashe, as the community is known, comprise around 7,200 members of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo tribe who live in the northeast Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur near the border with Myanmar.

Their oral history tells of a centuries-long exodus through Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet and China, all the while adhering to certain Jewish religious practices, like circumcision.

In India they were converted to Christianity by 19th century missionaries and, in reading the bible, recognised stories from their own traditions that convinced them they actually belonged to the Jewish faith.

“We are the lost tribe,” insists Reuben, who lives in a ramshackle two-storey wooden home set against a scenic background of the misty, ash-coloured Manipuri foothills.

A lunisolar Jewish calendar hangs on the wall of his living room, while a mezuzah, or parchment, with verses from the Torah is fixed to the front door frame of the house in Manipur’s state capital Imphal.

He prays three times a day with his eyes facing west “towards Jerusalem.” LOST AND FOUND: The ancestral claims of the Bnei Menashe — rejected by other members of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo — began to draw attention in the 1980s from Jewish organisations dedicated to identifying “lost Jews.” In the late 1990s, groups of Bnei Menashe were brought to Israel where they formally converted and settled.

But the real breakthrough came in 2005 when Israel’s Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar officially recognised the entire community as “descendants of Israel” — a crucial step in securing their “right of return.” The process was halted by new Israeli government policy in 2007, but last July the Ministerial Committee on Immigration and Absorption, agreed to the return of the remaining 7,200 Bnei Menashe.

“It is a huge project,” said Yochanan Phaltual, the Indian representative for Shavei Israel, an Israeli-based organisation that reaches out to descendants of Jews around the world.

“It is very complicated as it requires the involvement of all government departments,” Phaltual said.

The head of Shavei Israel, Michael Freund, who has lobbied hard for years on behalf of the Bnei Menashe, said he was confident the immigration would finally happen.

“This is simply a bureaucratic process, and like all bureaucratic processes, it takes time,” Freund said in an e-mail.

“I hope that we will soon hear good news, and that the Bnei Menashe will be allowed to return to the land of their ancestors.”

MIXED IDENTITY: Living as a tiny minority poses numerous problems for people like Talya Bem, a 45-year-old widow and mother of three, particularly when it comes to observing orthodox customs and rituals.

“I was born as a Jew,” Bem says. “I live in India but my heart is in Israel.

“I want to go there as soon as possible. We can’t follow all the commandments of the Torah here,” she adds tearfully, comforted by her 18-year-old daughter, dressed smartly in a long black skirt and purple top.

According to Phaltual, Bnei Menashe families almost never go out to eat in local restaurants or buy food from street vendors.

“Nothing is kosher here. All the eateries serve pork and we fear that our food will get mixed up with that,” he said.

Manipur has a primarily agrarian economy and is one of the least developed states in India — one of only five with a per capita income of less than 30,000 rupees ($600).

But Phaltual bristles at the suggestion that the Bnei Menashe are motivated less by religious feeling and more by the prospect of a more comfortable, material life in Israel.

“Most of our community is well-settled. It is a very wrong conception that economic considerations have fuelled our dream of return,” he said.

Phaltual and Reuben both converted to Judaism in the 1990s.

“We studied the Bible the way Christians do,” Reuben said. “But slowly as we grew up, we started discussing how some of our customs matched with the tradition followed by ancient Israelites.”

PREPARING FOR THE RETURN: At the Churachandpur synagogue, which boasts a small “mikveh” or pond used for ritual purification, Shlomo Haokip, 26, has been giving Hebrew classes for the past four years to help people prepare for life in Israel.

“Knowing Hebrew is one of the pre-requisites for formal conversion to Judaism in Israel,” said Haokip, who lives with his family in the premises of the synagogue in Churachandpur town, 60 kms from Imphal. “I hold classes for children during the summer vacation. We also organise Hebrew learning camps every now and then. It’s a difficult language, and even I am not an expert. But once I go to Israel, I will become more fluent.” Some Bnei Menashe are less sanguine about the issue of return, and feel impatient about the delays in the immigration process and the religious and bureaucratic hoops they feel forced to jump through.

“The British baptised us during their rule of the country and we corrected the mistake by taking up Judaism again,” said 31-year-old Moses, who gave just one name.—

Protesters outside the CRH AGM,  Dun Laoghaire, 9th May. The human wall spells out “CRH: Stop Cementing Misery in Palestine”. Organised by Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Palestinian Women Confront CRH Board, Submit 10,000 Petition Urging Divestment from Israel

PNN
10.05.12

This year’s CRH Annual General Meeting in Dun Laoghaire on Wednesday, 9th May, was again the scene of calls for the company to divest from its Israeli business interests which are involved in building the illegal wall and settlements in Palestine. Two Palestinian women made impassioned pleas from the floor asking CRH to heed the 10,000 signature strong petition calling for CRH to “Stop Cementing Misery in Palestine”. The petition and demonstration were organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC).

Outside, over 50 human rights activists created a colourful spectacle along Marine Road. 33 activists each held a single placard with one letter of the campaign slogan calling on CRH to divest while others held aloft 25 feet high Palestinian flags and 30 feet long Palestinian banners.

John Dorman, Divestment Officer of the IPSC, said that the intervention was because “CRH owns 25% of the Israeli company Mashav Initiative and Development Ltd, which in turn owns Israel’s sole cement producer Nesher Cement Enterprises Ltd. Nesher provide up to 90% of all cement sold in Israel, including cement used in the construction of Israel’s illegal separation wall in Palestine and illegal settlements and checkpoints.”

Palestinian human rights lawyer, Huwaida Arraf, drew a round of applause in the meeting after her heartfelt entreaty to CRH, which left board members stony-faced and decidedly awkward looking. In her speech, Ms Arraf implored CRH to divest from Israel. She said, “I am here to plead with you not be complicit in building Israel’s ghettos of the 21st Century that my family is living in right now. You say that CRH has no control over the end use of the cement that the Nesher company produces. I’m sorry but Palestinians simply can’t accept that. We cannot accept it because you knowingly invested in this company, and you are aware that the company has built this wall and these settlements, declared by the World Court to be a violation of international law.

Ms Arraf concluded with a warning for CRH and its shareholders, saying that “CRH should divest from Israel like other companies are doing right now, or else they face the loss of massive contracts as companies like G4S and Veolia have seen recently as a result of their complicity with Israeli apartheid. It is tainting the reputation of your company, so please do as other companies, who care morally and ethically about their investors and investments, have done and divest”.

Next to speak on the issue was Fatin Al Tamimi, a Palestinian woman from Hebron in the West Bank. Ms Tamimi pointed out that her “hometown is now an apartheid city because of the illegal settlements and checkpoints in its centre, built with cement from Nesher. CRH says it is committed to the highest standards of ethical, legal and moral standards. All I have to do is look at my home town, and CRH’s facilitation of Israel’s apartheid regime of occupation in Palestine, to see that this is a hollow claim. And I am not the only one.”

To prove her point, Ms Tamimi concluded: that she “would like to present the Board of Directors with a petition which has over ten thousand signatures calling on CRH to stop cementing misery in Palestine and to divest from its Israeli business interests. While most signatories are Irish, there are names here from Jacksonville to Johannesburg to Jerusalem, all united behind this call. The question is, will you listen CRH?”

At this point the petition was handed to the Board in cardboard boxes decorated to represent the Apartheid Wall, while Ms Tamimi held aloft a large placard calling on CRH to listen to the call.

During his intervention, John Dorman of the IPSC questioned whether falling profit rates for CRH were due to their continued investment in Israel. He also noted that the IPSC would be distributing a “CRH Annual Comic” in the lobby, but that it came with a health warning that “you may not find it funny that CRH profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestine”. 200 copies were distributed and the comic is available to download here [slow loader]

CRH announces materials investments in North America and the Middle East

Press Release, CRH
09.09.01
Excerpt

Mashav

Mashav is the holding company for Nesher Cement, the sole producer of cement in Israel. From two state-of-the-art dry process production lines at its main facility in Ramla and a single semi-dry process plant at Har Tuv, Nesher supplies cement throughout Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Both facilities have access to substantial raw material reserves. Nesher also operates a clinker grinding plant at Haifa where the company has permits to modernise its recently closed wet process clinker plant. In 2000, Nesher sold 5.7 million tonnes of cement.

Mashav, which also has a 50% interest in a logistics and transportation company, reported consolidated sales of euro 428.3 million and trading profits before depreciation of euro 123.6 million in 2000. Pretax profits amounted to euro 65.0 million after a depreciation charge of euro 48.0 million and interest expense of euro 10.6 million.

To know who we are we must know where we came from

Speech by Diana Neslen of Jews for Justice for Palestinians at a protest outside  Downing Street, London

12.05.12

We gather here at a sombre moment. The Palestinian prisoners are in the throes of a hunger strike to show the world the nature of the Israeli occupation and the indignity, cruelty and illegality to which they are subject.They remind us most forcibly of the reason we are here today.

Without memory there is no identity. Without memory we lose our bearings. So it is fitting that today we remember that Palestinians still wait to be recognised and mourn their exile from the land they love.

We need to think what exile means. For the Palestinian refugees who live in the West Bank or Gaza, it means being unable to return to the land their ancestors ploughed, the places where their homes once stood, the soil that is for them so precious. And many of them are unable to worship at either Al Aqsa mosque or at any of
the churches in Jerusalem on their holy days.

As Jews we still mourn the destruction of the temple on the 9th day of the Jewish month of Av. But while Israel cherishes its days of mourning, it denies Palestinians the same rights. The dispossession gathers pace, now encompassing the Bedouin, of the Negev. Today we reflect on the plight of the people from the Al Araquib, a village settled by the Bedouin since Ottoman times and subject to destruction over 30 times. The people are living in their cemetery. Thus does the mourning continue. But national leaders so often believe that if they airbrush the truth it will disappear. Last year Israel enacted a law that reduces funding for bodies that mark Independence day, which corresponds to the Nakba, as a day of mourning.

People may not realise what this means. It means that Palestinian schools already funded at a far lower level than the Jewish Israeli schools cannot teach Palestinian children their own history, namely the Nakba without losing money. Thus the very identity of indigenous Palestinian children is being systematically destroyed.

Israel has made sterling efforts to hide the evidence of destruction of the places where Palestinians once lived.

The Jewish National Fund has planted trees over the ruins; the names of the villages have been Hebraized; the new Jewish Israeli generations are taught nothing of this past. It can only be that Israel is ashamed of its history and wishes to wipe the slate clean. However not all Israelis feel that way. There is an organisation in Tel Aviv called ‘Zochrot’, Remembrance, made up of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, which seeks to raise public awareness of the Palestinian Nakba, especially among Jews in Israel, who bear a particular responsibility to remember and amend the legacy of 1948. Every Independence day they sally forth to commemorate the Nakba by posting the names of Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948, in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. This year their building was surrounded by riot police who prevented them from leaving on the grounds that what they were doing was seditious and that they were a threat to public order.

In the Western Galilee College where fully one quarter of the students are of Palestinian Arab descent, the Arab students were forced to stand on the day when Israel remembers the soldiers who died during their wars. They tried to go into the college but the doors were locked and the benches were hosed down to prevent them from sitting down. The authorities demanded that the Palestinian students pay homage to the people they regard as representative of those who conquered their land. It is hard to imagine a more callous demand. A poll, taken after an article reporting this action was published, showed that almost 80% of those polled agreed with the college authorities.

Israel calls itself the Jewish and democratic state. There is nothing democratic about dispossession or about denying people their rightful history and in my view there is nothing Jewish about contempt for anyone who does not conform to Jewish demands. So today we mourn with those who remember their homeland, and we also mourn for those who have lost their moral compass.

Protest Against the On-Going Nakba

PNN
10.05.12

Event: Saturday 12th May from 1 to 3pm outside Downing Street

Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) warns ‘the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) isn’t over – the ethnic cleansing continues today’.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign is holding a protest outside Downing Street on Saturday 12th May from 1 to 3pm to commemorate the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948 and to warn against the ‘on-going ethic cleansing’.

Speakers will include: PSC Chair Hugh Lanning,MP Andy Slaughter, singer/poet Melissa Melodee, Diana Neslen from Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Palestinian academic Karma Nabulsi, Baroness Jenny Tonge and the Ambassador for Palestine in the UK, Prof Manuel Hassassian.

Sarah Colborne, Director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said:

” When looking back on the horrors of war and ethnic cleansing, people say ‘let us never let this happen again’. But for the Palestinians the ethnic cleansing has never ended. The refugees are still barred from their homeland; Palestinians are being forced from their land to make way for Israeli settlements, and the Israeli administration have even stated that they don’t want Palestinians to exceed 30% of the population of Jerusalem – a blantatly racist target.

” We will be joining global protests to call for an end to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. We will also be calling for international support for Palestinian prisoners who are hunger striking against illegal captivity and inhumane prison conditions. ”

IDF gearing up for ‘Nakba Day’ violence

IDF is concerned it will face repeat of 2011’s Nakba Day protests when nearly 100 Syrians crossed into Israel at Golan border

By Yaakov Katzo, JPost
14.05.12

Amid concerns that violence may break out, the IDF is beefing up forces and anti-riot teams along Israel’s borders ahead of “Nakba Day” on Tuesday.

The IDF is concerned that it will face a repeat of last year’s Nakba Day protests when nearly 100 Syrians succeeded in crossing into Israel from the Golan Heights.

A number of protesters were reported killed by the IDF along the borders with Lebanon and Syria.

Nakba Day – or the “day of catastrophe” – is the day Palestinians mark the establishment of the State of Israel and its subsequent refugee crisis.

“There are preparations and we will not allow a violation of Israel’s sovereignty,” one officer explained on Sunday.

Since last year, the IDF has upgraded its riot gear with new nonlethal systems such as the “Skunk” and “Scream,” which have been used in the West Bank to disperse demonstrators. “Scream” is a device that emits penetrating bursts of sound that leave protesters dizzy and nauseous, while “Skunk” contains a foul-smelling liquid that is sprayed on protesters.

The IDF has equipped battalions with new receivers for the standardissued M-16 semi-automatic rifle so that it can shoot 0.22 mm. rounds.

The standard 5.556 mm. round is not as lethal when fired from a distance by sharpshooters.

The army has also purchased impact rounds for snipers to use with Remington M-24 7.62 mm. rifles.

Impact rounds are usually made of non-lead materials and do not penetrate the skin but rather inflict a painful blow to the target or victim.

The new equipment comes on the heels of ordering other riot gear such as tear gas, rubber bullets and protective equipment.

The IDF also recently completed the erection of a new fence along the Syrian border as well as the construction of new minefields aimed at preventing infiltrations.

Israel has passed on messages to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon warning that the IDF will use force to prevent an infiltration of its border.

In response, UNIFIL plans to deploy large forces along the border.

In the West Bank, the IDF and civil administration are coordinating with Palestinian Authority security forces to allow Palestinian protest without an escalation in violence. Expected hotspots will once again include the Kalandiya crossing between Jerusalem and Ramallah.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said standard law enforcement deployments would occur on Nakba Day, in line with security assessments.

The police’s seven districts will hold further deliberations in the coming days, and coordinate their preparations with one another, Rosenfeld added.

Yaakov Lappin contributed to this report.

Christians hold mass to mark Nakba day
By Jenny Baboun, Ma’an news
13.05.12

BETHLEHEM — Palestinian Christians held a mass Friday on the lands of the Cremisan monastery near Bethlehem, which is threatened by construction of Israel’s separation barrier.

Rev. Ibrahim Shomali, the Roman Catholic parish priest of Beit Jala led the mass which was held to mark Nakba day and honor the hundreds of prisoners on hunger strike in Israeli jails.

Bishop Munib Younan, the president of the Lutheran World Federation and a Fatah leader, and Mahmoud al-Aloul, the Chilean consul, also joined along with the ambassadors of Chile and Brazil.

Al-Aloul said long-term hunger-strikers Thaer Halahla and Bilal Diab entered their 75th day without food, which he called “something beyond the human realm of comprehension.”

Diab, 27, and Halahla, 33, are being held in a prison clinic because Israeli authorities refused to allow the prisoners society’s lawyer to visit them. An Israeli Prison Service spokeswoman says the detainees are being treated and will be hospitalized “if it is necessary.”

Younan said the hunger strikers were suffering but humans endure pain to regain their dignity.

He added that “Our weapons are not less than Israel’s weapons, as our weapon is to call for peace and to cling to the land, which breaks the occupation’s strategy.”

Bishop Younan said “no Palestinian house was unaffected by the Nakba,” referring to the exodus of some 750,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled during Israel’s establishment.

He added that the Palestinian cause is not only a political issue, but a spiritual pursuit.

“We have to pray when someone denies the other their rights,” Younan said.

Ahead of Nakba Day, Palestinians take measures to avoid confrontation with Israel

Hamas is pitching in to prevent rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Authority is working hard to ensure that protests will be confined to Palestinian cities and won’t assume a violent character.

By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz
11.05.12

The political storm that swept across the country this week obscured the huge dramas that are continuing to roll across the Middle East. The Arab Spring refuses to end. This week, too, the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad continued to kill civilians and opposition activists who are trying to drive out the regime. In Egypt, preparations for the presidential election, which will take place on May 23 and 24 (with a possible run-off in June) are at their height. At the same time, many fear that the Supreme Military Council will try to postpone the elections at the last minute. Amid all the unrest, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are emerging as islands of political and security stability. The question, of course, is how long that situation will last.

Next week, on May 14, the Palestinians will mark Nakba Day, recalling what they refer to as the “catastrophe” of 1948: Israel’s establishment and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their land. The day’s events will dovetail with the ongoing hunger strike of about 2,000 security prisoners in Israeli jails – which could make for a volatile mix. Still, this week the leaders of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority worked hard to ensure that the demonstrations will be confined to the Palestinian cities of the West Bank and will not assume a violent character. Even the tournament that Jibril Rajoub, president of the Palestinian Football Association, is planning for Nakba Day will be held in West Bank cities.

“My legacy? I have one thing, security,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday in an interview with Reuters. “Ask anyone if we are going to the third intifada. They will say no, they want peace. That has never happened before. People realized that through peaceful means we can achieve our goals.”

In the past, declarations of that sort drew harsh condemnations from Hamas, as did comments related to cooperation with Israel and to measures taken by the PA against armed and wanted Palestinians. But at a time when the head of Hamas’ political bureau, Khaled Meshal, is making it clear that the organization will focus on nonviolent public activities, it’s hard to see how the Islamic movement can criticize Abbas, even implicitly.

Moreover, below the public and media radar, a special unit has been operating in Gaza to prevent the firing of rockets into Israel, as reported yesterday in Haaretz. It may be difficult to grasp this, but Hamas – a terrorist organization that advocates jihad against Israel – has in fact established a security force whose aim is to arrest members of squads belonging to other Palestinian organizations. These include Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees and others who may try to fire missiles at the “Zionist enemy.”

Not exactly a honeymoon
The unit was set up and is commanded by Hamas’ interior minister, Fathi Hamad. Hamad, who was known to hold extreme views with regard to Israel, gave the unit the name Kawat Dabat al-Midan – meaning “the force in control on the ground.” It has about 300 soldiers, tasked with operating, as the unit describes itself, “24 hours a day, in every place in Gaza, especially in areas close to the border with Israel.”

