The "Right to Exist" Argument

This is an email I just received from a friend, pointing out that the Likud Party, which will likely win the next general election in Israel in a couple of months, refuses to recognize the right for a Palestinian State to exist in ANY part of the West Bank or Gaza. It is terribly unlikely that mainstream news media in North America will report the fact that the repetitive cry for Hamas to "recognize the right for Israel to exist" won't be matched with a similar statement by the Israeli Government.

Here is the text of the email. With links to Likud's Charter.

January 27, 2009

The Charter of Hamas vs. The Charter of the Likud Party

Zionist hasbara fighters claimed that it is impossible to talk with Hamas because its charter, written in 1988, calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.

Hamas leader Haniyeh has said publicly that Hamas is willing to accept a Palestinian state with 1967 borders and thereby will effectively recognize Israel. So from Hamas' site, a solution of the conflict is possible.

The Likud charter from 1999 as available on www.knesset.gov.il says:

The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.

...

The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.

Judea and Samaria are the West Bank.

Likud is likely to win next month' election in Israel. Its leader, Netanjahu, promises to extend the Zionist settlements in the West Bank.

This violates international law, the roadmap and other peace plans.

The Likud Platform

(Available online at http://www.knesset.gov.il/elections/knesset15/elikud_m.htm)

The following are excerpts from the 'Peace & Security' chapter of the Likud Party platform. The other chapters are currently being translated.

The Foundations of Peace

Peace is a primary objective of the State of Israel. The Likud will strengthen the existing peace agreements with the Arab states and strive to achieve peace agreements with all of Israel's neighbors with the aim of reaching a comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Likud will seek to achieve peace and permanent borders in the framework of peace treaties between Israel and its neighbors and will seek cooperation with them on the practical level. The peace agreements will include full diplomatic relations, borders open to free movement, economic cooperation, and the establishment of joint projects in the fields of science, technology, tourism, and industry.

The Arab states' desire for peace will be measured by their efforts to prevent hostile activities by terrorist organizations from their territory and to dismantle the infrastructure of the organizations. This includes closing their headquarters and preventing economic and political warfare and all hostile acts during the negotiations.

The Palestinians

Declaration of a State

A unilateral Palestinian declaration of the establishment of a Palestinian state will constitute a fundamental and substantive violation of the agreements with the State of Israel and the scuttling of the Oslo and Wye accords. The government will adopt immediate stringent measures in the event of such a declaration.

Settlements

The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.

The Partition of the Negev

Israel rejects out of hand ideas raised by Labor Party leaders concerning the relinquishment of parts of the Negev to the Palestinians. The practical meaning of this plan is that the "Green Line" should no longer be viewed as a "Red Line", which draws us closer to the partition plan of 1947 as it opens the door to the principle that the fate of the Galilee, the Triangle and additional areas within Israel is negotiable. The Likud asserts that such proposals by the Labor Party leadership may literally cause the dismemberment of the State of Israel.

Oslo & Wye River Accords

The Government of Israel will safeguard the state's vital interests in the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. Having established and meticulously adhered to the principle of reciprocity in the negotiations and implementation of agreements, including the Wye River Memorandum, the government will continue to condition implementation on the fulfillment of Palestinian commitments. The government will continue to insist on the fulfillment of the following Palestinian obligations:

The War on Terror

The Palestinian Authority must wage a systematic war on the terror organizations and their infrastructure. The PA must not only intensify its efforts to prevent attacks, but act with determination to prevent potential terrorist acts by dismantling the terrorist infrastructure that has developed and expanded in PA areas since the Oslo accords.

Halting Incitement

Halting incitement against Israel in the Palestinian media, educational system and all other Palestinian institutions, and turning the Palestinian media and educational system from their current anti-Israel mode to recognition of Israel and developing peaceful and good neighborly relations between Jews and Arabs.

Weapons Collection

The confiscation of illegal weapons held by Palestinian civilians and the removal of weapons held by the PA forces in excess of those permitted under the agreement to areas outside PA territory.

Reducing the Size of the PA Police

The size of the PA police must be reduced to the level permitted under the agreement.

The Permanent Status

The overall objectives for the final status with the Palestinians are: to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of a stable, sustainable agreement and replace confrontation with cooperation and good neighborliness, while safeguarding Israel's vital interests as a secure and prosperous Zionist and Jewish state.

The Likud government will honor all the international agreements signed by its predecessors and strive to achieve a final status arrangement with the Palestinians. The only way to reach a final status arrangement is via dialogue and political negotiations.

The permanent status arrangement will minimize the security dangers implicit in the Oslo accords. The primary such danger is the presence and the possible expansion of the Palestinian security forces within close range of Israel's population centers, government offices, emergency warehouses and staging areas of the Israel Defense Forces.

The permanent status arrangement shall be based on the following principles:

Self-Rule

The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.

The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state. Thus, for example, in matters of foreign affairs, security, immigration and ecology, their activity shall be limited in accordance with imperatives of Israel's existence, security and national needs.

Jerusalem

Jerusalem is the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel. The government will flatly reject Palestinian proposals to divide Jerusalem, including the plan to divide the city presented to the Knesset by the Arab factions and supported by many members of Labor and Meretz. The government firmly rejects attempts of various sources in the world, some anti-Semitic in origin, to question Jerusalem's status as Israel's capital, and the 3,000-year-old special connection between the Jewish people and its capital. To ensure this, the government will continue the firm policies it has adopted until now:

No diplomatic activity will be permitted at Orient House. The government stopped the stream of visits by heads of state and ministers at Orient House, begun under the left-wing government.

The presence of the Israeli police in eastern Jerusalem will be increased. This in addition to the new police posts and reinforcements in the neighborhoods.

The Likud government will act with vigor to continue Jewish habitation and strengthen Israeli sovereignty in the eastern parts of the city, while emphasizing improvements in the welfare and security of the Arab residents. Despite protests from the left, the Likud government consistently approved the continuation of Jewish living within the Old City and in 'City of David'.

The Jordan River as a Permanent Border

The Jordan Valley and the territories that dominate it shall be under Israeli sovereignty. The Jordan river will be the permanent eastern border of the State of Israel. The Kingdom of Jordan is a desirable partner in the permanent status arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians in matters that will be agreed upon.

Security Areas

The government succeeded in significantly reducing the extent of territory that the Palestinians expected to receive in the interim arrangement. The government will insist that security areas essential to Israel's defense, including the western security area and the Jewish settlements, shall remain under Israeli rule.

The Golan

Based on the Likud-led government's proposal, the 10th Knesset passed the law to extend Israeli law, jurisdiction and administration over the Golan Heights, thus establishing Israeli sovereignty over the area. The government will continue to strengthen Jewish settlement on the Golan.

Lebanon

Israel will act to implement UN Security Council resolution 425 to withdraw the IDF from Lebanon while ensuring appropriate security arrangements so as to defend its citizens in the north of the country and guarantee the security of South Lebanese Army members. Israel will refrain from rash steps that are likely to move the front line from southern Lebanon to the edge of the Galilee.

Syria

Israel will continue to seek the renewal of peace negotiations with Syria without preconditions.

Israel Accused of Using White Phosphorus

Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction

By Naomi Klein - January 8th, 2009

It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.

In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era." The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions—BDS for short—was born.

Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of cease-fires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the antiapartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves.… This international backing must stop."

Yet even in the face of these clear calls, many of us still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. And they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counterarguments.

1. Punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis. The world has tried what used to be called "constructive engagement." It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures—quite the opposite. The weapons and $3 billion in annual aid that the US sends to Israel is only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first non–Latin American country to sign a free-trade deal with Mercosur. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45 percent. A new trade deal with the European Union is set to double Israel's exports of processed food. And on December 8, European ministers "upgraded" the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.

It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war: confident they would face no meaningful costs. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's flagship index actually went up 10.7 percent. When carrots don't work, sticks are needed.

2. Israel is not South Africa. Of course it isn't. The relevance of the South African model is that it proves that BDS tactics can be effective when weaker measures (protests, petitions, back-room lobbying) have failed. And there are indeed deeply distressing echoes of South African apartheid in the occupied territories: the color-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed homes and forced displacement, the settler-only roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said that the architecture of segregation that he saw in the West Bank and Gaza was "infinitely worse than apartheid." That was in 2007, before Israel began its full-scale war against the open-air prison that is Gaza.

3. Why single out Israel when the United States, Britain and other Western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan? Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the BDS strategy should be tried against Israel is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work.

4. Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less. This one I'll answer with a personal story. For eight years, my books have been published in Israel by a commercial house called Babel. But when I published The Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect the boycott. On the advice of BDS activists, including the wonderful writer John Berger, I contacted a small publisher called Andalus. Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement and the only Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus's work, and none to me. In other words, I am boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.

Coming up with our modest publishing plan required dozens of phone calls, e-mails and instant messages, stretching from Tel Aviv to Ramallah to Paris to Toronto to Gaza City. My point is this: as soon as you start implementing a boycott strategy, dialogue increases dramatically. And why wouldn't it? Building a movement requires endless communicating, as many in the antiapartheid struggle well recall. The argument that supporting boycotts will cut us off from one another is particularly specious given the array of cheap information technologies at our fingertips. We are drowning in ways to rant at one another across national boundaries. No boycott can stop us.

Just about now, many a proud Zionist is gearing up for major point-scoring: don't I know that many of those very high-tech toys come from Israeli research parks, world leaders in infotech? True enough, but not all of them. Several days into Israel's Gaza assault, Richard Ramsey, the managing director of a British telecom specializing in voice-over-internet services, sent an email to the Israeli tech firm MobileMax. "As a result of the Israeli government action in the last few days we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with yourself or any other Israeli company."

Ramsey says that his decision wasn't political; he just didn't want to lose customers. "We can't afford to lose any of our clients," he explains, "so it was purely commercially defensive."

It was this kind of cold business calculation that led many companies to pull out of South Africa two decades ago. And it's precisely the kind of calculation that is our most realistic hope of bringing justice, so long denied, to Palestine.

This column was first published in The Nation

An Open Letter From Anti-Zionist Jewish Youth in Canada

Like much of the world, we have spent the last week watching in shock and disgust as Israel continues its assault on the Gaza Strip. With the body count rising and a new tragedy in full bloom, we feel that it is important to speak out as Jewish youth in Canada and to denounce what Israel is doing in our name.

The Jewish diaspora is diverse and divided on its positions on the state of Israel's policies. At this juncture in history, as Israel has committed its worst massacre in Gaza since it began its illegal occupation in 1967, we feel that it is crucial that Jews speak out and denounce Israel's actions that amount to no less than war crimes committed by an apartheid state.

As Jewish youth, we are diverse, but we are unified in our solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Gaza.

Some of us are students. We are outraged by the bombing of the Islamic University in Gaza city, as well as other civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and mosques.

Some of us are Arab-Jews and people of colour. We stand against Israel's racism, which has been enshrined in Israeli law, and privileges its Jewish citizens over its non-Jewish ones. This apartheid state views Palestinians as an expendable people, no more than collateral damage.
Some of us are queer. We reject Israel's branding of itself as the only safe place for queer people in the Middle-East while it targets gay and lesbian Palestinians and renders life unsafe for millions of others.

Some of us are Israelis living in Canada. We are calling for a solidarity that stretches beyond borders and nationalities. Israel's violent actions will only serve to further isolate the state and its citizens from the rest of the world. By calling itself a Jewish state and committing war crimes in the name of Jews everywhere, Israel makes the world even less safe for Jews, leading to an increase in animus towards Jewish people around the world.

Even though there have been approximately 100 Palestinian deaths for every Israeli killed by rocket fire, we recognize that Israeli Apartheid also leads to Israeli casualties. The blame for these deaths lies with Israel – if there were no occupation and no apartheid policies, there would be no rocket fire. If Israel, the world's fourth largest military power, is concerned about its citizens, it would abandon its apartheid policies and seek out justice for the Palestinian people.

In 2005, Palestinian civil society put out a clear call for international support through a non-violent campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) similar to that carried out against the apartheid regime of South Africa. Now, with the people of Gaza being crushed by Israeli bombs, manufactured in the USA and launched with Canada's blessing, it is more important than ever for Jewish communities throughout the world to take up this BDS campaign in order to end Israel's apartheid system, which makes life unsafe for millions of Jews and Palestinians alike.

Let us not be silent bystanders while humanity suffers. Let us raise our voices, as Jewish youth, and demand a single, democratic state, with equal rights for everyone in Israel/Palestine.
Ours is a generation that is committed to ending Middle-East violence by opposing all forms of discrimination, calling for a just peace within the entire region, and condemning Zionism to the dustbin of history.

Free Gaza, Free Palestine,

Jenny Peto, Toronto
Aaron Lakoff, Montreal
Max Silverman, Montreal
Rachel Gurofsky, Peterborough
Simon Gurofsky, Ottawa
Zohar Melinek, Montreal
Claire Hurtig, Montreal
Ben Saifer, Ottawa
Brook Thorndycraft, Toronto
Joel Balsam, Montreal
David Mandelzys, Toronto
Reena Katz, Toronto
Mia Amir, Vancouver
Matthew Shuster, Kingston
Avi Grenadier, Kingston
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Waterloo
Melissa Harendorf, Montreal
Jeff Hiemstra, Toronto
Sacha Moiseiwitsch, Vancouver
Jake Javanshir, Toronto
Noam Lapid, Montreal
Stephen Kamnitzer, Toronto
Naava Smolash, Vancouver
Tamara Herman, Victoria
Ryan Katz-Rosene, Ottawa
Sarah Fuchs, Montreal
Daniel Thau-Eleff, Winnipeg
Deborah Rachlis, Ottawa
Marie L. Belliveau, St. Catharines
Sarah Kardash, Sackville
David Taub Bancroft, Vancouver
Kinneret Sheetreet, Montreal
Rachel Marcuse, Vancouver
Lisa Barrett, Bowen Island
Maisie Jacobson, Montreal
Max Tennant,Vancouver
Noah Fine, Vancouver
David Hill, Vancouver
Corey Balsam, Ottawa
Lee Skinner, Vancouver
Britt Lehmann-Bender, Toronto
Alexis Mitchell, Toronto

http://yayacanada.blogspot.com/2009/01/open-letter-from-anti-zionist-jewish.html

Propaganda war: trusting what we see?

By Paul Reynolds World affairs correspondent, BBC News website

Israel has tried to take the initiative in the propaganda war over Gaza but, in one important instance, its version has been seriously challenged.

The incident raises the question of how to interpret video taken from the air.

SEE THE VIDEO AND PICTURES FROM B'TSELEM HERE:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7809371.stm

Israel released video of an air attack on 28 December, which appeared to show rockets being loaded onto a lorry. The truck and those close to it were then destroyed by a missile.

