The Palestinian Authority may be seeking renewed talks with Israel even in the absence of an Israeli freeze on settlements.
Commentary
This highway has told the whole story. They pave a road, expropriate Palestinian land and the High Court of Justice approves the expropriation, in its words, “provided that it is done for the sake of the local population.” Afterwards they prevent the “local population” from using the road, and finally they build a wall with drawings of creeks and meadows so we don’t see and don’t know that we are driving on an apartheid road, that we are traveling on the axis of evil.
The siege prohibits the export of Palestinian goods and severely limits the import of humanitarian supplies, such as food, medicine and reconstruction materials. The United Nations reports that Israel allows into Gaza less than 25% of the goods it did before the siege began in June 2007.
According to a current prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague… the significance of the Goldstone report… lies in its conclusion that Israel’s leaders “planned and predetermined the grave violations [of international law] and human rights abuses” long before the attack on Gaza.
The war the police and the Israel Defense Forces are openly waging against protests by left-wing and human rights activists has heated up in recent weeks. As a result, concern is growing over Israel’s image as a free and democratic country.
[G]reat efforts have been made to create an artificial symmetry between the systematic rebellion in the settlements and the refusal to serve in the territories that was prevalent at the beginning of the decade.
It is shameful to be Israeli today, much more than it was a year ago. In the final tally of the war, which was not a war but a brutal assault, Israel’s international status was dealt a severe blow, in addition to Israeli indifference and public blindness to what happened in Gaza.
Palestinians have a long history of nonviolent resistance but Israel has continuously deployed methods to destroy it… Israel’s response to [the] first strike was immediate and severe: it issued military orders categorising all forms of resistance as insurgency.
During the first and last days of Hanukkah, the Jerusalem police arrested drummers and clowns who believe in nonviolence, coexistence and equality between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem.
There is an internal document that has not been leaked, or perhaps has not even been written, but all the forces are acting according to its inspiration: the Shin Bet, Israel Defense Forces, Border Police, police, and civil and military judges. They have found the true enemy who refuses to whither away: The popular struggle against the occupation.
I am a Palestinian refugee, from the village of Fallujah which lies between Gaza, Hebron and Asqalan. I’ve never been allowed to visit Fallujah… I lived the next four years under constant fear of arrest by the Israeli military, because that would have resulted in almost certain deportation to Gaza, and isolation from my family.
These days, it’s tough to find a used car with a bumper sticker that reads “Peace is better than a Greater Israel.” Nowadays, everyone seems to favor the latest formula: two states for two peoples.
Livni is now unable to travel to Britain and a number of other countries, as if she were the president of Sudan. It is not (only) the world, it is (also) us. The arrest threat was issued by the most enlightened of nations. They did so when they became aware that Israel was not investigating itself. Is this not enough to rock Israeli society, to cause it to shine a light on itself instead of reprimanding half the globe?
We can wait no longer to restart the peace process. The human suffering demands urgent relief… US objections have impeded Egyptian efforts to resolve differences between Hamas and Fatah that could lead to 2010 elections.
Netanyahu has in essentially confirmed that he knew in advance that a limited settlement freeze wouldn’t bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. He could have bet that Abbas wouldn’t accept less than what the road map gave the Palestinians more than six years ago: a total freeze that includes natural growth and the immediate dismantling of all outposts established since March 2001.
Jonathan Cook: The Israeli media reported that [the man] had bled to death after he was shot under the “Hannibal procedure”, designed to prevent Israelis from being taken captive alive by enemy forces… “The Hannibal procedure is definitely the right procedure. We cannot afford now some soulmate next to Gilad Shalit.”
Between Stockholm and Tehran, Israel of 2009 is much closer to Tehran… It begins, of course, with the fact of our presence here. Among other things, it is based on theological reasoning. Abraham the Patriarch was here, so we are, too. He bought the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, so we, too, are in Palestinian Hebron. People who are entirely secular also cite religious and biblical explanations for the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel.
IOA Editor: Levy is making the rarely-made connection between religion and the Occupation – specifically, the religious beliefs of secular-like Israelis who, just the same, justify their presence and (illegal) actions by the Word of God. This crucial point is what makes this article important outside Israel.
Much is heard of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the story of the determined, long-term nonviolent resistance of many Palestinian villagers to the loss of their lands, striking as it may be, is seldom told. Here’s my report from just one village on the West Bank.
The [settlement construction] freeze orders will not change what exists now: an elite state for Jews and a sub-space for Palestinians – truncated, cut up, asphyxiated. The distinction in the mind nowadays between the state of Israel and the settlers is artificial.
