Autumn Part II Ragbag

The Gaza Siege and the flotilla, Goldstone and Corrie

follow-ups,
Israeli-Palestinian “negotiations” and the “Situation,”
and the Carmel Fire

The Gaza Siege

Gaza closure: not another year! International Committee of the Red
Cross
Independent journalists dismantling Israel's hold on the media
narrative
by Abraham Greenhouse, Nora Barrows-Friedman
Eyewitness to the Israeli Assault on the Mavi Marmara by Dave
LIndorff
Give them an inquiry by Zvi Bar'el
Calling Gaza a prison camp is an understatement by Laila El-
Haddad
Report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on follow-
up to the report of the UN Independent International Fact-Finding
Mission on the Gaza Conflict [link to pdf file at UN site]
IDF document: “Policy principle: separating Gaza from West
Bank” by Noam Sheizaf
Journal of a voyage by Yonatan Shapira
Report of the international fact-finding mission to investigate
violations of international law, including international
humanitarian and human rights law, resulting from the Israeli
attacks on the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian assistance
[link to UN pdf file]
Government releases documents detailing Gaza import
guidelines by Amira Hass
Want to weaken Hamas? Open Gaza's gates by Amira Hass
School's out: why Gazans can't reach class in the West Bank by
Fatma Al-Sharif
Gaza businesses boxed in by Israeli export ban by Jon Donnison

Goldstone and Corrie follow-ups

IDF Report Confirming Goldstone’s Key Findings Is Suppressed
Inside Israel by Max Blumenthal
What led to IDF bombing house full of civilians during Gaza
war? by Amira Hass
“There Are No Civilians In Wartime.” Rachel Corrie’s Family
Confronts The Israeli Military In Court
by Max Blumenthal
Israel’s Military on the Spot Over Activist’s Death by Karl Vick
Bulldozer driver testimony underscores lack of transparency in
Corrie trial

Israeli-Palestinian “Negotiations” (and the

“Situation”)
Halper: American Jews (and the Congress) don’t want an Israel
at peace by Philip Weiss
Palestine 2011 by Jeff Halper
Report of the Committee of independent experts in
international humanitarian and human rights laws to monitor
and assess any domestic, legal or other proceedings
undertaken by both the Government of Israel and the
Palestinian side, in the light of General Assembly resolution
64/254, including the independence, effectiveness,
genuineness of these investigations and their conformity with
international standards
Israel's Palestinian partner is ready and waiting by Libby
Lenkinski Friedlander
Night raid in Bil’in by Hamde Abu Rahme
Stanley and Me by David Lipkin
UN will be judged on whether it upholds Palestinian rights by
Richard Falk
Palestinian territories: “Prolonged occupation, a new type of
crime against humanity” – UN human rights expert by Richard
Falk
Israel blocking Palestinian officials from using main Jordan
crossing by Avi Issacharoff
The Nobleman and the Horse by Uri Avnery
Survey: 66% of Palestinians support peace negotiations by
Michael Omer-Man
U.S. taxpayers are paying for Israel's West Bank occupation by
Akiva Eldar
The endgame for the peace process by Robert Grenier
Referendum bill uses public as peace deal rubber stamp
By Akiva Eldar
Israel can't put occupation up for immoral referendum By
Gideon Levy
U.S.-Israel relations: Netanyahu’s self-made problem by Yossi
Gurvitz
Defense analyst on the looming US-Israel ’security
catastrophe’ by Didi Remez
UN: ‘The family has requested a tent as they have nowhere
else to live’ (US: ‘What, me worry?’) by Philip Weiss
The Shift: Israel-Palestine from Border Struggle to Ethnic
Conflict by Menachem Klein
(Videos Part 1-10 on YouTube of Menachem Klein’s recent launch
presentation at http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=aQTVITBHN3s -- then seek Part 2-10 at site as “Part ‘x’ -
Menachem Klein launches his new book THE SHIFT”)
Israel’s post-traumatic isolation by [psychologist] Carlo Strenger
Why NGO Monitor is attacking The Electronic Intifada
Carmel fire: the price of the treasury’s policy by Yossi Gurvitz
Israel’s deadliest fire: Eli Yishai must go by Noam Sheizaf

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Gaza closure: not another year!

International Committee of the Red Cross, 14 June 2010
Geneva/Jerusalem (ICRC) - The hardship faced by Gaza's 1.5 million
people cannot be addressed by providing humanitarian aid. The only
sustainable solution is to lift the closure.
The serious incidents that took place on 31 May between Israeli forces
and activists on a flotilla heading for Gaza once again put the spotlight
on the acute hardship faced by the population in the Gaza Strip.
As the ICRC has stressed repeatedly, the dire situation in Gaza cannot
be resolved by providing humanitarian aid. The closure imposed on the
Gaza Strip is about to enter its fourth year, choking off any real
possibility of economic development. Gazans continue to suffer from
unemployment, poverty and warfare, while the quality of Gaza's health
care system has reached an all-time low.
The whole of Gaza's civilian population is being punished for acts for
which they bear no responsibility. The closure therefore constitutes a
collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel's obligations
under international humanitarian law.
"The closure is having a devastating impact on the 1.5 million people
living in Gaza", said Béatrice Mégevand-Roggo, the ICRC's head of
operations for the Middle East. "That is why we are urging Israel to put
an end to this closure and call upon all those who have an influence on
the situation, including Hamas, to do their utmost to help Gaza's
civilian population. Israel's right to deal with its legitimate security
concerns must be balanced against the Palestinians' right to live
normal, dignified lives."
The international community has to do its part to ensure that repeated
appeals by States and international organizations to lift the closure are
finally heeded.
Under international humanitarian law, Israel must ensure that the basic
needs of Gazans, including adequate health care, are met. The
Palestinian authorities, for their part, must do everything within their
power to provide proper health care, supply electricity and maintain
infrastructure for Gaza's people.
Furthermore, all States have an obligation to allow and facilitate rapid
and unimpeded passage of all relief consignments, equipment and
personnel.
Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is about to enter his fifth year in captivity.
Hamas has continued to rebuff the ICRC's requests to let it visit Gilad
Shalit. In violation of international humanitarian law, it has also refused
to allow him to get in touch with his family. The ICRC again urges those
detaining Gilad Shalit to grant him the regular contact with his family
to which he is entitled. It also reiterates that those detaining him have
an obligation to ensure that he is well treated and that his living
conditions are humane and dignified.
Ruined livelihoods
Although about 80 types of goods are now allowed into Gaza – twice as
many as a year ago –over 4,000 items could be brought in prior to the
closure. Generally, the price of goods has increased while their quality
has dropped – this is one consequence of the largely unregulated trade
conducted through the tunnels that have been dug under the Gaza-
Egypt border to circumvent the closure.
Fertile farmland located close to the border fence has been turned into
a wasteland by ongoing hostilities, affecting people's livelihoods in
many rural communities. The buffer zone imposed by Israel extends in
practice over one kilometre into the Gaza Strip, covering a total area of
about 50 square kilometres that is host to nearly a third of Gaza's
farmland and a large share of its livestock. Agricultural activities in the
area are hampered by security conditions. Israel's enforcement of the
buffer zone and frequent hostilities have resulted not only in civilian
casualties and the destruction of civilian property but also in the
impoverishment and displacement of numerous families.
Gaza's fishermen have been greatly affected by successive reductions
imposed by Israel on the size of the fishing grounds they are allowed to
exploit. The latest restriction to three nautical miles has cut down both
the quantity and quality of the catch. As a result, nearly 90% of Gaza's
4000 fishermen are now considered either poor (with a monthly
income of between 100 and 190 US dollars) or very poor (earning less
than 100 dollars a month), up from 50% in 2008. In their struggle to
survive, the fishermen have little choice but to sail into no-go zones, at
the risk of being shot by the Israeli navy.
"I have already been arrested and my boat has been confiscated
several times," said Nezar Ayyash, who heads Gaza's fishermen's
union. "But this is our life here. We know that fishing can cost us our
lives, but we have no other choice but to go out with our boats: we
need to feed our families."
No cure in sight for ailing health-care system
Gaza is suffering from an acute electricity crisis. The power supply in
Gaza is interrupted for seven hours a day on average. The
consequences for public services, especially the primary health-care
system, are devastating. Hospitals rely on generators to cope with the
daily blackouts.
The power cuts pose a serious risk to the treatment of patients – and to
their very lives. It takes two to three minutes for a generator to begin
operating, and during that time electronic devices do not function. As a
result, artificial respirators must be reactivated manually, dialysis
treatment is disrupted and surgery is suspended as operating theatres
are plunged into darkness.
To make matters worse, fuel reserves for hospital generators keep
drying up. Three times this year, fuel shortages have forced hospitals
to cancel all elective surgery and accept emergency cases only. Gaza's
paediatric hospital had to transfer all its patients to another facility
because it could no longer function. Laundry services have repeatedly
shut down. With the prospect of increased electricity consumption
during the hot summer months when air conditioning is required, the
situation is likely to deteriorate further if hospitals do not receive
ample fuel.
Fluctuations in the power supply can also damage essential medical
equipment. Repairs are difficult owing to the closure, under which the
transfer into Gaza of spare parts for medical equipment is subject to
excessive delays of up to several months.
The transfer of disposable electrodes, which are used to monitor the
heart rhythm of cardiac patients, has been delayed since August 2009.
Without this equipment, patient lives are at risk, as heart problems
may not be detected in time. Because of the restrictions in place, most
heart monitors in Gaza will be unusable by the end of this month. The
run-down state of equipment is one of the reasons for the high
numbers of patients seeking treatment outside the Strip.
Stocks of essential medical supplies have reached an all-time low
because of a standstill in cooperation between Palestinian authorities
in Ramallah and Gaza. At the end of May 2010, 110 of 470 medicines
considered essential, such as chemotherapy and haemophilia drugs,
were unavailable in Gaza. When chemotherapy is interrupted, the
chances of success drop dramatically, even if another painful round of
treatment is initiated. Haemophilia patients face life-threatening
haemorrhages when compounds such as Factor VIII and IX are not
available.
More than 110 of the 700 disposable items that should be available are
also out of stock. The only way to cope is to re-use such items as
ventilator tubes or colostomy bags, even though doing so can lead to
infections that endanger patients' lives.
"The state of the health-care system in Gaza has never been worse,"
said Eileen Daly, the ICRC's health coordinator in the territory. "Health
is being politicized: that is the main reason the system is failing. Unless
something changes, things are only going to get even worse.
Thousands of patients could go without treatment and the long-term
outlook will be increasingly worrisome."
The health-care system is further weakened by severe restrictions
imposed on the movement of people into and out of Gaza. The
restrictions prevent medical staff from leaving the Strip to get the
training they need to update their skills, and technicians from entering
to repair medical equipment.
Lack of sanitation hazardous for health and the environment
The lack of proper sanitation and certain agricultural practices are
polluting Gaza's aquifer. Only about 60% of the territory's 1.4 million
inhabitants are connected to a sewage collection system. Raw sewage
discharged into the river Wadi Gaza, which snakes through urban
areas, jeopardizes the health of the communities living on its banks.
Because the aquifer is over-exploited, drinking water in most of Gaza
contains high levels of nitrate, chloride and salt. The water is unfit for
consumption, and the risk of contracting an infectious disease is high.
Assembling enough suitable materials to carry out sanitation projects
is a slow and haphazard process. Materials obtained through the tunnel
trade can be of questionable quality, while some items, such as certain
electro-mechanical pumps, cannot be found at all, which hobbles
construction efforts.
"The current situation is critical and may lead to an irreversible trend in
the degradation of underground fresh water," said Javier Cordoba, who
oversees the ICRC's water and sanitation activities in Gaza. "Large-
scale projects, such as the construction of a desalination plant, must
be undertaken to meet water-supply needs without further exposing
the aquifer. The closure must be lifted so that the 4.5 billion US dollars
pledged by donor countries over a year ago can be put to use."

