Abbas Quits - Is it for real?

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has announced," I do not choose to run" in the January 2010 Palestinian presidential elections. He insists that his decision is "final."

Abbas declared that he had fulfilled his political platform by "improving the situation in the West Bank and continued the aid to the Gaza Strip despite the Hamas overtake." He added that Hamas had thwarted all Egyptian reconciliation efforts.

Abbas stressed that despite efforts by fellow Fatah officials to dissuade him, his decision was "neither reversible nor debatable."

The PA president explained that the obstacles standing in the way of peace and reconciliation had caused him to decide to leave the political arena. Israel is implementing a policy that is destroying all peace efforts, he said, adding that the US had backpedaled on its Mideast policy by refusing to press Israel to freeze settlement construction.

"We have to abide by the UN resolutions and agreements, as well as the Arab peace initiative and vision for a two-state solution," he stated, adding that there was still a possibility that he would "take steps" in the future to promote the Palestinian cause.

Abbas went on to outline the issues on which the Palestinians had yet to reach an agreement with Israel. "There is no legitimacy for the continuation of settlements on Palestinian land," he asserted, speaking also of the need for solutions on the issues of water resources and refugees.

As for his vision for the future Palestinian state to be established within the framework of a comprehensive peace agreement, Abbas proclaimed that Israel and the Palestinians would have to "go back and agree to the '67 borders" while making arrangements to establish "a Palestinian capital in east Jerusalem."

Security forces should be deployed along the future Palestinian state's border with Israel, said Abbas, "allowing the Palestinians to use all resources on their legitimate land." He added that any agreement with Israel would also take into account the release "of all Palestinian prisoners."

Abbas stressed that "the difficulties of the current situation" were no excuse for political disorder, explaining that for this reason he had announced that presidential elections would be held in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip on Jan. 24, 2010. "By then," he said, "we would have hoped to achieve our national unity."

The PA president denounced the actions of rival faction Hamas, which had threatened to boycott the elections and prevent them from being held in Gaza. Hamas is obstinate, he said, and should reconsider its position.

"It is time for the world to put an end to our suffering," said Abbas, thus concluding what the Palestinian media called "a significant speech to his people."

Actually, perhaps it is time for the Palestinian people to put an end to their own suffering: to agree to peace with Israel on terms similar to the The Clinton Bridging Proposals, to stop insisting on "Right" of Return for refugees, allow for at least some Jewish rights in East Jerusalem, and demand that Palestinian refugees must be helped to resettle in Arab and Western countries, ending their long and pointless suffering in refugee camps. If Abbas wanted to help his people, he would have made those proposals, which no Israeli or American government could refuse, and he would have had the backing of almost the entire world.

What may be in store in the months ahead? There are several possibilities. One is that Abbas's final, absolutely final resignation is a ploy to get the United States to force Israel to implement a settlement freeze. Assuming the United States will take the bait, how much pressure would they apply to Israel and how will the government of Benjamin Netanyahu respond? Another possibility is that there will not be elections. A rumor to that effect has been floating about for some days. A third possibility is that a successor to Abbas will be found who can keep the Fatah and less extreme Palestinian polity together. Salem Fayyad, the moderate Prime Minister, has been suggested by some. Fayyad does not have a political base though. He is an independent with little political support from organizations. He is too moderate to be accepted by Fatah, and possible too incorruptible to join them. A fourth possibility is that the Fatah-PLO based Palestinian Authority government will fall apart, or be taken over by the Hamas.

Palestinian negotiator Saeeb Erekat revealed what is on his mind and what may be the preferred foreign policy of the Palestinian Authority in the future. According to a Ma'an News article he said:

Palestinians should "refocus their attention on the one-state solution where Muslims, Christians and Jews can live as equals," Erekat said. "It is very serious. This is the moment of truth for us."

In other words, if Israel will not agree to Palestinian peace terms that amount to destruction of Israel, then Palestinians should seek to destroy Israel in another way. Erekat knows that there are no states in the Middle East except Israel where Muslims, Christians and Jews live as equals, and there have never been such states since the advent of Islam.

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Nazis armed the Palestine 'Arab Uprising'

In 2006, 70 years after the fact, the British finally released documentation showing the close ties between Palestinian "nationalists" and Nazi Germany during the Arab Uprising, as well as Britain's cynical abandonment of promises to Jews and perfidy in the the crucial pre-war period. British later tried to make a case that they were balancing between two legitimate claims, whereas in fact, they simply abandoned their obligations under the League of Nations mandate in order to appease the Arabs.

The perfidy did not stop with the war, since the British withheld information about Arab-Nazi collaboration for many years, evidently because it would have helped the Jewish case.

Ami Isseroff

Nazis 'shipped arms to Palestinians'

British National Archives unveil presence of Nazi S.S. agents in Mandatory Palestine, working closely with Palestinian leaders

Yaakov Lappin Published: 05.07.06, 16:41 / Israel News

Historical documents in Britain's National Archives in London show that Nazi Germany attempted to ship arms to Palestinian forces in the 1930s.

A British Foreign Office report from 1939 reports of "news of a consignment of arms from Germany, sent via Turkey and addressed to Ibn Saud (king of Saudi Arabia), but really intended for the Palestine insurgents." Britain's chief military officer in Mandatory Palestine also noted reports "regarding import of German arms at intervals for some years now."

British documents from the same period, and German records photographed by an American spy and sent to the British government, said that a number of Nazi agents were sent to Mandatory Palestine, in order to forge alliances with Palestinian leaders, and urge them to reject a partition of the land between the Jewish and Arab populations.

One Nazi agent, Adam Vollhardt, arrived in Palestine in July 1938, and was reported to have gained strong influence with Arab leaders, meeting with Palestinian leaders throughout 1938. Vollhardt held several meetings with leading Arab politicians and told them "that the Palestine question would be settled to the satisfaction of the Arabs within a few weeks," adding that "it would be fatal to their (Palestinians') cause if at this juncture they showed any signs of weakness or exhaustion."

"Germany was interested in the settlement of the (Palestine) question on the basis of the Arabs obtaining their full demands," Vollhardt was reported to say to Palestinian leaders, according to a report by the British War Office. Vollhardt also assured Arab leaders that "the Germans could continue to support the Palestinian Arab cause by means of propaganda."

German documents photographed and sent to Whitehall by an American spy revealed that in 1937, German officials had calculated that "Palestine under Arab rule would… become one of the few countries where we could count on a strong sympathy for the new Germany."

'Arabs admire our Fuhrer'

"The Palestinian Arabs show on all levels a great sympathy for the new Germany and its Fuhrer, a sympathy whose value is particularly high as it is based on a purely ideological foundation," a Nazi official in Palestine wrote in a letter to Berlin in 1937. He added: "Most important for the sympathies which Arabs now feel towards Germany is their admiration for our Fuhrer, especially during the unrests, I often had an opportunity to see how far these sympathies extend. When faced with a dangerous behaviour of an Arab mass, when one said that one was German, this was already generally a free pass."

A second Nazi agent, Dr. Franz Reichart, was reported to be actively working with Palestinian Arabs by the British Criminal Investigation Division "to help coordinate Arab and German propaganda." Reichart was also head of the German Telegraphic Agency in Jerusalem.

German records show that the Nazis viewed the establishment of a Jewish state with great concern. A 1937 report from German General Consulate in Palestine said: "The formation of a Jewish state… is not in Germany's interest because a (Jewish) Palestinian state would create additional national power bases for international Jewry such as for example the Vatican State for political Catholicism or Moscow for the Communists. Therefore, there is a German interest in strengthening the Arabs as a counter weight against such possible power growth of the Jews."

Jewish refugees abandoned

The records also show that the news of increased Nazi-Arab cooperation panicked the British government, and caused it to cancel a plan in 1938 to bring to Palestine 20,000 German Jewish refugees, half of them children, facing danger from the Nazis.

Documents show that after deciding that the move would upset Arab opinion, Britain decided to abandon the Jewish refugees to their fate.

"His Majesty's Government asked His Majesty's Representatives in Cairo, Baghdad and Jeddah whether so far as they could judge, feelings in Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia against the admission of, say 5,000 Jewish children for adoption… would be so strong as to lead to a refusal to send representatives to the London discussions. All three replies were strongly against the proposal, which was not proceeded with," a Foreign Office report said.

"If war were to break out, no trouble that the Jews could occasion us, in Palestine or elsewhere, could weigh for a moment against the importance of winning Muslim opinion to our side," Britain's Minister for Coordination of Defence, Lord Chatfield, told the British cabinet in 1939, shortly before Britain reversed its decision to partition its mandate, promising instead all of the land to the Palestinian Arabs.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Netanyahu: 'Palestinians ruining peace bids by refusing to recognize Israel'

Actually, what the Palestinians refuse to recognize is the right of Israel to exist as the state of the Jewish people.
'Palestinians ruining peace bids by refusing to recognize Israel'
By Haaretz Service

The catalyst behind the long-lasting dispute between Israel and the Palestinians is the latter's unwillingness to recognize Israel's right to exist, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview to Israel Radio on Sunday.

When asked whether he thought the original sin of Israeli society was the occupation since 1967 of the West Bank, Netanyahu said that "the original sin was that the Jewish people couldn't protect itself from the verbal and physical assaults which ultimately brought to its destruction."

"I think that in 1967 the Jewish people were on the brink of destruction and the sin would have been our inability to defend ourselves the way we wanted to," the PM added, saying that he regretted "the fact that our glorious victory is presented as the mother of all sin."

Netanyahu said, however, that Israel does "not want to control the Palestinians, we want to reach a settlement," but that the reason for the peace talk stalemate isn't "because of the State of Israel but because of the other side's persistent refusal to recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist."

"I believe that the things I am doing to make that point clearer will lead to their recognition of Israel's right to exist, which will remove the malignant element preventing the peace we want so dearly," the PM added.

On word of an agreement between the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama on a future construction freeze in all West Bank settlements, the PM said that "no decision has been made, and we have not reached an agreement with the United States."

"There are a lot of rumors and a lot of newspaper articles, none of which are my responsibility. We haven't agreed to anything yet, we are still working toward advancing peace talks while safeguarding settlers' rights, who are equal citizens," Netanyahu said.

"Any decision is bound to disappoint someone, every side saying you should have done things differently, but I will conduct myself in the way I believe will promote Israel and peace, something which is ultimately appreciated by civilians as well as Knesset Members."

Regarding comments made by Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya'alon, who told a closed-door meeting of far-right activists a few weeks ago that he was "not afraid of the Americans" and that anti-settlement groups like Peace Now were "viruses" to Israel, Netanyahu made it clear that he found those remarks unacceptable.

"I've discussed the matter with minister Ya'alon and he made it clear to me that that was not his intention. I assume he will never use that term again," Netanyahu said.

"The Left is not a virus, settlers are not a cancer. We have legitimate disagreements, but we must maintain our unity by respecting our political adversaries."

When asked about his 1999 comment, that the "Left forgot what it meant to be Jewish" the PM said that "It was a mistake then, and it's still a mistake."

"Of course I have changed, it's the result of age and wisdom, both of which tell me one thing - we are one people and I am the prime minister of all of us."

Continued (Permanent Link)

Moderate Palestinian HS graduates: "in the name of Palestine: Haifa, Acre, Jaffa, and our Arab Jerusalem."

A video is available at the link below

PA Teens: Israeli Cities are 'Palestine'

by Hana Levi Julian

(IsraelNN.com) Palestinian Authority Arab teens dedicated this year's high school graduation ceremony to "the Shahids (martyrs)... the prisoners... the stone and the rifle."

As part of the ceremony, sponsored by the Fatah faction led by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, the graduates delivered a speech identifying Haifa, Akko, Yafo (Jaffa) and Jerusalem as "Palestine."

The Arabic-language festivities were translated by the media watchdog organization, Palestinian Media Watch, which monitors PA news and entertainment media.

The ceremony, broadcast July 28, 2009 on Al-Filistinya TV (Fatah), was held on a stage festooned with a sign that read: "Tribute to high school graduates under the auspices of Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah."

A transcript of part of the speech follows:

Male graduate: "In the name of the Shahids (Martyrs), in the name of the prisoners, in the name of the stone and the rifle."
Female graduate: "In the name of Fatah, the school that taught us the meaning of nationalism."
Male graduate: "in the name of Palestine: Haifa, Acre, Jaffa, and our Arab Jerusalem."
Female graduate: "In the name of Palestine: Gaza, the West Bank and the flag of national unity."
Male graduate: "Fatah is [still] with the rifle. And our rifles are not rusty even if they have fired thousands of bullets."

Continued (Permanent Link)

Sweden revives blood libel against Israel

"Legitimate criticism" of Israel reached new lows of depravity in Sweden when Sweden's leading daily newspaper revived the medieval blood libel accusation against the IDF. in a sensational article titled ""Our sons plundered for their organs"(Swedish article is here: aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5652583.ab). Based on this accusation, "Anti-Zionist" Web sites and e-mail lists are hurrying to circulate the "news" that the IDF kills Palestinian Arabs in order to extract their organs for transplants.

The reporter, one Donald Bostrom, assembled a farrago of unrelated stories about illegal organ trafficking from Israel, including a story about the arrest of a New York Jew engaged in selling kidneys contrary to Israeli law. He used hearsay and rumor from Palestinians about the fate of relatives killed during the Intifada:

I was in the area and worked on a book when I several times was contacted by UN staff who were concerned about the development. Those who contacted me felt that body theft actually took place, but that they were unable to act. On behalf of a television company, I then went around and spoke to a large number of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza....

"'Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,' relatives of Khaled from Nablus said to me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin as well as the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who all had disappeared for a few days and returned by night, dead and autopsied. - Why did they keep the bodies up to five days before we can bury them? What happened to the bodies in the meantime? And why is the autopsy when the cause of death is obvious, and in all cases against our will? And why are the bodies returned at night?".

Evidently, the rumors spread due to ignorance of forensic autopsy procedures and Jew hate, encouraged by UN personnel. Bostrom described in detail the case of one Bilal Achmed Ghanian, 19, whose body was returned after autopsy after he was killed in 1992. It is probable, but unclear, that the victims were dead when they were evacuated. Of course, organs cannot be harvested from cadavers. Bostrom quoted an IDF denial and explanation that the autopsies were routine, but Bostrom implied that the denial is false:

The routine autopsy of killed Palestinians, as told by the army spokesman is not true in reality in the Occupied Territories. .

The use of rumor and hearsay, and more especially the unrelated material about illegal organ traffic, make it clear that Bostrom set out to intentionally libel Israel and the Jewish people. The Israeli ambassador lodged a strong protest, but this can hardly be a deterrent to people like Bostrom. If a similar report about Muslims had been published in a Scandinavian journal, wouldn't there be violent world wide demonstrations as there were after the Danish Muhammad cartoons?

Swedish Jews claim Bostrom is a known anti-Semite and AftonBladet has published similar articles. The Swedish Embassy in Israel has apologized, but a culture editor of Aftonbladet told Haaretz that the publication stands by the story and insists on an "international investigation" of the alleged nefarious Jewish activities.

The libel of organ stealing is not new and may have originated with Yasser Arafat himself. According to a 2002 Honest Reporting article:

the Islamic Association for Palestine reported that Yasser Arafat "has accused the Israeli apartheid regime of murdering Palestinian children and youths and extricating their vital organs for organ transplants."

It is one thing when racist Palestinian leaders make accusations of Jewish blood libel, but quite another phenomenon and much more ominous when they appear in a respected northern European "Nordic" country journal. It seems that there are no longer any real limits to what may be published under the guise of supposedly "legitimate criticism of Israel." A competing Swedish newspaper has published a horrified editorial.The liberal Sydsvenskan - southern Sweden's major daily ran an opinion piece of Mats Skogkär called "Antisemitbladet" (a play on the name Aftonbladet):

"We have heard the story before, in one form or the other. It follows the traditional pattern of conspiracy theory: a great number of loose threads that the theorist tempts the reader to tie into a neat knot without having been provided with any proven connection whatsoever..."

"Whispers in the dark. Anonymous sources. Rumors. That is all it takes. After all we all know what they [the Jews] are like, don't we: inhuman, hardened. Capable of anything," the opinion piece says. "Now all that remains is the defense, equally predictable: 'Anti-Semitism' No, no, just criticism of Israel."

The tale is not told in a cultural vacuum of course. The stories of Bilal Achmed Ghanian and the others are backed by a rich European tradition of "legitimate criticism" of Jews. They have joined the European pantheon of fraudulent blood libel martys, which includes numerous "saints" revered by the Catholic church for many years, such as Saint Andreas of Rinn , Saint Simon of Trent, and Saint Hugh of Lincoln. Aftonbladet has carried on in a more modern tradition of Nordic journalism, illustrated by the following twentieth century cartoon from the Westdeutchen Beobachter, also considered "legitimate criticism" by its defenders:

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Naim Ateek: An Anglican priest disgraces authentic Christianity

Naim Ateek and his Sabeel group are leaders in Christian Israel bashing efforts of mainline Protestant churches in the USA. Ateek and Sabell do not believe in a two state solution and is therefore sabotaging the peace process. If they were Jews with the same ideas, they would be called "ultranationalist" and obstacles to peace. But their one state solution is an Arab state in which the Jews will have no right to self determination. For what reason are they given a platform to legitimize their noxious views at countless churches in the USA?

In his article e Anglican priest disgraces authentic Christianity, Dexter Van Zile asks what type of god inheres in the so-called peacemaking ministry of Anglican Priest Naim Ateek, founder of Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, notes that Naim Ateek is drumming up support for his latest book, A Palestinian Christian Cry for Reconciliation (Orbis, 2008), in which he falsely accuses Israel of perpetrating a "slow and creeping genocide" against Palestinians — who have one of the fastest growing populations in the world.

Ateek has long been a fixture at "Christian" events of a certain kind. The book gives him an excuse to peddle a vile that repeats Christian anti-Semitic accusations and repackages them as "theology." As Van Zile points out:

Apparently, leveling false accusations at the Jewish people and their homeland is not enough to get one barred from polite society in 21st century America.

He concludes:

The story Naim Ateek tells about the Arab-Israeli conflict, cloaked as it is in the language of Christian peacemaking, attests to the existence of a deaf, dumb and blind god who would use Muslim and Arab violence against Israel as a scourge against the Jewish people.

Such a god is not worthy of worship.

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Inspiration and ray of hope - Summer Camp for Palestinian and Israeli Youth

Danny Shapiro, a friend who has started working at the Peres Peace Center wrote the following account.

July 19 was the first day of a six day camp joining 32 Israeli kids, aged 12 – 14, from the poor southern towns of Yeruham and Sderot, and 28 Palestinian kids living in poverty and despair in the occupied territories.


The camp, held at Kibbutz Galon, is organized by the Peres Center's Sports Department. And as much as I read about this kind of program, no article I could read, or video I could watch, could in any possible way match the almost incredulous sense of wonder and inspiration aroused by seeing these sixty kids playing in Galon's pool together, and enjoying a multi-lingual "Darbuka" session with a Palestinian madrich (leader).


It was also fascinating and deeply impressive to speak at length with Issam, who works on a number of projects with the Peres Center. Issam grew up in Gaza and moved to Ramallah after Hamas came to power and he felt his life was in danger for his many years of reconciliation work. No doubt some of you know him.


His story is amazing. He sat in Israeli prison and had a life-changing experience with an Israeli officer that put him on the path of working towards conciliation and peace. If I have the time I will write the story down and pass it along.


Issam reminded me again and again that not only was this the first time most of the Palestinian children had met an Israeli who not either a soldier or a settler – but for the great majority of them, this was the first time in their lives outside of their town or certainly the territories; the first time they had eaten in a restaurant; the first time they experience what even the lowest social and economic classes in Israel take for granted.


I have no illusions that the experience of these 60 kids, and that of the additional several hundred who will be treated to similar camps this summer, will make any serious dent in overall public opinion or attitudes, and certainly will not make the leaders on both sides more peace loving and conciliatory. But then, that (the latter, at least) is not the goal of the Peres Peace Center.



But this type of program most certainly changes attitudes (this is based on professional evaluation following multiple years of experience), and, if nothing else, humanizes the conflict for those who are involved in it; and injects a few rays of hope into our battered and shattered hearts and minds

That is what Peres Peace Center does. That is what the "peace" group Alternative Information Center finds objectionable. They published an article insisting that Palestinians must boycott Peres Peace Center. The article states:

Shimon Peres is definitely an enemy of the Palestinian people, of human rights and of peace, and any kind of collaboration by a Palestinian organization with the Peres Center is scandalous.

Is the summer camp "scandalous?" You decide. The directors of the Peres Peace Center, in any case, are Uri Savir and Ron Pundak, though Peres founded the Peres Peace Center.

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Palestinian suicide attack- against Palestinians!

It is only a matter of time, before an attack succeeds...

Last update - 12:56 09/06/2009       
Three Hamas women arrested for plotting suicide attack against Fatah
By The Associated Press

 

Palestinian Authority security forces have arrested three Palestinian women who were allegedly planning a suicide attack targeting
their own policemen in the West Bank.

 

Palestinian official Jamal Muheisen said Tuesday the women are members of Hamas, the Islamic group that has a long-running feud with the Western-backed Fatah government in the West Bank.

 

Muheisen said the women were arrested Sunday on their way to the town of Qalqiliya, where four police officers and four Hamas militants were been killed in recent clashes.

 

He added that one woman was carrying an explosive belt and confessed she intended to blow herself up in a police compound.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Hamas-Fateh war continues

While Barack Obama talks about a two state solution, meanwhile, back in reality, things look different. Perhaps there will be three states between the river and the sea.

 

Last update - 17:02 06/06/2009       
Fatah: Hamas carrying out mass arrests of our men in Gaza
By Reuters

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction accused Hamas Islamists on Saturday of arresting some 150 of its activists in Gaza, in apparent retaliation for raids that killed four Hamas men in the West Bank this week.

 

Fahmi al-Zarir, a spokesman for Fatah in the West Bank, said Hamas had made the arrests since Friday. He said some men were being held in schools and hotels in the Gaza Strip, territory the Islamists seized in a bloody 2007 coup from Fatah.

 

Hamas officials declined any comment, but a statement posted on Hamas's Interior Ministry website said "some" Palestinians loyal to Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, a Fatah-backed leader, were arrested as suspected informers for Israel.
 

 

The arrests came days after four Hamas men and a civilian died in deadly raids by Abbas' Western-backed security forces against Hamas Islamists in the West Bank town of Qalqilya.

 

These raids highlighted the tensions within Palestinian society over Abbas's efforts to fulfill commitments to rein in militants as part of a long-stalled, U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan.

 

Underlining the growing tension, Hamas had published a "hit list" for security leaders accused of cracking down on its members, and one of the group's preachers in Gaza called for an intifada, or uprising, in the West Bank against Abbas' men.

 

Last month, U.S. President Barack Obama urged Abbas to press on with his security campaign, which he credited with making "great progress" in the West Bank.

 

In an address in Cairo on Thursday, Obama urged Hamas to heal the Palestinian rift by putting "an end to violence" and recognizing Israel's right to exist. Hamas calls for Israel's destruction.

Prominent Palestinians have issued a joint plea to "end the bloodletting" and engage in reconciliation talks which were expected to resume in Cairo next month

Continued (Permanent Link)

Peace initiative - Good for Israel?

Israel and the peace initiative

07.05. 2009
http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000688.html
Original content copyright by the author
Zionism & Israel Center http://zionism-israel.com

The American sponsored peace initiative seems to have little rational thinking behind it and little chance of success. But while the President of the United States may not be right, he is certainly the President of the United States. Israel cannot afford to forget that. Nonetheless, Israel's first responsibility must be to ensure that it has a viable defense.

A great peace initiative is being undertaken by the United States. The general idea seems to bundle a remodeled Arab Peace Initiative for regional peace, Palestinian-Israeli peace based on a two state solution and a solution to the problem of Iranian nuclear weapons development. Lately, a fourth element was apparently added - general nuclear disarmament and arms control, including hints that the U.S. expects Israel to become a signatory of the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty. All this will somehow, so the theory goes, make it easier for the United States to secure its withdrawal from Iraq, and prevent a disaster in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Continued here: Israel and the peace initiative

Continued (Permanent Link)

Barry Rubin: Two state dissolution?

Barry Rubin knows better than this. To a great extent, "Two state solution" is a slogan that is necessary for the sake of U.S. diplomacy, regardless of its utility as an actual policy.

Dissolving in the Two-State Solution

By Barry Rubin*

April 25, 2009

Ring! Ring! The Israeli prime minister's alarm clock went off. He quickly sat up in bed and immediately shouted out: "Yes! I'm for a two-state solution!"

At breakfast, lunch, and dinner, during his talks and all his meetings, in greeting his staff as he walked down the corridor to the office, endless he repeated that phrase.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what the world seems to want from Israeli policy.

But the fact is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted the two-state solution back in 1997 when he took over in the midst of the Oslo agreement peace process and committed himself to all preceding agreements.

This is not the real issue. The real issue is this: much of the world wants Israel to agree in advance to give the Palestinian Authority (PA) what they think it wants without any concessions or demonstration of serious intent on its part.

Continued here: Dissolving in the Two-State Solution

Continued (Permanent Link)

Proactive foreign policy: Israel meeting the Obama challenge

..."Moderate" Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. From the beginning, that should have been the cornerstone of Israeli policy - Arabs, Palestinians included, must recognize the validity of the League of Nations British Mandate for Palestine and of UN General Assembly Resolution 181, both of which explicitly recognize the right of the Jewish people to self determination. After all, that is what the whole conflict is about. Once the Palestinians are will willing to accept international law, we can quibble about borders, refugees and other issues. President Obama's off-the-cuff remarks must be converted into a commitment by the United States to support the existence of Israel and its recognition by its Arab neighbors as the homeland of the Jewish people. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already made a statement demanding that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Too bad that demand was not part of Avigdor Lieberman's speech. It will be remembered, also, that Ehud Olmert made a similar effort and then mysteriously dropped it. This issue has to be a centerpiece of Israeli policy, raised at every opportunity. not just a sound bite to be used when the occasion seems to call for it.