This was clear evidence, the Israelis said, of how accurate their strikes were and how well justified. A special unit it has set up to coordinate its informational plan put the video onto YouTube as part of its effort to use modern means of communications to get Israel's case across.

The YouTube video has a large caption on it saying "Grad missiles being loaded onto the Hamas vehicle." As of Saturday morning UK time, more than 260,000 people had watched it.

It turned out, however, that a 55-year-old Gaza resident named Ahmed Sanur, or Samur, claimed that the truck was his and that he and members of his family and his workers were moving oxygen cylinders from his workshop.

This workshop had been damaged when a building next door was bombed by the Israelis and he was afraid of looters, he said.

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem put Mr Sanur's account on its website, together with a photograph of burned out oxygen cylinders.

Mr Sanur said that eight people, one of them his son, had been killed. He subsequently told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: "These were not Hamas, they were our children... They were not Grad missiles.".

The Israeli response was that the "materiel" was being taken from a site that had stored weapons. The video remains on You Tube.

But the incident shows how an apparently definitive piece of video can turn into something much more doubtful.

It is reminiscent of an event in the Nato war against Serbia over Kosovo in 1999. In that case, a video taken from the air seemed to show a military convoy which was then attacked.

On the ground however it was discovered that the "trucks" were in fact tractors towing cartloads of civilian refugees, many of whom were killed.

The Israeli propaganda effort is being directed to achieve two main aims.

The first is to justify the air attacks. The second is to show that there is no humanitarian calamity in Gaza.

Both these aims are intended to place Israel in a strong position internationally and to enable its diplomacy to act as an umbrella to fend off calls for a ceasefire while the military operation unfolds.

Israel has pursued the first aim by being very active in getting its story across that Hamas is to blame. The sight of Hamas rockets streaking into Israel has been helpful in this respect.

It has also allowed trucks in with food aid and has stressed that it will not let people starve, even if they go short.

Israel appears to think its efforts are working.

One of its spokespeople, who has regularly appeared on the international media, Major Avital Leibovich said: "Quite a few outlets are very favourable to Israel."

Israel has bolstered its approach by banning foreign correspondents from Gaza, despite a ruling from the Israeli Supreme Court.

The Arab television news channel Al Jazeera is operating there and its reports have been graphic and have affected opinion across the Arab world. The BBC also has its local bureau hard at work. (Update: Al Jazeera also has correspondents reporting from Gaza in English).

But the absence of reporters from major organisations has meant, for example, that Mr Samur's story has not been as widely told as it probably would have been, or his account subject to an on-the-spot examination.

Meanwhile Israel has received good coverage of the threats and damage to its own towns and communities.

Whether Israel retains any propaganda initiative is not all certain. Pictures of dead and wounded children have undermined its claim to pinpoint accuracy and the longer this goes on, the greater the potential for world public opinion to swing against it, with diplomatic pressure building for a cessation.

Its presentational problems would be hugely increased if it engaged in a ground operation, which would bring with it more pictures of death and destruction.

Update: several readers have e-mailed to ask whether I believe Hamas. One said I had "bought into" Hamas propaganda. Another that I should have dealt with Hamas' claims: "What's missing speaks volumes about your one-sidedness."

I do not believe anyone's "propaganda." We seek to verify all claims, from whatever source. One of the main claims in Gaza at the moment is the serious situation for the population. Having reported from Gaza many times over the years, I know how crowded parts of it are and how dependent the people are on food aid from the UN. This means they have no other source of supply but equally, if the system is working, they should be getting enough to get by on. The problem is that foreign correspondents cannot get in to establish the exact situation for themselves.

Further update: I have had several hundred e-mails about this article. They are more or less evenly balanced between those who criticise it and those who praise it. I think I have replied to all. I would stress that I looked only at the Israeli side because of the new factor - Israel setting up a special unit to improve the projection of its arguments around the world.

Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Israel testing nasty weapons in Gaza, claims Mads Gilbert

Israel testing nasty weapons in Gaza, claims Mads Gilbert

From correspondents in Gaza January 13, 2009

Article from: Agence France-Presse

ISRAEL is testing a new "extremely nasty" type of weapon in Gaza , two medics charged as they returned home to Norway after spending 10 days working at a hospital in the war-torn Palestinian territory.

"There's a very strong suspicion I think that Gaza is now being used as a test laboratory for new weapons," Mads Gilbert said at Oslo's Gardermoen airport, commenting on the kinds of injuries he and his colleague Erik Fosse had seen while working at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza.

The two medics, who were sent into the war zone by the pro-Palestinian aid organisation NORWAC on December 31, said they had seen clear signs that Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME), an experimental kind of explosive, were being used in Gaza.

"This is a new generation of very powerful small explosives that detonates with an extreme power and dissipates its power within a range of five to 10 metres," Mr Gilbert, 61, said.

"We have not seen the casualties affected directly by the bomb because they are normally torn to pieces and do not survive, but we have seen a number of very brutal amputations ... without shrapnel injuries which we strongly suspect must have been caused by the DIME weapons," he said.

The weapon "causes the tissue to be torn from the flesh. It looks very different (from a shrapnel injury). I have seen and treated a lot of different injuries for the last 30 years in different war zones, and this looks completely different", Mr Fosse, 58, said.

"If you are in the immediate (vicinity of) a DIME weapon, it's like your legs get torn off. It's an enormous pressure wave and there is no shrapnel," he explained.

Mr Gilbert also accused Israel of having used the weapon in the 2006 Lebanon war and previously in Gaza, and referred to studies showing wounds from the explosive could cause lethal forms of cancer within just four to six months.

"Israel should disclose what weapons they use and the international community should make an investigation," he said, stressing the amount of damage apparently caused by the new form of explosive. "We are not soft-skinned when it comes to war injuries, but these amputations are really extremely nasty and for many of the patients not survivable," he said.

It's been a long time.

It's been a long time since I've posted anything to this blog. The pounding of Gaza continues relentlessly and I'm embarrassed to think that three weeks in and only now am I going to start trying to help disseminate some of the information I've been receiving. What follows will be a series of posts whose content is being sent to me on an hourly basis. Some of it is certainly not easy to take.

Mustafa Barghouti on The Prisoner Release

Ramallah - Ma'an - Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative Mustafa Barghouthi on Tuesday described the freeing of 429 Palestinian prisoners as an attempt by Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, "to mislead global public opinion about the true intent of Israel.

"Barghouthi explained that since the last prisoner release on October 1, Israel has arrested 808 new prisoners, including 22 children.

"This means that the liberation of 429 prisoners is not even a return to the situation of 2 months ago. The total number of Palestinian prisoners is in fact increasing," he said in a statement.

"The international community should not be misled: the current Israeli government is no partner for peace," the statement added.

Barghouthi underlined that this "release some and at the same time arrest even more" behaviour was common practice for the Israeli government, which sees Palestinian prisoners as "inexpensive bargaining chips."

"The Israeli military carries on a relentless arrest campaign against Palestinians and these 'goodwill gestures' never really bring down the number of Palestinians detained, currently standing at about 11,000," the statement added.

The Palestinian National Initiative is calling for the immediate release of all prisoners, the end of the siege of the Gaza Strip and "real peace negotiations between a united and democratic Palestinian leadership and Israel on the basis of international law."