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Independent journalists dismantling Israel's hold on
media narrative
By Abraham Greenhouse, Nora Barrows-Friedman, The Electronic
Intifada, 15 June 2010
"The systematic attempt and very deliberate first priority for the Israeli
soldiers as they came on the ships was to shut down the story, to
confiscate all cameras, to shut down satellites, to smash the CCTV
cameras that were on the Mavi Marmara, to make sure that nothing
was going out. They were hellbent on controlling the story,"
commented Australian journalist Paul McGeough, one of the hundreds
of activists and reporters who witnessed the deadly morning attack on
the Gaza Freedom Flotilla on 31 May ("Framing the Narrative: Israeli
Commandos Seize Videotape and Equipment from Journalists After
Deadly Raid," Democracy Now, 9 June 2010). McGeough was one of at
least 60 journalists aboard the flotilla who were detained and their
footage confiscated.
Within hours of the Gaza-bound aid flotilla being intercepted and
besieged in international waters by Israeli commandos, who killed at
least nine -- some at point-blank range -- aboard the Mavi Marmara,
news of the bloody attack had spread across the globe. Rage,
condemnation and calls for an international investigation followed.
Meanwhile, Israel's campaign to spin the attack, distort the facts and
quell an outraged public was already in full swing. Concurrently,
activists and skeptical journalists began deconstructing the official
story and assembling evidence to uncover the truth behind the violent
deaths of activists on a humanitarian mission to the besieged Gaza
Strip.
From the time the Israeli military apparently jammed the flotilla's
communications, and for the next 48 hours as survivors were held
incommunicado, their cameras and potentially incriminating footage
seized, Israel's account of the raid dominated international headlines.
Central to Israel's media strategy was the rapid release of selected
video and audio clips which, the government said, validated its claim
that passengers had violently attempted to kill troops without
provocation -- thereby forcing the soldiers to use live fire in self-
defense. However, the initially and most widely-distributed clips bore
signs of heavy editing, including the obscuring or removal of time
stamps.
Although the clips apparently depicted passengers aboard the Mavi
Marmara hitting Israeli troops with poles and other objects, the context
of the images was completely unclear. It was impossible to determine
at what point during the assault the clips had been filmed, raising
questions about exactly which party had been acting in self-defense.
Al-Jazeera's Jamal Elshayyal, among others, corroborated accounts by
other flotilla passengers, including Israeli Knesset member Hanin
Zoabi, that the Israeli commandos had allegedly started firing before
commandos began rappelling to the deck of the ship ("MK Zoabi: Israel
wanted highest number of fatalities," YNet, 1 June 2010; "Kidnapped by
Israel, forsaken by Britain," Al-Jazeera, 6 June 2010).
These clips were quickly supplemented by footage put on YouTube,
also heavily edited, which Israel said had been taken from the ship's
security cameras and from the journalists whose equipment had been
seized ("Flotilla Rioters Prepare Rods, Slingshots, Broken Bottles and
Metal Objects to Attack IDF Soldiers," 2 June 2010). The Israeli military
spokesperson's office also distributed numerous still images allegedly
documenting fighting on the deck.
After the commandeered flotilla ships were brought to the Israeli port
of Ashdod and were unloaded, on 1 June the Israeli Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (MFA) began distributing via the Flickr website photographs of
objects it said were found aboard. Materials the MFA classified as
"weapons"-- thus supposedly supporting its claim that activists had
planned to conduct a "lynching" of Israeli troops -- were identifiable to
the public as standard nautical equipment and kitchen utensils
("Weapons found on Mavi Marmara").
In addition, the ships were inspected multiple times prior to setting sail
for Gaza, both by Turkish customs authorities and by an independent
security firm, and had been found at both points to contain no
weapons, according to a Free Gaza Movement press release ("Did
Israel deliberately murder civilians aboard Freedom Flotilla?," 3 June
2010). Participants also say that all passengers were subject to
thorough security checks before boarding, regardless of where they
embarked.
These photographs of "weapons" became the first flashpoint in the
effort to analyze and expose inconsistencies in Israel's claims. Shortly
after the release of the images which appeared on the MFA's official
Flickr page on 1 June, commentators began calling attention to the fact
that several of the images included digitally-encoded information
indicating that they had been shot several years prior. The MFA
responded to this by modifying the dates, and issuing a statement that
one of its cameras had been incorrectly calibrated.
While this claim can be neither confirmed nor disproved, the gaffe
exposed the fact that Israel's rush to promote its version of events in
the media was leading to significant mistakes and oversights. As
surviving flotilla passengers began to be released and expelled
following detention in Israel, the accounts they gave of events aboard
the ships -- and on the Mavi Marmara in particular -- clearly diverged
from the official Israeli narrative.
Journalists aboard the ship, some of whom had been able to broadcast
via satellite for a limited time during the assault, told interviewers that
they had been singled out for attack by Israeli troops. "We had
cameras round our necks and our press cards in our hands, but the
soldiers kept aiming the lasers of their guns at our eyes in order to
intimidate us," Turkish journalist Yuecel Velioglu of the AA news
agency told Reporters Without Borders ("As Turkish photographer is
buried, other journalists aboard flotilla speak out," 9 June 2010).
In addition, much of the footage released by Israel (after heavy editing)
was taken from journalists aboard the ship after their equipment had
been confiscated. The move was strongly denounced by Israel's
Foreign Press Association (FPA), which stated on 4 June: "the use of
this material without permission from the relevant media organizations
is a clear violation of journalistic ethics and unacceptable."
Determined not to allow the Israeli government to continue dominating
public discourse on the flotilla attack with its questionable version of
events, independent journalists around the world analyzed and
identified inconsistencies with the Israeli narrative. This work played a
pivotal role in making a more complete and accurate picture of the
events available to an English-speaking audience: the vast majority of
English-language corporate media outlets, with the notable exception
of Al-Jazeera English, simply restated Israeli claims and conducted little
or no investigative work to ascertain their validity.
Images and the elimination of context
Another photograph released by the Israeli military spokesperson's
office aroused additional controversy when it began appearing in news
articles about the incident. The image, which featured an anonymous,
bearded man holding a curved knife, was generally presented with a
caption, also sourced from the Israeli military, claiming that the knife-
wielder was an activist aboard the Mavi Marmara photographed after
Israeli troops boarded the ship.
Ali Abunimah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, immediately
noticed clear inconsistencies with the context of the photo, casting its
veracity into doubt. Abunimah pointed out on his blog that behind the
man, natural light could be seen streaming in through a window --
despite the fact that the raid was conducted during pre-dawn hours.
Additionally, the man was surrounded by photographers who seemed
unusually calm for onlookers in the midst of a firefight ("Israeli
propaganda photo in Haaretz of man with knife make no sense
#FreedomFlotilla," 31 May 2010). Finally, a few days after the image
first appeared, the image was re-used in a video montage, published
on YouTube under the newly-registered handle "gazaflotillatruth", but
this time with less cropping. In the new version of the image, the
bearded man can be seen to be sitting down, not standing -- again, an
unusual physical position to display during a melee ("Gaza Flotilla - The
Love Boat," 2 June 2010).
Investigative journalist Max Blumenthal reports that the Israeli military-
sourced caption -- repeatedly used by media outlets such as the Israeli
daily Haaretz -- indicated that the bearded man was holding the knife
after the commandos boarded the ship ("Nailed Again: IDF Description
of Suspicious Photo It Distributed Is Retracted," 8 June 2010).
Following his query to the Israeli military spokesman's office, Haaretz
"scrubbed its caption of the suspicious photo." Blumenthal adds that
Haaretz "did not mention the retraction, probably assuming no one
would notice. The retraction raises disturbing questions about the level
of coordination between the IDF [Israeli army] and the Israeli media."
Nor did they mention that the bearded man was Yemeni Minister of
Parliament Mohammad al-Hazmi, who was displaying his ceremonial
dagger -- an essential part of traditional Yemeni dress -- to "curious
journalists and foreigners on the ship," as Blumenthal points out,
obviously well before the attack.
New accusations instantly dismantled
As the accounts of surviving passengers began receiving increased
attention in the mainstream Western press, Israel retaliated with a
series of increasingly dire accusations to discredit them. The serious
nature these accusations makes it difficult to understand why the
Israeli government would have waited so long to issue them. As
journalists began evaluating the new claims, they found Israel's
supporting evidence to be flimsy and periodically even nonexistent.
One such accusation, published in a 2 June MFA press release, was that
40 Mavi Marmara passengers had been identified as mercenaries in
the employ of al-Qaeda ("Attackers of the IDF soldiers found to be Al
Qaeda mercenaries," 2 June 2010). Later that day, US State
Department spokesperson Philip Crowley said that his office could not
validate Israel's story, and independent journalists on the ground in Tel
Aviv promptly set out to investigate for themselves.
Blumenthal and his colleague Lia Tarachansky were told bluntly by the
Israeli army's press office that the military didn't "have any evidence"
to support the MFA's contention. By the morning of 3 June, all
references to al-Qaeda had been removed from the online version of
the press release ("Under Scrutiny IDF Retracts Claims About Flotillas
Al Qaeda Links").
More significantly, on 4 June, Israel released a YouTube clip which it
claimed was an excerpt from radio communications between the Israeli
navy and the Mavi Marmara. The clip included a voice telling the
Israelis to "go back to Auschwitz," and another voice stating "We're
helping Arabs go against the US," in response to Israeli statements that
the vessel was "approaching an area which is under a naval blockade"
("Flotilla Ship to Israeli Navy: "We're Helping Arabs Go Against the US,
Don't Forget 9/11 Guys," 4 June 2010). The latter statement was made
in an accent resembling that of the American south, despite the fact
that no one from that region was present aboard any of the ships.
Numerous bloggers commented that the accents sounded as though
they had been faked, and ridiculed the quality of the apparent forgery.
One of the flotilla organizers, US citizen Huwaida Arraf, was astonished
to find that the clip included her own voice as well -- even though she
had not been aboard the Mavi Marmara, but was on a different vessel.
Tel Aviv-based journalist and blogger Mya Guarnieri noted that Arraf
told the Bethlehem-based Maan News Agency that the clip of her voice,
saying "we have permission from the Gaza Port Authority to enter,"
seemed to have been excerpted from communications during a
previous flotilla trip (there have been nine trips since 2008) ("Israel
under fire for doctoring flotilla recordings," 5 June 2010). "When they
radioed us [on this trip], we were still 100 miles away," Arraf remarked.
Blumenthal called attention to the mysterious presence of Arraf and
other discrepancies in the clip in an article he posted on 4 June. The
following day, the MFA issued a statement admitting that the clip had
been substantially edited ("Clarification/Correction Regarding Audio
Transmission Between Israeli Navy and Flotilla on 31 May 2010," 5 June
2010). However, the clip including the "Auschwitz" statement remains
on the MFA website in a new "unedited" version of the alleged
transmission.
High-tech sleuthing uncovers a web of deceit
Perhaps most damaging to the credibility of Israeli accounts was a map
published by Ali Abunimah on his blog and which was produced by
using archived transmissions of Automatic Identification System (AIS)
data to plot the position of the Mavi Marmara as it sailed on the
morning of the raid ("Did Israel press on with bloody attack on Mavi
Marmara even as ship fled at full-speed?," 7 June 2010). Using the
map, Abunimah was able to determine the location and heading of the
ship as it broadcast updates on its status. The map also plotted the
position of the Mavi Marmara at the exact points when surveillance
camera footage from the ship -- which Israel had released without
obscured time stamps -- was apparently recorded.
According to AIS data, the Mavi Marmara had been heading south --
parallel to the Israeli coast and more than 80 miles from the shore --
until approximately 4:35am local time. At this point, the ship abruptly
turned west, heading away from the Gaza coast.
The attack, which surviving passengers say began shortly after
4:00am, was reported to Greek activists in direct communication with
the ship at some point before 4:51am. However, the time stamp seen
in the released security camera footage and described in a caption as
being the point at which "rioters initiate confrontation with Israeli
soldiers," indicates that the clip was filmed at 5:03am. This is
reinforced by the fact that the sea is apparently lit by natural light,
which would not have been possible an hour earlier.
This evidence directly contradicts Israeli claims regarding the sequence
and timing of events, and throws its overarching narrative into doubt.
While the vast majority of footage of the raid has been seized by Israel,
along the flotilla's Voyage Data Recorders (VDRs, the nautical
equivalent of aircraft's "black boxes"), activists have been diligently
archiving all available evidence to prevent Israel from altering or
destroying it. As more time stamped data becomes available, it will be
aggregated by activists and plotted on mapping applications not only
to help reveal what happened aboard the Mavi Marmara, but
guarantee a greater level of accountability when Israel responds to
future flotillas.
A significant amount of data is already emerging. Several of the
survivors managed to conceal memory cards from their Israeli captors,
the contents of which they proceeded to make available to journalists
upon their return home. Some photos, published in the Turkish
newspaper HaberTurk, depict passengers administering medical care
to wounded Israeli soldiers and even protecting them from being
photographed -- which seemed to contradict Israel's claims that
passengers were intent on a premeditated "lynching" of the Israeli
commandoes ("İsrail'den kaçırılan fotoğraflar," 4 June 2010).
Recently-released video clips from flotilla survivors show Israeli
soldiers kicking, beating and shooting passengers, including footage
which Turkey's Cihan News Agency says depicts the close-range killing
of Furkan Dogan, a 19-year-old US citizen, with automatic weaponry
("Israeli Soldiers Murdering Man Identified as Furkan Dogan," 10 June
2010). An autopsy determined that Dogan was shot five times,
including once in the back and twice in the head from almost point-
blank range. Other footage shows helicopters hovering above the
flotilla, with apparent muzzle flashes and sounds of gunfire, supporting
the survivors' contention that commandos were already firing before
boarding the vessels, thus prompting the limited resistance
demonstrated by terrified passengers.
International vs. internal investigations
The Israeli government continues to reject the idea of an international
investigation in favor of pursuing its own. On 5 June, the United
Nation's Secretary General proposed an international panel to examine
the killing of nine flotilla passengers, but Israel's ambassador to the US,
Michael Oren, announced on FOX News the next day that Israel would
refuse "to be investigated by any international board" ("Transcript:
Amb. Michael Oren on 'FNS'," 7 June 2010).
Those who demand an international probe have good reason to doubt
Israel's ability to investigate itself. According to Human Rights Watch
(HRW), which cited statistics from the Israeli human rights organization
Yesh Din, between 2000 and 2008, "Israeli soldiers in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories killed more than 2,000 Palestinian civilians not
involved in combat. Of 1,246 criminal investigations initiated during
the same period into suspected offenses of all kinds by soldiers against
Palestinian civilians, only 6 percent (78 cases) resulted in indictments.
Only 13 of those indictments charged soldiers with killing civilians. As
of September 2008, five soldiers had been convicted for the deaths of
four civilians" ("Why No Justice in Gaza? Israel Is Different, and so ...," 1
October 2009).
HRW found a similar pattern in cases stemming from Israel's infamous
three-week attack on Gaza beginning on 27 December 2008. The
invasion, which caused the deaths of more than 1,400 Palestinians,
resulted in only one criminal conviction -- for the theft of a credit card
belonging to a Palestinian family after soldiers looted their home.
Regarding the flotilla attack, some sources in the Israeli government
have indicated that they would consider permitting one or more
international "observers" to be included in their internal investigation.
Governments around the world have insisted that this is not an
acceptable alternative to a genuine international investigation.
However, even a completely impartial group charged with investigating
the raid would be analyzing "evidence" (such as seized footage and
VDRs) that had been under the full control of the Israeli military since
the time of the assault.
Accountability and independent journalism
With little hope for a formal investigation with any degree of credibility,
independent journalists around the world have recognized the need to
mount their own. The work of independent journalists is achieving a
growing level of influence in the mainstream. And the story of the Mavi
Marmara killings, despite the unwillingness of many professional
reporters to publicly challenge Israel's version of events, is no
exception.
"This is an issue where, in the flotilla incident, the legal and moral
circumstances of Israeli abuse were so flagrant and visible that
independent media have a greater opportunity of being heard," said
Richard Falk, international law expert and United Nations Special
Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Should the UN or another impartial body mount an international probe,
it would "benefit greatly from [independent media's] active
undertaking to reinforce whatever investigation took place," Falk
commented for this story.
Independent journalists have already succeeded in cracking the wall of
Israel's narrative in the corporate media. For nearly an hour on the
morning of 5 June, most mainstream reports about the status of the
delayed fourth ship in the flotilla that had included the Mavi Marmara
relied almost exclusively on information gleaned from messages
shared between activists and independent journalists via Twitter. The
work of Abunimah and Blumenthal in debunking much of the Israeli
narrative was cited extensively in a post by The New York Times
blogger Robert Mackey ("Photographs of Battered Israeli Commandos
Show New Side of Raid," 7 June 2010).
On 10 June, a United Nations press conference was devoted to
presenting uncensored footage of the assault captured by filmmaker
Iara Lee, which promises to make global headlines with countless
images contradicting the Israeli version of events.
Paul Larudee, a San Francisco Bay Area-based activist who participated
in the flotilla and endured a severe beating which required him to him
to be hospitalized, believes that the success of independent journalists
in unraveling Israel's disjointed narrative has had a transformative
effect on the popular consciousness.
"Something's happening here. Perceptions begin to move," Larudee
said. "People are getting it -- they understand that a humanitarian aid
convoy was attacked, and the passengers were defending themselves,
despite the spin that Israel is creating in the media. Israel is not going
to be able to keep this up much longer. It's all starting to crumble."
Back to Top