Similarly, though it is not a prior condition for negotiations, everyone should be made to understand that Israel will assert the historic rights of the Jewish people in "East Jerusalem." The Palestinians have been allowed to establish a historical "fact on the ground" by dint of repetition: They have convinced at least themselves, and perhaps much of the world, that they have a "right" to a capital in East Jerusalem, even though Jerusalem was never the capital of any Arab state, and was not even included in the Palestinian area in the 1947 partition plan. Jerusalem was always known as the ancient capital of Jewish people, and the old city had a large Jewish community until it was ethnically cleansed in pogroms beginning in 1920 and culminating in the expulsion of the remaining Jews by force by the Jordanian Legion in 1948. Absurdly, a sizeable part of world opinion now believes that somehow "East Jerusalem" ought to be the capital of an Arab state and that Israel and the Jews have no rights there.

On these bases, when it is clear what is is being negotiated and what the end of the process will be for Israel, and it is clear that the agreements will be kept at least by the Fatah lead Palestinian Authority, it makes sense to continue negotiations. If they have any intellectual honesty, even the most enthusiastic proponents of "Annapolis" in the USA and in the EU would have a hard time explaining why Israel has to negotiate and what is to be negotiated with a partner that declares that its constituent groups - containing the same personnel who do the negotiating - are not bound by any agreements, and that the end goal of the negotiations is to destroy Israel as a Jewish state. But we can hardly expect others to agree with this point of view if the Israel Foreign Ministry itself has not advanced it at every opportunity.

Read the whole article here:

Proactive foreign policy: Israel meeting the Obama challenge

Continued (Permanent Link)

Palestinians: No rights for Israel in East Jerusalem

This is the Palestinian position:

There will be no peace whatsoever unless East Jerusalem – with every single stone in it – becomes the capital of Palestine.

Yasser Arafat said to Clinton defiantly: "I will not be a traitor. Someone will come to liberate it after 10, 50, or 100 years. Jerusalem will be nothing but the capital of the Palestinian state, and there is nothing underneath or above the Haram Al-Sharif except for Allah." That is why Yasser Arafat was besieged, and that is why he was killed unjustly.

In November 2008… Let me finish… Olmert, who talked today about his proposal to Abu Mazen, offered the 1967 borders, but said: "We will take 6.5% of the West Bank, and give in return 5.8% from the 1948 lands, and the 0.7% will constitute the safe passage, and East Jerusalem will be the capital, but there is a problem with the Haram and with what they called the Holy Basin." Abu Mazen too answered with defiance, saying: "I am not in a marketplace or a bazaar. I came to demarcate the borders of Palestine – the June 4, 1967 borders – without detracting a single inch, and without detracting a single stone from Jerusalem, or from the holy Christian and Muslim places. This is why the Palestinian negotiators did not sign…

This claim made below is false:

East Jerusalem is an occupied area, just like Khan Yunis, Jericho, and Nablus were. Its status in international law will never be anything else. Therefore, any arrangements regarding East Jerusalem are categorically unacceptable.

The truth is that under international law, according to UN Security Council resolution 252 of 1968, passed following the Six Day War, and reaffirming several previous resolutions, Jerusalem does not have the same status as the rest of the "West Bank" at all. Jerusalem is a corpus separatum that was to have been an internationalized area. It was occupied illegally by Jordan. It is a myth that East Jerusalem is "Arab East Jerusalem." Jews lived in the Old City of Jerusalem for hundreds of years until they were ethnically cleansed from Jerusalem in 1948. According to international law, there is no reason to favor Arab sovereignty in East Jerusalem over Israeli sovereignty.

Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat: Abu Mazen Rejected the Israeli Proposal in Annapolis Like Arafat Rejected the Camp David 2000 Proposal

Following are excerpts from a TV debate with chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on March 27, 2009.

Saeb Erekat: I am sitting in Jericho, in the house where I was born, four kilometers from the Jordan River, and there are Israeli flags from the Jordan River all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. Therefore, we are living under Israeli occupation. But let me say that Jerusalem has not been – and will not be – lost. 300,000 Palestinian citizens live in Jerusalem.

[…]

Jerusalem has not gone anywhere. Jerusalem is here to stay – in the same place throughout the ages. The important thing is for us to return and to liberate Jerusalem.

[…]

It is true that the negotiations continued for many years, but don't you know that President Yasser Arafat was besieged in Camp David and was killed unjustly, only because he adhered to Jerusalem, and because he refused to let the Israeli measures on the ground give rise to any [Israeli] right or any [Palestinian] obligation? The Palestinian negotiators could have given in in 1994, 1998, or 2000, and too months ago, brother Abu Mazen could have accepted a proposal that talked about Jerusalem and almost 100% of the West Bank, but it is not our goal to score points against one another here. Our strategic goal, when we strive for peace, is not to do so at any price. We strive for peace on the basis of an Israeli withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 borders, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip geographically connected.

[…]

There will be no peace whatsoever unless East Jerusalem – with every single stone in it – becomes the capital of Palestine.

[…]

In my family, we are seven siblings. My six brothers and sisters are in the diaspora. But this does not deny them the right to inherit this land. Ten million Palestinians own Palestine, just like I do. Our survival and steadfastness on this land, our wresting of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital – this is what we can achieve in our generation.

[…]

Let me recount two historical events, even if I am revealing a secret. On July 23, 200, in his meeting with President Arafat in Camp David, President Clinton said: "You will be the first president of a Palestinian state, within the 1967 borders – give or take, considering the land swap – and East Jerusalem will be the capital of the Palestinian state, but we want you, as a religious man, to acknowledge that the Temple of Solomon is located underneath the Haram Al-Sharif." Yasser Arafat said to Clinton defiantly: "I will not be a traitor. Someone will come to liberate it after 10, 50, or 100 years. Jerusalem will be nothing but the capital of the Palestinian state, and there is nothing underneath or above the Haram Al-Sharif except for Allah." That is why Yasser Arafat was besieged, and that is why he was killed unjustly.

In November 2008… Let me finish… Olmert, who talked today about his proposal to Abu Mazen, offered the 1967 borders, but said: "We will take 6.5% of the West Bank, and give in return 5.8% from the 1948 lands, and the 0.7% will constitute the safe passage, and East Jerusalem will be the capital, but there is a problem with the Haram and with what they called the Holy Basin." Abu Mazen too answered with defiance, saying: "I am not in a marketplace or a bazaar. I came to demarcate the borders of Palestine – the June 4, 1967 borders – without detracting a single inch, and without detracting a single stone from Jerusalem, or from the holy Christian and Muslim places. This is why the Palestinian negotiators did not sign…

TV host: Okay…

Saeb Erekat: This is the Palestinian position.

TV host: But let's return to Camp David. When you were in the meetings with Shlomo Ben-Ami… After two weeks of meetings between Barak, Arafat, and Clinton, which led to nothing, there was a meeting in which you proposed that there be [Palestinian] sovereignty, with arrangements in the Old City, including the Haram Al-Sharif. In other words, you proposed Palestinian sovereignty, with Israel playing a role in the administrative aspects. In other words, Israel would participate in the administration of the Haram area – unlike the "reduced sovereignty" demanded by Shlomo Ben-Ami at that meeting. In other words, you wanted to let [Israel] play a role, one way or another, with regard to the so-called Holy Basin.

Saeb Erekat: They will never have this. Like President Abu Mazen said in front of President Bush and PM Olmert: I am not in a marketplace or a bazaar. East Jerusalem is an occupied area, just like Khan Yunis, Jericho, and Nablus were. Its status in international law will never be anything else. Therefore, any arrangements regarding East Jerusalem are categorically unacceptable.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Palestinians in Lebanon - Exploited and unwelcome guests

Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon have a status slightly worse than that of dogs. Nonetheless, no UN resolutions are ever passed regarding the violation of Palestinian rights by the evil Lebanese, and the Palestinians are exploited to aid the Lebanese economy. Theoretically, they are not allowed to work. In fact, they do work - without social benefits and without any protection against exploitation, a convenient situation for some.

 

Palestinians pump up Lebanese economy - study
Despite employment obstacles, refugee community doesn't burden state's social safety net
By Dalila Mahdawi
Daily Star staff
Tuesday, February 03, 2009

 

Palestinians pump up Lebanese economy - study

 

BEIRUT: Despite facing severe work restrictions, most Palestinian refugee households have at least one family member who is employed, constitute 10 per cent of all private consumption in Lebanon, and do not burden the Lebanese welfare system, a recent report has found.

 

The Najdeh (Welfare) Association, a Palestinian nongovernmental organization (NGO), published the report examining the contributions of Palestinian refugees to the Lebanese economy in January with funding from aid agencies Diakonia and Christian Aid, as part of its "right to work" campaign.

 

The study is the result of a survey of 1,500 households in eight refugee camps across Lebanon and a number of focus group discussions, and assesses the income of Palestinian refugees, challenges to and perceptions of work, and their contribution to the Lebanese economy. According to Najdeh, the study "constitutes a paradigm shift in research on Palestinian refugees in Lebanon from examining employability to examining the contribution to the economy of the host country Lebanon."

 

Under Lebanese law, Palestinian refugees are barred from all but the most menial occupations. Nonetheless, the report found one third of the individuals sampled worked, 91.1 of households had a member who worked, and roughly 40 per cent were searching for work. Only 1.7 per cent of those surveyed had work permits, a fact the report said "renders the Palestinian refugee labor force invisible in official statistics" and exacerbates their socioeconomic marginalization.

 

Najdeh also found there was "disequilibrium in the contribution to the workforce among men and women typical to the region: women constitute only 20 per cent of those who work between ages 15 to 64 years." No change to this disequilibrium had occurred since a similar report was published a decade ago, the report said.

 

Some 31.1 per cent of men of working age (defined as 15-64 years old) were not currently in employment, compared to 83.2 per cent of women in the same age group. More women were found to work between the ages of 40-44 and 55-65, the report found, because "women go to work after their children grow up" in line with their traditional gender role as homemakers, or because elder women "have already been involved in the workforce since their youth."

 

Most men, meanwhile, worked when they were younger, between the ages of 25 and 29, and 35-39, in keeping with their time-honored gender role as breadwinner. However, significantly more men of working age were illiterate compared to their women counterparts. "This phenomenon may be considered a crude indicator of school dropouts," Najdeh said.

 

Most Palestinian men and women worked in the private service sector, with men working predominantly in construction, industry, transport and agriculture. More women, meanwhile, were employed in the NGO sector or by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Because of "limited work opportunities for Palestinian refugees outside" their camps, most of the men and women surveyed were found to work within or on the peripheries of the camps.

 

Perhaps surprisingly, the report found that a greater proportion (67 per cent) of employed women worked full-time, compared to 62 per cent of men, who more often engaged "in seasonal, occasional and other work patterns." Furthermore, more employed women (48.6 per cent) were employed by an establishment, whereas 49.6 per cent of men worked for an "individual employer." Men were also more likely to stop working due to health problems.

 

Most men (59.6 per cent) and women (55.1 per cent) said they were "somewhat satisfied" with their current work environment, but "twice the proportion of women express being 'very satisfied' with health and safety conditions at work" compared to men (21.7 and 10.8 per cent respectively). This may be because more men engage in occupations with greater safety hazards, stated the report.

 

The majority of both men and women expressed dissatisfaction with their low income levels, the report added. Median monthly wages were $260-266 for men and $188-200 for women. An overwhelming majority (84 per cent) of Palestinian households furthermore believed there were no work prospects for their children in Lebanon, a perspective perhaps compounded by the fact the median monthly household income of Palestinian refugees had declined from $260-266.7 in 2007 to $108-112 "during the first half of 2008." In addition, 54.9 per cent of households said they were supported financially by remittances from emigrant family members.

 

Individuals living with chronic illness constituted 16 per cent of the sample population in the report, 6.5 per cent of whom attributed their illness to occupation; 4.3 per cent of those with disabilities likewise attributed their disability to occupation. The report emphasized the difficulties these individuals faced, as because they are not legally supposed to work, they cannot claim insurance from UNRWA for occupational injuries. Consequently, "patients suffering from occupational injuries and their aftermath are vulnerable to financial as well as health-related catastrophes."

 

Although Palestinian refugees cannot legally contribute much to the Lebanese economy through employment, the sheer amount of them living in the country (more than 400,000) means they count for 10 per cent ($352 million) of all private consumption in Lebanon. Food, healthcare and rent constitute their top spending priorities.

 

The report also found that despite a 60-year presence in Lebanon and extreme vulnerability as a group, Palestinian refugees "do not appear to have constituted a burden on the safety net system provided by the Lebanese welfare system." The report stated UNRWA, NGOs and faith-based organizations represented the primary safety net for the Palestinian refugee community.

 

Palestinians also contributed to "invigorating" the areas surrounding their camps by creating low-cost markets for low-income and other marginalized communities in Lebanon. The "Sabra, Ein el-Hilweh and Nahr al-Bared camp markets are recognized as major informal economic hubs for the poor," said the report, adding that the destruction of Nahr al-Bared during the battles of 2007 had "resulted in a gap in the Akkar" region in northern Lebanon for such communities.

 

Concluding the report, Najdeh spoke of the importance of granting Palestinian refugees the right to work and called for "implementing a formal economic strategic partnership between the Lebanese economic community and the Palestinian refugee economic community." Najdeh also recommended allowing highly trained professionals to work in the Lebanese market "when needed," and forming a dialogue committee between the Lebanese and Palestinian economic communities. "This would enable Palestinian refugees to work more effectively toward their own welfare and the development of the country hosting them," said the report.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Olmert threatens retaliation as four rockets hit Israel

Too much talk and not enough action?

 

Last update - 00:36 01/01/2009    

 

 Olmert: Israel will not return to old rules of engagement in Gaza 

 

 By Barak Ravid and Yuval Azoulay, Haaretz Correspondents, Haaretz Service and The Associated Press

Israel will not agree to return to the old rules of engagement in Gaza, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at the beginning of the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday.

 

"We will act according to new rules that ensure we will not be dragged into an unceasing shootout that prevents us from living life as normal in the south," Olmert said.

 

Olmert warned that there would be a "fierce and disproportionate" Israeli response in the event that rockets continue to be fired from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel or directed Israel Defense Forces soldiers.

   
The prime minister said that the rocket fire has intensified in the last few days that leaves Israel with no choice but to react in a manner that makes its stance on the rocket fire clear.

 

"I asked the Defense Minister to instruct the IDF to prepare for the Israeli response that is required under these circumstances. The response will be given at the time, place and avenue that we choose."

 

Palestinian militants fired at least four Qassam rockets from the Gaza Strip into the western Negev on Sunday, with one landing in between two kindergartens.

 

Three rockets struck the Eshkol region, two of them landing in open fields and the third close to the kindergartens. A fourth rocket struck an open field in the Sdot Negev Regional Council area. No casualties or damage were reported in any of the strikes.

 

Later on Sunday morning, Israel Defense Forces soldiers exchanged fire with militants near the Kissufim crossing on the border with the Gaza Strip. No casualties were reported in the incident.

 

On Saturday morning one Grad rocket struck south of Ashkelon after a Color Red alert sounded in the city.

 

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said there is no need to wait for a response.

 

"The reaction must be strong and immediate as that is the only way that Hamas will understand the equation has changed," she said.

 

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the security establishment had been instructed to formulate a response.

 

"Hamas received a heavy blow and if needed will receive another one," he said.

 

The rockets have demonstrated the fragility of a cease-fire that ended Israel's devastating Gaza offensive on January 18.

 

Israel halted the operation after saying its goals had been achieved. But Hamas declared victory and militants have kept up sporadic attacks.

 

Since the cease-fire, militants have fired rockets into Israel and killed one soldier in a border attack. Israel has conducted retaliatory strikes and pounded tunnels Hamas uses to smuggle in weapons from Egypt. Israeli forces have also killed three men Palestinians identified as farmers in violence along the Gaza-Israel border.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Abbas: Olmert agreed that East Jerusalem should be Palestinian-ruled

Abbas: Olmert agreed that East Jerusalem should be Palestinian-ruled
Date: 26 / 11 / 2008  Time:  16:45    

 

Ramallah – Ma'an Exclusive – Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has accepted that East Jerusalem should be placed under Palestian control, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday.

 

In addition, Israel has recognized the existence of only 200,000 Palestinian refugees from the violence at its creation in 1948, Abbas said.

 

Abbas said this recognition took place in secret final-status negotiations with Israeli negotiators. Israel's acknowledgment of these refugees falls short of the list of 950,000 refugees the Palestinian Authority says were expelled in 1948, along with five million total refugees and their descendants, the Palestinian president claimed.

 

Abbas revealed this and other information about the negotiations with Israel and with his Palestinian rival, the Hamas movement, during a two-hour meeting with senior Fatah officials in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

 

Abbas said the Palestinian leadership takes the negotiations seriously: "Those who think that we sit with Israelis for sake of publicity; they are wrong."

 

"We armed ourselves with documents, maps, data and statistics ahead of each session and we have a fortified, professional expert negotiating team. We get prepared each time as if studying before class at school," he said.

 

Abbas said that he had rejected an Israeli offer of a Palestinian state that would include 92% of the land of the West Bank, saying that he would not accept any deal that left out even 1% of the land.

 

Abbas also explained that Israel had hesitated to make a firm commitment to the pre-1967 borders during the negotiations. However, in recent meetings, Israeli leaders had finally accepted that occupied East Jerusalem ought to be a part of the Palestinian State.

 

He said: "Whenever we asked them about the borders they had usually responded that they are not so sure. Only in the last two sessions they recognized those borders including East Jerusalem, as Olmert explained that a two-state solution is the best choice and Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem should be ruled by PA."

 

The president also recounted an anecdote about his first meeting with United States President George W. Bush. After presenting the US leader with a map of the West Bank showing the route of the separation wall and other Israeli installments, Bush became angry, throwing the maps in the face of an assistant.

 

"This way there won't be a Palestinian state and Israel is cutting off the road to a solution," Abbas reported Bush as saying.

 

Abbas said that when he went to Switzerland he was asked why he rejected Hamas' suggestion of a Palestinian state with temporary borders. He said he replied that he advised Hamas leader Isma'il Haniyeh at the time to stop making such suggestions, as he sees them as harmful to the negotiations with Israel.

 

He said Hamas's suggestion of a long-term truce with Israel would actually stabilize the current situation, with Palestinians controlling less than 60% of the West Bank and Gaza, and the Israeli wall remaining in place.

 

Abbas said that Hamas is damaging the Palestinian national cause out of anger of their exclusion from politics, "destroying the game because they are not allowed to play."

 

Blaming Hamas for the collapse of Palestinian internal talks, Abbas also criticized Israel for refusing to allow Palestinian political leaders from the West Bank representing Fatah, the PFLP, and the DFLP, to travel to the talks in Cairo.

 

Abbas said that three points must be accepted in order for the dialogue with Hamas to proceed: The presence of Arab forces to support Palestinian security forces, reform of the Palestinian government and simultaneous presidential and legislative elections.

 

Abbas also said that that the Palestinian prisoners slated for release by Israel before the upcoming Eid Al-Adha holiday include lawmakers and prisoners serving long sentences. 

 

Continued (Permanent Link)

Livni: I oppose Olmert's peace plan

Livni says what everyone knows: Neither Israel nor the Palestinians are ready to make a deal.

Last update - 01:50 06/10/2008
Livni tells France's Kouchner: I oppose Olmert's peace plan
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent and News Agencies

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told her French counterpart Bernard Kouchner that she opposes the agreement in principle that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has offered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

"I do not believe in far-reaching proposals and an attempt to expedite matters, especially in light of the political situation," Livni, the prime minister-designate, told Kouchner on Sunday.

In the morning, Kouchner met with Olmert, who said he was frustrated that Abbas had not accepted his proposal. "You've read what I said in the interview," Olmert told Kouchner, referring to his statements in Yedioth Ahronoth favoring concessions. "Still, the Palestinians do not want to sign."

Kouchner raised the matter later when he met with Livni and asked why she objects to Olmert's proposal. Olmert's plan proposes a comprehensive solution on borders and refugees and postpones a decision on Jerusalem.

Livni's explanation was a criticism of Olmert. "Abu Mazen [Abbas] in his present political situation cannot accept such an agreement," she said. "The political situation in Israel also does not allow it to be signed."

Livni also argued that blaming the Palestinians for refusing to accept Olmert's offer does no good. "We can say this is their fault - but what will that do?" she said. "We had the same thing after Camp David in 2000 and look where that got us."

Livni: Annapolis will continue, regardless of political upheaval
Earlier Sunday, in her first foreign policy address since winning the Kadima party primary, Livni voiced her commitment to continue peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

"Annapolis will continue," Livni said, referring to a U.S.-sponsored peace conference last November that restarted negotiations on a Palestinian state.

"Let us not allow dates or political changes to stand in our way," she said, in her address to Foreign Ministry conference on policy and strategy in Jerusalem.

"The point is to understand the required concessions in order to conduct a correct process," Livni said.

Sunday's conference marked the first of what is to be annual assessments of Israel's foreign policy, and was also attended by Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Palestinian Authority fears Hamas takeover attempt in West Bank

Palestinian Authority fears Hamas takeover attempt in West Bank

Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank have taken measures to prevent killings of leaders of the Palestinian Authority and its political power base, Fatah party, by the Islamic group Hamas, according to the London-based daily al-Sharq al-Awsat. The paper quoted Hamas members in the West Bank as saying, "The oppression that the security services put on us will not last for long," The source added that the security forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas "have not learned their lesson from what happened in Gaza," and intimated that a similar putsch is planned in the West Bank.

A senior Hamas leader in Gaza said the crackdown by pro-Abbas forces against Hamas members in the West Bank "will backfire."

Cross posted: Israel News Middle East Analysis

Continued (Permanent Link)

Barak: Arab areas in Jerusalem could be Palestinian capital

Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said some Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem could become the capital of a future Palestinian state as part of a final peace agreement. This is no different from the formula he offered in 2000. Palestinians continue to insist that Israel has no national rights whatever in East Jerusalem. The late Yasser Arafat amazed American politicians by claiming repeatedly that there had been no Jewish presence in Jerusalem in antiquity. Archeological finds give evidence of the Jewish monarchy as early as King Hezekiah in 700 BC and ancient writers commonly referred to Jerusalem as the former Jewish capital, but Palestinian leaders pretend this evidence does not exist. Arafat's views were frequently seconded by the former Mufti of Jerusalem, Ikremah Sabri.

Prior to 1948, about 5,000 Jews lived in the Jewish quarter of the Old City. The community underwent attrition due to Arab riots in 1929 and 1936. In 1948, the entire community was ethnically cleansed by the Transjordan Legion under the supervision of British officers. East Jerusalem was also the site of the original campus of the Hebrew University, which was reconstituted after 1967. Arab media however, ignore the Jewish connection to East Jerusalem in modern times as well as ancient, and commonly refer to it as "Arab East Jerusalem" on the basis of the 19 year illegal Jordanian occupation.

East Jerusalem is also the site of Masjid Al Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, important Muslim holy places.

Fatah leaders have been promising a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem since the signing of the Oslo accords, though Israel never undertook to cede all of Jerusalem or any of it as part of a peace setltement.

"We can find a formula under which certain neighborhoods, heavily-populated Arab neighborhoods, could become, in a peace agreement, part of the Palestinian capital that, of course, will include also the neighboring villages around Jerusalem," Barak told Al-Jazeera television.

"I'm not sure whether the gaps are close enough," Barak said when asked if a deal was possible this year.

Officially, Israel is not discussing Jerusalem with the Palestinians at all, since the non-Zionist ultraorthodox Shas party insisted they would leave the coalition if any concessions were offered in Jerusalem. Orthodox and ultraorthodox Jews in the United States and Israel, rather than Zionists, are the chief opposition to Israeli compromise on the issue. As long as the Palestinians remain intent on excluding Israel entirely from East Jerusalem, the issue of Israeli compromise is a moot point.

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Arafat killed US diplomats, but US continued to negotiate with PLO

A story in Ha'aretz reveals that the CIA knew that Yasser Arafat had ordered the murder of the Ambassador and his deputy in Khartoum, Sudan, but Henry Kissinger  instructed the CIA to continue diplomatic contacts with Yasser Arafat's PLO before the Yom Kippur war. At the time, the US insisted it would not negotiate with the PLO. Later it claimed the negotiations concerned only security. In fact, there were secret diplomatic negotiations.

 

Diplomatic negotiations were held between Robert Ames of the CIA and the head of the Fatah's security apparatus, Ali Hassan Salameh, who was also the commander of the Fatah's Black September organization. Salameh was killed in Beirut in 1979 in an operation conducted by the Mossad and naval commandos.

Ames,  head of the CIA's Middle Eastern department, was killed in an Iranian-ordered attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983. 

Helms' documents reveal that Arafat sent Salameh to the talks without hiding his responsibility for killing American diplomats in Khartoum in March 1973. Ames also agreed to Salameh's requests and asked Washington about various diplomatic issues, such as the Nixon administration's intentions relating to Palestinian interests.

Salameh told Ames that the PLO was working to topple King Hussein and establish a Palestinian state in Jordan. Unperturbed, Washington responded that if the Palestinians want to negotiate a settlement, the U.S. would be happy to hear their proposals, but the toppling of existing governments through the use of force did not seem to be the most promising way.

Arafat threatened, via Ames, that he would burn Beirut if the Lebanese government acted against the PLO.

 

The newly-released material also describes the Egyptian initiative in the spring of 1973 to plead with the U.S., through Iranian channels, to reach an arrangement with Israel "on the basis of the Rogers plan," a withdrawal from the occupied territories captured in 1967 and placing them under international supervision. The Rogers plan did not promise, nor did Egypt offer, peace with Israel, though the Ha'aretz article mentions a "peace agreement."  

The documents also reveal that the US and others knew quite a bit about the planned Yom Kippur war well in advance. The Shah of Iran evidently knew of Egyptian attack plans, and recommended to Egyptian foreign minister Muhammad Hassan al-Zayyat that Egypt content itself with an artillery barrage against Israeli positions on the Suez Canal instead of an attack crossing the canal.

