Israel’s War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands

November 2011

A study commissioned by Israel’s Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barakat to address housing shortages in the city, obtained by Hebrew daily Maariv, shows designs for 60,718 housing units in the city, with the majority — 52,363 homes — planned for East Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem office of Israeli group Peace Now was evacuated after receiving a bomb threat on Sunday evening, the organization said. Unknown assailants warned the building would explode in ten minutes in a “price tag” attack over the office intercom, the group said in a statement.

It appears that Anonymous carried out a major cyber-attack against Israeli government websites. Haaretz reports that IDF, Mossad, Shin-Bet, and several other government websites are currently inaccessible. Watch video for an accurate and sophisticated political statement.

The US is “absolutely” concerned that Israel is preparing an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and this concern is increasing… as is US “watchfulness” of Iran and Israel over the past few weeks by US Central and European Commands, which watch Iranian and Israeli developments.

IOA Editor: Whether information or disinformation, none of this has stopped the US from tightening its close military relations with Israel even further. The US, as the ‘senior partner’ in the US-Israel relations, could stop any Israeli action if it seriously wanted it.

UPDATED Top Israeli firm: World more likely to accept nuclear Iran than pay high cost of war

US Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro says security relationship with Israel is broader, deeper, more intense than ever before.

US cooperation with Israel [includes] various security concerns, from Israel’s undertakings of tasks the US might not be willing to do, to sharing intelligence and missile defense cooperation, to the Israeli expertise in cyber security that has already benefitted U.S. banking, communications, transportation and utilities.

IOA Editor: The full report on which the article is based, entitled Israel: A Strategic Asset for the US, can be downloaded on the article page. Highly recommended by Moshé Machover as “an antidote to the widespread thesis that the Israeli/Zionist tail is wagging the US dog. The US imperialists are not innocents coerced or manipulated by the evil Zionists. In fact, they are senior and junior partners, respectively.”

US cooperation with Israel [includes] various security concerns, from Israel’s undertakings of tasks the US might not be willing to do, to sharing intelligence and missile defense cooperation, to the Israeli expertise in cyber security that has already benefitted U.S. banking, communications, transportation and utilities.

Watch video…

In the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), Israel’s prolonged occupation has led to astonishing detention statistics. Since 1967, over 700,000 Palestinians have been detained: this figure amounts to around 20 percent of the existing Palestinian population in the OPT, which consists of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Among the most egregious aspects of Israeli detention policy is its treatment of child prisoners.

A report by two Israeli human rights organisations, the Public Committee Against Torture (PCAT) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), claims that medical staff are also failing to report suspicion of torture and ill-treatment, returning detainees to their interrogators and passing medical information to interrogators.

Like thwarted spoiled bullies, both Israel and the US reacted with theatrical pique and fury. The US, never applying sanctions against Israel’s decades- long war crimes in Gaza and the OPT’s by suspending its steadfast cornucopia of billions in aid and arms, immediately withdrew its $80 million contribution to UNESCO as a collective punishment.

Moshe Dayan: Fundamentally, a Palestinian state is an antithesis of the State of Israel… The basic and naked truth is that there is no fundamental difference between the relation of the Arabs of Nablus to Nablus and that of the Arabs of Jaffa to Jaffa… And if today we set out on this road and say that the Palestinians are entitled to their own state because they are natives of the same country and have the same rights, then it will not end with the West Bank. The West Bank together with the Gaza Strip do not amount to a state… The establishment of such a Palestinian state would lay a cornerstone to something else… Either the State of Israel — or a Palestinian state.

A gang of thugs, the forum of eight senior [Israeli] ministers, decided on the steps to punish the man who dared to act contrary to the desires of the familia. They’re building another 2,000 housing units in the settlements, which are for the first time being characterized as punishment. And they’re stealing the Palestinians’ tax money and canceling some of their leaders’ VIP passes.

The responsibility of the solidarity movement … is not to get caught up in wonkish or wishful “one-versus-two-state” disputations, but to do everything we can to advance the bottom-up struggle where we are. This is all the more important because, while gains can be won now to get the occupation’s foot a little bit off the Palestinians’ neck, no lasting solution seems possible in isolation from a broader democratic revolutionary transformation of the region.

Indeed, the Oslo Accords created false symmetry between the occupier/colonizer and the occupied/colonized. This symmetry denied the Palestinians an important asset in negotiations for their independence: recognition in principle of Israeli and international responsibility for having wronged the Palestinians and robbed them of their homeland and rights.

The beauty lies in the way Israel divides the conflict with the Palestinians into separate battlefields to avoid a comprehensive diplomatic solution… [T]he results of the January 2006 elections in the territories brought Hamas to power and gave Israel the excuse to deprive the PA of its representation. The two parts of the Palestinian state became independent entities and by their own doing fulfilled Israel’s desire to apply the principle of divide and rule.

Americans for Peace Now files amicus brief with US Supreme Court to oppose listing Israel as home country of Jerusalem-born Americans; US has never recognized any sovereignty over Jerusalem, be it Israel, Palestinian or Jordanian.

Noam Chomsky delivers a rare lecture on the US and Israel-Palestine (video).

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