Eyewitness to the Israeli Assault on the Mavi Marmara

By Dave LIndorff, 15 June 2010
Kevin Neish of Victoria, British Columbia, didn’t know he was a
celebrity until he was about to board a flight from Istanbul to Ottawa.
“This Arab woman wearing a beautiful outfit suddenly ran up to me
crying, ‘It’s you! From Arab TV! You’re famous!’” he recalls with a
laugh. “I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she told me, ‘I
saw you flipping through the Israeli commando’s book! It’s being aired
over and over!’”
A soft-spoken teacher and former civilian engineer with the Canadian
Department of Defense, Neish realized then that a video taken by an
Arab TV cameraman in the midst of the Israeli assault on the Freedom
Flotilla to Gaza of him flipping through a booklet had been transmitted
before the Israelis blocked all electronic signals from the flotilla. The
booklet had pictures and profiles of all the passengers, and he'd found
it in the backpack of an Israeli Defense Force commando.
Neish, 53, was on the second deck of the flotilla’s lead ship, the Turkish
Mavi Marmara, with a good view of the stern, when the IDF, in the early
morning darkness of May 31, began its assault with percussion
grenades, tear gas and a hail of bullets. He then moved to the fourth
deck in an enclosed stairwell, from which he watched and took
photographs as casualties were carried down past him to a makeshift
medical station. Several IDF commandos, captured by the passengers
and crew, were also brought past him.
“I saw them carrying this one IDF guy down,” he recalls. “He looked
terrified, like he thought he was going to be killed. But when a big
Turkish guy, who had seen seriously injured passengers who had been
shot by the IDF, charged over and tried to hit the commando, the
Turkish aid workers pushed him off and pinned him to the wall. They
protected this Israeli soldier.”
That was when he found the backpack which the soldier had dropped.
“I figured I’d look inside and see what he was carrying,” Neish says.
“And inside was this kind of flip-book. It was full of photos and names
in English and Hebrew of who was on all the ships. The booklet also
had a detailed diagram of the decks of the Mavi Marmara.”
Meanwhile, he says, more and more people were being carried down
the stairs from the mayhem above—people who'd been shot, and
people who were dying or people already dead. “I took detailed photos
of the dead and wounded with my camera,” he says, adding, “There
were several guys who had two neat bullet holes side by side on the
side of their head--clearly they were executed.”
Neish smuggled his photos out of Israel to Turkey despite his arrest on
the ship and imprisonment in Israel for several days. “I pulled out the
memory card, tossed my camera and anything I had on me that had
anything to do with electronics, and then kept moving the chip around
so it wouldn’t be found,” he says. “The Israelis took all the cameras
and computers. They were smashing some and keeping others. I put
the chip in my mouth under my tongue, between my butt cheeks, in
my sock, everywhere, to keep them from finding it,” he says. He finally
handed it to a Turk who was leaving for a flight home on a Turkish
airline. He says the card ended up in the hands of an organization
called Free Gaza, and he has seen some of his pictures published, so
he knows they made it out successfully.
Neish says that claims that the Israeli commandos were just armed
with paint guns and 9 mm pistols are “Bullshit--at one point when I was
in the stairwell, a commando opened a hatch above, stuck in a
machine gun, and started firing. Bullets were bouncing all over the
place. If the guy had gotten to look in and see where he was shooting,
I’d have been dead, but two Turkish guys in the stairwell, who had
short lengths of chain with them that they had taken from the access
points to the lifeboats, stood to the side of the hatch and whipped
them up at the barrell. I don’t know if they were trying to hit the
commando or to use them to snatch away the gun, but the Israeli
backed off, and they slammed and locked the hatch.”
“I never saw a single paint gun, or a sign of a fired paint ball!” he says.
He also didn't see any guns in the hands of people who were on the
ship. “In the whole time I was there on the ship, I never saw a single
weapon in the hands of the crew or the aid workers,” he says. Indeed,
Neish, who originally had been on a smaller 70-foot yacht called the
Challenger II, had transferred to the Mavi Marmara after a stop in
Cyprus, because his boat had been sabatoged by Israeli agents (a
claim verified by the Israeli government), making it impossible to steer.
“When we came aboard the big boat, I was frisked and my bag was
inspected for weapons,” he says. “Being an engineer, I of course had a
pocket knife, but they took that and tossed it into the ocean. Nobody
was allowed to have any weapons on this voyage. They were very
careful about that.”
What he did see during the IDF assault was severe bullet wounds. “In
addition to several people I saw who were killed, I saw several dozen
wounded people. There was one older guy who was just propped up
against the wall with a huge hole in his chest. He died as I was taking
his picture.”
Neish says he saw many of the 9 who were known to have been killed,
and of the 40 who were wounded, and adds, “There were many more
who were wounded, too, but less seriously. In the Israeli prison, I saw
people with knife wounds and broken bones. Some were hiding their
injuries so they wouldn’t be taken away from the others.” He also says,
“Initially there were reports that 16 on the boat had been killed. The
medical station said 16. There was a suspicion that some bodies may
have been thrown overboard. But what people think now is that the the
other seven who are missing, since we’re not hearing from families,
may have been Israeli spies.”
Once the Israeli commandos had secured control of the Mavi Marmara,
Neish says the ship’s passengers and crew were rounded up, with the
men put in one area on deck, and the women put below in another
area. The men were told to squat, and had their hands bound with
plastic cuffs, which Neish says were pulled so tight that his wrists were
cut and his hands swelled up and turned purple (he is still suffering
nerve damage from the experience, which his doctor in Canada says
he hopes will gradually repair on its own).
“They told us to be quiet,” he says. “But at one point this Turkish imam
stood up and started singing a call to prayer. Everybody was dead
quiet--even the Israelis. But after about ten seconds, this Israeli officer
stomped over through the squatting people, pulled out his pistol and
pointed at the guy’s head, yelling ‘Shut up!’ in English. The imam
looked at him directly and just kept singing! I thought, Jesus Christ,
he’s gonna kill him! Then I thought, well, this is what I’m here for, I
guess, so I stood up. The officer wheeled around and pointed his gun at
my head. The imam finished his song and sat down, and then I sat
down.”
While the commandeered vessels were sailed to the Israeli port of
Ashdot, the captives were left without food or water. “All we were
given were some chocolate bars that the Israelis pilfered from the
ship’s stores,” says Neish. “You had to grovel to get to go to the
bathroom, and many people had to just go in their pants.”
Things didn’t get much better once the passengers were transferred to
an Israeli prison. He and the other prisoners with him, who hadn’t
eaten for more than half a day, were tossed a frozen block of bread
and some cucumbers.
On the second day, someone from the Canadian embassy came
around, calling out his name. “It turned out he’d been going to every
cell looking for me,” says Neish. “My daughter had been frantically
telling the Canadian government I was in the flotilla. Even though the
Israelis had my name and knew where I was, they weren’t telling the
Canadian embassy people. In fact the Canadians--and my daughter--
thought I was dead, because people had said I’d been near the initial
assault. The good thing is that as they went around calling out for me,
they discovered two Arab-born Canadians that they hadn’t known were
there.”
“Eventually they got to my cell and I answered them. The embassy
official said, ‘You’re Kevin? You’re supposed to be dead.’”
After being held for a few days, there was a rush to move everyone to
the Ben Gurion airport for a flight to Turkey. “It turned out that Israeli
lawyers had brought our case to the Supreme Court, challenging the
legality of our capture on international waters. There was a chance
that the court would order the IDF to put us back on our ships and let
us go, so the government wanted to get us out of Israel and moot the
case. But two guys were hauled off, probably by Mossad (the Israeli
intelligence agency). So we all said, ‘No. We don’t go unless you bring
them back.’”
The two men were returned and were allowed to leave with the rest of
the group.
“I honestly never thought the Israelis would board the ship,” says
Neish. “I thought we’d get into Gaza. I mean, I went as part of the Free
Gaza Movement, and they had made prior attempts, with some getting
in, and some getting boarded or rammed, but this time it was a big
flotilla. I figured we’d be stopped, and maybe searched. My boat, the
Challenger II, only had dignitaries on board including three German
MPs, and then Lt. Col. Ann Wright and myself.
At one point in the Israeli prison, all the violence finally got to this man
who had witnessed more death and mayhem than many active duty US
troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. “I broke down and started crying,” he
admits. “This big Turkish guy came over and asked me, ‘What’s
wrong?’ I said, ‘Sixteen people died.’”
“He said to me, ‘No, they died for a wonderful cause. They’re happy.
You just go out and tell your story.’”
Back to Top

Give them an inquiry

Rather than investigating Israel's deadly raid of the Gaza-
bound aid flotilla, an international inquiry should look into how
Israel managed to sell its destructive Gaza policies to the
countries of the world.
By Zvi Bar'el, Haaretz, 20 June 2010
They want an international commission of inquiry to investigate the
events of the raid on the Gaza flotilla? No problem - on condition that it
is truly international: the kind that has UN secretaries-general over the
years give testimony, as well as U.S. presidents, European leaders,
Turkish presidents past and present, and all those who turned their
backs when they knew what was going on in the Gaza Strip and agreed
to the siege policy until the flotilla. All those who allowed the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict to go on undisturbed and who felt that Gaza was a
humanitarian, not a political problem.
It is fascinating to read UN resolutions on the Gaza Strip. They are
perfectly laid out and usually begin with words like "we call on the
sides," "we regard with gravity," "we support the Arab initiative," "we
endorse previous UN resolutions," which were never implemented, of
course. Empty words that were wasted on the sentences in which they
were used. There was no banging on the table, not a single resolution
on dispatching an international force, as if Gaza were not a combat
zone but an unavoidable natural disaster; something the aid
organizations should handle, not the politicians; a solution with aid
convoys, not sanctions.
True, Israel is the one that imposed the siege and jailed 1.5 million
civilians in a prison into which it threw food and medicine, following a
very orderly list and in line with the number of calories each person
needs to survive. Everyone watched, heard and remained silent - the
Turkish prime minister and president, who until Operation Cast Lead
did not really raise their voices, two American presidents, two UN
secretaries-general, and European heads of state. In other words, they
spoke endlessly, initiated resolutions, tried to mediate, but in the end
raised their hands in surrender. After all, it is an internal Israeli-
Palestinian matter that does not really pose a threat to world peace. A
million and a half jailed Palestinians? It's Hamas' fault, not Israel's.
Until suddenly it turns out that the Gaza Strip, an empty area without
petroleum or diamond wealth, strategically insignificant for the powers,
could stir an international crisis. Relations between Israel and Turkey
hit a reef, relations between the United States and Turkey are being
reevaluated, the Jewish lobby is working overtime in Congress to push
the administration to censure Turkey, Germany and the United States
are trying to mediate between Israel and Turkey, and Turkish
assistance to the international force in Afghanistan is being weighed.
Meanwhile, Turkey enjoys great popularity in the Arab and Muslim
world, but also threatens the Egyptian and Muslim monopoly for
resolving the conflicts in the region. And Israel once more appears to
be an irrational burden on U.S. policy in the region.
It also suddenly turns out that when the Gaza Strip manages to stir an
international crisis, it is possible to ease the conditions of the siege.
The list of items that can be imported is stretched like a rubber band.
And people are beginning to talk about conditions for operating the
Rafah crossing, the European Union is once more proposing to come
back and supervise it, and mostly, Washington has awoken and is
flexing a muscle. Not because the people of Gaza have been
transformed into something the world is genuinely interested in; they
have become a strategic threat. Where were all these critics, all the
countries that have signed the UN's human rights conventions, when
the siege was put in place and the blockade became asphyxiating?
An international inquiry into the foolishness of Israel's policy is
unnecessary. There is no need to busy the world with something that is
obvious and needs no proof. An international inquiry into the reasons
and ways Turkish citizens were killed should also not be created. This
is a subject for a joint Turkish-Israeli inquiry that should be set up
quickly.
An international inquiry should have a different mandate: to look into
how Israel managed to sell its destructive policy to the countries of the
world, how they agreed to the jailing of 1.5 million people without a UN
resolution. They should look into the international significance of the
fact that a member of the UN decides to take such a step, and the
international organization that now wants to investigate can't prevent
that step, or forcefully act to cancel it. This is not a commission of
inquiry against Israel but against UN headquarters in Manhattan. This
is also the reason that such a committee will not be formed. It is much
simpler to reach a plea bargain with Israel.

Back to Top

Calling Gaza a prison camp is an understatement

There may be some semblance of civil life and stability in Gaza,
but it is our freedoms that are under siege
By Laila El-Haddad, Guardian, 5 August 2010
It's three years since I've been back to Gaza. Much has happened since
my last visit. Fatah waged a failed coup and now rules only the West
Bank, while Hamas is in charge of Gaza. Israel launched its deadly Cast
Lead assault. Fuel shortages. Electricity crises. And so on.
I needed to regain perspective. So I walked and I talked and I listened. I
went to the beach where women – skinny jeans and all – were smoking
water pipes, swimming and generally having a good time, irrespective
of the purported Hamas ban on women smoking sheesha.
During the eight hours of electricity we get each day, I logged on to the
internet and browsed the English-language papers. It seemed like
suddenly everyone was an expert on Gaza, claiming they knew what
it's really like. Naysayers and their ilk have been providing us with the
same "evidence" that Gaza is burgeoning: the markets are full of
produce, fancy restaurants abound, there are pools and parks and
malls … all is well in the most isolated place on earth – Gaza, the
"prison camp" that is not.
If you take things at face value, and set aside for a moment the bizarre
idea that the availability of such amenities precludes the existence of
hardship, you'll be inclined to believe what you read.
So, is there a humanitarian crisis or not? That seems to be the question
of the hour. But it is the wrong one to be asking.
The message I've been hearing over and over again since I returned to
Gaza is this: the siege is not a siege on foods; it is a siege on freedoms
– freedom to move in and out of Gaza, freedom to fish more than three
miles out at to sea, freedom to learn, to work, to farm, to build, to live,
to prosper.
Gaza was never a place with a quantitative food shortage; it is a place
where many people lack the means to buy food and other goods
because of a closure policy whose tenets are "no development, no
prosperity, and no humanitarian crisis", Gisha, the Legal Centre for the
Freedom of Movement, explained in a press release.
The move from a "white list" of allowable imports to a "black list" might
sound in good in theory (ie everything is banned except xyz, to only
the following things are banned) but in practice only 40% of Gaza's
supply needs are being met, according to Gisha. The Palestinian
Federation of Industries estimates that only a few hundred of Gaza's
3,900 factories and workshops will be able to start up again under
present conditions
Sure, there are a handful of fancy restaurants in Gaza. And yes, there
is a new mall (infinitely smaller and less glamorous than it has been
portrayed).
As for food, it is in good supply, having found its way here either
through Israeli crossings or the vast network of tunnels between Gaza
and Egypt. Of course, this leaves aside the question of who in Gaza's
largely impoverished population (the overwhelming majority of whose
income is less than $2 a day, 61% of whom are food insecure) can
really afford mangoes at $4 a kilo or grapes at $8 a kilo. A recent trip
to the grocery store revealed that meat has risen to $13 a kilo. Fish,
once a cheap source of protein, goes for $15 to $35 a kilo. And so on.
Prices are on par with those of a developed country, except we are not
in a developed country. We are a de-developed occupied territory.
All of the above adds up to the erasure of the market economy and its
replacement with a system where everyone is turned into some kind of
welfare recipient. But people don't want handouts and uncertainty and
despair; they want their dignity and their freedom, employment and
prosperity and possibility.
Perhaps most significantly, they want to be able to move freely –
something they still cannot do.
Let's take the case of Fadi. His father recently had heart surgery. He
wanted to seek followup care abroad, at his own expense, but he
doesn't fall into the specified categories allowed out of Gaza for travel,
whether through Egypt or Israel. "He's not considered a level-one
priority," Fadi explained. "Can you please tell me why I can't decide
when I want to travel and what hospital I can take him to?"
Even the cream of Gazan high-school students must lobby the Israeli
authorities long and hard to be allowed out to complete their studies.
They literally have to start a campaign in conjunction with human
rights groups to raise enough awareness about their plight, and then
look for local individuals to blog about their progress, explained
Ibrahim, who was approached by one organisation to "sponsor a
student".
I have no doubt that if Stephanie Gutmann and Melanie Phillips lived in
Gaza their principle worry would not be about "what parts of their
bodies they can display", it would be the fact that they would not be
allowed out again. It would be because everything from the kind of
food they would have on their plate to when they can turn on the lights
to what they can clothe those bodies with and whether or not they can
obtain a degree is determined by an occupying power.
Using the phrase "prison camp" to describe Gaza, as Britain's prime
minister did, is not vile rhetoric. It is an understatement and even a
misnomer. Prisoners are guilty of a crime, yet they are guaranteed
access to certain things – electricity and water, even education – where
Gazans are not. What crime did Gazans commit, except, to quote my
late grandmother, "being born Palestinian"?
Ketchup and cookies may be flowing to Gaza in slightly greater
quantities than before. But so bloody what? Goods for export are not
flowing out. Nor, for that matter, are people. So while there may be
some semblance of civil life and stability in Gaza, there is absolutely no
political horizon or true markers of freedom to speak of.
And as long as freedom of movement is stifled, whether by Israel or
Egypt, and export-quality goods, which account for a large portion of
Gaza's manufacturing output, are forbidden from leaving Gaza, all the
malls and mangoes in the world won't make a bit of difference.
Back to Top

IDF document: “Policy principle: separating Gaza from

West Bank”
By Noam Sheizaf, 5 September 2010
An IDF Powerpoint slideshow, presented before the Turkel committee
for the investigation of the Israeli raid on the Gaza-bound flotilla,
reveals the official goals of the Israeli policy regarding the Gaza strip.
The slideshow, prepared by The Administration for the Coordination of
Government Policy in the Territories – the IDF body in charge of
carrying out Israeli government policies regarding the civilian
population in the West Bank and Gaza – deals with the humanitarian
conditions in the strip; with food, water, fuel and electricity supply and
with the condition of medical facilities in Gaza.
download the IDF slideshow [Hebrew] here
The first set of slides details the background for the current activities of
The Administration for the Coordination of Government Policy in the
Territories. Slide number 15 details the principles of Israeli policy (my
italic):
- Responding to the humanitarian needs of the population.
- Upholding civilian and economic limitations on the [Gaza] strip.
- Separating [or differentiating, ‫ ]בידול‬Judea and Samaria [i.e. West
Bank] from Gaza – a security and diplomatic objective.
- Preserving the Quartet’s conditions on Hamas (Hamas as a terrorist
entity).
Slide 20 deals with freedom of movement from and to the Gaza strip.
Policy objectives are:
- Limiting people from entering or exiting the strip, in accordance with
the government’s decision.
- Separating [differentiating] Judea and Samaria from Gaza.
- Dealing with humanitarian needs.
- Preserving the activity of humanitarian organizations in the strip.
- Keeping a coordinating mechanism with the Palestinian Authority.
The Israeli policy regarding Gaza could be seen as violation of official
and unofficial principles of previous agreements and negotiations with
the Palestinians and other parties. Gaza and the West Bank were
regarded as “one entity” – though not officially declared as such –
already in the 1978 peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. The
Oslo Declaration of Principles, signed in September 1993 and still an
abiding document, specifically states that:
The two sides view the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a single
territorial unit, whose integrity will be preserved during the interim
period.
This declaration was ratified in following agreements from 1994 and
1995.
The recent IDF slideshow is the first time an Israeli official document
publicly declares that the current policy objective is to create two
separate political entities in the Palestinian territories.
Nirit Ben-Ari, spokeswoman for Gisha, an Israeli NGO dealing with the
freedom of movement, export and import to and from the Palestinian
territories, said that “while in Washington a Palestinian state is being
negotiated and people are already discussing ‘a train line between
Gaza and Ramallah‘, in reality Israel is working to separate Gaza from
the West bank even further than the separation already caused by the
split in the Palestinian leadership.
“This policy is aimed against civilian population and against people
who have nothing to do with Israel’s security concerns. It hurts family
ties, and harms any future possibility to develop commerce, education
and economical life in the Palestinian society. Those policies should
raise concerns regarding the intentions of the Israeli government in
Gaza.”
————————-
Other slides in the IDF slideshow deals with the ways the IDF gather
information on the humanitarian situation in the strip (mainly through
NGO’s and media reports), how food and fuel supply is evaluated, and
how the needs of the local population are calculated. According to the
IDF assumptions, there are 1,600,000 people living in Gaza. The army
does not occupy itself with the distribution of supply, so there is no
way of knowing if the population’s needs are actually met – only that
according to the IDF, enough food and water is entering Gaza.
The slideshow doesn’t deal with the export of goods from the strip, nor
does it explains the mechanism that is used to determine which civilian
goods could be brought in.
Slide 50 details the goods found on the Gaza-bound flotilla: medical
supply, toys, school gear, construction materials and powered
wheelchairs.