In a telegram Helms sent Kissinger - then Richard Nixon's National Security Advisor - on July 5, 1973, Helms reported that King Hussein of Jordan told him that Jordanian intelligence had learned of a Syrian attack to recapture the Golan Heights originally planned for June, that had been delayed but could take place at any time. One of the Jordanian intelligence sources was the commander of a Syrian armored brigade, and the Jordanians had obtained a copy of the battle plans, which had been coordinated with Egypt and Iraq.

 

Continued (Permanent Link)

Mahmoud Abbas insists on ROR, urges Lebanese discrimination against Palestinians

 

Everyone knows that a dog in Israel has more rights than a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon. It is natural for Mahmoud Abbas to try to ingratiate himself with the Lebanese and calm their fears that, horror of horrors, Palestinians might want to settle in Lebanon. But Abbas went on to insist that the Palestinians are seeking "Right of Return" to Israel, a solution that he knows Israel has to reject.

 

Ami Isseroff

 

Abbas: Don't resettle Palestinians in Lebanon

Published: 08/28/2008

[JTA] Mahmoud Abbas said he objects to the permanent resettlement of Palestinians in Lebanon. 

"The Palestinians have the right of return and this is an issue we are discussing with the Israelis," the Palestinian Authority president, meeting in Beirut on Thursday with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, told reporters.

About 400,000 Palestinians live in 12 refugee camps in Lebanon. Most of them arrived in Lebanon in 1948 or are descendants of those refugees. The camps are a hotbed of ferment, with occasional outbursts of violence.

Abbas also called for a "comprehensive" solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict, including returning the Golan Heights to Syria and resolving the dispute between Israel and Lebanon over the border-area Shebaa Farms.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Moderate Palestinian Leader Abbas congratulates Kuntar's family for killer's release

Is any comment really needed here? It speaks for itself.

Ami Isseroff

Abbas congratulates Kuntar's family for killer's release By News Agencies

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday congratulated the family of notorious Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar , who was freed on Wednesday with four Hezbollah guerillas as part of a prisoner exchange with Israel.

Abbas welcomed the swap between Israel and the Lebanon-based militant group, and in a statement congratulated the families of the "liberated prisoners," issued during a visit to Malta.

Kuntar has been imprisoned in Israel since 1979. He was convicted of one of the grisliest attacks in Israeli history - killing three people including, a man in front of his 4-year-old daughter, and then killing the girl herself by crushing her skull.
In Gaza, meanwhile, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Wednesday hailed Kuntar as "a great hero" and said Israel's decision to release him and four Hezbollah fighters had undermined Israel's policy of not freeing "prisoners with blood on their hands."

Haniyeh also branded the exchange of prisoners as "a victory" for Hezbollah and armed resistance against Israel.

"The Israelis should pay the price for the release of Gilad Shalit," Haniya said in a statement in central Gaza, referring to the Israel Defense Forces soldier kidnapped by Gaza militants in June, 2006 cross-border raid.

"It is hard to see thousands of prisoners still held in Israeli jails," He added.

People celebrated in the streets of the Hamas-controlled coastal territory, and handed out sweets in support of Hezbollah.

"Today is a great victory for the resistance movements and to Hezbollah, said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri. "It shows that the only successful way to free the prisoners is by kidnapping soldiers."

Continued (Permanent Link)

Israelis support "calm" but think it won't last.

The latest poll shows that a plurality of Israelis support the "calm" with Hamas but think it won't last. Interestingly, Kadima voters support the "calm", but are pretty certain it won't last. Knesset polls show a significant relative advantage for the Kadima party if Tzippi Livni is its candidate for Prime Minister, and a drop in the popularity of Labor and the Likud relative to other scenarios and previous polls. Still, the Likud is the party that gets the largest number of mandates in all scenarios.

Polls: 40.6%:32.9% support calm agreement with Hamas, 74.8% expect to last
days
Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 19 June 2008

Telephone poll of a representative sample of 497 adult Israelis (including Arab Israelis) carried out by Shvakim Panorama for Israel Radio's Hakol Diburim (It's All Talk) the afternoon and evening of 18 June 2008 after the announcement of the "calm" in the Gaza Strip.

If elections were held today how would you vote (expressed in mandates - based on the 81.2% who indicated what party they would vote for)

Four scenarios:
[A] Kadima headed by Livni
[B] Kadima headed by Mofaz
[C] Kadima headed by Dichter
[D] Kadima headed by Shetreet

Actual Knesset today in [brackets]
[A][B][C][D]
22 18 09 08 [29] Kadima
14 17 19 19 [19] Labor
25 22 29 30 [12] Likud
11 11 11 11 [12] Shas
11 12 11 12 [11] Yisrael Beteinu
07 08 08 07 [09] Nat'l Union/NRP
06 06 06 06 [06] Yahadut Hatorah
06 07 07 07 [05] Meretz
04 05 06 06 [00] Green Party
03 03 03 03 [00] Social Justice (Gaydamak Party)
** ** ** ** [07] Retirees Party
11 11 11 11 [10] Arab parties
** does not get minimum votes for Knesset representation

Do you support or oppose the calm agreement with Hamas?
Total: Support 40.6% Oppose 32.9% No position 26.5%
Kadima voters: Support 38.1% Oppose 31.8% No position 30.1%
Likud voters: Support 22.3% Oppose 60.4% No position 17.3%
Labor voters: Support 69.2% Oppose 10.1% No position 20.7%

You think that the calm will continue for a short time (days) or a long time (months)?
Total: Short 74.8% Long 17.1% Don't know 8.1%
Kadima voters: Short 81.5% Long 5.3% DK 13.2%
Likud voters:: Short 91.4% Long 2.2% DK 6.4%
Labor voters: Short 59.6% Long 12.8% DK 27.6%

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
Website: http://www.imra.org.il

Continued (Permanent Link)

Settlers beating Palestinians and Israeli response

Crime and punishment! The people who carried out these attacks on innocent Arabs should be hunted mercilessly and treated as traitors and enemies of the Jewish people. They have done more harm to the Israeli cause than suicide bombers. Indeed, some suspected that the beatings were provocations by Palestinians dressed as Israelis.

 

The story of the beatings of the Nawaja family near Sussiya, and a video are posted here.

 

How many Palestinians have been arrested by Palestinians for murdering Israeli civilians?

 

Ami Isseroff

---

 

 

Jerusalem Post / Jun 17, 2008 10:10
2 settlers arrested in assault case
By YAAKOV LAPPIN AND JPOST.COM STAFF


Several days after police have opened an undercover investigation to identify the masked men who were videotaped beating three members of a Palestinian family with sticks a week ago, two settlers from the southern Mount Hebron area were arrested, Tuesday.

One of those arrested on Tuesday is a minor, and police estimated more arrests will be made.

The two settlers who were held Tuesday did not try to resist arrest. They were caught after police acted under cover.

The assault took place near Sussiya in the southern Hebron Hills. In the video, shot by a teenage Palestinian girl, four individuals who appear to be young men march toward the family while holding sticks, with one
man wielding a stick at a Palestinian farmer. The film then ends, as the camera girl fled to summon help.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Iraq Author: Jews have a historic right to Palestine

There is much to ponder in this wonderful article, including this:

"This enormous lie is what the Arabs called the Nakba – that is, the establishment of two states in Palestine: the state of Israel, which the Jews agreed to accept, and the state of Palestine, which the Arabs rejected.

"In our times, when science, with its accurate instruments, can predict climatic changes that will lead to drought or the movement of tectonic plates that causes earthquakes, it is inconceivable that a modern man can, without making a laughingstock of himself, attribute the destruction of cities ancient or modern to the wrath of Allah. Nevertheless, today, 80% of Arabs claim this to be the case. They are neither embarrassed nor afraid of being laughed at.

"This high percentage includes not only the illiterates who densely populate rural areas, villages, and small and large cities, but also students, teachers, lecturers, graduates of institutions of higher education, scientists, technology experts, physicians, graduates of religious universities such as Al-Azhar, historians, and politicians who have held or are currently holding public office.

"It is those numerous educated elites who have forced the Arab mentality into a narrow, restrictive, and deficient cultural mold, spewing violence, terrorism, and zealotry, and prohibiting innovative thought... All this was done to instill a false sense of oppression in the hearts of the Arabs, and to destroy them with the infectious disease of despair and confusion.

"[This attitude] is rooted in the 1947 Arab League resolution stating that Palestine is a 'stolen' land and that none but a Muslim Arab is entitled to benefit from it as an autonomous [political entity], even if another's historic roots there predate those of the Muslims or the Arabs."

...

"Why did the partition resolution, which gave a state in Palestine to the Jews and one to the Arabs next to it, become the Nakba – [the star] that rises and sets daily over the Arab lands without emitting even the tiniest ray of light to illuminate the path for their peoples?

"Did the Jews have any less right to Palestine than the Arabs? What historic criteria can be used to determine the precedence of one [nation's] right over that of the other?

"Refusing to recognize the right of the other so as to usurp his rights was a governing principle of the Islamic conquests from the time of 'Omar bin Al-Khattab; during that historical period it was the norm. [But] at the turn of the [20th] century, this principle was abandoned and prohibited, because it sparked wars and [violent] conflict. The international community passed laws restricting the principle of non-acceptance of the other, in the founding principles of the League of Nations in 1919. Subsequently, with the U.N.'s establishment, these laws were developed [further], with appendices and commentary, to adapt them to the current historical era and to express the commonly accepted values of national sovereignty and peoples' right to self-determination.

"But because of their sentimental yearning for the past and zealous adherence to [old] criteria, the Arabs purged their hearts of any inclination to adjust to the spirit of the age. They thus became captives of the principle of non-acceptance of the other and of denying the other [the right] to live, [among] other rights.

"As a result, damage was done to the rights and interests of non-Arab nations and ethnic groups in the Arab lands – among them the Kurds, the Copts, and the Jews. [Thus,] the Arabs still treat the numerous minorities that came under their dominion 1,400 years ago in accordance with the laws from the era of Arab conquest.

"Despite the consequences of denying the other the right to exist, not to mention other rights – that is, [despite] the oppression, conflicts, wars, and instability [resulting from this]... the Arabs have steadfastly clung to their clearly chauvinist position. All problems in the region arising from minorities' increasing awareness of their rights have been dealt with by the Arabs in accordance with [the principle of non-acceptance]... [even] after the emergence of international institutions giving these rights legal validity, in keeping with the mentality and rationale of our time."

Iraqi Author 'Aref 'Alwan: The Jews Have an Historic Right to Palestine

In an article posted December 7, 2007, on the leftist website http://www.ahewar.org ,(1) 'Aref 'Alwan, an Iraqi author and playwright who resides in London and is the author of 12 novels,(2) states that the Jews have an historic right to Palestine because their presence there preceded the Arab conquest and has continued to this day.

In the article, titled "Do the Jews Have Any Less Right to Palestine than the Arabs?" 'Alwan called on the Arab world to acknowledge the Jews' right to Palestine, because justice demanded it and also because doing so would end the violence and the killing of Arabs, as well as intra-Arab strife. He added that such a move would also open up new avenues for the Arab world that would be more consistent with the values and needs of modern society.

'Alwan writes that the Arab League is to blame for the refusal to recognize the 1947 U.N. partition plan, for starting a war to prevent its implementation, and for the results of that war, which the Arabs call the Nakba (disaster). He points an accusing finger at the Arab regimes, the Arab League, and the educated circles in the Arab world, saying that they had all used the term "nakba" to direct popular consciousness toward a cultural tradition that neither accepts the other side nor recognizes its rights – thereby promoting bigotry, violence and extremism. He also claims that there have been attempts to rewrite Palestinian history, in order to deny any connection between it and the Jewish people.

'Alwan contends that the "Nakba mentality" among Arabs has boomeranged, giving rise to tyrannical rulers, extremist clerics, and religious zealots of every description. In his view, the Arab world will never shed the stigma of terrorism in the West unless it abandons this concept and all that it entails.

To boost his claim that the Jews have an historic right to Palestine, 'Alwan provides an overview of Jewish history in the land of Israel. He questions the validity of the Islamic traditions underpinning the Arab claim to Palestine, Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount, and presents evidence that religions that preceded Islam had conducted rituals on the Temple Mount.

As an example of the traditional Arab mentality that does not accept the other or recognize his rights, 'Alwan discusses the Arabs' abuse of the Kurds in Iraq and of the Christians in Egypt and Lebanon.

The following are excerpts from the article:

The Nakba: A Great Lie


"When the Salafi mob in Gaza tied the hands and feet of a senior Palestinian official and hurled him, alive, from the 14th floor, I asked myself: What political or religious precepts must have been inculcated into the minds of these young people to make them treat a human life with such shocking cruelty?

"Earlier, I had watched on TV as the bodies of two Israeli soldiers were thrown from the second floor [of a building] in a Palestinian city. Whether or not it was the same Salafi mob behind that incident, [one asks oneself]: What language, [or rather,] what historic linguistic distortion could have erased from the human heart [all] moral sensibilities when dealing with a living and helpless human being?

"Arabs who are averse to such inhuman behavior must help me expose and eliminate the enormous lie that has for 60 years justified, extolled, and supported brutality. [Such behavior] is no longer limited to the expression of unconscious [impulses] by individuals, but constitutes a broad cultural phenomenon, which began in Lebanon, [spread to] Iraq and Palestine, and then [spread] – slowly but surely – to other Arab states as well.

"This enormous lie is what the Arabs called the Nakba – that is, the establishment of two states in Palestine: the state of Israel, which the Jews agreed to accept, and the state of Palestine, which the Arabs rejected.

"In our times, when science, with its accurate instruments, can predict climatic changes that will lead to drought or the movement of tectonic plates that causes earthquakes, it is inconceivable that a modern man can, without making a laughingstock of himself, attribute the destruction of cities ancient or modern to the wrath of Allah. Nevertheless, today, 80% of Arabs claim this to be the case. They are neither embarrassed nor afraid of being laughed at.

"This high percentage includes not only the illiterates who densely populate rural areas, villages, and small and large cities, but also students, teachers, lecturers, graduates of institutions of higher education, scientists, technology experts, physicians, graduates of religious universities such as Al-Azhar, historians, and politicians who have held or are currently holding public office.

"It is those numerous educated elites who have forced the Arab mentality into a narrow, restrictive, and deficient cultural mold, spewing violence, terrorism, and zealotry, and prohibiting innovative thought... All this was done to instill a false sense of oppression in the hearts of the Arabs, and to destroy them with the infectious disease of despair and confusion.

"[This attitude] is rooted in the 1947 Arab League resolution stating that Palestine is a 'stolen' land and that none but a Muslim Arab is entitled to benefit from it as an autonomous [political entity], even if another's historic roots there predate those of the Muslims or the Arabs."

The Nakba Boomerang


"[The upshot] of this confusion in [Arab] mentality is that the lie has boomeranged on the Arabs. [Thus] appeared [on the scene] Saddam Hussein, Hafez Al-Assad, Bashar Al-Assad, Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi, Hassan Nasrallah, Nabih Berri, Khaled Mash'al, Isma'il Haniya, and Mahmoud Al-Zahar, whose young [thugs] threw the senior Palestinian official from the 14th floor. Finally, from the foot of the eastern mountains bordering the Middle East came Ahmadinejad, who is committed to preparing the way for the anarchy and destruction that accompanies the advent of the long-awaited Mahdi, who will resolve the Palestinian problem.

"Today, owing to the ideological distortions that have afflicted the Arab popular consciousness since the so-called Nakba, and [also owing] to the lies that have accumulated around this notion, [the label of] 'terrorism' has become attached to Arabs, wherever they are.

"Despite the great political and cultural efforts by large and important Arab states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and some Gulf states to restore Arab ties with the rest of the world, and to curb the culture of terrorism in Arab societies, they have all failed. This is because these attempts to rectify [the situation], from both within and without [the Arab countries], both stemmed from and were a logical extension of the concept of the Nakba.

"This proves that the Arabs have no hope of extricating themselves from the cultural and political challenge of terrorism unless they come up with [new] and different [fundamental] premises, and with an outlook completely free of the fetters of the religious ritual that they have devised in modern times and called the Nakba.

"Although Palestinian senior officials, leaders, educated circles, and public figures, whose patriotism is beyond doubt, have come to terms with the existence of the State of Israel, the aforementioned 80% of Arabs... do not accept this view, and consider it religious apostasy. Leaders of the [Arab] states in the region, and party leaders, inflame sentiment, entrancing them with the drumbeat of extremism.

"With the strident chorus of its secretaries, the Arab League ensures that every car crash in Gaza or the West Bank is interpreted as an Israeli conspiracy against the Arab future. This is because the Arab League... was established as a pan-Arab entity whose main function was to write reports and studies rife with distortions of fact so as to quell the conscience of any Arab who dared think independently and expunge [the concept of] the Nakba from his consciousness. [It has done] this instead of devising creative strategies for cultural and economic development, so as to improve the deteriorating standard of living in the Arab societies."

The Nakba is Rooted in a Culture that Does Not Recognize the Right of the Other


"Why did the partition resolution, which gave a state in Palestine to the Jews and one to the Arabs next to it, become the Nakba – [the star] that rises and sets daily over the Arab lands without emitting even the tiniest ray of light to illuminate the path for their peoples?

"Did the Jews have any less right to Palestine than the Arabs? What historic criteria can be used to determine the precedence of one [nation's] right over that of the other?

"Refusing to recognize the right of the other so as to usurp his rights was a governing principle of the Islamic conquests from the time of 'Omar bin Al-Khattab; during that historical period it was the norm. [But] at the turn of the [20th] century, this principle was abandoned and prohibited, because it sparked wars and [violent] conflict. The international community passed laws restricting the principle of non-acceptance of the other, in the founding principles of the League of Nations in 1919. Subsequently, with the U.N.'s establishment, these laws were developed [further], with appendices and commentary, to adapt them to the current historical era and to express the commonly accepted values of national sovereignty and peoples' right to self-determination.

"But because of their sentimental yearning for the past and zealous adherence to [old] criteria, the Arabs purged their hearts of any inclination to adjust to the spirit of the age. They thus became captives of the principle of non-acceptance of the other and of denying the other [the right] to live, [among] other rights.

"As a result, damage was done to the rights and interests of non-Arab nations and ethnic groups in the Arab lands – among them the Kurds, the Copts, and the Jews. [Thus,] the Arabs still treat the numerous minorities that came under their dominion 1,400 years ago in accordance with the laws from the era of Arab conquest.

"Despite the consequences of denying the other the right to exist, not to mention other rights – that is, [despite] the oppression, conflicts, wars, and instability [resulting from this]... the Arabs have steadfastly clung to their clearly chauvinist position. All problems in the region arising from minorities' increasing awareness of their rights have been dealt with by the Arabs in accordance with [the principle of non-acceptance]... [even] after the emergence of international institutions giving these rights legal validity, in keeping with the mentality and rationale of our time."

Refusing to Accept the Other: The Kurds in Iraq; the Christians in Egypt and Lebanon

The Kurds


"The denial of the Kurds' national rights by the Iraqi government, and the Arab League's support for it, has brought on wars lasting 50 years – that is, three-quarters of the life span of the state that arose in Iraq...

"After fabricating arguments to justify the [1921] combining of the Basra region with the Baghdad region in order to establish a new state in Iraq, British colonialist interests demanded that a large area historically populated by Kurds be added to the new state. [This was done] to satisfy the aspirations of King Faisal bin Al-Hussein [bin Ali Al-Hashemi], who had been proposed as head of state in return for protecting British interests in the region.

"In his persistent refusal to grant the Kurds their rights, from 1988 through 1989 Saddam Hussein murdered approximately 180,000 Kurds, in an organized [genocidal] campaign he called 'Al-Anfal.' He then used mustard gas against one [Kurdish] city (Halabja), killing its residents (5,000 people). The Arab conscience silently acquiesced to this human slaughterhouse, while Arab League secretary-general (Shadhli Al-Qalibi) called the international press coverage of these events 'a colonialist conspiracy against the Arabs and the Iraqi regime.'

"Syrian Kurds are considered second-class citizens, and are banned from using their language or [practicing] their culture in public."

The Christians in Egypt and Lebanon

"The ethnic oppression of the Kurds [in Iraq] was echoed by sectarian extremism against the Copts [in Egypt]. In both cases, the Arabs used the principle of denying the existence of the other so as to strip him of his rights.

"The Copts, who [initially] assimilated Arabs into their society, but who have over time themselves assimilated into Arab society, discover time and again that this assimilated state is but a surface shell, which quickly cracks whenever they demand equality... As a result, Egypt, as a state, is gripped by constant social tensions that keep rising to the surface and threatening to undermine its stability...

"Sectarian extremism in Egypt took the form of an organized party with the 1928 emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood, with the aim of splitting Egyptian society into two mutually hostile and conflicting parts. This was in line with the Arab religious and political principle of denying legitimacy to all non-Muslims or non-Arabs, [a principle practiced] since the Muslim armies reached Egypt in 639 [CE]...

"In Lebanon, the presence of armed Palestinian militias – which was in accordance with the decision of the Arab states – encouraged the formation of Lebanese militias, both Sunni and Shi'ite. Chanting slogans proclaiming Palestinian liberation, they frightened Christians by appearing armed in streets swarming with Lebanese [citizens] and tourists.

"This eventually led to a confrontation with Christian militias, which had also armed themselves out of fear of the pan-Arab slogans and fear for the [preservation of] the rights of the Christian sects.

"Lebanon was engulfed by an ugly 15-year civil war, that ended only after Syria, which had played an ignominious role as instigator [of the hostilities], attained full protectorate status over Lebanese affairs and the Lebanese people – [and this] took on the nature of colonialist hegemony...

"After the Lebanese were liberated from this [Syrian] control, in 2005 the clouds of civil war – albeit of a different kind – reappeared on the Lebanese horizon. The Arab League is making no effort to prevent the eruption [of this civil war] for two main reasons. First, the Syrian regime still supports ethnic tension, in order to regain control of Lebanon; and second, the current majority government, which opposes the renewed Syrian influence, is predominantly Christian...

"We had hoped that the Arab national conscience would recover from the illness afflicting it since the time of the Nakba, and that it would adopt [views] which, if not ahead of their time, would at least be appropriate to our time. But a group of journalists, writers, and several Arab historians guided by the principle of non-acceptance of the other has twisted the facts and concocted a false and gloomy history of the region – thereby trampling these dreams to the ground."

Jews Have a Rich and Ancient History in Palestine


"The Arabs see the Palestinian problem as exceedingly complicated, while it actually appears so only to them – [that is], from the point of view of the Arabs' emotional attitudes and their national and religious philosophy. The Arabs have amassed false claims regarding their exclusive right to the Palestinian land, [and] these are based on phony arguments and on several axioms taken from written and oral sources – most of which they [themselves] created after the Islamic, and which they forbade anyone, Arab or foreigner, from questioning.

"When the Arabs agreed to U.N. arbitration... to resolve the Palestinian problem, it transpired that their axioms clearly contradicted reliable historical documents [that] this new international organization [had in its possession]. As a result, they wasted decades stubbornly defending the validity of their documents, which do not correspond to the officially accepted version of the region's history – which is based on concrete and solid evidence [such as] archaeological findings in the land of Palestine, the holy books of the three monotheistic religions, accounts by Roman, Greek, and Jewish historians... and modern historical research..."

Jewish and Christian Ritual Sites in Jerusalem Predate Muslim Sites


"[A look at] the story of Al-Aqsa is now in order – a site considered holy by Muslim Arabs, who call it 'Al-Haram al-Qudsi al-Sharif' [The Noble Sanctuary] and [believe that] it was set aside for them by Allah since the time of Adam.

"[This site] contains several places of worship, including the Dome of the Rock, built by the [Umayyad Caliph] 'Abd Al-Malik bin Marwan in the seventh century CE – that is, 72 years after the Muslim conquests. This religious public gathering place was erected over a prominent [foundation] stone at the peak of 'Mount Moriah.' [Mount Moriah] contains three ancient Jewish public worship sites, as well as [some] Christian sites... The octagonal structure of the Dome of the Rock Mosque was constructed on the site of an ancient Byzantine church, adjoining Solomon's Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

"Since the majority of Muslims claim that the Temple Mount is an Islamic site to which no one else is entitled, they do not acknowledge the presence of Jewish and Christian places of worship predating the Dome of the Rock within its walls...

"The Arabs take great pride in their tolerance of and benign treatment of the Jews and Christians who lived under the Muslim rule since the Muslim conquests. This account is part of the distortions underpinning the edifice of the Arabs' religious and national culture. [Arab] writers and historians keep eulogizing this epoch... while the truth is the opposite of what they claim. [Indeed,] the Pact of 'Omar [compelled] the Jews and the Christians to choose between either abandoning their religion and embracing Islam, or paying the [poll] tax in return for being permitted to reside... and receive protection of life and property in their homeland. [The Pact of 'Omar] allowed them to practice their religion, build new houses of worship, and repair the old ones [only] with the permission of a Muslim ruler, and subject to numerous conditions.

"In subsequent historical periods, the Muslims imposed [additional restrictions] on the members of [these] two religions: They forbade them to raise their voices during prayer; [they forced them] to conduct their prayers and religious ceremonies in closed areas so as not [to disturb] passersby; they forbade them to carry weapons, ride saddled horses, or build houses taller than those of the Muslims. [Christians and Jews] were required to show respect for the Muslims, e.g. by giving up their seat to a Muslim if he wanted it. They were banned from holding government posts or from working in 'sensitive' public places.

"The Koranic verses cursing the Jews and casting doubt on [the veracity of] their Holy Book [the Torah] promulgated a desire among Arabs to set themselves above the Jews who lived in their midst, humiliating and persecuting them even without pretext. In time, this treatment made large numbers of Jews abandon their cities and their land and emigrate... while those who stayed [in Palestine] until the 19th century remained marginalized, living among the Arabs like criminals in a foreign land...