According to a source in Hamas, the force is authorized to open fire at militants who resist arrest or try to shoot at its members. If arrested, the members of a launch squad can expect to serve at least a few months in prison. The launchers, rockets and mortars that it seizes are confiscated and become the property of Hamas. Arrests thus far have been made of activists from smaller Palestinian organizations but also from Islamic Jihad and the PRC, the leading opposition groups in the Strip.

Even though Hamas continues to build itself up militarily, acquiring long-range rockets and improved antitank missiles, its relations with Israel have never looked better. Strangely, close cooperation exists between the sides on the ground, even in the absence of direct contact. While this is not the kind of security coordination that exists between the Israel Defense Forces and the PA in the West Bank, the very existence of this new unit shows which way the wind is blowing in Hamas: The movement clearly wants to maintain security quiet on the border with Israel and consolidate its rule in the Gaza Strip.

The new unit barely interfered with Islamic Jihad and the PRC in the last round of violence between Gaza and Israel, however. One reason is that the force will not act in cases in which Israel attacks first. (Israel’s assassination of Zuhair al-Qaisi, from the PRC, in March, had sparked that last round of fighting.) A cynical observer who is identified with Fatah told Haaretz this week that the IDF should consider co-opting the Hamas force to its Iron Dome anti-missile units.

While Israel is highly suspicious of the force and disparages its capabilities, local sources admit that Hamas is working hard to preserve quiet. The relationship may not be a honeymoon, but there is definitely mutual acceptance by each side of the other’s presence.

The prevailing feeling in the Gaza Strip is that Hamas is rapidly morphing into a second PA. Even the head of its military wing, Ahmed Jabari – the embodiment of resistance to Israel, who remained in hiding for years – seems to have been thrilled by his travels abroad during the negotiations on the Gilad Shalit deal. Of late he hasn’t been seen much in the training camps of Rafah and Khan Yunis; he was spotted, though, in five-star hotels in Cairo.

Even though Israel continues to restrict the passage of people from Gaza to the West Bank, coordination exists in humanitarian cases between the Hamas Ministry of Health and the Israeli military liaison directorate. There is no direct communication – the PA’s Ministry of Civil Affairs acts as a middleman – but it’s clear to everyone involved that they are all talking to “the enemy.”

Checks and balances
Another sign of changing times in Gaza can be seen in the bustling activity at the Kerem Shalom crossing. This week the terminal was packed with trucks, most of them carrying goods from Israel to the Strip, some from Gaza earmarked for overseas (Israel recently agreed to allow small quantities of agricultural produce from there to pass through its territory for export ). Although the scale of commerce and of movement of people between Gaza and the rest of the world remains far lower than it was during the period of PA rule in the Strip, the fact is that Gaza is no longer under siege. Meanwhile, Egypt has opened the Rafah land crossing for Gazans traveling to Egypt, and it’s used by about 1,200 people a day.

In the past few months, the Kerem Shalom crossing has become part of the system of checks and balances that Hamas is utilizing to manage the Gaza economy. When the Islamic group wanted in the past to encourage the import of goods through the smuggling tunnels – its most important source of revenue – it organized security disturbances to provoke closure of the crossing. On other occasions, and as has been the case quite often recently, Hamas levied taxes on all goods entering Kerem Shalom. In the past few months, the organization has taxed 17 products, in part to help fill its dwindling coffers, but also to encourage smuggling through the tunnels, where even heavier taxes are levied.

The Gaza government’s financial straits have also spurred new taxes: on motorcycles, cars and even on mule-drawn carts passing through the border crossing. The Hamas government also changed its policy regarding issuance of drivers’ licenses in Gaza, making them subject to payment of taxes. In addition, medicines sent to Gaza by the PA at no cost are then sold to residents by Hamas.

Chaos in Sinai
It’s possible that the desire of the Hamas leadership for quiet is what drove the rival organizations to perpetrate acts of terror from Sinai. The movement of gunmen from Gaza to Sinai and back is facilitated by the extensive tunnel network. The situation is compounded by the chaotic situation in the peninsula. The Egyptian army is trying to assert its presence along the border with Israel, opposite Gaza, as well as in Sharm el-Sheikh and along the coastline. However, the vast area of central Sinai is looming as a growing threat both to Israel and to Egyptian sovereignty.

The number of warnings about potential terrorist attacks being launched from Sinai against Israeli targets now equals the number of Gaza-based alerts. In the meantime, Egyptian forces along the border are being attacked almost daily by armed Bedouin. Some of the latter belong to smuggling squads, others to Global Jihad. At the end of last week, six Egyptian soldiers were kidnapped by such Bedouins, who demanded the release of their comrades from prison. The demand was not met, but the six soldiers were eventually let go.

In another incident, which took place close to the border, armed fighters stormed Egyptian outposts, and while the troops were fighting off some of the Bedouin attackers, others in that group threw packages, apparently containing drugs, across the border. The armed men also opened fire at Israeli soldiers who approached. At this point, some jeeps arrived on the Israeli side, picked up the packages and drove off under the cover of battle.

Nevertheless, it would be farfetched to describe the Egyptian soldiers, who are stationed not far from Kerem Shalom, as being on high alert. They looked bored, and even seemed amused to see visitors this week on the Israeli side of the border. They waved in greeting at the Israeli guests, and went about their business. The soldiers belong to Egypt’s Armed Security unit, which guards the border, but most of them were not armed.

The Egyptian army sends its “lower-quality” troops to this most dangerous arena – most are illiterate and some are former criminals. Every few hundred meters, two or three of them can be seen sitting under a protected position which faces west: not toward Israel but toward Sinai. They are concerned about attacks by Bedouin. There is no reason to envy these troops, or the officer in charge of them. He is a brigadier general who is in direct contact with his counterparts on the Israeli side. In clashes with armed Bedouin smugglers, he has often found himself fighting shoulder to shoulder with Israeli officers. Owing to the great danger he is in, the Egyptian officer can only move about surrounded by armed bodyguards.

Minister tells Israeli university to rethink ceremony marking Palestinian Nakba

Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar calls Tel Aviv University’s decision permitting the ceremony ‘wrong and infuriating.’

By Talila Nesher, Haaretz
13.05.12

Education Minister and Council for Higher Education Chairman Gideon Sa’ar is attempting to interfere with the decision of Tel Aviv University to allow a Nakba Day memorial ceremony to take place on campus on Monday.

Sa’ar called TAU President Professor Yossef Kalupter on Sunday and requested that the university reconsider its decision to allow the event to take place.

Sa’ar’s press advisor told Haaretz in response that “the education minister is of the opinion that the decision is wrong and infuriating.”

MK Alex Miller (Yisrael Beiteinu), who chairs the Knesset’s Education Committee, plans to hold a discussion on the subject on Monday. “It is shameful that such an event is meant to happen in public, it’s a direct blow against the symbols of the state and its sovereignty. The university’s management must cancel the event immediately and return sanity to the system,” he said.

Last week, Haaretz reported that the university’s dean of students had decided to allow the ceremony to take place, on the condition that students pay for security guards for the event themselves.

In January, the High Court of Justice upheld the controversial Nakba Law passed by the Knesset last March, which grants the Finance Minister the authority to reduce the budget of state-funded bodies that openly reject Israel as a Jewish state or mark the state’s Independence Day as a day of mourning.

The university’s security unit also decided to change the location of the protest to a less central location.

On the ceremony’s agenda is a reading of a poem by poet Mahmoud Darwish, a moment of silence, as well a reading of an alternative version of the “Yizkor” prayer traditionally read at events commemorating fallen soldiers.
In order to make for equal, open, and calm relations between Jews and Arabs in this country, Israel must recognize the disaster that befell the Palestinian people,” explained Noa Levy, one of the organizers of the ceremony.

“We must recognize the catastrophe, and begin to understand the correct, and just way to fix it. Acknowledgement is the first step, and that is what is happening here on Monday,” said Levy.

RAMALLAH, West Bank— Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners agreed Monday to end a weekslong hunger strike after winning concessions from Israel to improve their conditions and limit detentions without trial, the two sides announced, resolving a standoff that united Palestinians behind one of their most emotional causes.

The deal ended one of the largest prison protests ever staged by the Palestinians. Two men had refused food for 77 days, the longest ever Palestinian hunger strike, leaving them in life-threatening conditions, according to their supporters.

With the Palestinians set to hold an annual day of mourning on Tuesday, both sides were eager to wrap up a deal to lower tensions. The Palestinians are marking what they call the “nakba,” or “catastrophe,” the term they use in describing the suffering that resulted from Israel’s establishment 64 years ago.

Both Israeli and Palestinian officials, as well as representatives of Palestinian militant groups, confirmed the deal had been signed on Monday afternoon. Egyptian mediators had brokered the deal, in which Palestinian officials from the West Bank, militant leaders and prisoner representatives participated over several days.

Two men launched the strike on Feb. 27, and were joined by hundreds of others on April 17.

Among their demands: permission to receive family visits from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and an end to solitary confinement.

More ambitiously, they also demanded an end to an Israeli policy of “administrative detention,” under which suspected militants are held for months, and sometimes years, without being charged. Israel has defended the policy as a necessary security measure.

Israel said it had granted many of the requests, including new limits on administrative detention. While the policy wasn’t scrapped, detentions cannot be extended if Israel does not present additional intelligence information to a military court, according to the Shin Bet security agency.

The Shin Bet also said the roughly 400 prisoners from Gaza will now be allowed to receive family visits, like their West Bank brethren. The visits from Gaza were halted in 2006 after Hamas-linked militants in Gaza captured an Israeli soldier. After the soldier was released in a prisoner swap last October, the Palestinians said the ban should be lifted.

Israel also said it would halt its punitive policy of placing prisoners in solitary confinement and allow prisoners to make phone calls to relatives. Palestinian officials said prisoners would also be permitted to pursue academic studies.

The Shin Bet said in return, the prisoners pledged “to absolutely stop terror activity from inside Israeli jails.” It also said militant group’s commanders outside the jails made a commitment “to prevent terror activity.” It said militant violence or resumed prisoner strikes would “annul the Israeli commitment.”

The two longest strikers, Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh, who have gone 77 days without food, had said they would not start eating again until their administrative detentions are lifted.

Diab has been held without charge since last August, and Halahleh has been in administrative detention since June 2010, and spent an additional six and a half years in administrative detention last decade.

Israel has not said what they are suspected of doing. Both men are members of Islamic Jihad, a violent Palestinian militant group that has killed hundreds and maimed many more in suicide bombings, shootings and other attacks.

It was not immediately known whether the pair would be released. Another Islamic Jihad militant, Khader Adnan, staged a 66-day hunger strike earlier this year that ended after Israel agreed to free him.

Israel said some 1,600 prisoners, or more than a third of the 4,500 Palestinians held by Israel, joined the hunger strike. Palestinians said the number was closer to 2,500.

The fate of the prisoners is an emotional issue in Palestinian society, where nearly everyone has a neighbor or relative who has spent time in an Israeli jail. As the strike dragged on, hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets of the West Bank and Gaza to demonstrate in solidarity.

For families of the prisoners, any deal that did not win freedom of the prisoners fell short.

“Will they release Bilal? Is it over?” asked Missadeh Diab, the elderly mother of Diab, one of the prisoners who refused food for 77 days. “May God give your demands and freedom.”

Israeli officials expressed hope that the prisoner deal would help bring President Mahmoud Abbas back to the negotiating table. Abbas has refused to engage in peace talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, demanding that Israel halt construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Ofir Gendleman, a spokesman for Netanyahu, said as an additional gesture, Israel would return to the Palestinians the bodies of 100 militants killed in combat against Israel.

Haitham Hamad in Ramallah, West Bank, and Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.

Palestinian prisoners end hunger strike as agreement reached with Israeli officials

Sources within the Palestinian Prisoners Club claim that agreement regulates administrative detainees, solitary confinement policy, and visits from family members residing in Gaza.

By Jack Khoury, Haaretz
14.05.12

Israel Prison Services reported on Monday that Palestinian prisoners have agreed to end their hunger strike. Senior sources within the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club told Haaretz that an agreement was forged between the Israel Prison Services and the prisoners, containing three main chapters concerning administrative detainees, solitary confinement policy, and visits from family members residing in Gaza.

Earlier Monday, it was reported that a disagreement arose between the prisoner’s delegation and prison service officials at Ashkelon prison, concerning administrative detainees. According to the report, a senior Egyptian Intelligence official was summoned to Israel in order to resolve the disagreement. After hours of feverish negotiations that included intervention from the Egyptian Intelligence official, an agreement was reached and signed by the Israel Prison Service and prisoner representatives.

A Fatah Central Committee member, Azxam Al Ahmad, said that the agreement between the committee representing the prisoners and the Israel Prison Services responded to the prisoner’s demands. Al Ahmad, a resident of Cairo, said that he met with senior Egyptian officials that served as mediators for the negotiations. According to Ahmad, senior Egyptian Intelligence officials, Rafaat Shehata, and General Nader Al Asar led the mediation efforts.

Over the last few days, progress began on prisoner demands as the negotiations between prisoner representatives and Israeli officials advanced, in a bid to end the widespread hunger strike that has lasted nearly a month. Roughly 1,600 prisoners among the 4,600 prisoners held in Israel are participating in the strike. Three prisoners have refused to eat for more than 70 days, and concern for their lives has been raised.

Last week, the organization Physicians for Human Rights petitioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Health Ministry, the Israeli Medical Association, the Israel Prison Service, and the director of Assaf Harofeh Hospital, with demands to transfer hunger-striking prisoners to civilian hospitals. In the letter sent by Physicians for Human Rights, the organization expresses significant fears that considerations other than prisoner’s health were influencing Israel Prison Service policy, among them an attempt to put pressure on the prisoners to end the strike by refusing to transfer prolonged hunger-strikers to civilian hospitals.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon released a statement last week calling for the release of prisoners held on administrative detention, or allowing them to stand trial. Moon’s call joined that of the EU, which criticized Israel for the use of administrative detention and also called for Israel to allow the administrative detainees the right to family visits. The French Embassy in Israel also expressed concern over the deteriorating situation of some of the hunger-striking prisoners, and noted that administrative detention must be used only in severe and rare cases.

Last Tuesday, the Knesset approved the second and third reading of legislation proposed to arrange humane prison conditions for all prisoners in Israel, including security prisoners. The legislation merges a law proposed by Dov Khenin (Hadash) with a proposal offered by the Ministry of Public Security.

National Public Radio, transcript
01.01.12
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:  2011 was a year of protests across the Middle East and North Africa. Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt ousted long-ruling dictatorships and each of those countries is now in the process of rebuilding their government. During the protests and in the weeks and months after each uprising, women were visible, fighting not just for the rights of their country but in many cases for rights of their own. But amid the recent images of an Egyptian woman stripped down to her bra and beaten by military police in Tahrir Square, there is some anxiety that the overthrow of these governments may not be all good news for women. Isobel Coleman is the director of the women and foreign policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations. She joins us from New York. Welcome, Isobel.

ISOBEL COLEMAN: Thanks for having me.

CORNISH: Now, you recently wrote an article for Foreign Policy magazine entitled “Is Arab Spring Bad for Women?” That raises questions about whether women were better off before the ouster of some of these dictators. Do you believe they were?

COLEMAN: Well, it – look, it’s a provocative headline, which I’m all for provocative headlines. Personally, I think that men and women are better off under freer societies. But it does raise some interesting issues about women’s rights because democracy in that part of the world, as we’ve already seen, is bringing to the forefront Islamic parties. And many of these Islamic parties do have very conservative notions about women and their role in society. And it will create complications for women and could, in some case, roll back rights that women already enjoy.

CORNISH: Of course, each country’s situation is unique. And are there instances where women are faring better than their Arab counterparts elsewhere; and why is that?

COLEMAN: Well, Tunisia has always been at the forefront of women and women’s rights in the Arab world. Ennahda, which is the leading Islamist party, won a plurality of votes and has earned the right to form a government. But they’ve been very careful to acknowledge that women’s rights are a fact of life in Tunisia. It’s been part of the fabric of society for decades in that country. Tunisia was the first country in 1956 to grant women many rights that women in the West didn’t even have at that time. You saw women have access to even abortion in Tunisia years before they had legal access to that in other countries in the West. And although there are conservative elements within Ennahda and, of course, within other Islamist parties in Tunisia that would like to see, I think, some of the existing laws that are to the benefit of women rolled back in that country, Ennahda itself has say we’re not going to do that. We’re not going to change the laws as they relate to women.

CORNISH: So, how is that different from, say, an Egypt where in the first round of elections you do see strong performance from Islamist parties who are eyeing a rollback in some ways for women’s rights?

COLEMAN: In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has got the majority of the votes among Islamist parties that got the most votes. But the next in line is Al Nour, which is a Salafi party, which is very, very conservative. They were required to have women on their party lists, but they spoke out against that and said it’s against Islam for women to run for office. They did field female candidates because they were required to do so, but the women who ran on their party lists didn’t even show their face. They replaced their photographs with a picture of a flower in most cases.

CORNISH: One thing that interests me about your article is you pointed out this idea that there has been a complex relationship between sort of pro-women’s movements in countries like Egypt and the previous regimes.

COLEMAN: Well, that’s another complicated factor. These previous, you know, deeply-discredited illegitimate regimes from before – Ben Ali in Tunisia; Mubarak in Egypt – that the women’s rights agenda was co-opted by those regimes and was closely associated with the first ladies in both of these countries. And today, you know, you see a bit of a backlash against that. In Egypt, you have groups claiming that the laws that are in place that are to the benefit of women today that deal with personal status laws – things like marriage, divorce, custody, things that touch people’s everyday lives – you’ve heard people saying that they need to be rolled back, need to be changed because they are, quote, “Suzanne Mubarak’s laws” and therefore illegitimate.

CORNISH: Isobel, many may think that this is the first time in history that women are so publicly standing up for their rights in the region. But, of course, there’s a long history of women fighting for political freedoms, and can you talk about how this revolution and the role for women in this revolution differs from the Arab feminists of the past?

COLEMAN: Women marched in Tahrir Square back in 1919, 1920 against the British. They were very instrumental in bringing out, you know, the crowds against the British. And what is different today though, I think, is you see much more of a mass mobilization of women. You have much higher levels of education and engagement of women. Across the region now, women make up a majority of college graduates. And in some countries, it’s not by a small amount, it’s by a large amount. In Libya, for example, women almost double the number of men at the university level. It’s a very different situation than 100 years ago where you had just a small elite group of women who were out protesting and being activists. You know, today, you see it up and down throughout society. And women are engaged both physically – marching in the streets, they’re engaged as bloggers, they’re engaged in all different ways in the unrest that’s going on. And it’s a genie that I don’t think can be put back in that bottle.

CORNISH: Isobel Coleman. She’s with the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of “Paradise beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East.” Isobel, thanks so much for being with us.

COLEMAN: Thank you for having me.

Palestinian mother joins in weekly protests outside the Red Cross, calling for the basic right to visit their loved ones in Israeli prisons. Many have gone 7 or more years without being allowed to see their imprisoned loved ones.
From In Gaza

Is the Arab Spring Bad for Women?
Overthrowing male dominance could be harder than overthrowing a dictator.