Back to Top
Journal of a voyage
By Yonatan Shapira 26 September 2010
The course is 120. Another 200 miles to the port in Cyprus and the
automatic pilot in the boat, which is supposed to maintain the course,
refuses to work and leaves me with the unending task of maintaining
the course on a turbulent sea with no sign of land from horizon to
horizon. In another half hour, Itamar, my brother, who is also a
“refusnik,” will relieve me at the wheel, after him Bruce and then Glyn
will take their shifts. If everything goes according to plan, we will reach
Famagusta at midday on Saturday, and there we will pick up the rest of
the passengers, who together with us, as strange as it may seem, will
try to break the blockade of Gaza.
For some weeks already we have been making our way east, from the
Greek island on which the yacht was bought, from north of the
Peloponnese through the Corinthian Canal, the Cycladic islands.
Already we have experienced just about every kind of mishap in the
book: the engines overheated on us and died, the wheel suddenly
became detached, the anchor got stuck, the sail tore, a storm, and
more. What we have not yet experienced is the uniqueness, the
wondrousness and the strong arm of the IDF - the most moral army in
the world, for those who forgot.
Warships have not yet intercepted us, they have not lowered
commandos on us from helicopters and snipers have not yet shot at
us. Those challenges are still before us and we will experience them
together with the passengers, among them Holocaust survivors, a
bereaved father [1] and others.
The southwest wind is getting a little stronger and the compass is
vacillating between 120 and 130. I glance at the GPS and see that I am
veering slightly to the left. Well, if the automatic pilot were working I
could simply sit, watch the waves and write undisturbed.
Seven years ago on the eve of Rosh Hashana we published what the
media called “the pilots’ letter.” In that declaration we announced to
the whole nation (yes, we wore flight-suits and were interviewed in the
press and on television) that we would refuse to take part in the crimes
of the Occupation.
Ten days after that, on the eve of Yom Kippur, we were invited for a
talk with the Commander of the Air Force. After he outlined to me his
racial theory (in the form of a scale of value of blood, from the Israelis
on the top down to the Palestinians at the bottom) he informed me that
I was dismissed and that I was no longer a pilot in the Israeli Air Force.
Many things have happened since then. Many boats have crossed the
Corinthian Canal, many demonstrations and arrests, but mainly, many
children have been murdered in Gaza. I remember Arik, a close
childhood friend and a combat pilot, who hesitated over whether to
sign and to refuse but in the end sincerely informed me that he did not
want to give up his wonderful toy, the F-16. At first he still had a little
shame about the comfortable choice he had made. Secretly he
supported me and admitted that he did not have courage. Seven years
passed and today he is still an operational pilot in the reserves, a
leader of attack formations in his combat wing and on his hands or
wings is the boiling blood of tens of innocent Palestinians and
Lebanese, maybe more. The traces of morality that he had are gone
now and today Arik will bomb any place at any time, wherever they tell
him. That is the beauty of routine. In the end everything looks normal
to you: an ordinary man, kind and polite and a good father to his
daughters, turns into a mass murderer. I was not a bomber pilot. I flew
Blackhawks that are used mainly for rescue missions and to transport
personnel. One argument we heard from those who disagreed with us,
and especially people from my wing, three members of which signed
the letter, was that none of us was asked personally to shoot or to
bomb or to assassinate. We replied to that argument by saying that it
was not necessary to commit murder in order to say that it is forbidden
to commit murder, and that it is easy to say “I just held the stick while
the other pilot launched the missile.”
Years passed and the events of the flotilla and the murderous attack
on the Mavi Marmara came and proved that the connection between
my wing and the murder of civilians is in fact a lot more direct. It was
the unit in which I served and the helicopters that I flew that carried
out the pirate operation and lowered the commandos onto the deck. It
is quite likely that the very people who flew on that night had been
pupils of mine or pilots who flew with me in the past.
What does a Blackhawk pilot think and feel when he is hovering over a
civilian ship far from the Israel’s territorial waters? What is he thinking
when he instructs the soldiers to descend in the middle of the night
onto a ship that is transporting supplies of humanitarian aid, bags of
cement and dozens of journalists?
Mainly he is thinking about how to maintain a stable hover and not to
lose visual contact with the other helicopters and the ship below him.
He listens and gives orders on the helicopter’s internal communication
system and maybe he also feels a little fear; after all, hovering over a
vessel on the open sea, and at night, is no simple task of aviation.
And maybe he thinks about a few other things. Maybe he has a certain
political outlook and maybe not, but what is certain is what he is not
thinking about … a pilot who is hovering over a civilian aid ship on the
open sea is not thinking that somebody among the people below him is
intending to shoot him or that they are in possession of firearms –
otherwise he would not have approached the spot! If he is not
conducting a necessary rescue operation, it is absolutely counter to
army regulations; that means that they knew beyond any doubt that
nobody on the Mavi Marmara was armed. He knows that they are
civilians who were set on expressing protest and identification with the
million and a half civilians of besieged Gaza; but he apparently does
not think about the fact that when masked armed pirates pounce on
you in the middle of the night it is legitimate for you to resist the
hijacking (even if it is tactically and strategically pointless).
To all who have doubts about the issue, I warmly recommend that you
try to imagine that you are in the middle of the sea on a dark night and
suddenly giant black helicopters are hovering low over you with a
deafening noise and from them, like masked burglars wearing black,
descend armed hoodlums, and warships are approaching you from
every direction, and they are all shooting stun grenades at you and
other things that you cannot identify, due to the noise and the
darkness.
The sun has just set on the horizon. It is 18:52 hours.
I am trying to think about what will happen to us in a few more days
near the coast of Gaza, within or outside the territorial waters. It
apparently makes no difference when you are above the law and can
shoot, hijack, rob, occupy and humiliate without anyone imposing any
limits.
We are in the small boat of Jews for Justice for Palestinians.
We do not intend to fight the IDF, even though we have every right to
do so. We chose non-violence as a tactic and as a strategy but we do
not intend to give up easily until the moment they arrest and handcuff
a Holocaust survivor and the bereaved father, right down to the last
passenger on the boat.
The colours of the sunset are getting more and more dark and deep.
Gold, pink and orange with light-blue stripes between the burning
clouds. Now Bruce, on the wheel, is continuing to maintain a course of
120 with the two engines along with the mainsail and the foresail
which add another half-knot to the speed. Itamar is practicing his
guitar and Glyn is preparing supper. It seems like the clouds of fried
onion are not only filling the yacht (and making it a little hard to
breathe) but the whole Mediterranean Sea. Looks like I’ll skip supper.
Chief of Staff Ashkenazi told the Israeli commission of inquiry that
investigated the flotilla events, that his conclusion from the events is –
“more snipers” … yes – yes, that’s his conclusion from the murder on
the Mavi Marmara, more snipers!
My conclusion was a bit different from that of a person who in the
foreseeable future will be put on trial at the international court for war
crimes. My conclusion was I had to join the next boat that set out for
Gaza, and what could be more fitting than a Jewish organization from
Europe that is struggling for human rights and peace.
I contacted the organizers and offered my services as skipper.
Apparently seamanship was the most fitting of all the trades I learned
in high school, and now I have the opportunity to implement what I
learned, not only for pleasure but for an important and symbolic action
with an organization that decided to invest a great deal of money,
hours of deliberation, planning and endless preparations for one
objective, to break the blockade of Gaza.
Yesterday evening on the island of Kastelorizo, during last-minute
preparation of the boat, we opened the foresail on a large space near
the pier and wrote on it in black in Arabic and Hebrew: “Yahud min ajl
al-‘adala lil-filastiniyin” – the name of the organization – Jews for Justice
for Palestinians.
The Arabic course I took in the summer helped me not get confused in
writing the curved letters and Itamar, who stood above me and by the
light by the public pier guided me up, down, left and right, so that the
writing will look good and clear when we raise the sail upon our
departure from Cyprus and as we approach the shores of Gaza.
Another long night-watch on the wheel followed. The sea was relatively
calm, but a moderate tailwind insisted on bringing the exhaust from
the engines directly to the cockpit, which strengthened my
determination to skip supper and to contend with the feeling of light
nausea by watching the horizon, maintaining a course of 125 and
mainly by singing, again and again, the songs that sound most
beautiful when one is on a boat in the middle of the sea: “if the
darkness has fallen and I have no star … light a rose of fire on the mast
of my boat, mother …” [2]
At 6:12 in the morning, as we approach Cyprus, with the first rays of
light, Itamar at the wheel, Bruce and Glyn are sleeping and I am on the
prow trying to breathe air clean of the smoke of the engines and trying
to snooze, suddenly a medium-sized boat passes us. It passed quite
close to us and looked strange. It circled us from the north and moved
off to the west and looked like a small warship. Maybe we are already a
little paranoid and maybe not and maybe it was just a vessel of the
Turkish coast guard; in any case, we began to think and to imagine to
ourselves what our encounter with the Israeli navy will be like when we
approach the coast of Gaza, what each of us will do, how we will take
care of the passengers and how we will react if the navy’s Dabur patrol
boat (as in previous incidents) attacks us and rams our little boat. We
decided to write in Hebrew and English a declaration that we will read
on the radio on the nautical emergency channel when elements of the
navy or the air force approach us. This is what we wrote:
We are a boat of the European Jewish organization Jews for Justice for
Palestinians
We are on our way to Gaza
We are not armed and we believe in non-violence
And we are determined to proceed to the port of Gaza
You are imposing an illegal blockade on occupied Gaza
These are international waters and we do not recognize your authority
here
There are activists of all ages on this boat
Among us are Holocaust survivors, bereaved parents and Israelis who
refuse to reconcile themselves to the illegal occupation of the
Palestinian territories
We are unarmed peace activists who believe in non-violence and we
are determined to proceed on our way to the port of Gaza
We appeal to you, officers and soldiers of the IDF, to refuse and not to
obey your commanders’ illegal orders
For your information, the blockade of Gaza is illegal under international
law and therefore you are running the risk of being put on trial at the
international court for war crimes
The blockade and the occupation are inhumane and counter to
universal morality and the values of Judaism
Use your consciences!
Do not say “I was only following orders”!
Remember the painful history of our people!
Refuse to enforce the blockade!
Refuse the Occupation!
1. In this context, “bereaved” is understood to refer to an Israeli who has lost
a loved one as a result of war or terrorism in the context of the Arab-Israeli
conflict – trans.
2. From the Israeli song “Zemer ahava la-yam” – “Love song for the sea.”
Lyrics: Raphael Eliaz, music: Sasha Argov – trans.
Translated from Hebrew by George Malent

Back to Top

Government releases documents detailing Gaza

import guidelines
Since Hamas took control of Gaza, officials have employed
mthematical formulas to monitor goods from aid groups
entering the Strip to ensure amount was in line with what
Israel permitted.
By Amira Hass, Haaretz, 26 October 2010
In the three years since Hamas took control of Gaza, Israeli officials
have employed mathematical formulas to monitor foodstuffs and other
basic goods entering the Strip to ensure that the amount of supplies
entering was neither less nor more than the amount Israel permitted,
according to documents released last week.
The documents - released Thursday in response to a Freedom of
Information Act petition by the non-profit group Gisha - were drafted
while Amos Gilad served as interim coordinator of government
activities in the territories, heading the body that checked the goods.
The formulas used coefficients and a formulation for "breathing space,"
a term used by COGAT authorities to refer to the number of days
remaining until a certain supply runs out in Gaza, to determine allowed
quantities.
In September 2007, the Israeli government ordered a tightening of the
blockade on Gaza, a closure first put in place in 1991. COGAT, in
conjunction with other authorities, drafted "Rules for permitting the
entry of goods" and "Regulation, supervision and evaluation of supply
inventories in Gaza."
Both documents were classified as drafts, but in effect served as
instructions for Israeli authorities and were considered valid until a
government-implemented policy change following the May raid of a
Gaza-bound flotilla that left nine people dead.
Officials from COGAT, a Defense Ministry unit that coordinates activity
between the government, military, international groups and the
Palestinian Authority, told Haaretz that it had actually been responsible
for releasing the documents, given that in the wake of the government
decision the directives for keeping the files classified were no longer in
force.
A high-ranking COGAT officer told Haaretz that "Regulation,
supervision and evaluation of supply of inventories in Gaza" is a
method of quickly identifying a shortage of any basic item in Gaza, and
that despite the mathematical equations contained in the document,
he had never intentionally limited the amount of goods allowed to
enter, but on the contrary, verified whether inventories of certain basic
supplies in Gaza were full.
The COGAT spokesman said that the regulations were formulated
"based on well-known basic foodstuffs, in consultation with the Israeli
Health Ministry and in consideration of family consumption habits in
Gaza, as published by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in
2006."
The document contained "warning lines," which were defined as "the
days of [remaining] inventory beyond which the relevant official must
pay attention to the deviation from reasonable norms and examine the
correctness of the model."
There were two types of warning lines. The "upper warning line," which
identified surpluses, was defined as an inventory exceeding 21 days for
products with short shelf lives or 80 days for those with long shelf lives.
The "lower warning line," which identified shortages, was defined as an
inventory of less than four days for products with short shelf lives and
of less than 20 days for those with long shelf lives.
The senior COGAT official said the upper warning line was never
actually used and the lower line was an important tool for identifying
and averting impending shortages.
The "rules for permitting the import of goods" was drafted pursuant to
a cabinet decision to restrict "the quantity and type of merchandise"
entering Gaza. Its stated purpose was to define the "procedure, rules
and method under which permission will be granted" for goods to enter
Gaza.
These rules, the draft continued, were meant to allow in goods that
would "supply the basic humanitarian needs of the Palestinian
population." It then listed seven considerations to weigh when
determining which goods should be permitted.
Security was one. The others were as follows:
* "The necessity of the product for meeting humanitarian needs
(including its implications for public health in both the Strip and
Israel )."
* "The product's image (whether it is considered a luxury )."
* "Legal obligations."
* "The impact of the product's use (whether it is used for preservation,
reconstruction or development ), with an emphasis on the impact of its
entry on the Hamas government's status."
* "The sensitivities of the international community."
* "The existence of alternatives."
These rules explain why, for example, imports of cloth and thread,
which were considered "development" products, were barred, thereby
destroying Gaza's textile industry.
The document states that many outside parties affected Israel's
decisions: The Strip's needs will be determined not only by the relevant
government agencies, it read, but by the Palestinian Authority,
international agencies, the media and petitions to the courts by
nongovernmental organizations, among others.
The third document that COGAT gave Gisha was the official list of
products allowed into Gaza prior to May's botched raid on a Gaza-
bound flotilla.
Following that raid, the list was significantly expanded. But the senior
COGAT official said that even before then, the list of products actually
allowed into Gaza was always longer than the written list.
Back to Top