"The Arabs claim that the 'Wailing Wall' has been their property since the Prophet Muhammad tied his horse Al-Buraq to one of its supports when Allah transported him by night from the Holy Mosque in Mecca to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem... Although this night-journey story seems dubious, Arab historiography after the advent of Islam contains such oddities as giving a horse the prerogative of making a wall weighing more than 2,000 tons into Muslim property. This is only one of thousands of examples of tales concocted by zealots, with which they swept away the Arab imagination.

"...When the U.N. resolution on the partition of Palestine was issued on November 29, 1947... the Arabs refused to recognize it. They thereby rejected the state set out by the resolution as the right of the Palestinians and the Arabs, with the aim of establishing legal and historical equity. The Arabs called this resolution the Nakba, while their new states, formed several years before the State of Israel, launched the first war against Israel, in which regular military operations were combined with local attacks by gangs comprising Palestinians and Arabs from Arab regions near and far. [That war] ended in [the Arabs'] defeat. Persisting in their error, the Arabs established refugee camps for the Palestinians who had fled during and after the war...

"Chairman Mahmoud 'Abbas... was the first Palestinian leader to acknowledge that the Christian church in Gaza plundered by Hamas gangs had stood there 'before [we] came to Gaza.' By this he meant 'we the Palestinians' – particularly the current Gaza residents, [the descendants of] Bedouins from the Sinai and the Arabian Peninsula and of others, of unknown origin. [These people were] attracted by the wealth of the new Islamic state that extended from Persia to Southern Ethiopia, and came after the Muslim conquests and set themselves up over the local population – Christians, Jews, Phoenicians, Byzantines, and the remnants of the Sumerians...

Arabs Must Recognize the Jews' Right to Palestine


"In order to prevent more bloodshed among the innocent [population]... and in order to keep the deteriorating situation in Lebanon, Iraq, Gaza, and the West Bank from making [these regions into] a quagmire that will spread to engulf all Arab states and societies, the Arabs must reassess the question of the Nakba and come up with a new, courageous vision for the region and for the future of its residents.

"[This vision] must involve public recognition of the Jews' legitimate right to their state – which is based on historical fact – instead of [recognition] of the writings filled with anger and demagogy produced and formed into an ideology by the confused [Arab] consciousness – a consciousness built upon lies, myths, and distortions stemming from the principle of non-acceptance of the other.

"The most important factor in strengthening such a new vision is [the adoption of] a principle [requiring] official condemnation of all individuals, groups, companies, religious and political parties, and totalitarian regimes that built their glory and hollow leaderships upon the notion of the Nakba, and which are always ready to absorb other false claims and fabrications.

"This must be done, so that a modern Arab face is turned to the world – [a face reflecting] ethical values that will not allow any Arab, under any pretext, to oppress his son or his brother who differs from him in religion, ethnicity, or ideology."

Endnotes:
(1) www.ahewar.org (formerly www.rezgar.com), December 7, 2007.
(2) 'Aref 'Alwan is the first Arab author to publish his novels on the Internet. His doing so was the subject of his January 20, 2005 interview in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.

Cross posted: Israel News Middle East Analysis

Continued (Permanent Link)

Palestinian Ma'an News: 2 Stories - one in Arabic, one in English

Netherlands and Denmark fund terror glorification, hate language of Palestinian news agency

By Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook

 

 

A Palestinian news agency that receives financial support from the governments of The Netherlands and Denmark glorifies terrorists, releases news stories using hate language and is a highly politicized, hate-promoting news organization. Paradoxically, Ma'an News claims to be "objective, accurate, balanced" and to "increase Palestinian media credibility," according to its web site.

1- Ma'an Honoring Terrorists and Murderers as Shahids

 

Ma'an has glorified the recent Palestinian murderer of eight Israeli yeshiva students, the Dimona suicide terrorist, the killers of the two Israeli hikers and the terrorists who attacked a boys' high school with the very highest Islamic status attainable, elevating them to the status of "Shahids" or "Martyrs for Allah." According to the accepted Palestinian interpretation of Islam, there is no higher status that a Muslim can achieve today than that of Shahid. In defining terrorist murderers as "Shahids," Ma'an is by definition sending its readers a straightforward message of honor for the killers, and approval for the many murders. Negative or dishonorable actions could not elevate an individual to Shahid status. (See below for full sources.)

 

In its English versions of these reports, Ma'an did not honor the terrorists  as "Shahids" or use the similar English term "Martyrs."Note, for example, the difference in Ma'an reporting on the murder of the two hikers:

 

Ma'an Arabic News	Ma'an English News
"Two of the operatives died as Shahids."  [Dec. 28, 2007]	"Two Israelis, two Palestinians killed by gunfire near Hebron."

 

The explanation for this and all other discrepancies between Ma'an's English and Arabic reporting is that this politically-charged Arabic terminology, together with the examples of Ma'an's use of hate-language (below), would readily expose Ma'an's lack of professionalism and messages of approval of terror if repeated in English. In addition, it must be assumed that the governments of The Netherlands and Denmark would be outraged to know they are funding terror glorification and hate journalism.

 

2 - Suicide Bombers: Ma'an uses term of higher honor: Shahada-Seekers

 

With regard to suicide terrorists Ma'an goes even further. According to Islam, someone who intentionally seeks Shahada - death for Allah - is greater than someone who achieves Shahada while not actively hoping to die. The Arabic term Istishhadi - Shahada- Seeker- is used by terror organizations to define and add a higher status of honor specifically to suicide terrorists .

 

Ma'an has followed this lead in its Arabic reporting of the Dimona suicide bombing that killed one Israeli woman and critically injured her husband. Note the apolitical report by Ma'an in English, where the suicide bomber is reported to be just that, "a bomber," followed by the Arabic Ma'an reports that use the term of highest honor, "Shahada-Seekers."

 

Ma'an Arabic News	Ma'an English News
"Ma'an - Senior military figure [Abu Al-Walid] of the Al-Aqsa Brigades in Gaza, rejected the suspicion that Israel aroused regarding the identity of the two Shahada-Seekers, who carried out the Dimona action... Pictures of the two Shahada-Seekers etc ..."  [February 5, 2008]	"Al-Aqsa Brigades dispel doubts about identity of second Dimona bomber... Speaking to Ma'an on Tuesday, Abu Al-Walid reiterated that the bombers were Luay Al-Ghawani and Mousa Arafat ... Israeli security officials had expressed doubt about the validity of the image of the second bomber."

 

 

Note also that under similar pictures of the mothers of the bombers, Ma'an uses the objective caption in English: "Mother of suspected bomber," and the honor caption in Arabic: "Mothers of the Shahada-Seekers".

Ma'an Arabic caption	Ma'an English caption
"Mothers of Shahada-Seekers"	"Mother of suspected bomber"

 

3- Ma'an denies Israel's right to exist- all Israel is "Occupation"

Ma'an uses very politicized hate language to routinely reject Israel's right to exist, and even to deny Israel's existence. For example, when reporting on Israeli Arab doctors who visited Gaza, Ma'an defined them in Arabic as "Palestinian doctors from inside 'Occupied Palestine'," Ma'an's term for Israel. In this case, Ma'an's English language report on this story followed similar hate language:

"Palestinian doctors from 1948 territories [another Ma'an euphemism for Israel] visit Gaza... A delegation of doctors from Palestinian territories occupied since 1948, from outside of the Green Line, visited the Gaza Strip."  [February 29, 2008]

 In this article to deny Israel's legitimacy on its land, Ma'an went out of its way to use a particularly awkward hate expression. Instead of using the simple, accurate and apolitical wording, "doctors from Israel," Ma'an used 13 cumbersome, politically-charged hate words to describe the doctors' origins:

Ma'an political language	Accurate apolitical language
"doctors from Palestinian territories occupied since 1948, from outside of the Green Line"	"doctors from Israel"

 

It is also important to note that later in the same article, Ma'an used the term "Israel" as follows: "...crippling siege led by Israel." The difference is striking. When referring to the land or location - Ma'an called Israel "Occupied Palestine."  In referring to the government of Israel or criticizing Israeli policy Ma'an used "Israel." (See other examples below.)

 

Finally, since Israel's very existence is presented by Ma'an as an "Occupation," the Israeli army in Arabic is referred to with hate language identical to that used by the terrorist organizations: "the occupation forces." Here, as in some of the cases above, Ma'an avoids the hate language in English. One example is a Ma'an report after Israel arrested three suspected terrorists.

 

Ma'an Arabic News	Ma'an English News
"Occupation forces arrest ..."  [March 25, 2008]	"Israeli forces raid ..."

 

See below a list of examples where Ma'an glorifies terrorists and uses hate language.

 

PMW comment:

Last year PMW documented that Ma'an used this politicized hate language after the suicide terror attack in the Israeli city of Eilat. [See PMW Bulletin]

In Arabic, Ma'an had reported that Eilat was "in the south of occupied Palestine," the mother of the terrorist was said to be from the "occupied city of Jaffa", though Jaffa is part of Tel Aviv, and Ma'an had honored the suicide bomber as a Shahid.

We find it surprising and unfortunate that the governments of The Netherlands and Denmark continue to fund this hate journalism without demanding a change. Hate incitement, including denial of Israel's existence and glorifying terror, is universally accepted as a paramount cause of continued Palestinian terror. These governments, together with governments who have blindly funded Palestinian schoolbooks, bear direct moral responsibility for the continued hatred that is being ingrained into future Palestinian generations, and bear a moral responsibility for the terror and its victims.

  

The following are additional examples of Ma'an using hate language and honoring terrorists.

Ma'an grants Shahid status to all terrorists in recent terror attacks. The following are in addition to examples above.

 

1. Jerusalem Yeshiva terror attack - 8 students killed:

Ma'an Arabic News:

"8 dead and two Shahids in the Jerusalem Operation. The operatives were from [village of] Jabal Mukbar..."  [Ma'an, Arabic news, March 6, 2008]

 

2. Terror attack in High School in Kfar Ezion:

Ma'an Arabic News:

"Ma'an discloses the identity of the two Shahids from the Ezion operation."  [Ma'an, Arabic news, January 24 , 2008]

 

3. Two hikers ambushed and murdered as they strolled on nature walk

Ma'an Arabic News:

"Two of the operatives died as Shahids, two more were injured and two Israeli soldiers were killed."  [Ma'an, Arabic news, December 28, 2007]

 

Ma'an English News:

"Two Israelis, two Palestinians killed by gunfire near Hebron."

[Ma'an, English news, December 28, 2007]

 

4. Suicide Terror attack in Dimona- one woman killed:

Ma'an Arabic News:

"Ma'an - Senior military figure [Abu Al-Walid] of the Al-Aqsa Brigades in Gaza, rejected the suspicion that Israel aroused regarding the identity of the two Shahada-Seekers, who carried out the Dimona action... Pictures of the two Shahada-Seekers etc ..."  

 

Ma'an English News:

"Speaking to Ma'an on Tuesday, Abu Al-Walid reiterated that the bombers were Luay Al-Ghawani and Mousa Arafat"    [ English news, February 5, 2008]

 

Ma'an news releases promote the hate message that Israel has no right to exist, calling Israel "Occupied Palestine" or "territories occupied after 1948," Israel's government the "Occupation Authority" and its soldiers the "Occupation forces." Note also when Israel is mentioned it is often put within quotation marks- a common linguistic method to express non-recognition.

 

1."The Occupation authorities [editor: replaces 'Israeli authorities'] have been enforcing severe restrictions since the morning hours on the entrance of residents to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and even on the entrance into the city of Jerusalem within the borders of the occupation municipality [editor: replaces 'Jerusalem']. They have prevented hundreds of the residents of Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories occupied since 1948, [editor: replaces 'Israel'] who hold blue "Israeli" identity cards from..."

[Ma'an, Arabic news, February 29, 2008]

 

2."He said that 72 prisoners have died as Shahids during the al-Aqsa intifada, 58 of them from the West Bank, one from the territories occupied since 1948 [editor: replaces 'Israel'] and 13 from the Gaza Strip..."       [Ma'an, Arabic news, February 29, 2008]

 

3."In a research paper he published on the issue of the number of prisoners of Palestine which has been occupied since 1948 (The "inside" prisoners) [editor: replaces 'Israeli prisoners'], he emphasized that this number is an important number in the equation of the historical and cultural struggle against the Israeli occupier..."    [Ma'an, Arabic news, March 15, 2008]

 

Note in this previous example that instead of just writing the single word "Israel," Ma"an used a very long term: Palestine which has been occupied since 1948. However, Ma"an itself felt the need to further explain its own cumbersome usage by adding in parentheses, ("inside" prisoners) meaning 'Israeli Arab prisoners.'  It shows again that Ma"an is willing to burden its readers with linguistic contortions, rather than use simple and accurate language which would indicate recognition of Israel. In this case the language it avoided writing was "Arab prisoners from Israel."

 

4. "Dr. al-Asta did not compare the outlook... to one who lives in the racist Ghetto in Occupied Palestine..."   [Ma'an, Arabic news, February 24, 2008]

 

5. "A delegation of doctors from Palestinian territories occupied since 1948... visited the Gaza Strip." [Ma'an, Arabic news, March 17, 2008]

 

6. Discrepancies between English and Arabic reports:

Ma'an Arabic Report:

"The occupation forces" detained 3 residents in Bethlehem and al-Duha".    [Ma'an, Arabic news, March 25, 2008]

Ma'an English Report:

"Israeli forces raid Bethlehem and seize 3 Palestinians"

[Ma'an, English news, March 25, 2008]

Ma'an Arabic Report:

"The Israeli occupation army seized the town of Kafin afternoon today, Wednesday..."  [Ma'an, Arabic news, March 26, 2008]

Ma'an EnglishReport:

"Israeli forces stormed the town of Kafin in the West Bank Wednesday..."  [Ma'an, English news, March 26, 2008]

Continued (Permanent Link)

Extending sympathy to the parents of Rachel Corrie

Send your sympathy to the parents of Rachel Corrie, one of many thousands of victims of the Israeli-Arab conflict, who was killed in 2003 by accident. Ask them please not to allow anyone to use her death in order to spread hatred and cause more and more deaths.

 

Condolences for Rachel Corrie

02.04. 2008
http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000523.html
Original content copyright by the author
Zionism & Israel Center http://zionism-israel.com

To the parents of Rachel Corrie,
I am sorry for your loss. In 2003, your daughter Rachel became one of the many victims of the struggle between Jews and Arabs in the land of Israel, AKA (between 1917 and 1947) as "Palestine." I am sure that you love your daughter as much as every one of the bereaved parents and relatives of victims of the conflict loved their children. Your daughter was killed, apparently by accident, by a civilian bulldozer driver. I wish that Israel would open a full investigation of the matter and issue an apology, even if the death was purely accidental. As an Israeli, I apologize, but I can only do so as an individual.

But the other victims of the conflict are as dear to their parents and loved ones as Rachel was to you. Here for example, are Rachel Thaler (left) age 15, killed in a suicide attack on a pizzeria, and by her side is Rachel is Rachel Levi, age 19, killed in a suicide attack while waiting for a bus.

There is also Carlos Chavez. I call him "the other Rachel Corrie." He is the Rachel Corrie nobody will remember. He was a volunteer, like Rachel. He was harming nobody. He was working on a kibbutz near the Gaza border. He came all the way from his home in Ecuador to do that. He was murdered intentionally by Palestinian Arab terrorists, not accidentally.

Continued here: Condolences for Rachel Corrie

Continued (Permanent Link)

Qassam rockets kill Israeli civilian; IDF kills Hamas terrorists

Qassam rockets kill, again. See Qassam rockets kill for background.

 

Israeli killed in massive Qassam barrage on Negev

By News Agencies

At least one person was killed, several were wounded and many were treated for shock Wednesday as least 30 Qassam rockets slammed into the western Negev town of Sderot and surrounding communities.

The 30-year-old student killed in the strike was apparently in a car, parked next to Sapir College on the outskirts of Sderot, which was hit by a Qassam. He suffered lethal shrapnel wounds to the chest.

The rocket barrage occurred hours after an Israel Air Force strike killed five Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip who were apparently planning a large scale terrorist attack against Israel after having been trained in Iran. The Shin Bet security service ventured a guess that the severity of the rocket attack against Israel Wednesday afternoon reflected the central role the dead Hamas men had played in the organization.

 

Palestinian officials said two more people, including a civilian, were killed in a second IAF airstrike carried out immediately after the Qassam attack against Sderot.

One of the Qassam rockets directly hit a home in Sderot, while another exploded in a factory mess hall shortly after the workers had exited.

Several people suffered shrapnel wounds in the attack, and seven people suffering light injuries and shock were evacuated to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon.

Later, a Qassam rocket exploded near the Ashkelon hospital and several more people suffered from shock. Four rockets struck various sites in Ashkelon.

Hamas' military wing claimed responsiblity for firing the Qassams.

Israel frequently carries out airstrikes and brief ground incursions in Gaza to halt the rocket attacks, and it appeared likely that the deadly rocket barrage would draw a new Israeli reprisal.

Earlier Wednesday, at least six Palestinian militants, most from the extremist Hamas movement, were killed in operations by the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In southern Gaza, an Israel Air Force air strike destroyed a minivan carrying Hamas members, killing five. Hamas said that the dead included a senior engineer involved in the production of the Qassam rockets fired at southern Israel from Gaza on a daily basis, as well the commander of a local rocket-launching squad.

Two other Hamas members were wounded in the airstrike, according to Hamas and Dr. Moaiya Hassanain of the Gaza Health Ministry.

Minutes after the first explosion, an IAF missile struck another car nearby. Witnesses said the militants in the car had abandoned the vehicle for the white minivan shortly before the strike. There were no casualties in the second attack.

The IDF confirmed the strikes, which it said targeted vehicles transporting militants. Israel is targeting Palestinians responsible for the daily Qassam barrages.

Local residents who knew the men said some of them had undergone training in Syria or Iran and returned home after Hamas breached the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt in defiance of an Israeli blockade of the territory of 1.5 million people.

Abu Ubaida, spokesman of Hamas's Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, denied they had traveled outside the Gaza Strip.

Also Wednesday, IDF elite troops operating in the center of the West Bank city of Nablus killed one Palestinian and wounded three others.

The IDF said that the commando patrol spotted a group of five men, one carrying a pistol. The group fled after they were asked to stop by the troops, who then opened fire. Four of the men were wounded, including the man who later died in an Israeli hospital. Another of the group was said to be in critical condition.

In the early hours of Wednesday, a gunman from Islamic Jihad was killed during clashes with IDF troops in central Gaza, the militant organization said. The man's body was taken to hospital in Gaza on Wednesday morning.

The IDF said a militant approached the Gaza-Israel border fence late Tuesday and that soldiers had seen an explosion, likely caused by explosives the militant was carrying.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Border policeman killed, 4 hurt in Jerusalem and W. Bank terror attacks.

Last update - 01:25 25/01/2008    

 

 Policeman killed, 4 hurt in two W. Bank terror attacks 
By Amos Harel, Yuval Azoulay, and Yair Ettinger, Haaretz Correspondents

 

A Border Policeman was killed and a policewoman was seriously wounded in a terror shooting attack Thursday night as Palestinian gunmen fired toward the Ras Hamis checkpoint near the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem.

 

Magen David Adom emergency medical services rushed to the scene and attempted to treat the victims. The policeman was pronounced dead at the scene after efforts to resuscitate him were for naught. The policewoman was evacuated to Hadassah Hospital, Ein Karem for treatment.

 

The Palestinian news agency Maan reported that a previously unknown organization, the Return and Struggle Brigades, had claimed responsibility for the attack. The organization said it was affiliated with Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.

 

 
 
In a separate incident in the Kfar Etzion settlement in the West Bank near Jerusalem, three civilians were hurt after Palestinian militants infiltrated a yeshiva in the community and began stabbing students.

 

The checkpoint at which the shooting took place served as a pedestrian crossing point between the refugee camp and the Pisgat Ze'ev neighborhood of Jerusalem. At the time of the shooting, the checkpoint was manned by two Border Police officers.

 

"This is a serious incident and we will do everything in order to capture the killers," Police Commissioner Dudi Cohen said. "The passages are a serious Achilles heel."

 

According to an initial report on the Kfar Etzion stabbing incident, the two assailants entered the yeshiva building, one armed with a gun and the other with a knife. They were met by a group of students and one counselor who tried to subdue the attackers. A struggle erupted at the scene and one man was moderately hurt while two others suffered light stab wounds.

 

The counselor shot and killed the two assailants.

 

Cohen added that there is no connection between the two attacks.

 

Large military forces under the command of Colonel Nir Salomon arrived on the scene to investigate the incidents. Authorities will try to piece together the sequence of events in order to figure out how two terrorists managed to enter the grounds of the yeshiva. Magen David Adom ambulances were also summoned to the area.

 

"Israel continues to wage an unending battle against Palestinian terror which is fueled by extremists and rejectionism," David Baker, an Israeli government spokesman, said in response.

 

Jerusalem District Police chief Aharon Franco announced prior to the attacks late Thursday that, in light of the escalation of hostilities along the Gaza front, security forces have raised the level of alert, particularly in the run-up to Friday prayers on the Temple Mount.

 

Franco said the circumstances of the shooting attack remain unclear, though he believes that one or more terrorists arrived at the checkpoint and opened fire in the direction of the two Border Policemen. Franco added that one of the policemen's weapons is missing.

 

The Jerusalem police chief said that the checkpoint is manned round the clock, "as required by a High Court decision in order to enable traffic to move from the Shuafat refugee camp."

 

Were the decision left to the police, Franco added, the checkpoint would not be manned at night, and pedestrian traffic would be re-routed through the Shuafat checkpoint, which is situated close to 200 meters from the checkpoint where the shooting took place.

 

According to Franco, the Ras Hamis checkpoint where the shooting occurred is more accomodating, people-friendly, and safer. Franco said dozens of people pass through the checkpoint each day.

 

"We respect all decisions made by the Supreme Court, and I have no doubt that if we need to change the way in which we man the checkpoints, we will change it," police chief Cohen said.

Source

Continued (Permanent Link)

Palestinian Refugees get disproportionate funding

Israel Zwick points out this comparison between UNHCR, the agency that deals with all refugees EXCEPT Palestinian refugees, and UNRWA, which deals ONLY with Palestinian refugees, and apparently is asking for half the budget of UNHCR, which deals with all other refugees.

 

Comparison of UNHCR With UNRWA

Editor's Note: The following comparisons of UNRWA and UNHCR were taken from their own official websites, UNHCR.org and UNRWA.org. The data are self-explanatory. This was compiled by Israel Zwick, Editor, CN Publications.

UNHCR set to ask donors for over one billion dollars for 2008 budget

UNHCR is present in 116 countries, has 262 offices worldwide with 6,260 staff members – 5,400 of whom are in the field. We work with 624 partners to provide help and assistance to 32.9 million refugees, displaced and stateless people.

This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Andrej Mahecic – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at the press briefing, on 4 December 2007, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

In Geneva next Tuesday (11 December), at its annual Pledging Conference, UNHCR will present to donor countries its 2008 annual budget of US$1.096 billion, up from $1.06 billion in 2007, to help millions of refugees, displaced and stateless persons around the world.

In addition to its regular budget, UNHCR will also launch a number of supplementary appeals for emergency and special programmes for an estimated total of US $480 million bringing UNHCR's total expected budget in 2008 to over US$ 1.57 billion, compared to US$ 1.45 billion in 2007.

In January 2008, UNHCR expects to launch supplementary appeals for programmes including the Iraq situation; relief operations in Darfur; the Somali situation; repatriation and reintegration of Sudanese and Mauritanian refugees; IDP programmes in Chad, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia and Colombia.

We hope the response by donors will be generous and swift to enable a smooth continuation during the coming year of our operations to assist and protect people uprooted by conflict and persecution.

The UN refugee agency relies almost entirely on voluntary contributions with only a very small proportion of its budget coming from the UN Regular Budget. So, it's important for us to have early, flexible and predictable funding so we can help the 32.9 million people of concern to us. UNHCR looks to the Pledging Conference to provide a strong funding start for the coming year, ensuring a timely launch of new activities and avoiding interruptions in current activities.

UNHCR's operations in Africa lead the needs with 37.5 percent of the total budget, followed by the Middle East and North Africa 17.5 percent, Asia/Pacific 9.9 percent, Europe 5.9 percent and the Americas 2.8 percent. The remaining percentage is made up of funds required for global programmes, headquarters and reserves.

The largest operations in the 2008 annual budget are: Chad (US$ 73.6 million), Afghanistan (US$ 49.87 million), Kenya (US$ 41.48 million) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (40.92 million).

The 2008 budget has risen by US$53 million – or five percent – from 2007, mainly due to the mainstreaming into the annual budget of the supplementary programme for the repatriation and reintegration of Congolese refugees in the DRC.

The 2008 Global Appeal reflects UNHCR's shift towards a two-year programme and budget cycle (for 2008 – $1.096 billion, and $1.108 billion for 2009) which will allow a more medium term approach to planning and implementation.

Pledges for both years would be appreciated, but we understand that donors frequently have their own restrictions which may only allow them to pledge for 2008.

So far, some 93 percent of last year's UNHCR budget has been funded by donors. Top donors in 2007 have been the USA, Sweden, the European Commission, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Norway.

UNHCR is present in 116 countries, has 262 offices worldwide with 6,260 staff members – 5,400 of whom are in the field. We work with 624 partners to provide help and assistance to 32.9 million refugees, displaced and stateless people.

Link: UNHCR Global Appeal 2008-2009

UNRWA Commissioner-General's Presentation to the Advisory Committee on Administrative & Budgetary Questions (ACABQ)

To meet the Agency's goals, the recurrent activities of UNRWA over the 2008 – 2009 biennium have been budgeted at $1.09 billion. Subject to member states' approval, the Agency has budgeted for an additional 20 international posts in this period. I will elaborate on this last point later in my presentation.

UNRWA's vital humanitarian and human development activities depend on the work of some 28,000 locally-recruited staff, many of whom have spent decades in the service of their fellow Palestinian refugees.

New York, 24 October 2007

Distinguished Chair and Members of the Committee:

Allow me to begin by expressing UNRWA's appreciation for this opportunity to present our programme budget requirements for the biennium 2008 - 2009.

