Peace in our Time?

Lies, Damn Lies and Supreme Court briefs

2008-03-30T00:07:00.003+03:00

March 23, 2008 by Gershom Gorenberg

The Israeli Supreme Court recently issued a temporary ruling on a petition brought by residents of six Palestinian villages who have been barred from using Highway 443. The highway is an Israeli-built road running from the Modi’in area near Tel Aviv, through the West Bank to the northern side of Jerusalem (actually, the north end of annexed East Jerusalem).

The petitioners, represented by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), asked the court to “repeal the IDF’s complete restriction on Palestinian movement on Route 443,” according to ACRI. Instead, the court gave the state six months to report on its efforts to built an alternative road for Palestinians only. Though this isn’t the final ruling, it looks like court approval for separate roads in the West Bank, segregated roads, for Israelis and Palestinians. The alternative road, by the way, has the Orwellian name, “Mirkam Haim” - “Fabric of Life Road” - meaning that Israel is protecting the fabric of normal life by building it.

As ACRI points out, Route 443 has a long history with the Supreme Court:

Parts of the road were built on land expropriated by the Israeli Military Commander in the 1980s. In response to a petition submitted at the time by local residents against the expropriation, the Supreme Court accepted the State’s claim that the road was intended primarily for the benefit of the local Palestinian population - the same population which is today prohibited from using the road.

One might conclude - the state would like us to conclude - that the contradiction is ex post facto. Originally the road was primarily for local Palestinians, but Israelis also used it. And it just happened to become a major thoroughfare from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. So when the second intifada began and Palestinians shot at Israeli cars several times on the road, the state responded by closing the road to all Palestinians and eventually decided to build a second road.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. I’ve found clear historical evidence that the state was lying to the Court in the 1980s when it claimed that the road was primarily for local Palestinians.

Rather, the road was planned in the mid-70s as part of a wider plan for Israeli settlement around Jerusalem. In turn, that plan reflected the original Allon Plan, drawn up by the-Labor Minister Yigal Allon in July 1967, immediately after the Six-Day War. The road’s purpose was to serve settlements and the eventual annexation of West Bank land to Israel. Everything else was purely a cover story

The Supreme Court depends on affadavits submitted to it; it does not conduct its own evidence hearings. And though it has occasionally, rarely, overthrown government actions in occupied territories, it has been all too ready to accept the government at its word on the purposes of its actions.

Here’s some of the evidence the court should have seen:

In one of the files of the-defense minister Shimon Peres, a document from the spring of 1976 lays out settlement plans. It includes a “new access road to Jerusalem, from the Lod area, via the Beit Sira junction, to Givon junction and Jerusalem…” The road will help link new settlement blocs, including one which is in the area of present day Givat Ze’ev. (continued below image)

Another document in the same file, from June 29, 1976, from the office of the government coordinator of activities in the territories, reports on a meeting of the Ministerial Committee on Settlement. The committee was informed of a decision by a parallel ministerial committee that dealt specifically with settlements intended to “widen Jerusalem.” The latter committee had approved the road that would become Route 443. (continued below image)

Both documents serve to back up the version of events in Asor Shel Shikul Da’at by Yehiel Admoni (Yad Tabenkin, 1992), pp. 155-57. Admoni was the No. 2 man in the Jewish Agency’s Settlement Department during the crucial first decade of settlement after the Six-Day War. Admoni reports a meeting as early as July 1975, with Peres and settlement committee chairman Yisrael Galili participating, in which it was agreed to build the road in order to “widen Jerusalem” with settlements.

It’s not an accident that this plan was born during the years that Labor was in power. It fits Yigal Allon’s original proposal for how Israel should redraw its borders following the June 1967 conquests. I found Allon’s proposal to the cabinet in prime minister Eshkol’s files in the State Archives. The proposal states that west of Ramallah, the border should be drawn so that “the Latrun-Beit Horon-Jerusalem road will be in Israel’s hands.” (Route 443 roughly follows the route of the road that existed in those days.) Allon’s goal was to widen the corridor that linked Jerusalem with coastal Israel. When the plan to build the new road was approved in the 1970s, it was a means to “create facts” to ensure that the territory specified by Allon would remain under Israeli rule.

When the state told the court that the new road was for use of local Palestinians, it was counting on the court’s unwillingness to challenge the factual basis of the governmet’s position. When the court ruled this month to leave the road for Israeli-only use, it was again rubber-stamping the annexationist policy.

Remarks by Barack Obama: 'A More Perfect Union'

2008-03-29T23:48:00.003+03:00

Delivered Tuesday March 18, 2008, at Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk – to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters.And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame aboutmemories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild."

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love. Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality. The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students. Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them. But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism. Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union. For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know – what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies. We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together. This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom. She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."

"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

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Barack Obama Video by Dylan's son

2008-02-05T16:18:00.000+02:00

On Friday, MoveOn members voted to endorse Barack Obama. Then a friend sent me this video. It really says a lot about why people are moved by Obama. If you're supporting him, or still on the fence, please check it out. And if you like it as much as I did, send it on.
It's already been watched by hundreds of thousands of people on YouTube. If everyone sends it to friends and family, I bet it'll become the top video in time for Tuesday's election.

Here's the link: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3376&id=12035-6825852-gCtKMj&t=1026

Apparently it was made independently of the campaign—by Bob Dylan's son, director Jesse Dylan, and musician will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas.

It really moved many of us on the MoveOn staff. It's worth watching.

Happy Sunday,
–Eli

On Friday, MoveOn members voted to endorse Barack Obama. Then a friend sent me this video. It really says a lot about why people are moved by Obama. If you're supporting him, or still on the fence, please check it out. And if you like it as much as I did, send it on.

PS. We're asking everyone we know who's supporting Obama to send a personal endorsement to their friends and family—calling it an "Endorse-O-thon." We've already gotten 50,000 endorsements sent in 24 hrs! If you decide to forward this video, add a sentence about why you're supporting Obama (your personal "endorsement") and then let us know you did it here:
http://pol.moveon.org/endorse-o-thon/video.html?id=12035-6825852-gCtKMj&t=1027

Citizenship, Zionism and Separation of Religion from the State

2008-01-16T23:58:00.000+02:00

By
Michael
"Mikado"
Warschawsky

It is customary to say that Haaretz is a progressive newspaper. However, its progressive character is generally no where to be seen when Israel initiates a war against one of its neighbors—its opposition to the previous two wars came only after the newspaper provided support to the policies of the government and the military—or abuses against the Palestinian people. However, when dealing with matters of religion, and particularly hatred of the religious, the progressiveness of Haaretz, its editors and community of readers, is endless.

In the op-ed from 27 December, the writers rail against the “ultra-orthodox blockade” that prevents the conversion of hundreds of thousands of new immigrants from the former Soviet Union: “the ultra-orthodox rabbis are pressuring and threatening the government, and causing intentional difficulties for the rabbinical courts, which are acting under state authority. The ultra-orthodox are truly not interested in additional members joining the chosen people.”

This criticism represents a common opinion amongst what is dubbed “the progressive liberal camp” in Israel.

Truly liberal? And indeed progressive?

This same camp accepts the assumption that in a Jewish state, full and real citizenship is possible only for a Jew. And not just for any Jew, but a Jew according to the definition of the religious establishment. It is difficult to perceive in such a definition, any sign of progress or enlightenment. This definition is based on the legitimization of an ethnic state, in contrast to a civil one, as the defining criteria for residency and connection to the land.

Indeed, the religious perception does not always suit national interests, including the need, in a Zionist state, to increase as much as possible the number of non-Arabs in the population registry. This contradiction, between the reliance on religion for the definition of citizenship, and the national need to increase the number of residents defined as Jews, compels the liberals to become analysts and reformers of religion. Members of Knesset who desecrate Shabbat in public, and non-religious newspapers, rely on structures of the religious canon to bolster their ideology and national interests! This is unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of religion, generally characteristic of totalitarian regimes that bend religion to their needs. This has absolutely nothing to do with progress and liberalism.

Of course, there exists another way: to preserve the autonomy of religion through a separation between religion and the needs of the state. This path prevents the interference of religion in state affairs, but also ensures that the state does not interfere in religious affairs. It protects the citizen from interference of religion in her/his private life, and further preserves the possibility that believers can live their lives as they see fit. This is the meaning of the concept of “secularism,” which is one of the foundational characteristics of modern democracy.

The editors of Haaretz and their friends from the liberal camp, however, are not secular at all. The majority loathe religious people with a racist hatred, but do not raise the idea of separating the state from religion, for religion provides them with justification for the claim to exclusive ownership over the territory, in addition to the definition of citizenship that removes the Palestinian from the whole and leaves them, in best case, in the position of second-class citizens.

In order for Israel to be transformed into a democratic state, it must, amongst other things, become a secular state. That is to say, religion needs to be made the private affair of each citizen, with no attempt to determine what is a “reasonable religion,” a “progressive religion” or a “modern religion.” This is the democratic right of each citizen, to live according to her/his religion. In a secular state, religion does not determine who a citizen is and what the rights of each citizen are, and the state does not determine who has the right to belong to one religious group or another. In a democratic state, the religious community is a private and exclusive club, only the members of which have the right to determine who belongs and who does not.

The attempt to “convince” rabbis to convert hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union is not only a racist act against Palestinians, but also gross injury to religious autonomy and a transformation of religion into a tool in the service of foreign political goals.

AL GORE'S NOBEL ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

2007-12-10T23:25:00.000+02:00

SPEECH BY AL GORE ON THE ACCEPTANCE
OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
DECEMBER 10, 2007
OSLO, NORWAY

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honorable members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen.

I have a purpose here today. It is a purpose I have tried to serve for many years. I have prayed that God would show me a way to accomplish it.

Sometimes, without warning, the future knocks on our door with a precious and painful vision of what might be. One hundred and nineteen years ago, a wealthy inventor read his own obituary, mistakenly published years before his death. Wrongly believing the inventor had just died, a newspaper printed a harsh judgment of his life’s work, unfairly labeling him “The Merchant of Death” because of his invention – dynamite. Shaken by this condemnation, the inventor made a fateful choice to serve the cause of peace.

Seven years later, Alfred Nobel created this prize and the others that bear his name.

Seven years ago tomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken – if not premature. But that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to serve my purpose.

Unexpectedly, that quest has brought me here. Even though I fear my words cannot match this moment, I pray what I am feeling in my heart will be communicated clearly enough that those who hear me will say, “We must act.”

The distinguished scientists with whom it is the greatest honor of my life to share this award have laid before us a choice between two different futures – a choice that to my ears echoes the words of an ancient prophet: “Life or death, blessings or curses. Therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”

We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency – a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst – though not all – of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly.

However, despite a growing number of honorable exceptions, too many of the world’s leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler’s threat: “They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.”

So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.

As a result, the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is wrong.

We are what is wrong, and we must make it right.

Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is “falling off a cliff.” One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years.

Seven years from now.

In the last few months, it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter. Major cities in North and South America, Asia and Australia are nearly out of water due to massive droughts and melting glaciers. Desperate farmers are losing their livelihoods. Peoples in the frozen Arctic and on low-lying Pacific islands are planning evacuations of places they have long called home. Unprecedented wildfires have forced a half million people from their homes in one country and caused a national emergency that almost brought down the government in another. Climate refugees have migrated into areas already inhabited by people with different cultures, religions, and traditions, increasing the potential for conflict. Stronger storms in the Pacific and Atlantic have threatened whole cities. Millions have been displaced by massive flooding in South Asia, Mexico, and 18 countries in Africa. As temperature extremes have increased, tens of thousands have lost their lives. We are recklessly burning and clearing our forests and driving more and more species into extinction. The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed.

We never intended to cause all this destruction, just as Alfred Nobel never intended that dynamite be used for waging war. He had hoped his invention would promote human progress. We shared that same worthy goal when we began burning massive quantities of coal, then oil and methane.

Even in Nobel’s time, there were a few warnings of the likely consequences. One of the very first winners of the Prize in chemistry worried that, “We are evaporating our coal mines into the air.” After performing 10,000 equations by hand, Svante Arrhenius calculated that the earth’s average temperature would increase by many degrees if we doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Seventy years later, my teacher, Roger Revelle, and his colleague, Dave Keeling, began to precisely document the increasing CO2 levels day by day.

But unlike most other forms of pollution, CO2 is invisible, tasteless, and odorless -- which has helped keep the truth about what it is doing to our climate out of sight and out of mind. Moreover, the catastrophe now threatening us is unprecedented – and we often confuse the unprecedented with the improbable.

We also find it hard to imagine making the massive changes that are now necessary to solve the crisis. And when large truths are genuinely inconvenient, whole societies can, at least for a time, ignore them. Yet as George Orwell reminds us: “Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

In the years since this prize was first awarded, the entire relationship between humankind and the earth has been radically transformed. And still, we have remained largely oblivious to the impact of our cumulative actions.

Indeed, without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself. Now, we and the earth's climate are locked in a relationship familiar to war planners: "Mutually assured destruction."

More than two decades ago, scientists calculated that nuclear war could throw so much debris and smoke into the air that it would block life-giving sunlight from our atmosphere, causing a "nuclear winter." Their eloquent warnings here in Oslo helped galvanize the world’s resolve to halt the nuclear arms race.

Now science is warning us that if we do not quickly reduce the global warming pollution that is trapping so much of the heat our planet normally radiates back out of the atmosphere, we are in danger of creating a permanent “carbon summer.”

As the American poet Robert Frost wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice.” Either, he notes, “would suffice.”

But neither need be our fate. It is time to make peace with the planet.

We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge.

These were not comforting and misleading assurances that the threat was not real or imminent; that it would affect others but not ourselves; that ordinary life might be lived even in the presence of extraordinary threat; that Providence could be trusted to do for us what we would not do for ourselves.

No, these were calls to come to the defense of the common future. They were calls upon the courage, generosity and strength of entire peoples, citizens of every class and condition who were ready to stand against the threat once asked to do so. Our enemies in those times calculated that free people would not rise to the challenge; they were, of course, catastrophically wrong.

Now comes the threat of climate crisis – a threat that is real, rising, imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable. For now we still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?

Mahatma Gandhi awakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a shared resolve with what he called “Satyagraha” – or “truth force.”

In every land, the truth – once known – has the power to set us free.

Truth also has the power to unite us and bridge the distance between “me” and “we,” creating the basis for common effort and shared responsibility.

There is an African proverb that says, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” We need to go far, quickly.

We must abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer. They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough without collective action. At the same time, we must ensure that in mobilizing globally, we do not invite the establishment of ideological conformity and a new lock-step “ism.”

That means adopting principles, values, laws, and treaties that release creativity and initiative at every level of society in multifold responses originating concurrently and spontaneously.

This new consciousness requires expanding the possibilities inherent in all humanity. The innovators who will devise a new way to harness the sun’s energy for pennies or invent an engine that’s carbon negative may live in Lagos or Mumbai or Montevideo. We must ensure that entrepreneurs and inventors everywhere on the globe have the chance to change the world.

When we unite for a moral purpose that is manifestly good and true, the spiritual energy unleashed can transform us. The generation that defeated fascism throughout the world in the 1940s found, in rising to meet their awesome challenge, that they had gained the moral authority and long-term vision to launch the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, and a new level of global cooperation and foresight that unified Europe and facilitated the emergence of democracy and prosperity in Germany, Japan, Italy and much of the world. One of their visionary leaders said, “It is time we steered by the stars and not by the lights of every passing ship.”

In the last year of that war, you gave the Peace Prize to a man from my hometown of 2000 people, Carthage, Tennessee. Cordell Hull was described by Franklin Roosevelt as the “Father of the United Nations.” He was an inspiration and hero to my own father, who followed Hull in the Congress and the U.S. Senate and in his commitment to world peace and global cooperation.

My parents spoke often of Hull, always in tones of reverence and admiration. Eight weeks ago, when you announced this prize, the deepest emotion I felt was when I saw the headline in my hometown paper that simply noted I had won the same prize that Cordell Hull had won. In that moment, I knew what my father and mother would have felt were they alive.

Just as Hull’s generation found moral authority in rising to solve the world crisis caused by fascism, so too can we find our greatest opportunity in rising to solve the climate crisis. In the Kanji characters used in both Chinese and Japanese, “crisis” is written with two symbols, the first meaning “danger,” the second “opportunity.” By facing and removing the danger of the climate crisis, we have the opportunity to gain the moral authority and vision to vastly increase our own capacity to solve other crises that have been too long ignored.

We must understand the connections between the climate crisis and the afflictions of poverty, hunger, HIV-Aids and other pandemics. As these problems are linked, so too must be their solutions. We must begin by making the common rescue of the global environment the central organizing principle of the world community.

Fifteen years ago, I made that case at the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro. Ten years ago, I presented it in Kyoto. This week, I will urge the delegates in Bali to adopt a bold mandate for a treaty that establishes a universal global cap on emissions and uses the market in emissions trading to efficiently allocate resources to the most effective opportunities for speedy reductions.

This treaty should be ratified and brought into effect everywhere in the world by the beginning of 2010 – two years sooner than presently contemplated. The pace of our response must be accelerated to match the accelerating pace of the crisis itself.

Heads of state should meet early next year to review what was accomplished in Bali and take personal responsibility for addressing this crisis. It is not unreasonable to ask, given the gravity of our circumstances, that these heads of state meet every three months until the treaty is completed.

We also need a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store carbon dioxide.

And most important of all, we need to put a price on carbon -- with a CO2 tax that is then rebated back to the people, progressively, according to the laws of each nation, in ways that shift the burden of taxation from employment to pollution. This is by far the most effective and simplest way to accelerate solutions to this crisis.

The world needs an alliance – especially of those nations that weigh heaviest in the scales where earth is in the balance. I salute Europe and Japan for the steps they’ve taken in recent years to meet the challenge, and the new government in Australia, which has made solving the climate crisis its first priority.

But the outcome will be decisively influenced by two nations that are now failing to do enough: the United States and China. While India is also growing fast in importance, it should be absolutely clear that it is the two largest CO2 emitters — most of all, my own country –– that will need to make the boldest moves, or stand accountable before history for their failure to act.

Both countries should stop using the other’s behavior as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment.

These are the last few years of decision, but they can be the first years of a bright and hopeful future if we do what we must. No one should believe a solution will be found without effort, without cost, without change. Let us acknowledge that if we wish to redeem squandered time and speak again with moral authority, then these are the hard truths:

The way ahead is difficult. The outer boundary of what we currently believe is feasible is still far short of what we actually must do. Moreover, between here and there, across the unknown, falls the shadow.

That is just another way of saying that we have to expand the boundaries of what is possible. In the words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, “Pathwalker, there is no path. You must make the path as you walk.”

We are standing at the most fateful fork in that path. So I want to end as I began, with a vision of two futures – each a palpable possibility – and with a prayer that we will see with vivid clarity the necessity of choosing between those two futures, and the urgency of making the right choice now.

The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, “One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door.”

The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: “What were you thinking; why didn’t you act?”

Or they will ask instead: “How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?”

We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource.

So let us renew it, and say together: “We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act.”

NOWHERE LEFT TO GO

2007-12-09T22:24:00.000+02:00

Read NOWHERE LEFT TO GO about Jahalin Bedouin forced displacement: http://www.icahd.org/eng/articles.asp?menu=6&submenu=2&article=411

JERUSALEM DISPOSSESSED PHOTO EXHIBITION

2007-12-09T22:05:00.000+02:00

See ActiveStills/ICAHD exhibition JERUSALEM DISPOSSESSED:
http://www.activestills.org/jerusalem/jerusalem.html

See JERUSALEM DISPOSSESSED catalogue: http://www.icahd.org/eng/images/uploaded_admin_content/books/Jerusalem_Dispossessed_Booklet.pdf

No Justice No Peace ... the Big Picture: The way of transfer

2007-11-20T09:21:00.000+02:00

No Justice No Peace ... the Big Picture: The way of transfer

Coming to terms with the right of return

2007-11-09T22:35:00.000+02:00

by Tom Pessah

Damn it, those neighbors!

It’s a hot and humid August in Tel Aviv, and I have no wish to leave my old room in my parents’ house. During two years of studying in the States I had forgotten just how unpleasant August was here. Crossing the road would be an expedition that would require an extensive shower when I got back.

But I can’t stay, either. There is a horrible clanging going on upstairs, people are drilling into walls and making the whole house shake.

Over breakfast my dad wonders if this isn’t the third time that apartment has been renovated in the past couple of years. What for? Why did they buy the place if they didn’t like the way it looks? Is there nothing we can do?
He supposes not, it is their apartment, after all.

The apartment is, but not the house, my mom explains. We all lease the land on which the house was built.

Who do we lease it from?

From the Jewish National Fund. Everyone does – either from them or from the State. Almost no one in Israel owns the land their houses are built on.

“And where did the Jewish National Fund get it from?” I ask myself. My parents have moved on to more comfortable topics. But I can guess the
answer: I know the houses of a Palestinian village, Sumeil, were just a few blocks south of my parents’ house, until 1948. And while I always liked to tell myself that “that’s where the village was”, in fact that’s just were the houses were. The villagers had land. All the land in the country was divided, none of it was empty. And this land, that my parents’ house is built on, must have belonged to them.

I grew up in Israel thinking I was left-wing. I went to all the right demonstrations against the occupation. The Ministry of Defense is located conveniently in the middle of Tel Aviv, just a few stops away on the bus.
You can just go and demonstrate, and then go out to a café. So we turned out and chanted all the right slogans: “ahat, shtaim, shalosh, arba’, teforak Kiryat Arba’ “ – “One, two, three, four, dismantle Kiryat Arba” (one of the most famous settlements, near Hebron/al-Khalil).

Settling on other people’s land is wrong, I thought, so all we need to do is move the settlers back into Israel and then we’ll have peace. And we went on chanting these slogans at the same place, through the first intifada, during the Oslo years, after the shock of Rabin’s murder and the ascent of Netanyahu, until the second intifada.

It was around then I met with some students from Nablus. The meeting between Israeli and Palestinian college students was organized by Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salaam, a community that tries to promote coexistence between Jews and Arabs. Unlike other groups, their idea wasn’t to help us find friends, to realize the “Other” wasn’t so bad, to create a shared belief in some kind of vague peace, tame and apolitical. It was quite the opposite: they tried to push us to confront some of the hardest issues, without guaranteeing any agreement would be found.

I had been getting along quite well with the Palestinian students, showing off my well-rehearsed tolerance, distancing myself from settlers, from the other Israelis in the group, from Israelis in general--I thought I was simply too open to be like them. And I understood some spoken Arabic, so I could listen a little to the Palestinians’ stories, about the checkpoints they avoided and the beatings they took just in order to come and meet us.

The organizers asked us to split into groups to discuss some of the biggest issues. I wanted to be on the group discussing the right of return. We Israelis came up with an especially tolerant proposal: we would allow a hundred thousand Palestinians to return! This was much to the left of the Israeli consensus and we felt very generous.

To our surprise, the Palestinians weren’t taken aback by our liberality.
They even seemed offended by our discussing the issue in terms of allowing them to enter our country! But how else could it be discussed, I wondered?
What is their solution? Could they really want to live among us? But how is that possible? Israel is a Jewish state, after all. What would happen to us Jews? Would we become a minority?

Five years have passed since then. I learned a lot, and I was lucky enough to study at UC Berkeley. As a famous Israeli song goes, things that you see from here, you don’t see from there. It seems much simpler to me now:
Palestine/Israel isn’t mine to give; Palestinians have as much of a right to it as I do. The former inhabitants of Sumeil don’t need my big-hearted
generosity: they need my recognition of the injustice committed towards them when they were expelled from their homes in 1948. They need me to remind people that most of Israel is built upon land that belonged to Palestinians.
They need me to invite them and their children to come and live with us.

In Berkeley, I live a couple of blocks from some of my closest Palestinian friends. That could happen in Tel Aviv too. Inshallah.

Tom Pessah is a graduate student of Sociology at UC Berkeley.

NOWHERE LEFT TO GO

2007-11-06T01:58:00.000+02:00

Download 50-page booklet (6MB file) at

http://www.icahd.org/eng/articles.asp?menu=6&submenu=2&article=411

New ICAHD Publication -
Edited by Angela Godfrey-Goldstein
Sunday, October 28, 2007

Over the past few months, Jahalin Bedouin have remained under sustained pressure by the Israeli authorities to relocate outside the planned route of the Wall and the area set for the construction of the new E1 colony (settlement). Their forced relocation to land belonging to other Palestinian villages would cause tensions with local communities, constitute forced displacement and would be detrimental to their semi-nomadic way of life. As available land shrinks, Bedouin are faced with nowhere to go.

The case brought by the residents of Abu Dis concerning the route of the Wall near their village, which may also impact the Bedouin communities living nearby, was heard by the Israeli High Court in June, 2007. The Court ruled at the beginning of August that the Defense Minister (Mr. Barak) had 45 days to review the route of the Wall in this area and advise the Court as to whether or not the route of the Wall could and should be changed. Depending on the opinion of Minister Barak, the route of the Wall may be re-routed further away from the village of Abu Dis, which could also allow nearby Jahalin communities (around 10) to remain where they currently reside. If the Minister does not advise to change the route of the Wall, construction of the Wall will go as planned and these Bedouin communities will most certainly be forcibly displaced in the next few months.

Meanwhile, Jahalin Bedouin are seeking ways to improve their living conditions. A number of Bedouin communities living in the area, and in particular near Kedar, have appealed to local and international organizations to support projects that will contribute to improve their living conditions. They have identified the most pressing needs of their communities: water, electricity (generator) and education for their children. Projects should help the Bedouin build sustainable livelihoods. The Jahalin welcome and are happy to host visitors, in the longstanding traditions of ancient Bedouin hospitality.

As the world, and this region specifically, faces increasing pressure on receding water resources and gradual desertification, these indigenous survivors of desert will be sorely needed for their wisdom and advice as to how to survive in extreme desert conditions. We shall miss and value them. When it is too late?

Jews for Justice for Palestinians' open letter to British Foreign Secretary in The Times [click on ad. to read signatories]

2007-10-07T15:59:00.000+02:00

Rt Hon David Miliband MP
Foreign Secretary
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
King Charles St
London SW1A 2AH, 28th September 2007

Dear David,

In your address to the UN today, we urge you to oppose Israel's sanctions against the people of Gaza. Amnesty International, Israeli organisations and distinguished Israeli writers have all condemned this move, announced on September 19th, to extend these sanctions.

As British Jews and voters, we call on the UK government to stand against this collective punishment, a direct violation of international law. The Israeli Deputy Prime Minister described the proposal as cutting off "infrastructural oxygen”. In fact, the threat is to the real water and real electricity supplies to the entrapped population of Gaza. Euphemisms cannot disguise the genuine danger to health and lives.

Indiscriminate punishment of Palestinian civilians does not protect the people of Sderot but, as Gush Shalom (the Israeli Peace Bloc) put it, unites all Palestinians “in bitterness and hatred” against Israelis “who will bear the price
eventually.” As you said in your speech to the Labour Party Conference – there may be military victories, but there is no military solution.

The UK Foreign Affairs Select Committee (August 2007) has called the decision not to speak to Hamas “counterproductive”. This week a petition from Israeli writers, including David Grossman, Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua says 'In the past Israel has negotiated with its worst enemies, and now the correct course of action is to negotiate with Hamas... to prevent further suffering on both sides'. (Jerusalem Post 23.9.2007)

We urge you to heed these words.

Yours sincerely,

Disrupting the separation policy

2007-09-25T13:39:00.000+02:00

By Amira Hass

A woman chatting idly in Ramallah on Sunday said dismissively: "The High Court of Justice's decision to move the separation fence in Bil'in proves nothing about the effectiveness of the popular Palestinian-Israeli struggle. Israel needs it to portray itself as a democracy."

Her frustration is understandable. The lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians are disrupted by a fence whose route elsewhere is no less "disproportionate" than it was in Bil'in. After two and a half years of weekly demonstrations by Palestinians, left-wing Israelis and foreign activists - demonstrations that were brutally dispersed, with numerous protesters being injured or arrested - the fence was moved a mere 1.7 kilometers. And the same High Court that moved the fence also legitimized the Jewish neighborhood that had already been built on Bil'in's private land.

The gap between the huge effort and the meager results is characteristic of the activities of all Israeli groups that work against the occupation. Last Friday morning, the eve of Yom Kippur, Machsom Watch activists had to spend hours making frantic telephone calls and using their connections with high-ranking officials to enable three sick people to traverse the Qalandiyah checkpoint and reach Jerusalem for urgent treatment. Media reports had promised that despite the hermetic closure, humanitarian cases would be allowed through the checkpoints, but by noon, most of those cases had given up and returned home.

In other cases, Machsom Watch's female volunteers try to alert commanders when soldiers are harassing people passing through the checkpoints. Months of correspondence and requests, reports in Haaretz and monitoring by B'Tselem resulted in two commanders being removed from the Taysir checkpoint. This did not stop a soldier from harassing people at that checkpoint a few months later, nor did it prevent similar abusive conduct at other checkpoints. Needless to say, the checkpoint and roadblock policy continues, despite the reek of apartheid it emits.

But those frustrated by the limited impact of Israeli anti-occupation activity are ignoring two of its salient characteristics. First, by helping to return one dunam of land to one individual, enabling farmers to complete an olive harvest without harassment and attacks by settlers, shortening the waiting time at a checkpoint or releasing a patient or a minor from detention without trial, life is made a bit less difficult for particular individuals at a given moment. This results from the activity of people who, by exploiting their immunity as Jewish Israelis, challenge the occupation bureaucracy.

Moreover, this immediate personal relief is interwoven into a more fundamental, longer-term Israeli-Palestinian struggle against the occupation. Since the 1990s, Israel has endeavored to separate the two peoples. It has restricted opportunities to meet and get to know one another outside the master-serf framework, VIP meetings or luxurious overseas peace showcases from which the term "occupation" is completely absent.

Because of this separation, the Palestinians know only settlers and soldiers - in other words, only those whose conduct and roles in the system justify the Palestinians' conclusion that it is impossible to reach a just agreement and peace with Israel. This separation also reinforces Israelis' racist - or at best, patronizing - attitudes toward the Palestinians.

The anarchists, Machsom Watch, Yesh Din, Rabbis for Human Rights, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Physicians for Human Rights and other activist groups - few as their members may be - disrupt the separation policy and its ills. They remind the Palestinians that there are other Israelis, so perhaps there is still hope. And in their immediate environment, they expose Israelis to facts and experiences that make it difficult for them to keep wallowing in their voluntary ignorance and disregarding the dangers that our oppressive regime poses over the Palestinians.

THE TIDE IS TURNING

2007-09-25T07:52:00.000+02:00

Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, The Electronic Intifada, Sep 24, 2007

Israelis and Palestinians protest in Tel Aviv against Israel's invasion of Lebanon, 5 August 2006. (Matthew Cassel)

The years 2007 and 2008 are landmark ones for those campaigning against occupation and for the Palestinian right to self-determination. Forty years of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was nonviolently marked around the world in June; next year, peaceful demonstrations will observe the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel during which approximately 700,000 Palestinians were forced from or fled their land -- an event that Palestinians call the Nakba, or "catastrophe."

Next year's worldwide campaigns will reinforce grassroots initiatives, reaffirm the numerous UN resolutions which reaffirm the Palestinians' right to self-determination, and call for the establishment of civil society networks.

As for Israeli civilians, since 1967, as many as one million have voted with their feet and left Israel, and some say the rate of those refusing to serve in the Israeli army is as high as 50 percent and that 30 percent of Israeli pilots refuse to bomb the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This occupation is unsustainable and Israeli civilians are losing faith in militarism. It has to end, and we must work out viable alternatives for living together peacefully, in full recognition of our mutual rights, not least the fundamental human right to self-determination.

Central issues such as acknowledgment by Israel of responsibility for the refugees must be addressed. Not least for the sake of Israeli "closure" and an end to the exceptional nature of Israel, which prevents it from participating as a normal state in this Parliament of Man, which is the UN.

Regarding Israel's cozy relationship with the US, which just announced a $30 billion military aid package for Israel, journalist and filmmaker John Pilger recently observed, "No other country on earth enjoys such immunity, allowing it to act without sanction, as Israel. No other country has such a record of lawlessness: not one of the world's tyrannies comes close. International treaties, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ratified by Iran, are ignored by Israel. There is nothing like it in UN history."

In fact, in direct negation of UN recognition of Israeli statehood, Israel has ignored over 60 UN Security Council resolutions.