By Isobel Coleman, Foreign Policy
20.12.11
In many ways, 2011 has been the Year of the Arab Woman. From the earliest days of upheaval that started in Tunisia last December, women have been on the front lines of protest, leading public demonstrations, blogging passionately, covering the unrest as journalists, launching social media campaigns, smuggling munitions, and caring for the wounded. This month, when Tawakkol Karman became the first Arab woman to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, she gave an enthusiastic shout-out to her many Arab sisters who have struggled “to win their rights in a society dominated by the supremacy of men.”

Across the region, though, Arab women are grumbling that overthrowing dictators is proving easier than overturning the pervasive supremacy of men. Gamila Ismail, a prominent Egyptian activist and politician, summed it up when she quit Egypt’s parliamentary race in disgust after learning that she would be put third on the list in her district — not a winning position. “We women had a very important role before, during, and after the revolution, and it does not work for us today, to accept this,” she complained in television. (She ran and narrowly lost as an independent candidate.) In Tunisia, disgruntled women activists have formed the October 24 Front to defend women’s rights in the aftermath of the Islamists’ electoral victory there. “We want a constitution that respects women’s rights and doesn’t roll back the advances we’ve made,” said one Tunisian protester.

Arab women are embattled on multiple fronts. First and foremost are the deep-seated patriarchal customs that constrain women. Patriarchy is certainly not unique to Arab lands, but it runs deep. It doesn’t help that for decades, the women’s rights agenda was closely associated with the now-discredited authoritarian regimes: Egypt’s Suzanne Mubarak ran a state-affiliated women’s NGO; Leila Ben Ali, Tunisia’s much-hated hairdresser-cum-first lady, was president of the Arab Women Organization, an intergovernmental body sponsored by the Arab League; and both Syria’s Asma al-Assad and Jordan’s Queen Rania have been active on women’s issues. The rise of politically empowered Islamist parties that contest existing laws for women on religious grounds also pose serious complications for women. Although women’s activism has clearly been important to the Arab revolts, there is no guarantee that women’s rights activists will be able to turn their engagement into longer-term economic, social, and political gains. In fact, in some countries, there is reason for concern that women will see their rights erode.

Libya is a case in point. At the ceremony marking Libya’s official liberation in October, one of the first announcements from Mustafa Abdel Jalil, leader of Libya’s National Transitional Council, was that any laws that contradicted sharia would be annulled. He specifically mentioned that, going forward, polygamy would be legal, drawing cheers and celebratory gunfire from the mostly male crowd. Libyan women expressed surprise and disappointment and wondered why, with all of Libya’s pressing issues, reinstating polygamy should be on the front burner. (NATO leaders wondered the same.) Although polygamy was technically legal under Qaddafi, it was discouraged and today is not practiced widely in Libya, but that could change. Female university students, who largely describe themselves as pious, vow to fight this regression.

In Egypt, a number of developments over the past year underscore women’s rights as a flashpoint in society. The inspirational images of gender solidarity in Tahrir Square in the early days of the revolution quickly gave way to ugly episodes of targeted harassment. A hastily planned demonstration on March 8, International Women’s Day, attracted a few hundred women but was marred by angry men shoving the protesters and yelling at them to go home, saying their demands for rights are against Islam. Around the same time, the Egyptian military rounded up scores of women demonstrators and, in a show of raw intimidation, subjected many of them to “virginity tests.” On the political level, women have been excluded from major decision-making bodies since the fall of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, and it appears that few, if any, will win seats in the ongoing parliamentary elections. Their low success rate was not helped by the military’s decision to eliminate a Mubarak-era quota ensuring women 64 seats. This was a setback for women’s political participation, even though the quota enjoyed little credibility because it had been used to reward Mubarak loyalists.

The strong showing of Islamists parties in the first round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections has women’s groups worried. The ultraconservative Salafi groups, which took a surprising 20 percent of the vote, openly question a modern role for women in society. One Salafi leader refused to appear on a political talk show on television until the female host put on a headscarf. Another denounced the military government’s requirement to include women on electoral lists as “evil,” though Emad Abdel-Ghafour, head of al-Nour, the leading Salafi party, stated that the party does accept women candidates. Yet the Salafi women who did run demurred from showing their pictures on campaign materials, instead replacing their faces with pictures of flowers; moreover, the party deliberately clustered them at the bottom of its lists, making them unlikely to win seats. One Salafi sheikh recently issued an opinion that women should not wear high-heeled shoes in public. Along with Salafi statements of intent to ban alcohol and limit beach tourism, these swipes at women unnerve liberals.

Yet liberals have not been stalwarts of women’s rights in Egypt either. The 2000 decision to grant women the right to no-fault divorce (prior to this, they had to jump over the onerous legal hurdle of proving abuse or abandonment) was denounced not only by Islamist groups but by secular ones too — for undermining the family. Other changes to the personal-status laws in the past decade that have benefited women, particularly an expansion of custody rights, are coming under increasing attack. Critics discredit the reforms by derisively calling them “Suzanne’s Laws,” after Suzanne Mubarak. They claim the laws were intended to accommodate the wealthy friends of the former first lady, and they blame those statutes for a rise in the country’s divorce rate. Given the criticism of these laws from all sides of the political spectrum, it is likely that they will be amended by the new parliament, and not to women’s benefit.

Women seem to be faring better in Tunisia. Liberals and secularists have been deeply wary of the rise of al-Nahda, the country’s leading Islamist party, warning that it could mean a reversal of women’s rights. Since the 1950s, Tunisian women have enjoyed the most expansive legal rights in the region, including relatively progressive marriage and divorce laws and access to birth control and abortion. Since returning to Tunisia in the beginning of this year, Rached Ghannouchi, al-Nahda’s leader, has strived to convince Tunisians that his party will not seek to change the country’s personal-status laws. Some, however, have accused al-Nahda of obfuscating its real intentions behind moderate rhetoric — a charge that did not prevent the party from surging to victory with 41 percent of the vote in October’s election. Thanks to electoral rules requiring favorable placement of women on party lists, women gained 23 percent of the seats in parliament, a higher share than in the U.S. Congress. Most of the women are from al-Nahda and will likely reflect their party’s traditional views on women, but their participation in such large numbers at least normalizes an active political role for women. Moreover, Ghannouchi and other al-Nahda leaders so far have been purposefully focused on efforts to jump-start the economy, produce jobs, and reassure foreign investors. Al-Nahda has forged a coalition with liberal parties, and to maintain that coalition, it will have to continue to focus on the economy and human rights rather than getting bogged down in divisive culture wars.

Ghannouchi seems to understand that while rolling back gains for women can score points among Islamic conservatives, ultimately al-Nahda will win or lose on economic grounds, and women are important economic actors. With high rates of literacy and relatively low fertility, women constitute nearly a third of Tunisia’s workforce. Economic reality simply demands a pragmatic approach toward women. Let’s hope that Ghannouchi can get that message through to his Islamist brothers across the region. Otherwise, Arab women might soon be channeling their Iranian sisters, who have complained that Iran’s Islamic Revolution has brought them little but poverty and polygamy.

Isobel Coleman is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of ‘Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women Are Transforming the Middle East’, published by  A CFR Book. Random House, 2010

Peace activist Jeff Halper speculates that Israel may annex Area C – with the consent of the Palestinian Authority.
Frank Barat, Al Jazeera
02.05.12

I caught up with Jeff Halper, long time Israeli peace activist, director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and author of numerous books, while he was on a European speaking tour. Here is what he had to say about the situation in Palestine/Israel:

Frank Barat: I’d like to start by talking about what’s happening in Jerusalem. When I came in 2007, you took us to Silwan, explaining the huge house demolition plan the Israeli government had in mind, telling us that thanks to the efforts of many and including an intervention by the US, the demolitions didn’t happen. Today, nonetheless, it looks like the demolitions will take place. Could you give us an update on this, and also give us a broader view of what people now often refer to as the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Jerusalem?

Jeff Halper: Well let me give you a broader picture about the whole thing and then we can go back and put it into context. I think what’s coming down the pipeline is that Israel today has basically finished this. We’ve gone beyond the occupation. The Palestinians have been pacified and from Israel’s point of view the whole conflict, the whole situation has been normalised. Netanyahu went last month [March] to Washington to meet with Obama. When he came back his adviser was asked what was new about this meeting. And his adviser said, “This is the first time in memory that an Israeli Prime Minister met with a US president and that the Palestinian issue was not even mentioned, it never came out.” So, in that situation where the US is really paralysed because Netanyahu has both parties in congress and Obama does not want to do anything – Netanyahu is going to make the last move in nailing this whole thing down. Israel could well annex Area C. Area C is 60 per cent of the West Bank.

Now, the European Consuls General in Jerusalem and Ramallah, a couple of months ago sent a report to the EU, saying that Israel has forcibly expelled the Palestinians from Area C. Forcible expulsion is hard language for European diplomats to use. So Area C has less than 5 per cent of the Palestinian population. In 1967 the Jordan Valley had about 250,000 people. Today, it’s less than 50,000. So the Palestinians have either been driven out of the country, especially the middle class, or they have been driven to Area A and Area B. That’s where 96 or 97 per cent of them are. The Palestinian population has been brought down low enough, there is probably somewhere around 125,000 Palestinians in Area C, so Israel could annex Area C and give them full citizenship.

In other words Israel can absorb 125,000 Palestinians without upsetting the demographic balance, you see. And then, what is the world going to say? It’s not apartheid; Israel has given them full citizenship. So I think that Israel feels it could get away with that. No one cares about what’s happening in Area A and Area B. If they want to declare a state, they can declare a state. Israel has no interest in Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron. The US, by the way, has already agreed that the settlement blocks are part of Israel. Annexing Area C does not go so much beyond the settlement blocks. It’s just pushing the envelope a little bit more.

Then you come to Jerusalem. I think what Israel is going to do is that it will give the Palestinians in the north and the south, in Beit Hanina, Shuafat, Tubat… it will allow them to have Palestinian citizenship. Israel, in a sense, gets rid of 100,000 Palestinians. What the government has already indicated it was going to do is that the wall around Jerusalem will be the border.

So what’s happening today is that because of the house demolitions and the policy of freezing the constructions Israel is allowing – it’s still illegal of course – but Shuaffat and Anata, have now been cut out by a huge wall a huge terminal. The tremendous building behind the wall is still in Jerusalem, so Palestinians are moving from inside the wall into that area. And the same thing is true in the north. So you are getting maybe another 100,000 or so Palestinians to move into those areas. Then, once they are there, Israel cuts them off.

Israel now says the wall is the border, we give up Anata, Shuafat – and so in a sense, what you’ve done is join those areas into Area C. So now Israel has the whole country, its isolated the 97 per cent of the Palestinians into area A and B. Jerusalem is now 80 to 85 per cent Jewish because these big Palestinian populations you either got them out completely like Shuafat and Anata or inside the wall you’ve given them Palestinian citizenship so you don’t have to deal with them. So Israel retains kind of that centre.

And it’s over. In other words, we’re finished. Israel is now from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, the Palestinians have been confined in Areas A and B or in small enclaves in East Jerusalem, and that’s it.

Now the wrinkle is that I think they will do this with the agreement of the Palestinian Authority because Fayyad is a neoliberal. Fayyad is saying to Israel, we don’t need territory. If you give us economic space, to do business, and our business class can do okay and we can trickle down to our working classes, it’s good enough. So we don’t need Area C. As a matter of a fact what the [heads of mission,] European Consuls General said in [their] report is that the Palestinian Authority has given up Area C. Completely. When government or agencies come to the Palestinian Authority for investments, the PA tell them invest only in Area A and Area B. Do not invest in Area C. They’ve given up C.

The idea is that Israel allows trade, to move freely between these Palestinian enclaves. I call it “viable apartheid”. I think Fayyad has developed a viable apartheid, saying that in the neoliberal world we need economic space, not territorial space. You let us move our goods freely into the Arab world, you give us an access to the Israeli market, and it’s fine. In other words, all the developments, like this new city Rawabi for upper-class Palestinians, are in the contours of Area A and B. They are now building a highway from Ramallah to Jericho; the Japanese are building it with the PA. Then either the Japanese or USAID will build from Ramallah to Bethlehem so greater Jerusalem, with E1, will be incorporated into Israel. I think you can get into a deal where Israel annexes Area C, it’s taken Jerusalem, they’ll give the Palestinians something symbolic like control of Haram Al Sharif/The Temple Mount, you can put up a capital in Abu Dis again. Basically, what I am saying is not only that they are they going to nail this down but they will do it with the agreement of the Palestinian Authority. If you give Israeli citizenship to the Palestinians in Area C and the PA agrees, that’s economic peace that Netanyahu and Fayyad talk about. So that’s the big picture.

FB: So when people talk about a Palestinian state on 22 per cent of historical Palestine, it’s not even that, right? The number is much smaller.
Yes, what Fayyad is saying is our state does not have to be on any particular amount of territory; our state is an economic state and we can work around you annexing this and that because we can make our cities. The idea is that Israel we’ll give them a bit of Area C, to put the enclaves a little bit more together. So you still have the cantons, of the north, the south and Gaza. So they will still be cantonised but what Fayyad is saying is we can make a go of that. Both Netanyahu and Fayyad have moved from a territorial conception of two states to an economic conception of two states, which is a whole different kind of thing.

The problem that the bosses have is how to sell that to the Palestinian people. But it seems to me that this is what is coming down the pipeline. What Israel is relying on, maybe the PA as well, I don’t know how to put this exactly. Israel feels that the Palestinians have been defeated. It’s over. Resistance is impossible because of the Israeli army, the Palestinian proxy army, the wall, I mean, you can’t mount a third intifada.

Israel policy since the Iron Wall of 1923 has been despair. I wrote an article about this once “Despair as a policy”. The Zionists have always always said that once the Arabs despair, and Jabotinsky put it interestingly “despair of the land of Israel ever becoming Palestine” – that was the end, victory for them. Israel feels that it’s what we have got now.

If you go today to the West Bank, Gaza might be different, you’ll hear the people say that they don’t care anymore, let me have a job, let me live my life and I’ll be happy. In a sense, Fayyad feels he can respond to that.

FB: Some pogroms took place recently when a group of Beitar soccer fans attacked Palestinian workers in a shopping mall. Were those people a few bad apples, or are these type of events do indeed say something about Israeli society?
They are more than bad apples. They are not completely Israeli society either. This football team in Jerusalem is connected to the Likud. In Israel many football clubs are associated with political parties. There is a very close relation between the ideology of Likud and Begin and the Beitar football team. They see the Arabs as the enemy. So it reflects about a third of the Israeli public, that is very committed to expansion, settlements, see the Arabs as the enemies. It reflects that.

You know, in Beitar, their chants, it’s not just the pogroms. They chant everytime their team scores a goal, “Death to the Arabs”. That’s what 20,000 people chant. Beitar for example has never ever had an Arab player. The Arabs are beginning to be more prominent in Israeli football teams. Not in Beitar Jerusalem. This pogrom is kind of an extension of this. It’s all in the context of kids, for the most part it’s kids that have seen Israel moved into a neoliberal economy, more and more Thatcherite, and you have tremendous income disparity in Israel. Israel is now in the OECD, it has one of the highest income disparities I think, maybe the US excluded.

Kids have got no real future, that’s part of the context too. Those kids come from the housing projects, very much like National Front in France or EDL in England, people that only have this racist emotional outlet for their frustrations, and football is great for that. It channels anger away from the government. That’s why they sponsor football teams!

FB: How important are the words we use, in your opinion when it comes to Palestine/Israel? Ilan Pappe recently told me that we should rethink our dictionary/vocabulary. Can we objectively still talk about peace/occupation? Shouldn’t we talk about the right to resist and apartheid instead?

For sure. We deal a lot with words in our analysis. There are two words, because I think occupation is an old word. We are way beyond occupation. I think we are also way beyond apartheid. There are two words that capture the political reality but don’t have any legal substance today. One of them is Judaisation. It’s a word that the government uses, to Judaise Jerusalem, the Galilee, so that’s a Judaisation process that really is the heart of what’s going on. But it has no legal reference. So one of our project, we’re working with Michael Sfard and some other lawyers, is to try to introduce those terms into the discourse with the idea of trying to give them some legal frame. We have to try to match the political process, the political reality, because it is unprecedented in the world.

Another term is “warehousing” because I think that captures what’s going on better than apartheid. Warehousing is permanent. Apartheid recognises that there is another side. With warehousing it’s like prisons. There is no other side. There is us, and then there are these people that we control, they have no rights, they have no identity, they’re inmates. It’s not political, it’s permanent, static. Apartheid you can resist. The whole brilliance of warehousing is that you can’t resist because you’re a prisoner. It’s like prisons. Prisoners can rise in the prison yards but prison guards have all the rights in the world to put them down. That’s what Israel has come to. They are terrorists and we have the right to put them down.

In a sense Israel has succeeded with the international community, and the US especially to take out of this situation the political. It’s now solely an issue of security, just like in prisons. It’s another concept that does not have any legal reference today but we’d like to put that in because warehousing is not only in Israel. Warehousing exists all over the capitalist world. That’s why I am writing about Global Palestine. I’m saying that Palestine is a microcosm of what’s happening around the world.

FB: You recently wrote: “Unlike most of my comrades, I do not think that activism by itself can achieve political results…until a reinvigorated Palestine National Council (PNC) or other representative agency can be constituted, a daunting but truly urgent task, Palestinian civil society might coalesce enough to create a kind of interim leadership bureau”. Is this being done in your opinion and what could we, solidarity activists, do better?

No, and that’s the problem. Because even if there is a collapse of this political situation we are talking about and new possibilities emerge, like a one state, bi-national or regional confederation, all kinds of possibilities that don’t exist today. And let’s say BDS and resistance have an effect. I really believe this conflict is unsustainable. I don’t think Israel can win. So if Israel’s project collapses, then what? Because today, there is no Palestinian agency. The only Palestinian agency is the PA – and it has no legitimacy. And then, in a way, to tell you the truth, I was a little bit upset with the Palestinian Left when Abu Mazen (President Mahmoud Abbas) went to the UN to ask for recognition of Palestine and they undercut him. Not because they were wrong; I could agree with them. I agree that it does not help, but don’t do that two weeks before he goes. This whole thing was gelling for a year. So you say, a year, nine months before, no. We don’t accept this. You don’t undercut the person who for most people represents Palestine two weeks before he goes. Where were you before?

The other question I have for people who say that Abbas has not legitimacy, that he should not have gone… so what? I mean, we have to liberate Palestine, right? And Abu Mazen is not the one to do it, so what? I kept asking all those people, so what do you suggest? You’re against him going, fine. So what are you suggesting? The only thing they came back with, weakly, was BDS.

BDS is a tool, not a strategy, it’s not going to liberate Palestine. It’s a tool. OK, let’s say BDS succeeds, Israel is brought down to its knees by this tactic. So what? Who is going to pick up the pieces? There is no agency.

Who is going to decide if it is a two-state solution, a one state, who is going to negotiate? That’s the real problem. The only agency that has that mandate, legitimacy, and is really representative is the Palestine National Council (PNC). I have no idea where that initiative is going. I understand in a way why they are not talking about it because it’s very delicate and they are doing it quietly. I mention this but I am not writing about it, because it’s not my issue, it’s a Palestinian issue. But the point is that without Palestinian leadership and without an agency, we’re stuck. I feel that we’ve gone as far as we can go. We’ve brought this to governments, we’ve raised public awareness, we’ve had campaigns, we’ve done this for decades, we’ve made this collectively, one of two or three really global issues. But without Palestinians we can only take it so far. This is their moment. If there is no PNC and the PA is either going to collapse or be collaborationist, then what?