Over the past 59 years, the population of registered refugees in UNRWA's five fields of operation, Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, has grown to some 4.5 million, more than five times the number in 1948. The Palestine refugee issue is the most intractable the world has known, and given its intimate link with the geo-politics of the Middle East, is an issue with implications for global peace and security. Many of the refugees have become largely self-sufficient, but the majority continues to depend on UNRWA for essential education, health and relief services. My agency is also active in the construction and maintenance of infrastructure in 58 refugee camps and provides microfinance services to small businesses.

The scale of the task entrusted to us has grown dramatically over the past six decades, and with it, the nature of the challenge of achieving our mission. As the region has developed, refugee needs have inevitably grown more complex and sophisticated, compelling the agency to become more dynamic and more responsive to the demand for programmes of enhanced quality. These changing needs and plans for higher standards of service delivery are reflected in our biennial budgets and our Organizational Development Plan, which covers the three years to the end of 2009.

Amidst changing circumstances and growing needs, UNRWA's humanitarian and human development vision, however, remains constant. It is for every refugee to be able to enjoy the best possible standards of human development consistent with international and regional standards, in consonance with those fundamental rights enshrined in the UN Charter and its Conventions, and in line with the Millennium Development Goals. Irrespective of the waxing and waning of prospects for a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which must include a just and durable solution to the refugee question, it is our obligation as a UN agency charged with upholding the wellbeing of the refugees to aim at achieving these standards for our beneficiaries.

UNRWA's strategic objectives for the coming biennium are thus to support the educational, health, social and economic development of the refugees and to provide targeted relief for the most vulnerable among them, particularly women, children and the disabled. Meeting these objectives requires an increased financial commitment on the part of the international community to improving the well-being of the refugees.

Allow me to outline briefly the main features of the 2008-9 budget.

Features of the 2008 – 2009 biennium budget

To meet the Agency's goals, the recurrent activities of UNRWA over the 2008 – 2009 biennium have been budgeted at $1.09 billion. Subject to member states' approval, the Agency has budgeted for an additional 20 international posts in this period. I will elaborate on this last point later in my presentation.

More at Comparison of UNHCR With UNRWA

Continued (Permanent Link)

Bush radio address: A Jewish state and an Arab Palestinian state

The higlight of President Bush's radio address from the Middle East:

In plain language, the result must be the establishment of a free and democratic homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel is a free and democratic homeland for the Jewish people. For this to happen, the Israelis must have secure, recognized, and defensible borders. And the Palestinians must have a state that is viable, contiguous, sovereign, and independent. Achieving this vision will require tough decisions and painful concessions from both sides.

The entire address is below.

Ami Isseroff

---

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. I'm speaking to you from the Middle East, where I have been meeting with friends and allies. We're discussing how we can work together to confront the extremists who threaten our future. And I have encouraged them to take advantage of the historic opportunity we have before us to advance peace, freedom, and security in this vital part of the world.

My first stop was Israel and the Palestinian Territories. I had good meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and Palestinian President Abbas. Both these men are committed to peace in the Holy Land. Both these men have been elected by their people. And both share a vision of two democratic states -- Israel and Palestine -- living side by side in peace and security.

I came away encouraged by my meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Each side understands that the key to achieving its own goals is helping the other side achieve its goals. For the Israelis, their main goal is ensuring the safety of their people and the security of their nation. For the Palestinians, the goal is a state of their own, where they can enjoy the dignity that comes with sovereignty and self-government.

In plain language, the result must be the establishment of a free and democratic homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel is a free and democratic homeland for the Jewish people. For this to happen, the Israelis must have secure, recognized, and defensible borders. And the Palestinians must have a state that is viable, contiguous, sovereign, and independent. Achieving this vision will require tough decisions and painful concessions from both sides.

I believe that a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians that defines a Palestinian state is possible this year. Prime Minister Olmert made clear to me that he understands a democratic Palestinian state is in the long-term security interests of Israel. President Abbas is committed to achieving this Palestinian state through negotiation. The United States cannot impose an agreement on the Israelis and Palestinians -- that is something they must work out themselves. But with hard work and good will on both sides, they can make it happen. And both men are getting down to the serious work of negotiation to make sure it does happen.

The United States will do all we can to encourage these negotiations and promote reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. But the international community has a responsibility to help as well. In particular, the Arab nations of the Gulf have a responsibility both to support President Abbas, Prime Minister Fayyad, and other Palestinian leaders as they work for peace, and to work for a larger reconciliation between Israel and the Arab world. And in my meetings with Arab leaders over the next few days, I will urge them to do their part.

A democratic Palestinian state is in the interests of the Palestinians. It is in the long-term security interests of Israel. And it is in the interests of a world at war with terrorists and extremists trying to impose their brutal vision on the Middle East. By helping the Israeli and Palestinian people lay the foundation for lasting peace, we will help build a more hopeful future for the Holy Land -- and a safer world for the American people.

Thank you for listening.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Palestinian water pollution entering Israel

Study: West Bank pollution threatening Israeli groundwater
By Zafrir Rinat  Haaretz 116 December 2007

For several years now, a white river has run through the Hebron Hills. The color comes from pollution - waste from a sawmill near Hebron. And according to a recent Israeli-Palestinian study, pollution from this river and others like it is threatening the groundwater inside Israel, and is impeding attempts to rehabilitate Israel's rivers.

Israel has tried to deal with the problem by collecting and purifying the waste at the Green Line, the boundary between Israel and the West Bank. But that is insufficient, because much pollution enters the groundwater in the West Bank and spreads to Israel underground.

 

The two-year study was conducted by the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, the Blaustein Institute for Desert Research at Ben-Gurion University and the Palestinian Water and Environmental Development
Organization. It focused on the Alexander River, which runs from Nablus to the Mediterranean north of Netanya, and the Basor River, which runs from near Hebron to the Gaza Strip. Major investments have been made in
rehabilitating both rivers in recent years, including by establishing waste treatment plants along them.

However, the study found, the Basor is now full of both municipal waste and toxins emitted by the stone- and leather-working industries around Hebron. It estimated that anywhere from 45 to 90 percent of the pollution seeps into the ground before the river reaches the Israeli treatment plant, thereby endangering the groundwater. Moreover, some of this underground waste then reenters the river downstream of the treatment plant.

The study found that faulty sewage systems in Israel also pollute the river.

While the Alexander River has improved substantially, the study said, it still is being polluted by municipal waste and the olive oil industries around Nablus and Tul Karm, as well as various sources within Israel, such as fertilizer and insecticides from nearby farms. In this case, too, about half of the pollution on the Palestinian side seeps into the groundwater before reaching the Green Line.

Amos Brandeis, chief planner of the project to rehabilitate the Alexander, noted that the German government plans to build waste treatment plants for  Nablus and Tul Karm, but they will not be operational for several years. He also noted that the amount of municipal waste on the Palestinian side has grown, due to population growth and because many more houses have been connected to the sewage system in recent years - and this system flows directly into the river, rather than to a treatment plant.

Hydrologists Lior Assaf and Hila Ackerman of the Arava Institute said that more could also be done on the Israeli side - for instance, said Assaf, "planting buffer zones of vegetation along the river banks, which would help prevent pollution from entering the river."

Professor Alon Tal of the Blaustein Institute, in his summary of the research, noted that Israelis and Palestinians had managed to work together to reduce pollution despite the political tensions. "Nevertheless, what has been done to date is only the first stage," he wrote.
 

Source

Continued (Permanent Link)

Will Fatah and Hamas reunite?

Note- Fatah in Gaza is not necessarily controlled by Fatah in West Bank any more.

 

Ami Isseroff

 

Exclusive: 'Fatah, Hamas may join ranks'
Khaled Abu Toameh , THE JERUSALEM POST Nov. 29, 2007

Fatah will fight alongside Hamas if and when the IDF launches a military operation in the Gaza Strip, a senior Fatah official in Gaza City said Thursday.

"Fatah won't remain idle in the face of an Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip," the official said. "We will definitely fight together with Hamas against the Israeli army. It's our duty to defend our people against the occupiers."

The Fatah official said his faction would place political differences aside and form a joint front against Israel if the IDF enters the Gaza Strip. "The homeland is more important than all our differences," he said.

The statements came amid reports that some Arab countries were planning to resume mediation efforts between Fatah and Hamas to avoid further deterioration in the aftermath of the Annapolis peace conference.

According to the reports, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have decided to invite representatives of Fatah and Hamas for talks on ways of ending their power struggle.

A senior Palestinian official who visited Cairo this week said the Egyptians and Saudis have reached the conclusion that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas won't be able to move forward with the peace talks with Israel without solving his problems with Hamas.

The official said Abbas had given his blessing to Cairo and Riyadh to resume their efforts to end the crisis with Hamas.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak phoned Abbas Thursday and discussed with him the results of the Annapolis conference and the possibility of resuming negotiations between Fatah and Hamas. Abbas is currently on a visit to Tunisia, where he is expected to brief veteran PLO officials on the outcome of the conference.

Earlier this week, the Egyptian government gave permission to several pro-Palestinian organizations in Egypt to send truckloads of food and medicine to the Gaza Strip. The trucks are scheduled to arrive in the Gaza Strip on Friday through the Rafah border crossing, which remains closed to travelers.

Hamas, meanwhile, is bracing for a massive IDF operation to halt the firing of rockets from the Gaza Strip.

Sources in the Gaza Strip said Hamas's security forces have been placed on full alert and most of the movement's senior leaders have gone into hiding for fear of being targeted by Israel. In addition, Hamas has evacuated many of its security and civil institutions.

Hamas leaders on Thursday tried to establish a link between the Annapolis conference and a potential IDF attack on the Gaza Strip. They said the latest escalation, which claimed the lives of some 20 Hamas members over the past week, was directly linked to the conference.

Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan said Israel was stepping up its military operations in the Gaza Strip to cover up for the "failure" of the Annapolis conference. He said the thousands of Palestinians who demonstrated against the conference over the past few days in the West Bank indicated that a majority of the public were opposed to Annapolis.

Hamas legislator Mushir al-Masri said the killing of six Hamas activists over the past 48 hours was one of the direct results of the Annapolis conference.

"The Annapolis conference has failed," he said. "This conference was nothing but an attempt to impose the American and Israeli agenda on the Palestinians. The conference also gave a green light to Israel to launch a big military operation in the Gaza Strip."

 

Source

Continued (Permanent Link)

Speeches of Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas at the Annapolis summit

See also: Joint Israeli-Palestinian Declaration, and its meaning

 

The full text of Olmert, Abbas' speeches at the Annapolis summit 

 

By Assaf Uni, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service  

 

PRIME MINISTER EHUD OLMERT 

 

The honorable president of the United States, George Bush, my colleague, president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, heads of delegations, and distinguished guests, I came here today from Jerusalem, Mr. President, at your invitation, to extend, on behalf of the people of Israel and the state of Israel, to the Palestinian people and to our neighboring Arab states, to extend a hand in peace, a hand which marks the beginning of historic reconciliation between us and you, the Palestinians, and all of the Arab nations.

 

I had many good reasons not to come here to this meeting. Memory of failures in the near and distant past weighed heavy upon us. The dreadful terrorism perpetrated by Palestinian terrorist organizations has affected thousands of Israeli citizens, has destroyed families and has tried to disrupt the lives of the citizens of Israel.

 

I witnessed this when I served as mayor of Jerusalem in days of bombings at cafes, on buses, and in recreational centers in Jerusalem, as well as in other cities in the state of Israel.

 

The ongoing shooting of Qassam rockets against tens of thousands of residents in the south of Israel, particularly in the city of Sderot, serves as a warning sign, one which we cannot overlook.

 

The absence of governmental institutions and effective law enforcement mechanisms, the role of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the ongoing activity of murderous organizations throughout all the territories of the Palestinian Authority, the absence of a legal system that meets the basic criteria of democratic government, all of these are factors which deter us from moving forward too hastily.

 

I am not overlooking any of these obstacles which are liable to emerge along the way. I see them.

 

But I came here, despite the concerns and the doubts and the hesitations to say to you, President Mahmoud Abbas, and through you to your people, and to the entire Arab world, the time has come.

 

We no longer and you no longer have the privilege of adhering to dreams which are disconnected from the sufferings of our peoples, the hardships that they experience daily, and the burden of living under ongoing uncertainty, which offers no hope of change or of a better future.

 

We want peace. We demand an end to terror, an end to incitement and to hatred.

 

We are prepared to make a painful compromise, rife with risks, in order to realize these aspirations.

 

I came here today not in order to settle historical accounts between us and you about what caused the confrontations and the hatred, and what for many years has prevented a compromise, a settlement of peace.

 

I want to tell you from the bottom of my heart that I acknowledge the fact I know that alongside the constant suffering that many in Israel have experienced, because of our history, because of the wars, the terrorism and the hatred toward us, a suffering that has always been part of our lives in our land, your people, too, have suffered for many years; and there are some who still suffer.

 

Many Palestinians have been living for decades in camps, disconnected from the environment in which they grew up, wallowing in poverty, in neglect, alienation, bitterness, and a deep, unrelenting sense of humiliation.

 

I know that this pain and this humiliation are the deepest foundations which fomented the ethos of hatred toward us. We are not indifferent to this suffering. We are not oblivious to the tragedies that you have experienced.

 

I believe that, in the course of negotiations between us, we will find the right way, as part of an international effort, in which we will participate, to assist these Palestinians in finding a proper framework for their future, in the Palestinian state that will be established in the territories agreed upon between us.

 

Israel will be part of an international mechanism that will assist in finding a solution to this problem.

 

The negotiations between us will not take place here in Annapolis but rather in our home and in your home. These negotiations will be bilateral, direct, ongoing, and continuous, in an effort to complete the process in the course of 2008.

 

The negotiations will address all of the issues which we have thus far avoided dealing with.

 

We will do this directly, openly and courageously. We will not avoid any subject. We will deal with all the core issues.

 

I am convinced that the reality that emerged in our region in 1967 will change significantly.

 

This will be an extremely difficult process for many of us, but it is nevertheless inevitable. I know this. Many of my people know this. We are prepared for it.

 

In the course of the negotiations, we will use previous agreements as a point of departure. U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map, and the letter of President Bush to the prime minister of Israel dated April 14, 2004.

 

When the negotiations are concluded, I believe that we shall be able to arrive at an agreement that will fulfill the vision expressed by President Bush: two states for two peoples, a peace-seeking Palestinian state, a viable, strong, democratic and terror-free state for the Palestinian people; and the state of Israel, Jewish and democratic, living in security and free from the threat of terrorism, the national home of the Jewish people.

 

Clearly the implementation of the agreement will be subject to the implementation of all obligations in the road map with all of its phases and according to its complete sequence, as concluded between us from the very beginning.

 

We will abide by all of our obligations, and so will you.

 

The agreement with you and its gradual implementation, cautiously and responsibly, is part of a much wider whole which will lead us, I believe and hope, to peace, to a peace agreement with all of the Arab states.

 

There isn't a single Arab state in the north, in the east or in the south with which we do not seek peace. There isn't a single Muslim state with which we do not want to establish diplomatic relations.

 

Anyone who wants to make peace with us, we say to them, from the bottom of our hearts (SPEAKING IN ARABIC) welcome.

 

I am pleased to see here in this hall representatives of Arab countries. Most of them do not have diplomatic relations with Israel. The time has come for you as well.

 

We cannot continue to stand by indefinitely and to watch the -- watch you standing and watching from the sidelines, watching the peace train, as it were, going by. The time has come to end the boycott, the alienation and the obliviousness toward the state of Israel. It does not help you and it hurts us.

 

I am familiar with the Arab peace initiative, which was born in Riyadh, affirmed in Beirut and recently reaffirmed by you in Riyadh.

 

I value this initiative, I acknowledge its importance, and I highly appreciate its contribution. I have no doubt that we will continue to refer to it in the course of the negotiations between us and the Palestinian leadership.

 

The Arab world represented here by many countries is a vital component in creating a new reality in the Middle East. The peace signed between Israel and Egypt, and subsequently between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is a solid foundation of stability and hope in our region.

 

This peace is an example and a model of the relations that we can build with Arab states. My close relations with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and with His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan are extremely significant for the process of building trust and understanding with the Arab states.

 

However, these relations, important though they may be, are not enough. We aspire for normalization with those Arab states which eschew as much as we do radical and fanatical fundamentalism and which seek to grant their citizens a more moderate, tolerant and prosperous world.

 

This is an interest that all of us share.

 

There is quite a lot that separates us. There are memories, there is a heritage, that do not emanate from the same historical roots. We have different ways of living, different customs. And the spontaneous emotional identification that you feel with our neighboring Arab countries, which have been trapped for a long time in this age-old, bloody conflict between us.

 

Nevertheless, there is also a great deal that we share. Like us, you know that religious fanaticism and national extremism are a perfect recipe for domestic instability, for violence, for bitterness and, ultimately, for the disintegration of the very foundations of coexistence based on tolerance and mutual acceptance.

 

We are a small country with a small population, but rich in good will and with a significant ability to create a partnership that will lead to prosperity, to growth, to economic development, and to stability for the entire region.

 

From here, from Annapolis, we can come forth with a message of a new political horizon, renewed hope, not only for the Palestinians and the Israelis but also, together with you, for the entire region.

 

Mr. President of the United States, my colleague Mahmoud Abbas, distinguished guests, almost two years ago, under very sad circumstances, the prime minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, was no longer able to carry the heavy responsibility of leading the state of Israel and this responsibility was passed on to me, first as a result of formal procedures and subsequently on the basis of an election in Israel's democratic system of government.

 

Prior to my election, I stated that my heart's desire and the desire of my people was to achieve a peace agreement, first and foremost with the Palestinian people. This is what I believed then, and this is what I continue to believe in now, with all my heart.

 

The past two years have been difficult for all of us.

 

The hardships have not been alleviated. The terrorist organizations have not been weakened. The enemies of peace have not disappeared. And we are still anxiously awaiting the return of our missing and captive sons who are being held by terrorist organizations.

 

I long for the day when I can see Gilad, Eldad and Udi back with their families. And I will continue relentlessly in my efforts to achieve their release.

 

I believe that there is no path other than the path of peace. I believe that there is no just solution other than the solution of two national states for two peoples. I believe that there is no path that does not involve painful compromise for you, the Palestinians, and for us, the Israelis.

 

I would like to thank you, President of United States George Bush, an ally in the path of peace, for your willingness, for the preparedness of your government, your administration, and for the assistance of the secretary of state, Ms. Rice, to assist us in the historical process of peace and reconciliation between us and our neighbors. I believe that the time has come. We are ready.

 

I invite you, my friend, Mahmoud Abbas, and your people to join us in this long and tormenting and complex path for which there is no substitute.

 

Together, we shall start. Together, we shall arrive.

 

Thank you very much.

 

PA CHAIRMAN MAHMOUD ABBAS

 

 

 

In the name of God, the compassionate, with great hope, but it is accompanied with great worry that this new opportunity might be lost.

 

But the meanings of your message are well known and they carry your personal bridge and commitment by your great country and its determination to embrace the Palestinian and Israeli peace and the Arab-Israeli peace to be converted in the arena of negotiations to be the first and foremost arena for making peace.

 

And that this initiative would culminate your term of office is an outstanding achievement which would add a new shining star in the skies of the world, the world of the future free of violence, oppression and bigotry.

 

And also we would like to applaud you, Mr. President, for choosing this charming city, Annapolis, as a venue for convening this international conference.

 

In addition to its beauty and distinctive location, it bears the symbol of freedom; the most sublime value in our life.

 

"Freedom" is the single word that stands for the future of the Palestinians and captures the meanings of all their generations. It is their sunshine and it is the life that inspires their future. It is the last word voiced by the martyrs and victims, and it is the lyric (ph) of their prisoners.

 

I must also pay tribute to the role played by Dr. Condoleezza Rice and her aides. For without here relentless resolve and determination and her vision vis-a-vis all aspects of conflict in our region, we would not have been convening here.

 

Dr. Rice took important strides with us in order to affirm that the path of peace is the only choice and it is irreversible. And that the path to negotiations for peace and to achieve peace is the right path.

 

It is important for me to indicate here that this distinguished participation and large participation from sister Arab and Islamic countries, the quartet, and the group of great industrial countries, and the permanent members of the Security Council of the United Nations, and many prominent European and Asian countries, as well as non-aligned countries and African states and from South America, in a unique conference in the history of the conflicts would provide impetus and protection, in addition to the fact that it carries the meanings of encouragement to pursue the path of Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations and move that forward and the need to reach the solution of two states, based on ending occupation and the establishment of the state of Palestine side by side to the state of Israel, and the resolution of all issues relating to the Palestinian- Israeli conflict, Arab-Israeli conflict in all their aspects, as an indispensable qualitative step, so that comprehensive and normal peace relations would be established in our region.

 

I am proud that this Arab and Islamic contribution and this broad international that this Arab and Islamic contribution and this broad international participation in the work of this conference is a testimony to the fact that sister and friendly states are standing by us, the people of Palestine, as a leadership, and for our efforts to achieve peace.

 

It is a support of our approach that calls for a balanced historical settlement that would ensure peace and security for our independent state and for Israel, as well as for all countries in the region.

 

This Arab and Islamic participation in today's meeting is also an affirmation that the Arab peace initiative was not a step without well-defined targets, but indeed it was a bold strategic plan that aims changing the nature of relations in the region and to usher in a new era there.

 

But to achieve that does not depend on the Arab and Islamic position by itself, but requires meeting this position by a reciprocal strategic willingness that would basically lead to ending the occupation of all Palestinian occupied territories in 1967, including East Jerusalem, as well as the Syrian Golan and what remains of occupied from Lebanese territories, and to resolve all other issues relating to the conflict, especially the Palestinian refugees question in all its political, humanitarian, individual and common aspects, consistent with Resolution 194, as emphasized by the Arab peace initiative and the participation of sister states that host refugees and carry huge burdens in this regard.

 

I am not making an overstatement, Mr. President, if I say that our region stands at a crossroad that separates two historical phases, pre-Annapolis phase and post-Annapolis phase.

 

In other words, this extraordinary huge opportunity provided today by the Arab, Islamic and international position, and the overwhelming support from the public opinion in both the Palestinian and Israeli societies for the need to exploit the occasion of this conference that would launch the negotiating process and not to do away with the potential that it carries, I say that this opportunity might not be repeated. And if it were to be repeated, it might not enjoy the same unanimity and impetus.

 

Mr. President, what we are facing today is not just the challenge of peace, but we are facing a test of our credibility as a whole: the United States, members of the quartet, and all members of the international community, Israel, the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, the Arab and Islamic group, as well.

 

It is a test that would leave its indelible impact on the future of the region and on the relationship among its peoples and the international powers that are entrusted in the peace, stability of our region on the other hand.

 

We came with this perspective to Annapolis today. And, therefore, we do recognize the volume of this possibility that we are bearing and the gravity of the burden that we must shoulder.

 

We do recognize, and I presume that you share me this view, that the absence of hope and overwhelming despair would feed extremism. Therefore, we have a common duty to spread genuine hope in order to achieve full transformation toward complete peace (inaudible) and long term during your term of office, Mr. President, thanks to your support and understanding.

 

Tomorrow, we have to start comprehensive and deep negotiations on all issues of final status, including Jerusalem, refugees, borders, settlements, water and security and others.

 

We have to support this negotiating process in concrete and direct steps on the ground that would prove that we are moving in an irreversible path toward negotiated, comprehensive and full peace, and to ensure ending all settlement activities, including natural growth, and reopening closed Jerusalem institutions, removal of settlement outposts, removal of road blocks, and freedom of prisoners, and to facilitate our mission in the authority to enforce law and the rule of law.

 

Here, I must defend in all sincerity and candor, and without wavering, the right of our people to see a new dawn, without occupation, without settlement, without separation walls, without prisons where thousands of prisoners are detained, without assassinations, without siege, without barriers around villages and (inaudible).

 

I look forward, Mr. President, to see that our prisoners have been set free and returned to exercise their role in supporting peace and to stand by us in our mission to build our statehood and our homeland.

 

It is my duty to say that, to have peace, we need the fate of the city of Jerusalem to be a critical component in any peace accord that we might reach.

 

We need East Jerusalem to be our capital and to establish open relations with western Jerusalem, and to ensure for all the faithful from all religions their right to exercise their rituals and to access holy shrines without any discrimination and on the basis of international and humanitarian goals.

 

In this regard, I wish to emphasize that we shall pursue our obligations under the road map, in order to combat chaos, violence, terrorism, and to ensure security, order and the rule of law.

 

The government of the Palestinian National Authority works tirelessly and without any wavering under extremely conditions to achieve this noble goal that represents, first and foremost, a Palestinian national interest before it becomes a political requirement that is imposed by signed accords or the road map.

 

Our people distinguish completely between emphasis on the danger of terrorism and using it as a pretext to maintain the status quo and to pursue the current practices that we suffer from every day.

 

There must be a chance given to us to build our civilian security and economic institutions.

 

And the international community must sponsor this opportunity so that our authority and our government would fully fulfill their mandates.

 

I must emphasize that our determination to end occupation emanates from our vision that we would remove the most important reasons for terrorism in our region and worldwide without underestimating the need to fight terrorism under all circumstances and from any source. Because it is a comprehensive threat that threatens the future of every people and imperils human civilization, its gains and achievements, and brings dire consequences on all of us.

 

Here, I must applaud the tireless efforts undertaken by Mr. Tony Blair, who continues to work in order to build and enhance building Palestinian institutions and to complete great projects at the economic level in order to improve the living conditions and the terms of peace. And in that endeavor, he continues to submit very constructive ideas.

 

And I wish to pay tribute to the role of the European Union, Japan and our Arab brothers who made commitments to support these economic projects and building the future Palestinian state institutions.

 

Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to address the mind and conscience of every citizen in Israel from this rostrum.

 

I'm speaking on the basis for our recognition that, despite the importance of international and regional support for the success of the peace process, but the most determining factor for the making peace and stability and its sustainability at the end of the day is the public opinion in Palestine, Israel and their legitimate leaders.