Want to weaken Hamas? Open Gaza's gates

Israel's policy, meant to overthrow Hamas by prohibiting
production and manufacturing, has failed miserably.
By Amira Hass, Haaretz, 27 October 2010
Do you really want to weaken Hamas? Surprise it. Go back and open
Gaza's gates - to ordinary human movement, not just to cherries,
shavers and a handful of pious Muslims who manage to wend their way
past the Egyptian bureaucracy. Open the Erez checkpoint. Then you'll
see how Gazans yearn for life.
Let young people study outside the Gaza Strip. Despite the
exasperating presence of Israel's foreign rule, in the Palestinian
enclaves in the West Bank those young people will encounter a form of
diversity that is becoming extinct in Gaza. They will discover that such
diversity is better than the monolithic reality imposed by Israel's siege
and messianic politics. Allow female pupils and female teachers to tour
their land and see that the world is more complicated than
brainwashing television programs and competitions to obtain relief
packages. Consider this: Diplomats report that most Hamas summer
camps in Gaza have been closed; most children preferred camps
operated by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration.
Stop suffocating manufacturers who have become impoverished over
the past five years. Challenge those who call for a boycott, and allow
the forcibly unemployed to find work in Israel. Let's see if Hamas can
stop them from doing that. The Kav La'oved worker's hotline will
campaign devotedly against their exploitation, while Palestinian
organizations will try to dissuade them, softly or not, from working in
Israel.
Yet their self-esteem, buoyed by the fact that they are again providing
for their families, will find its place among such internal contradictions.
Let cement and iron enter Gaza so engineers, builders and painters
can get back to work. They will rebuild the rubble, along with their
attitudes on life.
When residents from Hebron, Nazareth and foreign countries travel to
the Khan Yunis coast, or visit a cultural center north of the Al-Shatti
refugee camp, their illusions about the wonders of the religious-
totalitarian regime will evaporate. The earlier the quarantine in which
Gazans were put some 20 years ago is broken, the harder it will be for
Hamas to tighten the bridle.
The apocryphal legend says that the closure - the regime of movement
restrictions - was imposed on the Palestinians because of the
strengthening Islamic movement and the terror strikes against Israeli
citizens. But the sequence of events should be read the opposite way:
The policy of mass confinement took root in January 1991, before the
suicide attacks in Israel. This is a society that was progressively
allowed less access to the outside world and experienced ever-more
sophisticated variants of Israeli oppression and a lack of concrete
solutions from the PLO leadership. Under such circumstances, is it any
wonder Allah's earthly emissaries managed to find their way to
people's hearts?
If the Israeli government's policy indeed meant to overthrow Hamas by
prohibiting production and manufacturing, and by using mathematical
formulas to make sure that the animals' - excuse me, the human
beings' - nourishment does not slip beyond a red line, then it has failed
miserably. This failure was evident before Israel was compelled by
international pressure to annul the restrictions on the entry of
consumer goods. Gaza residents' famously high threshold of pain and
endurance levels let them get by the past three dark years. Unjustly,
this resilience is attributed to Hamas.
Appearing increasingly self-confident and self-satisfied, Hamas is
consolidating its rule. True, it relies on stifling dissent, intimidation and
oppression (like its rival, the Palestinian Authority ). But thanks to its
strong talent for improvisation, Hamas is learning to serve the
population and supply vital needs under extremely hostile
circumstances. Are those policy makers who devised the draconian
restrictions that foolish to think that bans on chocolate and toys and
the destruction of the manufacturing sector would stir an uprising
against Hamas or convince it to deliver the keys of power to Mahmoud
Abbas?
It would be wrong to dismiss the wisdom of our leaders. Perhaps
they've gotten exactly what they wanted - to strengthen Hamas in the
Gaza Strip, both for perpetuating the intentional division between Gaza
and the West Bank and to encourage perpetual low-intensity warfare
(which sometimes escalates ).
Only under such circumstances do our leaders know how to function,
while securing their people's support.

Back to Top

School's out: why Gazans can't reach class in the

West Bank
By Fatma Al-Sharif, 1 November 2010
Gaza -- When Israel announced in June, following its deadly
interception of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, that it would ease its siege
on the civilian population in the Gaza Strip, I almost let my hopes rise.
I am a Palestinian human rights lawyer living in Gaza. Earlier this year,
I was accepted into the Master's degree program in Human Rights and
Democracy Studies at Birzeit University, located in the West Bank.
Before the "easing" of the blockade, I tried repeatedly to persuade the
Israeli authorities to allow me to leave Gaza and attend my classes, but
was blocked at every turn. Would Israel's new announcement mean
that I'd finally be able to go to school this year?
This summer, backed by the Israeli and Palestinian human rights
organizations Gisha and Al Mezan, I petitioned Israel's Supreme Court
to allow me to travel to my university. But the court accepted the
Israeli military's statement that the "easing" did nothing to change the
policy in place since 2007 that only "exceptional humanitarian cases"
would be granted permission to leave Gaza. Terminally ill patients,
under certain circumstances -- yes. Students looking for a good
education -- no.
Egypt initially cooperated with this policy at the Rafah border crossing
it operates on Gaza's southern border, but since June, it has allowed an
increasing number of Palestinians -- including students with foreign
visas -- to leave Gaza for travel abroad. But for students like me, who
are enrolled in courses in the West Bank, this is of no help. Israel
controls all access to the West Bank. Even if we were to travel via
Egypt and Jordan, without crossing through Israel, Israel would still not
allow us to enter the West Bank.
My program at Birzeit University is unique: no universities in Gaza, or
indeed in any neighboring Arab country, offer a Master's in human
rights. Yet my inability to attend classes is far from an exception. Since
2000, Israel has imposed a blanket ban on all students from Gaza
studying in the West Bank -- a ban affecting those like me that even
Israel acknowledges pose no security risk. In so doing, it denies
thousands of students the ability to leave Gaza for programs in the
West Bank that Gaza's universities do not offer, such as dentistry,
veterinary medicine, occupational therapy, medical engineering, and
advanced environmental studies.
The higher education system in the West Bank and Gaza was planned
as one, unified system, and the West Bank and Gaza are considered a
single territorial unit by a series of international agreements, including
the 1995 U.S-sponsored Oslo Interim Agreement (Oslo II) and the 2005
Agreement on Movement and Access, which the UN Security Council
welcomed. Yet despite what would be a one-hour drive between Gaza
and Ramallah, without checkpoints, I and other students from Gaza are
denied our freedom of movement and our right to education -- and all
within our own land.
Israel, in a 2007 cabinet decision, said its travel restrictions were the
result of Hamas' taking power over the Gaza Strip, which turned Gaza
into a "hostile entity." But how do veterinary students, medical
students, and human rights lawyers constitute legitimate military
targets? Do Israeli government lawyers need to be reminded that
collective punishment of a civilian population is a serious violation of
the Geneva Conventions?
And do Israel's political leaders need to be told the implications of
prohibiting students from leaving a "hostile entity" to study, which will
limit our access to information and to students and professors from
other backgrounds? The denial of our right to education can only
perpetuate Gaza's isolation, making it ever-more difficult for
Palestinians to develop the kind of stable, progressive society in Gaza
that Israel and its allies claim to want.
Traveling to attend my studies in human rights will not threaten Israel's
security. And robbing Palestinians of our rights to education and
development will not bring peace. Palestinians like me want to build an
educated, human rights-conscious, civil society in the Gaza Strip.
Ultimately, we want to counter the ongoing escalation in human rights
violations not only by Israel, but also from within. If only Israel would
let us.
Fatma al-Sharif is a human rights lawyer working in Gaza.

Back to Top

Gaza businesses boxed in by Israeli export ban

Israel may have eased its blockade of the Gaza Strip earlier
this year, but a continuing ban on exports from the territory is
causing misery for many Palestinians, the BBC's Jon Donnison
reports from Gaza.
2 November 2010
Manal Hassan is a little short of breath as she walks me though the
gloomy deserted production lines at the Al Awda biscuit factory in
central Gaza.
She has a lot on her plate at the moment. She is eight and half months
pregnant, and the business she manages looks on the verge of going
under.
"It's very sad," Ms Hassan says, looking close to tears. "You can't
imagine how it is when the factory is working. It's completely alive and
full of people. Now it is like death."

The biscuit factory run by Manal Hassan could go out of business

Al Awda used to be one of the biggest, busiest factories in Gaza,
employing more than 300 people. They make biscuits, ice cream and
crisps. Or they used to.
Since Israel eased its blockade of the Gaza Strip in June they have had
to shut down virtually all production. The factory now operates only a
few days a month, as and when there is demand.
"Now the market is flooded with cheap imported biscuits from Israel.
But we are still not allowed to export. So we lose on both counts."
So ironically, the easing of the blockade has actually made things
worse for Manal Hassan. They can now get access to the imported raw
materials they need to make their biscuits, but there is no market for
them.
The store rooms at Al Awda are stacked full of a surplus of biscuits.
Devastating impact
Before Israel tightened its blockade of Gaza in 2007, Al Awda used to
export about 60% of its products, mostly to the West Bank.
But for the past three and a half years virtually all exports from Gaza
have been banned. Only flowers and strawberries are sometimes
exported during the season.
Last season, 17 million carnations were exported via Israel, through a
deal negotiated with the Dutch government. That compared with about
40 million flowers in the years before the blockade was imposed.
The export ban has had a devastating impact on Gaza's economy.
Unemployment is running at about 40%, and the United Nations
estimates 80% of people are reliant on food aid.
"Gaza used to export around $300m (£186m) worth of goods a year,"
says economist Omar Shabban, from Palthink - a think tank based in
the strip.
"We used to export textiles. Not only to Israel, but also to Marks and
Spencer in Britain. We used to export furniture. We used to export
hundreds of things."
Mr Shabban says if the ban on exports is not lifted, poverty will only
get worse - which he says encourages extremism and radicalisation.
Illegal exports
A few entrepreneurs in Gaza
have even started exporting
goods illegally through
smuggling tunnels from Egypt.
The tunnelling industry based
around the border town of
Rafah has been badly hit since
Israel opened up the borders to
the legal importation of most
food and consumer goods.
Tunnels that were used to smuggle goods into Gaza are
now used to export them illegally

Many of the thousands of people who used to be employed in the

tunnel business are now out of work.
Sitting by the road just a few hundred yards from the border is one
such man.
Abu Mohammed used to be a tunnel digger. Now he does not get much
work, but has turned to occasionally exporting goods to Egypt.
"We take out scrap metal that people have collected here. Copper and
aluminium. But only in small quantities."
Israeli concerns
The illegal trade could in theory increase if Israel maintains its ban on
most exports. For now, Israel says it is not ready to lift the ban because
of security risks.
"People need to ask why the blockade is in place. Why are there
restrictions on imports and exports? It's because Gaza is controlled by
a terror movement," says Yigal Palmor, an Israeli foreign ministry
spokesman.
Israel tightened its economic blockade of Gaza in 2007 after the
Islamist movement Hamas took power.
It said it was necessary to stop weapons being smuggled to militants in
Gaza and to put pressure on Hamas.
Mr Palmor says Israel is looking at increasing exports in the near
future, but says there are still concerns about security risks.
He cannot give a timescale or specify which products will be allowed
out and in what quantity.
The Dutch government says it is hoping to get approval this year to
export vegetables including cherry tomatoes and sweet peppers from
Gaza, as well as flowers and strawberries. But as of yet, that has not
been confirmed by Israel.
Bleak future
Back in Gaza at the Al Awda biscuit factory, Manal Hassan laughs at
the idea of a "Chocolate Crispy" biscuit posing a security risk.
"Israel has all the technology it needs to check our biscuits before they
leave," she says.
Ms Hassan says she and her employees face a bleak future if the
export ban is not lifted.
Walking between the boxes of biscuits slowly going stale, it feels - at
least here - as if things are getting worse, not better.
Israel eased its economic blockade almost five months ago. But most
people in Gaza will say that so far, few things have got any easier.

Back to Top
IDF Report Confirming Goldstone’s Key Findings Is
Suppressed Inside Israel
By Max Blumenthal, 25 July 2010
An IDF report quietly submitted to the UN two weeks ago
acknowledges the IDF's shelling of a UN compound with white
phosphorous shells. Previous Israeli reports denied such instances
occurred.
A report quietly submitted by IDF Military Advocate General Avichai
Mandelblit to the United Nations two weeks ago regarding Israel’s
conduct during Operation Cast Lead confirms the key findings of the
Goldstone Report. The report (full version here), which documents 150
ongoing investigations, has outraged the Israeli Army. “It looks as
though they were frightened by Goldstone,” remarked an IDF officer.
Another military official expressed anger that after a previous IDF
report asserting the legality of shelling civilian areas with white
phosphorous, a chemical weapon, the Mandelblit report has issued
recommendations limiting the munition’s use. “It looks like tying your
own hands behind your back. Why should a weapon with which there is
no problem be limited?” the official asked.
Mandelblit’s confirmation of the IDF’s use of white phosphorous in
Gaza against a UN compound is one of his report’s most remarkable
admissions. He has directly contradicted a lie told over and over again
to the Israeli public in the immediate aftermath of Cast Lead, and
repeated in an April 2009 IDF report, that “no phosphorous munitions
were used on built-up areas.”
Discussion of white phosphorous use is buried in the body of the
report, on page 21 in a section on the UNRWA Field Office Compound:
One of the most widely reported incidents during the Gaza Operation
involved the UNRWA field office compound, where three individuals
were injured and significant property damage resulted from the use of
smoke-screen munitions containing white phosphorous. Additional
damage occurred due to the use of high explosive shells in the vicinity
of the compound.
Besides the deployment of white phosphorous munitions, the
Mandelblit Report acknowledges that the IDF Military Advocate General
has launched a criminal investigation into the killing of 26 members of
the Al-Samouni family (p. 6); that the army may have used human
shields (pp. 9-11); knowingly shelled a UNRWA school filled with
children in order to neutralize a single enemy mortar launcher, causing
large-scale civilian deaths in the process; knowingly attacked a
mosque with “powerful” missiles in order to kill two unknown terrorist
“operatives” (p. 17); bombed a police graduation ceremony (p. 19),
killing four civilians in the process (according to Goldstone the IDF
killed 9 civilians and 99 cops); killed a civilian raising a white flag (p.
22); fired on a horse-drawn carriage carrying wounded civilians, killing
a number of people in the process (p. 24); fired flechette-filled tank
shells in the immediate vicinity of a “condolence tent,” killing civilians
in the process (p. 25); bulldozed the Sawafeary Chicken Coops (pp. 27-
28) in order to obtain “a clear line of sight” for soldiers in the area;
destroyed a cement packaging plant in a vain search for tunnels (p.
29); destroyed a series of factories, claiming it “did not know the
structures were used to produce food products” (p. 30); and implicitly
acknowledged that it destroyed private property (p. 33).
Although Mandelblit lays the blame for many killings at the feet of IDF
commanders, he invokes the army’s firing policy to justify the killings.
So long as soldiers claimed in their testimonies that they may have
seen enemy operatives in the area (Mandelblit acknowledges extreme
difficulty gathering testimony from Palestinian victims), he was able to
claim that the soldiers followed the “Law of Armed Conflict.”
What is the Law of Armed Conflict? It is a set of combat
guidelines specially refined for IDF army operations by Israeli military
philosopher Asa Kasher. In defining his version of the law, Kasher
wrote, “the responsibility for distinguishing between terrorists and
noncombatants is not placed upon [Israel’s] shoulders.” He added,
“Sending a soldier [to Gaza] to fight terrorists is justified, but why
should I force him to endanger himself much more than that so that
the terrorist’s neighbor isn’t killed? From the standpoint of the state of
Israel, the neighbor is much less important. I owe the soldier more. If
it’s between the soldier and the terrorist’s neighbor, the priority is the
soldier. Any country would do the same.” In other words, the killing of
civilians is justified according to Israeli military regulations if a soldier
is able to establish having felt a sense of danger.
It is unclear whether Mandelblit’s report will lead to a roll-back of
Kasher’s rules of engagement. The report’s recommendations have
already been met with fierce resentment from the IDF’s officer corps,
so it might be unrealistic to expect that they will ever be put into
practice, especially since Israel seems to be gearing up for a
potentially bloody campaign in urban areas in Southern Lebanon. The
report’s real value, then, is as a confirmation of Goldstone’s key
findings. Even as the most conservative investigation of IDF conduct
during Cast Lead, Mandelblit exposed a consistent pattern of
destruction of Palestinian civilian infrastructure and disregard for
civilian life.
Unfortunately, the devastating findings contained in the report have
not reached the Israeli mainstream. Articles about the report are
buried deep in Israeli newspapers while according to Yedioth
Aharonoth, the Israeli Foreign Ministry has refused to make it available
on its Hebrew website (it’s only on the English site).
Maariv columnist Ofer Shelakh was one of the few Israeli public figures
to address the official silence following Mandeblit’s release. He wrote in
a July 23 column about both the IDF’s Mandelblit report and Eiland
report on the Gaza flotilla (no link; from a Hebrew only translation from
p. 23 of the Maariv weekend supplement):
What is the truth and why suddenly do we reply to the UN in terms
different from those offered to Israel’s citizens? The same applies to
the legal procedures taken against IDF officers, the trial of the
Commander of the Gaza brigade, the investigation of former Giv’ati
brigade commander Ylan Malka, of which we hear only from Israeli
replies to foreign authorities.
It seems that according to the decision-makers in Israel’s Defense
system we don’t want to know, we don’t have to know or we agree that
all this is merely for foreign consumption, to repel anti-Israel criticism.
Israelis prefer to think that the IDF operates brilliantly, that its
commanders make no mistakes, and that its firing policy is considerate
and moral, and that the problem in “Cast Lead” was the firing policy
rather than the decisions of the local commanders.
Maybe this cynical approach to the Israeli public is justified. It is a fact
that no public outcry arose after the black picture emerging from [the
Eiland Report], but in the IDF, certainly among its medium ranks, many
understand the damage this causes to the standards of telling the
truth, and of telling the whole truth.