I am trying to challenge a little bit my Palestinian counterparts. Where are you guys? To tell me “BDS” is not the answer, that’s a tool. In some ways, the Palestinians that we work with owe us a certain strategy. Even if they don’t want to get into the details of this PNC thing, they should say something is cooking. Because what’s going to happen is that people will get fed up, depressed, and move on to other issues.

There are many issues around the world. One word embodies that: colonialism. For the Palestinians it is definitely settler colonialism. There is no question, it’s obvious. People coming in from Russia, saying it’s my country. Okay. For the Jewish point of view it is no settler colonialism. There is a genuine feeling that there is a tie to this country, they speak Hebrew – in other words, the Jews are not strangers. You can agree to disagree or whatever but the problem is that as the colonial discourse gets stronger and stronger in the Palestinian left, there really is going to be a delegimitisation of anything Israeli.

It’s important because our conception with the left in Israel has always been that whatever the solution was, it had to be inclusive, like in South Africa. Now, there is a retreat from that. In other words, the alternative to the South African model is the Algerian one. Once you liberate Palestine you guys go back to to where you came from – you’re out of here. That is why I don’t think it is settler colonialism. There is no mother country. It isn’t like France where you could go back to France. Where are the Israelis going to go back to, especially now with all those new generations? It’s not being articulated, nobody is saying it. It’s being articulated under the rubric of ‘normalisations’.

The Palestinian Left is pulling back from working with groups like ours, even the anti-Zionists like ourselves. You see it, for example, in the global march to Jerusalem. It’s always phrased as “this is a Palestinian and international struggle”. Where are we? Even non-Zionist? Where are we? The answer that I got from a few people was “we put you with internationals”. Which is wow, that means something. My problem is that I cannot obviously be part of a struggle which is not inclusive. It deserves to be addressed in-house, in the movement, not in public. I was forced to bring it up in the global march to Jerusalem. I was pressed to endorse the march publicly but they said not as the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions because we can’t use the word Israeli. You have to endorse the march as the head of the committee against house demolitions. I said no and that set up a whole discussion. An organiser of the march wrote that this whole issue of inclusivity was a western preoccupation. We are at a very crucial stage here where first of all the Palestinians have to take over and second of all, there has to be an end goal. If in fact the left is starting to say “it’s colonialism” and we are not working with you guys anymore, this has tremendous implications.

Frank Barat is a Human Rights activist based in London. He is the coordinator of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. He has edited two books; Gaza in Crisis with Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe, and Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Occupation with Asa Winstanley. He has also participated in the book Is There a Court for Gaza? with Daniel Machover.

[Notes

Administrative divisions of the Oslo Accords

The Oslo Accords created three temporary distinct administrative divisions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip until a final status accord would be established. The areas are not contiguous within each other but rather distributed depending on the different population areas as well as Israeli military requirements.

• Area 'A' (18 percent of the West Bank) - full civil and security control by the Palestinian Authority. This area includes all Palestinian cities and their surrounding areas, with no Israeli settlements. Entry into this area is forbidden to all Israeli citizens. The Israel Defense Forces maintain no presence, but sometimes conducts raids to arrest suspected militants.^[1]

• Area ‘B’ (21 percent of the West Bank) – Palestinian civil control and joint Israeli-Palestinian security control. Includes areas of many Palestinian towns and villages and areas, with no Israeli settlements.
• Area ‘C’ (61 percent of the West Bank) – Full Israeli civil and security control, except over Palestinian civilians. These areas include all Israeli settlements (cities, towns, and villages), land in the vicinity of these localities, most roadways that connected the settlements (and which Israelis are now restricted to) as well as strategic areas described as “security zones.”

The maps showing Areas A, B and C (but not the Golan Heights) need to be seen in too large a scale to be reproduced here.
This is a diagram of the original Areas plan This is an analysis by B’Tselem of Areas and encroaching settlements and this is their settlements map.

The terms European Counsel and European council in the original have been replaced by European Consul(s)

[A poke, a tweet and a click-through and @DavidBenGurion, Israel's first Prime Minister and diminutive giant of pre and post Jewish Statehood arrives at Micah's Paradigm Shift. Nakba Day approaches, the Palestinians are commemorating the 64th year of the 'catastrophe' and the 'Old Man' of Israeli politics is in the mood for a robust chat. In his hand he holds a small scroll, it is Israel's Declaration of Independence signed 14th May 1948. The conversation goes like this.]

Micah’s Paradigm Shift (MPS): Welcome Prime Minister!

David Ben-Gurion: (DBG): You call this place welcoming!
MPS: Well, I have some helpful navigation tabs to previous posts and you can sign up for email updates.

DBG: I’ve been here 20 minutes and I can see exactly what you’re up to.
MPS: You’re not the first to take offence. Nobody has ever turned up in person though.

DBG: You should be defending your own people not undermining one of the great triumphs of Jewish history. You’re a disgrace.
MPS: To be a disgrace I’d need more followers. Until then, I’m just an inconvenience.

DBG: The story is simple but your writing makes it all so complicated.
MPS: I like complicated.

DBG: We returned to our homeland, we built a sovereign state, we brought back pride and self-respect to a persecuted people. The Arabs hated us for it. There was a war. We won, they lost. That’s how it goes.
MPS: That’s not how I see it. That’s the paradigm I want to challenge. I’m trying to rescue the Hebrew covenant…one blog post at a time.

DBG: I was never a great one for religion. Socialism and Jewish nationalism were my thing.
MPS: But in the end it was your Jewish nationalism that won out. And nationalism will always drag you to the right. It was socialism, but socialism for Jews only.

DBG: And I don’t see much of that anymore!
MPS: Quite. But I’m still not sure what brings you here? I subscribe to a few bloggers who you’d feel much more at home with. I can give you their addresses or you can tweet them direct.

DBG: Don’t worry, I’ve checked them out too. I thought I could be high-handed and arrogant but clearly I still have much to learn.
MPS: I still don’t understand why you’re bothering with the blogosphere. This site is clearly not for you. You made it happen. Herzl, Weizmann and you…the three giants in the story. You are, without doubt, not my target audience.

DBG: I won’t contradict you.
MPS: Don’t get me wrong though, I can certainly appreciate your thinking. From the perspective of 19th Century Eastern European Jewry, the whole thing looked like a brilliant idea, the perfect solution.

DBG: Back to the future!
MPS: A grand return!

DBG: Start anew. To build and to be built!
MPS: Livnot L’hibanot!

DBG: Exactly!
MPS: Not very Jewish though.

DBG: Don’t be ridiculous! How much more Jewish does it get? A return to our ancient homeland.
MPS: I have serious problems with the whole project.

DBG: I know. That’s why I’m here dummy. I don’t need a ‘yes man’.
MPS: What do you need?

DBG: I’ve been thinking things over. I’ve looked around some other spider net things.
MPS: Websites, Prime Minister.

DBG: Palestinian ones.
MPS: Really?

DBG: I’m not entirely comfortable with how things turned out.
MPS: You mean the forced expulsions and denial of return for Palestinian refugees? The land theft, water appropriation, house demolitions, political assassinations, blockades, separation walls, imprisonment without trial, second class citizenship, disregard for international law and now stealing Bedouin land in the Negev. Stuff like that?

DBG: Don’t get carried away! Remember who you are speaking to.
MPS: One of the big three, Prime Minister.

DBG: I’m thinking, maybe it’s time for Zionism to move on a little. We could be a little more magnanimous in our victory, perhaps.
MPS: I’d love to know who you’ve been reading!

DBG: I have a few old friends working on this with me. Pioneers from the old days. We’ve been scouting around looking at where to start, working our way down blogrolls.
MPS: And what do you think I can I do?

DBG: Well to start with, we need a fresh look at the Declaration of Independence.
MPS: I’m surprised you think there’s a problem with it. It’s a brilliant summary of the whole Zionist mindset.

DBG: Thank you.
MPS: Liberal Zionists love it. It brings a warm glow to the mainstream Jewish heart. Democratic ideals, the protection of civil rights, and our national story over three millennia told in a nutshell.

DBG: I know, I’ve always liked it too.
MPS: I didn’t say I liked it!

DBG: I suspected as much. Anyway, looking back I think maybe it was written in haste, we were a little too close to events in Europe to get a good perspective on things, maybe we did not tell the story right.
MPS: I can’t believe you’re saying this.

DBG: We got to the third draft and went with that in time for the lifting of the British Mandate.
MPS: You want to re-write the Israeli Declaration of Independence?

DBG: No, I want you to. What would a Micah’s Paradigm Shift version look like?
MPS: Well, if you’re quite sure…I’d be happy to have a go.

DBG: The beginning is fine of course. I was always pleased with the beginning. It has that grand sweep of history about it and sets out our irrefutable claim to the land.
MPS: It’s certainly a tidy telling of the story.

DBG: [Reading from the scroll] “The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.” Now how can you better that?
MPS: A bit partial. A bit distorted. But we can work on it.

DBG: What’s to work on?
MPS: Well, if we really want to honour our founding national mythology and recognise what actually happened through our history how about mentioning some other points too. For a start, according to our own tradition, it was in the wilderness, outside the borders of the ‘Promised Land’, that we first became a nation with a mission to build a just society. It was on a desert mountaintop (Sinai) that we received that mission, our covenant.

DBG: I prefer my version.
MPS: Wait, I’m not finished. We ought to reflect that our understanding of Judaism has as much to do with our time in exile as it does with our time in the land. It was after 70 CE and the destruction of the second Temple that we developed a faith of action and spirituality located in time and independent of place.

DGB: Can’t we keep it simple?
MPS: No, simple is the whole problem. It was in Babylonia that the Talmud was written. It was in Spain and north Africa that we wrote much of our great rabbinic commentary. It was in eastern Europe that we deepened our understanding of the mystery of the universe and created a rich culture of joyful prayer, a literature that touched the soul, and music that reached to heaven. Yes we came from the land of Israel, but we are who we are today because of what happened far beyond Israel’s borders.

DBG: Okay, I’m hardly going to argue that our exile was not important but in all that time we kept faith with Israel, and, I quote, the Jews “never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.”
MPS: For most of our two thousand years in exile that’s not quite how we understood things.

DBG: More history?
MPS: And theology. We were taught that our exile was a punishment from God and that our return was conditional on fulfilling God’s commandments. Exile was exile from God. It was spiritual as much as physical. Our task in exile was to rebuild the covenant not organise for a political return.

DBG: We never forgot our attachment to Zion.
MPS: But we had to lead a righteous existence that would make us worthy of redemption and so worthy of returning. Seeking ‘Political freedom’ through a nationalist project was a new, and highly controversial, development that only began to take hold at the end of the19th century. Cue Herzl etc. etc. Redemption was about the Jewish people first, not the Jewish land. Speaking Jewishly, Zionism is a little presumptuous in its dealing with God. We seem to have conveniently forgotten all of this though.

DBG: Spare me the lectures, you think I haven’t heard all of this before? I said at the time we should leave God out of it. The whole thing will run to pages and pages the way you’re going.
MPS: I just want to reclaim the story of the dispersion and exile as not entirely negative and remind us that the criteria for a ‘return’ was a little more complex.

DBG: I know where my home should be.
MPS: You make it sound like two thousand years was just an aberration. Like we just popped out for some bagels but now we’re back.

DBG: [Reading again] “And we made the deserts bloom bringing the blessings of progress to all of the country’s inhabitants.”
MPS: You mean buying land from absentee Arab landlords and then allowing only Jewish labour to work it or use it. That wasn’t really a blessing for all. Arab Palestinian farmers had been making the desert bloom for one and a half thousand years. Some of them will be descended from the Jews that remained in the land after 70 CE. In fact, you probably share the same ancient Israelite DNA.

DBG: There’s no need to bring the Arabs into this.
MPS: There’s every need to bring the Arabs into this. It’s their story too.

DBG: Alright, alright! But we still have the Balfour declaration of 1917. That was Weizmann good work. And later there was the League of Nations backing up the British Empire’s commitment to a national home for the Jewish people.
MPS: One nation promises to another nation the land belonging to a third nation. Not much to admire there. British imperialism at its most inept. Promising everything to everyone but with only it’s own interests at heart.

DBG: The Holocaust justified the whole project. You can’t argue with that. [Reading from the scroll] “The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people – the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe – was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the comity of nations.”
MPS: Are you telling me that being a nation state is what protects a people from discrimination and victimisation?

DBG: Having power is what protects you. We had to make Jews like everyone else.
MPS: Ah, yes. Zionism as the ultimate move to Jewish assimilation.

DBG: You are being absurd!
MPS: No, just trying to re-focus the paradigm.

DBG: It’s the Jewish State that protects us from another Holocaust.
MPS: But we have a Jewish State and anti-Semitism remains. And now Netanyahu says the ‘Jewish life-boat’ is itself the target of a second Holocaust thanks to those new Nazis in Iran. That doesn’t sound like a successful normalising of the Jewish condition. If the Holocaust teaches us anything, it must be that something more fundamental was at stake than creating a new nation state. Something concerning the rights and responsibilities of all people towards all other people, at all times.

DBG: You are a hopeless idealist. I deal in reality.
MPS: No, I am a hopeful idealist. I deal in truth and justice.

DBG: I’m not sure this is going very well.
MPS: When it comes to the Holocaust, we learnt the wrong lessons.

DBG: Can we move on? I take it you don’t have an issue with the name we chose?
MPS: ‘Israel’, was a great choice of name.

DBG: At last, something we agree on!
MPS: If I remember right, the name means: ‘To wrestle with God’, as Jacob did in the wilderness. Jews wrestling with God sums up the whole history of the state building project. I’m not sure who’s winning though.

DBG: Can you please stop, just for a moment, finding fault in everything we did. It takes two to tango you know. The Palestinians are not a tribe of saints just as we are not all sinners.
MPS: This is true. Both sides have been violent and stupid plenty of times. But you know as well as anyone that this was never a battle between equals. You must have put yourself in their shoes at some point in 1947-9? The Palestinians were 70% of the population of Mandate Palestine and the Jews owned only 6% of the land. Yet the UN offered the Jews a State made up of 55% of Palestine. In fact, if the plan had gone ahead, the new Jewish State would have had more Arabs than Jews in it. And we expected the Palestinians to accept it as a generous offer and wish us ‘mazoltov!’

DBG: After 64 years we are still the only democracy in the Middle East. And we promised as much back in ’48. You can’t argue with this: “The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
MPS: It sounds great but it’s full of contradictions. A bit like the Balfour declaration. How do you create a Jewish State with a built-in bias towards one ethnic/religious national group and claim this will not harm the rights of any other ethnic/religious national group? That’s not how British democracy works, or French or American. The reality on the ground does not match the high ideals and it never could. A Jewish State will never be fair or just until we come to terms honestly with the meaning of its founding principles. We offer Arabs rights as individuals but no rights as a people.

DBG: I think this is what these days they call ‘delegitimising’ the Jewish state.
MPS: Israel has been doing a very job of delegitimising itself for decades without the slightest help from me. It could have all been different of course. A homeland did not have to be a Jewish State.

DBG: Buber? Magnes? Even more crazy than you!
MPS: No. Just way ahead of the curve. One day we may catch up with them.

DBG: I suppose at the end we did place our trust in “The Rock of Israel”.
MPS: What exactly was that meant to mean?

DBG: It was a compromise, a sop to the religious. God, without actually saying God.
MPS: Well, I agree there are pros and cons with bringing God into the Middle East mix.

DBG: Amen to that!
MPS: When we leave him out we lose all humility. But when we bring him in, it’s like a license for eternal arrogance.

DBG: So can you help with the re-write or not?
MPS: I sense we may struggle to reach agreement.

DBG: Look, I can live with two states if that’s what you are getting at.
MPS: Well that’s certainly a start. Be honest, you must have been delighted when they refused to accept the partition plan in 1947?

DBG: I would have been foolish not to take advantage of their intransigence. We needed a viable state to survive. The UN did not give us that.
MPS: A viable state is exactly what we’re denying the Palestinians today. It’s good that you know what it feels like to be offered an unworkable solution.

DBG: Like I said before, there was a war. Wars are not nice. We planned well. We were organised and united. We won, they lost.
MPS: And let’s all wave a fond farewell to three thousand years of Jewish ethics. You’ve given me nationalism instead, and boy do I feel short changed!

DBG: Are you taking on the job or not?
MPS: If you are serious about a re-write then we need to start by accepting that this document has to be about two peoples, Jews and Palestinians, whose stories are now irreversibly entwined.

DBG: It won’t even sound like a Declaration of Independence by the time you are finished with it!
MPS: It will be independence from the old, worn-out paradigm. Past, present and future, the Palestinians and the Jews are now forever bound together. Like it or not, everything about both peoples now intersects through that small strip of land. Our future and theirs, it’s all the same story.

DBG: I should have chosen one of those liberal Zionists, they’re less challenging than you.
MPS: You tried to write them out of existence in 1948 and Israel has been trying to make them disappear for good ever since. The Palestinians are the inconvenient truth. It’s time to tell ourselves the truth.

DBG: I’m going to have to speak to my colleagues. This is all far more than we had discussed. You push too far and too fast for an old man like me.
MPS: Israel is still young but it’s time to start growing up. To build and to be built was a terrific slogan but now let’s apply it to everyone in the land.

DBG: We’ll see! I’m off. Sweet dreams young man.
MPS: Remember what Theodor Herzl said.

DBG: Remind me.
MPS: If you will it, it is no dream.

[And with that @DavidBenGurion hits the share button and tweets the link to the conversation with his 13 million Jewish followers.]

Israel facing major West Bank uprising over Palestinian hunger strike

Israel has been warned that it faces a major uprising in the West Bank after six Palestinian prisoners taking part in one of the largest and most protracted hunger strikes ever staged in its jails were said to be close to death.

By Adrian Blomfield, in Kharas, the West Bank, The Telegraph
10.05. 12

Palestinian militant groups and moderate politicians alike have predicted that years of relative tranquility could be brought to an abrupt and violent end if any of the 1,600 inmates now refusing food were to starve to death.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said this week that the six inmates who have declined sustenance the longest are “at imminent risk of dying”.

None of the six, who have all been admitted to prison hospitals, has eaten for the past 50 days. But the greatest concern is directed at two men, Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Diab.

By Thursday, both men had refused food for 74 days, one more than managed by Kieran Doherty, the longest surviving of the 10 Irish militants who died during the Maze Prison hunger strike of 1981. Bobby Sands, the best known of the prisoners and the first to die, succumbed after 66 days.

The two men’s act of defiance, initially a largely solitary affair called to protest their incarceration without trial, has spiralled into a major crisis for Israel. The vast majority of the 1,600 inmates demanding better prison conditions and and end to the practice of detention without trial have now been on hunger strike for 24 days and an ever growing number are having to receive medial attention.

But it is the potential for the crisis to spread beyond the razor-coiled walls of its prisons that really worries Israel. Prisoner rights have always been a deeply emotive subject for Palestinians, a fifth of whom — some 700,000 people — have served time in Israeli jails, according to activist groups.