However, as Pilger also points out, the tide is turning. "The swell of a boycott is growing inexorably, as if an important marker has been passed, reminiscent of the boycotts that led to sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Both Mandela and Desmond Tutu have drawn this parallel; so have South African cabinet minister Ronnie Kasrils and other illustrious Jewish members of the liberation struggle."

In Palestine this year, Kasrils said the situation there is 100 times worse than it was in apartheid South Africa. UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, and (in a parliamentary debate) British Member of Parliament Clare Short, have both said that human rights conditions in the EU trade agreement should be invoked and Israel's trading preferences suspended. The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, John Dugard, speaks of crimes against humanity, as the occupation is characterized by elements of colonialism and apartheid.

After five years of working with diplomats, politicians and aid workers in Israel and Palestine, I see on an individual basis enormous personal support and empathy for the Palestinian cause because the picture of injustice is clear. But we stand at the edge of a dangerous chasm, a widening gulf between realpolitik and policies of peace and democracy.

To compel diplomats or politicians to change policy, we must build grassroots movements like the anti-apartheid movement in the '80s or civil rights in the '60s.

In Palestine there are daily home demolitions, arrests, settler violence, the building of the wall on Palestinian land, expropriations, tree uprootings, detentions, closures, checkpoints and military raids. Israeli society is dysfunctional, and Palestinian society powerlessly disenfranchised, so outside help and solidarity are vital. Only this will send the message to Israel and its sponsor the United States that the crimes of occupation are intolerable and must end.

For the sake of both Israel and the Palestinians, we must save Israel from itself. Living in South Africa under apartheid, I saw boycott efforts encourage public awareness, apply pressure and state disapproval for the government's racist policies. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has said boycotts "will not change positions in a day, but they will send a clear message to the Israeli public that these positions are racist and unacceptable ... They would have to choose."

We must halt the Israeli government's suicidal policies. This means lobbying those in power (especially in Washington, but also Europe) and insisting they visit Palestine with critical guides to see what's really going on.

The Israeli government and the neoconservative Bush administration are not acting for peace and it's up to us as citizens of the world to voice our disapproval. We are fighting a spiritual battle that we shall, insha'allah, eventually win. Together.

Angela Godfrey-Goldstein is Action Advocacy Officer of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, a peace and human rights organization based in Jerusalem.

This commentary is adapted from a speech given by the author at the EU Parliament on 30 August 2007 at a United Nations civil society conference for Israeli-Palestinian Peace.

Prospects Dim for Middle East Peace

2007-09-23T15:26:00.001+02:00

Read the recent News Release from the Carter Center.

Israeli Actions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank:
Prospects Dim for Middle East Peace

21 September 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

In a statement issued today (see below): The Carter Center deplores the decision taken Wednesday by Israel to declare the Gaza Strip a hostile territory and its threat to cut off provision of essential services such as electricity and fuel to the civilian population. The Center strongly believes that such actions would defy Israel's obligations toward the civilian population under international humanitarian and human rights laws, and urges Israel to rescind this decision.

While The Carter Center recognizes Israel's right to defend its citizens and condemns the continued indiscriminate firing of rockets from the Gaza Strip, as an occupying power, Israel is expressly prohibited under international law from collectively punishing the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. Furthermore, Israel is obligated to "take all the measures in [its] power" to ensure public order and civil life of the Palestinian civilian population. Israeli threats to cut off the supply of electricity and fuel to Gaza contradict these legal obligations and would have devastating humanitarian consequences.

"The people of Gaza have been reduced to conditions of poverty, malnutrition, and imprisonment that should be considered totally unacceptable by the civilized world," said Carter Center Field Office Director Scott Custer. "The deliberate Israeli policy to reduce the Palestinians to penury does not meet the standards required by international humanitarian and human rights law of Israel as an occupying power."

The latest crisis in Gaza underscores the escalating costs of failing even to seek a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. A peaceful solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict will only be possible if all Palestinians unite behind a single peace initiative. The Carter Center calls on the two major parties, Fateh and Hamas, to repair the breach that occurred with Hamas' illegal takeover of the Gaza Strip. At the same time, The Carter Center calls on the international community to support efforts for national reconciliation. The Carter Center believes that the forthcoming international meeting in Washington D.C. ultimately will be successful only if a strong majority of the Palestinian people supports the outcome and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are reunited under a single governmental authority.

Finally, The Carter Center calls for renewed attention to the greatest obstacle to a viable two state solution, namely continued expansion and consolidation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, protected by increasing internal checkpoints and the encroachment of a separation barrier. The infrastructure of Israel's occupation of the West Bank is fast becoming permanent, making a two-state solution and viable independent state in Palestine nearly impossible. As U.S. government aid is needed for Israel to continue the expansion of settlements and related infrastructure projects, it bears a special responsibility for undermining the prospects of lasting peace.

The Carter Center reopened its field office in May 2007 in the Palestinian territories in support of peace for Israel, justice for the Palestinians, and the emergence of a viable, democratic Palestinian state. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter led missions to observe Palestinian elections held in 1996, 2005, and 2006.

The Carter Center long has been committed to peace between Israel and the Palestinian people and the advancement of democracy and human rights in Palestine. The Center maintains a field presence to closely monitor political developments on the ground, publish periodic reports on critical issues of democratic development in the territories, and work with local partners on human rights and democracy activities.

Scott Custer, Carter Center Ramallah field office director, is formerly chief of the International Law Division, at the U.N. Relief and Works Agency Headquarters in Gaza.

None Dare Call It Genocide

2007-09-23T00:10:00.000+02:00

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

How comfy we are all in the United States, as we engage in living-room debates about the US occupation of Iraq, whether "we" are bringing them freedom and whether their freedom is really worth the sacrifice of so many of our men and women. We talk about whether war aims have really been achieved, how to exit gracefully, or whether we need a hyper-surge to finish this whole business once and for all.

But there's one thing Americans don't talk about: the lives of Iraqis, or, rather, the deaths of Iraqis. It's interesting because we live in an age of extreme multiculturalism and global concern. We adore international aid workers, go on mission trips abroad, weep for the plight of those suffering from hunger and disease, volunteer in efforts to bring plumbing to Ecuador, mosquito nets to Rwanda, clean water to Malawi, human rights to Togo, and medicine to Bangladesh.

But when "we" cause the calamity, suddenly there is silence. There is something odd, suspicious, even disloyal about a person who would harp on the deaths of Iraqis since the US invasion in 2003. Maybe a person who would weep for Iraq is really a terrorist sympathizer. After all, most of the deaths resulted from "sectarian violence," and who can stop crazed Islamic sects from killing each other. Better each other than us, right?

Well, it's about time that we think about the numbers, even though the US military has decided that body counts are not worth their time. Opinion Research Business, a highly reputable polling firm in the UK, has just completed a detailed and rigorous survey of Iraqis. In the past, the company's results have been touted by the Bush administration whenever the data looks favorable to the US cause. But their latest report received virtually no attention in the US.

Here is the grisly bottom line: more than one million people have been murdered in Iraq since the US invasion, according to the ORB. Yes, other estimates are lower, but you have to be impressed by what they have found. It seems very credible.

In Baghdad, where the US presence is most pronounced, nearly half of households report having lost a family member to a killing of some sort. Half the deaths are from gunshot wounds, one-fifth from car bombs, and one-tenth from aerial bombs. The total number of dead exceeds the hugely well-publicized Rwandan genocide in 1994.

You are welcome to inspect the detailed data.

Aside from the astonishing detail, what jumps out at me is the number of dead who are neither Sunni nor Shia. It is also striking how the further geographically you move from US troop activity, the more peaceful the area is. Americans think they are bringing freedom to Iraq, but the data indicate that we are only bringing suffering and death.

If you have ever lost a family member, you know that life is never the same again. It causes every manner of religious, social, and marital trauma. It's bad enough to lose a family member to some disease. But to a cold-blooded killing or a car bomb or an airplane bomb? That instills a sense of fury and motivation to retribution.

So we are speaking of some 1.2 million people who have been killed in this way, and that does not count the numbers that were killed during the invasion itself for the crime of having attempted to oppose invading foreign troops, or the 500,000 children and old people killed by the US-UN anti-civilian sanctions in the 10 previous years.

And let's not flatter ourselves into thinking that these are nothing but ragheads killing each other for no good reason. Just this past weekend, there is an example in point. Some of the legendary contractors for the State Department were driving through the Sunni neighborhood of Mansour in Baghdad. They were driving their SUVs when witnesses reported an explosion of fire that lasted 20 minutes. The SUVs drove off, leaving at least nine people dead on the road. Why? No one knows. Sure there will be investigations. There have already been apologies. The company in question has had its license to practice occupation revoked by the Iraqi government. For how long, no one knows. But these are merely symbolic gestures. There will be no justice, and no forgetting.

To the extent anyone pays attention to this stuff, they only hear the words of the State Department spokesman: "The bottom line is that the secretary wants to make sure that we do everything we possibly can to avoid the loss of innocent life."

In light of the one million plus figure, such statements come off as evil jokes. The US has unleashed bloodshed in Iraq that is rarely known even in countries we think of as violent and torn by civil strife. It is amazing to think that this has occurred in what was only recently a liberal and civilized country by the region’s standards. This was a country that had a problem with immigration, particularly among the well-educated and talented classes. They went to Iraq because it was the closest Arab proxy to Western-style society that one could find in the area.

It was the US that turned this country into a killing field. Why won’t we face this? Why won't we take responsibility? The reason has to do with this mysterious thing called nationalism, which makes an ideological religion of the nation's wars. We are god-like liberators. They are devil-like terrorists. No amount of data or contrary information seems to make a dent in this irreligious faith. So it is in every country and in all times. Here is the intellectual blindness that war generates.

Such blindness is always inexcusable, but perhaps more understandable in a time when information was severely restricted, when technological limits actually prohibited us from knowing the whole truth at the time. What excuse do we have today? Our blindness is not technological but ideological. We are the good guys, right? Every nation believes that about itself, but freedom is well served by the few who dare to think critically.

An essential postulate of the Western idea, or so we tell ourselves, is the universal and ultimate value of human life. And indeed it is true. No person or group of people is without value – not even those whom our own government chooses to label the enemy.

September 18, 2007

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail] is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com, and author of Speaking of Liberty.

Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com
Lew Rockwell Archives

Presentation at UN Conference in the EU Parliament in Brussels on 30th August 2007

2007-09-15T17:27:00.000+03:00

FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE OCCUPATION: BUILDING ON ACTION TAKEN BY CIVIL SOCIETY & MOVING FORWARD; CONNECTING WITH WORLDWIDE PEACE & SOCIAL MOVEMENTS,

by Angela Godfrey-Goldstein

This year and next are landmarks for Israelis, Palestinians and internationals campaigning against Occupation, advocating for a viable, sovereign Palestinian state, at peace with Israel, or other options if a viable 2-state option (as opposed to the Bantustan version currently on offer) is seen to be no longer attainable. 40 Years of Occupation was marked around the world in June with non-violent events which will continue by marking 60 years since the establishment of the state and the Nakba. Within ICAHD, my organisation, we launched a one and a half million dollar campaign to rebuild 300 homes demolished by Israel, including full page adverts in The New York Times and the Guardian, to mark our 40-60 Campaign, (funded by Americans, including holocaust survivors and Orthodox Jews) to expose Israeli policies of discrimination, whilst working to end the Occupation.

The 40 Years of Occupation was marked around the world in June with a multitude of events, gleaning much media attention. Next year’s worldwide campaigns will continue the Bilbao Declaration which invokes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UN resolutions and calls for the establishment of civil society networks. Similarly, the Florence Declaration underlines the role of civil society, and seeks to reinforce the Arab League Peace Plan. There is also the Avaaz.org internet lobby, a spin-off of MoveOn and in UK War on Want, ICAHD UK and many others in the Enough! coalition are blazing the way for civil society, too. In Israel, as many as a million Israeli civilians have voted with their feet and left the country, while some say the real refusal rate of youth to serve in the IDF may be as high as 50%. Grey refusal in the Air Force is also very high, said to be 30%.

John Pilger wrote recently: “The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is as much America's crusade as Israel's. On 16th August, the Bush administration announced an unprecedented $30bn military "aid package" for Israel, the world's fourth biggest military power, an air power greater than Britain, a nuclear power greater than France. No other country on earth enjoys such immunity, allowing it to act without sanction, as Israel. No other country has such a record of lawlessness: not one of the world's tyrannies comes close. International treaties, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ratified by Iran, are ignored by Israel. There is nothing like it in UN history.” I’d add that Israel has ignored over 60 UNSC resolutions, in direct negation of United Nations’ recognition of Israeli statehood.

“But [says Pilger] something is changing. Perhaps last summer's panoramic horror beamed from Lebanon on to the world's TV screens provided the catalyst. Or perhaps cynicism of Bush and Blair and the incessant use of the inanity, "terror", together with the day-by-day dissemination of a fabricated insecurity in all our lives, has finally brought the attention of the international community outside the rogue states, Britain and the US, back to one of its principal sources, Israel.”

“The swell of a boycott is growing inexorably, as if an important marker has been passed, reminiscent of the boycotts that led to sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Both Mandela and Desmond Tutu have drawn this parallel; so has South African cabinet minister Ronnie Kasrils and other illustrious Jewish members of the liberation struggle.” [end quote]
Ronnie Kasrils said, in fact, on visiting Palestine this year, that it is 100 times worse there than apartheid South Africa. And UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, has said that human rights conditions in the EU trade agreement should be invoked and Israel's trading preferences suspended. This was echoed by Clare Short, with us today, in a June 26th debate in the British Parliament.

Also in early July, the Dutch government warned a Rotterdam-based company to stop work on the construction of the 700 kilometre-long "separation barrier" or “apartheid wall”, as its construction was ruled illegal by the ICJ in 2004. In America major churches such as the Presbyterians have ongoing processes of Mission Responsibility Through Investment: MRTI in place, which lead to divestment.

I would say that those who read the facts on the ground, the infrastructure, and the money trail, and the political declarations or meaningful silences or constructive ambiguity (or even warnings of the next intifada brewing if November produces yet another slap in the face to the Palestinians) – are less than optimistic.

International civil society, as represented at this meeting and at Social Forum meetings, consisting of peace and human rights groups, faith-based groups, trade unions, universities and intellectuals, and all those ordinary people of the world in solidarity with the Palestinian people and the Israeli peace camp, is the key to liberation. When even the Peace NGOs Forum run by the Peres Centre for Peace holds a conference in Florence to engage with international civil society because it sees it as the only effective counterweight, one sees a growing realisation that only civil society can bear this singular burden of democracy, not least to empower politicians at forums such as this – the United Nations and the European Parliament.

I see, after five years of working with diplomats, politicians and aid workers in Israel and Palestine, that on an individual basis there’s enormous personal support and empathy for the Palestinian cause. Because they see it. They “get” it. But actually diplomats have no power. They are the ‘hollow men’ and their own governments are unable and unwilling, often for economic or domestic reasons, to translate diplomatic empathy into policy. Thus the gulf between realpolitik and policies of peace or real democracy. Between the peoples of the world and the power bases. Between those millions who took to the streets against the Occupation of Iraq or those who went to war, willy-nilly defying warnings.

I recall Ophir Pines-Paz, when Minister of Internal Affairs, insisting at a conference in Jerusalem about the city’s future (attended by the “left”): “Give me a hard time. I need to hear from you so I can offset pressure I get from other lobbies.” Similarly, in Florence, in June this year, Romano Prodi told the Peace NGOs that he can’t pressure George Bush or interfere in Israeli domestic policy, but said “Italian civil society can help you a lot with this.” In other words, only if we build a successful grassroots, civil society struggle, similar to that of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the 80s or Civil Rights in the 60s, will the diplomats and politicians become sufficiently compelled to change policy.

So much happens so fast on a daily basis (home demolitions, arrests, settler violence, Wall infrastructure, tree uprootings, detentions, military raids, 50% of Palestinian farmers now on food aid in model farming communities, and a general breakdown of Palestinian civil society, to name but a few), and Israeli and Palestinian society are so dysfunctional that outside help is vital. We need to build on action taken, connect with worldwide peace and social movements and develop them together. The real international peace movement, which mobilizes against wars and occupation, in Iraq, Lebanon or the OPT, is the only alternative. But campaigners must know the facts on the ground and subtleties, or else become unfocused, simplistic or simply hate-filled. And they must be able to counter the rhetoric of the right wing, which doesn’t recognise the Palestinians, and never has – whilst demanding of Hamas full recognition of borderless Israel as a Jewish state (invoking, with chutzpah, United Nations benchmarks!).

I see the Israeli extreme Right as a more dangerous enemy of peace than the Palestinians, most of whom want peace. Recently the IDF escorted us into Hebron for a demonstration through the Palestinian part of Hebron, rather than through militant strongholds of Kiryat Arba and settlements ruthlessly judaising Hebron’s Old City, which they considered far more dangerous to our safety. Indeed it was Hebron American Israeli Kach-supporter settler Dr. Baruch Goldstein’s massacre of 29 Palestinians in the Cave of the Patriarchs, the Ibrahimi Mosque, which persuaded Hamas to turn its armed struggle against civilians, and start the wave of bus and café suicide bombings which so traumatised Israelis, preventing them from feeling responsibility for Palestinian suffering. Hamas is threatening now to end its ceasefire. Let us see then if the Wall can really work or if – as Jamal has shown – it isn’t really just a huge land and water grab, a tool for massive population transfer. The Right has no peace plan. At a recent 3-day Conference in Jerusalem to discuss the future of the Jewish people, peace was not even on the Agenda. So much for their Jewish values.

We need now to co-ordinate a global campaign aimed to put pressure on Israel to end its politics of occupation and colonization and divide-and-rule tactics by sanctioning its systematic violations of international law and United Nations resolutions. We must save Israel from itself, for the sake of the majority of average peaceful Israelis and Palestinians.

As one who lived for five years in South Africa under apartheid, I heard the anti-boycott choruses from apartheid supporters, so I take such words with a large pinch of cynical salt. Boycott is a fundamentally useful way of encouraging public awareness, putting pressure and expressing disapproval. No, it is not okay. No, the world has benchmarks of human rights and international law. Occupation, colonialism and apartheid are unacceptable in the 21st century. Some say boycotts “will not change positions in a day, but they will send a clear message to the Israeli public that these positions are racist and unacceptable … They would have to choose.”

In my organisation we have gone unsuccessfully to the Supreme Court to fight a demolition order on our peace centre, Beit Arabiya, located in a Palestinian home demolished by Israel four times. So we’re now examining with the Chilean judge who brought Pinochet to trial, the possibility of using universal jurisdiction to sue those we say are committing war crimes by demolishing people’s homes (for nothing to do with security). Similarly, the UN has been served with an Urgent Action Appeal on behalf of 3,000 Jahalin Bedouin – refugees being moved off land they’ve lived on since being forced off their own lands in the early ’50s; a population transfer being enforced by military order simply because they live in the path of the Wall being built illegally around the settlement city of Maale Adumim, whose infrastructure is designed to prevent a viable Palestine from ever arising. Another Urgent Action Appeal has just been delivered as to the North Jordan Valley for more population transfer there.

I believe there are a number of actions that can be taken:

1. Present the issue of settlements to the ICJ for its ruling under international law.
2. Ensure the recommendations of the ICJ are implemented regarding the Wall, by calling the international community to boycott the Occupation, sanction Israel and divest;
3. Work on a comprehensive registry of Palestinian damages, in the knowledge that transitional justice will one day kick in as it always does;
4. If Israel doesn’t take serious steps towards real peace, Eurovision, the European Cup, the Olympic Games and other high profile events must be targeted, and the academic boycott increasingly kick in.
5. When even Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni uses the words “viable Palestine” we have to agree what real viability entails
6. Never forget the centrality of the Right of Return and Israel’s responsibility for the refugees (which must also be acknowledged for the sake of Israeli closure, psychological health and reconciliation).

Because the crimes against humanity which UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard says are being committed --– the Occupation has elements of colonialism and apartheid in it, according to him -- are unacceptable, even if governments turn a blind eye or lack the political will to take principled stands. The emperor is naked and only international civil society is free to say so. Which emperor? All the emperors. (If Madeleine Albright could put her foot down and freeze settlements, why doesn’t Ms. Rice?) Indeed, civil society has a duty to exercise and underwrite freedom and democracy or risk losing them, in the face of neo-conservative values and the neocons’ predilection for imperialistic wars – fought by Israel as their proxy in the Middle East.

Pressure works. So, sadly, we have to ratchet up the pressure, so that Israel’s government won’t continue down the suicidal road on which it’s embarked. This means lobbying those in power. Insisting that they visit Palestine with critical guides (not just the IDF or Jewish lobby) to see what is contentious. We need to ensure they visit the living conditions of Bedouin citizens living in the Negev without water, electricity, roads, health services or any conditions provided to other citizens living next door. It means writing Op-Eds or letters and getting them placed, even in local newspapers. Phoning-in to local or national radio to report on visits and actions and activisms and campaigns. Boycotting Israeli products. Insisting on the benchmarks of international law and human rights. Promoting photographic exhibitions particularly amongst students so they can see what the hell is going on.

And it demands of us to strategise and to prioritise. Are we now embarked on an anti-apartheid campaign? Are we still going for the 2-state solution or can we discuss alternatives? If the 2-state solution is already dead and buried and irrelevant because of those facts on the ground, what are the alternatives? How do we fight the so-called security infrastructure being built on E-1 -- the nail in the coffin of the 2-state solution – already two huge police stations dominate it. Can we strategise effectively? Where do we stand on Gaza and its prison-like sub-human conditions, the blockade it suffers, the poisonous water supply, the naval patrols preventing fishing, while Israeli officials talk of it being free? We must surely fund the Free Gaza campaign.

The Israeli government and the Bush Administration will not move forwards for real peace. Time and serious commitment are of the essence, as are truth, and true hearts. Peace – real peace - is long overdue. This is no time to cling for security to the line of least resistance, for feeling comfortable. We are in a state of psychological warfare, fighting for peace. A spiritual battle that we shall, insha’allah, eventually win. Together. Thank you.

FREEGAZA.ORG

2007-08-14T11:31:00.000+03:00

Project Description: The Free Gaza Movement

This movement is an international nonviolent resistance project to challenge Israel’s siege of Gaza. Israel claims that Gaza is no longer occupied, yet Israeli forces control Gaza by land, sea and air. We’ll enter Gaza from international waters at the invitation of Palestinian NGOs but without Israeli authorization, thereby recognizing Palestinian control over their own borders.

The Mission

1. To open Gaza to unrestricted international access, i.e. Palestinian sovereignty
2. To demonstrate that Israel still occupies Gaza, despite its claims to the contrary

3. To show international solidarity with the people of Gaza and the rest of Palestine

4. To demonstrate the potential of nonviolent resistance methods

The Plan

Up to 100 international volunteers will sail from Cyprus to Gaza in 2 to 6 seagoing vessels of 12 to 60 passengers each. The prospective date is September 15, but will depend upon funding, logistics, weather and other factors. The journey will take approximately 24 hours.

Contingencies

If Israel respects Palestinian sovereignty, we’ll arrive without incident. Some of us will fish at sea with Palestinian fishermen, while others will travel back and forth to test the passage for as long as permitted. If stopped, we’ll nonviolently resist. We are prepared to stay at sea if necessary, and/or resist arrest and confiscation of our vessels. We doubt that Israel will attack, but we will be equipped with medical personnel and equipment, life rafts and flotation vests. More likely, Israel will prefer sabotage. We’re prepared with alternate vessels and plans.

The Passengers

Aboard will be Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, Europeans, Africans and Asians. There will be rabbis, imams, Christian and Buddhist clerics, British MPs, entertainment celebrities, and internationally known journalists. Nakba and Holocaust survivors are also joining the project. All will undergo a training program and be selected according to the interests of the mission, such as the mix of persons and expertise; no one is assured of a place on board. Others will form the Cyprus support team and may board later vessels.

The Organizers

We are experienced human rights volunteers and organizers, including Huwaida Arraf, Greta Berlin, Sylvia Cattori, Uri Davis, Hedy Epstein, Kathy Kelly, Paul Larudee, Alison Weir, and more than 30 others from 13 countries. We have consulted with other organizations such as Greenpeace, who have experience with such projects, especially with encounters at sea.

The Vessels

Commercial fishing boats and cruise vessels powered by diesel and sail will be used. Volunteer vessels are also welcome. All will have standard GPS, plus radio and communications equipment for international navigation. They’ll also have refrigeration and cooking facilities for their size and passenger load. The larger vessels will carry fuel for both the voyage and an extended period at sea.

Security

If Israel wishes to harm our mission, we expect them to try to plant arms on board. Therefore, before boarding, all participants, vessels and supplies will undergo a security check by qualified personnel from an internationally recognized NGO to verify that no dangerous items are brought aboard. Since we will not be entering Israeli territory, we will not allow Israeli authorities to perform such inspections.

Supplies and equipment

Passengers will take basic necessities and electronic devices. Journalists, technicians and crew may also bring tools and equipment. Larger vessels will have at least one satellite phone with high-speed data transfer. Provisions, including food, water and medical supplies, will be laid aboard for an extended period at sea. We will also carry relief supplies to the people of Gaza, but this isn’t a primary part of our mission.

Captains and crew

Although we prefer competent volunteers who take principled risks, we are unlikely to recruit the personnel we need by such means. We will therefore hire captains and crew, to whom we will fully disclose the risks involved, so they understand and consent to the mission. Engineers will also be required to inspect and prepare the vessels.

Costs

We have considered vessel donation, lease and purchase. However, we prefer purchase, to have complete control and avoid cancellation by others. Terms are a down payment plus installments to be made either by reselling the vessels after the mission or by using them for nonprofit revenue. Other costs will be crew, equipment, supplies, fuel, docking and agent fees. The estimated cost is $300K, half from donations and half from loans. We can succeed on a smaller scale for as little as $150K, but it entails fewer backups and greater risk.

Further information

Organizational endorsements and financial support are needed and highly appreciated. We’re also available to speak to interested groups. Tax-exempt donations may be sent to our fiscal sponsor, the Palestinian Children’s Welfare Fund at PCWF – Gaza Human Rights, 201 W. Stassney #201, Austin, TX 78745, USA. Non-exempt donations may be made to our PayPal account through our website at www.freegaza.org.

www.freegaza.org

2007-08-14T11:09:00.000+03:00

Update August 12, 2007

• Interview with Hedy Epstein and Greta Berlin by Silvia Cattori (English & French) • "Mit dem Schiff nach Gaza" junge Welt (Germany) • "Hamas Shows Gaza to Foreign Reporters" by Steven Gutkin (Associated Press) • "I pacifisti: sbarcheremo a Gaza" il manifesto (Italia) • "Gaza: a gas for Blair?" By Arthur Neslen (Guardian) • Video Link: Israel and the Easiest Targets (12:49) by IfAmericansKnew

2007: Forty Years On

2007 marks the 40-year anniversary of the Six Day War, in which the Israeli army took military control of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem... This situation has continued to the current day despite Israel being in violation of international humanitarian law and over 60 UN resolutions." - Enough! Occupation

Mission Statement

We want to break the siege of Gaza. We want to raise international awareness about the prison-like closure of the Gaza Strip and pressure the international community to review its sanctions policy and end its support for continued Israeli occupation. We want to uphold Palestine's right to welcome internationals as visitors, human rights observers, humanitarian aid workers, journalists, or otherwise.

Who are we?

We are these human rights observers, aid workers, and journalists. We have years of experience volunteering in Gaza and the West Bank at the invitation of Palestinians. But now, because of the increasing stranglehold of Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine, many of us find it almost impossible to enter Gaza, and an increasing number have been refused entry to Israel and the West Bank as well. Despite the great need for our work, the Israeli Government will not allow us in to do it.

Photo © Joe Carr

We are of all ages and backgrounds. Back home, we are teachers, medics, musicians, secretaries, parents, grandparents, lawyers, students, activists, actors, playwrites, politicians, singer-songwriters, web designers, international training consultants, and even a former Hollywood film industry worker and an aviator. We are South African, Australian, American, English, Israeli, Palestinian, and more.

What are we going to do?

We've tried to enter Palestine by land. We've tried to arrive by air. Now we're getting serious. We're taking a ship.

http://www.freegaza.org/

Clare Short in UK Parliament on Middle East Peace Process

2007-08-14T10:59:00.000+03:00

Westminster Hall
26th June 2007

Middle East Peace Process

Clare Short (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Ind Lab): I tabled this debate because I visited recently the Palestinian occupied territories with a delegation organised by War on Want. It consisted of War on Want staff, myself, and Rodney Bickerstaffe, the former general secretary of Unison. I am grateful for the opportunity to report on our findings, and I hope that the Minister will take account of them.

I have previously visited the west bank and Gaza on a number occasions in the late 1980s and early 1990s, at the time of the first intifada—a Palestinian uprising involving peaceful disobedience or, at worst, children throwing stones at soldiers. Despite the injuries inflicted on children by the Israeli army, the intifada was full of hope, and it led to the negotiation of the Oslo peace accord and the return of Yasser Arafat to Palestine. I was hopeful at that time that a two-state peace—Israel and Palestine—was possible, that the new Palestinian state would be based on 1967 boundaries with East Jerusalem as its capital, and that there would be a negotiated settlement on Palestinian right of return. Those are the three essential components of a negotiated peace. I was hopeful; but it is now impossible to believe that there will be such a peace. Instead, I fear that unless we change policy, we face the prospect of years and possibly decades of bloodshed and conflict.

I have followed developments in the middle east carefully over many years, and I was well aware before my recent visit how bad things are for the Palestinian people. Nevertheless, I was deeply shocked by Israel’s blatant, brutal and systematic annexation of land, demolition of Palestinian homes, and deliberate creation of an apartheid system by which the Palestinians are enclosed in four bantustans, surrounded by a wall, with massive checkpoints that control all Palestinian movements in and out of the ghettos.

The Israelis are clearly and systematically attempting to take the maximum amount of land with the minimum number of Palestinians. As things stand, Israel has taken 85 per cent. of historical Palestine, leaving the remaining 15 per cent. for Palestinian ghettos. More shocking than that is that the international community, including the UK and the EU, does nothing to require Israel to abide by international law, despite all the claims made about European support for human rights and international law.

During its visit, the delegation spent a day with the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which is the agency responsible for humanitarian emergencies. It briefed us on the way in which the wall, the closures, the settlements and the separate system of settler roads were imprisoning the Palestinians. It published a map in the Financial Times to mark the 40th anniversary of the occupation, which is available for all to see.

The delegation spent the second day of its visit with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, an organisation that I greatly admire. The committee took us on a tour of East Jerusalem and showed us how the combination of formal and informal settlements, and systematic house demolition, was encircling East Jerusalem and how that constrained, displaced and ethnically cleansed the Palestinian population. When we were with ICAHD, we witnessed a house demolition. A massive machine with “Volvo” emblazoned on its side destroyed a substantial house that was built by a Palestinian family on their own land and in territory that belongs to the Palestinians under international law—formally, it is occupied territory.

Women relatives of the occupants quietly wept at the side of the road. Later, a young man was held back by his friends—he wanted to throw himself at the soldiers who were protecting the demolition, to do something about the destruction of his family home. The representative of ICAHD, a young Israeli, said that the demolition was, of course, a war crime. The point about that is that under the Geneva convention, an occupying power is not entitled to impose new laws or to settle in occupied territory. Houses are being demolished because Palestinians do not have permits to build, even on their own land. However, Israel is not entitled to introduce such a permit system. It never gives a permit to build a house, or after a house has been built. When Palestinian families expand, they must live somewhere, but Israel will never issue a permit because of its determination to drive Palestinians out of East Jerusalem.

According to ICAHD, Israel has demolished 18,000 Palestinian homes in the way I described since 1967. Each demolition was a war crime. More shocking than that is the fact that no action is taken to force Israel to adhere to international law. Later, the delegation visited a family whose house had been demolished and rebuilt by volunteers from ICAHD—Israelis and Palestinians worked together to rebuild a home for a Palestinian family. ICAHD is committed to acts of peaceful civil disobedience in order that international law is upheld. The family said how grateful they were to once again have a home. A Palestinian who works for ICAHD said that his house had been demolished four times. He said that most Palestinian homes in Jerusalem were subject to demolition orders, so everyone lives with the fear and insecurity that when they arrive home, they might find that their home has been destroyed. He said that when the Israelis arrive to demolish a person’s house, they give them 15 minutes in which to collect their family and belongings.