 

I start by saying that, despite our disagreements on critical issues, but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert showed desire for peace that I have perceived during our bilateral discussions, and that genuinely contributed to reach this important step for which we are meeting today in order to launch.

 

Mr. Prime Minister, I wish that we, together, continue and closely work in order to achieve a historical mission that we have waited for too long.

 

Each one of us must pitch in our weight and experience and sense of resolve in order to overcome the obstacles that we will face and to close the gaps between our positions in a bid to achieve a solution that would end occupation and the long years of suffering of the refugees and ensure good neighbor relations, economic cooperation, humanitarian openness so that all of them would ensure guarantees for peace that are stronger than any documents, commitments or pledges, despite the importance of these all.

 

I say to the citizens of Israel, in this extraordinary day, you, our neighbors on this small land, neither us nor you are begging for peace from each other. It is a common interest for us and for you.

 

Peace and freedom is a right to us, in as much as peace and security is a right for you and for us.

 

Time has come for the cycle of blood, violence and occupation to come to an end. Time has come that both of us should look at the future with confidence and hope, and that this long-suffering land, which was called the land of love and peace, would not be worth of its own name.

 

Peace is not impossible to achieve if there was will and good faith and every party got its legitimate right.

 

Those who say that peace-making between us is impossible, actually does not need except to perpetuate this conflict toward the unknown, but it is, we all know, in other words, that continuation of bloodshed for many decades to come. After that, we would not reach the solution proposed today, all of which we know, all its components and elements. Or the ideal of peace would be killed in the hearts and minds.

 

Indeed, peace is possible but it requires our common efforts so that we could make it and preserve it.

 

And on this day we stretch our hands to you as equal partners in peace. The whole world is our witness and the world as a whole is supporting us.

 

Therefore, we should not lose this opportunity which might not be available once again. Let us make a peace with a brave (ph) and protect that peace in the interest of the future of our children and your children.

 

To our friends across the globe, members of the international quartet, and all participants in this conference, powers and states outside this conference who have been and continue to lend support for us, I say to all of you that our people will never, ever forget your support for it under all circumstances and under our most difficult times.

 

We look forward that your political presence will continue to be with us after this conference, in order to support Palestinian-Israeli negotiations with a view to reach the desired results.

 

We all hope that the work of this conference would be supported by the success of the Paris economic conference to be held after a few weeks.

 

The continuation and success of negotiations would be the real key to change the face of the entire region.

 

Allah, the Lord, said in the Koran, in the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful, all you who believe, enter into peace, all of you, don't follow the steps of Satan.

 

Satan is your obvious enemy."

 

The Lord also said, "If they move toward peace, then you should move to peace and have faith in the Lord, because God, the Lord, will listen and support that effort."

 

And on this occasion, may I record here, as we are here in the United States of America, the words of former United States President John F. Kennedy, who said, quote, "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate," end of quotation.

 

To our Palestinian people, to all Palestinians in Gaza, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and in refugee camps and the diaspora, may I address these words?

 

I do recognize that each one of you has his or her personal pain, personal tragedy as a result of this conflict and as a result of the years of tragedy and occupation. These are very bitter years.

 

Don't be depressed, Don't lose confidence and hope, For the whole world today now is stretching its hand toward us in order to help us put an end to our tragedy, to our holocaust that has been running for too long, and to lift the historical injustice that our people suffer.

 

And we shall be ready as individuals and as a people to overcome pain and the tragedy when we reach a settlement that would ensure our rights, that would make us equal with all other peoples in the whole world: the right to independence and self-determination.

 

To the Palestinian mothers who are awaiting the return of their children from prisons, to the Palestinian children who are dreaming of a new life, a better future - more prosperous, more safe future, to our brave prisoners - my sisters, brothers, children - wherever you are, have confidence in the future and tomorrow, because future Palestine is coming, because this is the promise of the whole world to you.

 

Be confident that the dawn is coming.

 

To my people and relatives in the Gaza Strip, you are at the core of my heart. The hours of darkness will end in the face of your resolve and determination. For your insistence on the unity of our people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as one geographical political unit without any divergence, your suffering will end. Right and peace will prevail.

 

May I close by recalling some words of Abraham Lincoln in one of the darkest moments of American history? Quote, "Let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations," end of quotation.

 

We started with peace and I end on a note of peace and we hope that peace would prevail. Peace be upon all of you

 

 

Source

Continued (Permanent Link)

Nadia abu al Haj - Academic martyr to McCarthyism or bad scientist?

In The Nation, Larry Cohler-Esses attacks what he calls "The New McCarthyism," which he describes as attempts by pro-Israel groups to discredit faculty with unfavorable opinions of Israel. As examples, he cites the case of Norman Finkelstein, who did not get tenure at DePaul university. It is a fact that Finkelstein has very shaky ideas about the Holocaust, and attacked Alan Dershowitz's "The Case for Israel" on specious grounds. Be that as it may, there is a sufficient stock of anti-Israel academic figures in every university, whose bids for tenure do not seem to have been hurt by their political views, whether they are factual or not.

The centerpiece of Cohler-Esses' attack is the movement to deny tenure to Nadia abu al - Haj. Paula Stern, who initiated the petition against Nadia abu al-Haj, replies below to an article by Cohler-Esses in Jewish Week, that made identical charges, and was apparently recycled for The Nation.

Ami Isseroff

Editor with a Hatchet: Larry Cohler-Esses

By: Paula R. Stern
October, 2007

Larry Cohler-Esses is a man on a mission. He's an editor with a hatchet, ready to wield it in the noble cause of "gotcha" journalism. Of course, he refuses to focus on the little details, like the voices of experts on the very subject on which he writes nothing about his inability to focus on the forest when the tree beckons. During a recent interview, so fascinated with one petition, Cohler-Esses managed to miss the forest: that Barnard College is about to give tenure to a professor who has written a wholly inferior and highly political book which fails completely when measured against the scales of truth, integrity, academic honesty and simple facts.

Like many newspapers, the Jewish Week was interested in a story about the tenure decision of Barnard professor Nadia Abu El Haj. I became aware of the ongoing controversy more than a year ago and read her book to see if it could possibly be as inaccurate and filled with anti-Israel propaganda as the experts claimed. A quick read suggests this is true; a more in-depth study confirms it. At the time (a year ago), I made notes, highlighted sections, and decided to do what I could to make certain that Barnard and Columbia did not give tenure to a professor who is more of a propagandist than a qualified scholar.

I wrote to the Barnard administration and contacted other Barnard graduates. Barnard doesn't want their alumnae to mess with the process; we are there for giving donations only, it seems. When the administration was unresponsive, I started an online petition. I was in a hurry, after all, the decision was to be soon and Barnard was refusing to give any details of the time schedule (plus I have a business to run, a daughter was getting married, a son was going into the army, three other children needed my attention, etc.). I did a quick review of my notes, wrote up a petition, and posted it.

I asked dozens of people to sign it. I later noticed a couple of minor errors in my text. Little things like – El Haj is virtually ignorant of the Hebrew language instead of completely ignorant. That her reference to one specific dig was wrong, but named a different dig instead. These minor corrections should have been made, but once a petition is posted at petitiononline.com, no corrections to the text are possible.

Historians James Davila and Ralph Harrington concur that the petition was correct in its criticism of El Haj, except that : "I doubt that it is accurate to say that Abu El-Haj did not know Hebrew when she wrote the book. But in it she does make elementary errors that someone with a decent knowledge of the language would not have made, which raises the question whether she knew it well enough to pull off the ambitious project she undertakes in the book."

Several journalists have contacted me and interviewed me. Each focused on the forest - the Barnard tenure decision. Cohler-Esses called me moments before the Jewish Sabbat was to begin and we agreed he would call me back after the Sabbath ended in New York - that meant having a discussion at 12:30 a.m. in Israel. I asked that he speak to the experts on the subject for a detailed analysis of her work, but welcomed him to speak to me about my efforts. Little did I know that Cohler-Esses is a tree-man and likely wouldn't see a forest, even from way up high in the sky. The real question one must ask, is not why the petition is 100% accurate or not, but why Abu El Haj's book isn't accurate. And, of course, why attack-journalist Cohler-Esses devoted his time to seeking tiny criticisms in my petition instead of noting that Barnard is considering giving tenure to Abu El Haj on the basis of a single book that is riddled with serious errors of fact and of methodology.

The petition continued to grow, gaining more than 2,500 supporters, many of whom are Barnard and Columbia graduates. It's a fine showing, a clear message to Columbia University that its graduates are against this latest attempt to add yet another documented Israel hater to its ranks.

During this whole process, I've acted as an archive, posting many articles written by experts on the subject of El Haj's past and current research. It was on the basis of these articles, and not my opinion, that I asked concerned Barnard and Columbia graduates to make a decision. I asked the same of many reporters who contacted me. Most understood that the petition was an expression of concern and condemnation. Only Larry Cohler-Esses gave it the holiness one would normally equate with the Bible. Each word, he studied – more than he probably has ever bothered to study the Torah.

Cohler-Esses' mission can best be summed up in his own pre-determined prejudice, "This is the modus operandi of the New McCarthyism. It targets a new enemy for our era: Muslims, Arabs and others in the Middle East field who are identified as stepping over an unstated line in criticizing Israel, as radical Islamists, as just plain radical or as in some way sympathetic to terrorists."

In other words, Cohler-Esses was the most dangerous of hatchet editors – a man with a preconceived conclusion and the power to wield it. Sadly, he wasn't honest enough to make his opinions known, but hid behind innocuous questions and then minimized El Haj's 281-page manifesto as merely "criticizing Israel."

Rather than attack Cohler-Esses (as a response to his attack on me), this reporter will focus on the "facts" he raised and the answers he should have provided:

The four statements about her book that Cohler-Esses claims are false are that Abu El Haj:

• claims the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a "pure political fabrication,"
  
• denies the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE and instead blames its destruction on the Jews,
  
• does not speak or read Hebrew yet had the temerity to publish a book on Israeli archaeology that demanded such expertise,
  
• is so ignorant of her topic that she quotes one archaeologist on how a dig might have damaged the ancient palaces of Solomon--oblivious to the fact that those palaces, if they existed, were far from the site in question.

Let's take these statements point-by-point and demonstrate how wrong Cohler-Esses is:

Nadia Abu El Haj claims the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a "pure political fabrication."

I stand by this statement. El Haj does indeed claim that the story of ancient Israel is a "pure political fabrication." Here is a link to an essay that shows Cohler-Hess was incorrect, despite his almost desperate attempt to find some other meaning in El Haj's words. http://blog.greycat.org/2007/10/23/nadia-abu-el-haj-and-pure-political-fabrication/

Another, by a leading historian, comes to the same conclusion: http://paleojudaica.blogspot.com/2007_10_21_archive.html#9219122517838600497

Both these scholars agree that El Haj's characteristically convoluted language does not mask her true intent – to say that the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a "pure political fabrication."

Nadia Abu El Haj denies the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE and instead blames its destruction on the Jews.

What Abu El Haj actually says is that that Jerusalem in the times of Jesus was not Jewish. "...for most of its history, including the Herodian period, Jerusalem was not a Jewish city, but rather one integrated into larger empires and inhabited, primarily, by 'other' communities." pp 175-6. El Haj is simply wrong, and pretty much everyone except El Haj (and maybe Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) knows it. To claim Jerusalem, whose very name is an Anglicized version of its Hebrew name, as anything but the Jewish city it has always been recognized to be, is a mockery of history, revisionism most insidious.

El Haj then makes herself ridiculous by asserting, with regard to the fires that destroyed a particular site in ancient Jerusalem, that there are "several alternative but equally plausible accounts." Some two thousand years after the destruction of Jerusalem, Nadia Abu El Haj has set herself as the defender of Rome. It is her goal to acquit the ancient Roman Empire and to do so, she must find a culprit. Since there were but Jews and Romans present at the time, she is limited in her choices. Limited but not defeated, she makes her wild and undocumented suggestion, nonetheless, by suggesting that "some of the evidence… could just as convincingly be read as evidence of a class or sectarian conflict within Jewish Society…" pp 145

Here is yet another essay showing how El Haj got this wrong. http://phdiva.blogspot.com/2007/05/nadia-aby-el-haj-and-use-of-evidence.html. Cohler-Esses continues his attack on the petition by focusing on the exact wording while missing the main point that El Haj did, in fact, attempt to shift blame for the burning of Jerusalem to the Jews. That she did this for only a section of Jerusalem and not the entire city, as one might interpret from the petition, means nothing to Cohler-Esses. He can take the petition word for word, but cannot manage to do the same with El Haj's book - again, because that might disagree with his own intention.

Two points down, and one can begin to see a pattern to Cohler-Esses writing, but let's continue.

Nadia Abu El Haj does not speak or read Hebrew yet had the temerity to publish a book on Israeli archaeology that demanded such expertise.

Here one must concede, again, that the petition is correct in its conclusion, but with the added explanation that it seems that El Haj knows some Hebrew, just not enough to read and write intelligently on her chosen topic.

As I wrote on my site, "Any Israeli reading the book will quickly see that the numerous mistakes she makes are a clear indication...this woman is as uncertain and unskilled in her Hebrew skills as she is in her research, her documentation, her ability to draw logical and intelligent conclusions based on real facts on the ground." See http://www.paulasays.com/articles/nadia_el_haj/does_nadia_abu_el_haj_know_hebrew.html

When I tried to admit that the petition was correct in its essense, if not phrased as best as could be expected, one can almost hear the glee in Cohler-Esses pathetic attempt to misplace this "admission" to devalue the entire petition. But luckily, the only thing devalued in this process is the integrity of Cohler-Esses and any newspaper that would print his article without further investigation.

Nadia Abu El Haj is so ignorant of her topic that she quotes one archaeologist on how a dig might have damaged the ancient palaces of Solomon--oblivious to the fact that those palaces, if they existed, were far from the site in question.

Abu El Haj's ignorance of archaeology is monumental. As I mentioned previously, if Cohler-Esses wanted a professional discussion of all facets of El Haj's work, he should have spoken to the experts and he should have conducted a professional interview, not one with someone at 12:30 a.m. who is sitting in her bed wanting to go to sleep, or someone who was not informed that her notes and a copy of the book would be required to answer his questions. Cohler-Esses did a hatchet job because he wasn't interested in truth or the facts on Abu El Haj, but because he wanted to put forth his conspiracy theory of a new McCarthyism sweeping American colleges. Do not take my opinion on this.

As I asked Cohler-Esses to do, those who wish to be informed, should read the opinions of leading scholars, including these:

• http://paleojudaica.blogspot.com/2007_09_23_archive.html#7794082609795697575
• http://www.columbiaspectator.com/?q=node/26830
• http://www.meforum.org/article/560
• http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/008510.shtml
• http://www.columbiaspectator.com/?q=node/26827

Source: http://www.paulasays.com/articles/on_my_mind/editor_with_a_hatchet_larry_cohler-esses.html

Continued (Permanent Link)

One Million Voices: Middle East peace and its enemies

An op-ed about the peace virus captures much of the tragic reality of the current "peace" negotiations and has a correct prognosis in many ways. However, being a worshipper in a particular temple of received opinion, the author, Gadi Baltiansky, makes assumptions that are not in evidence.

He writes:

If the summit succeeds, the historical turning point shall come – if the principles of a final-status agreement are formulated, and if negotiations are launched on the details of the core issues. Yet it is very possible that the skeptics and cynics are right. The deal won't be reached and the summit will fail. However, even at such case, we could see a historical turning point --- for the worst.

Even were a deal to be reached, there is no way that Mahmoud Abbas would be able to keep his part of the bargain, as he doesn't control the Palestinian "street" and shows no will to do so.

The peace talks and the peace conference are supposed to be his party and the party of the Fatah, but Abbas can't seem to raise support for them even in the West Bank. They would grant greater legitimacy to the government of Mahmoud Abbas as opposed to his Hamas rivals. On October 18, there was to be a major peace event. It was planned before anyone knew of the November summit, perhaps before The United States policy makers Bush thought of the idea, but its timing was fortuitous. It required months of preparation. The One Million Voices group was to hold simultaneous concerts in Jericho, Tel Aviv and numerous other cities as a public demonstration of the will for peace. Attendees would be called on to sign a declaration demanding of both governments that they negotiate sincerely for peace. The declaration takes no position at all regarding the outcome of the negotiations or the nature of the final status agreement to be negotiated. You can read it and sign it at the One Million Voices Web site. Threats by Palestinian terrorist groups and their groupies against the performers and organizers of the event first caused cancellation of the Jericho event (See Drowning out One Million Voices: The enemies of peace ) and now have caused cancellation of all the events. Danny Lubetzky's One Voice Movement to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, often a target of right wing Zionist extremists, was behind the event. The event was cancelled, but the campaign to gather grass roots support for peace in Israel and among Palestinians goes on.

A coalition of terror groupies and peace thugs, ranging from Abunimah and his Electronic Intifada to PACBI - Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel to Neta Golan and ISM, smeared the One Million Voices campaign as a Zionist plot to perpetuate "apartheid" - meaning a real two state solution. The event organizers decided that there is no point in holding such events if they are not held both in Israel and Palestine. The terror camp will hold their own event, called "Another voice." At least for that one night, their "voice" will not be the boom of rockets and suicide bombers, but its meaning is the same.

There are many lessons to be learned, for those who would learn. The first is that Abu Mazen is not in control of the West Bank. He is titular head of a lawless society and cannot deliver on any promises of peace, not even in this case, where the event in question was so obviously advantageous to him.

A second lesson is that the political will for peace is absent on the Palestinian side. Baltiansky wrote:

The peace-loving Palestinians – and this is the majority on their side, will argue they have no partner on the Israeli side, and the only horizon they will see is the one of the fence, roadblock, and settlement.

The peace-loving Palestinians were called upon to stand up and be counted. The One Million Voices event was a way of mobilizing "people power" for peace on both sides. But the Palestinian people sat down and shut up instead - both the ordinary people and their leaders. From a BBC article about the canellation of the event we learn:

Leading Palestinians who initially supported the event have since distanced themselves from it.

These Palestinian leaders are not stupid. They understood which way the winds are blowing and what is in the interests of their longevity.

"WARNING: The surgeon general of Palestine has determined that supporting peace is hazardous to your health."

As long as Palestinian society is ruled by bandits -- latter day incarnations of Hajj Amin al Husseini and his gangs and various do-it yourself abu-Gilda's (an infamous Palestinian Arab bandit) -- there is no chance for peace, because there is no political organization that can support peace. The only "peace" conditions acceptable to the peace thugs are conditions that would result in destruction of Israel. They have never been interested in anything else. They make it clear that the "occupation" that has to end is the one that began in 1948, and the "aparheid" that has to end is the "aparheid" that prevents millions of Arabs from coming to live in Israel and destroying Jewish self-determination.

As for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, she is apparently clueless about the Middle East. She told reporters:

"Frankly it is time for the establishment of a Palestinian state," Ms Rice told reporters in a news conference which she held with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

If she is serious, then surely she is mad. Mahmoud Abbas cannot control his own back yard in Jericho or Nablus without the help of IDF security. What sort of state could this be? And what sort of peace could it make with Israel, if the Palestinian dark side won't even allow a concert that supports peace negotiations?

As for the Israelis, there will surely be no cause for joy if and when the conference is disastrous failure. Every Israeli must ask themselves if they have done their utmost to ensure the success of these efforts, even if the chances are slim. If it fails, it must not be our fault.

Those who urge Israel not to make "concessions" or to shun the conference are not friends of Zionism and are not promoting the welfare of Israel. We must understand that the peace thugs -- the Jeff Halpers and Neta Golans, the ISM and the Electronic Intifadah and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel are right from their point of view. Peace is a ZIonist plot, that should be opposed by all right-thinking followers of CODOH and Stormfront and other such organizations obsessed with the Jews. What will be on the table at the November conference is the heart of Zionism. The heart of Zionism is not some real estate in the West Bank. The heart of Zionism is the recognition by the Arab world and in particular, the Palestinians, of the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. The two state solution would recognize the rights of both peoples to be "a free people in their own land" - the 2000 year old Jewish wish of Hatiqva. This would put all the peace thugs out of business once and for all, and that is why they are working overtime to stop it. Anyone who opposes the peace conference is thus an enemy of the Jewish people, as well as an enemy of the Palestinians.

Ami Isseroff

Cross posted: Israel News Middle East Analysis

Continued (Permanent Link)

Haim Ramon: Jerusalem and the Summit

Haim Ramon says: 'Whoever thinks Jlem's future won't be discussed is deluded'

Well yes, of course it will be discussed. The question is, what will be said?!

 

Ramon stated:

"Whoever thinks the subject of discussions will be limited to the structure of Palestinian institutions is deluded. Israel has an interest to get recognition of all of Jerusalem's Jewish neighborhoods, and to hand over control of Arab neighborhoods to the Palestinians. When we speak of a diplomatic horizon, these are the subjects we are referring to," Ramon said.

All that is pretty clear. The question is, who is silly enough to think that this conference is about Palestinian institutions? It is not about Palestinian institutions. It is not about recipes for gefilte fish either. From the Arab point of view, it is a sort of dinner party. Israel is to be the main course. From the US point of view, it is peace conference that will let it get on with the war in Iraq in peace. From the Israeli point of view, it is not clear what it is - perhaps it is thought to be about Palestinian institution building, or exchanging recipes for Humus and gefilte fish. It is scary if people in the Israel government don't know what this conference is about.

 

Ehud Olmert is quoted as follows:

 

While the international conference is designed to promote peacemaking, "it will in no way replace direct negotiations with the Palestinians," Olmert said.

Olmert went on to say that "whoever doesn't agree to talks with Abbas will tomorrow find himself facing Hamas and a terrorist regime in the West Bank."

 

But whoever does agree to talks with Abbas will probably also find himself facing Hamas and a terrorist regime in the West Bank, because Abbas doesn't have control of Palestinian society. The reasons for talking to Abbas are much more complex, and what is said to Abbas will also determine what we will face in the West Bank.

 

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Palestinian Christian 'activist' killed - by Palestinians

Headline:

 

Palestinian Christian activist found dead in Gaza City

An "activist" is generally someone who plants bombs in Middle East newsspeak, but this activist was director of the Teacher's Bookshop, Gaza's only Christian bookstore, which is run by the Bible Society of Gaza Baptist church. Health Ministry officials confirmed his death.

 

Ayyad had been missing since Saturday evening. Over the years he had received repeated death threats from unidentified people displeased with his missionary work. He was found stabbed to death in a street in Gaza City early Sunday.

 

The associated press article adds gratuitously and incorrectly, that Muslim-Christian relations have not deteriorated since the Hamas takeover in June. Apparently, this means that the Muslims burn churches and murder "activists," and the Christians smile and say "I can't complain."

 

Ami Isseroff 
 

Continued (Permanent Link)

Palestinian refugees say no to peace

Headline: Don't accept two-state solution, refugees tell Abbas

As there is no other solution, that means, "don't accept peace."

---

Khaled Abu Toameh , THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 6, 2007

---

Representatives of Palestinian refugees warned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas over the weekend against surrendering their "right of return" by accepting a two-state solution during next month's planned US-sponsored peace conference in Maryland.

The warning came as former PA prime minister Ahmed Qurei, who is better known as Abu Ala, said the Palestinians would not accept a state that did not include Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

He said the Palestinians would boycott the conference unless an agreement was reached with Israel beforehand on all the "fundamental" issues: the status of Jerusalem, the borders of the future Palestinian state and the problem of the refugees.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, meanwhile, is likely to address the diplomatic process at Sunday's weekly cabinet session, where the ministers are expected to hear assessments on the recent talks between Olmert and Abbas.

Abbas said Saturday that Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams would hold their first meeting on Monday to draft a joint statement on principles for future peace talks ahead of the planned conference in Annapolis.

In a letter to Abbas, Salman Abu Sitta, a prominent spokesman for Palestinian refugees, wrote: "We are aware of the pressure you are facing to abandon the Palestinian position and endorse Israel's vision. But what has drawn our attention more than anything else is Israel's attempt to redefine the idea of the two-state solution. Israel now wants mutual recognition - Israel as the national homeland of the Jews and, on what's left of the land, Palestine as the national homeland of the Palestinians."

Abu Sitta described the Israeli formula as "extremely dangerous," saying it should be rejected by all Arabs. He said accepting this formula would be tantamount to abandoning the Arab right to Palestine and accepting the Jews' ostensible historical and biblical rights to the land.

In addition, Abu Sitta argued, the Israeli stance abolishes the right of return for Palestinians on two levels: recognition of this right and its fulfillment.

"This would constitute a historic burden; no Palestinian could bear its consequences in front of his people and history," he cautioned. He said it was inconceivable that the Palestinians would abandon the right of return after decades of fighting.

Representatives of Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon also appealed to Abbas not to relinquish the right of return. In letters to Abbas, they criticized Abbas's promise to hold a referendum on any deal he reaches with Israel. "Since when are our rights a disputed matter?" they asked. They said such a referendum would be meaningless because it would be held only in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Qurei was recently appointed head of the Palestinian team negotiating with Israel. In a series of interviews with Arab newspapers over the weekend, he said the Palestinians were hoping to strike a deal with Israel within five to six months.

"There must be a clear timetable outlining when the negotiations begin and when they are supposed to end," Qurei said. "Otherwise, the issue will remain open forever. We can reach an agreement quickly provided that there is a serious intention [on the part of Israel]."

Qurei added that the document he and his colleagues were hoping to draft with their Israeli counterparts before the conference would form the basis for future negotiations on a final settlement. "What's important is the content of the document," he said. "If it's going to be an unclear document, then we don't need it."

Qurei said the document must include an Israeli pledge to return to the pre-1967 borders. However, he did not rule out the possibility that the Palestinians would agree to "limited border amendments."

Asked how the Palestinians would react if an agreement on the core issues was not achieved in the coming weeks, he said: "Then this would not be a good situation. We will be forced to look into other options - including whether or not we would attend the conference."

The Prime Minister's Office declined to comment on Qurei's statements.