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=26628

Maan Journalists Arrested

This morning, in my daily check of Ma'an News' excellent coverage of current events in the West Bank and Gaza that are rarely covered in North America this is what I found...

The increasing crackdown on Palestinian journalists is an issue that itself is often neglected even within the Occupied Territories.

Keep checking Maan's website for updates on this grave situation.

Norman Finkelstein in Toronto - November 29th

Israel and Palestine: Roots of conflict, prospects for peace

Dr. Norman Finkelstein

November 29, 2007
6:30 PM (doors open at 5:30 PM)

OISE Auditorium, G162252 Bloor Street West

Toronto, Ontario

Tickets (at the door): Students $5; General: $10

The Canadian-Palestinian Educational Exchange (CEPAL) invites you to attend its eleventh annual commemoration of the United Nations International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, November 29. This day was instituted in 1977 by the UN General Assembly, and is meant to be one of solidarity with the Palestinian people, as well as an opportunity to reinvigorate efforts aimed at achieving a just peace.

Keynote speaker, Dr. Norman Finkelstein will discuss roots of conflict and prospects for peace in Israel and Palestine. Dr. Finkelstein received his doctorate in 1988 from the Department of Politics, Princeton University, for a thesis on the theory of Zionism. He is the author of five books: Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-Semitism and the abuse of history (2005); The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the exploitation of Jewish suffering (2000, 2003); Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (1995, 2003); A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen thesis and historical truth (1998); The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A personal account of the intifada years (1996).

Moreover, CEPAL is honored to host Ms. Olfat Mahmoud, Director of the Women’s Humanitarian Organisation (WHO), a CEPAL partner in Bourj el-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp near Beirut. Ms. Mahmoud will discuss the role and impact of CEPAL in the refugee camps, specifically its contribution to education and solidarity. She will also address the current situation for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

For more information about this event, please visit http://www.cepal.ca/

Israel's Toy Soldiers: Chris Hedges

Israel’s Toy Soldiers
by Chris Hedges

Published on Monday, October 1, 2007 by Truthdig.com

If you are a young Muslim American and head off to the Middle East for a spell in a fundamentalist “madrassa,” or religious school, Homeland Security will probably greet you at the airport when you return. But if you are an American Jew and you join hundreds of teenagers from Europe and Mexico for an eight-week training course run by the Israel Defense Forces, you can post your picture wearing an Israeli army uniform and holding an automatic weapon on MySpace.
The Marva program, part summer camp part indoctrination, was launched in Israel in 1981. It allows participants, who must be Jewish and between the ages of 18 and 28, to fire weapons, live in military barracks in the Negev desert and saunter around in an Israeli military uniform saluting and taking long hikes with military packs. The Youth and Education Corps of the Israel Defense Forces run four 120-strong training sessions a year.
“Upon arrival, the participants experience an abrupt change into army life: wearing uniforms, accepting army discipline, and learning the programs and lessons integral to the program,” the Let Israelis Show You Israel Web site reads. “The program includes military content such as: navigation, field training, weapons training, shooting ranges, marches and more, as well as educational content such as: Zionism, Jewish Identity, history and knowledge of the land of Israel. All of this is taught in Hebrew in an intensive eight weeks.”
“The participants finish the program after completing a short, intensive, exhilarating military experience that allows them to taste Israel in a way that they never could before-as part of the Israel Defense Forces,” the site reads. “They leave the program with a feeling of belonging and a strong connection to Israel, and many return to Israel to continue the connection that was created in the framework of the Marva course.”
There are, of course, gushing testimonials about the program.
“I spent the first few days of Marva doubting my decision, wondering why I had come, wondering if there was any way out. With all of the running, yelling orders, discipline and Hebrew, I felt horribly out of place,” writes Canadian David Roth of his summer. “It was a completely different world from the one I was used to. All that changed, though, by the end of the first week. We had our first ‘Masa’ (Hike). It was very hard, but at the end, we all knew, our M16s were waiting for us at the ‘tekes’ (Ceremony). We got through the 8 kilometers and had our ‘tekes’ and got our guns. It felt amazing, and from that point on Marva was incredible.”
How have we reacted when we discovered that American Muslims were being taught in a foreign country to fire machine guns at paper figures and simulate military maneuvers? And what about the summer schools in Gaza organized by Islamic Jihad designed to train young Palestinians in the basics of military life? These Gaza camps, uncovered in 2001, were widely denounced by Israel as proof that the Palestinians were teaching their children to hate and kill.
The argument in favor of camps in Israel, as opposed to camps in Pakistan, is that these young men and women are not going to come back and use what they have learned to harm Americans. They are not terrorists. Muslims, however, have not cornered the market on terrorism and violence. Radical Jews have also been involved in terrorist attacks in Israel and the United States.
I discovered an American in Israel in 1989 named Robert Manning. A huge, burly man, Manning was living in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Kiyrat Arba. When I found him he was carrying a pistol, a large knife strapped to his leg and an M-16 assault rifle. He was part of a Jewish terrorist group called Committee for Protection and Safety of the Highways that set up ad hoc roadblocks and pulled Palestinians from cars to beat and often shoot them. He was a follower of Meir Kahane, the leader of the Jewish Defense League, who was implicated in terrorist attacks in the United States and Israel. Manning served as a reservist in the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank.
Manning was wanted in California for murder. He had been charged in a 1980 mail-bomb killing as part of his involvement in the Jewish Defense League. The bomb was intended for the owner of a local computer firm, but the package holding the device was opened by the firm’s secretary, Patricia Wilkerson, who was killed instantly by the blast.
Manning, full of bluster and a bitter racism toward Arabs, used as his pseudonym the name of the FBI agent in charge of his case, a bit of humor that backfired on him by confirming my suspicion of his identify. I obtained the picture from his California driver’s license and showed it to his neighbors at Kiyrat Arba. They identified him from the photo. I wrote an article affirming that Manning, heavily armed and an active member of the Israeli army, was living in a Jewish settlement. The Israeli government, until that moment, said it had no information about his location. He was extradited in 1993 and sentenced the next year to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for 30 years. He is in a maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo.
Those who go through the Marva summer program are indoctrinated as thoroughly as Muslims who go overseas and are told they are part of a greater jihad for Islam. The results, given Israel’s close alliance with the United States, may not be negative for those in power in the United States, but it may be very negative for those Americans defined as the enemy, especially Muslims, should we suffer another 9/11. The program inculcates hatred and a belief in the efficacy of violence to solve the problems in the Middle East. It identifies Israel with militarism. It feeds the idea that a Jew born in Brooklyn has a birthright to settle in Israel that is denied to an American of Palestinian descent.
Jerusalem, aside from being one of the most beautiful cities in the world, is one of the most literate, creative and intellectual. Do these young men and women really know the best of Israel by spending eight weeks playing soldier and glorifying the military? Is the cause of Israel advanced by mirroring the twisted militarism of Islamic fundamentalists?
Terrorists arise in all cultures, all nations and all religions. We have produced more than our share. Ask the people of Vietnam or Iraq. The danger of a military program such as these is that it solidifies a mind-set of us and them. It romanticizes violence. It widens the divide that leads to conflict. It makes dialogue impossible. There are great Israeli institutions, from the newspaper Haaretz to the courageous Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem to Peace Now. A summer working for them, rather than wearing an army uniform, unleashing bursts of automatic fire in the desert and singing Israeli patriotic songs, might actually help.
Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.“

Mustafa Barghouti - speaking event in Toronto

The First James Graff Memorial Lecture

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti

Dr. Barghouti is a Palestinian patriot who devotes his life to the freedom and betterment of his people. A medical doctor, he founded and is president of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, which provides health care in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. He was also a founder of the Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute, PNGO and Palestine Monitor.