Normally, people refuse to co-operate. The ICAHD worker told me that in such a situation, the demolition people use tear gas. He told me that he stood there, with his wife fainting and his children crying while their property was being thrown out of their house on to the ground. He said that it made him feel like a useless man who could not even protect his family in their home, and that three possible courses of action passed through his mind. First, full of hate and anger, he thought about obtaining a suicide vest and destroying his own life and that of others. Secondly, he thought about whether he could get out of Palestine and Jerusalem, being unable to bear the pressure being put on him and his family, but that would be to co-operate in the ethnic-cleansing that he opposed. Thirdly—he said that this kept him sane—he said he thought about working for ICAHD to rebuild the demolished homes in peaceful civil disobedience.

I understand that ICAHD has given a pledge to rebuild all the demolished homes in this, the 40th year of the occupation, and that—poignantly—an American holocaust survivor is funding the work. I hope that all people of good will will support ICAHD financially and politically in that endeavour. Importantly, the organisation brings radical Israelis and Palestinians together and creates a space for hope in an otherwise hopeless situation.

The delegation’s third day was hosted by the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, which is War on Want’s partner in Palestine. We were briefed about how the closures have destroyed the Palestinian economy—that has subsequently been underlined by a World Bank report—and also how more and more Palestinians are forced to work for the Israeli settlements to produce agricultural products and other goods that are exported largely to the European market, to which trade agreements give Israel privileged access. Illegal settlements using Palestinians as cheap labour is another element of the new apartheid system in which the EU and the UK fully collude.

The delegation went to visit the Jordan valley with a representative of the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign. The situation there is truly terrible. All fertile land near the river has been confiscated by Israel, supposedly for security purposes under the Oslo peace accords. In the remaining territory, there are occasionally settlements, some of only one person, which lead to Palestinian families being removed from their land for security reasons. There are acres of plastic greenhouses that are organised and worked by settlers and which are strategically located over water sources. They grow organic herbs and other agricultural produce for the European market and yet, when we visited a totally impoverished nearby Palestinian village, we found that there was no school and, that day, no water—the one tap in the village gave no water. The impoverished Palestinians must buy water by the bucket from the settlers.

We visited farming families whose relatives had lived on the land in the Jordan valley for generations to grow crops, herd sheep and goats, and to make cheese. They were being threatened and moved constantly as new settlements of only one or a few people brought in the army, which claimed that they had to move for security reasons. We stopped to talk to another family who had a compound at the side of the road. A house bought for their son and his family on their own land had been demolished, and their aubergine crop was rotting in a heap in front of the house because they could not get it to market.

There is terrible poverty and abuse of human rights in the Jordan valley. The people there are being grossly neglected. I appeal to the Minister, the Department for International Development and all the humanitarian and non-governmental organisations to do more in the Jordan valley—it is in a terrible situation, and more could be done to bring instant relief.

My conclusion is pessimistic, and the prospect of a two-state solution is being destroyed. Instead, we are allowing a new, brutal apartheid regime to be created with the Palestinians being confined to ghettoes and used as cheap labour by the settlers. The Hamas takeover in Gaza is not the cause of the problem, but the consequence of it. The refusal of the UK and the EU to provide aid to the Palestinian Authority following the Hamas election victory has helped to create the problem. The arming of Fatah by US and Israeli forces to enable it to fight Hamas in Gaza made the takeover inevitable. Now it seems that efforts are to be made to offer money and inducements to President Abbas to accept the monstrous ghettoes as the promised Palestinian state. As Uri Avnery, the great Israeli peace campaigner, said, they want him to act as a quisling, and that will not bring peace.

In conclusion, the situation in the Palestinian territories is deeply distressing and depressing, and the Government and the EU are colluding in that oppression and the building of a new apartheid regime. In particular, Israel has privileged access to the EU market under a trade treaty that, like all EU trade treaties, contains human rights conditions. I hope that the Minister will explain why those conditions are not invoked to insist on Israeli compliance with international law. That is a big lever, and Israel would be frightened of losing access to the EU market. I wish that we would make use of that for everyone’s benefit.

I fear continuing bloodshed and suffering, and further destabilisation of the middle east. The situation in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories is fuelling the anger of the Muslim world, which is acting as a recruiting sergeant for the ugly ideology of Osama bin Laden and those who advocate similar ideas.

It is in the interests of the people of Israel, the Palestinians and the wider middle east that there should be a two-state solution to bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but that possibility is being thrown away by Israel, which is determined constantly to expand its borders in total breach of international law. The UK and the EU are, sadly, colluding in that, and the consequences are causing terrible suffering, and endangering the future. I truly hope that our new Prime Minister will reconsider that policy, and that the Opposition parties will reconsider and bring pressure to bear to bring the situation back from the brink and to ensure that the centrepiece of UK policy is a just peace and Israeli compliance with international law.

The Minister for the Middle East (Dr. Kim Howells): I thank the right hon. Lady for initiating this debate and for her comments. I also thank her for her eye-witness account of the illegal activities of the Israeli defence forces and others in demolishing houses along the route of the wall, the barrier or fence, where it incorporates Palestinian land illegally. I agree entirely with the right hon. Lady that that not only breaks international law but generates huge resentment, not just in Palestine but throughout the region. We have constantly urged the Israelis not to do that, and it is ironic that lawyers in Israel have given Palestinians their redress only about the route of the wall. Sometimes that route has been altered as a consequence of legal action that Palestinians have taken, especially in and around Jerusalem.

The right hon. Lady’s point about generating sympathy for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda is prescient, and we ignore such warnings at our peril. I take her message about the Jordan valley needing the attention of the Department for International Development. I, too, was shocked when I saw the extent to which so much of the Palestinian economy on the west bank has collapsed. I shall come to Gaza in a moment.

This is one of those times in history when, from an appalling tragedy of Palestinians killing Palestinians in Gaza, one hopes that the Israelis and everyone else will take a real step forward, remove the barriers on the west bank, and allow people to trade properly. The right hon. Lady referred to a crop of aubergines that were rotting in the field, and we have heard such stories so many times.

I understand, as I am sure can everyone, why Israel has built barriers, and I know why it has built the wall. On my last visit but one, I went to see some old lefties—I do not know how to describe them—in a kibbutz up on the old Jerusalem road. Very reluctantly, they told me that life had become easier since the barrier was built because they were not worried about their kids going out, as suicide bombers were finding it much harder to come in from Nablus and other towns. I tried to argue then, and I argue now, that they will find ways of getting in and killing innocent citizens, because resentment will continue to build up unless the core issue is tackled.

Clare Short: I simply want to say that, ugly and regrettable as the wall is, if it were on the 1967 boundary it would be one thing, but it is taking great swathes of Palestinian land and dividing communities from their land. That was found to be illegal by the International Court of Justice, and there is no excuse for it.

Dr. Howells: The right hon. Lady is absolutely correct. I was quite shocked even to discuss with Labour Ministers in Israel some time ago their unwillingness to build tunnels, for example, to join cantons together. It is hard to believe that a viable state, albeit small, could emerge from such a geographical configuration. It is difficult to see how it could work. We must keep pressing the Israelis.

I do not agree with the right hon. Lady about sanctions—she did not refer to sanctions, but I have heard people talk about them. She referred to withdrawal of the preferential trade agreement with the EU. It is a fair subject for debate, although I am sceptical about making such moves, but that is my subjective assessment. It is a subject that should be discussed, and it is widely discussed throughout Europe. I tend to feel that there is already so much tension and there are so many difficulties that I am not sure that that would advance the cause of peace.

If the right hon. Lady will allow me, I shall say something about Gaza, because we share her deep concern about what has happened there. It is a tragedy, and it underlines the urgent need to maintain international engagement and the current political processes.

We are also concerned, as is the right hon. Lady, about the welfare of Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist, whose family must be going through the most dreadful time. We condemn the release of the latest video, which can only add further distress to his family and friends. We urge his captors, as I know does the right hon. Lady, to release him immediately. There should be a general release of captives on both sides— Corporal Shalit, the soldiers who were kidnapped by Hezbollah, the councillors and elected parliamentary representatives of the Palestinian people. Now is the time to make such moves, and I hope that after the disaster in Gaza there will be a sense that this historic opportunity should not be missed, and that misery should not be heaped on the existing misery.

I also extend our thanks to the Egyptian Government for initiating the meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh yesterday between President Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan, whom I had the privilege of speaking with just last week. He brought to the situation a sharp series of observations, which the right hon. Lady complemented today, and he understands the gravity of the situation. If the west bank statelet—that group of cantons—fails, one wonders where the conflict will spread to next. Jordan, with its huge Palestinian population, would be in grave danger, and King Abdullah is well aware of that. He was at Sharm el-Sheikh, as were Prime Minister Olmert and President Abbas.

We welcome Prime Minister Olmert’s statement that he will work, with President Abbas as a true partner, towards the establishment of a two-state solution and the implementation of the road map. There are some positive aspects, but I agree with the right hon. Lady that it is a pretty bleak picture. It is as bleak as I can ever remember it, but the decision by Prime Minister Olmert to transfer the withheld revenues is probably a positive step forward, and we look forward to the implementation of the commitments to increase freedom of movement and expand trade connections in the west bank. Such actions are not rocket science; they can easily be done and they could make a big difference, if only to that family about whom the right hon. Lady spoke, with their crop of aubergines.

Such actions are vital to the Palestinian people, and they have helped to improve the humanitarian and economic situation, which is critical. We welcome Prime Minister Olmert’s pledge to ensure the continued supply of humanitarian aid to Gaza. As the right hon. Lady knows, we have earmarked funding for that project. It does not address the central issue that she has raised today, but there is an immediate humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which the international community must address. It is important that the international community works together to help all Palestinian people.

President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad’s Government have our full support, and we share their aim of restoring security and improving the economic and humanitarian situation. We continue to work with all people, including President Abbas, who are dedicated to a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

The right hon. Lady did not mention this point, because time is always limited in such debates, but President Abbas, among others, has said that there ought to be an international peacekeeping force in Gaza certainly, if not on the west bank. I can see the right hon. Lady shaking her head, and one cannot imagine who would donate the troops to such a force. They would have to fight their way in, there would be bloodshed and mayhem on a huge scale, and quite frankly, I cannot see the idea coming off.

To reinforce what the right hon. Lady said, we must understand the gravity of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, address it and at the same time, urge Israel ashard as we possibly can to think again about its policy of incorporating Palestinian villages and land within the confines of that wall. As she said, the Israelis have a perfect right to defend themselves, and if they want to build a wall, it is up to them, but it ought to be along the agreed frontier—such as it is—that was defined in 1967. It ought not to encroach on Palestinian territory.

It is important that we receive such reports in the House. In so many ways, that is what such debates are for—so that we are reminded constantly of the reality of what can sometimes look like great, strategic trends and events on the world stage. However, for the family whom the right hon. Lady described so vividly, the reality is that their lives have been shattered. Many other families’ lives have been, too. I have always considered myself to be a friend of the Palestinian people and the Israeli people. I was brought up in a home in which the dreams of everybody who was interested in the subject were about people living alongside each other peacefully, not even in separate states.

I shall not apportion blame; I have been around too long for that. I have seen the successive invasions of Israel, and what the Israelis have done in an attempt to head off what they perceive as threats to the Israeli heartland, which has usually meant extending territory. My message to the Israelis is simple; if they are to live in peace side by side with their neighbours, the Israelis must help them become viable states with economies that can live in a competitive world. They need the education, skills, infrastructure and wherewithal to do all that, but most important, they need the self-respect and dignity that we enjoy as members of sovereign states.

Clare Short: May I press the Minister to reconsider his view on Israeli access to the EU market? If we invoked the human rights conditionality in that treaty, we would have a lever with which to press Israel to do what he calls for. Does not our failure to use that leverage mean that we are colluding in the breach of international law? Will he reconsider his position on that point?

Dr. Howells: I certainly do not believe that we are colluding in any shape or form. I was going to come to that point, but with respect to the right hon. Lady, “colluding” is certainly the wrong word to use. I know that she chose that word very carefully, but I do not think that it is the right one. I can speak only subjectively from my meeting with other European Ministers. She, too, met her counterparts from the EU and other nations many times. There is at one extreme a sense of hopelessness, which she also described today in a very grim analysis of the situation. I am at the other extreme. I keep telling myself that we have material to work with, and that it is a very small part of the world. What is Gaza? Ten miles wide, and at the most, 35 to 40 miles long. It has a wonderful beach on the Mediterranean, and I remember vividly the first time I ever walked on it, thinking, “Why is this a poor part of the world? Why haven’t people here got any jobs?” It seemed mad to me.

The right hon. Lady expressed the hope that my right hon. Friend the new Prime Minister would take the issue by the scruff of the neck and try to do something with it. She knows that he has been very interested for a very long time in trying to work with the Israelis and the Arab countries in the area to do something about that economy and that infrastructure. I disagree with her about the effect of that general sense of good will towards Israel and Palestine—the desire throughout Europe that there should be a good outcome, and peace and prosperity in the future. In the end, we disagree about whether applying a screw to the Israelis on the question of human rights compliance would achieve a great deal.

We should at every possible opportunity engage the Israelis on human rights and on compliance with their undertakings, which, as a consequence, enable them to enjoy access to the European market. We should talk to them about that, but I have a feeling that there are already far too many strictures on all sides to add another one. It would just create more tension, and we should try to build on what we have, aim for the high ground and figure out how we can get there by engaging with both sides.

NOT ONLY TERRITORY, BUT VIABILITY

2007-08-14T10:49:00.000+03:00

Jeff Halper

August, 2007

On paper, the headlines sounded promising, even stirring. Prime Minister Olmert, they said, told PA Chairman Abbas in Jericho he would push for establishment of a Palestinian state as "fast as possible" on “the equivalent to 100% of the territories conquered in 1967.” The Palestinians, it was said, would cede just 5% of the West Bank in return for territorial swaps, so Israel would withdraw from 95.6 % of the combined West Bank and Gaza –a figure not including East Jerusalem, which Israel does not consider occupied. It looked like another “generous offer,” one the Palestinians could not refuse. The problem was, it was too generous for Israel to accept. Some hours after Haaretz’ report, the PM’s Office denied the proposal’s existence. “We do not know of any plan as described in [Ha’aretz’] article,” said the PMO. “We would like to clarify that such a plan has not been considered, nor is it being raised for discussion in any forum.”

So much for that. Yet the proposal is useful to examine as a “best case” scenario. It appears to relinquish almost all the occupied territory to the Palestinians: the maximum that Israel could apparently offer. If it was nothing more than a sophisticated attempt to expand Israeli control to the Jordan River, with no chance of ending the conflict, it provides the best illustration of the futility of basing any peace process on mere transfer of territory rather than viability. The devil, as we know, is in the details.

At issue isn’t a Palestinian state on the equivalent of 100% of the Territories (which, of course, is only 22% of historic Palestine). The issue, as the Road Map specifies, is whether a Palestinian state is truly sovereign and viable; but even the 5% that Israel would retain under the purported plan prevents such a state’s establishment. What makes the difference between a just and lasting peace or apartheid?

Sovereignty: The basis for negotiations, says Olmert, “continues to be the Road Map, which is acceptable to both sides." True in general, but with major caveats. Phase II of the Road Map is a Palestinian nightmare, and they have constantly pressed for its removal. It calls for establishment of a “transitional” state with “provisional borders.” If all is quiet, they fear, and Israel proclaims a Palestinian state and the end of Occupation, who could guarantee the process would continue to Phase III, where thorny final status details must be negotiated and a real Palestinian state emerge? Their fears are justified – and here’s the “catch.” Israel considers its “14 reservations” integral parts of the Road Map. Reservation #5 states: “The provisional state will have provisional borders and certain aspects of sovereignty, be fully demilitarized…, be without the authority to undertake defense alliances or military cooperation, and Israeli control over the entry and exit of all persons and cargo, as well as of its air space and electromagnetic spectrum.”

Try to square that reservation with the notion of Palestinian sovereignty. Tzipi Livni worked for months on “The Israeli Initiative for a Two-State Solution” based precisely on replacing Phase I (which calls for a freeze on settlement building) with this problematic Phase II. Rice says the Bush Administration will work towards a provisional Palestine, leaving “the details” to the next Administration.

A state has no sovereignty without borders. Added to problems of provisionality, does Olmert intend to grant Palestine unsupervised borders with Jordan? If Israel insists on border control, or the Jordan River is part of the 5% the Palestinians must cede, there is no Palestinian state even if they receive all the territory.

Viability: Israel could relinquish 95% of the West Bank, yet totally control a Palestinian Bantustan, with no viable economy. If it insists on border control, denying free movement of goods and people, Palestine could not be viable. If that 5% includes a corridor across the West Bank, or Israel keeps Ma’aleh Adumim settlement with its “E-1” corridor to Jerusalem, (destroying territorial contiguity of Palestine), it is non-viable. If it includes Israeli control of all the water resources, it is non-viable. If Jerusalem isn’t fully integrated into Palestine politically, geographically and economically – and I would bet the core of East Jerusalem falls outside the 95% – then Palestine is non-viable. The World Bank suggests Jerusalem accounts for 40% of the Palestinian economy because of tourism, its largest industry.

Meanwhile, Israel’s repeated advancement of territorial-based plans all have the same aim: to perpetuate the settlements, Israeli “greater” Jerusalem and control of the entire land. Until that matrix of control is broken and a real Palestinian state can emerge – if that’s still possible given Israeli “facts on the ground” – we will have to monitor carefully each proposal, to ascertain if it can end the conflict or merely substitute a sophisticated regime of apartheid. Israel’s ongoing settlement construction and commitment to retaining strategic parts of the West Bank and “greater” Jerusalem unfortunately justify a healthy suspicion of Israel’s intentions.

(Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. He can be reached at )

Brit Tzedek Letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice

2007-08-14T10:31:00.000+03:00

Due to the grave humanitarian situation in Gaza as well as the welcome increase in US engagement in Middle East diplomacy, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom has sent the following letter to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday, August 10, 2007.

Related articles are listed below.

Dear Secretary Rice:

On behalf of the 36,000 supporters of Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace, we write to commend your progress towards the planned international conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to express several concerns we hope you will consider as you move forward. Brit Tzedek v’Shalom is a grassroots organization that educates and mobilizes American Jews in support of a negotiated two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The U.S.-led international conference, announced by President Bush in his speech on July 16th and set for this fall, represents a significant step forward on the path to the creation of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. We are optimistic that by involving regional and international players, in particular Saudi Arabia, and by building upon the Arab League Peace Initiative, real progress can be made towards that goal. We welcome your recent statements that the conference will be more than a mere "photo op," and urge you to ensure the seriousness of its content by including discussion of the most fundamental issues regarding the conflict: borders, settlements, refugees, and Jerusalem.

We further welcome your renewed support for the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas, by ending the boycott of the P.A. and resuming sorely needed economic, humanitarian and development aid to the Palestinian people. Yet, we are deeply concerned by the U.S. policy, which you reiterated on your most recent trip to the region, to ignore and isolate Hamas. This deepens the divide between Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, undermining the legitimacy and viability of peace negotiations and raising greater risk of attacks on Israel.

Brit Tzedek is gravely concerned by the continued closings of border crossings in and out of Gaza, which exacerbate already desperate economic and humanitarian conditions for a population at risk of becoming virtually 100% aid dependent. The international community has already acknowledged that the hopelessness and despair produced by such conditions, creates a climate ideal for the support of extremist groups. Therefore, in the name of ensuring humanitarian treatment of the Palestinian people, please consider a policy of minimal, pragmatic contact with those Palestinians in control of the Gaza side of these border crossings who may be affiliated with Hamas. Without such contact, we fear a dangerous resurgence of attacks against Israelis and renewed factional violence in Gaza. This approach has also been suggested by former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Efraim Halevy, former chief of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency.

We recognize the complexity of your mission and the many challenges that lie ahead. We thank you for consideration of our message which reflects the input and insights of our national Jewish leadership and grassroots volunteers from communities across America dedicated to the well-being and security of Israel and the United States.

Sincerely,
Marcia Freedman
President

Related Articles

Hamas boycott criticised in UK by Ben Hall and Daniel Dombey. Financial Times. August 12, 2007.
George W. Bush’s Flawed Peace Plan by Shlomo Ben-Ami. Daily Star. August 9, 2007.
Getting Hamas Strategy Right by David Dreilinger and IPF Staff. Israel Policy Forum. August 9, 2007.
UN: Gaza faces economic disaster by Associated Press. Jerusalem Post. August 9, 2007.
Final Status Negotiations Now by MJ Rosenberg. IPF Friday. July 20, 2007.

Brit Tzedek v'Shalom,
The Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace
11 E. Adams Street, Suite 707
Chicago, IL 60603
Phone: (312) 341-1205
Fax: (312) 341-1206
info@btvshalom.org
www.btvshalom.org

The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam

2007-08-14T10:02:00.000+03:00

By
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.

Henry Siegman, the director of the US/ Middle East Project, served as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations from 1994 to 2006, and was head of the American Jewish Congress from 1978 to 1994.
copyright © LRB Ltd, 1997-2007
9 August 2007

George W. Bush's flawed peace plan

2007-08-14T09:48:00.000+03:00

By Shlomo Ben-Ami
August 09, 2007

That a summit in Damascus of the Middle East's "axis of evil" - Iran, Hizbullah, Syria and Hamas - was convened immediately following President George W. Bush's call for a conference of "moderates" to promote an Israeli-Palestinian peace demonstrated once again how intertwined the region's problems are. The Damascus meeting reflected Iran's view of Israeli-Arab peace as a major strategic threat, because it would condemn Iran to isolation in a hostile Arab environment free of its conflict with Israel. The Iranians also sought the meeting to forge an alliance against a possible attack by the United States against their country's nuclear installations.

America has always known that the Middle East's problems are interconnected, but for years it got its priorities wrong because it failed to see that if there was an Archimedean point to the Middle East problem, it was to be found in the Palestinian issue, not the "war on terror," Iraq, or the need for Arab democracy. It took Bush six years of wrongheaded policies to finally admit that "Iraq is not the only pivotal matter in the Middle East."

Bush's initiative is a last-ditch effort to salvage America's position in a region where it is on the defensive on all fronts. It is especially ironic that, in stark contrast to his own rhetoric, Bush's call for a Middle East peace conference is a call to wage war against the party, Hamas, that won a democratic election, and to make peace with the loser, Fatah.

Nevertheless, Bush's initiative is not devoid of virtue. He has finally acknowledged the failure of the "road map," and hence the need to skip interim stages and move directly to a final settlement between Israelis and Palestinians. Moreover, both he and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were unusually blunt in warning Israel that its future does not lie in "continued occupation of the West Bank." Bush also came as close as he could to endorsing former President Bill Clinton's peace plan by affirming that "the borders of the past, the realities of the present, and agreed changes" will define his two-state solution.

But Bush's strategy suffers from serious inconsistencies. The conference ground rules exclude radical forces - Syria and Hamas - thus encouraging them to persist in their role as spoilers. It is a fantasy to believe that peace can be concluded without the radicals' participation. As long as Hamas and Syria are left out of the US-led peace process, they are condemned to remaining in Iran's orbit.

The Saudis certainly have an interest in supporting this last-ditch American attempt for an Israeli-Palestinian peace, especially now that, for the first time ever, Israel has refrained from opposing an arms deal between the US and Saudi Arabia. The common fear of Iran is a major consideration here. However, Saudi Arabia's willingness to participate in the conference might come with a price too high for Israel to pay: an endorsement of the Saudi peace initiative. This is the reason US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was cautious in her reaction to the Saudis' ambiguous acceptance of their invitation to attend the conference.

Bush was right to call on friendly Arab states to contribute to an Israeli-Palestinian peace. But how much leverage can he apply when they are so badly needed for his "war on terror" and for containing Iran? Though certainly a welcome new idea, Bush's call for Egypt and Jordan to replace Israel as the gateway for Palestinian exports is most likely to be resisted. For these "moderate" American allies, peace is about Israeli concessions, not about pulling Israel's chestnuts out of the fire, certainly as long as it refuses to endorse the Arab peace plan.

The current American initiative sounds reasonable, but it is essentially unrealistic. Tony Blair, the new envoy of the Quartet (the US, the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia), has called for a "conference with substance." But Israel will be required to engage in peace talks only if the Palestinians crack down on terrorism - that is, risk another Fatah-Hamas civil war - and eliminate corruption.

Such a sequence - and a conference whose harmless aim is "to review progress toward building Palestinian institutions, look for ways to support further reforms, and support the effort going on between the parties" - fits perfectly with the Israeli view. But Palestinian militias have shown time and again that they will not give up the armed struggle before they see a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders, with Arab Jerusalem as its capital.

This is the fundamental pitfall of a strategy based on driving a wedge between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' "moderates" and Hamas' "extremists." If Abbas is to prevail, it will not be through "gestures" or a process focusing on "institution building," however important these may be. Nothing less than a full-fledged peace agreement that meets the fundamental aspirations of Palestinian nationalism is likely to give him the popular legitimacy needed to confront the radicals.

Shlomo Ben-Ami is a former Israeli foreign minister who now serves as the vice-president of the Toledo Center for Peace. He is the author of Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy."

The Apostate

2007-08-02T03:58:00.000+03:00

A Zionist politician loses faith in the future.
by David Remnick
July 30, 2007
“People are not willing to admit it, but Israel has reached the wall,” Avrum Burg says.

The self-regard of Israelis is built, in no small part, around a sense of sang-froid, and yet few would deny that the past year was deeply unnerving. Last July, Israel launched an aerial attack on Lebanon designed to destroy the arsenal of the radical Islamist group Hezbollah, the Party of God, and force its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, to return two kidnapped soldiers and end its cross-border rocket attacks. “If the soldiers are not returned,” Dan Halutz, the Israeli Army’s chief of staff, said at the time, “we will turn Lebanon’s clock back twenty years.” Israel bombed the runways of the Beirut airport, the Beirut-Damascus highway, and numerous towns, mainly in the south; Hezbollah, from a network of guerrilla installations and tunnel networks worthy of the Vietcong, launched some four thousand rockets, mainly Katyushas, at cities in northern Israel. Israel degraded Hezbollah’s military capabilities, at least temporarily, but there was no victory. Hezbollah survived and, in the eyes of the Islamic world, in doing so won; Nasrallah emerged as an iconic hero; and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, one of his sponsors, called yet again for the elimination of Israel from the map of the Middle East. Halutz, who had dumped all his stocks on the eve of the war, resigned, and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, saw his approval rating fall to as low as two per cent.

More recently, Hezbollah’s ideological ally in Palestine, Hamas—the Islamic Resistance Movement—led a violent uprising in the Gaza Strip, overwhelming its secular rival, Fatah. Suddenly, Israel, backed by the United States, found itself propping up the Fatah leadership, in order not to lose the West Bank to Hamas as well. Not even the ceremonial office of the Israeli Presidency was immune from the year’s disasters: a few weeks ago, President Moshe Katsav agreed to plead guilty to multiple sexual offences and resign, lest he face trial for rape. Despite a resilient, even booming economy, peace and stability have rarely seemed so distant.

In this atmosphere of post-traumatic gloom, Avraham Burg, a former Speaker of the Knesset, managed to inflame the Israeli public (left, right, and center) with little more than an interview in the liberal daily Ha’aretz, promoting his recent book, “Defeating Hitler.” Short of being Prime Minister, Burg could not be higher in the Zionist establishment. His father was a Cabinet minister for nearly four decades, serving under Prime Ministers from David Ben-Gurion to Shimon Peres. In addition to a decade-long career in the Knesset, including four years as Speaker, Burg had also been leader of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Israel. And yet he did not obey the commands of pedigree. “Defeating Hitler” and an earlier book, “God Is Back,” are, in combination, a despairing look at the Israeli condition. Burg warns that an increasingly large and ardent sector of Israeli society disdains political democracy. He describes the country in its current state as Holocaust-obsessed, militaristic, xenophobic, and, like Germany in the nineteen-thirties, vulnerable to an extremist minority.

Burg’s interlocutor for the Ha’aretz article was Ari Shavit, a writer well known in Israel for his confrontational interviews and his cerebral opinion articles. (His Profile of Ariel Sharon, “The General,” appeared in these pages in January, 2006.) Shavit’s interviewing style is aggressive and moralistic—not so distant, at times, from Oriana Fallaci’s in her prime. Politically, he is left of center, but, in the view of some to his left, he has seemed apocalyptic of late, warning darkly of the “existential” threats against Israel. In the preface to the interview, Shavit declared himself “outraged” by Burg’s book: “I saw it as one-dimensional and an unempathetic attack on the Israeli experience.”

The Israeli political world is unfailingly intimate. Shavit, who is forty-nine, and Burg, who is fifty-two, met twenty-five years ago, when they were both protesting against Israel’s first war in Lebanon. After the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians by Israel’s allies among the Christian Phalangists in 1982, Burg gave a powerful speech before four hundred thousand people at an anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv—the biggest rally in the history of Israel. This was his entrance into public life. “Because Avrum was a lefty and a religious Jew who wore a kippa, he really stood out among the left-wing speakers,” Shavit told me. “That gave him a very specific role in our society, and he played it extremely well.” Whatever remained of the relationship between Burg and Shavit frayed badly when they met for their interview. After Burg described Israel as a perpetually “frightened society,” the discussion quickly grew tense:

SHAVIT: You are patronizing and supercilious, Avrum. You have no empathy for Israelis. You treat the Israeli Jew as a paranoid. But, as the cliché goes, some paranoids really are persecuted. On the day we are speaking, Ahmadinejad is saying that our days are numbered. He promises to eradicate us. No, he is not Hitler. But he is also not a mirage. He is a true threat. He is the real world—a world you ignore.
BURG: I say that as of this moment Israel is a state of trauma in nearly every one of its dimensions. And it’s not just a theoretical question. Would our ability to cope with Iran not be much better if we renewed in Israel the ability to trust the world? Would it not be more right if we didn’t deal with the problem on our own but, rather, as part of a world alignment beginning with the Christian churches, going on to the governments and finally the armies? Instead, we say we do not trust the world, they will abandon us, and here’s Chamberlain returning from Munich with the black umbrella and we will bomb them alone.

Burg has a fairly standard left-leaning view of the Palestinian question: even now, with Hamas in control of Gaza, the longer Israel delays in coming to terms with a sovereign Palestinian state, the more Palestinian society will radicalize and embrace maximalist, jihadi ideologies, and the more Israeli society will lose its moral sense. But some of the views that Burg expressed in the interview were far from standard. He told Shavit that civil disobedience would have been preferable to the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto and that Israel should give up its nuclear weaponry in exchange for an unspecified “deal” with its Arab neighbors. Israel’s “law of return,” which allows any Jew around the world to immigrate and become a citizen, was “dynamite” in the Arab world, he said, and needed to be reëvaluated. One subject that especially infuriated Shavit, and provoked countless letters to the editor, e-mail screeds, and editorial-page rebuttals, was Burg’s depiction of the European Union as an almost irresistibly attractive “biblical utopia” and his flouting of the fact that he holds a French passport, because his wife is French-born, and voted in the recent French elections. When Shavit asked Burg if he recommended that all Israelis acquire a second passport, Burg replied, “Whoever can”—a moment of determined cosmopolitanism. Shavit sarcastically called Burg “the prophet of Brussels.” He went on:

SHAVIT: There really is a deep anti-Zionist pattern in you. Emotionally, you are with German Jewry and American Jewry. They excite you, thrill you, and by comparison you find the Zionist option crude and spiritually meagre. It broadens neither the heart nor the soul.

BURG: Yes, yes. The Israeli reality is not exciting. People are not willing to admit it, but Israel has reached the wall. Ask your friends if they are certain their children will live here. How many will say yes? At most fifty per cent. In other words, the Israeli élite has already parted with this place. And without an élite there is no nation.

SHAVIT: You are saying that we are suffocating here for lack of spirit.

BURG: Totally. We are already dead. We haven’t received the news yet, but we are dead. It doesn’t work anymore. It doesn’t work. . . . There is no one to talk to here. The religious community of which I was a part—I feel no sense of belonging to it. The secular community—I am not part of it, either. I have no one to talk to. I am sitting with you and you don’t understand me, either.

This was not the first time that Burg had outraged some of his countrymen. In 2003, when Hamas was carrying out a suicide-bombing campaign, he published an article in the mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth (which was republished worldwide), saying, “Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centers of Israeli escapism.” That statement caused a sensation not only because of the offices Burg held but also because of his ambitions. “Once I wanted very much to be prime minister,” he admitted to Shavit. “It burned like fire in my bones.” He allowed that he had been living “a lie” while he was in government. “I was not myself.” Now he was very much himself, a man with multiple identities, “beyond Israeli,” a universal humanist.