On the refugees, Rami Khouri, a prominent Palestinian-Jordanian editor, wrote in Lebanon's English-language Daily Star: "The hardest issue to resolve is the status and rights of Palestinian refugees, of whom there are now 4.5 million living outside Palestine (they were 750,000 when they first became refugees in 1948). All other contentious matters - land, sovereignty, recognition, settlements, water, security, Jerusalem - now appear resolvable, given the years of negotiations that have taken place by the concerned parties. The refugee issue, however, remains both intractable and existential for both sides."

Khouri said Abbas was dangerously close to being seen by many in the Arab world as a hapless American-Israeli puppet; his political party, Fatah, has been largely discredited as a corrupt, bloated and inefficient burden on society, and no longer represents majority Palestinian thinking; and the absence of Hamas from the Annapolis meeting would render the Palestinian delegation's credentials "rather thin."

"There is one way that Abbas can overcome these constraints, which recalls a major weakness that contributed to the collapse of the Camp David talks in 2000: He should consult widely, deeply and sincerely with ordinary and politically active Palestinians throughout the world, in order to be able to attend the Annapolis talks as a credible representative of the Palestinians," Khouri wrote.

Abbas said Friday that he expected at least 36 nations to attend the conference, including 12 Arab states, another three Muslim nations, the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the G-8.

"We hope that the number will increase to 40 states," Abbas was quoted as telling Palestinian dignitaries from Jerusalem, during a meal breaking the dawn-to-dusk Ramadan fast.

The remarks were quoted by the Palestinian news agency WAFA and confirmed by a participant.

Abbas did not provide a list of countries expected to attend. The US has not released such a list or set a date for the conference.

In Friday's meeting with Palestinian dignitaries, Abbas told his guests that a solution for Jerusalem would be a key to any peace deal.

"Jerusalem has always been in our hearts, and the hope that we have been looking at," Abbas said. "There is no independent Palestinian state without Jerusalem as its capital. It is a concern in the coming, difficult days."

Herb Keinon contributed to this report.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Going for broke: The Palestinians want to dictate terms

Several stories this week carried the same messages:

 

1- The Palestinians insist on a sweeping deal for a Palestinian state to be announced at the international conference,  to be completely agreed upon in detail within six months.

 

2 - There is no flexibility whatever in the Palestinian positions, which are basically unacceptable to Israel.

 

We read in the Jerusalem Post, for example:

 

The Palestinians will only participate in the US-sponsored peace conference expected to be held next month if general agreement is first reached with Israel on all the fundamental issues, Palestinian Authority officials here said Monday.

They said that in addition to Jerusalem, the borders of the future Palestinian state and the problem of the refugees, the PA was also seeking agreement on water, security and settlements.

....

The officials also denied that the PA had agreed to discuss an exchange of land with Israel and limiting the number of refugees who would return to Israel proper. They said the PA's official position remained that Israel must withdraw from all the territories captured in 1967, including east Jerusalem, and that there would be no concessions on the "right of return."

PA negotiator Saeb Erekat said he was unaware of any land swap agreement. He called on the media to refrain from publishing any unofficial documents or unauthorized statements.

.....

According to another PA official, the Palestinians want the declaration of principles to include an Israeli commitment to withdraw to the pre-1967 borders. "As President Mahmoud Abbas stated last week, we have no intention to compromise on any of our rights," he said.

Asked why the PA, which in recent weeks had expressed reservations about the conference, was now sounding more positive, the official said: "When [US Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice was here lately, she told us that the US administration was determined to turn the conference into a successful event. She also promised to exert pressure on Israel to soften its position."

And in Haaretz:

The upcoming Middle East conference should set a six-month deadline for the completion of a final peace agreement, the Palestinian information [Riad Malki] minister said Thursday.

There are several amazing statements that seem to indicate on the surface that the Palestinians have no grip on reality whatever, or else, on second thought, that they have an excellent grip on reality. Their proposals cannot be implemented, and there cannot be an agreement in six months or six hundred years based on these proposals. Moreover, the Palestinian government in Ramallah does not control Gaza. It is a government that scarcely controls its own territory, and it cannot meet even minimal payrolls without international help. Nonetheless, they are making "peace" conditions worthy of the victor of the Six Day War. They know that Israel will never agree to Return, they know that Israel cannot move nearly half a million Israelis out of Jerusalem and the West Bank. They know that there is very broad consensus in Israel that Israel has annexed Jerusalem by right, as opposed to wide divisions of opinion about the West Bank. Therefore, we must conclude that they see the conference as an opportunity for a tremendous propaganda victory in the Arab world and a way to perhaps gain some support for their positions in the world at large. It is another sally in the Peace offensive , and it must be met by an equally clear Israeli final status declaration proposal. 

Ami Isseroff  

 

 

Continued (Permanent Link)

Al Dura case is far from proven

Those who rejoiced to hear that Israel has now "officially" denied that little Muhammad Al-Dura was a victim of Israeli fire may be disappointed. Though news stories said the denial was "official," it seems, as a sharp analyst has pointed out, that only Daniel Seaman, the official in charge of antagonizing the foreign press composed this denial and knew that it existed.  The Prime Minister's Office did not know. It is not clear what evidence, if any, led Seaman to this conclusion, The timing of Seaman's denial is also odd, since the raw footage of the France-2 film that was allegedly fabricated to show the Al-Dura murder has not been aired in court yet, and Seaman himself doesn't seem to have any independent evidence that he could not have had seven years ago.

 

The best outcome one could have wished for is that this little boy had never died. The worst outcome, worse even than finding out that Israeli soldiers killed him for whatever reason, would be if, in addition, it would now be proven that the film appears to be authentic, and that there is a great chance that al-Dura was killed by Israeli fire. That would make not only Seaman, but the Israeli government, look really silly. 

 

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Olmert - Abbas meet under shadow of Hamas/Abbas talk rumors

The original Jerusalem post headline for this one seemed to be "Abbas understands time is not ripe for final status agreement." That got changed somewhere along the line, and the issue is not even discussed below. Instead, there is discussion of a possible Hamas/Fatah rapprochement.

 

What indeed, should Israel and the United States do if there is such a rapprochement?

 

Ami Isseroff

 

PM, Abbas meet despite report of possible Abbas-Hamas talks

---

JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 3, 2007

---

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hosted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in his succa Wednesday afternoon, despite reports from Arab sources that Abbas has agreed to renew talks with Hamas.

The two spoke privately, discussing a list of key subjects they would delegate to separate Israeli and Palestinian teams of advisors. The teams are expected to iron out details pertaining to those key subjects in preparation for the Middle East peace parley scheduled for mid-Novemeber and for a preceding visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, scheduled to predate the parley by a month.

A senior official said just as Olmert was beginning his meeting with Abbas that if the reports about Abbas's planned meeting with Hamas officials in Cairo were true, there was "no point" in continuing negotiations.

The Prime Minister's Office issued a statement saying Israel's stance regarding Hamas was "known and unequivocal."

The statement further emphasized that the government rejected any attempts by the Palestinian Authority to negotiate with Hamas and added that all Israeli officials traveling abroad were instructed to ask their foreign counterparts to step up pressure on Abbas against his making any effort to bridge the gap with Hamas.

MK Arye Eldad (NU-NRP) said that "Olmert has crossed all red lilnes of the Israeli consensus" by negotiating with Abbas amid reports that the latter was renewing contact with Hamas.

Abbas agreed "in principle" to renew mediation between Fatah and Hamas, Israel Radio reported Wednesday, quoting Arab sources.

Abbas reportedly answered a request forwarded by Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who has been in touch with Abbas's loyalists as well as with Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal and other top figures in Hamas.

The pan-Arabic Asharq Alawsat reported that Hamas had also responded positively to Suleiman's mediation attempts.

According to the Egyptian initiative, the talks between Fatah and Hamas would be confidential. Abbas suggested Azzam al-Ahmed, one of his close associates, as the man to head Fatah's delegation in the talks.

Suleiman asked both sides to produce proposals to end the strife, so that he could review them and formulate one joined proposal that would hopefully appeal to both sides. When such a proposal is drafted, the sides plan to hold secret talks in Cairo.

Nevertheless, over the past few days Abbas has reiterated to foreign media outlets that under no conditions would Fatah again share power with Hamas. "It was a bad experience, they ruined it," Abbas was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority government headed by Abbas-nominated independent Salaam Fayad was preparing a plan to battle Hamas's funding sources. Fayad's government estimated that Hamas was feeding off charities, smuggling through tunnels dug under the Philadelphi Corridor in the southern Gaza Strip, and charging commissions from money changers.

Until the violent takeover in June, Hamas also transferred money through the Rafah crossing, the PA government assessed.

But a Hamas senior told Al Hayat that his organization had "a million ways" to receive outside funding and that Fayad's government would not be able to succeed where Israel and the US have failed [i.e. in stopping funds from reaching Hamas.]

In related news, an Islamic Jihad leader said Wednesday that his group would not abide by any agreements reached by Abbas or his allies, and that it would continue carrying out terror attacks within the Green Line. The spokesman said that his group would respect nothing less than a return to the 1948 borders.

The Islamic Jihad official also said his group would not respect any understanding or agreement that would be achieved before the upcoming peace parley.

Sources in Washington said the parley might be delayed by two-to-four weeks, in order to give the sides time to reach some agreement ahead of the talks, Army Radio reported.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Israel (1 official) 'officially' denies responsibility for death of Intifadah "martyr" Muhammad al-Dura in 2000

Headline: Israel officially denies responsibility for death of al-Dura in 2000

Twelve year old Muhammad al-Dura was killed by someone in Gaza in 2000. Using film shot by France 2, Palestinians dramatized his case, and made it an excuse for dozens of terror attacks in the violence that followed.

What was really odd about the case, was that there was no possible operational necessity for firing in the direction of the unarmed boy or his father, yet the film clearly showed or seemed to show that someone was firing on them repeatedly over a long period.

At the time, the IDF neither confirmed nor denied the report, nor, strangely enough, did the IDF conduct an in depth investigation.

Efforts of independent volunteers have forced France 2 to air the films in court. Seven years after the event, the government has now realized that it ought to have denied the killing.

It did not wait until the films had been aired in public -- a matter of a few days, to announce its conclusions.

Also - it appears that this "official" denial was just a letter by the head of the GPO, and that the Israeli government doesn't know anything about it.

Ami Isseroff

Seven years after death of Gaza boy captured by France 2 cameraman was blamed on Israel, Prime Minister's Office issues first official document stating incident was staged. French reporter defends video, calling it 'authentic'

Ronny Sofer Published:

10.01.07, 22:16 / Israel News

Seven years after the death of the Palestinian boy Muhammad al-Dura in Gaza, the Prime Minister's Office speaks out against the "myth of the murder".

An official document from Jerusalem denied - for the first time - that Israel was responsible for the death of al-Dura at the start of the second intifada.

The document argued that the images, which showed al-Dura being shot beside his father and have become a symbol of the second intifada, were staged.

"The creation of the myth of Muhammad al-Dura has caused great damage to the state of Israel. This is an explicit blood libel against the state. And just as blood libels in the old days have led to pogroms, this one has also caused damage and dozens of dead," said Government Press Office director Daniel Seaman.

The arguments were based on investigations that showed that the angles of the IDF troops' fire could not have hit the child or his father, that part of the filmed material, mainly the moment of the boy's alleged death, is missing, and the fact that the cameraman can be heard saying the boy is dead while the boy is still seen moving.

On September 30, 2000, on the second day of the intifada, then 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura was going with his father to buy a car. The two got caught between heavy fire clashes between Israel Defense Forces and Palestinian gunmen.

The incident lasted some 45 minutes, 27 of which were filmed by Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahma, who was working for the France 2 television network.

Charles Enderlin, Jerusalem bureau chief of France 2, who was not present at the incident, broadcasted the report. The report accused the IDF soldiers who were involved in the incident of causing the child's death and the father's injury.

The report has been investigated by various bodies over the years, and four intensive journalistic inquiries examining the incident said there was no evidence that the boy was shot by the soldiers. Some of the inquiries stated that according to calculations of the angle in which the boy and his father were hit, they were most likely shot by the Palestinians.

During the past seven years, Israel has preferred not to confront the most popular television station in France, but following repeated requests by Shurat HaDin, Israel Law Center, the first official document from the Prime Minister's Office, signed by the GPO director, was issued last week.

The document argued that based on investigations that were carried out, the boy's death was staged by the French network's cameraman, Talal Abu Rahma.

France 2 reporter calls allegations 'nonesense'

In a letter to Shurat HaDin, Seaman wrote, "It turns out that the events could not have occurred as they were described by the network's reporter Charles Enderlin, since they contradict the laws of physics… Furthermore, it was not even possible to hit them (the boy and his father) in the place they were hiding according to the report."

Nonetheless, following consultation with Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, the GPO director decided that Israel should not take criminal steps against France 2's reporters or revoke the government journalist certificates that were given to them in Jerusalem.

In his letter to Shurat HaDin, Seaman said he was instructed by the attorney general the treat the matter "on the public-media plane and not on the criminal plane".

Shurat HaDin Chairwoman Nitzana Darshan-Leitner said she did not accept the GPO's position. "Shurat HaDin plans to continue to act in order to bring the truth to light," the chairwoman said.

"Among other things, we plan to petition the High Court of Justice and demand the journalist certificates and other GPO certificates are revoked from all France 2 crew members in Israel – reporters, cameramen, produces, etc – as long as the network does not publicly announce that the al-Dura report was staged and was biased.

"In addition, Shurat HaDin is considering filing a damages claim for the accumulated damage the report has caused, and specifically for the line of attacks and riots it has led to. This modern-day blood libel has led to the death of hundreds of Arabs and Jews and has ignited hatred solely for the purpose of ratings and poor journalism. We will demand that those responsible for this crime pay for their deeds."

Charles Enderlin, the France 2 reporter who is still working in Israel, said in response to this report, "This is not the first time that Seaman makes such allegations against me – it is nonsense. It is pure slander. The video that we filmed is authentic and I stand behind it.

"We plan to show the film in court in France, and I am certain it will end the repeated mudslinging," the French reporter said.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Palestinian resistance... To Hamas

The Gaza story bears watching. The fighting between the "democratically elected" Hamas and the Fatah is gradually intensifying, or at least, Hamas repression is intensifying. according to the story below, Fatah Calls It Third Intifada. While the story says that at lease 35 Palestinians were wounded, other sources put the numbers at "at least 70."

 

The problem for Israel is that Israeli attacks on Gaza, to stop the accumulation of arms and to hinder Qassam rocket fire, would probably serve to unify the Palestinians and allow Hamas to consolidate their rule under the rubric of "uniting against the Zionist enemy."

 

Ami Isseroff

 

Fatah Calls It Third Intifada

Hisham Abu Taha, Arab News
 

 

GAZA CITY, 8 September 2007 — At least 35 Palestinians were wounded yesterday when Hamas security forces clubbed Fatah supporters who tried to hold street prayers to protest Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip.

 

Some of the injured had gunshot wounds. "They were chasing and beating and arresting us as if they were occupation soldiers," said one young Fatah supporter in Gaza's Maghazi refugee camp, likening Hamas forces to Israelis.

 

Palestinian Information Minister Reyad Al-Maliki called it the beginning of a third intifada. He told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah: "What we saw in Gaza today was the beginning of a third Intifada, against the Hamas occupation. We bless this uprising." The earlier two were against Israel in 1987 and 2000.

 

The street showdowns, which erupted three months after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip violently, had been widely expected after Hamas said it would not allow Fatah to conduct "political prayers" outdoors on Fridays.

 

The Friday gatherings have become focal points for clashes between the Executive Force that polices the territory and members of Fatah.

 

The Executive Force briefly detained three Palestinian journalists and assaulted five other reporters.

 

President Mahmoud Abbas appealed for calm. "We ask our worshippers to avoid any friction or confrontation with the coup-makers and their armed militia," said a statement from Abbas.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Ethnic cleansing of Jews in pre-state Israel

Seth Frantzman, a doctoral student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has compiled a survey showing that Arabs killed 1,256 Palestinian Jews between the United Nations Palestine partition vote Nov. 29, 1947, and the outbreak of war May 15, 1948.

Frantzman presents the data, drawn from newspaper archives, in an article disputing anti-Zionist historian Ilan Pappe's contention that Jews committed ethnic cleansing against Arabs during the birth of Israel.

Frantzman writes: "Sixty-two Jews were murdered by Arabs in the first week after the UN partition plan was passed, and by May 15, 1948, a total of 1,256 Jews had been killed, most of them civilians. These deaths were caused by Arab militias, gangs, terrorists and army units which attacked every place of Jewish inhabitation in Palestine."

"Even before the first Arab villages were captured in April, 924 Jews had already been killed," he adds.

Franzman suggests that the eventual Jewish victory might have been less sweeping if the Arabs had not carried out across-the-board attacks throughout the Yishuv in 1947-48.

"As it was," he writes, "the ceaseless attacks against all isolated Jewish settlements only gave Zionist commanders every reason to see neighboring Arab villages as threatening and to act accordingly."

He concludes: "Scholarship - including that of the 'new historians' - on the 1948 war will remain incomplete until methodical studies are carried out about widespread and often well-planned Arab assaults on the Yishuv."

Frantzman's article is titled "Ethnic cleansing in Palestine?" It appeared in The Jerusalem Post on Aug. 17. The text follows.

---

The Jerusalem Post, Aug. 17, 2007
Guest Columnist: Ethnic cleansing in Palestine?
by Seth Frantzman
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1186557466176&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

As negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority aimed at creating a Palestinian state willing to live side-by-side with Israel in peace resume, one of the major sticking points continues to be the Arab refugee issue. Bitter arguments among politicians and scholars continue to surround the creation of the refugee problem during Israel's War of Independence in 1948.

It has become fashionable in recent decades to frame the 1948 war as one in which the Arabs were victims of Zionist aggression. Anti-Zionist scholars such as Noam Chomsky, Rashid Khalidi and Ilan Pappe have presented the war as if the only important events were Deir Yassin and the flight or expulsion of Arabs from Haifa, Acre, Tiberias, west Jerusalem, Jaffa and numerous villages.

IN THIS context, Ilan Pappe's work deserves special attention. He was born to a German Jewish family in Haifa in 1954. The former senior lecturer in the University of Haifa's Department of Political Science recently announced he was moving to the UK because it had become "increasingly difficult to live in Israel" with his "unwelcome views and convictions."

These views are those of the "new historians" - leftist scholars who in the 1980s began to reinterpret Israeli and Palestinian history. He is the author of six works on the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict and the Middle East. In his recently released book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Pappe claims that Israel prepared a special plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine's Arab population known as Plan D for dalet. Pappe's "evidence" is derived from his interpretations of files found in the Hagana and Israel state archives.

One of his most damning pieces of evidence is the village surveys carried out by the Hagana's intelligence units. These surveys go into minute detail about many Arab villages, including the number of armed men, the mukhtar and any anti-Jewish activity in the village. Pappe lends further evidence to his thesis by showing that Jewish forces, whether Hagana, Irgun or Lehi, attacked Arab villages even before the declaration of the state on May 15, 1948.

But Pappe makes one egregious mistake. He never bothers to ask the same question of the Arabs he does of the Jews: What about their lists, their intelligence reports and their ethnic-cleansing plans? What were Arab intentions in the five months between the passage of the UN partition plan on November 29, 1947, and the birth of Israel?

THE ARCHIVES of The Palestine Post, now The Jerusalem Post and then the newspaper of record of Mandatory Palestine, provide some of the answers and tell a very different story from the one presented by Pappe.

Sixty-two Jews were murdered by Arabs in the first week after the UN partition plan was passed, and by May 15, 1948, a total of 1,256 Jews had been killed, most of them civilians. These deaths were caused by Arab militias, gangs, terrorists and army units which attacked every place of Jewish inhabitation in Palestine.

The attacks succeeded in placing Jerusalem under siege and eventually cutting off its water supply. All Jewish villages in the Negev were attacked, and Jews had to go about the country in convoys. In every major city where Jews and Arabs lived in mixed neighborhoods the Jewish areas came under attack. This was true in Haifa's Hadar Hacarmel as well as Jerusalem's Old City.

Massacres were not uncommon.

THIRTY-NINE Jews were killed by Arab rioters at Haifa's oil refinery on December 30, 1947. On January 16, 1948, 35 Jews were killed trying to reach Gush Etzion. On February 22, 44 Jews were murdered in a bombing on Jerusalem's Rehov Ben-Yehuda. And on February 29, 23 Jews were killed all across Palestine, eight of them at the Hayotzek iron foundry.

Thirty-five Jews were murdered during the Mount Scopus convoy massacre on April 13. And 127 Jews were massacred at Kfar Etzion on May 15, 1948, after 30 others had died defending the Etzion Bloc.

IN ARAB countries more than 100 Jews were also massacred and synagogues were burned in Aleppo and Aden, driving thousands of Jews from their homes.

Back in Palestine many small kibbutzim were subjected to attacks, including Gvulot, Ben-Shemen, Holon, Safed, Bat Yam and Kfar Yavetz - all in December. In January and February, it was the turn of Rishon Lezion, Yehiam, Mishmar Hayarden, Tirat Zvi, Sde Eliahu, Ein Hanatziv, Magdiel, Mitzpe Hagalil and Ma'anit.

In March and April these attacks culminated with an assault on Hartuv by 400 Arabs based in the village of Ishwa and an attack on Kfar Darom by members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Arab attackers also bombed The Palestine Post in February. In March, the Jewish Agency, the Solel Boneh building in Haifa and an Egged bus were also bombed.

SOME OF today's scholars prefer to present every massacre of Jews as a "response" to some Jewish deed, and to portray as a "myth" the very idea that Israel struggled desperately for existence in 1948.

But it was no myth.

The fact is 1,256 Jews were killed in five months. Even before the first Arab villages were captured in April, 924 Jews had already been killed. Ilan Pappe should have pondered what might have been if those Jews had not been slaughtered.

What if attacks and riots had not been the first Arab reaction to the partition plan?

Plan Dalet was a plan, it was one of many plans. The lists compiled by the Hagana had been cobbled together for a decade before 1948, but they were not blueprints - merely intelligence assessments. The British also kept lists of everything; they knew about weapons in various kibbutzim, about the Hagana and illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine. Those lists weren't blueprints for ethnic cleansing anymore than were the Hagana files on Arab villages.

When a Jewish area was overrun - and some were - the homes were looted or destroyed and any survivors were killed, as at Kfar Etzion (only three of the defenders survived the massacre).

The potential for the ethnic cleansing of Jewish Palestine was never realized because of the discipline, determination and sheer luck of the Yishuv.

If the Arabs had not carried out across the board attacks throughout the Yishuv between 1947 and 1948, perhaps the nature of the subsequent Jewish victory would have been different. As it was, the ceaseless attacks against all isolated Jewish settlements only gave Zionist commanders every reason to see neighboring Arab villages as threatening and to act accordingly.

Scholarship - including that of the "new historians" - on the 1948 war will remain incomplete until methodical studies are carried out about widespread and often well-planned Arab assaults on the Yishuv.
---
The writer is in the doctoral program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His master's thesis was on the 1948 war.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Hamas tells it like it is, but lies

Hamas speaks. What part is a lie and what part is true? Consider this:

 

No, there were no Palestinian Jews. When the British Mandate began in 1917, there was only one settlement on Palestinian land, which included several dozen Jews, who were living there in violation of the law at the time. I would like to mention that under the Ottoman state – regardless of the many reservations we have about it – there was a law that prohibited the Jews from staying in Palestine for over a month. Their passports and personal documents were taken away from them, and they were given an Ottoman permit at the border, which allowed them to stay for a month on Palestinian land. The only group that can be called Jewish was the one in Nablus. They still live there to this day.

This guy has to be kidding. There are no Jews in Nablus, though there once were. But about four decades before the Balfour declaration, my grandmothers were born in Jerusalem. Five years before the Balfour declaration, my mother was born in Hebron. As for my aunt, her family had lived in Tiberias for over 300 years by the time of Lord Balfour and his declaration. One of my grandfathers was a soldier in the Ottoman army, not a transient with an Ottoman permit. The other grandfather was excused from service because he sold charcoal to the Ottoman army to run their trains.

 

The rest of what he has to say is equally fictitious. He has been smoking too much Lebanese blond, or too many Lebanese blondes.

 

There is one part I believe though:

 

...the final goal of the resistance is to wipe this entity off the face of the earth. This goal necessitates the development of the capabilities of the resistance, until this entity is wiped out.

So much for peace deals with the Hamas.

 

Ami Isseroff

 

 

Special Dispatch-Hamas/Jihad & Terrorism Studies Project
August 16, 2007
No. 1682
 
Hamas Representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan Justifies Suicide Bombings in Buses: Israeli Soldiers Ride Those Buses
 
 
The following are excerpts from an interview with Hamas representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan, which aired on Al-Kawthar TV on August 6, 2007.
 
August 06, 2007

Hamas representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan Justifies Suicide Bombings in Buses: Israeli Soldiers Ride Those Buses

Following are excerpts from an interview with Hamas representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan, which aired on Al-Kawthar TV on August 6, 2007:

Interviewer: Islamic law has forbidden aggression during Jihad – by forbidding the killing of women, children, the elderly, clerics who devote themselves to the worship of God, and other non-combatant civilians who do not serve in the enemy's army. Do you consider all the Jews in Palestine to be combatants who have plundered the land? We've witnessed martyrdom operations that targeted buses and restaurants.

Osama Hamdan: First of all, let me clarify something very important. What is the ruling regarding those who live in Palestine, in the co-called Israel, and who are aggressors and plunderers of the land? The way we see it, they all came to Palestine from abroad, whether before the declaration of the Zionist entity or after it. If you were to conduct statistics within the Zionist entity, you would find that all these people have their origins in other countries – they came from Europe, Eastern Europe, from American, South America, or other places.

Interviewer: In other words, there were no Palestinian Jews?