Dr. Barghouti was a delegate to the Madrid Conference in 1991, which was to end the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict. He was a founder and is general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, an alternative to Fatah and to Hamas. Barghouti was a candidate for the presidency of the Palestinian National Authority in 2005, and was elected as a member of Parliament in 2006.

Sunday, October 28th at 2 p.m.
Trinity St. Paul's United Church
427 Bloor St. West, one block west of Spadina Road at Roberts St.

Tickets at $10/$5 students
Available at Women's BookStore, 73 Harbord St., west of Spadina: 416-922-8744
For more information or reservations go to www.necef.org or email us at necef.canada@gmail.com Ticket proceeds to go to UPMRC medical relief

Gaza to run out of medicine

Ma'an News is reporting that Gaza will run out of 470 essential medicines within the week.

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=25684

Down Time

Once again I've been out of commission for a while. The last couple of weeks have been quite busy (again) for me here at work.

I'm going to add a few things that I've written over these past couple of weeks and add articles and things that I SHOULD have been posting but have clearly been negligent in doing so!

I'm also going to add some reviews of books I've recently read. Hows THAT for a new feature?

Article: Boycott Movement Targets Israel

Law Professor George Bisharat on Boycotting Israel.

From the San Francisco Chronicle, Wednesday August 15, 2007.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/08/15/EDASRIF3U.DTL

When does a citizen-led boycott of a state become morally justified?

That question is raised by an expanding academic, cultural and economic boycott of Israel. The movement joins churches, unions, professional societies and other groups based in the United States, Canada, Europe and South Africa. It has elicited dramatic reactions from Israel's supporters. U.S. labor leaders have condemned British unions, representing millions of workers, for supporting the Israel boycott. American academics have been frantically gathering signatures against the boycott, and have mounted a prominent advertising campaign in American newspapers - unwittingly elevating the controversy further in the public eye.

Israel's defenders have protested that Israel is not the worst human-rights offender in the world, and singling it out is hypocrisy, or even anti-Semitism. Rhetorically, this shifts focus from Israel's human rights record to the imagined motives of its critics.

But "the worst first" has never been the rule for whom to boycott. Had it been, the Pol Pot regime, not apartheid South Africa, would have been targeted in the past. It was not - Cambodia's ties to the West were insufficient to make any embargo effective. Boycotting North Korea today would be similarly futile. Should every other quest for justice be put on hold as a result?

In contrast, the boycott of South Africa had grip. The opprobrium suffered by white South Africans unquestionably helped persuade them to yield to the just demands of the black majority. Israel, too, assiduously guards its public image. A dense web of economic and cultural relations also ties it to the West. That - and its irrefutably documented human-rights violations - render it ripe for boycott.

What state actions should trigger a boycott? Expelling or intimidating into flight a country's majority population, then denying them internationally recognized rights to return to their homes? Israel has done that.

Seizing, without compensation, the properties of hundreds of thousands of refugees? Israel has done that.

Systematically torturing detainees, many held without trial? Israel has done that.

Assassinating its opponents, including those living in territories it occupies? Israel has done that.

Demolishing thousands of homes belonging to one national group, and settling its own people in another nation's land? Israel has done that. No country with such a record, whether first or 50th worst in the world, can credibly protest a boycott.

Apartheid South Africa provides another useful standard. How does Israel's behavior toward Palestinians compare to former South Africa's treatment of blacks? It is similar or worse, say a number of South Africans, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, U.N. special rapporteur in the occupied territories John Dugard, and African National Congress member and government minister Ronnie Kasrils. The latter observed recently that apartheid South Africa never used fighter jets to attack ANC activists, and judged Israel's violent control of Palestinians as "10 times worse." Dual laws for Jewish settlers and Palestinians, segregated roads and housing, and restrictions on Palestinians' freedom of movement strongly recall apartheid South Africa. If boycotting apartheid South Africa was appropriate, it is equally fair to boycott Israel on a similar record.

Israel has been singled out, but not as its defenders complain. Instead, Israel has been enveloped in a cocoon of impunity. Our government has vetoed 41 U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning Israeli actions - half of the total U.S. vetoes since the birth of the United Nations - thus enabling Israel's continuing abuses. The Bush administration has announced an increase in military aid to Israel to $30 billion for the coming decade.

Other military occupations and human-rights abusers have faced considerably rougher treatment. Just recall Iraq's 1990 takeover of Kuwait. Perhaps the United Nations should have long ago issued Israel the ultimatum it gave Iraq - and enforced it. Israel's occupation of Arab lands has now exceeded 40 years.

Iran, Sudan and Syria have all been targeted for federal and state-level sanctions. Even the City of Beverly Hills is contemplating Iran divestment actions, following the lead of Los Angeles, which approved Iran divestment legislation in June. Yet the Islamic Republic of Iran has never attacked its neighbors nor occupied their territories. It is merely suspected of aspiring to the same nuclear weapons Israel already possesses.

Politicians worldwide, and American ones especially, have failed us. Our leaders, from the executive branch to Congress, have dithered, or cheered Israel on, as it devoured the land base for a Palestinian state. Their collective irresponsibility dooms both Palestinians and Israelis to a future of strife and insecurity, and undermines our global stature. If politicians cannot lead the way, then citizens must. That is why boycotting Israel has become both necessary and justified.
George Bisharat is a professor of law at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, and writes frequently on law and politics in the Middle East.

Memo to England.

What a surprise. The same country that originally played Solomon and carved up the Middle East has decided that the members of the Palestinian National Under-19 Soccer Team are too poor to get visas to play in a tournament in Britain. Scheduled to play against the minor teams of a handful of English soccer clubs, the Palestinian team – who have little access to any sort of soccer field – have been told that the British Government suspects they may try and stay in England instead of returning to the hell hole that Gaza has become. Let’s not forget that Britain plays a significant role in contributing to what Gaza now resembles. Theirs, and other “democracies”, are the ones who cut off aide to the Palestinians after they elected Hamas. And their unwillingness to apply even a modicum of pressure on Israel to alleviate the slow suffocation of the people of Gaza should be seen as criminal. Their denial of visas to these Gazan teenagers for a soccer tournament smacks of their lack of compassion or understanding of their own culpability in the crisis. The reason that the visas have been denied is that the players are incapable of showing that their life in Gaza is good enough for them to want to return. Incredible. Bottom line for the British Government should be: "maybe, even if they DO want to stay in England (which they have no evidence to suggest) we should take responsibility for the mess we helped create and let 15 kids stay."

Not that they’d necessarily want to. There’s a reason that Palestinians have been fighting the Israelis since 1948. It’s called: "Love of Palestine". I hate to spoil it for you England, but your country ain’t that great. And just because they’re poor, it doesn’t mean they want to be rich, it doesn’t mean they want to be British, it doesn’t mean they wouldn’t want to go back to Gaza when they’re done getting beaten by your little English lads. They’re poor because of what you’ve helped do to them, helped do to their people. You want to know how you could solve this problem? When they arrive to play, monitor their movements very closely – like, don’t let their bus go ten minutes without checking to make sure they are allowed to be where they are - and put them up in your local prisons. It’ll actually make them feel at home!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6959707.stm

New blog account info

I've updated my blogger account and have added a new email address that you can now reach me at... thewestbankblog@gmail.com you may also notice that I have kept my profile largely the same while changing account information. It's been over a year now that I've kept this blog going and now, nearing the 100 posts mark, I'm pleased that I've kept at it. So let me pretend like this is the one year anniversary post and thank you all for reading!