In Ha’aretz, Burg was prepared to explore his spiritual options and defend his quest for material well-being. Even as he lamented lost values, he made no apologies for going to court to retain the perks of his old job (particularly a chauffeur-driven jeep) or for his desire to leave behind public service for business. “Life is not just to be a pioneer with a hoe and a bold fighter at Lions Gate,” he said. “Life is also to be a merchant in Warsaw. Unequivocally, that is a richer totality in life.”

Soon after the interview was published, Otniel Schneller, a Knesset member from Ehud Olmert’s centrist Kadima Party, said that when Burg dies he should be denied burial in the special section of Mt. Herzl National Cemetery, in Jerusalem, reserved for national leaders. “He had better search for a grave in another country,” Schneller said. One letter to the Jerusalem Post compared Burg to young people who, after military service, go off to India to find their spiritual selves in an ashram. “Yesteryear, Burg would have been disowned as at least a lunatic,” the columnist Sarah Honig wrote in the same paper. “The grave danger is that today he gives voice and lends insidious quasi-respectability to what was heretofore unutterable. By tomorrow, the uncontrollable infestation he spreads might confer outright legitimacy on Israel’s delegitimatization.” If and when Israel’s borders changed, Honig continued, “Burg probably won’t stick around to risk the ensuing slaughter. The new Wandering Jew will pack his sinister seeds and propagate his wicked wandering weeds from afar.”

My own unscientific survey suggested that criticism of Burg was, with few exceptions, general and crossed ideological lines. Conservatives like the former Likud adviser Dore Gold said that Burg’s analysis was “dead wrong: what we used to call crum pshat—twisted interpretation—in the Yeshiva world.” A range of prominent political and cultural figures on the left—Yossi Beilin, the chairman of the Meretz-Yachad Party; Shulamit Aloni, a feminist and a former education minister; A. B. Yehoshua and Meir Shalev, both well-known novelists; and the peace activist Janet Aviad and the philosopher Avishai Margalit, a founder of Peace Now—expressed a familial disgust, or worse, for their wayward brother. They sensed in him a kind of undergraduate universalism, a table talk at once snobbish and half-baked. Burg’s remarks about Edenic Europe and his French passport were hypocritical, a particularly Israeli form of bad taste at a time when it could least be tolerated. “For the so-called head of the Zionist movement to say all this—to say, ‘Get another passport for your kids,’ ” Avishai Margalit said to me. “It’s like the Pope giving sex tips.”

“Avrum is a friend, but I felt what most people felt—that, beyond the ideological debate, there is something profoundly wrong in his character,” Yossi Klein Halevi, a writer, said. “You don’t take all the perks of the Zionist movement and refuse to relinquish them and then repudiate the most cherished notions of Zionism at the same time. There’s something smarmy about it. He is so totally out of touch with Israeli reality that I’m appalled that he ever had any positions of Israeli authority. That interview really destroyed him, or he destroyed himself.”

Avrum Burg lives with his wife in the tiny village of Nataf, in the hills west of Jerusalem. They have six children, all grown. Burg’s bungalow is surrounded by shrubbery, desert blooms, bougainvillea, and a tiny lawn. The Israeli Arab village of Abu Ghosh is a few minutes down the road, and the border with the West Bank is little more than a thousand yards away. The house in Nataf is quiet except for the mewling of cats, whinnying horses, and the attention-beseeching barks of Burg’s dog, Buling, who is missing his left hind leg. The dog, Burg explained, lost the leg when, on patrol with one of Burg’s sons in the West Bank city of Nablus, he leaped at a Palestinian gunman just as he was firing his gun. “Buling saved my son’s life,” Burg said, “so we had to adopt him.”

Burg is a vegetarian, and fit; he has taken up marathon running. He is nearly bald, and wears a small knit yarmulke. Normally, this is the yarmulke of the modern Orthodox, though Burg seemed eager to emphasize his disaffection from all things Orthodox; he told me of his affinity for B’nai Jeshurun, a synagogue on New York’s Upper West Side where some of the rabbis are women and the sermons are as likely to quote Martin Luther King as Maimonides. “My alliance with the people at B’nai Jeshurun,” he said, “is much more immediate and intensive and important for me than my alliance with my nephew or my cousin, who lives two kilometres away in the West Bank, a fundamentalist settler.”

Burg comes from a conservative Zionist family; his father helped found Mafdal, the National Religious Party. But when he started out in politics he joined the Labor Party; he was deeply influenced by Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a scientist and philosophy professor at Hebrew University who had contempt for the Greater Israel movement’s conflation of religion and politics and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Leibowitz referred to abusive Israeli soldiers as “Judeo-Nazis” and was so upset by the sight of the festivities around the Western Wall after the Six-Day War that he referred to it as a “disco wall.” In the pursuit of increasingly higher offices, Burg avoided such language. He held back, he self-censored. “You’re into the system,” he said. “You’re in the tunnel. I was a devoted politician and so I talked the talk.”

But then, he said, “after some fifteen, twenty years in political life I had a feeling all of a sudden that, to use the Biblical term, Israel was the kingdom without prophesy. I realized that the three founding narratives of the national idea of Israeliness were over: the mass immigration to the land, aliyah; the security of the land; and the settling of the land. All three had served their purpose and were no longer the core of the nation’s narratives. I asked myself what was the alternative. This was a long process of thought. I didn’t feel that the political system in Israel was trying to renew its thinking.”

In 2001, Burg attempted to succeed Ehud Barak as leader of the Labor Party and lost. Thwarted, if not entirely humbled, he quit the Knesset in 2004. At one point in the last months of his political life, he said, “I went on a very long walk on the Appalachian Trail. I went for five weeks and crossed half the state of Connecticut, the whole state of New York, and half the state of New Jersey. I saw maybe twelve people, none of them Jewish—for the first time in my life. I did a lot of thinking, and I realized that I had to change the pace of my life.”

In “Defeating Hitler,” Burg writes that one of the most dispiriting aspects of Israeli political conversation is the constant reference point of the slaughter of six million Jews in the nineteen-forties. “The most optimistic years in the state of Israel were 1945 to 1948,” he said to me. “The farther we got from the camps and the gas chambers, the more pessimistic we became and the more untrusting we became toward the world. It was a shock to me. Didn’t we, the politicians, feed the public? Didn’t we cheapen the sanctity of the Holocaust by using it about everything? Some people say, ‘Occupation? You call this occupation? This is nothing compared to the absolute evil of the Holocaust!’ And if it is nothing compared to the Holocaust then you can continue. And since nothing, thank God, is comparable to the ultimate trauma it legitimatizes many things.” Burg said that contemporary Israelis “are not at the stage to be sensitive enough to what happens to others and in many ways are too indifferent to the suffering of others. We confiscated, we monopolized, world suffering. We did not allow anybody else to call whatever suffering they have ‘holocaust’ or ‘genocide,’ be it Armenians, be it Kosovo, be it Darfur.

“In the last years, Israeliness has confined itself for itself only and lost interest almost for what happens in the world,” he went on. “For me, Israel is shrinking into its own shell rather than struggling for a better world. Who is responsible for identity? The ultraOrthodox. They sit in the yeshivot”—the religious schools. “Who is responsible for our fundamental relation to the soil? The settlers. The two tribes responsible for the spiritual dimension and the territorial dimension are anti-modern Israel.”

Burg is ambivalent about the kind of support that the Israeli government has traditionally received from the United States government and the American Jewish community. His views, in fact, are not far from those expressed in a controversial article published last year in the London Review of Books, by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, denouncing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for subordinating American policy to Israeli interests and, by doing so, radicalizing public opinion in the Arab world.

“Can you imagine the European Union with a lobby or a PAC for the Knesset?” Burg said. “Maybe this was O.K. in the early fifties, but today I don’t need it.” He would prefer that Israel take no financial aid from the United States: “I don’t like it. A state like mine should live on its own means.” What Israel does need from its superpower ally is the impetus to move forward on negotiations with the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world, no matter how paralyzed, fractured, and desperate the situation now appears. A purposeful American President, he said, can always push forward even the most conservative Israeli Prime Minister. “Even Yitzhak Shamir shlepped to Madrid” for a peace conference in 1991, he said. “Israel needs dramatic decisions, like de Gaulle giving up Algeria.”

The longer Israel waits to resolve the Palestinian question, Burg said, the more intractable the problem becomes and the more deeply it scars the psyches of both sides. In towns near Gaza, like Sderot, the political outcry is not for peace talks but for military action. Among some right-wing Israeli politicians, there is open talk of schemes to “transfer” Palestinians to Jordan or other neighboring Arab countries, and this alarms Burg: “You hear the conversation in the Knesset, you hear it in the public, you see the graffiti ‘Arabs out’—like Juden raus. I don’t care all that much about the right-wing hoodlum who writes the graffiti so much as I do the municipalities that don’t erase it. The seeds of national chauvinism are here and flourishing. Of course, I can understand all the fears—can you imagine an American kid hit by a foreign rocket in Chevy Chase? Can you imagine the hysteria? I’ve watched Jack Bauer very closely. ‘24’ iconizes the fears of America. So if this seems right in Los Angeles it must be right in Sderot.”

Although Burg is now trying to make a living as a businessman, there are those who think that “Defeating Hitler” is an attempt to reënter the political discussion and, eventually, the electoral arena. And, in fact, Burg’s views on some issues, if not his language, are in keeping with the Israeli mainstream. Even now, with Palestinian politics in chaos, around two-thirds of Israelis, and almost as many Palestinians, are ready to accept a two-state solution—an independent Palestine in Gaza and the West Bank with part of Jerusalem as its capital. What Ari Shavit and so many others are less willing to accept is Burg’s harsh diagnosis of “Israeliness.”

“The comparison with pre-Nazi Germany is absurd,” Shavit said over lunch one afternoon in Jerusalem. “Also, Israel was much more militaristic in the old days. I don’t like the role of generals in political life, and I regret the lack of a Truman to restrain the influence of generals—a tough, decent civilian who understands the need to use power but who is decisive in controlling the Army. But there is nothing here of that Junker tradition or even anything like America’s military élites and academies. Israelis live in an open, free society with a very free spirit, even verging on anarchy. To describe us as a Bismarckian state with expansionist chauvinism—if there was a grain of truth to that, it was thirty years ago! Soldiers here take off their uniforms as soon as they come home. They’re not proud of their uniforms or their ranks. Wearing a uniform doesn’t get you girls.” There are anti-Arab racists in Israel, he added, but nothing like those in Burg’s favorite part of the world. “There are actual racist parties in Continental Europe that are far more powerful than any of the sickening elements here,” Shavit said. “There is no chance that an Israeli Day parade will draw as many as the number of people who came out for the Gay Pride parade in Tel Aviv. So to describe this as a Prussian Sparta is ridiculous.”

One morning, Shavit and I drove south to Sderot, which is surely the most anxious—and Burg-resistant—town in Israel. Sderot is a “development town,” one of many towns that began as absorption sites in the nineteen-fifties for “Oriental” Jews, mainly religious and poor, from Morocco, Algeria, and other Muslim countries. More recently, many immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who are generally low-income and politically conservative, have moved to such towns. Sderot, with a population of twenty-four thousand, is the closest Israeli town to the Gaza Strip—about half a mile from Beit Hanoun, just over the border. Since 2001, Sderot has been hit by nearly five thousand homemade Qassam missiles launched from Beit Hanoun by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other groups. Qassams are extremely inaccurate, but they have exacted a toll, especially psychologically. The rockets have killed eleven Israelis in Sderot—far fewer than the Gazans who have been killed by Israeli F-16s, helicopter gunships, and troops—and have succeeded in terrorizing the town. In the second half of May, when hundreds of rockets fell on Sderot, eighty per cent of the population evacuated, according to city officials.

The mayor, Eli Moyal, a rangy, chain-smoking Moroccan who has been called the Rudy Giuliani of Israel by his admirers, has demanded that the Olmert government take more severe military actions against Gaza and has denounced the leadership for failing to spend enough on shelters. The shelter problem has been addressed by Arcadi Gaydamak, one of the most mysterious figures in Israel. He is a Russian-born, multi-passport-holding billionaire oligarch who is wanted in France for tax evasion and for making illegal arms deals with Angola. (He has denied any wrongdoing.) Gaydamak has provided temporary housing for residents from Sderot during heavy periods of attack, and last summer, during the war with Hezbollah, he underwrote a tent village on the beach in Nitzanim for people fleeing the shelling in towns in northern Israel. Gaydamak recently bought Beitar Jerusalem, the popular soccer team supported by the city’s political conservatives, and used his money to improve its roster. Last year, he offered the people of Sderot free vacations to the beach resort of Eilat; and he has even talked—in Russian and English; he speaks almost no Hebrew—about running for mayor of Jerusalem.

When I asked Moyal about Gaydamak, he took a long drag on his cigarette, with such force that he burned it to the filter.

“Aaacchh,” he said, exhaling at last. “Don’t make me talk too much about . . . him.” The Gaydamak phenomenon was evidence of a failed government. Nor was Moyal pleased, he said, to have received a gift of more than two million dollars from an American evangelical group for the purpose of reinforcing buildings against rocket attacks. Moyal came to office hoping to build schools, and he has ended up on the borderline of what is widely known in Israel as “Hamastan.” Even as the Israeli government, along with the United States, tries to bolster the Fatah president, Mahmoud Abbas, in the West Bank, with funds and diplomatic blandishments, Hamas has an absolute hold over Gaza.

“Look,” Moyal said. “Hamas wants to empty Sderot. If we experience a hundred rockets a day—and Hamas says it has ten thousand rockets in its arsenal—no one will stay, and Hamas will be able to show the world that it can beat Israel with its primitive arms. It’s so simple: make Hamas pay a price for this. But the Israeli reaction is nothing. And if Sderot collapses this will be the end of Israel. Then Hamas will reach Ashdod,” ten miles farther north. “And then what? Evacuate Ashdod, a city of two hundred thousand people? Imagine if they start launching rockets from Judea and Samaria”—the West Bank—“and they hit Tel Aviv.”

Moyal said that if the United States could send troops thousands of miles to Afghanistan to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban, Olmert could surely order a more decisive force into Gaza. Sharon’s unilateral disengagement, in August, 2005, he said, had been a disaster: Hamas controlled Gaza and the Qassams had not stopped. “The big mistake is that this was all for nothing. At the time, the defense minister under Sharon, Shaul Mofaz, said that if after disengagement there was just one Qassam Gaza City would be shut down. We’ve had a few thousand rockets since then.”

Moyal expressed disgust for the generation of Israeli politicians now in their forties and fifties—not least Avraham Burg—and said that it was because of their failure that “we are living in a retro age,” in which the emerging contenders for Prime Minister are two former Prime Ministers: Barak, of Labor, and, Moyal’s preference, Benjamin Netanyahu, of Likud.

Later, Moyal took me to the police station where the municipality stores debris from the missiles that have fallen on Sderot. About a hundred of the rockets—twisted metal tubes, thicker ones by Hamas, thinner by Islamic Jihad—lay on a set of shelves. “Here is the latest harvest!” he said, as if the distorted metal were a rack of prize melons. The police paint the date on the rockets the day they fall. Moyal pointed to one from the previous morning, which exploded in a scrubby field on the edge of town. “This is yesterday’s, fresh from the oven.”

Nearby, in a tiny office, a few young Army technicians monitored a series of computer screens. They were getting satellite information from surveillance cameras, including cameras mounted on a blimp that hovers above Gaza. More than ninety per cent of the time, when rockets are launched toward Sderot from Gaza, the system, called Red Dawn, picks up their flight and an alarm sounds throughout the town.

“You have about fifteen seconds to take cover,” Moyal said.

Most Israelis believe that the occupation of Arab lands is untenable, and they also wonder how, when both Palestinian and Israeli politics have degenerated, the economy has soared. The Tel Aviv stock-exchange index has gone up two hundred and ten per cent in the past four years.

In the coming months, it may turn out that the most important constituency applying pressure to the Israeli government to engage the Palestinians in diplomatic negotiations will be not the activists or the left wing of the Labor Party but, rather, the entrepreneurs and managers who run such successful companies as Teva, Check Point, and Iscar. According to Bernard Avishai, a consulting editor with Harvard Business Review and the author of “The Tragedy of Zionism,” the business élites know that political unrest and, of course, potential war on any front threatens their interests. Those same businessmen are also wary of the most right-wing sector of society: the thirty-eight per cent of the Jewish population that wants the state to be run by religious law, and the thirty per cent that wants Yigal Amir, the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin, to be pardoned.

“The continued success of the economy depends on global companies being willing to let Israeli companies into their networks,” Avishai told me over lunch in Jerusalem. “If Israel collapses into chaos—if the Lebanon war had been six months instead of one—that could all end.”

Olmert and the two leading contenders to succeed him, Netanyahu and Barak, differ politically, but they are all closely connected to the business élites, and they can easily see that, decades after the country left behind its old semi-socialist pioneer economy for a modern one, it cannot afford to let its most educated and entrepreneurial young people leave for Europe and the United States. Avishai said that about a third of forty-five business and law students he taught a few years ago at the Interdisciplinary Center, in Herzliya, now live abroad, and many of them may never return. According to a study by the Institute for Economic and Social Policy at the Shalem Center, in Jerusalem, Israel is the world’s largest exporter of intellectual capital to the United States.

“Will the young people take the job offer in London from Goldman Sachs or will they stay here and wait for the missiles to fall?” Avishai said. “The question is, is this a good enough place to come back to when they are married and have children? Finally, the Israeli government has to confront its own crazies and create a national consensus on democratic ideals, enact a secular constitution, and really confront the settlers. So far, the government is only willing to say that it is making ‘painful’ moves. We are told that we have to grieve with the settlers, think about making deals, but quietly let on that we actually think these are the real Israeli pioneers. Bullshit. Avrum Burg might not express the need to change in the most effective way, but at least he has the courage to insist on it.” ♦

ILLUSTRATION: STEVE BRODNER

Fury As Israeli Textbook Admits Expulsions

2007-08-02T03:48:00.000+03:00

BEN LYNFIELD IN JERUSALEM

ISRAELI right-wingers are furious at the acknowledgement in a new schoolbook that Palestinians were forcibly expelled when Israel was established in 1948.
They claim it undermines Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish nation state.
Zevulun Orlev, the leader of the National Religious Party, called on the education minister, Yuli Tamir, to step down after she gave the go-ahead for the new textbook, which is much more honest about the 1948 war than many Israelis are.

"Some of the Arab residents were forced to leave their houses and some were expelled and became refugees in the neighbouring Arab countries," the book says.
The book says that what for Jews was a fight for Israeli independence was for Arabs "a catastrophe, a war of disaster and loss".

The departure from the official Israeli version that all Palestinians ran away during the 1948 fighting rather than being evicted, as many were, comes in a book called Living Together in Israel that is being introduced into schools among Israel's Arab minority this September.

Ms Tamir, a founder of the Peace Now movement and veteran Labour party MP, said the book "gives a balanced picture that enables the Arab pupil to read about his story.
One shouldn't expect that the Arab student will connect with a text that says the state of Israel was born and everyone danced in the streets".

Taleb al-Sanaa, an Arab MP, termed the new text "a significant step".

"In order for there to be historical reconciliation we need an end to the brushing aside and ignoring of what happened during the [1948] catastrophe," he said.

Dalia Fenig, an education ministry official, said the text was not being introduced into textbooks for Israeli Jewish eight-year-olds.

Right-wing politicians have reacted furiously to the book. "This is an anti-Zionist decision, which erases Jewish history and denies that the state of Israel is a Jewish state," said Mr Orlev.

Limor Livnat, a former education minister from the right-wing Likud party, said: "The moment that you teach pupils in the Arab sector that Jews expelled them from their homes and that the establishment of Israel was a catastrophe, they are liable to learn from this that they should undertake armed struggle against the state of Israel.

"The result will be that under the generous sponsorship of our education system, we will with our own hands be raising a fifth column here."

'All the dreams we had are now gone'

2007-07-24T14:34:00.000+03:00

NEW YORK - Even on a steaming hot day such as descended on New York last Monday, the Middle East looks very far away from the office of James D. Wolfensohn, 29 stories above Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. Construction staff in work boots, wearing hip- hugging tool belts, are still working industriously to complete the renovations - Wolfensohn is renting the entire floor. That will happen very soon, at which time Wolfensohn, 73, who was president of the World Bank for 10 years (1995-2005) and then spent 11 months as the Middle East envoy of the Quartet (the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations), will launch his new adventure. His sons are now working to raise $500 million to develop alternative fuel sources, and he will head up the vast new fund.

Wolfensohn's period in the Middle East has left its mark on him. He may have left Israel and the Palestinian territories at the end of April 2006, but Israel and the territories have not yet left him. Which is understandable.

An Australian-born American Jew, Wolfensohn arrived in the region three months before the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, brimming with good intentions. His decade as head of the World Bank, his relaxed temperament and his intimate acquaintance with the leaders of the Quartet made him an ideal candidate for the post of special envoy. His father, who served with the Jewish Battalions in World War I, planted emotional ties to Zionism and the region in his heart.

Wolfensohn landed in the Middle East in May 2005 in order to monitor the Israeli disengagement from Gaza and to help heal the badly ailing Palestinian economy. In the beginning he was full of hope: He was able to raise $9 billion ($3 billion a year for three years) to bolster the Palestinian economy, and in November 2005, three months after the disengagement, he served as the mediator between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in negotiations on transit routes and on access to and from the Gaza Strip. He also donated money of his own to help the Palestinians buy Israeli-owned greenhouses in Gaza.

However, the departure of Ariel Sharon from the political arena in January 2006, the fact that Wolfensohn's efforts were constantly undermined by none other than the U.S. administration, and the rise of Hamas to power combined to derail his mission. At the end of April 2006, fed up with both the Israelis and the Palestinians, and after understanding that he would not get backing from the Quartet, he decided to pack it in. He returned to the United States, where he divides his time between Manhattan and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and tried to leave the failed mission behind him.

For more than a year, Wolfensohn kept his feelings about his year in the Middle East to himself. He watched, appalled, as the disengagement plan failed and as violence continued to rage in the region. It was only after the recent takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas and the appointment of former British prime minister Tony Blair to the post he held that Wolfensohn agreed to speak on the record. Indeed, the impression is that he considers it his duty to do so.

Lost dreams

Even before he is asked about his reaction to Blair's appointment as the Quartet's emissary, Wolfensohn opens the conversation with something of a self-justification: "I don't think that when negotiations are going on at various different levels - and I'm reasonably well informed about what's going on - that intervention by a third party really adds much."

The current situation in the Middle East leaves him in despair. "I think it was certainly easier in that glowing moment when there appeared to be an agreement that would give hope to the Palestinians and security to the Israelis - and you need to have both. You need to have a secure Israel, which is very clear, and you need to have a Palestinian community that feels it can have hope. The polls show that Israelis and Palestinians have such a balance - they'd like to come to a deal on borders, they'd like to reach a situation in which each can get on with their lives and live side by side for centuries. I think the average person, whether it be Hamas or Fatah, or religious or not religious, would love to settle down and live.

"I think that there was a framework for that in the agreement that Condi [Condoleezza] Rice announced in my presence and in the presence of the European representative Javier Solana," Wolfensohn continues. "But in the months following, every aspect of the agreement was abrogated. In fact, the sadness of it is that the last remaining aspect - the opening to Egypt [via the border crossing] - has seen the international observers reducing their representation because of non-usage [of the terminal]. So all the dreams that we had then have now gone, and beyond that you now have an elected Hamas government and a split with Fatah and [PA Chairman] Abu Mazen, with a new prime minister, and you've got Hamas in Gaza. So we have an added difficulty in that we don't have two parties now, we have three. And one with whom neither of the other two wishes to deal."

However, in Wolfensohn's view, none of the sides can allow itself to observe from afar the new reality that has emerged in the region and to wait for it to change. "The reality is that you have 1.4 million Palestinians living in Gaza and you can't wish them away, you can't leave Gaza as a place where the rich and the intellectuals and the powerful can get out, and leave just the people who can't make a living - or can make a living if they could, but have no leadership. And military use or subjugation doesn't solve the problem, it seems to me."

It is Wolfensohn's view that "in the interest of Israel, in the interest of the Palestinians, there is a need to get things back to a situation where there is representation of all the Palestinian people in an entity that can deal with Israel to bring about, if Israel wishes, a two-state solution, which appears to be a thing Secretary [of State] Rice is now committed to." The situation, he says, cannot simply "be allowed to lie there, because just pretending that 1.4 million people can live in a sort of prison is not a solution at all. So I think it's going to require, on the part of Tony Blair or someone, some real negotiations to try and get this started."

Asked about another possible way out of the deadlock - with Israel taking the initiative and exerting pressure on the Palestinian population to rid itself of the Hamas leadership, or assassinating the organization's leaders in order to pave the way for Fatah to take control again - Wolfensohn shrugs his shoulders. "I'm not at all sure that Israel can determine what happens in Palestine, the Palestinian territories. There's been no evidence up to now that a decision taken by the Israelis will determine what the Palestinians do. I don't think personally that a military solution is a solution," he says dryly.

Corruption at the crossings

Wolfensohn sounds hurt and disappointed as he describes the slide into violence after the disengagement from Gaza. "Part of the reason it happened, in my view, is that the conditions in Gaza deteriorated so terribly," he explains. "If you recall, in the time of the withdrawal there was a day or two of people looting, but within 48 hours it was under control. Things were peaceful in Gaza, and this was not because of a military presence of the Israelis. It was because the Palestinians recognized that if they want to have any hope, they need to be in a more peaceful mode."

He toured the Gaza Strip with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) immediately after the PA asserted its authority there, and recalls a euphoric atmosphere that dissipated very quickly.

"I remember seeing the greenhouses with the chairman and looking at the fruits and everything, and there was a joyous atmosphere: 'Boy, we're about to get this going and we're going to have hotels by the beaches and we're going to have tourism and it's going to be fantastic, and the Palestinians really know how to be hosts.' But in the months afterward, first of all Arik [Sharon] became ill and the current prime minister came in, and there was a clear change of view."

At that time, Wolfensohn recalls, powerful forces in the U.S. administration worked behind his back: They did not believe in the border terminals agreement and wanted to undermine his status as the Quartet's emissary. The official behind this development, he says, was Elliot Abrams, the neoconservative who was appointed deputy national security adviser in charge of disseminating democracy in the Middle East - "and every aspect of that agreement was abrogated."

The non-implementation of the agreement naturally had serious economic consequences. According to Wolfensohn, the shattering of the great hope of normality, which the Palestinians experienced so deeply when the Israel Defense Forces and the settlers left the Gaza Strip, brought about the rise of Hamas. "Instead of hope, the Palestinians saw that they were put back in prison. And with 50 percent unemployment, you would have conflict. This is not just a Palestinian issue. If you have 50 percent of your people with no work, chances are they will become annoyed. So it's not, in my opinion, that Palestinians are so terrible; it is that they were in a situation where a modulation of views between one and the other became impossible.

"And you can blame the Palestinians because there were those among them who were firing rockets or you can blame the Israelis for overreacting," he continues. "But either way - whichever side you take - the situation that emerged was that you had 50 percent of the population frustrated, no resources, and a border which was corrupt on both sides. I saw it with my own eyes: Israelis and Palestinians, arm in arm, walking off together and clearly pricing how you could get your truck to the top of the line or get it through at all. It was an absolutely transparently corrupt system at the border - you had to buy your truck's way across. I thought it was a disgrace."

The issue of the greenhouses is especially painful to Wolfensohn because of his personal contribution to them. "Everything was rotting because you couldn't get the fruit. And if you went to the border, as I did many times, and saw tomatoes and fruit just being dumped on the side of the road, you would have to say that if you were a Palestinian farmer you'd be pretty upset. So my view is to try and not demonize the Palestinians. I'm not denying that there are Palestinians who fire rockets and do terrible things; I know that that happens. But to get a fundamental solution, you have to have hope on both sides."

Wolfensohn is not naive. He knows that the Hamas election victory in January 2006 did not derive only from the collapse of the border-crossings agreement after the disengagement, but also from the years-long corruption of the Fatah leadership. He says he cautioned Fatah representatives with whom he was in contact about this danger, but they ignored him.

"Fatah wasn't that popular at the time. A lot of people thought that the Fatah leadership was overpaid. The Palestinians, at least, did. They thought they had a dishonest leadership - not, I think, at the level of Abu Mazen, but at a ministerial level. They felt that there was an elite class that was taking advantage of the situation, and that the only way they could get some improvement was by electing a group that, at least at the time, was perceived as straightforward. My own opinion is that the decision to move to Hamas was partly ideological, but partly because of the failure of the Fatah leadership. I know that to be the case and so does everybody who was there." Wolfensohn had discussions with the Fatah leadership, he says, "but at the time they were pretty self-confident. If you look at [Mohammed] Dahlan, the people who were there, the informal leaders - there wasn't a lot of talk about Hamas ousting them."

Didn't they think it was a problem for them to drive their shiny Mercedes through refugee camps?

Wolfensohn: "I thought it was and said so many times. It's not only that, it's also the building of the big houses, the private armies. They said their polls showed that they'd win. What can you do? I'm an outsider. For any outsider there's a level to which you cannot penetrate."

Even though Wolfensohn identified the danger already then - in contrast to many observers and commentators, who see America's insistence on holding democratic elections in the PA as the factor that enabled Hamas to become so strong - he does not view this as a mistake. "I think that's a very hard question to answer, because although it's pretty clear that the tide had turned in terms of support for Hamas, there had been a promise of elections. I think probably that I, too, would have taken the position to press on, in the hope that the outcome might have been different."

Surprised by Bush

James Wolfensohn was born in Sydney, Australia in 1933. He is a graduate of the faculty of law of the University of Sydney, was the captain of the Australian fencing team at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, and served as an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force. After the Olympics he entered Harvard Business School, emerging with an MBA. He was then employed briefly by the Swiss-based cement company Holderbank (now Holcim), before returning to Australia and working in a number of banking firms, specializing in investments.

His principal employer in this period was the investment bank J. Henry Schroders. He served as a senior executive in the institution's London headquarters before becoming the managing director of its New York branch, a post he held from 1970 until 1976. Afterward Wolfensohn held a senior position with Salomon Brothers, the Wall Street investment bank.

In the 1970s, he became friends with the cellist Jacqueline du Pre and began to study the instrument with her when he was 41. He continues to take this hobby seriously and performs on various occasions. Wolfensohn says that if peace is ever attained between Israel and the Palestinians, he has an agreement in principle with Ehud Barak ("I like Ehud Barak, but that's largely because he's a pianist") and with a Palestinian violinist to give a joint concert.

Wolfensohn became an American citizen in 1980 and was already then considered a candidate to head the World Bank, after the tenure of Robert McNamara. When this did not happen, he established an investment firm bearing his name, and devoted much of his time to philanthropic activity. Among other public service activities, he was chairman of Carnegie Hall in New York and of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

In 1995, he was nominated by then-U.S. president Bill Clinton to be president of the World Bank, and won the unreserved support of the bank's board. His term was unanimously extended for another five years in 2005, making him the third person to hold the presidency for two consecutive terms (after Eugene Black and McNamara). During his term of office, Wolfensohn placed the emphasis on changing the institution's organizational culture, focusing attention not only on making loans, but also on creating economic growth in the Third World and reducing the rate of poverty throughout the world. He was surprised, he says, that President George Bush let him continue as president of the World Bank, instead of appointing one of his people to the post.

"No Democratic appointee kept his job, and he wanted to put in [Paul] Wolfowitz, so it was clear to me that I couldn't stay a day longer at the World Bank," he reveals. "It was very clear that it wasn't personal. It was practice. But they then asked me if I'd take on this other term, which was hugely unusual and I have no I idea why it happened. I was very surprised, and delighted."

'Small print'

According to James Wolfensohn, the major blame for the failure of his Middle East mission lies with him. "I feel that if anything, I was stupid for not reading the small print," he admits. "I was never given the mandate to negotiate the peace." The mandate he received, he says - which is identical to the one Tony Blair has now been given - was solely to try to improve the economic situation in the territories and to improve the Palestinians' situation in general, whereas he naively thought that this included intervention to advance peace.

"To be quite honest with you, I was so anxious to try to help. I was getting out of the World Bank, and I thought, you know, this is a good place to start. I was full of ideas and good intent, and everybody would see me and they would all discuss the peace process with me. I was given enough rope so that I could go to the G7 [meetings of finance ministers from seven industrialized nations] and see any leader that I wanted, and when I got out of the bank I just continued, not because of the need to see them, but because I thought this job was pretty good, because I was really helping to do something that I was keenly interested in."