Back to Top

What led to IDF bombing house full of civilians during

Gaza war?
The order to bomb the house has been explained as the
brigade commander's legitimate interpretation of drone photos
shown in the war room.
By Amira Hass, Haaretz, 24 October 2010
A Military Police investigation into an air strike that killed 21 Palestinian
civilians during Operation Cast Lead, according to a recent Haaretz
report, indicates senior air force officers had approved the attack. The
report, published on Friday by Amos Harel and Anshel Pfeffer ("IDF
probes top officers on Gaza war strike that killed 21 family members" ),
alleges senior officers authorized the bombing despite being warned by
more junior officers that civilians were likely located at or nearby the
target site.
One officer involved in approving the attack is then-Givati Brigade
commander Col. Ilan Malka. To date it has not yet been determined
whether he will stand trial as an officer involved in the affair.
The incident took place on January 5, 2009, in the Zeitun neighborhood
of Gaza City. During Givati Brigade activity in Zeitun, a house there -
home to the Al-Samouni family - was identified as harboring armed
Palestinians. The Israel Air Force hit the house twice with missiles,
killing 21 civilians, including women and children, and wounding 19
others.
While some Givati soldiers agreed to testify to Breaking the Silence (an
organization of veteran combatants who served during the second
intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public
to everyday life in the occupied territories ) about their part in
Operation Cast Lead, notably absent are the soldiers who manned the
position nearest the house that was bombed on Malka's orders.
On the morning of January 4, the commanders of this force ordered the
dozens of members of the extended Samouni family to leave the three-
story house (the home of Talal Samouni ), which they then turned into
their outpost. The soldiers told them to gather in the one-story home of
Wail Samouni, on the other side of the road and about 30 meters
southeast. The Samounis took the fact that the soldiers themselves
concentrated the family in one building, and saw that there were
infants, children, women, elderly people and unarmed men, as
insurance that they would not be harmed.
Despite the intense firing heard all around them that entire evening,
the family's fears were mitigated by the proximity of the soldiers who
had assembled them into the one home. Several of the Samouni men
even left the house on Monday morning (January 5 ) to collect wood for
a fire, hoping to bake pita and heat up tea. They also called out to a
relative who had remained in his home, a few meters east of them, and
suggested he join them because their house was safe.
Shortly before that, one of the women of the house ventured outside
with a child to draw water from a nearby well, as the water tanks on
the roof had been riddled by the soldiers' bullets a day earlier. The
woman and the child were within view of the soldiers, a fact which the
Samounis reported to Haaretz, in Gaza, over a year and a half ago.
Their testimony received extensive coverage in Haaretz, in world
media outlets, and in reports filed by Palestinian and Israeli human
rights organizations.
Straight from the war room
A small wooden structure stood next to the house, and several of the
men apparently began climbing onto it to take apart the boards. This
activity was seen in drone photographs shown on the screen in the war
room headquarters, which according to testimony obtained by
Breaking the Silence is of poorer quality than the screen before the
person operating the aircraft.
In the war room the poles the men were holding were taken to be RPGs
(rocket-propelled grenades ) and the people carrying them were
marked as a squad of terrorists who should be shot immediately. First
the group of men outside the house was shelled. They ran into the
home, which was then shelled twice. The structure was not destroyed,
but because it was so crowded inside, dozens were killed and
wounded.
One soldier who had testified to Breaking the Silence told Haaretz
about two months ago that soldiers at another outpost, east of the
Samouni compound, received information from the war room on the
two-way radio that an RPG squad was walking around in the area.
On the morning of Monday, January 5, a group of stunned Palestinian
civilians, including a woman and her baby daughter whose fingers had
been lopped off, arrived at that soldier's outpost. The soldiers managed
to understand that the woman's husband had just been killed. The
woman's husband, the soldier confidently told Haaretz, had been killed
by a Palestinian RPG that was aimed at the other soldiers' outpost but
by mistake had hit the adjacent Samouni home.
Most of the Givati soldiers who gave testimony to Breaking the Silence
didn't even know 21 civilians had been killed in a shelling carried out
under war-room orders, based on drone photographs. They didn't know
in real time, nor did they know a year and a half later, when they spoke
to Haaretz. They hadn't heard of the "Samouni" family, despite the
extensive media coverage as well as the space devoted to this family's
history in the Goldstone report.
Unknown details
On January 4, 2009, the Sunday after the ground incursion had begun,
a Givati force set up outposts and bases in at least six houses in the
Samouni compound at the southeast end of Zeitun - as revealed upon
matching the testimony of local Palestinians with that of the soldiers.
Immediately after the ground incursion, IDF soldiers had already killed
five Palestinian civilians, most of them from the Samouni family, in
separate incidents that took place late at night and in the morning.
One child who was seriously wounded when forces broke into his
home, bled there to death until the next day - 24 hours after his father
was killed at short range.
These details were also unknown to the soldiers that Haaretz found
with the help of Breaking the Silence. They agreed to the
organization's request to testify because they were horrified by two
other incidents they witnessed, when their comrades killed civilians at
close range. The soldiers were upset by the destructive actions of the
IDF, the trigger-happy atmosphere and the virtual reality, as they
described it, created by IDF spokesmen inside Israel, to the effect that
there was serious fighting in the Gaza Strip. The soldiers soon
understood that they were not actually confronting the dangerous
Hamas resistance for which they had been prepared on the eve of the
attack.
Until now the order to bomb a house full of civilians has been explained
and understood as an ostensibly legitimate interpretation on the part
of the brigade commander of drone photographs displayed on the
screen in the war room. According to the findings of human rights
organizations and Haaretz investigations, during the course of Cast
Lead many other civilians were killed and wounded by aerial strikes, in
a similar process: based on how drone photos on war-room screens
were interpreted.
The many incidents described in the human rights organizations'
reports indicate that the drone photographs are not as precise or clear
as they are said to be, or that the technology considered "objective"
also depends on commanders' interpretation: Children playing on the
roof are liable to be regarded as "scouts," people trying to speak to
their relatives over the phone are liable to be "signal operators for a
terrorist brigade," and families that went to the garden to feed the
goats, squads of Qassam launchers.
In the case of the Samounis, the possibility of cross-referencing
sophisticated technological information with human information from
the field was available 24 hours before the "RPG squad" ostensibly
appeared on the war room screens.
No ambulances
The Givati Brigade commander, fearing Hamas attempts to kidnap IDF
soldiers, insisted that not a single ambulance enter the sector under
his control. That was also learned from soldiers who spoke to Breaking
the Silence. Testimony from the Zeitun area, which was reported by
Haaretz in real time based on conversations with neighborhood
residents, told of at least two children and two adults who bled to
death after being shot by Givati soldiers, because the Red Cross and
the Red Crescent were unable to coordinate with the IDF the approach
of ambulances to the area.
According to the testimony of the family of Hussein Ayedi, who lived in
eastern Zeitun, only a week after he was injured and after daily
coordination efforts by Physicians for Human Rights, were they allowed
to leave on foot, under various conditions, and to meet up with
ambulances at a distance of over three kilometers.
According to one soldier who spoke with Breaking the Silence, brigade
commander Malka insisted that if there were wounded, they should be
taken on foot. But according to many reports from the field, sometimes
even convoys of civilians were not allowed to progress on foot and the
soldiers fired at them.
Back to Top

“There Are No Civilians In Wartime.” Rachel Corrie’s

Family Confronts The Israeli Military In Court
By Max Blumenthal, 9 September 2010
In a small courtroom on the sixth floor of Haifa’s District Court, a
colonel in the Israeli engineering corps who wrote a manual for the
bulldozer units that razed the Rafah Refugee Camp in 2003 offered his
opinion on the killing of the American activist Rachel Corrie.
“There are no civilians during wartime,” Yossi declared under oath.
Yossi made his remarkable statement under withering cross
examination by Hussein Abu Hussein, the lawyer for the family of
Corrie, who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah on
March 17, 2003. In the back of the courtroom were Rachel’s parents,
Craig and Cindy, and her sister, Sarah, back in Israel for the second
round of hearings in their civil suit against the state of Israel. They
were joined by supporters, friends and a handful of reporters, including
me (see Nora Barrows-Friedman’s report for more). No one from the
Israeli media was present — the case has been virtually ignored inside
Israel.
In the immediate wake of Corrie’s killing, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson,
then the chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, instructed
Corrie’s parents to demand a “thorough, fair and transparent
investigation” from the Israeli government. Since then, the Israelis
have stonewalled them, refusing to provide key details of their
investigation, which was corrupted from the start by the investigators’
apparent attempts to find evidence that a bulldozer did not in fact kill
Rachel.
A 2003 bill introduced in the House International Relations Committee
calling for a thorough Israeli investigation in Corrie’s killing and for
American efforts to prevent such killings from happening again
garnered 78 signatures in support (Rahm Emanuel was the only Jewish
signer). However, Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, one of the
Israel lobby’s closest allies in Congress, prevented the bill from getting
out of the committee. President George W. Bush could have pressed
for a full floor vote on the bill but he did nothing. The bill died as a
result.
Having been obstructed by the Israelis’ opaque investigation and
betrayed by their own government (with notable exceptions like former
Rep. Brian Baird), the Corries have been forced to take matters into
their own hands. And so they have filed suit against the Israeli
government for criminal negligence. Whether or not they will be able
to secure the ruling they seek, Rachel Corrie’s family has already
elicited a number of damning revelations about the Israeli army’s
abuses in Gaza in 2003 and the machinations it has relied on to
obscure evidence of its criminal conduct.
“I think we are in a situation similar to South Africa. What we are trying
to make clear is that the truth has to be pursued diligently or we won’t
make it to the point of reconciliation,” Craig Corrie told me, referring to
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that enabled South Africa to
peacefully transition from an apartheid system to representative
democracy. “We need to understand and acknowledge the truth first.”
So far, the truth has not been easy to come by. The Corries are saddled
with a judge who is said to have never ruled in favor of any plaintiff in
a civil rights-related suit. And the defense has claimed unspecified
state security concerns in its successful bid to avoid revealing the full
contents of the investigation into Rachel Corrie’s killing — the family’s
lawyers have only been allowed to view a summary. But the Corries’
legal efforts have not been in vain.
On the first day of hearings, the Corries’ lawyers were able to confirm
through testimony from “Oded,” one of the investigators of Rachel
Corrie’s killing, that Major General Doron Almog, then the head of the
Israeli army’s Southern Command, had attempted to stop the military
investigators from questioning the bulldozer operators who killed
Rachel. When asked why he did not challenge Almog’s apparently
illegal intervention, Oded stated that he was only 20-years-old at the
time, with no college education and only a few months of training as an
investigator. He was intimidated by the high-ranking officer who
stormed into the room and menaced him and the other investigators.
(Almog once canceled a trip to Britain after being warned that he
would be arrested on arrival for ordering the destruction of 59 homes
in the Rafah refugee camp in 2002).
Among the most disturbing aspects of Corrie’s case is the abuse of her
body by Israeli authorities after she was killed. Craig Corrie recalled to
me a panicked phone conversation he had with Will Hewitt, a friend
and former classmate of Rachel Corrie who had just witnessed her
killing.
“It’s getting dark over here and there are no refrigeration units for her
body in Gaza,” Hewitt told Craig Corrie.
“Just leave it until tomorrow,” Craig replied. “We don’t want you or
anyone else to get killed.”
“But her body is starting to smell,” Hewitt pleaded.
Somehow Hewitt and his fellow activists from the International
Solidarity Movement were able to get Rachel Corrie’s body out of Gaza.
But first Hewitt was ordered by Israeli troops to remove the body from
the casket and carry it across a border checkpoint. Only Hewitt was
allowed to escort Corrie’s body in the ambulance; the rest of the
activists who witnessed her death were forced to hitchhike home in the
desert. Finally, Corrie’s body was transported to the Abu Kabir Forensic
Institute in Tel Aviv where the notorious Dr. Yehuda Hiss autopsied her.
Who is Dr. Hiss? The chief pathologist of Israel for a decade and a half,
Hiss was implicated by a 2001 investigation by the Israeli Health
Ministry of stealing body parts ranging from legs to testicles to ovaries
from bodies without permission from family members then selling
them to research institutes. Bodies plundered by Hiss included those of
Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. He was finally removed from his post
in 2004 when the body of a teenage boy killed in a traffic accident was
discovered to have been thoroughly gnawed on by a rat in Hiss’s
laboratory. In an interview with researcher Nancy Schepper-Hughes,
Hiss admitted that he harvested organs if he was confident relatives
would not discover that they were missing. He added that he often
used glue to close eyelids to hide missing corneas.
When Craig and Cindy Corrie learned that Hiss would perform an
autopsy on their daughter, they stipulated that they would only allow
the doctor to go forward if an official from the American consulate was
present throughout the entire procedure. An Israeli military police
report stated that an American official did indeed witness the autopsy.
However, when the Corries asked American diplomatic officials
including former US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzner if the report
was true, they were informed that no American was present at all. The
Israelis had lied to them, and apparently fixed their own report to
deceive the American government.
On March 14, during the first round of hearings in the Corries’ civil suit,
Hiss admitted under oath that he had lied about the presence of an
American official during the autopsy of Rachel Corrie. He also
conceded to taking “samples” from Corrie’s body for “histological
testing” without informing her family. Just which parts of Corrie’s body
Hiss took remains unclear; despite Hiss’s claim that he “buried” the
samples, her family has not confirmed the whereabouts of her missing
body parts.
“It’s so hard to know that Rachel’s body wasn’t respected,” Rachel’s
sister, Sarah, told me. “Doctor Hiss and the Israeli government knew
what our family’s wishes were. The fact that our wishes were
disregarded and a judge hasn’t done anything is absolutely horrifying.”
The treatment of Rachel Corrie’s body is peripheral to her family’s
lawsuit. But it demonstrates the degree to which she and those whose
homes she died defending have been dehumanized — “there are no
civilians during wartime,” as Colonel Yossi declared. Rachel Corrie’s
family is seeking only one dollar in symbolic punitive damages from
the Israeli government. Their real goal is to force a country in a
perpetual state of warfare to treat its innocent victims as human
beings, and to be held accountable if it does not.
“It is incredibly expensive for us to carry this case on both emotionally
and financially,” Craig Corrie remarked. “It is a whole lot to ask of a
private citizen. But as a family we still have the ability to do a lot, so
we are going to carry this cause on for everyone who cannot.”
Back to Top