There have already been violent clashes between protesters and the Israeli security forces outside prisons where hunger-striking inmates are being held. More demonstrations are planned for Friday.

Although the protests have been small so far, any death could cause such outrage that it could easily revive the resentments that triggered the Second Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, in 2000, according to relatives of some of the prisoners.

“If anyone dies there will be a third intifada that will include both violence and non-violence,” said Ahmad Zidan, whose brother Rami is among the hunger strikers.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a militant Gaza-based group, has already declared that it will end its ceasefire if any prisoner dies while this week Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, sounded his own ominous warning.

“It is very dangerous,” Mahmoud Abbas told Reuters. “If anyone dies today or tomorrow or after a week, it would be a disaster and no-one could control the situation.”

For the moment, however, Palestinians are exulting in challenging Israel through non-violent means.

In Kharas, the village near the city of Hebron when he was born, Thaer Halahleh has become a hero, a reputation that has spread through the West Bank because of the perceived dignity of his act of protest.

At his home on Thursday his mother Fatima anxiously awaited news of her son, aware that his life hung in the balance — all the more so after Israel’s supreme court this week rejected demands by Halahleh and Diab to be charged or freed.

Her hopes were lifted by the arrival of an intensely personal letter, written two days before and addressed to his family.

To his parents, he wrote: “I salute you from the middle of the battle and from the depth of my suffering. My morale is very high and my will very strong. Do not worry about me.”

Turning to his wife Shireen and his daughter Namer, born a fortnight after his arrest two years ago, he added: “I cannot explain with words my love for you. I do this for the sake of God and my homeland, my wife and my daughter. Take care of her and take care of your health and forgive me that I cannot be there to hug you.”

But in a letter to his lawyer on the same day, he struck a more sombre note, writing that he had lost more than 50lb.

“I have inflammation in my hands. It comes and goes. I’m bleeding in my stomach and from my gums. I have mouth ulcers and my muscles are shrinking — I feel my body has stopped operating normally,” he wrote.

“My excrement is black and I feel very cold. The doctors have been insulting. One told me: ‘I hope you die.’”

It is powerful stuff, and his refusal to bow down is why Israel is so scared, according to Halahleh’s brother Maher.

“This is a battle of wills,” he said. “He doesn’t have a weapon, but he has a weapon stronger than a weapon. This is a new weapon that is stronger than a nuclear bomb. Israel is fighting people who have no weapons, only their will.”

Israeli officials admit they are in quandary. Israel has already reached deals to free two hunger striking prisoners earlier this year. If they do the same with Halahleh and Diab, both accused of membership of Palestinian Islamic Jihand which they deny, it would only embolden other hunger-striking prisoners.

Nor is it willing to end the practice of “administrative detention”, under which more than 300 Palestinians are held, saying the practice is essential to protect informants in the West Bank whose identity would be exposed in a trial before open court.

“From Israel’s point of view, if every time someone goes on hunger strike they get a get out of jail free card, obviously that would not be sustainable,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

But he also conceded that any deaths would be dangerous for Israel and would give some of the instigators of the hunger strike what he said they have been after all along: a martyr.

“We don’t want to see someone on custody commit suicide,” he said. “Many of these prisoners were involved in very gruesome crimes against civilians. There is a concern that some of them are trying to commit suicide in order to instigate violence.”

Jihad: Any hunger-striker death will start next intifada
Ma’an news
06. (updated 09)05.12

GAZA CITY — Islamic Jihad leader Mohammad Al-Hindi warned Sunday that the death of any hunger-striking prisoner will start the third intifada, referencing the popular uprisings against Israeli occupation.

The Jihad official said the “battle of the empty stomachs” — in which more than 2,000 jailed Palestinians are refusing food — had overcome factional divisions.

“This battle will be the gateway for Palestinian unity,” he told supporters of the hunger-strikers at a solidarity tent in central Gaza City.

Al-Hindi urged cross-factional demonstrations to support the prisoners even if they lead to clashes with Israeli forces.

He also called on the Arab League to shut Israeli embassies and expel envoys in response to the popular protest rocking Israel’s jails.

Meanwhile, the Arab League held an urgent meeting in Cairo on Sunday to discuss the situation, with the Kuwaiti chair of the summit posing a resolution at the UN General Assembly to support the prisoners.

Delegates also urged the World Health Organization to investigate the conditions inside Israeli jails for Palestinians, official PA news agency Wafa reported.

On April 17, Palestinian prisoners day, over 1,000 prisoners joined a group of hunger-strikers protesting detention without charge. Around 2,000 are now taking part in the strike, prisoners rights groups estimate.

Administrative detainees Bilal Diab, 27, from Jenin, and Thaer Halahla, 33, from Hebron — are in a precarious condition after 68 days without food, a doctor from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel said this week.

The organization petitioned an Israeli court to allow an independent doctor to access to Diab, but the urgent appeal was rejected and postponed until a regular hearing on Monday, PHR said.

The group also slammed the Israeli High Court for not setting a date to hear an appeal against Diab and Halahla’s detention orders.

“By ignoring the gravity of their current situation, the High Court judges are not only acting with severe negligence, but also with malicious intent,” PHR said in a joint statement with prisoners rights group Addameer.

Palestinian women relatives of prisoners inside Israeli jails during a solidarity sit-in vigil.

May 17th: 24 hours of hunger in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails

Popular Struggle Co-ordinating Committee, Palestinian BDS National Committee, AIC
13.05.12

This coming Thursday, May 17, will mark a month to the hunger strike, with over 2,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails participating in it. As Israel refuses to accept the prisoners’ demands for their basic rights, including humane treatment, many of them face immediate risk of death as the world watches in silence.

The prisoners have decided to live in dignity or starve to death in their isolation cells, and a global mobilization is urgently needed to break the deafening silence! A month into the hunger strike, join a

Global 24-hour hunger strike
In front of Israeli embassies, consulates and UN offices
May 17, 2012

Endorse the Palestinian civil society call for a boycott of G4S due to its complicity in Israel’s violations of Palestinian prisoners’ rights

Click here  to pledge to join the Global 24-hour hunger strike.

Background
More than two weeks ago, some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners launched an open-ended hunger strike and their life is in danger. Their demands are simple and the strike’s slogan, echoing through the prison walls, is just as plain- freedom or death. The lives of all prisoners on strike are currently under danger, but among them is a smaller group, which has been striking for a longer period and whose lives are under immediate threat.

Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Diab have not eaten for more than 70 days – since the 29th of February. Israeli courts have rejected their appeals and refused to free them from administrative detention where they remain without charge or trial, subject to secret evidence and secret allegations. They are in critical condition.

Hassan Safadi has been refusing food since the 2nd of March, Omar Abu Shalal, 54, since the 4th of March, Mahmoud Sarsak, the only Gazan to have been incarcerated under Israel’s Illegal Combatants Law, since the 24th of March, Mohammed al-Taj, 40, also since the 24th of March and Ja’afar Ezzadeen, 41, since the 27th of march.

The Prisoners’ key demands include:
● Ending the policy of solitary confinement and isolation;
● End ot the use of administrative detentions;
● Restoration of visitation rihts to families of prisoners from the Gaza Strip, a right that has been denied to all families for more than 6 years;
● Cancelling ‘Shalit’ law, which restricts prisoners’ access to educational materials as punitive measure. The law remains intact despite a prisoner swap last October.
● Ending systematic humiliation, including arbitrary strip searches, nightly raids and collective punishment.

Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike have been hit hard with retaliation by Israel Prison Services, including beatings, transferring from one prison to another, confiscation of salt (an act that could have severe health consequences for hunger strikers), denial of family and lawyer visits, and isolation and solitary confinement of hunger strikers.

In response, Human Rights Watch issued a statement chiding Israel’s over its administrative detention policy; it said, “It shouldn’t take the self-starvation of Palestinian prisoners for Israel to realize it is violating their due process rights.” Amnesty International also issued a call for urgent action from individuals around the world to contact Israeli authorities about Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh.

Emphasizing imprisonment as a critical component of Israel’s system of occupation, colonialism and apartheid practiced against the Palestinian people, Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations have called for intensifying the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign to target corporations profiting directly from the Israeli prison system. In particular, we call for action to be taken to hold to account G4S, the world’s largest international security corporation, which helps to maintain and profit from Israel’s prison system, for its complicity with Israeli violations of international law.

Signed:
Popular Struggle Coordinating Committee
Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC)

Fasting on Fridays
Elizabeth West and Domenica Bianca
09.05.12
It is a departure for both of us to reach out to you in this way, but we are feeling as if we must. The world offers us many opportunities to take a stand and to act for change, and each of us must respond according to the guidance of our own hearts. We are following ours now, and thank you for spending the few minutes it will take for you to read about FASTING ON FRIDAYS: In Solidarity with the Palestinian Karameh (Dignity) Hunger Strike.

Let us begin with a little background. You probably heard or read about Khader Adnan and Hana Shalabi a few months back. Both of them have spent years of their lives in and out of Israeli-run prisons under the administrative detention policy. Also known as interment, and very similar to what is practiced by the US at Guantánamo, Israeli administrative detention places people in prison without charges or trial for up to six months, with the potential for an indefinite number of renewals. Neither Adnan nor Shalabi were ever charged with, or convicted of, committing a crime. During their most recent incarcerations, they each chose to go on a hunger strike—Adnan’s lasted for 66 days and Shalabi’s for 43—to protest, among other things, the widespread usage of administrative detention.

Both of the hunger strikes last winter ended through negotiation before deaths occurred. Right now, however, a new and massive non-violent protest has been undertaken by as many as 2500 Palestinians currently held in Israeli prisons. The numbers are not entirely clear and we apologize for that, but even if the lower estimates of 1500 are correct, this is a huge action, and a large number of people are putting their lives on the line in order to focus the world’s attention upon violations of international law that are a routine part of the lives of many Palestinians. Ten of the hunger strikers are now gravely ill and close to death. As of this writing, on May 9th, two of them have refused food for 71 days, and the majority are into their fourth week without eating. The situation changes moment to moment.

They have pledged to continue the strike until their demands are met, or until death.
…………………………………………..
Although we are interested in making as many of you as possible aware of what is unfolding, our purpose here is a little deeper.

Ali Abuminah, a Palestinian-American journalist writes that “Former prisoners and hunger strikers have said that even the smallest demonstration, the smallest acts of solidarity anywhere in the world make an enormous difference to their morale.”

In addition to the public demonstrations of support in Gaza and the West Bank, we know that rallies, teachings, vigils and street protests are happening in various places throughout the US, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and more. It is important for us to note here that a number of the organizers of these events are Jews who embrace the concept of tikkun olam—repairing the world, who like Rabbi Jeffrey Newman, believe that “Without justice for Palestinians, there is no hope for Israel.”

Yesterday, discussing this situation, we found that our hearts demanded we follow our sorrow into some form of action. Time is of the essence here; it is likely that some of the hunger strikers will begin to die in the next day or so. Ideally we would like for our actions to influence public opinion, to change the course of things, but our first and deepest wish is that the Palestinian people know that there are others, many of us Americans, who are with them as they stand steadfastly in the tradition of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and many prisoners from a multitude of nations who have chosen, over the years, to lay down their lives, if necessary, rather than to live a life stripped of both human rights and human dignity.

In terms of action, we would like to invite you to join us and a growing number of people in one or more of the following ways if you feel at all moved to do so:
Make a commitment to FASTING ON FRIDAYS– just one day a week, in solidarity with the hunger strikers. We will continue our once-weekly fasts until the Palestinians end their hunger strike. We are asking that you pledge to the fast for a month (four Fridays) at a time, so that we can track the numbers of fasters and do everything possible to bring attention to our efforts. You can design your own fast, but at minimum, we hope you’ll abstain from sunrise to sunset, each Friday. You can sign up, find more information about the pledge and about fasting here: http://fastingonfridays.wordpress.com/

We begin this Friday, May 11, 2012.
If your heart would like to join the fast, but your body is not able, we ask you to make a special intention on Fridays to send your love, thoughts and prayers to the Palestinians on hunger strike, to their loved ones, and to all whose lives are moved or changed by this action.

Consider making a donation to an organization that provides support to Palestinians in need, perhaps in the name of, or in honor of, the hunger strikers. We are not in a position to recommend particular groups, but have compiled a list of the members of a coalition called the Palestinian Council of Human Rights Organisations (PCHRO), with links to their individual websites.

Some of these groups focus on general welfare and human rights, some on legal aid, one on women’s issues and another is specific to children’s concerns.

Read and sign this letter to Israeli Brigadier General Dani Afroni, Military Judge Advocate General:
Read and sign this letter to the International Committee of the Red Cross:

We know that there are many things that call to each of us, that open our hearts and ask that we step out of our comfort in order to make the world a bit kinder. We all have to do it in the way or ways that feel correct to us, and we don’t expect that what is moving us to action will necessarily be what galvanizes you. However, we really appreciate your giving our proposal your thoughtful consideration. And if this isn’t for you, then we would be grateful if you forwarded it to anyone whom you think might find it of interest.

With gratitude for all that we have, around and among us,
Elizabeth West and Domenica Bianca
fastingonfridays@gmail.com

Action alert: STW office raided by Israeli military
Media release, Stop the Wall
08.05.12

At 1.30am this morning ten armoured jeeps of the Israeli occupation forces and intelligence surrounded and raided the offices of Stop the Wall in Ramallah. Israeli military stole 2 laptops, 3 hard drives and 10 memory cards containing files and photos as well as archive material relating to the work that the organisation does in opposition to Israel’s apartheid wall and the attack on Palestinian human rights that the wall and the settlement represent. This is a renewed attack upon Palestinian civil society and their struggle against the physical and psychological oppression, land confiscation and ethnic cleansing policies of the Israel.

It is no coincidence that the Israeli authorities have chosen this moment to escalate their repression against the Stop the Wall grassroots network of civil resistance against the Wall and the settlements, choosing to act on the same day that the Israeli High Court rejected the appeals of Palestinian hunger strikers Bilal Diab and Tha’’ir Halahleh, imprisoned without charge and without trial, effectively condemning them to death. Israel is fearing popular resistance and at the same time prepares for confrontation and more repression, clearly showing that it is not ready to relinquish any of the international sanctioned rights the Palestinian people are struggling for.

This is a stark reminder of the 2010 office raid and the 2009/10 wave of arrests of Stop the Wall staff and grassroots leaders. At that time we could count on the solidarity of all our supporters across the globe. Thanks to the steadfastness of Stop the Wall activists and your support internationally, we have been able to staff off the attack and emerge stronger than before.

We once again call upon you to support us by:

• Spreading the news and publicly express your support to Stop the Wall and our work in the media available to you (and please let us know you did so!)
• Encouraging your representatives and governments to condemn and report this further repression of civil resistance and human rights defenders organizations.
• Let Israel know that their walls cannot isolate anybody!

Click here for photos.

Background:
Stop the Wall is one of the most vibrant organizations of human rights defenders in Palestine, and has been promoting, for almost ten years, civil resistance and advocacy campaigns against the Wall and in defense of Palestinian rights to self determination. Human Rights Defenders are internationally recognized as an essential element in political processes and their repression further underlines Israeli unwillingness to achieve a just peace.

This raid on the Stop the Wall offices is a clear message that the Israeli authorities are fearing widespread nonviolent action will challenge their policies effectively.

The courageous steadfastness of the more than 2000 hunger strikers in Israeli jails is underlining once more the power of civil resistance as part of the Palestinian struggle. Almost daily people are out in the streets to protest in solidarity with the Palestinian political prisoners, and the discontent with the fruitless and completely stalled diplomatic processes is growing stronger. At the same time, the Israeli authorities announced in 2011 to UN agencies that throughout 2012 year they will systematically displace the Palestinian population in area C. While the displacement drive is underway in the Jordan Valley, home demolitions are rising and the settlement construction is accelerated, the people across the West Bank are always more constraint behind the cantons of the wall. Israel is preparing for confrontation and more repression, clearly showing that it is not ready to relinquish any of the international sanctioned rights the Palestinian people are struggling for.

This is not the first time Stop the Wall has been the target of Israeli repression. In September 2009 Stop the Wall youth coordinator was arrested and the Stop the Wall coordinator, Jamal Juma’, was arrested a few months later, in December 2009. The Israeli authorities were not able to formulate any accusations against either of them and after a sustained international campaign, that saw the active involvement of the diplomatic missions in Palestine and European foreign ministries as well as countless human rights organizations around the world, both had to be freed in January 2010. This attack was followed only a few months later by an extensive office raid by the Israeli military on February 8 2010 and mass arrests of grassroots human rights defenders in the villages most actively protesting against the Wall.

Israeli forces raid anti-wall campaign office in Ramallah

Ma’an news
08.05.12

RAMALLAH — Israeli forces stormed the offices of a grassroots campaign against the separation wall in Ramallah early Tuesday, the group said.

Ten military jeeps raided the Stop the Wall campaign office and forces seized two laptops, three hard drives and ten memory cards containing files and photos, and archive material, the organization said.

Group coordinator Jamal Juma said: “This raid on the Stop the Wall offices is a clear message that the Israeli authorities are fearing widespread nonviolent action will challenge their policies effectively.”

An Israeli military spokeswoman said “in order to prevent terror activity, Israeli forces operated overnight in Ramallah,” without elaborating on the office raid.

The Stop the Wall campaign office was raided by Israeli forces in February 2010, a month after Israel freed Juma and the group’s youth coordinator from jail. They were detained in late 2009 and both held without charge.

The group organizes grassroots support for non-violent resistance against Israel’s separation wall and Israeli settlements.

IDF Raids Ramallah Office Suspected of Terror Ties

IDF forces descended on the offices of Stop the Wall in Ramallah overnight ‘in order to prevent terror activity’

By Gabe Kahn, Israel National News
08.05.12

IDF forces on Tuesday raided the Ramallah offices of a group ostensibly dedicated to opposing the construction of the Israel’s separation fence in Judea and Samaria.

According to the Bethlehem Maan News Agency, ten IDF jeeps raided the Stop the Wall campaign office.

Soldiers seized two laptops, threehard drives and ten memory cards containing files, photos, and archive material.

Stop the Wall coordinator Jamal Juma said, “This raid on the Stop the Wall offices is a clear message that the Israeli authorities are fearing widespread nonviolent action will challenge their policies effectively.”

However, an Israeli military spokeswoman said the raid was conducted “in order to prevent terror activity, Israeli forces operated overnight in Ramallah.” She did not elaborate further.

The Stop the Wall campaign office was raided by Israeli forces in February 2010, a month after Israel freed Juma from jail.

He had been incarcerated under Israel’s administrative detention laws in 2009 for suspicion of terror activity.

Security officials speaking on condition of anonymity told Arutz Sheva that several grassroots activist groups claiming to be non-violent pass information they collect on troop movements and security arrangements to terror groups.

Israeli forces raid Palestinian NGO’s office in Ramallah
Mya Guarnieri, +972
08.05.12
[Excerpt]
Stop the Wall, a Palestinian grassroots organization, reports that Israeli forces raided the group’s offices, which are located in Palestinian Authority-controlled Area A, early this morning. The move points to Israel’s total intolerance of Palestinian resistance to the occupation.