In 2005, Wolfensohn's access to the G7 leaders may have made it easier for him to extract from them a commitment for a $9-billion package to ameliorate the situation of the Palestinian economy. However, he says, afterward Condoleezza Rice and Elliot Abrams made it very clear to him that intervention in peace negotiations was not within his purview. "I had to fight my way into the November [2005] meeting when Secretary Rice announced the six-point plan. I was there with Javier Solana when it was announced, and what I didn't realize was that that was the death penalty, because after that the Israelis and the Americans took apart that agreement one by one, and I knew less and less what was happening. And my team of 18 people was fired. So I was left with no office and no people, and even though they asked me to stay on, it was pretty clear to me that the only thing to do was to get out."

Asked whether the disengagement plan was not one big mistake, because of its unilateral character and because Israel has been attacked relentlessly from the Gaza Strip since its implementation, Wolfensohn waxes nostalgic for Ariel Sharon. "I don't think it was a mistake, if it had been followed by the second part of the disengagement - to create a self-sustaining entity that could be the first step to Palestinian statehood that could allow the Palestinians to live their lives and develop a sense of national integrity. That was an opportunity that was missed, and at the heart of it was Arik [Sharon]. He was an unlikely negotiator of peace because of his record, but I have to say that personally I found him very pragmatic. I can't say that he was fond of Palestinians, but he knew that for the future, you couldn't have an Israel full of Palestinians. That demographic imperative made it essential that there would be some kind of two-state solution."

Sharon, Wolfensohn continues, "was hugely suspicious of me, as he was of the Quartet, but in the end he accepted me and I think I knew what was in his mind. I think he saw the Gaza withdrawal as a very positive thing. When Condi [Rice] came over for those meetings in November [2005], he and I at that stage were becoming pretty good friends. He got up from the table where he was sitting with Condi - and that's something he never did - came across to my table and gave me a hug. He was prime minister, so it was for me to [rise to] greet him, but he did it in a very obvious way. I think personally that he had the strength and the standing, and in my opinion the determination to move through with the two-state solution.

"I don't blame [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert. He doesn't have the strength or the leadership that Arik had. Arik, as you remember, confronted the nation and said, 'If you want to attack someone, attack me.' Ehud [Olmert] has not had the standing and his popularity is quite low," Wolfensohn adds, smiling.

"I have no doubts that I may have made tactical, strategic mistakes, but the basic problem was that I didn't have the authority. The Quartet had the authority, and within the Quartet it was the Americans who had the authority. It was not a Quartet decision to close the office," he explains, in a very unsubtle hint. "There was never a desire on the part of the Americans to give up control of the negotiations, and I would doubt that in the eyes of Elliot Abrams and the State Department team, I was ever anything but a nuisance."

Not such a big deal

Wolfensohn is convinced that he was also perceived as a nuisance by Olmert and by Dov Weissglas, Sharon's close adviser, who stayed on in the initial period after Sharon was incapacitated by a stroke. Wolfensohn feels that he may have been able to wield influence in matters of little importance, but that he did not have access to the real decision makers after Sharon's departure. "I was mature enough to understand that at the main gate, I had no position," he says.

"My worry for Tony Blair is that if you read the mandate he has - it's exactly the same as mine. It talks about helping both sides, helping the Palestinians, but there's nothing there about negotiating peace. I would only hope that there's a greater mandate given to him, because even with the superior standing that he has over the standing I had, if he doesn't have a mandate ... If halfway through the negotiations your office is closed and someone takes over the negotiations, you have to say you failed," Wolfensohn says, breaking into loud, bitter laughter.

Did you speak with Blair after his appointment?

"I have no comment on that."

How do you assess his chances?

"Better than mine were. He is closer to George Bush. He was prime minister. I do not believe there's much time. I think it is difficult. But we're fortunate to have somebody with experience."

Precisely because he views himself as an analyst who observes the global arena from a bird's-eye view, Wolfensohn is convinced that the Palestinians - and even more, the Israelis - cannot allow themselves to waste time. He also disputes the prevailing concept in the region, which holds that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is central to the future of the world.

"In the end, both sides have to recognize that they are 11 million people in a sea of 350 million Arabs," Wolfensohn says, and goes on to illustrate the proportions numerically: "Over the last four years, the war in Israel and Palestine has cost the international community - including military expenditure - somewhere between $10 and $20 billion. The Iraq war has cost $600 billion. The Afghanistan war has cost between $50 billion and $100 billion. You have a nuclear threat in Iran, you have the issue of Syria and which way it goes, and you have a doubling of the Arab population in something like between 10 and 15 years. So instead of 350 million, there will be 700 million. Israel may grow from six million to eight million, if they're lucky, or nine million.

"There has to be a moment when Israelis and Palestinians understand that they are a sideshow," Wolfensohn continues. "The real global politics is the politics of war and the politics of nuclear weaponry and the weight of the population. In the Western press the Israeli-Palestinian conflict gets a lot of coverage, but you should see the press in the developing countries, as I did when I visited more than 140 countries: It's not such a big deal there. I don't see any way to argue that Israel's position is improving."

Wolfensohn carefully avoids giving a reply to the question of whether the continuation of the conflict and the worsening of Israel's situation are liable to produce a regime with apartheid characteristics. At the same time, he notes that Israel has for some time been suffering from a brain drain, and adds that when the country reaches junctures of major decisions, the strength of the security establishment always overcomes that of the civil forces in society.

"The expenses on military and intelligence in Israel are probably greater than in any democracy I know of, and I can understand that, given the situation, but as a continuing characteristic of the country, I don't think it's hopeful. To me it is so bloody sad that all the creativity you have in Israeli youth has to go through this experience in the army, risking their lives," Wolfensohn says, casting his gaze far beyond Central Park. "Israeli youth finish high school and spend two-three years in the army, and then go to Thailand and other places and smoke pot to get over it, then come back and start their lives when they're 24. I don't think that's an ideal way for the next generation of Israel to live their lives."

Did your mission in Israel change the way you perceive Zionism and Israel?

"No. I still believe in that. But Israelis and Palestinians really should get over thinking that they're a show on Broadway. They are a show in the Village, off-off-off-off Broadway. I hope I don't get into too much trouble for saying this, but what the hell, that's what I believe, and I'm 73."

Unmoved by the Humanitarian Crisis

2007-06-19T11:03:00.000+03:00

Nehemia Shtrasler (Haaretz)

From the perspective of Likud chief Benjamin Netanyahu, the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip proves that the right-wing stance was correct all along. Israel didn't have to quit Gaza in 2005 or withdraw from Lebanon in 2000, Netanyahu says. The conclusion of Netanyahu and National Union's Zvi Hendel is that Israel should not negotiate over either the Golan Heights or the West Bank, because Syrian President Bashar Assad is unreliable and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is weak.

Such a position makes it seem like rockets weren't being fired on Sderot when Israel was deep in Gaza, and Hamas wouldn't have taken control of the strip if the Gush Katif settlement bloc had remained in Israel's hands. Except that if Israel had not withdrawn from Gaza, the Palestinian fire would have been aimed at the settlers, and the Israel Defense Forces would have paid a heavy price to protect them.

But Netanyahu and Hendel are not moved by the death toll. According to their thinking, we will still be living by our swords in another hundred years. They are also unmoved by the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. They think Israel was charitable toward the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza because the quality of their lives rose during the years of occupation.

But the facts indicate otherwise. In 1970, the gross national product in the West Bank was $250 per capita, and today it is $1,300 - five times as hi gh in nominal terms. During the same period, Jordan experienced 10-fold growth, going from $280 to $2,800.

Similarly, Gaza's GNP rose from $170 per capita in 1970 to $1,000 today, growing six times, while the figure in Egypt rose from $200 to $1,800 - nine times. In other words, the Palestinians' conditions under Israeli rule worsened compared with the region, not to mention the large gap between them and us. Israel's GNP per capita is 20 times larger than the Palestinians'.

Israel has used the resources of the West Bank and Gaza shamefully, taking full advantage of the occupied areas. For years, Israel prevented the Palestinian territories from developing and setting up factories due to opposition from Israeli industrialists, but exploited the cheap and humiliated labor pool. Palestinians stood on endless lines at the Erez Crossing starting at 2 A.M. to land a day's work in Israel. Israel also saw the 3.5 million residents of the West Bank and Gaza as a captive market for Israeli products, generally those of inferior quality. To this day, Israeli factories in the fashion industry continue to take advantage of the cheap labor in Gaza for simple sewing work.

In addition, Israel prevented the Palestinian Authority from setting up a large power station so that it could remain dependent on the Israel Electric Corporation. Israel also prevented the construction of a port so it could control all the imports and exports, and put Dor Energy in charge of supplying the territories with gas.

For 40 years, Israel imprisoned 1.4 million people in the large, neglected and backward refugee camp that is the Gaza Strip, turning them into "the poor that are cast out," as Isaiah would have it. There is a 60-percent unemployment rate in Gaza, and residents depend for sustenance on the rice and hummus they get from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. It is a hopeless situation. Parents are unable to provide their children with food, the housing is dismal, the poverty is humiliating, and the filth, neglect and overcrowding cause despair and aggression.

There is virtually no family in Gaza that has not had relatives killed or wounded, that has not suffered degradation. In such a situation, they have nothing to lose other than life itself. It has become clear that when despair goes sufficiently deep, even life holds no attraction. Last week a woman in her ninth month of pregnancy, a mother of eight children, was arrested on her way to carry out a suicide bombing.

When the Palestinians had a strong and widely accepted leader, Yasser Arafat, with whom one could arrive at a final-status solution, Israel depicted him as a monster and imprisoned him in his Muqata headquarters until his death. When Abbas, an easygoing leader, came along afterward, Israel humiliated him and weakened him and damaged the Palestinian Authority. Israel wouldn't agree to let him have even the accomplishment of the withdrawal from Gaza. No wonder then that Hamas won the elections.

There is a lot of talk over here about the large gaps between the income of the top Israeli decile and the bottom decile, gaps that are said to endanger the stability of Israeli society. But what about the gaps between us and the Palestinians? Don't they endanger us? After all, no one wants to live in a "villa in the jungle," as Labor Party leader Ehud Barak put it. No one wants his neighbor to be poor, unemployed and bitter, to be planning to take revenge on him. But that is precisely our situation. That is where our leaders have brought us. Netanyahu and Hendel, though, aren't bothered by this. They want to continue to lead the country on the path of destruction and bereavement - because Rachel's Tomb is more important.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nurit Peled-Elhanan, laureate of the Sakharov Prize

2007-06-18T23:33:00.000+03:00

Speech delivered at the Tel Aviv demonstration to commemorate 40 years of the occupation

Good evening. It is a great honour for me to stand on this stage beside my friend and brother Bassam Aramin, a man of the Palestinian peace camp, one of the founders of the Combatants for Peace movement of which two of my sons, Elik and Guy, are members of. Only last week, on Tuesday in Anata and on Thursday in Tul Karem, the Combatants for Peace movement succeeded in organizing two massive gatherings and recruited 10 thousands Palestinians to their goal – a joint non-violent struggle against the occupation through close cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians. If not for the racist laws of the State of Israel all those of thousands of people could be with us here this evening to prove once and for all that we have a partner.

Bassam and I are both victims of the cruel occupation that has been corrupting this country for forty years now. The two of us came this evening to lament the fate of this place that has buried our two daughters – Smadar – the bud of the fruit* and Abir – the perfume of the flower*, who were murdered at an interval of ten years, ten years during which this country has filled with the blood of children and the underground kingdom of children on which we tread day by day and hour by hour has grown to overflowing.

But what unites Bassam and me is not just the death that the Occupation sentenced us to. What unites us is principally faith and a willingness to raise the children that have been left to us so that they will never again allow corrupt, greedy and power-hungry politicians and generals who thirst for blood and conquest to rule over their lives and set them against each other. No more will they allow the racism that has spread over this country to lead them off the path of peace and brotherhood that they have paved for themselves. Because only that brotherhood can bring down the wall of racism that is being built before our very eyes.

For forty years now, racism and megalomania have dictated our lives. Forty years during which more than four million people do not know the meaning of freedom of movement. Forty years in which Palestinian children are born and raised as prisoners in their homes that the Occupation converted into a prison, deprived at the outset of all the rights that human beings are entitled to because they are human. Forty years during which Israeli children are educated in racism of the type that has been unknown in the civilized world for decades. Forty years during which they have learned to hate the neighbours just because they are neighbours, to fear them without knowing them, to see a quarter of the citizens of the State as a demographic danger and an enemy within, and to relate to the residents of the ghettos created by the policy of occupation as a problem that must be solved. Only sixty years ago Jews were residents of ghettos and seen in the eyes of their oppressors as a problem that needed to be solved. Only sixty years ago the Jews were enclosed behind ugly concrete and electrified walls topped with watchtowers manned by erect armed figures, and deprived of the ability to make a living or to raise their children with dignity. Only sixty years ago racism exacted its price from the Jewish people. Today racism rules in the Jewish state, tramples people’s dignity underfoot and deprives them of liberty, condemns all of us to lives of hell. For forty years now the Jewish head has unceasingly been bowed in worship of racism while the Jewish mind is devising the most creative ways to devastate and demolish and destroy this country. That is what remains of the Jewish genius, which has become Israeli. Jewish compassion, Jewish mercy, Jewish cosmopolitan-ness, love of humanity and respect for the other have been long forgotten. Their place was claimed by racism. It was only racism that motivated a Border Guard soldier to pull the trigger from inside his armoured vehicle and to shoot at the head of little Abir as she huddled by the wall of her school in fear of the military vehicle that was plopped down in the schoolyard as if it owned the place. It is only racism that motivates the drivers of bulldozers to demolish houses on top of their occupants, to destroy vineyards and fields, to uproot centuries-old olive trees. Only racism can invent roads on which circulation is classified on the basis of race, and it is only racism that motivates our children to humiliate women who could be their mothers and to abuse old people at the evil checkpoints, to strike young people their own age who, like them, want to drive with their families to bathe in the sea, and to look on impassively as women give birth on the road. It is only pure racism that motivates our best pilots to drop one-ton bombs on residential buildings and it is only racism that permits those criminals to sleep well at night.

Because racism eliminates shame. This racism has erected for itself a monument in its own image – the monument of an ugly, rigid, menacing and invasive concrete wall. A monument that proclaims to the whole world the banishment of shame from this country. This wall is our wall of shame, it is testimony to the fact that we have turned from being a light unto the nations to “an object of disgrace to the nations and a mockery to all the countries.” **

And this evening we must ask where we take our shame? How will we remove the disgrace? But first and foremost, how is it that the shame does not keep us from sleeping at night? How do we consent to have half our salaries be used for the execution of crimes against humanity?

How did it happen that we succeeded in restricting the shame to two columns in the newspaper, and to devote to it no more than the minutes that we devote to a cursory reading of the articles of Gideon Levy and Amira Hass, as one reads a report on a scenario that was known in advance?

How did it happen that we succeeded in packing endless daily suffering, hunger, malnutrition, children’s trauma, disablement, orphanhood and bereavement into one alienating word: “politics”?

How is it that our children continue to strut and swagger in the uniforms of brutality that they wear when they serve in the army of slaughter and destruction?

How is it that all the splendid institutions of the world stand aside and cannot do a thing to save one child from death or to remove one concrete block from the wall of shame? How is it that all the peace and human rights organizations are not able to stop the jeeps of the Border Guards that come to terrify schoolchildren and to kill them, are not able to stop one bulldozer on its way to demolish a house on top of its occupants, to rescue one olive tree from destruction or one schoolgirl who lost her way to school and found herself in the gunsights of the soldiers of the Occupation?

One of the answers to these questions is that the State of Israel is able to silence and paralyze the entire world because there was a Holocaust. The State of Israel has acquired a permit to abuse an entire nation because there is anti-Semitism. The State of Israel is bringing existential disaster – economic, social and human, on its citizens and on its subjects and no one dares to stop it because once there was Hitler. And all that while the survivors of the Holocaust are suffering the ignominy of hunger in this country.

This evening we must appeal to the world for help in ridding ourselves of the shame. This evening we must explain to the world that if it wants to rescue the people of Israel and the Palestinian people from the imminent holocaust that threatens all of us it is necessary to condemn the policy of occupation, the dominion of death must be stopped in its tracks. All war criminals who put away their uniforms and set out to travel in the world must be arrested, tried and imprisoned instead of being allowed to enjoy the pleasures of freedom while they are still dragging behind them a jingling cashbox full of war-crimes.

And the time has come for us to stop handing our children over to an educational establishment that plants in them false and racist values and teaches them that their contribution to society is summed up in the abuse and killing of other people’s children. The time has come for us to explain to them that the local population of this place is not divided into Jews and non-Jews as is written in their school-books, but into human beings who want to live in peace and quiet in spite of everything, such as Bassam Aramin and many others like him, who if not for the racial laws that restrict their movements would be standing with us today, and people who have lost their humanity and take pleasure in destruction and devastation. And the time has come for us to tell our children where they are living.

Today, while the entire civilized world enjoys slandering and smearing the Palestinian education system, there is no school-book in Israel that presents a picture of a Palestinian as a modern ordinary person. There is no school-book in Israel that presents a map that shows the true borders of the State. There is no school-book in Israel in which the word “occupation” appears. Our children are conscripted into the army of occupation without knowing the place in which they are living and without knowing its history and its people. They join the army imbued with hate and fear. Our children are educated to see everyone who is not Jewish as the Goy, the Other, who generation after generation seeks to destroy us. This education makes it easy for the military establishment to turn children into monsters.

Therefore the only way to prevent our children from becoming tools in the hands of the machine of destruction is to teach them the history of this place, to draw for them its borders, to help them to know the neighbours, their culture, their customs, their courtesy and their rights on the land where they live and lived for many generations before the Zionist Pioneers arrived at the Promised Land of Israel. And above all to teach them not to submit to the State, not torespect its authority, because the State is ruled by petty thieves and base opportunists who do not control their sexual and other impulses even in the most dire times and run this country according to the laws of the Mafia. You killed one of mine - I’ll kill a hundred of yours. You threw a home-made bomb at me - I’ll drop on you a hundred of the most elaborate and destructive bombs in the world that will leave no trace of you or your family or your neighbours. You burned one of my cars so I’ll burn one of your cities. That is the logic of the criminal world.

This evening we must think about those who are condemned to death in the next year, and of those who are condemned to fall into crime under the cover of the law and the uniform. We must rescue all of them. We must teach all of them not to obey orders that, even if they are legal according to the race laws of this State, are manifestly inhuman.clearly

And above all, this evening we must stop for a moment, all of us, and look into the face of little Abir Aramin, her head shot from behind, whose murderer will never face judgement in this country and will never be punished in any way he deserves, and ask ourselves,
Why does that streak of blood rip the petal of her cheek.***

* The literal meanings of the girls’ Hebrew and Arabic names.
** Ezekiel 22:4.
*** Anna Akhmatova

Israel wanted the dowry, not the bride

2007-06-18T23:25:00.000+03:00

By ASSAF ORON

Forty years ago this week, tiny Israel demolished the greatest Arab armies and acquired territories three times its size. For us Israelis, these newly occupied territories -- East Jerusalem, West Bank, Gaza, Golan, Sinai -- were love at first sight. The occupied people -- especially more than a million Palestinians -- much less so.

In Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol's words, "We want the dowry, not the bride." Legal experts concluded that settling Israelis in occupied territories would be illegal. The late Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Israel's leading intellectual, warned that occupation would turn Israel into a terror-ridden police state. But these voices were drowned in the euphoric din. The Israeli Defense Forces and Shin Bet secret police were ready; we embarked on a mission to have the cake and eat it.

Already in June 1967, citing "municipal unification," we annexed East Jerusalem, immediately confiscating land and building Jewish neighborhoods. The world looked the other way. Before long, all old borders were erased from our maps. New roads connected Israel with the territories. New settlements were built on "borrowed" land. We loved touring those biblical landscapes, and Palestinians seemed happy. After all, we brought them modernity and great jobs.

Their jobs: building our homes, washing dishes in our restaurants, tilling our fields. No civil or social rights. Palestinians became the ideal cheap foreign laborers -- ones who returned home every night.

The Shin Bet made sure Palestinians "looked happy," spreading its nets everywhere: recruiting collaborators, corrupting leaders, jailing or expelling incorruptible ones, torturing bad guys when needed. The IDF provided boots on the ground (including mine), liberal daily doses of humiliation and a system of kangaroo military courts.

The occupation is still intact. We have settled more than 400,000 Israelis beyond the 1967 borders, seamlessly integrating them into Israel. Palestinians are impoverished, demoralized, bitterly divided and oppressed by us more than ever. Considering the fate of other modern occupation regimes, our little "dowry" project seems like an astounding success. Or is it?
Many tend to forget, but settling Sinai and ignoring Egypt brought us the costly 1973 war. We gained peace by completely evacuating Sinai, but failed to apply the same logic elsewhere. So it happened again: Since 1987, East Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza have erupted with rebellions and terror waves, turning the occupation into an emotional drain and a financial sinkhole -- kept afloat only with U.S. support. Most Israelis don't visit the West Bank anymore, and Jewish Jerusalem suffers a mass exodus of its young.

Meanwhile, the have-the-cake-and-eat-it attitude permeates and corrupts Israeli society and politics to a frightening degree. Tribalism and internal rifts between Jewish population groups have intensified. External threats temporarily unite us, but last summer's war exposed another problem: After decades of functioning mostly as an occupation police, a bloated IDF could not defeat Hezbollah -- a force the size of one regiment.

Most Israelis blame everything on "Arab mentality" or on the Oslo process, conveniently leaving us with an empty to-do list. But occupation and settlement were our free choices. We must take drastic, honest steps to dismantle both.

Unfortunately, the occupation mind-set predates 1967. "Good Arabs," a new book by Hillel Cohen based on declassified government documents, describes our military rule over Israel's Arabs from 1948 to 1966. All the occupation's ingredients were there. In the 1950s, our "security" system even objected to municipal elections in Israel's Arab towns, for fear of losing control. From the start, our security establishment has equated Israel's security with controlling Arab lives.

What a narrow-minded, immoral, disastrous mind-set. Go tell Israelis that: We blindly trust our "security experts." After the much-heralded 2005 Gaza evacuation, Israelis did not question the outrageous security demand to continue controlling Gaza's exit and entry, its imports and exports. We merely converted Gaza from occupied colony to remote-control prison, precipitating the current chaos there.

Israel is sinking fast. Our Jewish population will soon be outnumbered by the country's Palestinians, most of them under occupation. Perhaps Americans, who have funded this madness, will help us undo it? Oops, I forgot: Americans are now stuck occupying Iraq.

Assaf Oron is writing his doctoral dissertation at the University of Washington.

The Smiling Fish [winner at Berlin Film Festival]

2007-06-18T21:35:00.000+03:00

Crisis in Gaza

2007-06-18T20:58:00.000+03:00

American Jew finances anti-demolition campaign

2007-06-16T12:50:00.000+03:00

By Tovah Lazaroff

An Orthodox American Jew has donated $1.5 million to fund a campaign against the demolition of Palestinian and Beduin homes throughout Israel and the territories, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions announced on Monday.

The committee plans to use those funds to rebuild as many as 300 Palestinians homes it expects to be demolished this year either by the Interior Ministry, the Jerusalem Municipality or the Civil Administration.

Israel officials argue that Palestinian homes are only destroyed for security reasons or because they were illegally constructed, but ICAHD disputes both those arguments. Director-General Jeff Halper said that the government discriminates against Palestinians and therefore it is very difficult for them to obtain building permits.

Nor does he believe the security argument. "These are not people that have done anything or have been charged with anything. There is no security issues at all in terms of these homes," he said.

"This is really part of a continuing policy of displacement and dispossession" of Palestinians, he added.

He would not give the name of the US donor but said it was someone who did not want to be complicit with the policy of destroying Palestinian homes.

In the last 10 years, ICAHD has rebuilt some 35 destroyed Palestinians homes, but this is the first time that it has embarked on an anti-demolition campaign of this magnitude, in which it plans to rebuild each destroyed Palestinian home. It has already rebuilt five homes in the Jerusalem area and started on another eight, including four in Hebron.

To mark both the start of its campaign and the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War, the group held a press event in the Old City in one of the few homes that remains from the Mughrabi Quarter which once stood at the site of the plaza that stretches out from the Wailing Wall.

While there have been few home demolitions in the Old City itself in the last 40 years, Halper said that the first act of the "occupation" in 1967 at the end of the war was to destroy part of the Mughrabi Quarter, including two mosques, to make space for worshipers at the wall. Bulldozers came at night and 135 families were forced to leave their homes, Halper said. "We are coming back to the place where the occupation began," he said.

Speaking with him was the mukhtar of the Mughrabi Quarter, Mahmoud Masloukhi, whose family had lived there for 120 years. He himself was born in 1933 and grew up in the quarter. In 1967, he had recently remarried. When he and his family understood that the quarter was being destroyed, they fled with only the clothes on their backs, he recalled. Now all he has left of his ancestral home is a few black and white photographs which he brought with him. He recalled how at one time, Jews and Muslims lived peacefully together in the Old City. Jews were forced to leave the Old City after the War of Independence in 1948, when Jordan had control of the area. It also destroyed most of the Old City's Jewish Quarter.

After the Six Day War, it was Masloukhi and his family who had to leave. He and his sister are among the few who have returned to the Old City.

As Masloukhi stood with reporters and showed them the photos of his former home, a number of Jewish children in a school located above the courtyard threw large spitballs and water at him and the other people standing below.

ICAHD wins Jewish Voice for Peace "Olive Award"

2007-06-10T14:30:00.000+03:00

On Saturday, April 28, 2007 in Oakland, CA, Jewish Voice for Peace proudly presented the 2007 Olive Branch Award to two extraordinary people representing two extraordinary Israeli human rights organizations: Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and Professor Anat Biletzki, former chair of B'Tselem, the Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.

Jewish Voice for Peace is one of the largest and. oldest Jewish peace organizations in the United States. We are dedicated to promoting a US foreign policy grounded in international law and democracy that recognizes the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians to self determination.

Both ICAHD and B'Tselem embody the spirit of the Jewish tradition of universal justice -- ICAHD through its unwavering dedication to stopping the illegal and inhumane practice of the destruction of Palestinian homes, B'Tselem through its fearless commitment to documenting human rights violations in the Occupied Territories. Both organizations are beacons of light to thousands in the United States. We look to you for leadership, courage and inspiration. It is with great pride that we have selected both groups to win the prize this year. Nominees were selected by a group comprised of members from across the United States.

______________________________________________________________
*Cecilie Surasky Director of Communications Jewish Voice for Peace*
1611 Telegraph Ave., Suite 806; Oakland, California 94612
ph: 510 465 1777 x303 fx: 510 465 1616 cell: 510 410 4202 cecilie@jewishvoiceforpeace.org http://www.blogger.com/www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org

UNOCHA Map showing Fragmentation of West Bank

2007-06-08T19:19:00.000+03:00

Free Alan Now

2007-06-01T11:56:00.000+03:00

Watch Alan on newly released video at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6710863.stm

Twilight Zone / Cry, the beloved country

2007-05-26T11:20:00.000+03:00

By Gideon Levy

PRETORIA, South Africa - It was like being in the movies. Only there would you see an inert photo suddenly come to life. We were standing at the memorial museum in Soweto, next to a photo of a dead boy with other children around him, and our guide Antoinette was telling us about it. Antoinette said that the young girl in the picture was her.

The photo is at the entrance of the museum, built to commemorate the blacks' struggle against apartheid, which began here. Across the way is Nelson Mandela's tiny hut, nearby is the house of Desmond Tutu and down the street is the present home of Winnie Mandela.

The picture was stunningly familiar to us. We were four: MK Ran Cohen (Meretz); Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations; Diana Buttu, a former legal advisor to the PLO; and myself. We were all making the same associations: Hector is Mohammed al-Dura; the white soldiers shooting at children are us.

The passage of time was evident with Antoinette. The teenager in the picture was now a woman in her late forties. Her brother would have been 44, but a bullet from the rifle of a white policeman deprived him of the chance to witness the miracle of how the cruel racist regime collapsed.

It was another UN conference about peace with the Palestinians, but this time it was being held in a particularly "loaded" location. We were only two Israelis there, but the calling cards I collected were quite varied: Arab and African ambassadors, the previous Egyptian foreign minister, representatives of Muslim countries and diplomats posted in Pretoria. The Syrian ambassador smiled and did not offer his card; the Libyan ambassador did the same. But they listened to us attentively.

The new regime has been good for South Africa; no Palestinian refugee camp looks nearly as attractive as Soweto 2007. But not far away is a shantytown called Alexandra and the sights there are worse than in any Palestinian refugee camp we've seen. This is where South African blacks who haven't been able to pull themselves out of poverty live, together with refugees from neighboring Zimbabwe.

Less than a kilometer separates the impoverished Alexandra from a fancy Johannesburg neighborhood called Sandton. There, behind the electric fences and personal bodyguards, hide the city's wealthy - many of them Jews and a good number former Israelis. On Shabbat we ate cholent. On Friday night we dined with a former Israeli from Nahalal. We drove to Alexandra with a guy who originally hails from Tivon, who has been here for 30 years and owns a huge agricultural enterprise that employs 1,800 black workers earning $2 an hour.

It's impossible not to admire what has occurred in this battered land since the yoke of white tyranny was lifted.

Not in his name

At the conference luncheon, Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa's minister for intelligence services, hurried over to grab a seat next to us. Kasrils, a Jew, had never been to Israel (where he has relatives) until his visit to the territories earlier in the month, when he invited Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to his country. He then made his first, quick trip to Tel Aviv, saw Rabin Square and ate fish in Jaffa. "It was the most pleasant evening I had," he acknowledges.

Tom Segev once wrote that he is "a guy I wouldn't choose to be stuck in an elevator with," but I would be glad to get stuck with Ronnie Kasrils, inside or outside an elevator. He is a Jew in conflict with his people, perhaps also with his identity - a courageous freedom fighter and communist, who joined the oppressed race in its struggle, was exiled from his country for 27 years and is now a minister.

A son of Lithuanian Jews, who had a bar mitzvah and belonged to Jewish youth movements, Kasrils is one of the most fascinating characters to come out of the local Jewish community - which now thoroughly denounces him. He brandishes his Jewishness openly, perhaps defiantly, even when he recently made an official visit to Iran and Syria. He once founded a movement called "Not in My Name," to underscore his disassociation from the injustices committed by Israel in the territories. Ronnie Kasrils hates the Israeli occupation.

When we talked he said the Israeli occupation is worse than apartheid: The whites never shelled the black neighborhoods with tanks and artillery.

Just like the pogroms

If this warm, outgoing 69-year-old has any personal security protection, it is invisible. We sat in a vacant room in a building on the University of Pretoria campus and talked. "You're an Israeli and I'm a South African," he emphasized immediately, as if to negate any common identity. "I'm confident that the circle will be closed one day and people will understand that I'm not anti-Jewish or anti-Israeli ... It really pains me as a Jew that in this country such hostility has developed toward Israel, because of its treatment of the Palestinians ...

"When we saw on television the drama going on in your country, the oppressive pictures of the methods you use toward the Palestinians, the uprooting of trees, the tanks entering Jenin, and the old woman weeping over the demolition of her house and crying 'The Jews, the Jews' - it's just like what my grandmother used to tell me about the pogroms: The Cossacks are coming, the Cossacks are coming. I'm trying to say: It's not the Jews, it's Zionisms that's doing this. So I decided to get up and say something. I found this in the Jewish tradition: to open your mouth, in the name of conscience.

"The man who greeted me when I returned to South Africa after the years of exile was Rabbi Cyril Harris ... He gave me a red skullcap with a dedication: to the freedom fighter. When I started to express criticism of Israel, I thought that the Jews would denounce Ariel Sharon, but then I found out that I was naive. I was stunned to see that the Jewish community here didn't care who was in power in Israel and how extreme the policy was against the Palestinians ... They would blindly support any government. Rabbi Harris became my enemy. He called me a fringe Jew and my response was: We were the only ones who stood up against apartheid and now we're the minority against the injustice.

"When I visited the territories I also passed through Israel and I saw the forests that cover the remnants of the Palestinian villages. As a former forestry minister, this was especially striking to me. I also went into a few settlements. It was insane. Young Americans spat on the flag that was on my car. The occupation reminds me of the darkest days of apartheid, but we never saw tanks and planes firing at a civilian population. It's a monstrousness I'd never seen before. The wall you built, the checkpoints and the roads for Jews only - it turns the stomach, even for someone who grew up under apartheid. It's a hundred times worse.

