Both Palestinian rivals know how to use the resilience and creativity of their people in the face of the daily torture that is foreign rule. But they do not help translate this personal and collective stamina into a strategy of unarmed popular struggle.
Commentary
The “Palestine Papers” demand a serious re-evaluation of two lingering, erroneous assumptions made by many Western observers: 1) the US’ self-proclaimed role as honest broker; 2) the assumption that peace talks have fallen into abeyance chiefly because of the election nearly two years ago of Netanyahu’s rightwing Israeli government. The Americans’ goal was to strong-arm him into bringing into his coalition Tzipi Livni who is widely regarded as the most credible Israeli advocate for peace. However, Livni, previously Mr Olmert’s foreign minister, emerges in the leaked papers as an inflexible negotiator, dismissive of the huge concessions being made by the Palestinians.
IOA Editor: Indeed, as we’ve said since the release of The Palestine Papers.
Livni to Ahmed Qurei and Saeb Erekat: “Israel was established to become a national home for Jews from all over the world. The Jew gets the citizenship as soon as he steps in Israel, and therefore don’t say anything about the nature of Israel… The basis for the creation of the state of Israel is that it was created for the Jewish people. Your state will be the answer to all Palestinians including refugees. Putting an end to claims means fulfilling national rights for all.”
Imad Samouni: I know Hebrew and I told the family not to worry because Jews have better hearts than we do, I worked with them for 10 years. They tied us up… There were 46 of us… “The soldiers passed among us, made our home into their hostel… [The shackles] hurt me terribly and my fingers swelled. A soldier tried to open them but couldn’t, and only made them tighter. My wife cried that they hurt me. He brought scissors and cut down to the flesh to open them. My wife cried… And I’m a man, I told them not to cry, and he brought new plastic ties. We stayed that way from Sunday to Monday…
The army declared the River Jordan a closed military zone in 1967 and later laid mines along much of its length to deter “infiltrators” from Jordan, both Palestinian refugees seeking to return to their homes in the West Bank and Arab fighters trying to launch attacks… [T]he Israel director of Roots of Peace, a global advocacy group opposed to landmines, said half a million remained in the Valley. He added that mines could drift from fenced-off areas during storm-floods, putting worshippers at risk if they strayed off marked paths.
For months now, the media has been reporting that the UN-mandated Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is expected to indict Hezbollah members for the killing of Rafiq Hariri in February 2005. Up until about 2008, when Syria was Washington’s official evildoer, the STL targeted Syria. When the US sought to improve relations with Syria and draw it away from Iran, it was Hezbollah’s turn to assume the role and the STL put Hezbollah in its crosshairs. As with other shifting designations of who the official evildoers are, it is not too conspiratorial to suppose that the STL’s re-adjusted focus is more than mere coincidence and serves a political purpose.
The ‘diplomatic holding action’ that Israel is conducting has enjoyed partial success, but the world is gradually becoming accustomed to the idea that Palestine will join the family of nations this summer.
IOA Editor: A centrist Israeli view about the impending Palestinian statehood. Maybe. Unclear just how any Israeli government — Netanyahu’s or other — would respond. And what kind of state? On that, read Aisling Byrne’s Building a Police State in Palestine.
“If we are building a police state — what are we actually doing here?” So asked a European diplomat responding to allegations of torture by the Palestinian security forces. The diplomat might well ask. A police state is not a state. It is a form of larceny: of people’s rights, aspirations and sacrifices, for the personal benefit of an élite. This is not what the world meant when it called for statehood. But a police state is what is being assiduously constructed in Palestine, disguised as state-building and good governance.
A brilliant skit from the Israeli comedy show “Eretz Nehederet” (“Wonderful Country”) on Israel’s Channel 2 TV showing anti-Arab racism introduced to young Israeli children very early in life.
IOA Editor: If you think that this is some sort of an abstract humor, think again. For the latest, see Student’s answer on civics test: Death to Arabs
It was once widely assumed that creation of the Palestinian state would be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians. No more. The final nail in the direct-negotiations coffin was driven by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu when he coldly rejected President Obama’s offer of an extra $3.5 billion in U.S. aid in exchange for a 90-day settlement freeze.
IOA Editor: Just when was the last time such an assumption could be made? Twenty years ago? If then. Netanyahu’s predecessors, of the Likud and Labor alike, drove many earlier nails into the negotiations coffin. While Rosenberg is correct in calling for a US recognition of a self-declared future Palestinian state — a theoretical entity lacking borders, authority, or substance — he neglects to mention the historical role of all US governments in the burial of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations: it is US support of Israel — militarily, financially, and diplomatically — that enables the Occupation to continue unabated, now on the Nobel Laureate’s watch.
Israeli Occupation soldier: “You don’t want to get into a confrontation with a Jewish settlement. They are the people that are closest to you, they are like your operations branch officer, that’s how it works.”
When people comment on [Israel] venomously around the world, we object almost instinctively and say, no, that is too much already. It is only anti-Semitic hate propaganda. But with a hand on the heart — are we not becoming, from year to year, more and more like our monstrous caricature, which is drawn by our worst enemies? For really, where are we going? Think for yourselves, as unpleasant as this may be: Are we becoming more or less racist? More or less democratic? More or less decent?
IOA Editor: It is good that Mr. Dankner has finally awakened from his self-inflicted vacuous state of mind, as former editor of Maariv, one of Israel’s two most popular rags. Unfortunately, the extent of his appreciation of Israel’s decline is remarkably limited. Indeed, very little and very late. Yet, the fact that a figure who spent decades at the heart of Israel’s propaganda machine expresses regret and disappointment in the state of Jewish State is somewhat reassuring, despite the repulsive feelings one is overwhelmed by when reading his statement.