……
Area A [where Stop the Wall offices are located] is supposed to be under the control of the Palestinian Authority. So, Israeli forces either got permission from the PA to enter the area–another indication that the PA is just a puppet of Israel–or Israeli forces entered by their own volition. Either way, the raid shows that there is no place where Palestinians are fully in control of their lives. It also reminds that Israel will not tolerate any form of Palestinian resistance, even non-violent resistance.

Addendum: Israeli forces enter Area A frequently. The Israeli army admits to this, stating it conducts about six raids in Area A every night.

Zionist history: A short quiz

Take this test to find out how much you know about the gradual shift in Israeli political thought over the decades.

Neve Gordon, Al Jazeera
06.05.12

Be’er-Sheva, Israel – Not long after Israel celebrated its 64th Independence Day on April 26, a friend prepared a quiz of sorts. She read out loud political quotes to about ten guests who were having dinner at my house, and asked us to identify the politician who had uttered each statement.

Truth be told, none of my guests did very well on the quiz, but I thought that readers acquainted with Zionist history might do better and would be able to identify the source of each of the following statements. There is only one rule to this game: all search engines, including Google, are off limits.

●”Does a bad law become a good one just because Jews apply it? I say that this law is bad from its very foundation and does not become good because it is practiced by Jews … We oppose administrative detention in principle. There is no place for such detention.”

●”We do not accept the semi-official view … wherein the state grants rights and is entitled to rescind them. We believe that there are human rights that precede the human form of life called a state.”

●”We have learned that an elected parliamentary majority can be an instrument in the hands of a group of rulers and act as camouflage for their tyranny. Therefore, the nation must, if it chooses freedom, determine its rights also with regard to the House of Representatives in order that the majority thereof, that serves the regime more than it oversees it, should not negate these rights.”

●”We would propose that the Knesset enact a law of its own free will, limiting its authority and stipulating that it will not tolerate any legislation that limits oral or written freedom of expression or association, or other basic civil and human rights to be enumerated before the Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee.”

●”The day will come when a government elected by our people will fulfill the first promise made to the people on the establishment of the state, namely: To elect a founding assembly whose chief function – in any country on earth – is to provide the people with a constitution and issue legislative guarantees of civil liberties and national liberty… For the nation will then be free – above all, free of fear, free of hunger, free of the fear of starvation. That day will come. I can sense that it is coming soon.”
●
“Some say that it is impossible for us to provide full equal rights to Arab citizens of the state because they do not fulfill full equal obligations. But this is a strange claim. True, we decided not to obligate Arab residents, as distinguished from the Druze, to perform military service. But we decided this of our own free will, and I believe that the moral reason for it is valid. Should war break out, we would not want one Arab citizen to face the harsh human test that our own people had experienced for generations.”

Confused yet?

If you are having trouble identifying the author, you are not alone. After hearing the quotes, I, too, wondered why they were so difficult to decipher. But, following a few misguided guesses, I recognised the source of the difficulty. The quiz was counterintuitive, and not only because all of the statements were uttered by a single politician.

No doubt, time has done its work and what was once pronounced by the undisputed leader of the Israeli right, now sounds more like declarations coming out of the liberal and far left – such as Knesset Members from Meretz and Hadash. Even the head of the Labor Party, Sheli Yichimovich, does not oppose administrative detention, and does not dare to claim that “there are human rights that precede the human form of life called a state”, probably for fear of losing potential voters.

My friend’s quiz managed to expose just how far right Israeli politics, as well as the public discourse informing it, have shifted over the years; so much so that, within the current political climate, declarations once uttered by former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who passed away 20 years ago, can now only be reiterated by leftists.

I have no doubt that if Menachem Begin, commander of the infamous Irgun Zionist militia from 1943-1948, were alive today and would utter these very same statements in the Knesset, his own party members from the Likud – as well as the Israeli majority – would condemn him. Today, citizens who hold such positions are simply called “traitors”.

Neve Gordon is the author of Israel’s Occupation and can be reached through his website.

Fayyad: Palestinians isolated, short of funds

By Michael Stott and Samia Nakhoul, Ma’an news/ Reuters
08/09.04.12

RAMALLAH — Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Tuesday the Palestinians may have “lost the argument” on the international stage for an independent state but cautioned that continued Israeli occupation was unsustainable.

In an interview, Fayyad struck a note of discord with President Mahmoud Abbas by calling for elections that have long been delayed because of deep political divisions between the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.

He also warned his administration’s future was clouded by severe financial strains and said the Palestinians had failed to galvanize a distracted world behind their cause.

“I think we are losing the argument, if we have not already lost the argument. But that doesn’t make our position wrong,” said the former World Bank economist, a political independent who has had strong support amongst Western powers.

Arab unrest, the US presidential elections and financial crises in Europe had combined to knock the Palestinian issue off the global agenda more than 18 months after peace talks with Israel broke down in a dispute over settlement building.

“What is the biggest obstacle we face? The state of marginalization. It is unprecedented,” he said. “The Israelis have managed to successfully trivialize our side of the argument,” he added, alluding to the Palestinian demands for a halt to settlement building before negotiations can resume.

Israel says talks should continue without preconditions and has continued to build housing in blocs that dot the West Bank on land the United Nations deems illegally occupied.

Speaking from his offices in Ramallah, 12 miles from Jerusalem, with the red, black, green and white national flag behind him, Fayyad said Palestinians must get their own house in order before they could hope for long-cherished independence, which most world powers continue to support in principle.

“I do not believe we will be able to get a state unless we are able to reunify our country,” he said of the political divide that has split the West Bank from the coastal enclave of Gaza, governed since 2007 by Hamas.

Deep freeze
Attempts by Abbas, who rules in the West Bank, to bridge this divide over the past year have failed amid mutual recriminations and plans to hold long-awaited elections this month across the Palestinian territories were shelved.

“The reconciliation process is in the deep freeze. Let’s face it,” Fayyad said, adding that the Palestinians should forge ahead with election plans regardless of opposition from Hamas in order to re-engage with a disillusioned populace.

“A basic right of our people is being violated. The right of being able to choose our leadership,” he said.

The last presidential and parliamentary elections were held in 2006 and many Palestinians, including Abbas and the Hamas leadership, have said a fresh vote can happen only if both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are involved.

Strains have been reported in relations between Abbas and Fayyad since the PA prime minister refused to hand over a letter from the president to Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu laying out Palestinian grievances over the failure of talks.

Fayyad disagreed with the initiative last month but said the episode was now behind them and confirmed the two were working on the formation of a new government, where he will remain prime minister but will likely lose the finance portfolio.

Given the task of building institutions in readiness for statehood, Fayyad said his job was being imperiled by a lack of resources, with Arab nations failing to hand over promised aid.

“There is an issue of survivability of the Palestinian Authority given the acute financial crisis we are going through,” he said, adding his government needed a “few hundred million dollars” to keep afloat.

The Palestinian Authority — which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank — depends on donor aid from the United States, the European Union and Arab states to pay the salaries of public workers, including teachers and security personnel.

The Palestinians had planned for foreign aid of about $1.1 billion in 2011, but received just under $750 million and are lagging again in donations this year. No reason has been given for the failure of some Arab allies to honor their pledges.

Despite the many challenges facing the Palestinians and the lengthy breakdown in peace negotiations, Fayyad said he was convinced that independence would be achieved within 10 years.

“Occupation is not only a major political failure, but given its oppressive nature it is also a moral failure for Israel. It is not something that can be sustained,” he said. “Walls have gone down elsewhere. Why should here be an exception?”

Mideast Din Drowns Out Palestinians

By Ethan Bronner, NY Times
08.03.12

RAMALLAH, West Bank — In the 14 months since revolution has spread across the Middle East and tension has soared over Iran’s nuclear program, the Palestinian leadership has found itself orphaned. Politically divided, its peace talks with Israel collapsed and its foreign support waning, the Palestinian Authority is sidelined, confused and worried that its people may return to violence.

“The biggest challenge we face — apart from occupation — is marginalization,” Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, said in an interview. “This is a direct consequence of the Arab Spring where people are preoccupied with their own domestic affairs. The United States is in an election year and has economic problems, Europe has its worries. We’re in a corner.”

For decades, as autocrats ruled their neighbors, the Palestinians were at the center of Middle Eastern politics, their struggle with Israeli occupation embodying the Arab longing for post-colonial freedom and dignity. The Obama administration came into office asserting that a state in the West Bank and Gaza was the key to regional progress.

But when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel visited Washington this week, the conversation was dominated by Iran, not peace talks or occupation.

In the region, the Arab Spring may have increased popular attention to the Palestinian cause, freeing Egyptians and others to express anti-Israel sentiments. But that has actually made things harder on the Palestine Liberation Organization, which negotiated with Israel. Popular affection has shifted to the Islamists of Hamas. They too have difficulties, however, abandoning their political headquarters in Syria, facing reduced help from Iran and contending with their increased divisions.

The result is a serial splintering of the Palestinian movement, a loss of state sponsors and paralysis for those trying to build a state next to Israel. Just six months ago, there was a moment of optimism when the Palestinian Authority presented its case for recognition to the United Nations, and later when Hamas closed a deal to free hundreds of its prisoners in exchange for the release of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.

But now, as momentum for a peaceful two-state solution fades, and the effort at the United Nations remains stymied, no viable alternatives have emerged and attention has focused on other conflicts.

Zakaria al-Qaq, a Palestinian expert in national security at Al Quds University in Jerusalem, said he recently joined dozens of other foreign scholars for a series of lectures on his specialty in the United States. Not a single one mentioned the Palestinian issue.

“I don’t see Palestine on the agenda of the United States or Israel,” he said. “It is on the shelf. The Palestinians don’t have the ability to impose themselves on the world and they can’t mobilize their people. The Arab world is busy. The Palestinians are becoming secondary.”

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, known for indecisiveness, seems especially torn on how to proceed. He and his lieutenants have been working for weeks on a multipage letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu, laying out all the reasons they believe that Israel has stood in the way of peaceful progress.

He plans to deliver a copy to American and European leaders as well, explaining why he thinks he must abandon the Israeli peace track and reconsider the Palestinian Authority’s relationship with Israel. And while diplomats are sympathetic with his frustration over Israel’s refusal to stop settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, they suspect that Mr. Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, feels politically unable to compromise with Israel at this time of upheaval.

“The political price Abu Mazen pays for being in negotiations with Netanyahu is too high right now,” a top Western diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “People in this region believe that you are either protesting or being protested against. He has decided it is better to protest.”

The problem is not only a Palestinian one, however. Mr. Netanyahu’s government and its supporters also say that the regional tumult makes it harder for them to yield territory.

“Israelis have always been concerned that if they make difficult and strategic concession in the peace process, what will happen if the regimes with which they signed an agreement are overthrown?” noted Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and a longtime adviser to Mr. Netanyahu.

“Israel has to be extremely cautious and ratchet up its security concerns. Will the Palestinian Authority be the Palestinian Authority one year from now? When European diplomats come to Israel and ask it for new territorial concessions, it is like asking us to put up a tent in the middle of a hurricane.”

Others argue that as Palestinian frustration grows the chance of an explosion in the West Bank increases. Rock throwing and confrontations with Israeli troops have picked up in recent months.

“We don’t want to be employees of the occupation,” Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said in an interview. “Israel has left the Palestinian Authority with responsibility but no power. At the same time, Israel has gotten the international community to pay the bill. It has a cushy occupation.”

The end of the Israeli track has pushed Mr. Abbas to pursue reconciliation with Hamas. But that too has faltered. Announced in a flourish last May, the plan for a unity government that would ready the Palestinians for elections has stalled largely over internal Hamas divisions on the plan.

Khaled Meshal, the political chief of Hamas who was based in Syria, agreed that Mr. Abbas would become the prime minister in the interim government. But his colleagues in Gaza objected to the way he negotiated without consultation. There are divisions among them and within the military wing of Hamas. Few Palestinians believe that elections are imminent; many suspect that they are a long way off.

Meanwhile, the distractions in the Arab world along with Israeli maneuvers have contributed to a worsening fiscal crisis for the Palestinian Authority even as the private sector here builds a modern infrastructure, creating a small but impressive business class.

Economic growth for the West Bank, which from 2008 to 2010 averaged 10 percent, slowed to 5.7 percent in 2011 with unemployment remaining at 17 percent, said Oussama Kanaan, of the International Monetary Fund. Last year, Arab countries together gave only $340 million to the Palestinian Authority, leaving it with $200 million less than expected.

The authority has been unable to pay its debts to private companies and the public pension fund, leaving it about $500 million in arrears, in addition to its debt of $1.1 billion to private banks.

Agreements between the Palestinian and Israeli finance ministries to improve Palestinian revenue collection have not been carried out because the Israeli government has not signed off. Prime Minister Fayyad said that unless those measures went into effect, he might not attend a donors conference planned for Brussels this month.

At the same time, Israeli troops have stepped up their nighttime raids on West Bank cities,recently shutting down two television stations and contributing to the sense of impotence.

“We need attention to our finances, our security and to the violence from the Israeli Army,” Mr. Fayyad said. “What the army has been doing is both wrong and dangerous. It makes us look like a weak authority. They don’t know when there will be one incident too many, when things will simply spin out of control.”

2,000 Palestinian Prisoners on Hunger Strike and Zero News Coverage

John Wight, Huffington Post
30.04.12

There are currently 2000 Palestinians on hunger strike in Israeli prisons, though judging by the lack of coverage of the story in the mainstream media you’d never know it. Two of the prisoners involved are now in a critical condition, having been on hunger strike for 60 days and counting. They are protesting prison conditions, including the widespread use of solitary confinement, lack of medical treatment, and most importantly the use by the Israelis of the prisoner category described as administrative detention.

Under this particular category prisoners can be held indefinitely at the behest of the military without any charges being brought, no trial, or even so much as a hearing to be made aware of the evidence against them. Currently, over 300 Palestinians are being held in Israeli prisons and detentions centers under administrative detention, including six women and six children.

According to the website of the Palestinian prisoner support organisation Addameer, 19 of the Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike are being kept in solitary confinement. One of those, Ahmad Sa’adat, has been held in isolation for three years.

It is also claimed that the Israeli prison authorities are waging a campaign of punishment against the hunger strikers, which includes daily raids on their cells, the confiscation of personal belongings, cutting their electricity supply, and various other measures deemed illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Back in March Amnesty International called for the immediate release of Hana Shalabi, a female prisoner who was being held under administrative detention and was close to death as a result of the hunger strike she began 37 days prior.

The human rights organization issued a statement on Shalabi’s plight.

Amnesty International has repeatedly called on the Israeli authorities to release Hana Shalabi and other Palestinians held in administrative detention, unless they are promptly charged with internationally recognizable criminal offences and tried in accordance with international fair trial standards.

Shalabi’s case came to international attention. The resulting pressure brought to bear on the Israeli government led to her being released her as part of the prisoner swap between Israel and Hamas involving 1,027 Palestinian detainees in return for Gilad Shalit, who’d been held captive in Gaza after being captured during an operation by members of the Palestinian resistance on an Israeli military position in 2006. Shalit was the only Israeli being detained by the Palestinians, who are now holding no Israelis captive. In contradistinction, the Israelis currently have over 4,000 Palestinians in captivity.

Israeli prisons and military detention camps are primarily located within the 1948 borders of Israel. There are a total of four interrogation centers, as well as secret interrogation facilities, five detention/holding centers, and about 21 prisons in which Palestinians from the Occupied Territories are held. The location of prisons within Israel and the transfer of detainees to locations within the occupying power’s territory are illegal under international law and constitute a war crime. Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly states that “Protected persons accused of offences shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein.”

Most of the Palestinian Prisoners are being held in detention facilities located outside the Occupied Territories.

Physical abuse and humiliation of the detainee by Israeli forces is common. Based on numerous sworn affidavits, detainees have reported that they have been subjected to attempted murder and rape, thrown down stairs while blindfolded, as well as various other forms of physical abuse. During their arrest, detainees are often forced to strip in public before being taken into custody. Family members have also been forced to remove their clothes during military raids. Mass arrests from homes in entire neighborhoods continue to take place in the Occupied Territories during military incursions. Once bound and blindfolded, the detainee is usually placed on the floor of a military jeep, sometimes face down, for transfer to an interrogation and detention center.

Since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, over 700,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel. This forms approximately 20 percent of the total Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories. Considering the fact that the majority of those detained are male, the number of Palestinians who’ve been detained forms approximately 40 percent of the total male Palestinian population of the Occupied Territories.

Draw your own conclusions.

Under-reported Palestinian political prisoners: an urgent matter for peace

By Alessandra Bajec, emaj magazine
28.02.12

In contrast to political prisoners in other parts of the Middle East and beyond the situation of Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails gets very little coverage in the mainstream media. The reported arrests of Palestinian MPs, Mohammed Totah, Khaled Abu Arafeh, Aziz Dweik, or the current detention of hunger-striking prisoner Khader Adnan are only the most recent cases in Israel’s ongoing campaign of arrests across the occupied West Bank. Why is this subject under-reported by the established media? And why is the political status of  Palestinian prisoners still ignored in the press today?

Anat Matar, senior lecturer in philosophy at Tel Aviv University, sees the main problem as the reporting by international media being largely based on Israel’s perspective, which tends to silence the issue. “I have been involved in many political activities in the last 40 years, certainly the least popular subject in Israel is that of Palestinian prisoners”, she observes.

Matar, who also chairs the Israeli Action Committee for Palestinian Prisoners, points out that  Palestinians are presented in the Israeli press as ‘security prisoners’ rather than political, and are portrayed by the mainstream media as ‘criminals’. In her view, this label denies their political nature and justifies Israel’s need for self-defence and its mass detention policy. “When I insist on calling Palestinian prisoners ‘political’, it brings so much criticism from the Israeli society, they don’t want to acknowledge this”, Matar explains.

Murad Jadallah, legal researcher at Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Organization, suggests that the media tends to wrongly report the situation in Palestine as if it was a post-conflict scenario. “We still live under military occupation. Israel detains up to 7,000 Palestinians every year, with an average of 11 to 20 Palestinians are arrested every day. There are 123 veteran prisoners kept in Israeli jails since before the Oslo accords.”

Abeer Baker, private human rights lawyer and public defender in prisoners cases, maintains that prisoners issues attract limited media attention, and this is particularly true for Palestinians. “It is obvious that, with very rare exceptions, the public opinion will never be interested to hear about these thousands of people.” Baker also explains the justification for Israel’s denial of the political nature of imprisonment. “To acknowledge this would mean admitting that Palestinians are fighters for justice and self-determination. Criminalizing Palestinians, instead, turns them into ‘terrorists’ making the Israeli people feel like persecuted victims forever.”

Israel’s attitude to criminalise and de-politicise Palestinian prisoners is then reflected in the mainstream media.

The prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and Israel, reached earlier last year, was the first time that we saw intensive media coverage of Palestinian prisoners. Baker, also former senior lawyer with Adalah Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, criticizes the news reporting throughout that period. She recalls the media were busy covering the case of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit rather than one thousand Palestinian prisoners, and focuses on certain prisoners and their crimes: “The impression was that nobody from the media could stand the idea that political prisoners were released. The stories of these prisoners, their families, and what they had faced during the years in jail were totally ignored.”