"We know from our experience that oppression motivates resistance and that the more savage the oppression, the harsher the resistance. At a certain point in time you think that the oppression is working, and that you're controlling the other people, imprisoning its leaders and its activists, but the resistance will triumph in the end.

"We saw the entrance to Qalqilyah, the wall, the people standing hours in line at the checkpoints. It's a beautiful country, I love its landscapes, but I know that it's big enough to contain more people. Israel has developed very impressively, but how much more impressive it would be if you brought about a just solution ... I don't care if it's two states or one - it's up to you, the Israelis and the Palestinians, to decide.

"I had coffee with the commander of the Erez checkpoint. It reminded me of the central prison in Pretoria, a place I've visited many times. And it was so awful to go through this thing in order to get to Gaza. At first I said that I don't want to speak with the man at the checkpoint, but then I decided that was foolish. The Israelis were actually very nice to me.

"What is Zionism to me? When I was 10 years old, it meant security and a national home for the Jews. I waved the Israeli flag at my bar mitzvah and I was very proud of my Judaism. The first book I received for my bar mitzvah was 'The Revolt,' by Menachem Begin. My biggest hero was Asher Ginsberg, Ahad Ha'am ... Later on I started reading not only Herzl, but also [historians] Ilan Pappe, Benny Morris and Tom Segev, and I came to see 1948 in a different light. I understood that it was an ethnic cleansing.

"South Africa changed me and strengthened my South African identity. And then I began to understand that the main problem of Zionism is the exclusivity of the establishment of a national home and the concept of the chosen people. Very soon I started to oppose it. The establishment of a national home for Jews alone seemed to me like a parallel of apartheid. The apartheid leaders also spoke about a chosen people. In 1961, prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd said that Israel is like South Africa. That opened my eyes. For many years we were also aware of the military cooperation between Israel and South Africa - a joint offensive naval force, missile boats, the Cheetah planes and the big secret of the nuclear weapons. Prime minister Johannes Vorster, who had a declared Nazi past, received a hero's welcome from you. This added to my feelings regarding Israel.

"I am very conscious of the Holocaust and of anti-Semitism, but my experience here leads me to one conclusion: that all forms of racism must be fought by means of a common struggle. I have a dream: That you will change your outlook, as happened here, and that change will come. When politicians reach agreements, it's amazing how fast ordinary folks can come to a change in thinking. Change the leadership and the economic conditions and you'll see how easy the change is."

A kind of military coup

2007-05-26T11:02:00.000+03:00

By Haaretz Editorial

Does Israel still uphold that proper state of affairs in which the elected government sets policy and civil servants carry it out? According to an article published in Haaretz yesterday ("The spirit of the commander prevails" by Meron Rapoport), it seems that with regard to the army, the answer is negative. While ministers speak about a two-state solution, a kind of military coup is taking place in the West Bank, in which the Israel Defense Forces are turning the area into the state of the settlers. While the Palestinian population is being suffocated, the settlements are flourishing.

It does not make much difference whether the Defense Ministry is headed by a civilian minister, because the army has its own agenda, and its subordination to the government is often simulated. For years, Israel was proud of the democratic miracle of an obedient army that did not accumulate too much power and served the elected government loyally, even though the country was engaged in a continual existential war. During the last war, however, cracks appeared in this faith, when it turned out that the cabinet had been dragged into approving military plans that were never even submitted to it. And even worse things happen every day in the occupied territories. Haggai Alon, an adviser to the defense minister who is responsible for the fabric of life in the West Bank, says that the army disregards the government's diplomatic agenda and essentially serves as the settlers' army. Or at least, that is how it was throughout Dan Halutz's tenure as chief of staff.

One shocking example of this democratic crisis is the army's disregard of court decisions regarding the route of the separation fence. After years of High Court of Justice hearings on every meter of the fence, with the goal of striking a balance between security needs and the needs of Palestinian daily life, it turns out that along Route 317, which links several settlements in the southern Mount Hebron area, the army ignored these decisions and built a mini-fence in addition to the one that was formally approved - and it is located along the original route that the High Court nixed.

Additionally, a section of the fence near the Trans-Samaria Highway, which was supposed to be built near the Green Line, was never completed due to the settlers' objections. The army also stopped conducting security checks on cars with Israeli license plates due to the protests lodged by settlers, who did not want to stop at the checkpoints - even though an explosives-laden car with an Israeli license plate recently entered Israel. The IDF does not report to the government on how many roadblocks there are in the West Bank; thus the government can talk about making life easier for the Palestinians while the army refrains from doing so. Similarly, thanks to assistance from IDF officers, settlers moved into a disputed house in Hebron; downtown Hebron was closed to Palestinians; and 3,000 demonstrators reached the evacuated settlement of Homesh in defiance of the government's decision. Settlements are also expanding in various places because the army has turned a blind eye, and sometimes even with its active assistance.

In light of all this, Amir Peretz's talk about dismantling West Bank settlement outposts, like Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni's promises to reach a new agreement on dividing the land between Israel and Palestine, sounds emptier than ever. It evidently makes no difference which party is in power, as long as the army serves the settlers rather than the state.

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The spirit of the commander prevails

2007-05-26T10:56:00.001+03:00

Haggai Alon has a bone to pick with the military establishment. He believes the system is calibrated to make the security-fence route more favorable to settlers and to allow them to take over houses in Hebron

By Meron Rapoport

"There is a military policy that is causing the Arab population to leave the center of Hebron. It's a clear plan, it's a fact. Everything would be all right if they would say so openly, if our policy were to create Jewish contiguity in Hebron, and the government were to tell the army to do so: We would go to elections over that. But that is not the policy of the State of Israel. The problem is that under military rule the spirit of the commander is stronger than anything else."

Haggai Alon says these words in the context of his job. In his position as adviser to the defense minister on "fabric of life" issues, Alon visits Hebron with the army, with the Civil Administration, with whoever he has to. As part of his job he sits in on discussions with senior Israel Defense Forces officers, walks around in the area, meets with officers and is supposed to tell them what to do on behalf of his boss, the defense minister.

Here and there he succeeds, he says. The Jordan Valley Highway stopped being a highway for "Israelis only," the work hours at the Karni crossing were doubled, increasing the amount of goods that pass through - but the overall situation is depressing. The experience Alon has accumulated after a year in the job has taught him that the official policy of the Israeli government is one thing, and the actions of the army on the ground are another, sometimes the opposite. In a disturbing way it is reminiscent of the Winograd Committee, which revealed to us how the General Staff held political discussions, whereas the cabinet discussed where to bomb. The cabinet and the army exchanged roles in Lebanon. According to Alon, the same is true of the West Bank.

Alon, 33, has become a thorn in the side of the defense establishment. When, of his own accord, the outgoing CEO of Central Command issued an order forbidding Israelis to give Palestinians rides in their cars, Alon set up a hue and cry and the order was finally rescinded. When he discovered that the IDF was trying to evade honoring a ruling of the High Court of Justice, he sent letters and caused a great deal of embarrassment in the system. When he reveals how army officers are trying to move the fence so it will accord with the map of settlements, he quarrels openly with very senior officers.

Alon, as one may guess, did not grow up in the defense establishment. He is a political person and he doesn't hide it. He was born in Kibbutz Naan, a vestige of what was once called Ahdut Ha'avoda (the left-wing Zionist Labor party). He thinks the Jordan Valley should be left in Israeli hands even in a final status agreement. Definitely not a classical leftist.

For years he has accompanied Amir Peretz, and shortly after Peretz was appointed defense minister, Alon was appointed his political adviser. Since the beginning of the year he has been working in the Defense Ministry as the adviser on "fabric of life" issues. He, a dyed-in-the-wool civilian, replaced Brigadier General (res.) Baruch Spiegel, formerly a senior officer in the Civil Administration.

"Fabric of life" has recently become a burning issue. Last week the World Bank, the United Nations organization considered to be friendliest to Israel, published a harsh report, which claimed that although Israel signed an agreement in 2005 to ease restrictions on movement in the territories, they have only become stricter. The report states that Israel prevents Palestinians access to about half the areas of the West Bank, and it claims that the restrictions on movement were designed to grant priority to the movement of the settlers and to help the expansion of the settlements at the expense of the Palestinian population.

The Benchmarks document recently formulated by the Americans, which presented Israel with a timetable for dismantling roadblocks in the West Bank and for the opening of a safe passage between the West Bank and Gaza, aroused a great deal of anger in Israel. Some IDF officials claimed that the Americans were able to write the document only based on inside information from "factors in the defense establishment." As though OCHA, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, doesn't report regularly on the situation of the roadblocks in the territories, and as though the Americans have no way of knowing what is happening at Hawara checkpoint. Alon does not understand why they are upset by the American demands. The problem is not the demands, he says, but the question: "How did it happen that a year and a half after the disengagement, the Americans feel a need to give us a written document, something they haven't done in a very long time."

A defense source says the origins of this document lie in the fact that the Americans have stopped believing Israel because "they are presented with maps that are an outright lie." Alon says that even though he works in the Defense Ministry and the data are supposed to be accessible to him, he has difficulty knowing the exact number of checkpoints. "The only thing that's clear is that they have doubled since the disengagement."

His job, he says, is to ensure that the official statements made by the Israeli government regarding its policy toward the Palestinians are in fact implemented, and that is not an easy job. He says the IDF is setting a route for the fence that will not enable the establishment of a Palestinian state and is allowing itself to evade High Court orders to change the route. He claims that the army "is carrying out an apartheid policy" that is emptying Hebron of Arabs, setting up roadblocks without anyone knowing where and how many, Judaizing the Jordan Valley and cooperating openly and blatantly with the settlers.

Take for example Highway 317, which links several settlements in the south Hebron Hills. About a year ago, the IDF constructed a concrete barrier along the road, whose location is no coincidence. The barrier prevents Palestinian from reaching their lands on the side of the road. According to the plan approved by Ariel Sharon about three years ago, the separation fence was supposed to run along Highway 317 and in effect to annex the local settlements to Israel, together with hundreds of square kilometers of the southern West Bank between the highway and the Green Line. After it turned out that it would be impossible to defend this route in the courts, it was decided to change the route to coincide with the Green Line.

And now, miraculously, the concrete barrier that was constructed last year is exactly congruent with Sharon's original route. About half a year ago the High Court ordered it dismantled, but the IDF was not impressed. For months it ignored the specific order, until the legal adviser of the Judea and Samaria division announced about a month and a half ago that the IDF has no intention of dismantling the barrier. This was a strange announcement, not only because it ostensibly contradicts a High Court order, but also because, according to Alon, no senior officials in the Defense Minister were informed of the intention not to move the fence: not the defense minister and not even the ministry's director general, who is the official responsible for the fence. The Central Command decided to build the fence in the spirit of Sharon, and that's that. Exactly, says Alon, the way it enthusiastically maintains what he calls the "malicious plan" to link Gush Etzion to Jerusalem, or to annex dozens of kilometers of desert in the area of Ma'aleh Adumim - plans that if carried out will eliminate the possibility of establishing two states for two nations, as written in the government platform.

After discovering a few weeks ago that the IDF does not intend to dismantle the barrier, Alon sent a furious letter to the defense minister, in which he claimed that the army "is doing everything in its power to avoid obeying the High Court ruling." He says that "what is amazing is that army officers say that the route of the fence should have passed there [along Highway 317, M.R.], because that is what Sharon wanted. They're not embarrassed. They say: 'The High Court told us to move the fence, so we moved it, and now we're building a mini-fence [the barrier, M.R.].' As they see it, there was a hitch, the High Court screwed them.

"Another example is the 'hole' in the fence in the area of the Trans-Samaria Highway. The route, which was approved a moment before the formation of the new government, includes 'fingers' around Ariel and Karnei Shomron, but at the moment this section is not being built, because the Americans are opposed to building a fence deep inside the West Bank. So meanwhile there is a gap."

Alon coordinated the work of a team of former senior officials in the Central Command, the Civil Administration and the Shin Bet security services, which has proposed a solution: The fence will be built along the Green Line, and "special security areas" will be built around the large settlements deep inside the area. The proposal will soon be submitted to the defense minister for discussion, but Alon is guessing that the army will prefer to leave the gap in place. "The entire conduct on this issue shows the extent to which the professional establishment has implemented a political policy, in a frightening manner."

Proof of the fact that the gap is a security risk could be seen last Pesach, in his opinion, when a truck bearing a yellow license plate, loaded with explosives, arrived in Tel Aviv and returned to Qalqilyah, without being stopped on the way. How did that happen? "There is no checking of cars with yellow license plates on the Green Line, because the settlers are unwilling to undergo a check," says Alon.

Alon has several current examples of the close relations between the army and the settlers: for example, the ascent to Homesh on Independence Day. The defense minister did not approve plan. Yet thousands of demonstrators celebrated the holiday on the hill near Nablus. "In Homesh there was open, blatant cooperation with the settlers," says Alon. "At first the army gave them permission to ascend. After the permission was revealed, they canceled it, and then, ostensibly by surprise, the settlers 'confused' the army and went up to Homesh with dozens of buses."

Something similar happened in Hebron. Alon has trouble believing that the army did not know of the intention of hundreds of settlers to enter the "beit hameriva" ("house of contention"). He says "when a system is calibrated in advance to allow such things to happen, they happen."

As an example he cites from a letter sent by the legal adviser of the Judea and Samaria division in reply to a request by the Council for Peace and Security to open the center of Hebron to Palestinian movement. "Does anyone think it is possible to protect the residents of the Jewish settlement in the neighborhoods of Jewish settlement when these neighborhoods are isolated from one another, and when they are divided by an area in which a Palestinian lifestyle is being conducted as a matter of routine? How is it possible to prevent an attack caused by friction in the aforesaid neighborhoods when regular Palestinian commercial life is being conducted right on their threshold?"

It may be an excellent reply, but neither Alon nor Minister Peretz nor any of his assistants have informed the Judea and Samaria Division that there is a policy of separation in the center of Hebron. "There is no written order to empty Hebron of Arabs," says Alon, "but that's the greatness of military rule. It can simply refrain from doing: it can refrain from enforcing the law on the settlers and it can refrain from allowing the Palestinians to move around. In the entire story of violations of the law in the territories, the spirit of the commander is the determining factor. It is stronger than any law or procedure."

According to Alon, the sprit of the CEO of Central Command, Yair Naveh, who is about to retire, was clear. He was "a settler in the service of the settlers," he says, and should have been removed because of his statements against King Abdullah of Jordan and because of IDF activity in Ramallah on the day when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Sharm el-Sheikh. But Naveh, says Alon, at least behaved decently. He did not conceal his opinions, yet he didn't refuse to obey an order the moment he received specific instructions from the political leadership. Other officers, he says, recall their moral difficulty on the issue of the roadblocks only when interviewed upon their discharge.

Alon is trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Awareness of the issue of the roadblocks has increased, and in some places, like the Jordan Valley, there has been an easing of restrictions. The program he coordinated to change the route of the fence will soon come up for discussion. New Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi also raises his hopes. "Dan Halutz was a Sharon appointment, and that's how he behaved. Ashkenazi is responsible. He is the hope of the Jewish people for taking politics out of the army. He has already told the political leaders: 'Don't cover political decisions with a pretense of security. Decide, and we'll implement.' The actual policy of the IDF, especially in recent years, is creating profound changes that threaten to make it impossible to leave the West Bank. We cannot allow the executive ranks to get us stuck in an irreversible binational situation."

The IDF Spokesman said in response regarding Homesh that "3,000 Israeli citizens came to Homesh, although it was forbidden to remain in the area without a permit. IDF forces operated according to IDF values in order to ensure the security of the civilians."

Regarding Highway 317 he said that "the Central Command did not try to prevent the implementation of the High Court decision, but examined it and decided on a model for implementation. Due to the reservations of Palestinian residents, the route proposed by the defense establishment is currently being examined."

Throw a pebble at Goliath: don't buy Israeli produce

2007-05-26T10:46:00.000+03:00

The 'boycott movement' forces the issue of Israel's disregard of Palestinian human rights into the public arena - where it is too little aired.

Yvonne Roberts
The Guardian: Comment is Free

"The boycott campaign is not really about what happens in the Middle East but about what happens in our unions, on our campuses and in our public discourse. The damage that it does in the UK is that it disables political work in solidarity with those who fight for peace in the Middle East by polarising opinion around an artificial and destructive issue."

So writes David Hirsh on Comment is free, on the vote next Wednesday at a conference held by the University and College Union (UCU), arguing against what he calls "the boycott movement".

So the boycott movement allegedly "disables political work in solidarity with those who fight for peace in the Middle East" does it? Is that the same political work that is so highly effective that the only major change since the 1970s, when I regularly reported from the region, is of a profound deterioration in all aspects of life for ordinary Palestinians?

In contributing his blog, David Hirsh ironically illustrates precisely why the boycott movement has an impact. It clears a space in the public arena which, in the UK and the USA, is normally hopelessly biased in favour of Israel - not least because Zionist supporters of Israel in both countries have money and political clout on a scale the Palestinians cannot hope to match.

While we frequently see and hear about the lives of ordinary Israelis, whether illegally settled on the West Bank or endeavouring to live under harrowing rocket bombardment or simply "being" Israelis - when was the last time the reality of day-to-day life in the refugee camps was regularly portrayed?

Back in the 1970s, long before the war on terror was launched, we tried to do precisely that for the now defunct current affairs series Weekend World. John Birt, its editor, fought furiously to have the film screened, but the battle with his superiors at LWT was lost. The film was shelved, deemed, "propaganda".

Regardless of the rhetoric of some of those advocating a boycott, one hopes that the majority of us are not so naive or so daft as to think that the issue of the Middle East, as Hirsh suggests, splits into a simplistic polarisation of Israel - bad; Palestine - good. Or that excluding Israeli Jewish academics from UK campuses, journals and conferences is anything more than an attack on the right to freedom of speech.

However, a double standard pertains. The Israeli treatment of Palestinians shows a total disregard for human rights. Apartheid doesn't seem to me to be too strong a word - and its consequence, as many have pointed out, is a recruitment drive for Islamic fundamentalists.

In this month's New Internationalist, psychiatrist Samah Jabr, describes his work in Ramallah and Jericho and the "mental health emergency" under way. For a population of 3.8 million, there are 15 psychiatrists and disastrously too few nurses, psychologists and support staff. He points out that 53% of the population is under 17 - especially vulnerable to family deaths, absent fathers and constant warfare.

Add poverty, affecting 67% of the population, unemployment at 40%, 20% of the population are prisoners and ex-prisoners, many suffering the psychiatric after-effects of isolation, and the daily violence does the rest.

Palestinian factionalism and Israel's brutal retaliation, plus its pre-emptive strikes and demolition of homes hits the Palestinian people with a savagery that destroys any semblance of normal living. (The ordinary Palestinians in the Lebanon are again paying the heaviest price.) Of course, ordinary Israelis are affected too - but their community remains robust, well cared-for, with needs met. Psychological trauma, for many Israelis, is at best held at bay and at worst given help. Hundreds of Israeli political prisoners are not rotting in Palestinian jails.

A boycott is neither self-indulgent gesture politics nor an indicator of powerlessness, as Hirsh suggests. It is an international protest against the way in which Israel behaves on a daily basis in an area that will, in all probability, never see peace.

June 9 sees the Global Day of Action on Palestine. Throw a pebble at Goliath - don't spend your pennies on Israeli produce.

Yvonne Roberts has been an award winning journalist, writer and broadcaster in newspapers, radio and television for over 30 years. She writes for the Guardian, Independent on Sunday, Observer, Community Care and the internet magazine, The Frist Post.

It is not only God that will be Blair's judge over Iraq

2007-05-25T23:26:00.000+03:00

His cravenly pro-US policy on the Middle East misunderstood Bush's real agenda and resulted in catastrophic failure

Avi Shlaim
Monday May 14, 2007
The Guardian

Tony Blair's opposition to an immediate ceasefire in the Lebanon war last summer precipitated his downfall. Now that he has announced the date of his departure from Downing Street, his entire Middle East record needs to be placed under an uncompromising lens.

Blair came to office with no experience of, and virtually no interest in, foreign affairs, and ended by taking this country to war five times. Blair boasts that his foreign policy was guided by the doctrine of liberal interventionism. But the war in Iraq is the antithesis of liberal intervention. It is an illegal, immoral and unnecessary war, a war undertaken on a false prospectus and without sanction from the UN.

Blair's entire record in the Middle East is one of catastrophic failure. He used to portray Britain as a bridge between the two sides of the Atlantic. By siding with America against Europe on Iraq, however, he helped to destroy the bridge. Preserving the special relationship with America was the be all and end all of Blair's foreign policy. He presumably supported the Bush administration over Iraq in the hope of exercising influence on its policy. Yet there is no evidence that he exercised influence on any significant policy issue. His support for the neoconservative agenda on Iraq was uncritical and unconditional.

Blair failed to understand that America's really special relationship is with Israel, not Britain. Every time that George Bush had to choose between Blair and Ariel Sharon, he chose the latter. Blair's special relationship with Bush was a one-way street: Blair made all the concessions and got nothing tangible in return.

American policy towards the Middle East was doomed to failure from the start, and the end result has been to saddle Britain with a share of the responsibility for this failure. The premise behind American policy was that Iraq was the main issue in Middle East politics and that regime change in Baghdad would weaken the Palestinians and force them to accept a settlement on Israel's terms. The road to Jerusalem, it was argued, went through Baghdad. This premise was wrong. Iraq was a non-issue; it did not pose a threat to any of its neighbours, and certainly not to America or Britain. The real issue was Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories and America's support for Israel in its savage colonial war against the Palestinian people.

When seeking the approval of the Commons for the war, Blair pledged that after Iraq was disarmed, he and his American friends would seek a solution to the Palestine problem. He has utterly failed to deliver on this promise.

True, Blair was the driving force behind the "road map" that envisaged the emergence of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2005. But Sharon wrecked the road map. In return for the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, Sharon exacted a written American agreement to Israel's retention of the major settlement blocs on the West Bank. Blair publicly endorsed the nefarious Sharon-Bush pact. This was the most egregious British betrayal of the Palestinians since the Balfour declaration of 1917.

Blair and Bush have also betrayed the Iraqi people. To begin with, there was much brave rhetoric about bringing democracy to Iraq and turning it into a model for the rest of the Arab world. But the rhetoric was empty. The neoconservatives who drove American policy were interested in overthrowing Saddam Hussein and in nothing else.

The allied invasion of Iraq was not an isolated episode but part of the so-called global war on terror. But the overthrow of the Ba'ath regime in Iraq only exacerbated the problem of terrorism. The invasion of Iraq has given a powerful boost to al-Qaida and its confederates by damaging Britain's reputation and radicalising its young Muslims. The London bombs may not have been a direct result of the Iraq war - but they are indisputably a part of the blowback.

What we have in Iraq today is chronic instability, an incipient civil war, endemic violence and anarchy, an upsurge of terrorist activity of every kind, and a national insurgency to which the allies have no answer. The neocons did not bother to plan for postwar reconstruction. Occupation was accompanied by devastation and destruction on a massive scale and a civilian death toll estimated by one source at 655,000.

The allies pride themselves on having brought democracy to the Iraqi people, but they have failed in the primary duty of any government: to provide security for the civilian population. The upshot is that America and its pillion passenger in the "war against terror" are now embroiled in a vicious, protracted and unwinnable conflict.

Blair has the audacity to say that God will be his judge over the Iraq war. This is a curious attitude for a democratic politician to adopt. History will surely pass a harsh judgment on Blair. He has the worst record on the Middle East of any British prime minister in the past century, infinitely worse than that of Anthony Eden, who at least had the decency to accept responsibility for the Suez debacle.

· Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at St Antony's College, Oxford, and author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.

Imprisoning a whole nation

2007-05-24T09:00:00.000+03:00

by John Pilger

22 May 2007

In an article for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes how Gaza in Palestine has come to symbolise the imposition of great power on the powerless, in the Middle East and all over the world, and how a vocabulary of double standard is employed to justify this epic tragedy.

Israel is destroying any notion of a state of Palestine and is being allowed to imprison an entire nation. That is clear from the latest attacks on Gaza, whose suffering has become a metaphor for the tragedy imposed on the peoples of the Middle East and beyond. These attacks, reported on Britain's Channel 4 News, were "targeting key militants of Hamas" and the "Hamas infrastructure". The BBC described a "clash" between the same militants and Israeli F-16 aircraft.

Consider one such clash. The militants' car was blown to pieces by a missile from a fighter-bomber. Who were these militants? In my experience, all the people of Gaza are militant in their resistance to their jailer and tormentor. As for the "Hamas infrastructure", this was the headquarters of the party that won last year's democratic elections in Palestine. To report that would give the wrong impression. It would suggest that the people in the car and all the others over the years, the babies and the elderly who have also "clashed" with fighter-bombers, were victims of a monstrous injustice. It would suggest the truth.

"Some say," said the Channel 4 reporter, that "Hamas has courted this [attack]..." Perhaps he was referring to the rockets fired at Israel from within the prison of Gaza which killed no one. Under international law an occupied people has the right to use arms against the occupier's forces. This right is never reported. The Channel 4 reporter referred to an "endless war", suggesting equivalents. There is no war. There is resistance among the poorest, most vulnerable people on earth to an enduring, illegal occupation imposed by the world's fourth largest military power, whose weapons of mass destruction range from cluster bombs to thermonuclear devices, bankrolled by the superpower. In the past six years alone, wrote the historian Ilan Pappe, "Israeli forces have killed more than 4,000 Palestinians, half of them children".

Consider how this power works. According to documents obtained by United Press International, the Israelis once secretly funded Hamas as "a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation] by using a competing religious alternative", in the words of a former CIA official.

Today, Israel and the US have reversed this ploy and openly back Hamas's rival, Fatah, with bribes of millions of dollars. Israel recently secretly allowed 500 Fatah fighters to cross into Gaza from Egypt, where they had been trained by another American client, the Cairo dictatorship. The Israelis' aim is to undermine the elected Palestinian government and ignite a civil war. They have not quite succeeded. In response, the Palestinians forged a government of national unity, of both Hamas and Fatah. The latest attacks are aimed at destroying this.

With Gaza secured in chaos and the West Bank walled in, the Israeli plan, wrote the Palestinian academic Karma Nabulsi, is "a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed, ruled by disparate militias, gangs, religious ideologues and extremists, broken up into ethnic and religious tribalism and co-opted collaborationists. Look to the Iraq of today..."

On 19 May, the Guardian received this letter from Omar Jabary al-Sarafeh, a Ramallah resident: "Land, water and air are under constant sight of a sophisticated military surveillance system that makes Gaza like The Truman Show," he wrote. "In this film every Gazan actor has a predefined role and the [Israeli] army behaves as a director... The Gaza strip needs to be shown as what it is... an Israeli laboratory backed by the international community where human beings are used as rabbits to test the most dramatic and perverse practices of economic suffocation and starvation."

The remarkable Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has described the starvation sweeping Gaza's more than a million and a quarter inhabitants and the "thousands of wounded, disabled and shell-shocked people unable to receive any treatment... The shadows of human beings roam the ruins... They only know the [Israeli army] will return and they know what this will mean for them: more imprisonment in their homes for weeks, more death and destruction in monstrous proportions".

Whenever I have been in Gaza, I have been consumed by this melancholia, as if I were a trespasser in a secret place of mourning. Skeins of smoke from wood fires hang over the same Mediterranean Sea that free peoples know, but not here. Along beaches that tourists would regard as picturesque trudge the incarcerated of Gaza; lines of sepia figures become silhouettes, marching at the water's edge, through lapping sewage. The water and power are cut off, yet again, when the generators are bombed, yet again. Iconic murals on walls pockmarked by bullets commemorate the dead, such as the family of 18 men, women and children who "clashed" with a 500lb American/Israeli bomb, dropped on their block of flats as they slept. Presumably, they were militants.

More than 40 per cent of the population of Gaza are children under the age of 15. Reporting on a four-year field study in occupied Palestine for the British Medical Journal, Dr Derek Summerfield wrote that "two-thirds of the 621 children killed at checkpoints, in the street, on the way to school, in their homes, died from small arms fire, directed in over half of cases to the head, neck and chest - the sniper's wound". A friend of mine with the United Nations calls them "children of the dust". Their wonderful childishness, their rowdiness and giggles and charm, belie their nightmare.

I met Dr Khalid Dahlan, a psychiatrist who heads one of several childrens community health projects in Gaza. He told me about his latest survey. "The statistic I personally find unbearable," he said, "is that 99.4 per cent of the children we studied suffer trauma. Once you look at the rates of exposure to trauma, you see why: 99.2 per cent of the study group's homes were bombarded; 97.5 per cent were exposed to tear gas; 96.6 per cent witnessed shootings; 95.8 per cent witnessed bombardment and funerals; almost a quarter saw family members injured or killed."

He said children as young as three faced the dichotomy caused by having to cope with these conditions. They dreamt about becoming doctors and nurses, then this was overtaken by an apocalyptic vision of themselves as the next generation of suicide bombers. They experienced this invariably after an attack by the Israelis. For some boys, their heroes were no longer football players, but a confusion of Palestinian "martyrs" and even the enemy, "because Israeli soldiers are the strongest and have Apache gunships".

Shortly before he died, Edward Said bitterly reproached foreign journalists for what he called their destructive role in "stripping the context of Palestinian violence, the response of a desperate and horribly oppressed people, and the terrible suffering from which it arises". Just as the invasion of Iraq was a "war by media", so the same can be said of the grotesquely one-sided "conflict" in Palestine. As the pioneering work of the Glasgow University Media Group shows, television viewers are rarely told that the Palestinians are victims of an illegal military occupation; the term "occupied territories" is seldom explained. Only 9 per cent of young people interviewed in the UK know that the Israelis are the occupying force and the illegal settlers are Jewish; many believe them to be Palestinian. The selective use of language by broadcasters is crucial in maintaining this confusion and ignorance. Words such as "terrorism", "murder" and "savage, cold-blooded killing" describe the deaths of Israelis, almost never Palestinians.

There are honourable exceptions. The kidnapped BBC reporter Alan Johnston is one of them. Yet, amidst the avalanche of coverage of his abduction, no mention is made of the thousands of Palestinians abducted by Israel, many of whom will not see their families for years. There are no appeals for them. In Jerusalem, the Foreign Press Association documents the shooting and intimidation of its members by Israeli soldiers. In one eight-month period, as many journalists, including the CNN bureau chief in Jerusalem, were wounded by the Israelis, some of them seriously. In each case, the FPA complained. In each case, there was no satisfactory reply.

A censorship by omission runs deep in western journalism on Israel, especially in the US. Hamas is dismissed as a "terrorist group sworn to Israel's destruction" and one that "refuses to recognise Israel and wants to fight not talk". This theme suppresses the truth: that Israel is bent on Palestine's destruction. Moreover, Hamas's long-standing proposals for a ten-year ceasefire are ignored, along with a recent, hopeful ideological shift within Hamas itself that amounts to a historic acceptance of the sovereignty of Israel. "The [Hamas] charter is not the Quran," said a senior Hamas official, Mohammed Ghazal. "Historically, we believe all Palestine belongs to Palestinians, but we're talking now about reality, about political solutions... If Israel reached a stage where it was able to talk to Hamas, I don't think there would be a problem of negotiating with the Israelis [for a solution]".

When I last saw Gaza, driving towards the Israeli checkpoint and the razor wire, I was rewarded with a spectacle of Palestinian flags fluttering from inside the walled compounds. Children were responsible for this, I was told. They make flagpoles out of sticks tied together and one or two will climb on to a wall and hold the flag between them, silently. They do it when there are foreigners around and they believe they can tell the world.

Israeli Riddle: Love Jerusalem, Hate Living There

2007-05-24T01:12:00.000+03:00

GREG MYRE, The New York Times, May 13, 2007

JERUSALEM — ISRAEL is facing a challenge it never expected when it captured East Jerusalem and reunited the city in the 1967 war: each year, Jerusalem’s population is becoming more Arab and less Jewish.

For four decades, Israel has pushed to build and expand Jewish neighborhoods, while trying to restrict the growth in Arab parts of the city. Yet two trends are unchanged: Jews moving out of Jerusalem have outnumbered those moving in for 27 of the last 29 years. And the Palestinian growth rate has been high.

In a 1967 census taken shortly after the war, the population of Jerusalem was 74 percent Jewish and 26 percent Arab. Today, the city is 66 percent Jewish and 34 percent Arab, with the gap narrowing by about 1 percentage point a year, according to the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.

Jerusalem’s profound religious and historical significance makes its status perhaps the single most explosive issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict. And that status clearly would become even more contentious were the balance of the population to tip toward the Arabs. This is a specter that worries Israelis, even as the 40th anniversary of their victory in the June 1967 war approaches.