Israel’s Military on the Spot Over Activist’s Death

By Karl Vick, Time, 9 September 2010
The day after the American activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death
by the armored Israeli bulldozer she was trying to stop from destroying
a Palestinian home, then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised
U.S. President George W. Bush “a thorough, credible and transparent
investigation.” It was the least that could be expected after the death
of a U.S. citizen at the hands of its closest ally.
Seven years, two Prime Ministers and one President later, Corrie’s
parents sat in the front row of Haifa District Court on Sunday, a white-
haired couple struggling to get to the bottom of their daughter’s death.
Corrie v. the State of Israel, a civil suit, is also putting a withering
spotlight on Israel’s conduct since March 16, 2003. (See pictures of
heartbreak in the Middle East.)
“She was hurt by a grenade; this is the information that was given to
us,” said Oded (his last name was withheld for security reasons), one
of the three military police investigators who conducted the official
inquiry into the death — an effort the testimony painted as slipshod at
best. “I don’t remember who said it.”
“How many grenades were there?” asked Hussein Abu Hussein, an
attorney for the Corrie family.
Oded: “I don’t remember.”
Hussein: “You didn’t record it?”
Oded: “I don’t know.”
Hussein: “Who threw the grenade?”
Oded: “I believe hostile forces, but I don’t know.”
As the attorney bore down, Oded shot a look at the table where two
lawyers for the state of Israel sat. The look said, Can you believe this?
But with a wave of his hand, the judge spared the witness from digging
through the case file for answers. “No,” said Judge Oded Gershon from
the bench, “we know that it is untrue that a grenade was thrown.”
What, then, do we know is true? Neither thorough nor credible, and
every bit as transparent as a sandstorm, Israel’s investigation of
Corrie’s death sheds little light on what happened — the grenade story
apparently came out of thin air — but is providing a great deal of
fodder for her family’s case against the state. Heard intermittently in
the manner of Israel’s court system, the case may not conclude until
November. But it has already validated anew Richard Nixon’s timeless
observation that it is the cover-up that does you in.
“What, did you kill him?” a soldier asked after Corrie disappeared
beneath the blade of a D9R Caterpillar, wreathed in armor for use by
the Israel Defense Forces. “May God have mercy on him,” came the
reply. The striking exchange, between Israeli soldiers speaking in
Arabic, was not included in the report’s transcript of radio
transmissions, the former investigator acknowledged on the stand. He
said he didn’t think it was important.
Oded testified that the interview of the bulldozer driver was halted on
the order of a senior commander. He also testified that investigators
waited a week to retrieve from another unit the only known videotape
of the incident; failed to interview non-military eyewitnesses; ignored
the ambulance workers, doctors and other Palestinians who treated
her; and did not even visit the scene of her death. That was a
neighborhood in the Gaza Strip where a handful of foreign-born
protesters with the International Solidarity Movement tried to do what
Palestinians could not do themselves if they expected to survive: turn
themselves into human shields between Israeli bulldozers and the
Palestinian homes the bulldozers were trying to tear down on the
grounds that they provided cover for gunmen and tunnels.
The army maintains that Corrie’s death was an accident: because of
the armored plating around the cab, the driver, who is scheduled to
testify next month, could not see her, even in a fluorescent orange
vest. But on Monday the expert witness whose study of sightlines
backed up that claim confirmed on the stand that he in fact set out to
support the army’s narrative.
Afterward, Craig Corrie despaired at how easily the contradictions were
coming.
“It was really depressing, because my impression was the people were
making statements that indicated they never expected to be
questioned,” Rachel’s father told TIME. “The lies were like the lies of a
7-year-old.”
Composed and genial, the Corries cut an impressive figure in the sun-
drenched Haifa courthouse. After quitting his job as an insurance
actuary, Craig and his wife Cindy made full-time work of ascertaining
the truth about their daughter’s death. That meant immersing
themselves, as she had done, in the situation of the 1.5 million
Palestinians in Gaza. Although the imminent invasion of Iraq had kept
her story, and the plight of the Gazans, largely out of the headlines at
the time, the recent Israeli raid that killed nine Turkish activists aboard
a boat intent on breaking Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-controlled
coastal strip has put it back in the spotlight. Weeks later another boat
filled with Irish activists approached; its name: the MV Rachel Corrie.
“Like a lot of Americans, we were really removed from what was going
on there,” said Cindy of life before her daughter’s death. The education
that had begun with Rachel’s e-mails deepened profoundly when they
met residents of Gaza in person, making new friends and worrying for
their lives, too, during Israel’s massive military offensive against Gaza
in January 2009 in response to Hamas rocket fire.
“We’d call a Palestinian friend to see how he was doing,” Craig said.
“And he’d say, ‘Listen to this,’ and hold the phone out. It was just what
Rachel used to do: ‘Listen to this.’ And you’d hear the explosions.”

Back to Top

Bulldozer driver testimony underscores lack of

transparency in Corrie trial
Voice behind screen says soldiers don't stop work.
The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice, 23 October 2010
Haifa, Israel - The bulldozer driver who struck and killed Rachel Corrie
in March 2003, in Rafah, Gaza, testified for the first time Thursday in
the civil lawsuit filed by the Corrie family against the state of Israel, but
did so under extraordinary protective measures that continue to
underscore the lack of transparency in the investigation as well as the
trial process.
The driver, Y.P., whose name was not released, is a 38-year-old
Russian immigrant who came to Israel in 1995. He was the sole witness
for the day and gave his testimony over four hours behind a makeshift
partition, a measure the state claimed was necessary to protect his
security. Attorneys for the Corries requested that the family be allowed
to see the driver even if the public could not, but their appeals were
denied.
"We were disappointed not to see the whole human being," said Cindy
Corrie, Rachel's mother. "It is a personal affront that the state's
attorneys and Israeli government, on the basis of security, chose to
keep our family from seeing the witness."
Scores of journalists, human rights observers and members of the
public were shut out of the proceedings Thursday. The courtroom has
only two long rows of seats, nearly half of which were held for the first
time by observers apparently from the State Attorney's office and
Ministry of Defense.
In over four hours of often confused testimony, Y.P. seemed to struggle
to read and understand his own affidavit signed in April. He could not
remember basic facts, such as the date of Rachel's killing or time of
day it happened. He repeatedly contradicted his own statements on
the stand and testimony given to military police investigators in 2003.
Highlights of testimony include the following:
Y.P stated that after he drove over Rachel and backed up, she was
located between his bulldozer and the mound of earth that he had
pushed, corroborating photographic evidence and testimony from
international eyewitnesses given to the court in March. His testimony
calls into question that of the commander inside this same bulldozer,
whose written affidavit states that Rachel's body was located in a
different location, on the far side of the mound of earth created by the
bulldozer. In court, Y.P. was asked if based on this contradiction he
wanted to change his testimony. He firmly stated no.
In testimony to military police investigators only three days after the
incident, Y.P. said the blind spot in front of the bulldozer was 3 meters.
In contradicting court testimony, he claimed the blind spot was 30
meters--ten times the distance first stated.
Y.P. knew about regulations that the bulldozer was not to work within
10 meters of people. He was aware civilians were present, but said he
was given orders to continue working. He said I' m just a soldier. It was
not my decision.
He claimed he did not see Rachel before the event. Nor did he recall
seeing her specifically at all that day, despite the fact that she had
protested the bulldozer's activity for several hours and was the only
female activist wearing a bright orange fluorescent jacket.
Following the driver's testimony, Cindy Corrie stated, "It was very
difficult not to hear or detect anything in this witness's words or voice
that suggested remorse. Sadly, what I heard from the other side of the
screen was indifference."
The proceedings on Thursday were attended by representatives of the
US Embassy, Advocates sans Frontiers, the Center for Constitutional
Rights, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), National
Lawyers Guild, Adalah, and the Arab Association for Human Rights,
many of whom have closely followed the hearings throughout the trial.
The next scheduled hearings are November 4 and 15 between the
hours of 9:00-16:00 before Judge Oded Gershon at the Haifa, District
Court, 12 Palyam St., Haifa, Israel. Additional court dates are expected
to be announced soon.
Please visit http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/trial for trial updates,
changes to the court schedule and related information.
Back to Top

Halper: American Jews (and the Congress) don’t want

an Israel at peace
By Philip Weiss, MondoWeiss, 4 October 2010
For anyone who tries to imagine a life of meaning amid inhumane
circumstances, Jeff Halper is a hero. The Minnesota-born founder of the
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Halper has for decades
now dedicated himself to Palestinian human rights, resisting the
occupation by helping Palestinians try to defy Israeli power. Above, he
drinks tea in a Palestinian friend's house that has been destroyed by
settlers five times-- and that he has five times helped rebuild.
In West Jerusalem last week, Halper bought salami and rolls at a corner
store and then walked me back to his house, whose crowded
bookshelves and humble furnishings are a reminder that he has been
both a rabbinical student and an academic and author. Over lunch, I
asked him about the politics of the conflict. What is the answer?
"I go with the flow, except there is no flow today." Halper said that he
personally favors the one-state solution but he is respectful of the fact
that world consensus has long supported two states.
“It’s not hard to do actually. But you’d have to put massive pressure on
Israel to do it. And that’s where I think we’re stuck. The United States
cannot bring pressure because of the Congress, and that is the
absolute necessary condition, pressure.
“But I will tell you my formula for peace. You say to Israel three things.
Obama and the international community have to say it.
"One, We love you. Israelis love to hear that. That’s where Sadat
succeeded. He hugged Golda [Meir] and the Israelis melted. They just
melted.” That is why Israel yielded the Sinai so easily in the end after a
lot of bluster. “Obama would come and speak at the Knesset, Abu
Mazen would go to Yad Vashem.
“Two, we will guarantee your security. Israelis are not committed to
the occupation for ideological reasons, most Israelis aren’t, but
because they don’t trust Arabs. If you can allay their fears that
withdrawal won’t lead to Sderot, then they will do it... There are
security arrangements that could be found to satisfy the Israeli public.
“Three, you say the occupation’s over. Period. You’re out of every
square inch… Maybe parts of Gush Etzion would be swapped, but we’re
back to the 1967 borders. And the Jewish Quarter in a shared
Jerusalem, not a divided Jerusalem. The only resource Jerusalem has is
its religious symbolism, and you want to give all the stakeholders a
feeling of ownership.
“If that scenario were followed, you’d have dancing in the streets of Tel
Aviv. This is what Israelis want. They want security. They don’t want to
see Palestinians. This is what Ehud Barak ran on in 1999, for Labor. ‘Us
here, them there.’ That’s what Israelis want, and that’s what the two
state solution would do."
And the likelihood of this coming to pass?
“Maybe 1-1/2 percent of Israelis are ideological settlers. But in the
Knesset, the settlers have two or three parties. So this 1-1/2 percent
controls the government. If you had a referendum on the two state
solution the vast majority of Jews would agree. But this is so unlikely,
that you go back to the one state solution. Which is equally unlikely.”
Of course Halper would be happy living in a democracy with
Palestinians. I asked him why so many Israelis don't feel that way.
“There is a principle inculcated in Israelis and Jews from before 1948,
by all politicians, newscasters, teachers, journalists, any official, and
that is that the Arabs are our permanent enemies. And that’s it! And if
you take that as an unchanging premise, then it doesn’t matter what is
being done to Palestinians.They brought it on themselves.
“You can’t trust the Arabs. That makes everything else a non-issue…
Yitzhak Shamir said, ‘The Jews are still the Jews, the Arabs are still the
Arabs, and the sea is still the sea.’ Which means, it’s just the way it is,
it’s nature. Arabs are what they are, and we are what we are, and
nothing’s going to change that...."
But are Israelis even aware of the tapestry of suffering that is the
occupation, and what this does to Palestinian lives?
“Israelis don’t care. Because they’re living the good life. Polls show
that peace is the 8th issue in priority for Israelis. It’s like that cover of
Time magazine, Israel doesn't want peace. I’ve been saying that for
years…. And the Israeli government thinks it’s sustainable, they think
they can keep this going for another 40 years. They have no idea that
we’re living on borrowed time.
“And Israel is not going to cooperate and is not going to negotiate in
good faith. Because of the Congress. The only way to go to some kind
of peace is by exerting pressure on Israel, which the U.S. could do
easily, but the president can’t do. And Israel feels completely
protected. The U.S. can’t do anything to Israel, and it won’t let anyone
else do anything to Israel. We start building settlements, and it’s, ‘So
what?’”
I said that the status quo will bring on violence. Halper said he doubts
it.
"It's too sewn up. Israel is too much in control. Israeli soldiers are every
ten feet in the West Bank... Israel is knocking off Palestinian leaders all
the time." And the natural source of Palestinian leadership is all in
Israeli jails, 12,000 Palestinians-- "I use the term warehousing"-- and
Palestinian society is rife with collaborators, from the Palestinian
Authority on down.
Where's the hope?
"I don't use the word hope, I use the word struggle. There's a struggle
going on..."
The good news is that now it's globalized: the United States is
becoming more and more isolated on this issue.
“I don’t think Americans appreciate how isolated they are
internationally. This is now a global conflict, and so you have the
irresistible force meeting the immovable object. The irresistible force
is-- the EU can make things hard on Israel economically, and the whole
Muslim world can be up in arms, and you have BDS, Turkey, isolating
Israel, and the international community saying that this is too costly to
accept forever. But then the immovable object is the U.S. Congress.”
What about the Arab dictatorships, aren’t they implicated in the
arrangement?
“Mubarak and Asad have no support from their people on this, but
they’re kept going because of the conflict. Syria once had a vibrant
constitutional process. It got all messed up because of the occupation
and the refugees. Nationalism, the right to return….
“This conflict is the bone in the throat of the world. It’s not the biggest
thing, but it’s the most immediate thing, and it could kill you. You can’t
deal with the cancer and the other diseases till you deal with the bone
in your throat.
“And rather than [complain about] the repressiveness of the Arab
countries, we should get rid of this occupation and I think you will see a
whole new dynamic in the Middle East…. My allies, my brothers and
sisters, are civil society groups in the Arab world. In Syria, they’re
fighting the good fight. In Libya, in Tunisia, it’s not that easy in
autocracies, but in all these societies, you have democratic liberal
progressive people… It’s not us against them. The clash of civilizations
is an essentialist argument, and it’s not true… Within a week of [an
end to the conflict] that would all dissipate and there would be plans to
develop this whole area.”
Finally I asked Halper about Zionism, the growing battle in the U.S.
between non-Zionist and Zionist Jews. He laughed.
"Arguing about Zionism is like the battle in the United States 200 years
ago between having a Hamiltonian democracy and a Jeffersonian
democracy. Who cares any more? This is a a real country called Israel."
Then he told American Jews to bug out. He goes back to the States a
lot, and talks to American Jews. "They don't care about Israel. If you
actually tell them what is happening here [in rightwing Israeli politics],
their eyes glaze over. It's not a real place to these people, it's there to
meet their needs. They need this idealized Leon Uris Israel to maintain
their identity. If they came here, they wouldn't like it.
"Well this is a real country. It's not some projection of what you want it
to be, and it has a right to evolve and change.... [American Jews] can't
have an Israel at peace because that doesn't do it for them. They need
an Israel at war, so they can galvanize their sense of Jewishness
around it..."
Lunch was over. Halper walked me down the hill and pointed me to the
walkways leading to the Israel Museum.
Back to Top