Matar similarly highlights the unbalanced reporting by the major media. “Palestinian prisoners themselves were treated by the international media as masses, not individually and not politically”,. Jadallah reminds us that there are still at least 4,500 Palestinians in Israeli jails, and condemns the media for never mentioning about the more than 8,000 Palestinians who have been detained by Israel since 1967. “Last year, Addameer documented that over 3,700 Palestinians were arrested, and in 2010 only in Silwan more than 1,200 children were rounded up by Israeli forces, some of them several times”, the legal researcher also reports.

Based on Addameer’s media monitoring, as part of its advocacy work, the response from the mainstream media proves to be largely disappointing. “We invite foreign journalists to military courts so they can attend trials on cases of political prisoners, and report what they witness, but in many instances they refuse to go”, Jadallah denounces.

Similarly, Matar urges more involvement from the foreign media in covering trials concerning organisers of demonstrations. “If they wanted, they could go and draw attention to their cases. Very often, I have seen several EU representatives attending trials, but I don’t remember ever seeing international media there”.

One striking example of this media neglect, which Jadallah remembers well, goes back to 2010, when Addameer documented five cases of sexual abuse by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian child detainees. “We issued a report on our website, I myself contacted the BBC, and they refused to cover the story”.

Jadallah appears to be familiar with the international media’s work in the West Bank. As Israel maintains a heavy control over the media coverage, he underlines, foreign journalists prefer to hide the truth from occupied Palestine. While Israel refuses to abide by international conventions regarding the treatment of Palestinian prisoners, the silence of the international media may risk allowing Israel to continue to breach international humanitarian laws. “Why can they not cover what’s going on in Palestine? By not showing the reality, they are covering up Israel’s crimes. This is not professional, this is not human.”

Anat Matar and Abeer Baker are co-editors of ‘Threat: Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israel’, a collection of essays written by prisoners, ex-prisoners, human rights defenders, lawyers and academic researchers, which sheds light on the subject of Palestinian prisoners from a variety of perspectives. Matar refers to the personal testimonies, the legal analysis on Israel’s breaches of international treaties, and the deals of exchanges of prisoners as some key parts of the book. Despite the many endorsements and some good reviews, Matar regrets there was marginal interest in the subject from the mainstream media. “We tried to raise media attention in both the Israeli and international press, unfortunately we were not successful”,.

Baker finds the reaction the book got was good, but agrees it had a limited scope. “It showed how little people knew about Palestinian prisoners. Many were interested to hear more, but still I don’t think we had a ‘flood’ of writings”, she admits. In addition, Baker observes that prisons are a place in which Israel can excercise its full control over prisoners, their families and children. “The prison is used as a tool to hinder their struggle and silence their voices. No one will ever be able to understand the Occupation if he or she knows little about Palestinian prisoners”, the human rights lawyer states.

One of the main issues that should be presented by the media in relation to Palestinian prisoners is administrative detention. Legal researcher Addameer expresses concern regarding this practice used by Israel against human rights defenders, journalists, legislators, as well as peace activists, women, children, and elders. “Why the need to arrest masses of Palestinians? It’s a punishment for prisoners, for their families, and the Palestinian society. What Israel is doing to Palestine is ‘social genocide’”, says Jadallah. Likewise, Baker sees administrative detention as a major question that should be addressed. “This practice of detaining Palestinians without charges and based on classified evidence shows the easy way to get the freedom from innocent people solely for political purposes”, she argues. In particular, Matar notes that the arrest campaign of political leaders and activists (namely leaders of popular resistance committees) is left under-covered in the media. “This issue includes that of child prisoners, accused of stone-throwing, since many children are detained in order to criminalize leaders and organisers of peaceful demonstrations.”

Like Baker, Jadallah regards solitary confinement as another primary issue of concern. There are prisoners who have been in isolation for many years. Some of them have died in prison, others have been released just before dying. Jadallah states: “We want to stop this policy, it is a crime, it is against the law and against the Israeli prison service regulations.”

One of the minimum demands of the Palestinian people in order to return to the negotiating table is that all the political prisoners should be released. Matar believes this issue will be addressed more by the media in time. “If Israel wanted peace -and if the US and Europe did too- demanding a gradual release of all political prisoners, in line with the implementation of the peace process, would be so critical.” Baker thinks that the demand for releasing prisoners will be highlighted in the next peace talks, though to a lesser extent than the issues of borders, refugees, and East Jerusalem. And Jadallah asks: “How can Israel make peace if it doesn’t want to release prisoners of war? There cannot be peace in the Middle East without the release of all the Palestinian prisoners.”

[EMAJ is an academy for young journalists; EMAJ Magazine is an intercultural magazine, made by a network of young journalists from the Middle East, North Africa (MENA) and the EU.]

How BBC views Gaza through a Zionist looking glass

Amena Saleem, The Electronic Intifada
11.04.12

Watching, reading or listening to a BBC report on Israel’s occupation of Palestine is like stepping through the Zionist looking-glass and witnessing not the reality of the situation, but Israel’s totally distorted version of it.

In this inverted world, presented to us by a broadcaster with a huge global reach, we were recently told that the besieged people of Gaza have become accustomed to the relentless violence and deprivation of Israel’s occupation and siege, while the residents of southern Israel continue to feel anxiety and dread when crude rockets are fired into their neighborhood.

These extraordinary claims are made in two juxtaposed articles published on one page recently on BBC Online (“Gaza-Israel clashes: The view from each side,” 13 March 2012).

They perfectly encapsulate the BBC’s general attitude towards reporting on the occupation — reporting which, with sad regularity, lacks truth, honesty and integrity.

Published just after Israel had bombed Gaza continuously for four days, killing 27 Palestinians including children as young as seven, the headline for the article about Gaza reads, “Gazans ‘inured’ to conflict.”

This incredible opinion — that the people of Gaza have become used to the mass killings visited on them by Israeli airstrikes, to the destruction of their homes by F16s, to the suffering caused by near-total blockade, to the restrictions on their freedom and movement, to the daily terror of drones flying overhead — is that of the BBC’s correspondent in Gaza, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes.

No evidence
An experienced journalist, Wingfield-Hayes provides no evidence for his article from official sources such as the United Nations or Palestine Trauma Centre, which produce factual reports on the high levels of mental health problems amongst the population. Nor does he interview any Palestinians in Gaza on whether they have become habituated to the Israeli bombs which fall on their homes and incinerate members of their families in order to back up his headline-making claim.

Instead, the basis for his assertion is that, while Israeli warplanes fly overhead as he sits in a building in Gaza City, “down below on the streets the cars kept passing, the shops stayed open, pedestrians kept walking home with their groceries.”

And so, because people continue trying to survive amidst the destruction, the BBC presents them as being “inured” to the violence and injustice that is rained down on them on a daily basis. This public broadcaster, paid for by the UK taxpayer, denies the Palestinians even the luxury of sharing the same human feelings of terror, frustration and longing for freedom that everyone else on the planet is allowed to possess. Described as being “inured” to a situation no sentient human being could become used to, they are, essentially, deemed less than human.

Making the siege invisible
Wingfield-Hayes also renders invisible Israel’s five-year siege, with not even a brief description of the desperate situation currently facing Palestinians in Gaza, as supplies of fuel and cooking gas near exhaustion, electricity is available only six hours in every 24, hospitals cancel operations, schools and universities close, and families resort to candles for light and ancient clay ovens, lit with straw and wood, to cook food.

Is this because reporting honestly on the siege and its effects might elicit sympathy, even understanding, for the Palestinians and clash with the image Israel wants the media to project of a terrorist population threatening its security?

Was a desire to present Israel’s singular view of international law also the reason behind the article’s original claim that the occupation of Gaza had ended in 2005? A written complaint from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign directing the BBC’s Middle East editor to UN resolutions on the matter resulted in a paragraph being added to say that Israel still maintains control over Gaza’s borders and airspace.

Astonishing and inept
Nevertheless, Wingfield-Hayes’ extraordinary questioning of an unfortunate Palestinian in Gaza remains in the modified article. “What do you mean when you say you are struggling against the occupation?” he demands of a man who does not have the freedom to move beyond an area of land measuring 25 miles by 4 miles, whose every aspect of life, including whether he will be allowed enough food to keep his family alive, is controlled by Israel. “After all Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005,” Wingfield-Hayes insists.

This is quite astonishing and, taking into account Wingfield-Hayes’ failure to mention the siege which dominates this man’s life, journalistically inept.

The subconscious message this article is sending out, by denying the desperate reality in Gaza in favor of groundless, unsupported theories put forward by the journalist, is that Palestinians in Gaza are ok, there’s nothing to worry about, you can look away.

This is in stark contrast to the article which runs parallel to it, headlined “Israel’s Iron Dome hopes.” In this piece, the BBC’s Kevin Connolly tells us how “normal life” in southern Israel is “severely disrupted” during periods of rocket fire. He provides us with emotive descriptions of the “anxiety” of the Israelis as they go through “grimly familiar rituals” on hearing “the mournful howling” of sirens and describes a young man running in fear for shelter. We learn about “that familiar sense of dread” experienced by the residents of southern Israel and their hopes that the Iron Dome missile shield will become an “instrument of deliverance” from Gaza’s rockets.

These are clearly not people, Connolly is saying, who are inured to conflict. So why, according to the BBC, do they still feel dread and anxiety and not the Palestinians? Are the Palestinians simply hardier, or are the F16s, Apache helicopters, armored tanks and drones deployed against them just not as frightening as the homemade rockets which terrify the Israelis?

Leaving Wonderland
Connolly’s article focuses on the image of the Israeli state defending itself from the besieged, refugee population of Gaza. As with Wingfield-Hayes’ contribution to “the view from each side,” there is absolutely no mention of the fact that Israel illegally occupies Gaza, has held it under tight siege for six years, committed a massacre of 1,400 people there during three weeks in 2008-09, shoots from remote-controlled watchtowers at Palestinian children collecting rubble and from gunboats at fishermen trying to catch fish to feed their impoverished families, and no mention at all that Israel violates international law every single day of the year in relation to Gaza and the Palestinians.

Connolly talks about the levels of “military balance” between the Israelis (funded to the tune of $3 billion a year in military aid by the US) and the Palestinians (a people with no state and no army). Wingfield-Hayes implies, when he interviews a man whose house has been reduced to rubble by an airstrike, that the Palestinians have brought their collective punishment upon themselves by standing up to Israel and refusing to accept their occupation.

As a BBC journalist who has been asked to step through the Zionist looking-glass, he does not of course tell his audience that, under the Geneva convention, collective punishment is illegal or that international law allows an occupied people to resist their occupation.

To do this would mean leaving Wonderland and stepping back through the looking-glass and into reality. This is something that the BBC, with its twisted, fact-free reporting of the occupation loaded in favor of Israel, seems incapable of doing. After all, this is the same organization which has declared that “Palestine doesn’t exist” while simultaneously warning that to claim it isn’t free is a contentious issue. And with the BBC’s reach extending into every corner of the globe, this inability — or unwillingness — is something that should concern us all.

Amena Saleem is active with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the UK and keeps a close eye on the media’s coverage of Palestine as part of her brief. She has twice driven on convoys to Gaza for PSC. More information on PSC is available atwww.palestinecampaign.org.

World’s media cool on Palestinian hunger strikers

Arabic News Digest, The National
23.04.12

A whole week has passed since the Palestinian inmates in Israeli prisons started their indefinite hunger strike in a symbolic “uprising” against their jailers’ cruelty. But their battle isn’t going according to plan amid what seems to be an intentional media blackout, said the columnist Hussam Kanafani in the Sharjah-based newspaper Al Khaleej.

One day after the collective decision was announced, follow-up news on the strike seemed to slip off most western and Arab news agencies daily grids. The issue should have received more focus, at least in Palestine.

“Who’s to blame?” asked the writer. “It isn’t enough to point fingers at the Israeli occupation authorities at this point. In fact, it was the normal reaction to be expect from them, especially in light of the arbitrary measures they have been practicing so far against the Palestinians.”

Besides, this isn’t the first time the Israeli authorities had to deal with this type of mutiny in its jails. The recently released prisoner Khader Adnan had successfully coerced his jailers to acquiesce, even partly, to his terms by going on a 67-day hunger strike that ended in February.

But if his attempt was successful, it was because of the media coverage it attracted, mainly in Palestine, which in turn caught the attention of the western media.

“No media impetus of the sort can be seen in this instance where more than 1,200 prisoners are refusing their daily meals, either in the Arab or in the western media,” added Kanafani. “On the contrary, it looks as if the fascination that surfaced with the first day of the strike has subsided.”

The issue is bigger than a mere focus on the launching of the strike. Daily developments must lead at every news medium in and outside Palestine; that is if the strike was to reach the same scope as Mr Adnan’s individual strike and especially since reports are suggesting that more and more prisoners are joining the strike.

The Palestinian media have yet to take the prisoners’ movement seriously. Only then will the voice of empty stomachs be heard.

It isn’t too late yet; the movement is still in the beginning and promises more escalation in the near future. But it lacks strong and efficient support from within, away from political divisions, as well as the backing of the Arab world.

Approximately 4,700 Palestinians are detained in Israeli prisons. Their hunger strike, which coincided with the annual commemoration of Prisoners’ Day in Palestine, was a last-resort measure to coerce their captors into meeting their demands, mainly the abolishment of inhumane incarceration policies such as solitary confinement, administrative detention and the continuation of sanctions that were imposed before the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier that was captured in Gaza.

Emergency statement by Jews for Justice for Palestinians

May 8th 2012

On Monday 7th May the Israeli Supreme Court rejected the appeals of two hunger strikers, Bilal Diab 27, and Thaer Halahleh 33, held in administrative detention without charge or trial, denied the right to see the evidence against them. These young men are in the 70th day of their hunger strike and by rejecting their appeals, the Supreme court could, according to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, be condemning them to death. There is no known evidence that a hunger striker has ever lived beyond75 days.

There are at present between 1600 and 2000 prisoners on hunger strike. Their main demands are an end to administrative detention and to solitary confinement, as well as the reinstatement of family visits from Gaza.

Israel insists it is a democracy which abides by the rule of law. However it is hard to see how the state can justify this position when one considers that administrative detention for any length of time, is a violation of international law.  Holding ‘protected persons’ in the territory of the occupier is a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Israel talks with conviction about its ‘security’ as a rationale for holding Palestinian prisoners from the occupied territories. However Israel also states that the annexation wall has brought it unprecedented security. So Israel must decide. Either it is under such an overwhelming threat that it needs all the legal resources at its disposal to protect its population from external threats, or it is using its machinery to imprison a subject population and to submit them to human rights abuse. The evidence points inexorably in one direction. Over 40% of Palestinian men have at some point been detained by the Israeli authorities. This sort of scenario is consistent with all colonial powers, who use what they call their ‘criminal justice’ system to criminalise those who challenge their dominion.

It is time that we expose the real criminals. It is those who oppress another people and treat them with callous contempt, while hiding behind what they call the law, but which stands in stark contrast to international law to which all countries calling themselves democracies hold allegiance. We urge the Israeli government even at this late stage to show some humanity and to release the prisoners. We also urge the UK Government to demand that Israel abide by international law and release the prisoners. Israel should be informed that, unless it abides by its international treaty obligations, sanctions could be imposed.

Further actions that can be taken to help Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh:

*Write to the Israeli government, military and legal authorities and demand that the prisoners be released immediately and his administrative detention order not be renewed.

Brigadier General Danny Efroni, Military Judge Advocate General
6 David Elazar Street
Harkiya, Tel Aviv
Israel

Fax: +972 3 608 0366; +972 3 569 4526
Email: arbel@mail.idf.il; avimn@idf.gov.il

Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon
OC Central Command Nehemia Base, Central Command

Neveh Yaacov, Jerusalam
Fax: +972 2 530 5741

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak

Ministry of Defense
37 Kaplan Street, Hakirya
Tel Aviv 61909, Israel

Fax: +972 3 691 6940 / 696 2757

Col. Eli Bar On
Legal Advisor of Judea and Samaria PO Box 5
Beth El 90631

Fax: +972 2 9977326

*Write to your own elected representatives urging them to pressure Israel to release Bilal Diab and to put an end to such an unjust, arbitrary and cruel system of incarceration without trial.

Petition in support of Palestinian hunger strikers
To sign this petition produced by Jewish Voice for Peace, click on the headline above

I stand in solidarity with the Palestinian Hunger Strikers
Israel has long imprisoned Palestinians without charge, a practice called “adminstrative detention.” But now Palestinians are making history by nonviolently resisting these abuses with a 2,000 prisoner hunger strike.

Their demand is just: freedom from arrest without charge, the right of habeas corpus, is at the foundation of international human rights. The hunger strikers have inspired support actions from Palestinians and Israeli allies, as well as from international human rights organizations like Amnesty International.

Two of the hunger strikers are near death. We need to bring them justice before it’s too late. Please add your name to petition to end administrative detention below.

I support the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike in opposition to inhumane prison conditions and the Israeli practice of detaining Palestinians without charge. I stand with their historic act of nonviolent resistance to these gross injustices.

Submit to the strikers

The hunger strike is the latest rock in the avalanche of largely nonviolent flotillas, ‘fly-ins’ and marches that Palestinians and their supporters have organized, to great success.

By Shay Fogelman, Ha’aretz
07.05.12

It’s impossible to determine precisely how many days people can survive without food. The medical history of hunger strikes indicates that healthy people of average weight can expect to lose consciousness on the 55th day of their fast. The data also indicates that hunger strikers can expect to die by day 75.

As these lines are being written, administrative detainees Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahla are approaching the 70th day of their hunger strike. They are reportedly both still conscious but, statistically speaking, they can expect to die any minute.

In addition to Diab and Halahla, six other administrative detainees are also on a hunger strike – one for more than 40 days, and another for nearly 60. The oldest of them, a 72-year-old man, has been refusing to eat for three weeks. What they are all demanding is their freedom. They have stated that they would rather die than remain in detention without being tried or even charged, without a release date, without visits from family or any of the other rights that regular prisoners are guaranteed by law. They want to stop being the victims of that distortion of law and justice known as administrative detention – a category that accounts for around 300 Palestinians currently incarcerated in Israel.

More than two weeks ago, some 1,500 convicted prisoners joined the hunger strike. They are reported to have done so primarily to improve their prison conditions, which got much worse while negotiations were under way for the release of Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity. But representatives of the hunger strikers have said at every opportunity that they are taking part in the protest primarily to show their solidarity with the administrative detainees.

The hunger strike is the latest rock in the avalanche of largely nonviolent flotillas, “fly-ins” and marches that Palestinians and their supporters have organized, to great success, in the last several years. After all, it was a single Turkish ship that, in 2010, prompted Israel to expand the list of goods allowed into Gaza far faster than the thousands of rockets and mortar shells that Palestinians had been firing on Sderot for years. It was a single protest fly-in, and Israel’s demand last month that presumed pro-Palestinian demonstrators be barred from boarding Tel Aviv-bound planes, that turned the world’s attention to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. And it was a single protest bicycle tour by European and Palestinian activists in the Jericho area last month, and an Israeli officer’s videotaped attack on a Danish participant, that won more international media coverage than any Palestinian shooting attack on settlers.