“The Jewish people dreamed for centuries of getting back their ancient capital,” said Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and author of “The Fight for Jerusalem.” Nineteenth-century immigration to Jerusalem, site of the biblical Jewish temples, gave the city a Jewish majority that has been in place since the 1860s, he said.

For many Palestinians, Jerusalem is an economic hub, containing the third-holiest site in Islam — and the city they yearn to make the capital of a future state. Yet Israeli security measures, imposed after the Palestinian uprising in 2000, have put the city, like the rest of Israel, off limits to the vast majority of Palestinians who live in the West Bank or Gaza Strip.

“People want to go to Jerusalem to pray, but they can’t,” said Rami Nasrallah, an Arab resident who advised the previous Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, on Jerusalem affairs. “This makes Jerusalem even more important in their imaginations.”

While Jerusalem’s symbolic importance is paramount to both sides, Israelis and Palestinians differ on the city as a place to live. For Palestinians, it remains a magnet, offering more opportunities than any Palestinian city in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. But many Israelis see it as poor, rundown and riddled with religious and political tension.

When it comes to job opportunities, affordable housing and a varied cultural life, Jerusalem is much less appealing to secular Israelis than Tel Aviv or other cities.

“Jerusalem just got to be too extreme and we decided it was time to leave,” said Alona Angel, 60, an Israeli who lived more than 30 years in Jerusalem before moving to Tel Aviv two years ago when her husband retired and the last of her children finished high school. “After so many years in Jerusalem, I thought it would be hard to leave, but it wasn’t.”

Ms. Angel said she was increasingly turned off by religious and political intolerance. She recalled being casually but modestly dressed one day when an ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman began yelling at her that she was not properly clothed. “I just felt less and less welcome,” said Ms. Angel, an interior designer.

Last year, Jews leaving Jerusalem outnumbered those moving in by 6,000, in line with figures for the past decade, according to the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.

A poll released last week captured the Israeli ambivalence over Jerusalem. More than 60 percent of Israelis said they would not want to give up Israeli control of the city’s holy sites, even as part of a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Yet 78 percent of Israelis said they would not consider living in Jerusalem or would prefer to live elsewhere in Israel.

Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital, but only a tiny minority of the Arabs who live there are citizens of Israel. The vast majority have legal residency, a status similar to that of green-card holders in the United States.

Jews and Arabs, by and large, do not mix. “This is still a clear case of two separate cities,” said Shlomo Hasson, a geography professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “There are separate commercial centers, separate transport systems and separate cultures.”

When the Israelis and Palestinians held their last round of full-fledged peace talks in January 2001, the two sides discussed a plan to make Jerusalem’s Jewish neighborhoods part of Israel, and the city’s Arab neighborhoods part of a future Palestinian state — a sharp break from Israel’s insistence that all of Jerusalem remain part of Israel’s “eternal, undivided capital.” But the talks collapsed, and since then Israel has built a West Bank separation barrier that runs largely along the eastern border of Jerusalem. The one substantial exception is in northern Jerusalem, where more than 50,000 Palestinians have been left outside.

Still, the thought of re-dividing the city provokes a strong reaction among some Jews, who recall when Jordan held East Jerusalem and the Old City, from 1948 to 1967, and Jews were not allowed to pray at the Western Wall.

That is a central reason that the demographic trends stir fear among Israelis, since it would be difficult to reconcile the fact of an Arab majority in the city with its status as Israel’s eternal capital. Overall, the city now has 475,000 Jews and 245,000 Arabs as of 2005, the latest year for which figures are available.

Jerusalem’s Jewish population is still growing despite the out-migration, but only by a little over 1 percent a year — not enough to match the annual 3 percent increase among Arabs. The small Jewish increase is a result of an extraordinarily high birth rate among the ultra-Orthodox, who make up about a quarter of the city’s population; on average, each of these woman has more than seven children.

Yet as the ratio of ultra-Orthodox Jews increases, so does the outflow of secular Jews.

With the Arab and ultra-Orthodox communities expanding, the city’s tax base has weakened, straining municipal services and contributing to the outflow of the middle class. Meanwhile, many Palestinian neighborhoods are becoming badly overcrowded.

While it is virtually impossible for Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza to move to Jerusalem if they were not born there, natural population growth and restrictions on building in Arab parts of the city mean large families often share very small apartments.

An estimated 18,000 apartments and homes, or a third of all the Arab residences in East Jerusalem, were built illegally because permits are so hard to obtain, Mr. Nasrallah said, adding that Israel has not approved the development of a new Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem since 1967.

“Israel sees Jerusalem as a demographic problem,” he said, “and sees the solution as getting rid of Palestinians.”

In contrast, Israel has established many Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and more than 200,000 Jews now live in the eastern part of the city.

But in the long term, if the demographers are right, it will not be enough.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

NYTimes: Red Cross Report Says Israel Disregards Humanitarian Law

2007-05-15T22:32:00.000+03:00

May 15, 2007

By STEVEN ERLANGER
JERUSALEM, May 14 — The International Committee of the Red Cross, in a confidential report about East Jerusalem and its surrounding areas, accuses Israel of a “general disregard” for “its obligations under international humanitarian law — and the law of occupation in particular.”

The committee, which does not accept Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, says Israel is using its rights as an occupying power under international law “in order to further its own interests or those of its own population to the detriment of the population of the occupied territory.”

With the construction of the separation barrier, the establishment of an outer ring of Jewish settlements beyond the expanded municipal boundaries and the creation of a dense road network linking the different Israeli neighborhoods and settlements in and outside Jerusalem, the report says, Israel is “reshaping the development of the Jerusalem metropolitan area” with “far-reaching humanitarian consequences.” Those include the increasing isolation of Palestinians living in Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and the increasing difficulty for some Palestinians to easily reach Jerusalem’s schools and hospitals.

The Red Cross committee, which is recognized as a guardian of humanitarian law under the Geneva Conventions of 1949, does not publish its reports but provides them in confidence to the parties involved and to a small number of countries. This report was provided to The New York Times by someone outside the organization who wanted the report’s conclusions publicized. The leak came just days before Israel’s celebration of Jerusalem Day this Wednesday, observing the 40th anniversary of the unification of the city.

The committee is better known for its role in visiting prisoners all over the world to try to ensure humanitarian conditions. It has been involved for decades with the Israeli-Palestinian situation as part of its role in upholding the Geneva Conventions, which cover the responsibilities of occupying countries. But its reports rarely surface.

The report considers all land that Israel conquered in the 1967 war to be occupied territory. It was the result of nine months of work by the committee and was delivered in late February “to Israel and to a small number of foreign governments we believe would be in the best position to help support our efforts for the implementation of humanitarian law,” said Bernard Barrett, a spokesman for the committee in Jerusalem.

Israeli officials said that they respected the committee and that they had cooperated with it gladly on issues ranging from the release of captured Israeli soldiers to asking its officials to give briefings on international law to Israeli diplomats and commanders serving in the occupied West Bank.

They confirmed having received the report, but disagreed with its premises and conclusions.

“We reject the premise of the report, that East Jerusalem is occupied territory,” said Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. “It is not. Israel annexed Jerusalem in 1967 and offered full citizenship at the time to all of Jerusalem’s residents. These are facts that cannot be ignored.”

Israel, he said, “is committed to a diverse and pluralistic Jerusalem, to improving the conditions of all the city’s inhabitants and to protecting their interests as part of our sovereign responsibility.” He added, “If any population in Jerusalem is thriving and growing, it is the Arab population.”

He also noted that Israel made great efforts to ensure health care for Palestinians, pointing to 81,000 entry permits in 2006 for Palestinians needing care inside Israel.

Conditions have worsened for Palestinians in East Jerusalem, which has long had inferior services.

Security restrictions and the barrier that runs around and through parts of East Jerusalem were Israel’s response to suicide bombings after 2000, but they made it much more difficult for Palestinians to move into and out of Jerusalem.

It is virtually impossible for Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza to move to Jerusalem if they were not born in the city; even visiting requires a permit that can be hard to get. Natural population growth and building restrictions in Arab parts of the city means that large families often share very small apartments.

Palestinians argue that the building restrictions are meant to suppress the growth of the their community; the Israelis counter that zoning restrictions are imposed throughout the city.

The Red Cross report notes that the separation barrier “was undertaken with an undeniable security aim,” but adds, “The route of the West Bank barrier is also following a demographic logic, enclosing the settlement blocs around the city while excluding built-up Palestinian areas (thus creating isolated Palestinian enclaves).”

Mustafa Barghouti, spokesman for the Palestinian unity government, welcomed the report, calling it consistent with the rulings of the International Court of Justice, which said in a nonbinding opinion in 2004 that Israel’s security barrier was illegal where it crossed the 1967 lines into occupied territory. “Israel violates international law with impunity, and couldn’t continue this blunt violation for 40 years if it did not feel impunity toward the international community,” Mr. Barghouti said.

Top Bush Adviser Says Rice's Push For Mideast Peace Is 'Just Process'

2007-05-11T02:29:00.000+03:00

Nathan Guttman
The Forward | Fri. May 11, 2007

Washington - As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice presses Israelis and Palestinians to meet a new set of policy benchmarks, the White House is reassuring Jewish groups and conservatives that the president has no plans to pressure Jerusalem.

Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams told a group of Jewish communal leaders last week that the president would ensure that the process does not lead to Israel being pushed into an agreement with which it is uncomfortable.

Also last week, at a regular gathering of Jewish Republicans, sources said, Abrams described President Bush as an "emergency brake" who would prevent Israel from being pressed into a deal; during the breakfast gathering, the White House official also said that a lot of what is done during Rice's frequent trips to the region is "just process" — steps needed in order to keep the Europeans and moderate Arab countries "on the team" and to make sure they feel that the United States is promoting peace in the Middle East.

According to one of the participants in the meeting of Jewish Republicans, Abrams said that he does not believe that the United States can make much progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front. The United States could only see success, Abrams added, on limited issues relating to freedom of movement for Palestinians in the territories and efforts to strengthen the presidential guard of Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Abrams offered his skeptical view of the prospects for progress as the State Department was launching its latest effort to push the process forward. In general, according to Washington insiders, Rice and her Middle East team are pushing an increasingly aggressive agenda on the Israeli-Palestinian front, while the White House policy team, led by Abrams, is pulling back, viewing any major breakthrough as unlikely.

[In response to the initial version of this article, an NSC spokesperson issued a statement on behalf of Abrams stating that the White House supported Rice's efforts. "Advancing toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians and toward the President's vision of two states living side by side in peace and security is not only Secretary Rice's goal, it is a key goal of the President's," the NSC statement said. "It is inaccurate to suggest that the White House and State Department are at odds on this issue, for the entire Administration — including Mr Abrams — is committed to pursuing it and the rest of the President's agenda. Moreover, Mr. Abrams' reference an 'emergency brake' was in reply to a question about whether European and Arab pressure could put Israel in a corner, and was intended to make clear that this would not happen because ultimately the United States provides an emergency brake. It had nothing to do with efforts by the United States to push the process forward, under Secretary Rice's direction."]

Last week, American diplomats presented the Israelis and Palestinians with a document specifying benchmarks that both sides are required to fulfill in the upcoming months.

Most demands of Israel have to do with issues of mobility and access — lifting roadblocks, allowing truck convoys from Gaza to the West Bank and opening the Karni crossing, Gaza's main import and export entrance point. The Palestinians, according to the document, are required to deploy forces in order to stop the firing of rockets at Israeli towns and to curb violence within the territories.

The presentation of the benchmarks is seen as a major move by the United States and as another sign of Rice's determination to push the stalled peace process forward.

The Palestinian reaction to the document was mixed, with Hamas turning it down and Fatah seeing the paper as a possible platform for negotiations. Jerusalem, according to Israeli sources, is still studying the proposal and will provide its formal answer to American diplomats on the ground. Israeli sources stressed, however, that they view the program as positive, mainly since it includes a demand that the Palestinian Authority confront the rocket-launching issue.

Rice's dramatic attempt to make both sides live up to their commitments, however, now appears undermined by political developments on the ground.

The State Department announced Monday that Rice is postponing her planned visit to the region, due to the political uncertainty in Israel. "There's obviously a lot of politics in Israel that they're working through at this point," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

Rice, however, made clear that she intends to keep on working with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on promoting the peace process. "We're going to continue to work toward the two-state solution because one thing that we know is that the Israeli people overwhelmingly want to get to a place where they have a neighbor who can contribute to their security," Rice said in an interview to the Al-Arabiya TV network.

The benchmarks carry even more urgency in light of a new report released this week by the World Bank. The report stresses the economic difficulties faced by the Palestinians because of a lack of free movement and access, issues that Rice has frequently raised in Israel and that are addressed in the benchmarks she established.

The World Bank report described in great detail the restrictions Israel imposed on the Palestinians regarding use of roads, access to land and freedom of movement. These restrictions are a result of building the separation barrier, forbidding Palestinians from entering roads used by Jewish settlers and closing areas adjacent to settlements.

"As long as large areas of the West Bank remain inaccessible for economic purposes… and unpredictable movement remains the norm for the vast majority of Palestinians, sustainable economic recovery will remain elusive," the report concluded.

Rice's renewed drive to promote an Israeli-Palestinian settlement is seen in Washington not only as a desire to calm America's allies in Europe and the Middle East but also as part of the new thinking within the State Department, which views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an obstacle that deters Arab countries from joining the United States in its attempts to stabilize Iraq.

This view was recently reinforced by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who in a conversation with nationally syndicated columnist Robert Novak accused Abrams of preventing the administration from having a "coherent Middle East policy" which would engage Iran and Syria in an attempt to stabilize Iraq. "I do know that there are a number of Israelis who would like to engage Syria," Hagel told Novak. "They have said that Elliott Abrams keeps pushing them back."

The columnist also said Hagel quoted foreign ministers, ambassadors and former Americans officials as saying they believe Abrams "is making policy in the Middle East."

Israel, according to sources close to decision-makers in Jerusalem, also sees Abrams as the leading policy figure in the administration on Middle East issues, a status that has led Olmert to keep an open channel of communications with Bush's senior adviser.

According to the sources, Abrams is also a leading voice in trying to convince American Jews to be more supportive of the war in Iraq.

At the same time, Abrams is said to hold a relatively moderate view when it comes to dealing with Iran's nuclear threat. In a recent White House meeting with leaders of a major Jewish group, Abrams outlined what he described as the disadvantages of taking military action against Iran. Participants quoted Abrams as saying that accepting a nuclear Iran or launching a military attack against the Islamic country would both be "terrible options," and that international diplomatic and economic pressure is the only way to solve the problem.

Israeli officials also recalled the tough stand Abrams took against Israel's plans to build in the E1 corridor near Jerusalem, an area seen as vital for the territorial contiguity of any future Palestinian state.

"I never sensed that he is committed to a 'greater Israel' idea," said an official in a Jewish organization who regularly meets with Abrams. "He is simply very skeptical when it comes to the Palestinians."

Like the Israelis, officials at Jewish organizations see Abrams as the main contact point in the administration when it comes to Middle East affairs. "He knows all the Washington representatives of the Jewish groups and has good relations with them," said one Jewish organizational official.

Another Jewish official, who described Abrams as a "pretty approachable guy," said that it is regular practice for the administration to "send the [National Security Council] when they want to be nice to the Jewish community and send the State Department when they want to please the world."

Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, said that Abrams' availability to Jewish representatives depends on their views of the administration. "Once we [the ZOA] started criticizing Bush's policy in the Middle East, he stopped taking my calls," Klein said. "Before he joined this administration, he agreed with me about Oslo and about Arafat."

Fri. May 11, 2007

World Bank: Sustainable Palestinian economic recovery impossible under West Bank restriction system

2007-05-11T02:09:00.000+03:00

JERUSALEM, May 9 2007 – As part of its ongoing analytical work on Palestinian trade facilitation and economic revival, the World Bank released its latest report today, entitled Movement and Access Restrictions in the West Bank: Uncertainty and Inefficiency in the Palestinian Economy.

While acknowledging Israel's legitimate security concerns, the report examines the wider context and implications of the current access situation in the West Bank. It notes that although physical impediments are the visible manifestations of closure, the means of curtailing Palestinian movement and access are far more complex and are based on a set of administrative practices and permit policies. The resulting system, while enhancing Israeli security, is also aimed at protecting and enhancing the free movement of settlers and the physical and economic expansion of the settlements at the expense of the Palestinian population. In particular, the routing of the separation barrier, the system of restricted West Bank roads, the control of the Palestinian population registry and restrictive zoning and land use rules and practices are aimed primarily at serving the settler population.

Drawing on extensive work undertaken by UN OCHA and others, the Bank report notes that the restriction system has fragmented the West Bank into 10 economically isolated cantons, severed Palestinian economic, social and physical links to Jerusalem and denied Palestinians access to some 50% of West Bank land for economic purposes.

According to David Craig, World Bank Country Director for the West Bank and Gaza, this has devastated the Palestinian economy. "The restriction system has caused a rise in transaction costs, making Palestinian goods increasingly uncompetitive. Even more importantly, the system has created such a high level of uncertainty and inefficiency that the normal conduct of business in the West Bank has become exceedingly difficult and investment has been stymied," he said.

"Palestinian economic revival is predicated on an integrated economic entity with freedom of movement between the West bank and Gaza and within the West Bank, unfettered Palestinian access to West Bank land for economic purposes, and reliable access to world markets," Craig added. "The restriction system has significantly undermined these conditions. Restoring sustainable Palestinian economic growth is dependent on its dismantling."

Official English Summary of Winograd

2007-05-05T19:38:00.000+03:00

Press Release

1. On September 17th 2006 The Government of Israel decided, under section 8A of The Government Act 2001, to appoint a governmental commission of examination “To look into the preparation and conduct of the political and the security levels concerning all the dimensions of the Northern Campaign which started on July 12th 2006”. Today we have submitted to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence the classified interim report, and we are now presenting the inclassified report to the public.

2. The Commission was appointed due to a strong sense of a crisis and deep disappointment with the consequences of the campaign and the way it was conducted. We regarded accepted this difficult task both as a duty and a privilege. It is our belief that the larger the event and the deeper the feeling of crisis – the greater the opportunity to change and improve matters which are essential for the security and the flourishing of state and society in Israel. We believe Israeli society has great strength and resilience, with a robust sense of the justice of its being and of its achievements. These, too, were expressed during the war in Lebanon and after it. At the same time, we must not underrated deep failures among us.

3. This conception of our role affected the way we operated. No-one underestimates the need to study what happened in the past, including the imposition of personal responsibility. The past is the key for learning lessons for the future. Nonetheless, learning these lessons and actually implementing them are the most implication of the conclusions of the Commission.

4. This emphasis on learning lessons does not only follow from our conception of the role of a public Commission. It also follows from our belief that one Israeli society greatest sources of strength is its being a free, open and creative. Together with great achievements, the challenges facing it are existential. To cope with them, Israel must be a learning society – a society which examines its achievements and, in particular, its failures, in order to improve its ability to face the future.

5. Initially we hoped that the appointment of the Commission will serve as an incentive to accelerate learning processes in the relevant systems, while we are working, so that we could devote our time to study all of the materials in depth, and present the public with a comprehensive picture. However, learning processes have been limited. In some ways an opposite, and worrying, process emerged – a process of ‘waiting’ for the Commission’s Report before energetic and determined action is taken to redress failures which have been revealed.

6. Therefore we decided to publish initially an Interim Report, focusing on the decisions related to starting the war. We do this in the hope that the relevant bodies will act urgently to change and correct all that it implies. We would like to reiterate and emphasize that we hope that this Partial Report, which concentrates on the functioning of the highest political and military echelons in their decision to move into the war will not divert attention from the overall troubling complete picture revealed by the war as a whole.

7. The interim report includes a numer of chapters dealing with the following subjects:

a. The Commissions’ conception of its role, and its attitude to recommendations in general and to recommendations dealing with specific persons in particular. (chapter 2): We see as the main task of a public commission of inquiry (or investigation) to determine findings and conclusions, and present them- with its recommendations – before the public and decision makers so that they can take action. A public commission should not – in most cases – replace the usual political decision-making processes and determine who should serve as a minister or senior military commander. Accordingly, we include personal conclusions in the interim report, without personal recommendations. However, we will reconsider this matter towards our Final Report in view of the depiction of the war as a whole.

b. The way we balanced our desire to engage in a speedy and efficient investigation with the rights of those who may be negatively affected to ‘natural justice’ (chapter 3): The special stipulations of the Commissions of Inquiry Act in this regard do not apply to a governmental commission of Examination, but we regard ourselves, naturally, as working under the general principles of natural justice. The commission notified those who may be affected by its investigation, in detailed letters of invitation, of the ways in which they may be negatively affected, and enabled them to respond to allegations against them, without sending “notices of warning” and holding a quasi-judicial hearing before reaching out conclusions. We believe that in this way we provided all who may be negatively affected by our report with a full opportunity to answer all allegations against them.

c. The processes and developments in the period between the withdrawal of the IDF from Lebanon until July 11, 2006 which contributed to the background of the Lebanon War (Chapter 4): These processes created much of the factual background against which the decision-makers had to operate on July 12th, and they are thus essential to both the understanding and the evaluation of the events of the war. Understanding them is also essential for drawing lessons from the events, whose significance is often broader than that of the war itself.

8. The core of the interim report is a detailed examination of the decisions of senior political and military decision-makers concerning the decision to go to war at the wake of the abduction of the two soldiers on the morning of July 12th. We start with the decision of the government on the fateful evening of the 12th to authorize a sharp military response, and end with the speech of the Prime Minister in the Knesset on July 17th, when he officially presented the campaign and its goals. These decisions were critical and constitutive, and therefore deserve separate investigation. We should note that these decisions enjoyed broad support within the government, the Knesset and the public throughout this period.

9. Despite this broad support, we determine that there are very serious failings in these decisions and the way they were made. We impose the primary responsibility for these failures on the Prime Minister, the minister of defence and the (outgoing) Chief of Staff. All three made a decisive personal contribution to these decisions and the way in which they were made. Howwever,, there are many others who share responsibility for the mistakes we found in these decisions and for their background conditions.

10. The main failures in the decisions made and the decision-making processes can be summed up as follows:

a. The decision to respond with an immediate, intensive military strike was not based on a detailed, comprehensive and authorized military plan, based on carefull study of the complex characteristics of the Lebanon arena . A meticulous examination of these characteristics would have revealed the following: the ability to achieve military gains having significant political-international weight was limited; an Israeli military strike would inevitably lead to missiles fired at the Israeli civilian north; there was not other effective military response to such missile attacks than an extensive and prolonged ground operation to capture the areas from which the missiles were fired – which would have a high “cost” and which did not enjoy broad support. These difficulties were not explicitly raised with the political leaders before the decision to strike was taken.

b. Consequently, in making the decision to go to war, the government did not consider the whole range of options, including that of continuing the policy of ‘containment’, or combining political and diplomatic moves with military strikes below the ‘escalation level’, or military preparations without immediage military action -- so as to maintain for Israel the full range of responses to the abduction. This failure reflects weakness in strategic thinking, which derives the response to the event from a more comprehensive and encompassing picture.

c. The support in the cabinet for this move was gained in part through ambiguity in the presentation of goals and modes of operation, so that ministers with different or even contradictory attitudes could support it. The ministers voted for a vague decision, without understanding and knowing its nature and implications. They authorized to commence a military campaign without considering how to exit it.

d. Some of the declared goals of the war were not clear and could not be achieved, and in part were not achieveable by the authorized modes of military action.

e. The IDF did not exhibit creativity in proposing alternative action possibilities, did not alert the political decision-makers to the discrepancy between its own scenarios and the authorized modes of action, and did not demand – as was necessary under its own plans – early mobilization of the reserves so they could be equipped and trained in case a ground operation would be required.

f. Even after these facts became known to the political leaders, they failed to adapt the military way of operation and its goals to the reality on the ground. On the contrary, declared goals were too ambitious, and it was publicly states that fighting will continue till they are achieved. But the authorized military operations did not enable their achievement.

11. The primary responsibility for these serious failings rests with the Prime Minister, the minister of defense and the (outgoing) Chief of Staff. We single out these three because it is likely that had any of them acted better – the decisions in the relevant period and the ways they were made, as well as the outcome of the war, would have been significantly better.

12. Let us start with the Prime Minister.

a. The Prime Minister bears supreme and comprehensive responsibility for the decisions of ‘his’ government and the operations of the army. His responsibility for the failures in the initial decisions concerning the war stem from both his position and from his behavior, as he initiated and led the decisions which were taken.

b. The Prime Minister made up his mind hastily, despite the fact that no detailed military plan was submitted to him and without asking for one. Also, his decision was made without close study of the complex features of the Lebanon front and of the military, political and diplomatic options available to Israel. He made his decision without systematic consultation with others, especially outside the the IDF, despite not having experience in external-political and military affairs. In addition, he did not adequately consider political and professional reservations presented to him before the fateful decisions of July 12th.

c. The Prime Minister is responsible for the fact that the goals of the campaign were not set out clearly and carefully, and that there was no serious discussion of the relationships between these goals and the authorized modes of military action. He nade a personal contribution to the fact that the declared goals were over-ambitious and not feasible.

d. The Prime Minister did not adapt his plans once it became clear that the assumptions and expectations of Israel’s actions were not realistic and were not materializing.

e. All of these add up to a serious failure in exercising judgment, responsibility and prudence.

13. The Minister of Defence is the minister responsible for overseeing the IDF, and he is a senior member in the group of leaders in charge of political-military affairs.

a. The Minister of Defence did not have knowledge or experience in military, political or governmental matters. He also did not have good knowledge of the basic principles of using military force to achieve political goals.

b. Despite these serious gaps, he made his decisions during this period without systemic consultations with experienced political and professional experts, including outside the security establishment. In addition, he did not give adequate weight to reservations expressed in the meetings he attended.

c. The Minister of Defence did not act within a strategic conception of the systems he oversaw. He did not ask for the IDF’s operational plans and did not examine them; he did not check the preparedness and fitness of IDF; and did not examine the fit between the goals set and the modes of action presented and authorized for achieving them. His influence on the decisions made was mainly pointillist and operational. He did not put on the table – and did not demand presentation – of serious strategic options for discussion with the Prime Minister and the IDF.

d. The Minister of Defence did not develop an independent assessment of the implications of the complexity of the front for Israel’s proper response, the goals of the campaign, and the relations between military and diplomatic moves within it. His lack of experience and knowledge prevented him from challenging in a competent way both the IDF, over which he was in charge, and the Prime Minister.

e. In all these ways, the Minister of Defence failed in fulfilling his functions. Therefore, his serving as Minister of Defence during the war impaired Israel’s ability to respond well to its challenges.

14. The Chief of Staff (COS) is the supreme commander of the IDF, and the main source of information concerning the army, its plans, abilities and recommendations presented to the political echelon. Furthermore, the COS’s personal involvement with decision making within the army and in coordination with the political echelon were dominant.

a. The army and the COS were not prepared for the event of the abduction despite recurring alerts. When the abduction happened, he responded impulsively. He did not alert the political leaders to the complexity of the situation, and did not present information, assessments and plans that were available in the IDF at various levels of planning and approval and which would have enabled a better response to the challenges.

b. Among other things, the COS did not alert the political echelon to the serious shortcomings in the preparedness and the fitness of the armed forces for an extensive ground operation, if that became necessary. In addition, he did not clarify that the military assessments and analyses of the arena were that a military strike against Hezbollah will with a high probability make such a move necessary.

c. The COS’s responsibility is aggravated by the fact that he knew well that both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense lacked adequate knowledge and experience in these matters, and by the fact that he had led them to believe that the IDF was ready and prepared and had operational plans fitting the situation.

d. The COS did not provide adequate responses to serious reservation about his recommendations raised by ministers and others during the first days of the campaign, and he did not present to the political leaders the internal debates within the IDF concerning the fit between the stated goals and the authorized modes of actions.

e. In all these the Chief of Staff failed in his duties as commander in chief of the army and as a critical part of the political-military leadership, and exhibited flaws in professionalism, responsibility and judgment.

15. Concomitantly we determine that the failures listed here, and in the outcomes of the war, had many other partners.

a. The complexity of the Lebanon scene is basically outside Israel’s control.

b. The ability of Hezbollah to sit ‘on the border’, its ability to dictate the moment of escalation, and the growth of its military abilities and missile arsenal increased significantly as a result of Israel’s unilateral withdrawal in May 2000 (which was not followed, as had been hoped, by The Lebanese Army deploying on the border with Israel.

c. The shortcomings in the preparedness and the training of the army, its operational doctrine, and various flaws in its organizational culture and structure, were all the responsibility of the military commanders and political leaders in charge years before the present Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and Chief of Staff took office.

d. On the political-security strategic level, the lack of preparedness was also caused by the failure to update and fully articulate Israel’s security strategy doctrine, in the fullest sense of that term, so that it could not serve as a basis for coping comprehensively will all the challenges facing Israel. Responsibility for this lack of an updates national security strategy lies with Israel’s governments over the years. This omission made it difficult to devise an immediate proper response to the abduction, because it led to stressing an immediate and sharp military strike. If the response had been derived from a more comprehensive security strategy, it would have been easier to take into account Israel’s overall balance of strengths and vulnerabilities, including the preparedness of the civil population.

e. Another factor which largely contributed to the failures is the weakness of the high staff work available to the political leadership. This weakness existed under all previous Prime Ministers and this continuing failure is the responsibility of these PMs and their cabinets. The current political leadership did not act in a way that could compensate for this lack, and did not rely sufficiently on other bodies within and outside the security system that could have helped it.

f. Israel’s government in its plenum failed in its political function of taking full responsibility for its decisions. It did not explore and seek adequate response for various reservations that were raised, and authorized an immediate military strike that was not thought-through and suffered from over-reliance on the judgment of the primary decision-makers.

g. Members of the IDF’s general staff who were familiar with the assessments and intelligence concerning the Lebanon front, and the serious deficiencies in preparedness and training, did not insist that these should be considered within the army, and did not alert the political leaders concerning the flaws in the decisions and the way they were made.

16. As a result of our investigation, we make a number of structural and institutional recommendations, which require urgent attention:

a. The improvement of the quality of discussions and decision making within the government through strengthening and deepening staff work; strict enforcement of the prohibition of leaks; improving the knowledge base of all members of the government on core issues of Israel’s challenges, and orderly procdures for presentation of issues for discussion and resolution.

b. Full incorporation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in security decisions with political and diplomatic aspects.

c. Substantial improvement in the functioning of the National Security Council, the establishment of a national assessment team, and creating a center for crises management in the Prime Minister’s Office.

17. We regard it is of great importance to make findings, reach conclusions and present recommendations on the other critical issues which emerged in this war. We will cover them in the final report, which we strive to conclude soon. These subjects include, among others, the direction of the war was led and its management by the political echelon; the conduct of the military campaign by the army; the civil-military relationship in the war; taking care of Israel’s civilian population under missile attack; the diplomatic negotiations by the Prime Minister’s office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; censorship, the media and secrecy; the effectiveness of Israel’s media campaign; and the discussion of various social and political processes which are essential for a comprehensive analysis of the events of the war and their significance.

18. Let us add a few final comments: It took the government till March 2007 to name the events of the summer of 2006 ‘The Second Lebanon War’. After 25 years without a war, Israel experienced a war of a different kind. The war thus brought back to center stage some critical questions that parts of Israeli society preferred to avoid.

19. The IDF was not ready for this war. Among the many reasons for this we can mention a few: Some of the political and military elites in Israel have reached the conclusion that Israel is beyond the era of wars. It had enough military might and superiority to deter others from declaring war against her; these would also be sufficient to send a painful reminder to anyone who seemed to be undeterred; since Israel did not intend to initiate a war, the conclusion was that the main challenge facing the land forces would be low intensity asymmetrical conflicts.

20. Given these assumptions, the IDF did not need to be prepared for ‘real’ war. There was also no urgent need to update in a systematic and sophisticated way Israel’s overall security strategy and to consider how to mobilize and combine all its resources and sources of strength – political, economic, social, military, spiritual. cultural and scientific – to address the totality of the challenges it faces.

21. We believe that – beyond the important need to examine the failures of conducting the war and the preparation for it, beyond the need to identify the weaknesses (and strengths) in the decisions made in the war – these are the main questions raised by the Second Lebanon war. These are questions that go far beyond the mandate of this or that commission of inquiry; they are the questions that stand at the center of our existence here as a Jewish and democratic state. It would be a grave mistake to concentrate only on the flaws revealed in the war and not to address these basic issues.