Statement on the Middle East by the former leader of the American Jewish Congress, Henry Siegman

This is an article published in the London Review of Books by Henry Siegman. Siegman is Director of the US/Middle East Project, former senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and head of the American Jewish Congress.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n16/sieg01_.html

The Middle East Peace Process Scam

Henry Siegman

When Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush met at the White House in June, they concluded that Hamas’s violent ousting of Fatah from Gaza – which brought down the Palestinian national unity government brokered by the Saudis in Mecca in March – had presented the world with a new ‘window of opportunity’.[*] (Never has a failed peace process enjoyed so many windows of opportunity.) Hamas’s isolation in Gaza, Olmert and Bush agreed, would allow them to grant generous concessions to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, giving him the credibility he needed with the Palestinian people in order to prevail over Hamas.

Both Bush and Olmert have spoken endlessly of their commitment to a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, but it is their determination to bring down Hamas rather than to build up a Palestinian state that animates their new-found enthusiasm for making Abbas look good. That is why their expectation that Hamas will be defeated is illusory. Palestinian moderates will never prevail over those considered extremists, since what defines moderation for Olmert is Palestinian acquiescence in Israel’s dismemberment of Palestinian territory. In the end, what Olmert and his government are prepared to offer Palestinians will be rejected by Abbas no less than by Hamas, and will only confirm to Palestinians the futility of Abbas’s moderation and justify its rejection by Hamas. Equally illusory are Bush’s expectations of what will be achieved by the conference he recently announced would be held in the autumn (it has now been downgraded to a ‘meeting’). In his view, all previous peace initiatives have failed largely, if not exclusively, because Palestinians were not ready for a state of their own. The meeting will therefore focus narrowly on Palestinian institution-building and reform, under the tutelage of Tony Blair, the Quartet’s newly appointed envoy.

In fact, all previous peace initiatives have got nowhere for a reason that neither Bush nor the EU has had the political courage to acknowledge. That reason is the consensus reached long ago by Israel’s decision-making elites that Israel will never allow the emergence of a Palestinian state which denies it effective military and economic control of the West Bank. To be sure, Israel would allow – indeed, it would insist on – the creation of a number of isolated enclaves that Palestinians could call a state, but only in order to prevent the creation of a binational state in which Palestinians would be the majority.

The Middle East peace process may well be the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history. Since the failed Camp David summit of 2000, and actually well before it, Israel’s interest in a peace process – other than for the purpose of obtaining Palestinian and international acceptance of the status quo – has been a fiction that has served primarily to provide cover for its systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and an occupation whose goal, according to the former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon, is ‘to sear deep into the consciousness of Palestinians that they are a defeated people’. In his reluctant embrace of the Oslo Accords, and his distaste for the settlers, Yitzhak Rabin may have been the exception to this, but even he did not entertain a return of Palestinian territory beyond the so-called Allon Plan, which allowed Israel to retain the Jordan Valley and other parts of the West Bank.

Anyone familiar with Israel’s relentless confiscations of Palestinian territory – based on a plan devised, overseen and implemented by Ariel Sharon – knows that the objective of its settlement enterprise in the West Bank has been largely achieved. Gaza, the evacuation of whose settlements was so naively hailed by the international community as the heroic achievement of a man newly committed to an honourable peace with the Palestinians, was intended to serve as the first in a series of Palestinian bantustans. Gaza’s situation shows us what these bantustans will look like if their residents do not behave as Israel wants.

Israel’s disingenuous commitment to a peace process and a two-state solution is precisely what has made possible its open-ended occupation and dismemberment of Palestinian territory. And the Quartet – with the EU, the UN secretary general and Russia obediently following Washington’s lead – has collaborated with and provided cover for this deception by accepting Israel’s claim that it has been unable to find a deserving Palestinian peace partner.
Just one year after the 1967 war, Moshe Dayan, a former IDF chief of staff who at the time was minister of defence, described his plan for the future as ‘the current reality in the territories’. ‘The plan,’ he said, ‘is being implemented in actual fact. What exists today must remain as a permanent arrangement in the West Bank.’ Ten years later, at a conference in Tel Aviv, Dayan said: ‘The question is not “What is the solution?” but “How do we live without a solution?”’ Geoffrey Aronson, who has monitored the settlement enterprise from its beginnings, summarises the situation as follows:

Living without a solution, then as now, was understood by Israel as the key to maximising the benefits of conquest while minimising the burdens and dangers of retreat or formal annexation. This commitment to the status quo, however, disguised a programme of expansion that generations of Israeli leaders supported as enabling, through Israeli settlement, the dynamic transformation of the territories and the expansion of effective Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan River.

In an interview in Ha’aretz in 2004, Dov Weissglas, chef de cabinet to the then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, described the strategic goal of Sharon’s diplomacy as being to secure the support of the White House and Congress for Israeli measures that would place the peace process and Palestinian statehood in ‘formaldehyde’. It is a fiendishly appropriate metaphor: formaldehyde uniquely prevents the deterioration of dead bodies, and sometimes creates the illusion that they are still alive. Weissglas explains that the purpose of Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, and the dismantling of several isolated settlements in the West Bank, was to gain US acceptance of Israel’s unilateralism, not to set a precedent for an eventual withdrawal from the West Bank. The limited withdrawals were intended to provide Israel with the political room to deepen and widen its presence in the West Bank, and that is what they achieved. In a letter to Sharon, Bush wrote: ‘In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centres, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.’

In a recent interview in Ha’aretz, James Wolfensohn, who was the Quartet’s representative at the time of the Gaza disengagement, said that Israel and the US had systematically undermined the agreement he helped forge in 2005 between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and had instead turned Gaza into a vast prison. The official behind this, he told Ha’aretz, was Elliott Abrams, the deputy national security adviser. ‘Every aspect’ of the agreement Wolfensohn had brokered ‘was abrogated’.

Another recent interview in Ha’aretz, with Haggai Alon, who was a senior adviser to Amir Peretz at the Ministry of Defence, is even more revealing. Alon accuses the IDF (whose most senior officers increasingly are themselves settlers) of working clandestinely to further the settlers’ interests. The IDF, Alon says, ignores the Supreme Court’s instructions about the path the so-called security fence should follow, instead ‘setting a route that will not enable the establishment of a Palestinian state’. Alon told Ha’aretz that when in 2005 politicians signed an agreement with the Palestinians to ease restrictions on Palestinians travelling in the territories (part of the deal that Wolfensohn had worked on), the IDF eased them for settlers instead. For Palestinians, the number of checkpoints doubled. According to Alon, the IDF is ‘carrying out an apartheid policy’ that is emptying Hebron of Arabs and Judaising (his term) the Jordan Valley, while it co-operates openly with the settlers in an attempt to make a two-state solution impossible.

A new UN map of the West Bank, produced by the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, gives a comprehensive picture of the situation. Israeli civilian and military infrastructure has rendered 40 per cent of the territory off limits to Palestinians. The rest of the territory, including major population centres such as Nablus and Jericho, is split into enclaves; movement between them is restricted by 450 roadblocks and 70 manned checkpoints. The UN found that what remains is an area very similar to that set aside for the Palestinian population in Israeli security proposals in the aftermath of the 1967 war. It also found that changes now underway to the infrastructure of the territories – including a network of highways that bypass and isolate Palestinian towns – would serve to formalise the de facto cantonisation of the West Bank.

