This week's postings at JfJfP.com


April 26, 2015
Sarah Benton

JFJFP-BANNERlong

In the week April 20th – 26th, 2015, our postings began and ended with the same issue: the new Israeli law (2011) forbidding anyone, including its citizens, from publicising the call for boycott of anything Israeli (Law for Prevention of Damage to State of Israel through Boycott).  It’s in the news again because Uri Avnery headed a list of people appealing to the Supreme Court against this denial of freedom of speech. He lost.
Right to boycott in a free market

Akiva Eldar also found the law outrageously restrictive:
Where it is forbidden to speak of boycott

Jewish Forward probes the chilling effects of the boycott law on one-time free-speakers such as Neve Gordon:
Panic about boycott gags dissenters

This week marked Israel’s Independence Day which produced a number of articles about what Israel had achieved in its 67 years:
Fear and loathing in 67-year old Israel
What’s to celebrate?
While Israelis party, Palestinians protest

Independence Day – or rather the ‘eve of Israel’s Memorial Day’ – was the reason cited for its condemnation of a debate in the Scottish parliament about the recognition of Palestine. It was the timing, said the Israel foreign office, which made such a debate ‘shameful’. And what adjective is fitting for this sort of response to a legitimate debate?
Scots’ debate on Palestine ‘shameful’ – Israeli foreign office

A well-documented article by Amena Saleem contrasts the harsh and impatient interrogation of a Palestinian spokesperson by Today (John Humphrys) with the gentle invitation to an Israeli spokesperson to put his case by Today (Sarah Montague). The BBC’s response to the many complainants was too absurd to bother repeating.
Why won’t the natives leave the colonisers in peace?

An illuminating article on the growing divide between Gaza and the West Bank by Hazem Balousha  points to actual differences but more significantly to gulfs in knowledge which has allowed massive projection of the other – loose women in Ramallah, decorous / restrained in Gaza. This is a fundamental issue that it seems unlikely the PA will deal with.
The Gaza Split
The split is accentuated by the military versus peace-making stances of Hamas and Fatah. But the belligerence of Israel towards Hamas, pace John Humphrys, has led to their ‘relaxing’ their rules of engagement – which had demanded scrupulous care in not harming civilians – to allow the use of weapons which cannot be targetted and thus fire indiscriminately on Palestinian populations.
IDF bins rules of engagement to shell Gaza

Analysis of the means by which the Israeli state dispossesses Palestinians of their land (and farming income) continues to develop. Yossi Gurvitz of Yesh Din explains so clearly:
Start with an outpost, the rest follows
and a combination of Israel’s martial law and bureaucracy leads to
Settlers steal Palestine’s best resource

It is that bureaucracy which so struck writer Teju Cole on a visit to Jerusalem; it dispassionately strangles Palestinian life:
The slow stranglehold of Israeli bureaucracy

Also in Jerusalem, EU heads of mission warn their political masters that if they don’t take firm action, the polarisation will shatter the EU’s belief in a negotiated two-state solution. (The phrase ‘battle for Jerusalem’ is Al Jazeera’s.)
EU must act after ‘battle for Jerusalem’

The new move in this slow strangulation comes from the PA which sees hope for a new strategy following Iran’s success in negotiating a deal at Lausanne. The PA (no love lost between Iran and Palestinians) thinks the P5+1 model could serve to produce effective negotiations on the Palestine/Israel conflict and on enforcing clear borders.
PA sees Iran deal as precedent for Palestine

 

© Copyright JFJFP 2024