MKs from the party heading the opposition recently voted in favor of two bills that should have been easy “nays”: giving mortgage help to would-be settlers and probing leftist organizations.
IOA Editor: Another, rather mundane, instance where so-called “Labor,” “Centrist” Israeli parties participate, alongside the “Extreme Right,” in the daily conduct of Israel’s colonization program: the century-long dispossession and repression of the Palestinian people, now with a new McCarthyist twist pointing to its own Jewish citizens. History doesn’t repeat itself, it simply continues.
The corporations, no matter how badly the wars are going, make huge profits from the conflicts. They have no interest in turning off their money-making machine. Let Iraqis die. Let Afghans die. Let Pakistanis die. Let our own die. And the mandarins in Congress and the White House, along with their court jesters on the television news shows, cynically “feel our pain” and sell us out for bundles of corporate cash.
From an unbiased viewpoint, even if it were true that present-day Jews are descended from an ancient people forcibly exiled from Palestine, it would clearly not justify Zionist colonization and the ‘repossession’ of the country after two millennia from its long-standing inhabitants. This is the epitome of hutzpah coming from Zionists, who deny the right of return to the Palestinians they evicted and exiled 62 years ago.
The army’s seizure of land “for military and security purposes” quickly turned into large-scale appropriation for the exclusive benefit of Israel’s super-citizens, at the expense of the subpar species.
The persecution of “Jewish Left extremists” creates a different dynamic than the persecution of Arab citizens. Political persecution is now extending to all layers of Jewish society, permeating into areas that not even the General Security Service, and the powers to be, have ever considered.
In the wake of the recent attack on Coptic Christians in Egypt, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, warned that Christians face a campaign of “religious cleansing in the Middle East”. But, given Western governments’ colonial history and double standards on human rights, Arab Christians would be better served by an end to destructive Western intervention in the region than by sympathetic statements.
Instead of working toward revealing the truth behind the recent death of an anti-fence demonstrator the IDF is behaving like the propaganda ministry of an authoritarian regime.
Israel is gearing up for another major offensive into Gaza, yet the world community still remains bafflingly silent.
“Although it was not my usual custom, I made a point of kissing my children every night,” one young father from Gaza City told me. “I never knew which of us would still be alive the next day, and I wanted to say goodbye properly.”
It’s high time a legal ban on the Israeli left be instituted. Why do we continue beating around the bush? Why do we need such a taxing, exhaustive legislative process in enacting law after law? What’s the use of all these various proposals and amendments? In lieu of all the aforementioned, let’s just do one very simple thing: declare the left an illegal entity in the State of Israel. From then on, whoever thinks left, acts left, demonstrates left or tolerates left will belong in jail.
Once you are labeled and stereotyped – especially if you are denounced as an anti-Semite – you are relegated to the fringes, pronounced a hater beyond redemption, and even beyond explanation.
Rashid Khalidi: “Palestinian statehood is 62 years overdue. It should have happened at the time of the partition plan, a Jewish state, an Arab state. That’s what the U.N. mandated. It’s 44 years since the West Bank and the Gaza and Jerusalem were occupied, and we’re still waiting for a peace process that is going absolutely Nowhere, in fact, has made things much worse.”
As 2010 came to a close in the West Bank under the regular, weekly cloud of teargas experienced among the villages bordering Israel’s 1967 Green Line, 2011 started with the death of Palestinian woman from the village of Bi’lin and the arrest of 19 Israeli activists in the Tel Aviv area.
While intensively engaged in illegal settlement expansion, the government of Israel is also seeking to deal with two problems: a global campaign of what it perceives as “delegitimation” – that is, objections to its crimes and withdrawal of participation in them – and a parallel campaign of legitimation of Palestine.
At midnight, when the French champagne is flowing like water, perhaps we will understand that next year will be the last year we can still save something, and be grateful the truth came out.
The American-Israeli special relationship is a classic example of the tail that wags the dog. As a result of its palpable partiality towards Israel, America has lost all credibility in the eyes not only of the Palestinians but of the wider Arab and Muslim worlds. The so-called peace process has been all process and no peace. It is worse than a sham. Peace talks that go nowhere slowly provide Israel with just the cover it needs to pursue its relentlessly expansionist agenda on the West Bank.
Vilnai is depending on Israelis’ total indifference to our Qassams: our soldiers’ nearly daily firing on Gaza civilians, regularly wounding and sometimes killing them.
Half a million trees planted over the past 18 months on the ancestral lands of Bedouin tribes in Israel’s Negev region were bought by a controversial Christian evangelical television channel that calls itself God-TV.
No society is immune to deterioration into violent racism. In the Israel of today, we can observe quite a few conditions whose presence in other societies and among other peoples led to racial separation, ethnic cleansing and even genocide. There are minority groups (Arabs and foreigners ) who are ostracized by the majority, a growing racist ideology, attempts to limit the political activities and civil rights of the minority, a tense security situation and strong political elements with vested interests in territorial expansion.
Something evil is occurring in Israeli society. Racism and xenophobia are consuming its enlightenment and tolerance, and democracy is becoming more and more endangered. Phenomena that had been on the sidelines are now moving to the forefront.
Given [Israel's] predispositions, combined with the disparities in bargaining power between the parties, as well as the one-sided hegemonic role of the United States, who but a fool could think that a just peace could emerge from the such a deformed pattern of geopolitical diplomacy?
Clinton illustrated how completely the administration has bought into the Israeli discourse. In her eagerness to support an Israel that is both Jewish and democratic, she skated perilously close to racism. She warned that “the long-term population trends that result from the occupation” were endangering the Zionist vision. In other words, that another four million Palestinians might soon demand equal rights in an Israel that has effectively controlled all of mandate Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea since 1967.
