This week's postings in JfJfP.com

The UK’s Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron makes several entries this week, February 22-28, 2016. He caused surprise and speculation by saying he had been shocked to see how East Jerusalem was encircled by settlements, and walls:
Cameron attacks Israel’s land policy

That’s alright for him to say. He’s a Friend of Israel. He’s the Prime Minister. His criticism is in line with the FCO’s position. But God forbid that any lesser body should take up an ethical position on trade with Israel. That is clearly public bodies getting above their station and they must be quashed.

Is it more, or less, democratic that the US Congress should outlaw any boycott of Israel?
BDS forbidden by law -US- and dictat -UK

Netanyahu’s response was quite muted (he’d probably been forewarned) leaving Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, to lead the counter-attack – with the highly improbable claim that anyone could live anywhere she/he liked in Jerusalem. That may be true of the Jews who have set up settlements in E.Jerusalem. It is self-evidently not true of Palestinians:
Jerusalem mayor says all citizens have right to live where they want

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir has no such illusions. In a coruscating open letter to Netanyahu he describes how Israeli land/people policies have created a ghettoised ‘garrison state’:
Our country is degenerating into a garrison state

Despite occasional promises to freeze settlement construction, it is impossible for Netanyahu to do this. Israel is now dependent on a continuous take-over of Palestinian land for new settlements:
1800 new housing units despite freeze

The borders of Israel (which the government has always refused to delineate) bristle with military posts and patrols. The ‘Gaza envelope’  – or western Negev – is seen by most Israelis as a danger best eliminated. A new movement is challenging this perception and pressing for a permanent diplomatic solution:
‘Turn Gaza into a parking lot’

Much of the time Israel lives in a small world of its own – by its choice. But the international nature of the Oscars has given Israel the opportunity to join the international movers and shakers by offering an all-expenses-paid visit to Israel for all Oscar nominees. Unfortunately for Israel, several Oscar nominees, being creative and intelligent persons, have spurned the offer:
Oscar nominees paid to scatter stardust on Israel

A rift in the founding relationship between the military and political establishments has been a long-time coming as the government has consistently ignored the advice from military intelligence on how to understand, and respond to, violent Palestinian opposition to the occupation. Is a change in the governance of Israel, in which the IDF has been idealised, really likely to happen?
End of the great IDF love affair

The power of the IDF is the thing that the USA most likes about Israel – over half its military aid budget goes to Israel. Ali Abuminah thinks this is to solidify the US hegemony over the MidEast. Peter Beinart wonders why the US asks for nothing in return – and suggests it could make its largesse conditional on Israel ending its subsidies to settlements:
The gift that keeps on giving

Those who believed that the Jewish homeland would represent the best of Jewish values have had to find a way to come to terms with their bitter disappointment. David Gordis is one:
Jewish values, distorted by materialism and a fanatic religion

The idealists certainly never imagined that the new state would become notorious for human-rights abuses, particularly the use of illegal detention and torture. B’Tselem and HaMoked reveal how and where – but not why:
Routine, illegal torture of prisoners

The journalist Mohammad al-Qiq who was on the edge of death from starvation – perhaps his death-defying hunger strike of 94 days was powered by fury at his ‘administrative detention’ which in any modern country would be utterly illegal. He was freed by the Israeli Prison Service without conditions or threats of repeated detentions. The government must have realised that his death would cause them infinitely more trouble than his life as a free man (if he is able to recover):
Al-Qiq ends longest hunger strike against administrative detention

Israel is not the only country which uses some form of administrative detention – obviating the need for evidence or open charges and trial. Public tolerance of this abuse of state power has increased with the fear of Islamist terrorism. But Israel is the only western country to have used massive military power to vanquish a challenge to its authority. The ICC has accepted the PNA’s complaint of war crimes (2014, OPE). It will be investigated by chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. It is hoped that her insistence, in an interview with JPost, that she will investigate particular incidents and persons, regardless of the wider Israel/Palestine conflict, will persuade Israel to co-operate with the inquiry:
Bensouda says will not be swayed on Israeli war crimes

All countries are affected by climate change. Few are as poor with such weak governance and infrastructure as the Gaza Strip. Yet again, the region has been overwhelmed by floods and, as in the previous two years, does not have the flood barriers or pumping power to protect itself:
Floods overwhelm Gaza

And to remark on a guerrilla display on the London Underground – an array of perfectly tailored posters about apartheid in Israel at the start of apartheid in Israel week. They were put up by the group London Palestine Action:
Underground posters