These are the realities on the ground that the uninformed and/or cynical blather in Jerusalem, Washington and Brussels – about waiting for Palestinians to reform their institutions, democratise their culture, dismantle the ‘infrastructures of terror’ and halt all violence and incitement before peace negotiations can begin – seeks to drown out. Given the vast power imbalance between Israel and the Palestinians – not to mention the vast preponderance of diplomatic support enjoyed by Israel from precisely those countries that one would have expected to compensate diplomatically for the military imbalance – nothing will change for the better without the US, the EU and other international actors finally facing up to what have long been the fundamental impediments to peace.

These impediments include the assumption, implicit in Israel’s occupation policy, that if no peace agreement is reached, the ‘default setting’ of UN Security Council Resolution 242 is the indefinite continuation of Israel’s occupation. If this reading were true, the resolution would actually be inviting an occupying power that wishes to retain its adversary’s territory to do so simply by means of avoiding peace talks – which is exactly what Israel has been doing. In fact, the introductory statement to Resolution 242 declares that territory cannot be acquired by war, implying that if the parties cannot reach agreement, the occupier must withdraw to the status quo ante: that, logically, is 242’s default setting. Had there been a sincere intention on Israel’s part to withdraw from the territories, surely forty years should have been more than enough time in which to reach an agreement.

Israel’s contention has long been that since no Palestinian state existed before the 1967 war, there is no recognised border to which Israel can withdraw, because the pre-1967 border was merely an armistice line. Moreover, since Resolution 242 calls for a ‘just and lasting peace’ that will allow ‘every state in the area [to] live in security’, Israel holds that it must be allowed to change the armistice line, either bilaterally or unilaterally, to make it secure before it ends the occupation. This is a specious argument for many reasons, but principally because UN General Assembly Partition Resolution 181 of 1947, which established the Jewish state’s international legitimacy, also recognised the remaining Palestinian territory outside the new state’s borders as the equally legitimate patrimony of Palestine’s Arab population on which they were entitled to establish their own state, and it mapped the borders of that territory with great precision. Resolution 181’s affirmation of the right of Palestine’s Arab population to national self-determination was based on normative law and the democratic principles that grant statehood to the majority population. (At the time, Arabs constituted two-thirds of the population in Palestine.) This right does not evaporate because of delays in its implementation.

In the course of a war launched by Arab countries that sought to prevent the implementation of the UN partition resolution, Israel enlarged its territory by 50 per cent. If it is illegal to acquire territory as a result of war, then the question now cannot conceivably be how much additional Palestinian territory Israel may confiscate, but rather how much of the territory it acquired in the course of the war of 1948 it is allowed to retain. At the very least, if ‘adjustments’ are to be made to the 1949 armistice line, these should be made on Israel’s side of that line, not the Palestinians’.

Clearly, the obstacle to resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict has not been a dearth of peace initiatives or peace envoys. Nor has it been the violence to which Palestinians have resorted in their struggle to rid themselves of Israel’s occupation, even when that violence has despicably targeted Israel’s civilian population. It is not to sanction the murder of civilians to observe that such violence occurs, sooner or later, in most situations in which a people’s drive for national self-determination is frustrated by an occupying power. Indeed, Israel’s own struggle for national independence was no exception. According to the historian Benny Morris, in this conflict it was the Irgun that first targeted civilians. In Righteous Victims, Morris writes that the upsurge of Arab terrorism in 1937 ‘triggered a wave of Irgun bombings against Arab crowds and buses, introducing a new dimension to the conflict.’ While in the past Arabs had ‘sniped at cars and pedestrians and occasionally lobbed a grenade, often killing or injuring a few bystanders or passengers’, now ‘for the first time, massive bombs were placed in crowded Arab centres, and dozens of people were indiscriminately murdered and maimed.’ Morris notes that ‘this “innovation” soon found Arab imitators.’

Underlying Israel’s efforts to retain the occupied territories is the fact that it has never really considered the West Bank as occupied territory, despite its pro forma acceptance of that designation. Israelis see the Palestinian areas as ‘contested’ territory to which they have claims no less compelling than the Palestinians, international law and UN resolutions notwithstanding. This is a view that was made explicit for the first time by Sharon in an op-ed essay published on the front page of the New York Times on 9 June 2002. The use of the biblical designations of Judea and Samaria to describe the territories, terms which were formerly employed only by the Likud but are now de rigueur for Labour Party stalwarts as well, is a reflection of a common Israeli view. That the former prime minister Ehud Barak (now Olmert’s defence minister) endlessly describes the territorial proposals he made at the Camp David summit as expressions of Israel’s ‘generosity’, and never as an acknowledgment of Palestinian rights, is another example of this mindset. Indeed, the term ‘Palestinian rights’ seems not to exist in Israel’s lexicon.

The problem is not, as Israelis often claim, that Palestinians do not know how to compromise. (Another former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, famously complained that ‘Palestinians take and take while Israel gives and gives.’) That is an indecent charge, since the Palestinians made much the most far-reaching compromise of all when the PLO formally accepted the legitimacy of Israel within the 1949 armistice border. With that concession, Palestinians ceded their claim to more than half the territory that the UN’s partition resolution had assigned to its Arab inhabitants. They have never received any credit for this wrenching concession, made years before Israel agreed that Palestinians had a right to statehood in any part of Palestine. The notion that further border adjustments should be made at the expense of the 22 per cent of the territory that remains to the Palestinians is deeply offensive to them, and understandably so.

Nonetheless, the Palestinians agreed at the Camp David summit to adjustments to the pre-1967 border that would allow large numbers of West Bank settlers – about 70 per cent – to remain within the Jewish state, provided they received comparable territory on Israel’s side of the border. Barak rejected this. To be sure, in the past the Palestinian demand of a right of return was a serious obstacle to a peace agreement. But the Arab League’s peace initiative of 2002 leaves no doubt that Arab countries will accept a nominal and symbolic return of refugees into Israel in numbers approved by Israel, with the overwhelming majority repatriated in the new Palestinian state, their countries of residence, or in other countries prepared to receive them.
It is the failure of the international community to reject (other than in empty rhetoric) Israel’s notion that the occupation and the creation of ‘facts on the ground’ can go on indefinitely, so long as there is no agreement that is acceptable to Israel, that has defeated all previous peace initiatives and the efforts of all peace envoys. Future efforts will meet the same fate if this fundamental issue is not addressed.

What is required for a breakthrough is the adoption by the Security Council of a resolution affirming the following: 1. Changes to the pre-1967 situation can be made only by agreement between the parties. Unilateral measures will not receive international recognition. 2. The default setting of Resolution 242, reiterated by Resolution 338, the 1973 ceasefire resolution, is a return by Israel’s occupying forces to the pre-1967 border. 3. If the parties do not reach agreement within 12 months (the implementation of agreements will obviously take longer), the default setting will be invoked by the Security Council. The Security Council will then adopt its own terms for an end to the conflict, and will arrange for an international force to enter the occupied territories to help establish the rule of law, assist Palestinians in building their institutions, assure Israel’s security by preventing cross-border violence, and monitor and oversee the implementation of terms for an end to the conflict.