The hunger strike, and its ever-widening circle of participants, has already achieved a lot for the Palestinian national struggle, primarily regarding administrative detention. Israel recently released Islamic Jihad activist Khader Adnan, who refused to eat for 67 days while he was being held in administrative detention for four months. Hana Shalabi, who went on a 30-day hunger strike while under administrative detention, has been released and deported to the Gaza Strip for three years.

The research that has been conducted on hunger strikes shows that on the second or third day people stop feeling hungry. After two weeks, the glycogen reserves in the liver and muscles are depleted, causing a significant drop in weight. Around day 30, vision becomes impaired because of weakened eye muscles, vomiting begins, and hunger strikers begin to have difficulty swallowing water and suffer severe vertigo. Most of these symptoms fade after about 10 days, leaving the hunger strikers weak and apathetic. In the next few days, those who continue to refuse food can expect to lose their hearing and vision, suffer internal bleeding and ultimately die.

The State of Israel cannot allow Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahla to die of hunger. It does not have the moral legitimacy to do so. The State of Israel must submit one more time to a just and nonviolent struggle. It must release Diab and Halahla and put an end to the unacceptable practice of administrative detention.

Shaul Mofaz, Netanyahu’s new partner, ordered ‘revenge’ op that killed Palestinian police in 2002

By Alex Kane, Mondoweiss
08.05.12

For analysis of what the new coalition deal struck by Benjamin Netanyahu means, read Paul Mutter’s take. But I wanted to look at the other man at the center of the deal: Shaul Mofaz.

Mofaz is a military man; he was the Israeli military’s Chief of Staff during the Second Intifada. And as part of the conditions for Kadima entering Netanyahu’s coalition, Mofaz gets inside Netanayhu’s cabinet and will be appointed deputy prime minister.

The speculation is that Mofaz will now play a role in formulating the Netanyahu government’s policy towards the Palestinians. JJ Goldberg of the Forward [below] describes the new government as the “smartest move by any Israeli peace advocate in a long time.” Goldberg points to Mofaz’s “peace place,” which “calls for immediate recognition of a Palestinian state with provisional borders, controlling 60% of the West Bank for now, followed promptly by state-to-state negotiations toward a final-status agreement.”

But if you look at the fine print of the Mofaz plan, [at Israel Policy Forum ] it’s nothing special. Mofaz calls for keeping the major settlement blocs, including Ariel, making any talk of a Palestinian state moot. Jerusalem would remain under Israeli control. There would be no settlement freeze. You call that a peace plan?

And then there’s Mofaz’s record in the Israeli military. Here’s Haaretz’s Gideon Levy on Mofaz:

Mofaz was also one of our crueler defense ministers – no less than 1,705 Palestinians were killed on his watch, including 372 children and teens and 191 targeted killings: that is no great honor, either. True, those were the days of the second intifada, but Mofaz was also one of the fathers of the doctrine of targeted killings, which has been completely forgotten. He was also the one heard whispering into a microphone that Yasser Arafat should be expelled from Ramallah, another genius idea at the time.

“I thought we should strike very hard,” he told the Winograd Commission investigating the Second Lebanon War, and in so doing said everything there was to say about his doctrine of warfare and his military-political creed. Perhaps he has changed his mind since then, but it is up to him to prove it, and he has not yet done so.

In September 2005, the Independent’s Donald Macintyre reported on Breaking the Silence, the courageous Israeli organization of ex-soldiers who speak out about the violent abuse heaped on Palestinians living under occupation. Macintyre mentions a book [Boomerang] authored by Israeli journalists to back up Breaking the Silence’s claim that Israeli army officials order soldiers to violate international law:

Breaking the Silence contends that the inspiration for many orders, which it says directly violate the international legal obligations of an occupying power, came from the highest ranks. Certainly, Booomerang, a new book by two prominent Israeli journalists, Ofer Shelah and Raviv Druker, reports that at a conference of officers as early as May 2001, Shaul Mofaz, now the Defence Minister but then Chief of Staff, asked for the tape to be switched off before telling them that he wanted a “price” exacted from the Palestinians of 10 killed a day on each of the Army’s seven fronts.

And after six Israeli soldiers were killed in Ein Arik in February 2002, the book says, Mr Mofaz personally ordered a revenge operation in which for the first time Palestinian police officers would be shot, whether they posed a threat or not. One soldier who took part in a raid which killed four or five Palestinian policemen at a checkpoint 24 hours after Ein Arik told the IoS: “It felt bad even at that time. They said Palestinian police are connected to terror and that the [killers] passed through the checkpoint. Maybe the police are connected to terror but for sure they didn’t pass through all the checkpoints [attacked that day].”

Now of course, whether Mofaz in the government or not will make very little difference for Palestinians looking for an end to Israel’s occupation. The occupation and settlement project is much larger than one man or coalition government. But, you can forget about Mofaz saving peace negotiations. Perhaps even more importantly, Mofaz’s record is no comfort to those worried about the next Israeli escalation in the Gaza Strip.

Bibi-Kadima Unity Deal Saves the Peace Camp

By J.J. Goldberg, Jewish Forward blog
07.05.12

The Likud-Kadima agreement to form a unity government and cancel the early election makes all the sense in the world for Kadima. It’s arguably the smartest move by any Israeli peace advocate in a long time.

Newly minted Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz, who ousted Tzipi Livni in a primary upset just two weeks ago, inherited a party with 28 seats Knesset seats. It’s the largest bloc in the current house – one seat more than the Likud in the 120-seat legislature. But Kadima was headed for a crash in the coming snap elections. Polls showed Mofaz winning just 11 seats in September, the same as center-liberal newcomer Yair Lapid. Labor Party leader Sheli Yacimovich was polling at 18 seats (up from the 13 Labor won in the last election, which dropped to 8 after Ehud Barak’s defection). Thus the total center-left bloc was headed for 40 seats. Netanyahu was polling at a commanding 30 seats, and with Avigdor Lieberman pulling 15, plus assorted religious and far-right factions, Bibi was headed for a second term that would take him through 2016 essentially unchallenged.

By joining a unity coalition, Mofaz gives himself another year to build up a following and establish himself as an alternative to Bibi. From his perspective, his two rivals for leadership of the center-left, Yacimovich and Lapid, are not serious candidates. Both are former television journalists with little to no leadership experience and only the fuzziest familiarity with foreign and security policy. Mofaz is a former army chief of staff and former defense minister, active in civilian politics since 2003, highly regarded as a team leader, manager and policy wonk on domestic and security affairs. There have been talks in recent days about bringing the three together to form a joint list to oppose Bibi, but no agreement as to who would lead.

What specifically does tonight’s deal gain for Mofaz and Kadima?

First of all, gives Mofaz a seat in the inner security cabinet, which gives him a voice in shaping policy toward both Iran and the Palestinians. If you haven’t been following, Mofaz has been defending Meir Dagan and Yuval Diskin in their criticisms of Netanyahu’s policies over the past year. He’s outspokenly opposed to attacking Iran at this stage. His own Palestinian plan, announced in 2009 and lately gaining increasing favor among fellow security types, calls for immediate recognition of a Palestinian state with provisional borders, controlling 60% of the West Bank for now, followed promptly by state-to-state negotiations toward a final-status agreement. To allay Palestinian suspicions that the provisional borders would be the final ones, Israel would deposit a pledge with the United States that the final borders will be based on the 1967 lines with agreed swaps.

He’s also been promised chairmanship of the Knesset Economic Committee, which allows him take a lead role in social policy, where his views lean social-democratic. And, not incidentally, he denies Bibi the opportunity to win a near-certain mandate this September for four more years.

Netanyahu Crowns Himself King of Israel: Will Israeli Left Finally Stir?

By Jonathan Cook
05.09.12

Israelis barely had time to absorb the news that they were heading into a summer election when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu yesterday pulled the rug from underneath the charade. Rancourous early electioneering had provided cover for a secret agreement between Netanyahu and the main opposition party, Kadima, to form a new, expanded coalition government.

Rather than facing the electorate in September, Netanyahu and his hardline rightwing government are expected to comfortably see out the remaining 18 months of his term of office. Not only that, but he will now have the backing of more than three-quarters of the 120-seat Israeli parliament, leading one commentator to crown him the “King of Israel”.

The announcement may have taken Israelis by surprise but it fully accorded with the logic of an increasingly dysfunctional Israeli political culture.

Shaul Mofaz, who a few weeks ago ousted Tzipi Livni as head of the centre-right Kadima party, had been vitriolic in denouncing Netanyahu. He called the prime minister a “liar” and went to the trouble of posting on his Facebook page a pledge that he would never make a deal with this “weak, incompetent and deaf government”.

He also boasted in a recent interview that he would topple Netanyahu by leading the revival of mass social protests expected in the summer.

Last year hundreds of thousands took to the streets to demand an end to the rocketing cost of living, much of it caused by business cartels that were empowered by Netanyahu and his Likud party in privatisation programmes years ago.

But the reality was that Mofaz, a hawkish former army chief of staff who is seen as a lacklustre, power-hungry and slippery politician, had no credibility with either the demonstrators or the wider electorate.

Kadima, which has never strayed far from its ideological roots in the Likud, from which it split several years ago, is currently the largest faction in the parliament. But polls suggested Mofaz would lead it to electoral oblivion.

The deal will win him a temporary reprieve, with a seat in the inner circle alongside Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the long-time defence minister whose own party was expected to vanish if the September election had taken place.

Kadima will get no ministries but Mofaz will have a say in the biggest issues facing Israel: its dealings with Iran and the Palestinians.

This may be good for Mofaz personally but most likely his act of supreme duplicity will finish off Kadima as an independent party. The next year and a half may see him try to return to the Likud fold.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, has created a national unity government that more precisely reflects the majority mood: an unalloyed, aggressive and xenophobic rightwing consensus.

There was little need for Netanyahu to bring Kadima into the coalition. He was racing ahead in the polls, his popularity outstripping that of all the other major party leaders combined. And he had won this scale of support even as senior security officials, including the former heads of the Mossad and the Shin Bet, questioned his rationality on the issue of whether to attack Iran.

But there are advantages to Netanyahu in postponing an election he was expected to win.

Not least, it gives him time to entrench moves towards authoritarianism. Netanyahu has been behind a series of measures to weaken the media, human rights groups, and the courts. At the moment his government is defying a series of Supreme Court rulings to dismantle several small Jewish settlements on Palestinian land that are illegal even under Israeli law.

An uninterrupted 18 months will allow him to further undermine these rival centres of power. One of the promises he and Mofaz made yesterday was to overhaul the system of government. Netanyahu now has enough MPs to overturn even the most sacrosanct of Israel’s Basic Laws.

In addition, the new coalition will face an all but non-existent parliamentary opposition: a shrivelled centre-left of the Labor and Meretz parties, with only a handful of seats; a few noisy ultra-nationalists who would be more trouble in government than Netanyahu needs; and the Arab parties, who are reviled by Jewish public and politicians alike.

Labor’s new leader, Shelly Yacimovich, was expected to partially revive her party’s fortunes on the back of the social protests and might have been joined in a potentially confrontational opposition by a new centrist party, headed by TV news anchor and heart-throb Yair Lapid. Now both are relegated to the political margins.

Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister and leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, whom Netanyahu fears most as a potential challenger, has also been defanged. His current, pivotal role in the coalition will be savagely diminished by the bulky presence of Kadima.

Another bonus for Netayahu is that he is now better situated to see off the potentially dangerous early days of a Barack Obama second term, if the US president is re-elected in November. This is when some observers believed the US president, serially humiliated by Netanyahu over the settlements and the peace process, might seek his revenge.

But should Obama choose a fight on the Palestinian issue, he will be facing a prime minister whose position in Israel is unassailable.

What does all this mean for Iran and the Palestinians?

Regarding the former, several commentators and some of his own ministers have argued that Netanyahu now has a free hand to launch a go-it-alone attack on Iran and destroy what he claims is a nuclear weapons programme that might one day rival Israel’s own secret arsenal.

More likely, the expanded coalition will make little difference to Israeli calculations over Iran, one way or the other. Mofaz, like most of the security establishment, opposes an attack unless it is headed by the US.

But Netanyahu will doubtless exploit his strengthened position to up the rhetoric against Tehran and add to the pressure for intensified action from the US and Europe.

As for the Palestinians, it can mean only more of the same — or worse. Mofaz, who tried to distinguish himself in opposition by proposing a miserly peace plan that would see the Palestinians holed up in a series of enclaves, lacks the political weight to deflect Netanyahu from his even more intransigent approach.

But at least for Netanyahu, the Kadima leader will cut a more presentable figure in Washington than Lieberman as an advocate for Israel’s hard line.

The Israeli prime minister’s claim yesterday that he was about to unveil a “responsible peace process” should be taken no more seriously than his professed commitment, abandoned the same day, to submit himself to the judgment of the Israeli electorate.

The one small sliver of light is that what remains of the Israeli left, so long in hibernation or denial, may finally be stirred into a response by the antics of this ugly ruling cabal.

Last year’s social protests remained, in a great Israeli tradition, studiously “apolitical”, unlike their counterparts, the Occupy movements, in the United States and Europe.

The demonstrators refused to draw any connection between the rapidly polarised economic situation — the gap between Israel’s rich and poor is now as bad as in the US — and either the right’s self-serving neoliberal policies or the occupation that has channelled endless resources to the settlers and the security establishment.

This summer Israel may finally get its own Occupy movement — one prepared to tackle the real occupation.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net. He contributed this article to Palestine Chronicle.com.

Listen carefully: I will not join Bibi’s government. Not today, not tomorrow, and not after I become head of Kadima on March 28th. This is an evil, failing, and pig-headed government and Kadima, under my leadership, will succeed it in the next elections. Clear enough?

–Shaul Mofaz Facebook Wall, March 3rd, shortly before he won the Kadima party leadership

Loud and clear, Mr. Chairman (original Hebrew Facebook post here). But something happened between this statement made a few weeks ago and yesterday. Kadima’s new leader, Shaul Mofaz, agreed at the eleventh hour to join the Netanyahu government in order to stave off his party’s electoral implosion at the polls come September. The gambit is wholly cynical and dismal. The deal will give his party a single ministerial post, and a meaningless one at that: minister for Palestinian affairs. He also gets the honorific: senior vice prime minister. That and three bucks will get you a latte…somewhere. So in return for providing Netanyahu’s governing coalition the single largest bloc of seats it has, Mofaz gets a made-up, virtually meaningless portfolio. Some deal.

Mofaz will attempt to create movement in a process for which his new boss wants no movement. Which means that either Mofaz will join Bibi’s weird Kabuki drama pretending to make peace but doing nothing of the sort; or else Mofaz will take his new job seriously and quickly realize he’s been snookered and co-opted by Bibi, who will surely allow no one but him to run Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

Kadima MKs can only have agreed to this devil’s bargain because they know most of them would be out of jobs after September. Any honorable or even half-way honorable party would’ve gone to the people before agreeing to such a sham. But Israeli politics is full of opportunism, corruption and naked greed. It’s a bit like the old Tammany Hall, except that it encompasses an entire country, rather than a single city.

Mofaz will now have a vote to determine whether Israel goes to war with Iran. It’s not believed Mofaz supports such a venture. But his new vantage point at Bibi’s right-hand might give him fresh “insight” into the existential threat posed by Iran.

Finally, this cynical backroom deal guarantees a long, hot summer for the kingmakers. The J14 social justice movement that swept Israel last summer will almost certainly return with a vengeance, since it was initially fueled by a deep malaise among the populace toward precisely this sort of shenanigans. Mofaz, who only a few weeks ago claimed (laughably) that he would lead the new social justice protests (who asked him, anyway?), will be their butt instead.

Just after George Bush won an easy victory in the 2004 elections and Bush-Cheney triumphalism was the Republican order of the day, I wrote that hubris was the bane of successful politicians. Indeed, within four years Bush had become a political irrelevancy and his seeming brilliant electoral performance faded into oblivion. Bibi is even more prone to this sort of hubris and will almost certainly see his “deal of the century” as a divine affirmation of his call to lead his people to…to what? To something. Bibi will have to fill in the blank with something. But as today’s Haaretz notes, today’s triumph could easily and rapidly turn into tomorrow’s laughingstock.

Color me: disgusted.

No Early Election, Netanyahu, Mofaz Unite to Form Government

PNN
08.05.12

On Tuesday, 8th May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his counterpart chairman MK Shaul Mofaz (leader of Kadima party) agreed to form a national unity government.

This move came after the decision Netanyahu had made to make early elections, which were expected to be scheduled in the 4th September.

Kadima will join Netanyahu’s government and commit to act according to its policies till the end of its term in late 2013. It’s expected that Mofaz will be appointed as deputy prime minister.

He will also be a member of the security cabinet, and the Kadima members will serve as chairmen of the Knesset foreign affairs, defense committees, and the economic committee.

Chairperson of the Israeli Labor Party, Shelly Yachimovich, will be opposition leader instead of Mofaz. Yachimovich called this step a coalition of cowards, and the most ridiculous zig-zag in Israel’s political history. She also said that this move give the opportunity for Israel Labor Party to lead the opposition.

According to Haaretz Israeli newspaper, journalist Yair Lapid described the formation of the unity government as “the old kind of politics” and “corrupt and ugly.”

Hundreds of Israelis take to the streets to protest unity deal between Netanyahu and Mofaz

Former Kadima head Tzipi Livni says Israel deserves a more principled political system; police make several arrests including journalists

By Ilan Lior , Yaniv Kubovich and Bradley Burston, Haaretz
08.05.12

Over 1,000 people demonstrated on Tuesday night near the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv against the deal struck between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz.

The protest, which took place near where the 2011 summer protest began on Rothschild Boulevard, included waved flags, and chanted slogans such as “Bibi, go home.”

Several politicians spoke to the crowd, among them former Kadima head Tzipi Livni, Isaac Herzog (Labor) Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz), and Dov Khenin (Hadash).

Livni, who spoke briefly, said that she was asked to speak by “young people who want to fight for the country.”

“These young people deserve a different form of politics – one of principles and not of survival. This is what the struggle is about,” Livni said.

The police, which declared the protest illegal, arrested several people, including journalists, after attempting to prevent demonstrators from marching toward the Likud party headquarters on King George St. in central Tel Aviv.

A protest was also held in Be’er Sheva, where 150 demonstrators held signs and chanted slogans in the Merkaz Hamorim square.

The demonstration was called for on Monday night by the social protest leaders via their Facebook pages.

“I and the [other] activists have been flooded with inquiries since this morning,” said social protest leader Stav Shaffir. “People are angry, asking, ‘What to do? What todo?’ People feel betrayed ¬ not just that they lied to us twice in 10 days, but that they betrayed us: They created a clenched, unbreakable fist around the policies we disagree with.”

“We won’t stand by helplessly, we’ll oppose this with all our might,” she added.

As of Tuesday evening, more than 1,000 people had pledged to attend. Yet two of the most prominent figures from last summer’s protests, Daphni Leef and Itzik Shmuli, have not yet agreed to join Shaffir’s effort. Leef stated she will skip demonstrations, explaining that she is busy setting up a new social advocacy organization. But her friends said her real reason is that tonight’s protests will be politically partisan rather than a broad public movement.

The activists spent hours yesterday phoning Knesset members from both coalition and opposition parties to urge them to attend tonight’s demonstrations. Some agreed, but the activists declined to say who.