Jonathan Cook: About 35,000 Bedouin residents of Israel’s southern Negev have been denied the right to hold their first local council election after the Israeli parliament passed a law at the last minute to cancel this month’s ballot. The new law gives the government the power to postpone elections to the regional council, known as Abu Basma, until the interior ministry deems the local Bedouin ready to run their own affairs. Legal and human rights groups say the move is an unprecedented violation of Israel’s constitutional principles.
Make no mistake, not a single conflict of contemporary times has been resolved, no durable peace achieved, unless and until the voices of the victims of those conflicts were heard, their losses acknowledged and redress found to injustices they experience.
The point of contention hinges on a completely different issue: the peace process. Abbas insists that the talks on the permanent status agreement be based on the parameters of the 2003 Road Map, which received affirmation in a UN Security Council Resolution. The map is reminiscent, among other things, of the Arab peace initiative which focused on normalization in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967.
You open the newspaper on any day and you can be sure to find at least one front-page article related to the Middle East. It will be something ugly or depressing, something implicating the United States directly or indirectly — Israel and Palestine, the Iraq war… And you wonder how much of the story is true, how much is distorted, and how much is omitted outright. It is not just for lack of space.
Jonathan Cook gave a talk to a visiting delegation from Belgium in Bethlehem on 5 December 2009. Much of the talk, presented in five parts, is included here. It covers a wide range of topics, including Israel’s development of the homeland security industry, its economic dependence on US aid, its use of Gaza as a laboratory for experimentation in warfare, its need to promote a global clash of civilisations, and the increasing promotion of Jewish religious fundamentalism.
For additional Jonathan Cook interviews: www.jkcook.net/Interviews
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the settlers do not mean what they say. They freeze and they wink, for the show must go on. The settlers, as is their wont, scream to the high heavens in order to sow fear and warn of what awaits us in the future.
If realized, these plans would connect Israeli Jerusalem to the Gush Etzion settlements. At the same time, the swath of Israeli neighborhoods on the South East would join the neighborhoods that close on Jerusalem from the North and North East, thus cutting a major territorial bridge between the future Palestinian state and East Jerusalem.
The Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders on Wednesday awarded veteran Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass a “Press Freedom” prize, for “independent and outspoken reporting.”
Congressman Perriello, I am afraid, has become like so many of his colleagues, a mere tool of a hard-right AIPAC agenda that has no business dictating American policy. He has become part of an American dog wagged by an Israeli and AIPAC tail.
IOA Editor: AIPAC is a strong and highly influential organization. But there is no evidence, in this article or elsewhere, that it is “dictating” American policy or that it is the tail that wags the dog – it is bad enough that AIPAC buys influence, and that it does so better than most.
History shows that when a US president wants to apply pressure on Israel, he can do so without much resistance from Congress: whether it is blocking persistent Israeli attempts to release its jailed spy, Jonathan Pollard, or punishing Israel for selling to China advanced military technologies against the wishes of the US. This has been done and could be done again, if only there were a president who wanted to do more than just talk about peace and justice. It is easy to focus on AIPAC, and much more difficult to deal with a president who talks about peace and justice while pursuing war and destruction throughout the Middle East – in many ways, reminding us of his predecessor, except for his far greater propaganda skills.
Jonathan Cook: A recent report from Israel’s National Insurance Institute showed that half of all Arab families in Israel are classified as poor compared with just 14 per cent of Jewish families.
Barghouti is considered a Palestinian leader. Before he moved on to subversive activities and running a terrorist cell, he was a peace activist and sought to hold meetings between Israelis and Palestinians. He considered the Oslo Accords the basis for dialogue. From his cell he developed, along with Hamas leaders, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Document and has not abandoned diplomatic discourse. Anyone who thinks that keeping him behind bars will contain his political power and standing is welcome to learn from South Africa, which imprisoned Nelson Mandela for decades only to see him become president.
IOA Editor: This Haaretz editorial reflects the domestic discussion in Israel on the impending Shalit-prisoners exchange deal.
Peacemaking takes strategic skill. But we see no sign that President Obama and Mr. Mitchell were thinking more than one move down the board. The president went public with his demand for a full freeze on settlements before securing Israel’s commitment. And he and his aides apparently had no plan for what they would do if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said no.
IOA Editor: Even Mr. Obama’s natural allies, the US “liberal media elite” are not impressed by his ME peace initiative. What should the rest of us think? “Hope?” “Change?” Blah, blah. Incidentally, the New York Times has no criticism of Israel. None.