If the US and its allies were to take a stand forceful enough to persuade Israel that it will not be allowed to make changes to the pre-1967 situation except by agreement with the Palestinians in permanent status negotiations, there would be no need for complicated peace formulas or celebrity mediators to get a peace process underway. The only thing that an envoy such as Blair can do to put the peace process back on track is to speak the truth about the real impediment to peace. This would also be a historic contribution to the Jewish state, since Israel’s only hope of real long-term security is to have a successful Palestinian state as its neighbour.

The small picture

I'm busy with work and have taken a few days (weeks?) off from the blog. I'm not going to be able to do much over the next two weeks either but when I can, I'll post articles or thoughts about recent happenings...

One thing that caught my eye today while reading Ma'an was the recent death of Jihad al Shaer, a twenty year old from the West Bank. Al Shaer was killed by the Israeli Occupation Forces at a checkpoint outside of Bethlehem near a village called Tuqu'. The Hospital that took al Shaer says he died after receiving multiple blows to the head from a baton.

This is a brief story - one highlighted in part because of the outrage expressed by Mustafa Barghouti, an independent Palestinian Politician - but an important story nonetheless. If you've read the Economist article that I posted earlier, you'll have a better understanding of why checkpoints exist: to harass, to intimidate, and to generally make life as difficult as possible for the indigenous population of the Occupied Territories.

What could highlight the raw brutality of the Israeli Army more than beating a 20 year old to death? This boy did not have a suicide bomb belt on him - why would they choose to beat him then? This boy was not armed with an AK47 - why would they choose to beat him then? No the likely story is that he did something disobedient. Something that upset the soldiers but obviously not threatened enough to just shoot him. Instead they chose to pull out their batons and crush his skull. And they probably continue to inspect Palestinian ID cards at the same checkpoint today. Until a few months form now when they will be released from the military to return to their life of freedom on the beaches of Tel Aviv. I hope they never forget the life they took. Al Shaer's family, his younger brothers and sisters, his parent never will.

READ THIS ARTICLE!...

This is a MUST READ article. Not since coming home from the West Bank have I found such an apt summation of just what life is ACTUALLY like there. It is these daily "inconveniences" that are often completely lost in reporting here in the West. The fact that it's been written up in the Economist - not exactly a left-wing rag - should only highlight the absence of these details in our mainstream media. Oh, and by the way, there are references in this article to certain practices and LAWS that are at the root of the use of the word "Apartheid" when describing Israel. I challenge anyone to argue that rules like the one that prevents Palestinians from driving in cars with Israeli license plates is not a form of separation BASED ON RACE. If you've ever been to the Occupied Territories, especially of course the West Bank, you'll know just how many Israeli plated-cars are on the roads there. Most of the taxis bear those yellow plates.

So if you can, please pass this article along to everyone you know! ...

The Palestinians

It's the little things that make an occupation

Jan 18th 2007 JERUSALEM AND RAMALLAH
From The Economist print edition

Those seemingly minor inconveniences that make life hellish

DURING 2006, according to B'tselem, an Israeli human-rights group, Israeli forces killed 660 Palestinians, almost half of them innocent bystanders, among them 141 children. In the same period, Palestinians killed 17 Israeli civilians and six soldiers. It is such figures, as well as events like shellings, house demolitions, arrest raids and land expropriations, that make the headlines in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What rarely get into the media but make up the staple of Palestinian daily conversation are the countless little restrictions that slow down most people's lives, strangle the economy and provide constant fuel for extremists.

Arbitrariness is one of the most crippling features of these rules. No one can predict how a trip will go. Many of the main West Bank roads, for the sake of the security of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, are off-limits to Palestinian vehicles—only one road connecting the north and south West Bank, for instance, is open to them—and these restrictions change frequently. So do the rules on who can pass the checkpoints that in effect divide the West Bank into a number of semi-connected regions (see map).

A new order due to come into force this week would have banned most West Bankers from riding in cars with Israeli licence plates, and thus from getting lifts from friends and relatives among the 1.6m Palestinians who live as citizens in Israel, as well as from aid workers, journalists and other foreigners. The army decided to suspend the order after protests from human-rights groups that it would give soldiers enormous arbitrary powers—but it has not revoked it.

Large parts of the population of the northern West Bank, and of individual cities like Nablus and Jericho, simply cannot leave their home areas without special permits, which are not always forthcoming. If they can travel, how long they spend waiting at checkpoints, from minutes to hours, depends on the time of day and the humour of the soldiers. Several checkpoints may punctuate a journey between cities that would otherwise be less than an hour's drive apart. These checkpoints move and shift every day, and army jeeps add to the unpredictability and annoyance by stopping and creating ad hoc mobile checkpoints at various spots.

According to the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the number of such obstacles had increased to 534 by mid-December from 376 in August 2005, when OCHA and the Israeli army completed a joint count. When Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, agreed last month to ease restrictions at a few of these checkpoints as a concession to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, human-rights people reported that not only did many of the checkpoints go on working as before; near the ones that had eased up, mobile ones were now operating instead, causing worse disruption and pain.

It is sometimes hard to fathom the logic of the checkpoint regime. One route from Ramallah, the Palestinian administrative capital, to Jerusalem, involves a careful inspection of documents, while on another the soldiers—if they are at their posts—just glance at cars' occupants to see if they look Arab. Israeli law strictly forbids Israeli citizens from visiting the main Palestinian cities, but they can drive straight into Ramallah and Hebron without being challenged, while other cities, such as Jericho and Nablus, remain impermeable. In many places the barrier that Israel is building through the West Bank for security purposes (though in Palestinian eyes to grab more land) is monitored with all the care of an international border, while around Jerusalem the army turns a blind eye to hundreds of people who slip through cracks in the wall as part of their daily commute.

Because of the internal travel restrictions, people who want to move from one Palestinian city to another for work or study must register a change of address to make sure they can stay there. But they cannot. Israel's population registry, which issues Palestinian identity cards as well as Israeli ones, has issued almost no new Palestinian cards since the start of the second intifada in 2000. And that means no address changes either. This also makes it virtually impossible for Palestinians from abroad to get residency in the occupied territories, which are supposed to be their future state, never mind in Israel.

No-through-roads galore

On top of that, in the past year several thousand Palestinians who had applied for residency in the West Bank and were living there on renewable six-month visitor permits have become illegal residents too, liable to be stopped and deported at any checkpoint, not because of anything they have done but because Israel has stopped renewing permits since Hamas, the Islamist movement, took control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) a year ago. (Israel says it is because the PA isn't handing over the requests.)

Like Israelis, Palestinians who commit a traffic offence on the West Bank's highways have to pay the fine at an Israeli post office or a police station. But in the West Bank the only post offices and police stations are on Israeli settlements that most West Bank Palestinians cannot visit without a rare permit. If they do not pay, however, they lose their driving licences the next time the police stop them. They also get a criminal record—which then makes an Israeli entry permit quite impossible.

Some of the regulations stray into the realm of the absurd. A year ago a military order, for no obvious reason, expanded the list of protected wild plants in the West Bank to include za'atar (hyssop), an abundant herb and Palestinian staple. For a while, soldiers at checkpoints confiscated bunches of it from bewildered Palestinians who had merely wanted something to liven up their salads. Lately there have been no reports of za'atar confiscation, but, says Michael Sfard, the legal adviser for Yesh Din, another Israeli human-rights body, the order is still in force. As he tells the story, he cannot help laughing. There is not much else to do.

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