Osama Hamdan: No, there were no Palestinian Jews. When the British Mandate began in 1917, there was only one settlement on Palestinian land, which included several dozen Jews, who were living there in violation of the law at the time. I would like to mention that under the Ottoman state – regardless of the many reservations we have about it – there was a law that prohibited the Jews from staying in Palestine for over a month. Their passports and personal documents were taken away from them, and they were given an Ottoman permit at the border, which allowed them to stay for a month on Palestinian land. The only group that can be called Jewish was the one in Nablus. They still live there to this day. The Palestinians regard them as part of the makeup of Palestinian society, and they number no more than several hundred. As for those who immigrated from various countries – they are not Jews. Anyone who comes to live in a war zone is a combatant, regardless of whether he wears a uniform. That's one thing. Secondly, neither Hamas nor the Palestinian resistance force intentionally killed civilians. You mentioned the buses. What's an easier target – a bus, which is protected by various security measures, or a school, a theater, or a stadium, for example? These civilian targets – in which the killing of women and children is intentional – were not targeted by the resistance. Why were buses targeted? Because they are the means of transport used by the soldiers as well. The Zionist soldiers, who go from their homes to their bases and back, use public transport, because it is free or almost free. In my opinion, the occupation soldiers also have a security motive in using public transport: They shield themselves behind the so-called "civilians" within the Zionist entity. Therefore, the way I see it, they need to stop using public transport, or else society should prevent them from using it, because it is the soldiers who are targeted. Just to prove it, in the dozens of operations that were carried out, the Zionists never announced, for example, that 20 children were killed, or that 50 women were killed. On the contrary, if you were to examine who was killed in martyrdom operations that targeted buses, you would find that 70% were occupation soldiers, and they may even have been in uniform at the time of the operation.

[...]

We are making the preparations for a confrontation. This is not because we need to be prepared for an Israeli act of aggression – after all, aggression is intrinsic to this entity – but because the final goal of the resistance is to wipe this entity off the face of the earth. This goal necessitates the development of the capabilities of the resistance, until this entity is wiped out.

Interviewer: Do you think that Mahmoud Abbas, who has found himself in the crisis of the confrontation with Hamas, plays the role of a policeman, who thwarts the Intifada, the resistance, and the Jihad against the Zionist occupation in the Palestinian lands?

Osama Hamdan: He plays a role that is even worse than that. Mahmoud Abbas is doing this out of ideological conviction. He has been calling for a settlement ever since 1973. It was Mahmoud Abbas who created the Oslo Accords, and who was brought in by the Americans to serve as prime minister in order to confront Arafat. In my opinion, he plays this role willingly and out of conviction, which is worse than if he were doing so due to commitments to the occupation.

FONT>
*********************
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request.

MEMRI holds copyrights on all translations. Materials may only be used with proper attribution.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
P.O. Box 27837, Washington, DC 20038-7837
Phone: (202) 955-9070
Fax: (202) 955-9077
E-Mail: memri@memri.org
Search previous MEMRI publications at www.memri.org

If you no longer wish to receive this publication via email, please reply and enter only the word "UNSUBSCRIBE" in the subject line.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Another Zionist Crime: Palestinian wounds ten in gun attack

This one is too good to pass up.

 

First headline: Ten wounded in shooting attack in Old City of Jerusalem

Ten people were wounded, three moderately and seven lightly, during a shooting attack Friday morning in Jerusalem's Old City.

The assailant, who has yet to be identified, was shot and killed by a security guard.

The attack took place near the Old City's Ateret Cohanim yeshiva in the Christian Quarter.

The assailant was walking with a friend on Hanotsrim Street near Jaffa Gate, when he attacked a security guard, managing to take his gun. He then shot the guard, moderately wounding him in his shoulder.

The attacker then fled the scene, running down Avtimos Street. Another guard ran after the man, and nine bystanders were wounded, four from ricochets, in the ensuing gunfight. Five people were wounded by the attacker's gunfire, according to Israel Radio.

 

 

Everyone can judge the case on its merits. Here is the Palestinian reaction:

 

Mustafa Al Barghouthi, the secretary-general of the Palestinian national
initiative, condemned the killing, saying "This incident just confirms the
enormity of Israeli crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians."

 

So you see, the crimes of the Zionists are exposed. When you shoot at Zionists, they shoot back. Jews are not allowed to do that.

Ami Isseroff
 

Continued (Permanent Link)

What is wrong with the Palestinians?

In Repeating a historic failure

, Shlomo Avineri suggests:

... a review of history shows a more profound structural failing, which has accompanied the Palestinian movement over the years: the inability to establish institutions that are based on a national consensus and that are able to serve as the foundation for a state.

The failure began back in the time of the British Mandate...

The Arab community, however, did not succeed in establishing a parallel institutional system. The Arab Higher Committee was no more than an assembly of notables, who were appointed on a regional and clan basis without elections, and it represented only itself. The committee never established education or welfare systems, and a party-based political system never developed. 

This weakness was clearly evident in the years 1936-1939, which in the Palestinian narrative are called "the Great Revolt" against British rule. A united command for the revolt was never created, and the situation degenerated into an Arab civil war in which armed militias killed each other's members: the mufti's followers and the Husseinis against the militias identified with the Nashashibi clan. In this struggle more Arabs were killed by Arabs than were killed by the British or the Jews.

A similar picture also emerged after the United Nations partition resolution. The Palestinians ... never established a consolidated political and military leadership, and the lack of such a leadership is responsible for some of their weaknesses in 1947-48. The Arab Higher Committee did not have at its command effective administrative and institutional structures, and many of its members fled the country when the violence started. The fighting was left to regional and local leaders.

What we are now seeing in the Gaza Strip - the inability of the two Palestinian factions to work together within an agreed-upon framework - is nothing but a repeat of this historic failure of the Palestinians. The current Palestinian excuse is that it is difficult to establish coherent political institutions in conditions of territorial fragmentation, refugees and Israeli occupation. All this is true, but irrelevant. Every national movement emerges in difficult conditions, which usually have to do with being under foreign rule. It is hard to imagine more difficult conditions than those that faced the Jewish Yishuv in Palestine in the 1930s and '40s, with the rise of the Nazis, abandonment on the part of Britain, the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust. But this is the test of a national movement: whether it is able to transform a crisis into a historical moment of opportunity.

Does that history suggest something? 

Continued (Permanent Link)

Are Olmert and Abbas tallking about final status?

Last update - 10:45 31/07/2007   

 

Report: Olmert, Abbas holding secret talks on final status agreement

 

By Haaretz Service

 

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas are engaged in secret talks on final status issues, Israel Radio quoted the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayyat as reporting Tuesday.

 

According to the report, the two leaders agreed to open a secret channel to discuss the issues, which include such sticking points as refugees, Jerusalem, and final borders, during their meeting roughly two weeks ago.

 

The report stated that the talks have yet to produce a breakthrough.

 

Olmert confirmed last week that he intends to engage in negotiations with Abbas on the formation of a Palestinian state.

 

Olmert was responding to a Haaretz report, according to which he offered to hold negotiations toward an "Agreement of Principles" for the establishment of a Palestinian state comprised of the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank.

 

Olmert's proposal to Abbas is based on his view that it is important to first discuss issues that are relatively easy for the two sides to agree upon. The prime minister also believes that such an accord will enjoy the overwhelming support of the Israeli public and the Knesset.

 

Abbas, however, told Meretz Chairman Yossi Beilin during their meeting in Ramallah last week that an agreement of principles would not be satisfactory. He said the Palestinian Authority is prepared to achieve a final status settlement with Israel by next fall, when an international Mideast peace conference is scheduled to take place.

Continued (Permanent Link)

One state solution: South Africa Is Not a Model for Us

Benjamin Pogrund makes good sense in this article about the so-called "one-state solution" for Israel and Palestine. However, it seems to me that the idea of a "one state solution" is fraudulent, and that discussing it seriously gives it a dignity it does not deserve. It is well meaning, but missing the point to write:

Shain puts his finger on it. South African espousal of a single state is due to faulty information and misunderstanding...

 

There is no misunderstanding. Denial of the right of self-determination to the Jewish people is racism. The South African people decided to solve their problem in their way. That is fine for them, as long as it is accepted by the South African people. But deciding that Jews must give up their right of self determination when they do not want to do so is racism, because every people that wants it should have that right. Beyond that, the one state solution was always, from the time it was first proposed by the Nazi Grand Mufti Hajj Amin Al Husseini, a thin mask for a genocidal program. There is no one state solution, because the Arabs of Palestine will would not be willing to accord equal rights to the Jews. They could not do so if they wanted to. The Arab peoples have over twenty states in which to give expression to their national heritage, language and culture. Under the "one state solution," the Jewish people would have no state at all. That is not equality.

 

Surely there is something fraudulent when on the one hand, the Arabs of Palestine insist that they cannot live in Jordan or Egypt because they are a different people from the Jordanians or Egyptians, and yet on the other hand, they insist they want to make a one state solution with Jews, a people of a different national culture and language. What will be the official national language of this state? What will be the immigration policy? Will Islam be the basis of law, as it is in the Palestinian Authority?

 

Nonetheless, it is worth considering Benjamin Pogrund's article below, if you are willing to grant the fiction that those who propose a one state solution are in earnest.

 

Ami Isseroff

---

Palestine-Israel Journal, Volume 14 No. 2, 2007: Future Options

South Africa Is Not a Model for Us

Benjamin Pogrund

Benjamin Pogrund is the founder and director of Yakar's Center for Social Concern in Jerusalem and was deputy editor of the former Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg. He is co-editor of Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue and is a member of the Palestine-Israel Journal's Editorial Board.

It's fashionable these days in South Africa to offer the country as an exemplar for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: "We created a unitary state and so must you," they say. The argument is that blacks were oppressed under apartheid, and Palestinians are oppressed by Israel, so the same solution applies to both situations.

An Israeli visitor stands to be challenged as to why the Jews want their own state instead of joining in a single state with the Palestinians. Palestinian suffering is identified with what was suffered under apartheid. The general outlook of uncritical support for the Palestinians and unbridled hostility towards Israel is articulated by the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and its allies, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist Party. They no doubt reflect much popular feeling in denouncing Israel as the "apartheid regime," and they are increasingly urging stern action — boycotts, disinvestment and breaking off diplomatic relations. Yet despite the vehemence of their attacks, these organizations do not explicitly call for a one-state solution.

The 40th anniversary of the Six Day War in June was marked by demonstrations against Israel as well as heated exchanges of views in articles and letters in newspapers. Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils played a leading part in this: He has become a frequent critic of Israel. He is an old-style Communist who stuck with the party despite the revelations of Stalinist horrors, the Hungarian and East German uprisings and the final collapse of the system. In recent years he has said that he has rediscovered his identity as a Jew; however, the South African Jewish community wants nothing to do with him. In one letter to the editor, he referred to the "bloody establishment of the Zionist state" and said there was "no historical or moral basis for the Zionist claim to an ethnic Jewish state on all the land of the former mandate territory" (Business Day, June 13, 2007). If this seems to imply a denial of the right of Israel to exist, he shied away from it by concluding with a call for national self-determination for the Palestinians — "and acceptance of two independent, sovereign states alongside each other."

Kasrils often bases his condemnation of Israel on alleged historical events, as he did in writing about the Six Day War, which he said was Israel's fault. But the noted Israeli historian Benny Morris scoffed at him, saying in a letter that Kasrils "uses history to advance a political agenda. The problem is that his history is skewered, factual errors piled on top of ideologically motivated distortions. The outcome is lamentable" (Cape Times, June 18, 2007).

The outright public rejection of two states comes from Muslim organizations and individuals. It also regularly appears in the press through a veteran journalist, Allister Sparks. He writes about the "fantasy" of the two-state solution, and in a recent column, asked Jews: "… if I, as a white South African can live in a secular, nonracial state with a black majority and feel perfectly secure in my own identity, can you not do the same in Israel?" (Cape Times, June 13, 2007). The answer to that, of course, is that he does not understand Jewish history and has no insight into the psyche of Israeli Jews. It led to Milton Shain, professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town, writing that Sparks' views "can be written off as provocative journalese or simple myopia … he is blind to the differences between the two cases" (Cape Times, June 19, 2007).

Shain puts his finger on it. South African espousal of a single state is due to faulty information and misunderstanding, whether from simple lack of knowledge and/or built-in prejudice against the mere existence of a Jewish state. In addition to Kasrils and Sparks there is plentiful evidence of this, such as the Communist Party which, while excoriating the Israeli occupation, is evidently unaware that Jordan occupied the West Bank until June 1967. It also claims that Israel "was the biggest friend and collaborator with the apartheid regime" (South African Communist Party General Secretary Blade Nzimande, Umsebenzi Online, June 6, 2007). A friend, regrettably yes, as is well-known, but bigger than Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, which all supplied oil in defiance of international boycotts? And what of the United Kingdom, France, the United States and virtually every country in the world that traded with apartheid South Africa? Or there is this fevered writing in Islamic Focus magazine: "The day that Nelson Mandela was released [in February 1990] was probably one of the last times that Palestinians enjoyed the simple pleasure of a sweet treat called baklava. They sang and rejoiced in the narrow, dusty streets …" (Shabnam Mohamed, "There's something different about this Nakba," Islamic Focus, Pretoria, Issue 8, June 2007, p. 3).

Differences Outweigh Similarities

For a more informed and informative look at the issue, one can turn to an authoritative source: a book published in 2005 by two Canadians, Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley, who are specialists on South Africa. In Seeking Mandela: Peacemaking Between Israelis and Palestinians* they conclude that the South Africa = Israel and Palestine assertion does not offer a realistic way forward. To explain this, they examine six "crucial realms":

1. Economy: Blacks and whites in South Africa were economically interdependent. The growth of politicized trade unions enabled blacks to attack apartheid through industrial action such as strikes and consumer boycotts. In contrast, Palestinians do not have this power because Israel barely depends on Palestinian labor. Two economies exist more or less side by side. Moreover, Israel uses closure as collective punishment, whereas South Africa's whites were too dependent on black labor to be able to do this.
2. Religion: Christianity in South Africa was a "common bond to assail and de-legitimize" apartheid. In contrast, Judaism and Islam compete for sovereignty. This divide has, of course, grown sharper and wider through the rise of Hamas and its Islamist policies. On the Jewish side, religiously motivated settlers and ultra-Orthodox believers cannot be as easily marginalized as were extremists among white Afrikaners.
3. Third-party intervention: Both the main players in South Africa, the ANC and the Afrikaner Nationalist Party, avoided third-party intervention in their negotiations. In contrast, an Israeli-Palestinian agreement "depends heavily" on U.S. policy that strongly supports Israel. "Sanctions (divestment and trade boycotts) are generally overrated in triggering South African change," they say. "Only loan refusals and, to a lesser extent, moral ostracism, impacted significantly on the apartheid government. Such action against Israel by the West is inconceivable at present." Israelis also have the benefit of a supportive diaspora, whereas Afrikaners faced a near-unanimously hostile world.
4. Political culture: "Much more personal interaction in a vertical-status hierarchy shaped South African race relations, compared with the more horizontal social distance between Jews and Palestinians … Moral erosion of the apartheid stance among the ruling elite in South Africa contrasts with moral myopia in Israel … Both sides in the Middle East display a collective sense of victimhood." South Africa was "a pariah state that lacked the legitimacy of Israel outside the Arab and Muslim world."
5. Violence: Suicide was never used as a weapon, and martyrdom was never celebrated during the South African anti-apartheid struggle. In contrast, the tactics of the second intifada have been "counter-productive," and "[t]he attacks on civilians unify Israeli public opinion on security and also destroy the social fabric of Palestinian society."

   To which can be added that, when the ANC decided in 1961 to switch to armed resistance, it adopted a policy that there would be no killing of white civilians. The decision was partly to do with the belief in Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence, and was partly strategic: The ANC accepted that if it targeted white civilians it would confirm their fears of being swept into the sea by the black majority and this would harden their resolve to hold on to power. The ANC's approach was proved correct: Only a few attacks on whites took place over the decades, and this was a significant factor in persuading whites that it was safe to end apartheid.

6. Leadership: Negotiations in South Africa were facilitated by the existence of cohesive and credible leaders. They could obtain popular mandates and sell a controversial compromise to their peoples. In contrast, the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships are fragmented.

It can indeed be said that South Africa was blessed by leaders who fought for freedom without sowing hatred and instead preached unity between black and white — such as Chief Albert Luthuli, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960, and Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, who was imprisoned, detained and banished for the last 18 years of his life. And ultimately there was Nelson Mandela, who led the way to the "miracle" of the new South Africa, and the Afrikaner leader F.W. de Klerk, who had the boldness and courage to recognize that white rule could not be sustained. Israel and Palestine lack such leaders, hence the wistful title chosen by Adam and Moodley for their book.

Their analysis leads the authors to say that "on most counts, the differences between apartheid South Africa and Israel outweigh the similarities that could facilitate transferable conditions for a negotiated compromise. Above all, opponents in South Africa finally realized that neither side could defeat the other completely without destroying the country. This perception of stalemate as a precondition for negotiating in good faith is missing in the Middle East. Peacemaking resulted in an inclusive democracy in South Africa, while territorial separation of the adversaries in two states is widely hailed as the solution in Israel and Palestine:

Such a different trajectory suggests itself because South Africa, arguably, constitutes merely a multiethnic society with many cross-cutting bonds between the legislated artificial racial groups. In Israel/Palestine, on the other hand, a truly divided society exists. The two Semitic people may look alike and even enjoy the same food. They are, however, divided by religion, language, and above all, by history and the mythologies that the 'burden of history' imprints on the self-concept and collective identity of the two groups. Jews and Palestinians constitute groups competing for meaning, security, and scarce resources in a small space. (p.167)

But they go on to warn that the two-state solution is undermined by the spread of permanent Jewish settlements and security barriers on the West Bank, so that "the logic of Zionist expansionism may ultimately destroy the very idea of an exclusive Jewish state." In the context of European and North American ethnically mixed, multicultural democracies, post-Zionists view an exclusive ethnic state as an anachronism. "However, in the Middle Eastern reality of communal hostilities and national identities, the Zionist vision is deeply rooted and more difficult to dislodge than racist supremacist illusions in South Africa. Could the Israeli public ever abandon its Zionist identity and embrace an inclusive civic nationalism of all its inhabitants?" they ask.

Adam and Moodley add another cautionary note:

A redefinition of Israel from an ethnic state with a guaranteed Jewish majority to a pluralist, multicultural democracy requires a reciprocal Arab revision of an anti-Zionist identity that frequently flows into anti-Semitic stereotyping of the worst kind. Israel's moral legitimacy has yet to be accepted by its neighbors. As long as crude anti-Semitic stereotypes, such as the Czarist forgeries of the 'Protocol of the Elders of Zion' or even Holocaust denial is peddled among Islamists, the South African solution of an inclusive, tolerant common state remains a utopian vision indeed. (p.177)

While outlining similarities and even asserting that in some respects conditions are worse for the Palestinians than apartheid was for blacks, Adam and Moodley argue that similar anti-apartheid strategies may falter in the Israeli case.

Despite the differences, South Africa does offer valuable lessons in the efforts to resolve the Israel and Palestine conflict. To quote their suggestions:

• An end to violence is the outcome of negotiations but should not be a precondition for their start.
• Only a relatively unified, not a fragmented, adversary guarantees adherence to controversial compromises and prevents populist outbidding.
• Transparency and bottom-up involvement through voter education must parallel top-down leadership deals.
• Leaders who are imposed from outside are tainted and acquire legitimacy only through their own constituencies.
• Each side has to understand the problem of its partner with his or her constituency and should empower the antagonists to deal with it.

On the other hand, as they repeatedly stress, "the simplistic assumption that the South African model readily lends itself to export may actually retard necessary new solutions by clinging to visions or processes of negotiation that may not work in another context."

A Tempting but Unrealistic Model

When all is said and done, it is tempting to go along with the notion of a single state. The South African "miracle" is a powerful image. Imagine Jews and Arabs living together on a tiny piece of land, a shared society of equals with one government; it would end their long and bitter conflict and fulfill the ideal of a united world in which people live together in amity and peace.

However, "one size fits all" does not always apply in our imperfect world: It did not work in India-Pakistan in 1948, or in the later breakaway by Bangladesh from Pakistan. It did not work in the Soviet Union, whose different peoples chose to go their separate ways after the collapse of Communism. It did not work in the former Yugoslavia, with tragic results. It is not working in Sri Lanka, or Sudan, or Ethiopia, or Morocco or sundry other places with variable levels of discontent, division, strife and suffering among people who want to be apart from one another.

Nor is a single state possible, given the history and emotions of where we are. Both the blessings and the cruelty of historical experience have shaped Israelis and Palestinians. The mistrust and rejection which separate them are far more intense than what divided white and black in South Africa. And at the root of it all, Israeli Jews will not forgo their Jewish state. On no account will they submerge themselves in a single state in which demography will lose them their majority and control. To them it would be national suicide, and it's not going to happen.

True, the spread of settlements on the West Bank brings into question the viability of a Palestinian state and could point to the inevitability of a single state. But if that were ever to come about, it would be at the cost of democracy and Jewish values, because it would be a state in which Palestinians would be oppressed semi- or non-citizens. Palestinians would never accept that, and we would all be doomed to perpetual war. The point of no return towards this has not yet been reached and, one hopes, never will be. Meanwhile, broad Israeli-Palestinian agreement remains for a two-state solution. Israel and Palestine will not be going along the South African road.

 

* Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley, Seeking Mandela: Peacemaking Between Israelis and Palestinians. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Peace loving Palestinian neighbors? Not yet

According to a PEW Research Center Poll released Tuesday, July 24,  admiration for suicide bombings and terror has cooled in most of the Arab world. However in one or two places terror groups and suicide bombings remain popular.

 

Notably, in the Palestinian territories, it seems that 41% believe that suicide bombings against civilians are often justified in defense of Islam, and and an additional 29% believe they are sometimes justified. Only 6% replied that they are never justified. This finding is all the more noteworthy in that Palestinian territories stand out in their responses from every other Muslim country surveyed. The second highest rating for suicide bombings was given in Mali, where 21% said they are often justified, and 18% said they are sometimes justified. Even in Mali, fully 36% said that suicide bombings are never justified.

 

It is instructive to compare these responses with those of Jordanians. The majority of Jordanians are Palestinian Arabs, and a large number live in refugee camps which supposedly breed despair. Yet only 6% said suicide bombings are often justified, 17% said they are sometimes justified, and 42% said they  are never justified.

 

In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, only 3% said that such bombings are often justified, 7% responded that they are sometimes justified, and 77% said they are never justified.  

 

The question asked was:

Question: Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is often justified, sometimes justified, rarely justified or never justified?

In the same poll, it was found that 76% of Palestinians have a very favorable (41%)  or somewhat favorable view (35%)  of Hezbollah - highest among the countries polled by far. Hamas got only 27% and 35% respectively, which was far below its rating in Bangladesh - 45% very favorable, 37% favorable.

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Palestinians -Gotterdammerung or just plain Damned?

As Ronny Shaked tells us in Ynet, Palestinian national movement faces deep crisis over Fatah-Hamas rift . Perhaps there is not much here that you didn't know, but it is worth pondering. Does the Hamas/Fateh split mean the end of the Palestinian dream, or does it mean the end of the peace process only? Is it an opportunity for Israel and the West or is it just a trap? Is it a justification for Israel to hold on to remaining territories in the West Bank, or a warning that if the occupation continues, the West Bank will fall into the hands of the Hamas, and perhaps the "East Bank" (Jordan) as well?

 

Anti-Zionist critics have already perversely ascribed the split to Israel of course. In the Middle ages, there was a school of thought that ascribed every evil event to the Jew, including and especially plagues and war. In the Middle East there is a school of thought that attributes every evil event to Israel. It is Israel's fault in the following ways: First, Israel supposedly "encouraged" the Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO. So Israel is at fault for helping the Hamas, they claim. Then Israel persecuted the poor Hamas by killing the nice Mr. Achmed Yassin, and the very nice Mr. Rantissi, wich made the Hamas people very desperate. Until then they were great humanitarians.

 

Then Israel did not give enough concessions to Mr. Abbas. Israel had the strange idea that if it would give arms to Mr. Abbas, they would end up in the hands of the Fateh, and the even stranger idea that if it made too many concessions to the Fateh, and withdrew from parts of the territories. Hamas would take over Palestinian society.  Then Israel refused to negotiate its surrender with the Hamas or to recognize the Hamas government, for the trivial nitpicking reason that the Hamas want to wipe out Israel.  No matter that Hamas have declared repeatedly that they will never make peace with Israel. Israel must make peace with Israel, and it is clear to anti-Zionists that all Israeli complaints that there is no peace partner are simply excuses to occupy the territories and fill them with all those Jewish religious fanatics from Brooklyn. The occupation, they tell us, is what caused the rise of the Hamas, notwithstanding the fact that the Hamas came to power only after Israel had ended the occupation in Gaza.

 

The Hamas-Fateh split was probably inevitable from the day that Yasser Arafat died. In any case, as Hamas always vowed that they would never recognize Israel, the split had to come sooner or later if the Fateh/PLO were serious about negotiating peace with Israel.

 

Here is the text of Ronny Shaked's very interesting report.

Wakseh – this is the new political term prevalent on the Palestinian street.

Following the Nakba (the 1948 defeat and the State of Israel's establishment) and the Naksa (the 1967 defeat,) the Palestinian split and the disconnection from the Gaza Strip are being referred to as "Wakseh". The word means humiliation, ruin, and collapse as a result of self-inflicted damage.

The term expresses the great downfall of the Palestinian national movement and Palestine's division into two ideological camps – the national camp and the Islamic camp.

The latest term, Wakseh, joins a series of political terms that have been etched into the collective Palestinian conscience and memory. In the Arab tradition, Wakseh is worse than Naksa because it is not caused by an external enemy, but rather, constitutes a self-inflicted wound that is almost akin to suicide.

In national terms, the Wakseh has brought Palestinians to one of the worst low points in their history. The Palestinian national movement has regressed 50 years to the reality of 1948-1967. It is back to a period of Palestinian geographical dispersal in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian diaspora in Arab countries, an era of national disintegration and focus on a daily struggle for personal survival.

 

'Catastrophic situation'