We hope that our findings and conclusions in the interim report and in the final report will not only impel taking care of the serious governmental flaws and failures we examine and expose, but will also lead towards a renewed process in which Israeli society, and its political and spiritual leaders will take up and explore Israel’s long-term aspirations and the ways to advance them.

THE LIVNI-RICE PLAN: TOWARDS A JUST PEACE OR APARTHEID?

2007-05-03T21:03:00.000+03:00

by Jeff Halper

For years I have been one of the doomsayers, arguing that the two-state solution is dead and that apartheid has become the only realistic political outcome of the Israel-Palestine conflict– at least until a full-blown anti-apartheid struggle arises that fundamentally changes the equation. I based my assessment on several seemingly incontrovertible realities. Over the past 40 years, Israel has laid a thick and irreversible Matrix of Control over the Occupied Territories, including some 300 settlements, which effectively eliminates the possibility of a viable Palestinian state. No Israeli politician could conceivably be elected on the basis of withdrawing from the Occupied Territories to a point where a real Palestinian state could actually emerge, and even if s/he was, the prospect of cobbling together a coalition government with the requisite will and clout to carry out such a plan is highly unlikely, if at all. And given the unconditional bi-partisan support Israel enjoys in both houses of Congress and successive Adminstrations, reinforced by the Christian Right, the influential Jewish community and military lobbyists and a lack of will on the part of the international community to pressure Israel into making meaningful concessions, a genuine two-state solution seems virtually out of the question – even though it is the preferred option espoused by the international community in the moribund “Road Map” initiative.

Now if it is true that the two-state solution is gone, the next logical alternative would be the one-state solution, particularly since Israel conceives of the entire country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River as one country – the Land of Israel – and has de facto made it one country through its settlements and highways. Seeing that Israel has been the only effective government throughout the land these past 40 years, why not go all the way and declare it a democratic state of all its inhabitants? (After all, Israel claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East.) The answer is clear: a democratic state in the Land of Israel is unacceptable (to Israel) because such a state, with a Palestinian majority, could not be “Jewish.”

Which leads us back, then, to apartheid, a system in which one population separates itself from another and then proceeds to dominate it permanently and structurally. Since the dominant group seeks control of the entire country but wants to get the unwanted population off its hands, it rules them indirectly, by means of a bantustan, a kind of prison-state. This is precisely what Olmert laid out to a joint session of Congress last May when he presented his “convergence plan” (to 18 standing ovations). And this is precisely what Condoleezza Rice, together with Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, have been working on during Rice’s monthly visits to the region.

The plan embodies the worst nightmare of the Palestinians. Phase II of the Road Map presents the "option" of an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders, "as a way station to a permanent status settlement." Livni is publicly pushing for Phase II to replace Phase I, raising Palestinian fears of being frozen indefinitely in limbo between occupation and a “provisional” state with no borders, no sovereignty, no viable economy, surrounded, fragmented and controlled by Israel and its ever-expanding settlements.

For their part, Livni and Rice are proceeding very quietly, in stark contrast to the bluster of their male bosses. They have even refrained from giving a name to their plan, which Livni calls simply and innocuously “Israel’s peace initiative for a two-state solution.” Ari Shavit, a leading journalist in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, asks: “Does Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have a clear diplomatic plan that she is trying to promote? Livni implies that she does, but refuses to explain. She speaks of the two-state vision. She talks about the need to divide the country politically….However, she does not explain what the plan really is.”

The plan is simple but far below the public radar. (The New York Times recently took Rice to task for “humiliating” herself by going to Israel frequently with no apparent plan). In order to seemingly conform to the Road Map initiative ostensibly led by the US, Livni talks of the two-state solution arrived at through negotiations. But the Road Map requires Israel to freeze its settlement building, something Israel steadfastly refuses to do. How can this be reconciled? How can Israel pursue a two-state solution while at the same time expanding its settlements and infrastructure in the very territories in which a Palestinian state would emerge?

The answer lies in a little noticed but fundamental change in US policy, announced by President Bush in April, 2004, and ratified almost unanimously by both houses of Congress. “In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers [which is what the Bush Administration calls Israel’s massive settlement blocs],” he stated, “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 one fell (but immensely significant) swoop, Bush fatally undercut the very basis of international diplomacy towards the Israel-Palestine conflict, including his own Road Map: the withdrawal of Israel to the 1967(1949) borders to make space for a genuine Palestinian state. Israel thus claims that settlement building within these settlement blocs does not violate the Road Map, since that territory has been unilaterally recognized by the US as belonging permanently to Israel. In this way between 15-25% of the West Bank has been removed from negotiations and annexed de facto to Israel, while the “occupied territories” have been redefined as only that area outside the settlement blocs – and that to be negotiated and “compromised.”

What Israel expects of the Palestinians, then, is a type of occupation-by-consent made possible by “negotiations” in which a priori the Palestinians lose up to 85% of their historic homeland. Now this is patently unacceptable to the Palestinians. Israel’s initial attitude was: Who cares? The Palestinians have always been irrelevant, including in the Oslo “peace process.” In his congressional address, Olmert was explicit in Israel’s intention to impose a Pax Israeliana unilaterally if need be: “We cannot wait for the Palestinians forever. Our deepest wish is to build a better future for our region, hand-in-hand with a Palestinian partner. But if not, we will move forward -- but not alone. We could never have implemented the disengagement plan without your [America’s] firm support. The disengagement could never have happened without the commitments set out by President Bush in his letter of April 14th, 2004, endorsed by both houses of Congress in unprecedented majorities.”

But here Olmert hit a snag. The Road Map – to which lip service must be paid – clearly calls for a negotiated end to the Occupation and the conflict. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, says the text, must be resolved “through a negotiated settlement leading to a final and comprehensive settlement.” Both Bush and Blair grabbed Olmert and told him that the “convergence plan” could not be imposed unilaterally. He would have to “pretend” (and I know that word was used by the British government) to negotiate with Abbas for a year. That is what lies behind the occasional meetings Olmert has had with Abbas, which Olmert has publicly limited to strictly “practical issues.” The Boston Globe reported on April 15, 2007, “Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas launched a U.S.-initiated series of meetings on Sunday, bypassing some of the most contentious issues of the Middle East conflict….‘We will not discuss the core issues of the conflict – the issue of (Palestinian) refugees, Jerusalem and borders,’ Olmert said in broadcast remarks at the weekly cabinet meeting.”

And here is where Tzipi Livni’s idea of substituting Phase II for Phase I comes in. After the year is over (in May 2007) and it is clear that the Palestinians have not been “forthcoming,” Israel will be allowed to declare the route of the Separation Barrier its “provisional” border, thus annexing about 10% of the West Bank. That may not sound like much, but it incorporates into Israel the major settlement blocs (plus a half-million Israeli settlers) while carving the West Bank into a number of small, disconnected, impoverished “cantons.” It removes from the Palestinians their richest agricultural land and all their water. It also creates a “greater” Israeli Jerusalem over the entire central portion of the West Bank, thereby cutting the economic, cultural, religious and historic heart out of any Palestinian state. It then sandwiches the Palestinians between the Barrier/border and yet another “security” border, the Jordan Valley, giving Israel two eastern borders. This prevents movement of people and goods into both Israel and Jordan, but also internally, between the various cantons. Israel also retains control of Palestinian airspace, the electro-magnetic sphere and even the right of a Palestinian state to conduct its own foreign policy.

In that way the Palestinians get their state, albeit with “provisional borders,” Israel expands onto 82-85% of the country while still conforming to the Road Map and apartheid – in the guise of a “two-state solution” – becomes political reality. And that’s where we stay forever.

But here I hit a snag. Make your case as persuasive as you might, neither Israelis nor Palestinians nor governments are willing to give up on the two-state solution, seeing nowhere to go from there. So I have to cut it some slack. Tzipi Livni herself, one of the few truly thinking government officials we Israelis have, has uttered some hopeful phrases lately, going further in tone and content than anyone in the Labor Party. “On the one hand, I want to anchor my interests on the security issue, demilitarization and the refugee problem,” she said recently, “and on the other I want to create a genuine alternative for the Palestinians that includes a solution to their national problem.”

She has even criticized male approaches to the conflict over the years. “Did you see male hormones raging around you?” she was asked in a Ha’aretz interview (December 29, 2006). "Sometimes there are guy issues," she answered candidly. “Was there a guy problem in the conduct of the [Lebanon] war?” pressed the interviewer. "Not only in the war,” she responded. “In all kinds of discussions, I hear arguments between generals and admirals and such and I say guys, stop it. There's something of that here….During those days [of the war], the thinking was too militaristic….At the beginning of the war, some people thought that the diplomatic role was to provide the army with time. That's understandable: In the past we always achieved, we conquered, we released, we won, and then the world came and took away from us. The victory was military and the failure political. But this time it was the opposite."
Livni, like most Israelis, cannot abandon the two-state plan. The alternatives – one state or apartheid – are clearly unacceptable. The existence of a Jewish state depends on that of a Palestinian one. Yet that has not constrained Israeli settlement expansion, which continues apace even as I write. Livni appears to believe, with most Israelis, that there is a thin magic overlap between the minimum the Palestinians can accept and the minimum Israel can concede – especially if emphasis is given to the Palestinian state and territory rather than to genuine sovereignty and economic viability. I doubt this, particularly in light of the fact that more than 60% of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are under the age of 18 and need a truly viable future.

Failing the carrot, Israelis – and here I’m not really sure where Livni stands – turn to the stick, to military pressures, economic sanctions and daily hardship that, they believe, can compel the Palestinians to accept a truncated, semi-sovereign, non-viable mini-state. All that is needed is continued pressure on the part of Israel, combined with some “sweetening of the pudding” designed to make apartheid palatable to the international community. Giving the Palestinians 90% of the Occupied Territories, for example. Though all the resources, sovereignty and developmental potential are found in the 10% Israel would keep, simply offering them such a “generous offer” would place irresistible pressures on them to accept. Who, after all, really cares about “viability?”

I think the two-state solution is gone and apartheid is at the door. I do not see any way that “finessing” will liberate enough qualitative land for a viable Palestinian state to emerge. But if we are stuck with it for the meantime, I would then contend that three absolutely indispensable criteria have to be met to give any two-state solution at least a shot at success: (1) the Palestinians must obtain Gaza, 85-90% of the West Bank in a coherent form (including its water resources) and an extra-territorial land connection between them; (2) they must have unsupervised borders with Arab States (the Jordan Valley and the Rafah crossing in Gaza), plus unrestricted sea- and airports; and (3) a shared Jerusalem must be an integral part of a Palestinian state with free and unrestricted access.

I fear that the Livni-Rice plan falls far short of this. I don’t doubt Livni’s sincerity (something unusual for me to say about any politician, let alone one from Likud-Kadima), but I fear she, like almost all Israelis who seek peace, minimize what the Palestinians can accept beyond what they are capable of. And when they don’t accept, they are, of course, to blame. Thus Livni herself has said tellingly: “Abbas is not a partner for a final-status agreement, but he could be a partner for other arrangements, on the basis of the road map's phased process.”

Can Livni pull it off? It all depends on her sincerity, her ability to maneuver an extremely right-wing Olmert government onto a path of true peace or, failing that, to get elected Prime Minister on her own and then establish a government that could take the momentous decisions a true and just peace with the Palestinians would require. A pretty tall order, but keep Tzipi Livni, not a name most people recognize today, in mind.

In the meantime, the no-name, no-publicity, Livni-Rice non-plan proceeds on its course, concealed by seemingly larger events such as the Arab League initiative. But wait! What about the Arab League/Saudi initiative? Doesn’t that call for a two-state solution and a return of refugees? It does, of course, but few in the Arab world take it seriously. People there understand that justice for Palestinians means far less to the Arab governments than relations with the US and, yes, Israel, especially given the common Iranian threat. So the Arab League initiative is intended more to placate the Arab Street than as an actual political position that will adversely affect the Livni-Rice plan.

We in the peace camp must closely monitor the doings of Livni and Rice. There is nothing really secret; everything reported above has been said or reported upon in the Israeli press. It is simply a matter of connecting the dots, of picking up the hints and half-statements. We must develop the ability to comprehend the significance of bland non-news statements such as “Abbas is not a partner for a final-status agreement but…” if we, unlike the New York Times, want to “get it.” As it is, the Livni-Rice initiative is significant in exactly the reverse proportion to how it is perceived as newsworthy.

(Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and a candidate, with the Palestinian peace activist Ghassan Andoni, for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. He can be reached at ).

Prevention of Demolition of Centre for Autistic and Special Needs Children in East Jerusalem

2007-04-30T01:08:00.000+03:00

(Hebrew follows below)

The Jerusalem Municipality is planning, during the coming days, to demolish a building in Wadi Joz in East Jerusalem which is used by the Iyat amuta, (an amuta for advancement of children with special needs) and the amuta Kochavey Jerusalem. Prevention of demolition will help the children and families of a particularly vulnerable sector of the community, in very real need of urgent help.

Tomorrow morning (Monday), from 7.00 a.m. onwards, activists will be present at the centre’s site in Wadi Joz to try to prevent the demolition. In order to get there, go to Wadi Joz, in Suwani, after the wholesale market continue straight down, 50 metres, to the entrance to the industrial area, and then turn right onto a rough track and you will see the centre (Palestinian public transport goes to that area from nearby Damascus Gate). The centre is within walking distance of Augusta Victoria and the Hebrew University.

The demolition is being carried out according to the final decision of the district court. The centre hosts children for 2-week special stays, and is an afternoon daycare centre. It is important to state that all special education schools in the east of the city are located in the Wadi Joz area, near the centre’s address. This is something which affects access and transport to the centre. The Iyat amuta searched for a long time for suitable premises for the school, but didn’t manage to find such a place, because of the scarcity of available buildings and sky-high rents charged in the area. At the premises of the centre they already undertook various renovations to serve the children’s special needs and are involved in ongoing work there for that end. Iyat is the only service provider in the entire East Jerusalem area providing for the special needs and therapy for autistic children, handicapped or challenged children and on many occasions has to refuse to accept any more children for treatment, with all the anguish involved in such refusal.

Please come to help. For further information, or directions contact: Abdul Rahman, of Iyat: 0548-121 925, Shai Haim (ICAHD): 0506-986 964, Meir Margalit (ICAHD): 0544 345 503

עצירת הריסת מרכז לילדים אוטיסטים ובעלי צרכים מיוחדים בירושלים
עיריית ירושלים מתכוונת להרוס בימים הקרובים מבנה בשכונת וואדי אלג'וז במזרח ירושלים המשמש את עמותת איאת- עמותה לקידום ילדים בעלי צרכים מיוחדים, ועמותת כוכבי ירושלים. מניעת ההריסה שבנידון יאפשר לעזור לילדים ולמשפחות מאוכלוסיה החלשה בחלשות.
מחר החל משבע בבוקר פעילים מתבצרים במרכז במטרה לנסות למנוע את ההריסה.
הגעה למרכז:
וואדי אלג'וז- אזור סוואני- אחרי שוק הסיטונאי- החיז'בה, להמשיך 50 מטר ישר למטה, בצומת פונים ימינה בשביל עפר וממשיכים כמאה מטר.
להכוונה נוספת התקשרו:
עבדל רחמן מאיאת- 0548121925
מאיר מרגלית- 0544345503
ההריסה היא לפי החלטה סופית של בית משפט מחוזי. בין היתר עמותת איאת מפעילה במקום נופשון בן שבועיים לילדים ומועדונית לשעות אחה"צ. חשוב להדגיש כי כל בתי הספר לחינוך מיוחד במזרח העיר נמצאים בשכונת ואדי אלג'וז, בקירבת מקום למרכז. דבר זה מקל רבות על הגעת והסעת הילדים. עמותת איאת חיפשה זמן רב מקום מתאים לבתי הספר, אולם לא עלה בידה למצוא מקום שכזה, בשל מחסור במבנים ודמי שכירות שהרקיעו לשמים. במבנה בוצעו שינויים רבים להתאמתו לצרכי הילדים והוא בעיצומו של תהליכים נוספים.
איאת הינה העמותה היחידה בכל מזרח העיר המעניקה סיוע, טיפול והשגחה לילדים אוטיסטיים, לילדים בעלי מוגלביות וצרכים מיוחדים, ופעמים רבות נאלצה לסרב לקבל ילדים נוספים לטיפול, עם כל הכאב הכרוך בכך.
אנא הגיעו לעזור במניעת ההריסה

We are Virginia Tech

2007-04-19T23:26:00.000+03:00

We are Virginia Tech

We are sad today
We will be sad for quite a while
We are not moving on
We are embracing our mourning

We are Virginia Tech

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly
We are brave enough to bend to cry
And we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again

We are Virginia Tech

We do not understand this tragedy
We know we did nothing to deserve it

But neither does a child in Africa
Dying of AIDS

Neither do the Invisible Children
Walking the night away to avoid being captured by a rogue army

Neither does the baby elephant watching his community
Be devastated for ivory
Neither does the Mexican child looking
For fresh water

Neither does the Iraqi teenager dodging bombs

Neither does the Appalachian infant killed
By a boulder
Dislodged
Because the land was destabilized

No one deserves a tragedy

We are Virginia Tech
The Hokie Nation embraces
Our own
And reaches out
With open heart and mind
To those who offer their hearts and hands

We are strong
And brave
And innocent
And unafraid

We are better than we think
And not yet quite what we want to be

We are alive to imagination
And open to possibility
We will continue
To invent the future

Through our blood and tears
Through all this sadness

We are the Hokies

We will prevail
We will prevail
We will prevail

We are
Virginia Tech

Nikki Giovanni, delivered at the Convocation, April 17, 2007

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Irish NUJ Vigil for Alan Johnston

2007-04-19T02:21:00.000+03:00

-The Irish Executive Council of the NUJ have called a solidarity vigil demanding the immediate release of abducted journalist and NUJ member Alan Johnston.

The NUJ and the BBC request that no banners/posters/flags be brought along to the event. Photos of Alan will be distributed.

Venue: outside the office of the General Delegation of Palestine (PLO) to Ireland, 42 Adelaide Rd. (near the Eye and Ear hospital)

Time and date: Thursday the 18th of April, 5.30 to 6.30 pm.

- To mark Palestinian Prisoners' day yesterday, and in response to the claim by Alan's alleged kidnappers that he was taken to help Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails the Gaza based organisation 'The Mothers and Families of Palestinian and Arab Prisoners in Israeli Jails' released the following statement.

"On Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, the Mothers of Prisoners Call for Their Release and Condemn Kidnappings in the Name of Stopping Their Continuous Suffering."

On the occasion of Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, 17 April 2007, we, the mothers and families of Palestinian and Arab prisoners detained in Israeli jails, continue to miss our loved ones and hope that they will be immediately released.

It is we who each day miss our loved ones, who have been cut off from their sons, daughters and relatives by Israeli Occupation Forces. It is we who witness their detention in jails that lack the minimum international acceptable detention standards.

As we reject the illegal detention and inhuman treatment of prisoners, we reject the claim by any group that they may commit criminal and un-national acts in the name of the Palestinian and Arab prisoners. The kidnapping of anybody, including BBC journalist Alan Johnston, is against the rights of the prisoners, it is against the love and the suffering of their mothers, it is against the whole of the Palestinian people.

As we call upon relevant local, regional and international parties to ensure the immediate release of our prisoners, we call on those who have kidnapped Alan to immediately release him. We call on them not to stoop to the level of the occupation by conducting these pernicious acts. We call on them not to violate the goodwill of the people of the world towards the well-known suffering of the Palestinian people, who have been under occupation for nearly 40 years.

Based on our heritage, morals and principles and the Palestinian proverb that says: “No one feels the pain, except those who are injured,” we, the mothers and families of prisoners understand the pain afflicted to the family of Alan Johnston, and as we call for the immediate release of our prisoners, we hope the same for our peoples' friend Alan Johnston.

As the suffering of prisoners in Israeli jails continues, and conflicting statements appears in the media concerning an exchange of prisoners, we call on the Palestinian side to prioritize this issue and learn from the mistakes of the past in negotiations on the issue of prisoners.

We also call upon the international community to pressure the Israeli government to comply with the human justice requirements and international humanitarian law, and release our prisoners.

We further stress to the Israeli government that the continued detention and inhuman treatment of more than 10,000 prisoners does not serve the peace process. Rather it deepens doubts concerning the possibility of achieving peace. These doubts will continue as long as prisoners are still detained in Israeli jails and they and their families continue to suffer.

Peace should bring liberation of people and land rather than enhance occupation and increase the suffering of people.

Freedom for the prisoners of liberation.

Signed,
The Mothers and Families of Palestinian and Arab Prisoners in Israeli Jails

Whose Government is this?

2007-04-17T22:40:00.000+03:00

By Gideon Levy

A call should be made to the Consumers Council: This is a case of wholesale fraud. In the sea of thieves, embezzlers and crooks around us, this is the largest deceit of all. The majority of Israeli citizens voted for a centrist government, perhaps even a bit left of center, and received one of the most extreme right-wing governments in the history of Israel.

We voted for Kadima, which promised convergence and an end to the occupation. We voted for Ehud Olmert, the left flank of Ariel Sharon, who was carried aloft (solely) on the wings of the disengagement's success. We voted for Shimon Peres, who always promises peace. We voted for the Pensioners, who did not speak like right-wingers. We voted for the Big Bang, which was supposed to be a harbinger of a pragmatic turnabout. And what did we receive? The world already knows and we should also recognize this: a benighted, right-wing government.

The 28,000 participants in a recent survey by the BBC World Service in 27 countries ranked Olmert's Israel, together with Ahmadinejad's Iran, as the countries having the most negative influence on the world. The current government is largely responsible for the fact that Israelis do not care that they are viewed this way. In a country where people are quick to sue a travel agency for a vacation package that did not meet their expectations, the masses of voters who fell victim to the great fraud remain silent.

The settlers establish another illegal outpost in Hebron, and most Israelis are not interested in the most criminal settlement of them all. And what does their government say? A front is already forming to oppose the evacuation. The Arab League extends its hand for peace and the 52 percent of Israelis who have heard of the Saudi initiative say it could constitute a basis for negotiation. And what does their government say? It makes a sour face and quashes the chance. There are signs of a chance to liberate Gilad Shalit and create a new atmosphere with the Palestinians; 45 percent of Israelis are in favor of releasing prisoners "with blood on their hands" and only 36 percent are opposed. And their government? It categorically rejects the Palestinian proposal. The majority of Israelis tell the pollsters that they are in favor of establishing a Palestinian state and evacuating settlements. And what is their government doing to realize the aspirations of its voters? Not a thing. It has been a long time since such a wide disparity has existed between the views of the public and the government, a disparity that makes democracy look like a bandage.

This gap reaches its peak in the case of the building in Hebron. In a government that raised the banner of evacuating settlements, there are quite a few ministers who are opposed to evacuating a building that was inhabited without a permit. Even a single building. Who are these opponents? Is it only Avigdor Lieberman? The prime minister himself has already promised not to evacuate the building, according to MK Effi Eitam. There is also Roni Bar-On from the "moderate" Kadima party, Eli Yishai from Shas and even Rafi Eitan from the Pensioners. "Israeli territory" is what Eitan calls the heart of the Palestinian city, where nearly 20,000 residents have already been forced to flee in fear of the settlers.

Never have the settlers been in a worse situation in terms of public opinion. Never has their situation been better in the government. After we thought the disengagement had rid us of their caprices and that they had been proved a paper tiger, the government is again intimidated by them, as in their heyday. The Marzels are provoking again, and they are winning again. How many Israelis have ever visited Hebron? How many of them have seen the dreadfulness with their own eyes? And look at how many of them are willing to continue to suffer the misdeeds of the settlers, to pay such a steep price for them, and to remain silent.

There is no protest in Israel and no center. Only radicalism speaks: The fragments of the far left still go out to protest, and the settlers continue with their extortion. If once their source of strength was broad public support, their source of strength now is an all-encompassing apathy. In a comatose society, the settlers can terrorize Olmert, Bar-On and Eitan. In a comatose government, inaction is turning into extreme right-wingedness.

But now we are also coming under suspicion. Perhaps when we are voting for the center and the left, we actually want the right? Maybe what we really want is a nationalistic, rightist government, and that all of the rest - the ostensibly enlightened talk about ending the occupation and evacuating settlements, human rights and a Palestinian state - is nothing more than a loathsome falsehood and self-deception?

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www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=848316

People Kill People -- With Guns

2007-04-17T22:09:00.000+03:00

by Michael Winship

On Sunday, the National Rifle Association wrapped up its 136th annual convention in St. Louis. Sixty-thousand attended. NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre fired up the crowd, telling them, "Today, there is not one firearm owner whose freedom is secure."

On Monday, one of those owners shot more than fifty students, staff and teachers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Thirty-two of them died, the worst such massacre in American history. So much for their freedom.

At that same St. Louis meeting -- amidst sessions on African big game hunting, "methods of concealed carry," and quick draw competitions -- Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action, chillingly warned of an event remarkably like Monday's shootings. Warned, not because of the bloodshed or the anguish it would bring the bereaved families, but because such an incident would give gun control advocates "a green light to do it all," by which he meant, he said, "gun bans, gun registration, gun owner licensing, gun rationing, taxes and fees."

Cox callously declared that for those in favor of stricter gun laws such a tragedy would be "the Hail Mary of their playbook." Hours after his remarks, innocent victims lay dying, shot down by a maniac with a pair of handguns.

Frankly, I wish Cox were right about at least some of what he propagandizes as the vast power of the gun control lobby. How many times do mass killings such as what happened in Blacksburg, Virginia, have to occur before we get it through our thick, wired for the Stone Age skulls? For that matter, how many times do people have to write a column like this one decrying the insanity of gun violence in America?

And how many times do we have to put up with NRA bullies and loudmouths screaming about the right to bear arms? You can have your guns for hunting and collecting and skeet, trap and target practice. Hell, you can have a permit for a gun to protect your business or home, even though it's 22 times more likely to kill a member of your family than an intruder. But the rest?

Let's face it, the reality is that NRA officials have a much broader agenda than most of their four million members probably realize. At its root is opposition to government regulation of any kind. They mention the United Nations as an alien force almost as often as those black helicopter loons in Idaho. Former UN Ambassador John Bolton was even one of their convention's guest speakers, inveighing against the perfidy of international arms trafficking treaties.

Maybe here in New York City we're more hyper on the issue. Thirty years ago I had a handgun pointed at me during a robbery on a Manhattan cross street. It got my attention. And don't start with me, suggesting that if I'd had a gun I could have fought back. More likely, I'd be dead.

Friends have had similar close calls. And a month ago, just a few blocks from my apartment, two unarmed auxiliary policemen were gunned down by a lunatic not unlike Monday's campus killer.

As for Virginia, well, to modify their tourist slogan, the state is indeed for lovers -- of firearms. "Having a gun is not a liability in this state for a politician," George Mason University politics professor Mark Rozell explained to the Washington Post last month. This was after an aide to the state's new junior senator, Democrat James Webb, was arrested with a loaded handgun and ammunition, entering a US Senate office building. He said the gun belonged to Webb.

The senator is "clearly committed to the Second Amendment and has a gun close by when he is in Virginia," Virginia Commonwealth University political scientist Robert Holsworth told the Post. Senator Webb, a former Marine marksman, proudly showed off his carry permit during last year's election campaign and received an NRA approval grade of "A."

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence gives Virginia a grade of C- on legislation preventing gun violence (New York State gets a B+, Mississippi an F). Virginia has no law requiring gun registration, although a permit is needed to carry a concealed weapon. If you buy firearms from a licensed dealer in Virginia, you have to pass a criminal background check, but there is no such rule for buying weapons from unlicensed dealers at gun shows, a loophole both congressional and state legislation aim to close (the bills are vehemently opposed by the NRA).

The Virginia Tech killings will be blamed on a variety of things, just as Columbine was. Regardless of the true motive, some will suggest that the shootings were an aberrant incident timed to mark the anniversary of Columbine, Waco, Oklahoma City -- even the 1775 Battle of Lexington and Concord and Hitler's birthday -- all of which took place at this time of the month. Or that if this young murderer is, as the Chicago Sun-Times was reporting Monday night, a Chinese national on a student visa and not an American, it somehow doesn't count.

Polling indicates that although a majority of Americans favor stricter gun control, they tend to blame such senseless massacres more on a poor family upbringing and the dark influence of popular culture than a lack of sensible gun laws. There's some truth to that, of course. The argument also will be made that regardless of the law, a lunatic or criminal can get hold of a gun.

Yet take a look at a study released last fall by Johns Hopkins' Center for Gun Policy and Research. In 1999, a gun store in the Milwaukee area was found to be the leading seller of guns in America that later turned up in the hands of criminals. The shop cleaned up its act, observed the laws and there was a 44 percent decrease in new guns going to local bad guys. According to Daniel Webster, the study's lead author, “Increased scrutiny of the few gun dealers linked to the most crime guns has the potential to significantly reduce the supply of new guns to criminals in many other US cities.” (According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, one percent of licensed dealers are responsible for more than half the guns recovered from criminals.)

We have some 200 million, privately owned firearms in America, 65 million of which are handguns, the primary purpose of which is to threaten, hurt and kill people. Every year, there are 30,000 gun deaths and 300,000 gun-related assaults in this country. All of this violence costs America an estimated $100 billion a year. Toys are regulated with greater care and safety concerns.

Over the next days and weeks and months, there will be much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments but what will be done? If the past is any guide, the majority who favor stricter control will in all likelihood be shouted down by the vitriol, and the electoral and lobbying money power, of the well-armed few. Oh well, we all too probably will say. Until the next time. And the time after that. Unless we make a noise. Now.

Sadly, perhaps the person with the sanest, existential perspective on all this was Jamal Albarghouti, the Virginia Tech grad student who shot the cell phone video that has been seen on all the networks. What was he going to do next, an anchorwoman asked him. "Get on with my life. What else can I do?" he replied.

"Of course," he added, by way of an explanation, "I'm from the Middle East."

Refugees and Israeli Responsibility

2007-04-08T17:11:00.000+03:00

Letter to the IHT from Ambassador Erik Ader, Netherlands (see cv at end)

3rd April 2007

According to Steven Erlanger’s article in the Saturday/Sunday edition of the International Herald Tribune, PM Ehud Olmert stated categorically “… that Israel bore no responsibility for the refugees, whose plight resulted from an attack by Arab nations on the fledgling state”.

On a recent visit to Israel, to see people who found refuge in my parents’ manse in World War II, I wandered into the “Etzel Museum” in a park between Tel Aviv and Jaffa. From a plaque on the wall I quote “On Monday 25 April 1948 during the week of Passover an Etzel Force set out to conquer Jaffa… population 80,000… to remove the danger posed to the city of Tel Aviv and its residents… Etzel mortars, relentlessly bombarding the centre of the town, caused the mass flight of the Arab population”. Twenty tons of ordnance rained down on frightened citizens. This had already been preceded by the attack on mainly Palestinian Haifa, coordinated between the Irgun and Haganah, on 21 April 1948 and other Palestinian population centres.

Another plaque in this museum states “… Beyond the dispute over the number of casualties, it is universally agreed that the Deir Yassin operation was a key point in the War of Independence”. The numbers disputed are those of the casualties, ranging from 110 to 250. The Etzel attackers lost five men, it was a massacre of mainly unarmed civilians. The “key point” the plaque refers to is that “operations” like these were the main cause of the Palestinian exodus. The date was 10 April 1948. On 14th May 1948, the day Israel declared its Independence, 300,000 Palestinians had left the country, according to Israeli historian Benny Morris. All this, therefore, happened before Arab armies invaded the fledgling state to come to the rescue of the beleaguered Palestinians. The larger part of that exodus had been caused by acts of terror and intimidation as described above.

Israel would continue the expulsions, not only after the 14th May 1948 but even after the cessation of hostilities in 1949 and deny the refugees to return to their homes and lands, often within sight across barbed wire. All in all some 750,000 residents of Palestine were thus dispossessed.

I would suggest that all Israelis who suffer from similar bouts of selective amnesia read the publications by their own historians on the subject, like Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe and former deputy mayor of Jerusalem Meron Benvenisti, or contact the courageous Israeli NGO Zochrot.

One does understand that before negotiations tough positions are being taken, but overdoing it is counterproductive. In the longer run it is ruinous: for genuine peace and reconciliation between Israel and Palestine, justice and truth are preconditions.

D.A.V.E. Ader

On my background: I am a recently retired Dutch Ambassador (postings in Oslo, Hanoi and Beirut) and the son of a Dutch reverend who was shot by the Germans for saving hundreds of Jewish compatriots during the occupation in World War II. (Re. Yad Vashem).