Palestine 2011
By Jeff Halper, 25 November 2010
Struggling as I have for the past decades to grasp the dynamics of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and find ways to get out of this interminable
and absolutely superfluous conflict, I have been two-thirds successful.
After many years of activism and analysis, I think I have put my finger
on the first third of the equation: What is the problem? My answer,
which has withstood the test of time and today is so evident that it
elicits the response…“duh”…is that all Israeli governments are
unwaveringly determined to maintain complete control of
Palestine/Israel from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, frustrating
any just and workable solution based on Palestinian claims to self-
determination. There will be no negotiated settlement, period.
The second part of the equation – how can the conflict be resolved? – is
also easily answerable. I don’t mean entering into the one state/two
state conundrum and deciding which option best. Under certain
circumstances both could work, and I can think of at least 3-4 other
viable options as well, including my favorite, a Middle Eastern
economic confederation. The Palestinian think tank Passia published a
collection of twelve proposed solutions a few years ago. What I mean
is, it is not difficult to identity the essential elements of any solution.
They are, in brief,
· A just, workable and lasting peace must be inclusive of the two
peoples living in Palestine/Israel;
· Any solution must provide for a national expression of each
people, not merely a democratic formula based on one person-one
vote;
· It must provide economic viability to all the parties;
· No solution will work that is not based on human rights,
international law and UN resolutions.
· The refugee issue, based on the right of return, must be addressed
squarely.
· A workable peace must be regional in scope; it cannot be confined
merely to Israel/Palestine; and
· A just peace must address the security concerns of all the parties
and countries in the region.
These seven elements, I would submit, must configure any just
solution. If they are all included, a settlement of the conflict could take
many different forms. If, however, even one is missing, no solution will
work, no matter how good it looks on paper.
That leaves the third and most intractable part of the equation: how to
we get there? Employing the linear analysis we have used over the
years, you can’t. In those terms we are at a dead-end of a dead
“process.” Israel will never end its Occupation voluntarily; the best it
may agree to is apartheid, but the permanent warehousing of the
Palestinians is more what it has in mind. Given the massive “facts on
the ground” Israel has imposed on the Occupied Territories, the
international community will not exert enough pressure on Israel to
realize even a two-state solution (which leaves Israel on 78% of historic
Palestine, with no right of refugee return); given the veto power over
any political process enjoyed by the American Congress, locked into an
unshakable bi-partisan “pro-Israel” position, the international
community cannot exert that required pressure. And the Palestinians,
fragmented and with weak leadership, have no clout. Indeed, they’re
not even in the game. In terms of any sort of rational, linear,
government-led “peace process,” we have arrived at the end of the
road.
And yet I’m optimistic that 2011 will witness a game-changing “break”
that will create a new set of circumstances in which a just peace is
possible. That jolt which smashes the present dead-end paradigm must
come from outside the present “process.” It can take one of two forms.
The first possible game-changer is already being discussed: a unilateral
declaration by the Palestinian Authority of a state based on the 1949
armistice lines (the 1967 “Green Line”), which then applies for
membership in the UN. This, I believe, would force the hand of the
international community. Most of the countries of the world would
recognize a Palestinian state – including not a few in Europe – placing
the US, Britain, Germany and other reluctant powers in a difficult if not
impossible situation, including isolation and even irrelevancy. Indeed, a
Palestinians declaration of independence within those boundaries
would not be a unilateral act but rather one done in agreement with
the member states of the UN, who have accepted the 1949/1967
borders as the basis of a solution. It conforms as well to the Road Map
initiative led by the US itself.
Such a scenario, while still possible given the deadlock in negotiations,
is unlikely, if only because the leadership of the Palestinian Authority
lacks the courage to undertake such a bold initiative. A second one
seems more likely: in 2011, the Palestinian Authority will either resign
or collapse, throwing the Occupation back on the lap of Israel. Given
the deadlock in negotiations, I can’t see the PA lasting even until
August, when (sort-of) Prime Minister Salem Fayyad expects the
international community to give the Palestinians a state. Even if the
90-day settlement freeze eventually comes into effect, Netanyahu will
not negotiate borders during that period, the only issue worth
discussing. Either fed up to the point of resigning – Abbas may be weak
and pliable, but he is not a collaborator – or having lost so much
credibility with its own people that it simply collapses, the fall of the PA
would end definitively the present “process.”
The end or fall of the PA would create an intolerable and unsustainable
situation. Israel would be forced to retake by force all the Occupied
Territories, and unwilling to allow Hamas to step into the vacuum,
would have to do so violently, perhaps even invading Gaza again and
assuming permanent control. Having to support four million
impoverished Palestinians with no economic infrastructure whatsoever
would be an impossible burden (and hopefully the “donor community”
would not enable the re-occupation by stepping in to prevent a
“humanitarian crisis,” as it does today). Such a move on the part of
Israel would also inflame the Muslim world and generate massive
protests worldwide, again forcing the hand of the international
community. Looked at in this way, the Palestinians have one source of
enormous clout: they are the gatekeepers. Until they – the Palestinian
people as a whole, not the PA – say the conflict is over, it’s not over.
Israel and its erstwhile allies have the ability to make life almost
unbearable for the Palestinians, but they cannot impose apartheid or
warehousing. We, the millions supporting the Palestinian struggle the
world over, will not let it go until the Palestinians signal that they have
arrived at a settlement that they can live with. Until then, the conflict
will remain open and globally disruptive.
If any of these scenarios comes about and new possibilities of peace
arise out of the violence and chaos that will ensue, the real question is:
where will we be, the people who support a just, inclusive, workable
and sustainable peace? Here in Israel/Palestine, unfortunately, there is
no discussion over what may happen in the next year. Not only do we
of the Palestinian and Israeli peace movements fail to give adequate
direction and leadership to our civil society allies abroad, we tend to
pursue “politics as normal” disconnected from the political processes
around us, more reactive than pro-active. Despite its crucial
importance to the Palestinian struggle, for instance, the BDS campaign
moves along and accumulates strength, but is not accompanied by
focused, timely campaigns intended to seize a political moment. When
the Gaza flotilla was attacked and Israel was reeling from international
condemnation, Palestinian and Israeli activists from all over the world –
including Palestine/Israel – should have kicked into action. Sympathetic
parliamentarians (and members of Congress) the world over should
have been induced to introduce bills saying that if the Occupation does
not end in a year their governments will end all military aid to Israel
and preferential treatment. They might not have carried the day, but
imagine the public debate they would have generated at that point of
time. Instead the political moment fizzled.
We are at the cusp of another such moment today, and we still have
time – though not much time – to organize. Activist and civil society
groups abroad should ask their Palestinian and Israeli counterparts for
their evaluation of the political moment and suggestions on what to do
should the Palestinian Authority collapse together with the “peace
process.” Thought should be given over how to transform the BDS
campaign and the infrastructure of resistance it is creating from a
blunt instrument into one capable of more focused resistance – of
mobilizing churches, trade unions and universities, for example, and by
priming sympathetic politicians to act when the moment arrives? In the
absence of an ANC-type organization to direct us, we have a much
more difficult job of communicating and of coordinating our actions.
But we are in touch with one another. The political moment looming
just weeks or months ahead demands our attention.
Life in the Occupied Territories is about to get even more difficult, I
believe, but perhaps we are finally approaching the breaking point. If
that is the case, we must be there for the Palestinians on all the fronts:
to protect them, to play our role in pushing the Occupation into
unsustainability, to resist re-occupation, to act as watchdogs over
political “processes” that threaten to impose apartheid in the guise of
a two-state solution and, ultimately, to ensure that a just and lasting
peace emerges. As weak and failed attempts by governments head for
collapse, we must pick up the slack. 2011 is upon us.
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Israel's Palestinian partner is ready and waiting

Abdallah Abu Rahma, a Palestinian peace activist in the West
Bank, and his story exemplifies the complexity of the current
situation.
By Libby Lenkinski Friedlander, Haaretz, 24 September 2010
For most Israelis, who have had little or no interaction with Palestinians
for at least the past decade, the "Palestinian partner" remains an
abstract concept. As a result, we spend a lot of time seeking a clear
definition of what that ideal partner for ending the occupation would
be: Who would be acceptable? What is the ideal profile? As a civil
society worker, I have a face for the Palestinian partner that I want to
see, in the abstract and in flesh and blood. I have met him. But my
Palestinian partner is now in jail as a "security prisoner" - convicted of
illegal acts and facing a harsh sentence to be determined by a military
judge in the coming weeks.
I met Abdallah Abu Rahma in 2009 when I was handling media for
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. Among other activities, PHR
provided first-aid training to Palestinian, Israeli and international
activists after the death of Bassem Abu Rahma, who was killed in Bil'in
that April after being shot in the chest with a tear-gas canister at one
of the weekly protests that have been held in the village since
February 2005. Abdallah, a 39-year-old high-school teacher and father
of three, and a distant relative of Bassem's, was Bil'in's media
coordinator, and thus my direct counterpart and partner in the project.
We were in touch daily and met several times. Abdallah was always in
his trademark suit and tie, an outfit that is a source of affectionate
attention among the Israeli activist crowd.
One of the first things that struck me when I attended a pre-sentencing
hearing at Ofer prison for him last week was that he was no longer in
his suit. A brown prison outfit and ankle chains replaced the usual tie,
starched shirt and handkerchief. Abdallah, a dignified, formal man, was
now being tried and sentenced by a military court system that lumps
legitimate and illegitimate protest together - that is, violent and
nonviolent, legal and illegal. This system does not see the partner that
I worked with - it sees only a threat. Palestinian activism - violent or
not - is always perceived as threatening to Israeli security.
Israelis say they have been wondering for years when Palestinian
leaders who preach nonviolence will emerge. But when Palestinians
began a civil protest against the separation barrier that sliced through
their lives, Israel resurrected Military Order 101. That deems any
gathering of more than 10 people illegal unless they obtain a permit
from the military commander of the West Bank. Abdallah and
organizers like him - who have chosen, both in principle and through
their actions, the route of nonviolence and civil disobedience - are the
kind of partners we said we wanted. And now they are being arrested
for doing just the thing we said we hoped they'd do.
And why did Israel start using 101? "Stone-throwing."
"Stone-throwing" is a term that categorizes all Palestinian civil
disobedience as violent, makes protests impossible long before the
first stone is thrown, and has given Israeli military officials carte
blanche for implementing a range of policies that seem to be aimed at
quashing any political organizing in the West Bank.
Like so many policies of the occupation - segregated roads, curfews,
etc. - Israel has thus chosen a sweeping policy that limits the basic
rights and liberties of all because of the perceived risk posed by a few -
in this case, the stone-throwers. The sweeping nature of 101 a priori
categorizes all demonstrations under the occupation as illegal. And
while the military has the authority to arrest stone-throwers, it prefers
to make legitimate, nonviolent protest impossible.
Abdallah organized protests because the separation barrier, which is
built on his village's lands, and whose route the High Court ordered to
be changed in its decision of September 2007, still stands where it was
originally erected. He says that his political struggle has not ended and
that, as a committed activist and human rights defender, he will not be
deterred by arrests and jail time from carrying out the organizing work
that still needs to be done. The prosecution has said it wants to make
an example of him, and wants him to be sentenced to more than the
usual two years that come with these charges.
I want him and other Palestinian grass-roots nonviolent organizers to
be free to carry on their political struggle together with Israeli partners
and supporters. For the past nine months, while he has been on trial
for organizing illegal protests and incitement to violence, Abdallah Abu
Rahma has been in detention, torn away from his wife, three children
and the young students he could be teaching, because Israel has
apparently decided that civic activism, nonviolent protest or any kind
of dissidence in Palestine is illegal.
On my way into the pre-sentencing hearing last week, I braced myself,
expecting to see a shell of the Abdallah that was imprisoned nine
months ago. But the same upright person walked in. He was greeted
by a room full of Israelis, foreign diplomats and family members - and
insisted on speaking at the end of the hearing. He stood and said: "I
was raised to believe in peace, coexistence and nonviolence. This is
what I have passed on to my children and my students."
This is our Palestinian partner.
Back to Top

Night raid in Bil’in

By Hamde Abu Rahme, MondoWeiss, 9 November 2010
(Photos: Hamde Abu
Rahme)
Today, November 9 at
about 3:00 in the
morning, the Israeli
army entered the
village of Bil'in. About
50 soldiers entered the
village by jeep and foot.
When they arrived at
the two targeted
houses, they ran and took positions outside while a number of soldiers
entered the house.
At first the soldiers were hammering on the door of one house,
demanding to see 30-year old Ashraf al-Khatib. It turned out they went
to the wrong house. They then went to another house – forcing one of
Ashraf's brothers to show them where Ashraf lives. Soldiers then
entered that house, and his brother's family's house, and again they
woke up the family, asking for Ashraf al-Khatib. His brother, Haytham
al-Khatib, is a journalist from the human right's group B'tselem and
was of the ones woken up by the army. Even though they entered a
house where their target didn't live, they stayed there for about one
and a half hours, searching all the rooms.
Haytham al-Khatib told me about his 6-year-old son's reaction to
waking up to see dozens of soldiers in his house, "he asked me to close
the door, because he didn't want to see them." Haytham himself was
prevented when he wanted to record the raid in his family's houses –
the soldiers simply locked him in a room for more than an hour, away
from his children and wife. The children in the houses are ages 1,5 and
8 years old, and this is not the first time they have seen their homes
raided at night.
However, after 1.5 hours of searching for the target in three houses,
two of which he doesn't reside in, Ashraf al-Khatib was not found. Five
weeks ago Ashraf was shot in his leg with live ammunition by an Israeli
soldier during a demonstration in Bil'in. The bullet went through his
leg, breaking the bone. Even though he was heavily injured and in
major pain, the soldiers tried to arrest him. Luckily he was brought to
safety, and then taken to a hospital for surgery by fellow protesters.
Tonight the army decided to come and take him in front of his wife and
1.5 year old daughter instead.
The soldiers finally retreated from the targeted houses by foot, walking
toward the military road that follows the illegal segregation fence in
Bil'in, at about 4.30 AM. The village of Bil'in has suffered from frequent
night raids over the last few years, and a number of villagers have
been taken for interrogation and imprisoned for their non-violent
resistance to the occupation and segregation wall on Bil'in's land.
 Back to Top

Governor of the Palestinian Monetary Authority:

Stanley and Me
By David Lipkin, Ma’ariv, “Asakim” economic supplement, 8 October
2010
Washington -- [October 8] The leading world economic figures and
governors of central banks who attended the annual conference of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) certainly did not hesitate before
settling into their ample rooms in one of the luxury hotels in the US
capital. Therefore, the choice of Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz
to stay at the Palomar boutique hotel was not surprising. But one of
the participants who was invited to the conference, and became a
sought-after partner for discussions with all the world economic
leaders, chose none other than a 3-star hotel, the Renaissance. Dr.
Jihad al-Wazir is known to Israeli readers less for his post—which is the
equivalent of the governor of the Palestinian central bank—and more
for his father’s name, the arch-murderer Abu Jihad.
For more than two years, al-Wazir, in his post as governor of the
Palestinian Monetary Authority, has been laying the infrastructure for
the economic institutions of the state in the making. Since the trauma
of the derailment of the peace talks at the start of the decade, the idea
of the Palestinian state has been revived, and al-Wazir is preparing the
economic groundwork for its day of birth against the backdrop of the
resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority.
However, along with the establishment of an independent central
bank, replacing the shekel with a Palestinian currency and linking it to
one of the large international currencies, al-Wazir is preparing to
prevent upheavals in the Palestinian banking system, in case the talks
should fail. In a special interview to Ma’ariv, which was held this week
in Washington, al-Wazir reveals that he is preparing for another
scenario, one which he describes as possible, in which the security
situation will deteriorate into another Intifada. “If the opportunity to
reach an agreement is missed this time, we will return to another crisis
and an escalation in the relations, with everything this entails. It is a
shame to miss the opportunity,” he says.
In preparation for Palestinian independence, al-Wazir is working to
implement a monetary reform that will assure the Palestinian state
economic independence and will reduce its dependence on Israel.
“Teams from the Monetary Authority and the Palestinian Finance
Ministry are now examining several economic models for the future of
the relations with Israel, which is the large neighbor of the independent
state that will be established, and models for the relationship with
Europe on one hand and with the Arab states on the other.” He says,
“the work is underway, and it will determine, among other things,
whether the Palestinian pound will be linked to the dollar or the euro,
after we decide on issuing a Palestinian pound—an essential step for
the independence of the future state.”
Not the Wild West
Al-Wazir has served as governor of the Palestine Monetary Authority for
over two years. He is among the associates of Palestinian Prime
Minister Salam Fayyad, and was his deputy when the latter served as
finance minister. When the Hamas government was formed, al-Wazir
left his post and was appointed as deputy governor of the Monetary
Authority, and at the beginning of 2008 was appointed as governor of
the authority.
Al-Wazir, 47, graduated electronic engineering studies at Marquette
University in Milwaukee, and holds a doctorate in business
administration from Loughborough University in Britain. He is the son
of arch-murderer Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad)—the deputy of Yasser
Arafat, who was responsible for some of the most murderous terror
attacks in the 1970s, and was assassinated in his home in Tunisia in
the late 1980s, according to foreign reports by Israel. More than 30
years later, the governor of the Monetary Authority maintains close
relations with his Israeli counterparts. He says, “I have close working
relations with Stanley Fischer. I have known him since his days at the
IMF, and I have only good words for the help that he gives us in solving
problems, along with [Supervisor of Banks] Rony Hizkiyahu.” In
addition to his ties with Fischer, al-Wazir intends to meet during his
stay in Washington with several top officials of Israeli banks, in order to
arrange the relationship between them concerning the absorption of
surplus shekels from the West Bank.
The extent of Palestinian trade with Israel is NIS 20 billion per year, in
addition to a large amount of funds that flow into the West Bank as a
result of the labor of Palestinian workers in Israeli territory. As a result,
surplus shekels accumulated in the Palestinian banks, and for a certain
period the Israeli banks refused to receive these surpluses. This
required the intervention of the Bank of Israel, which is currently
formulating a solution to the problem.
Another issue that requires cooperation between al-Wazir and the
Israeli authorities is the issue of paying National Insurance allowances
to people in Gaza who worked in Israel, paid National Insurance fees
and were injured in work accidents. Al-Wazir notes that “the PA
created a mechanism for transferring National Insurance funds to
Gaza, where most of the people are poverty-stricken and are waiting
for these funds. This will be done by depositing the money in bank
accounts that were opened for them. But the National Insurance
Institute has not yet transferred these funds.”
These are not the only difficulties faced by al-Wazir. The dreams he
envisions for the Palestinian economy are grand—but managing an
economy that has not yet gained independence is a difficult and
complex task. The governor of the Monetary Authority cannot set the
interest rate in the Palestinian economy, and does not have all the
economic tools necessary to ensure price stability—the main task of
the Bank of Israel, for example.
Despite the fact that his powers are limited, al-Wazir’s hands are filled
with work. Similarly to his counterpart Fischer, one of the
achievements of the governor of the Monetary Authority is a significant
reduction of the number of fees that the banks collect: from 194 fees
to only 64. […]
Another of al-Wazir’s plans is to increase the capital of the banks, and
he plans to raise the required minimal capital from USD 50 million to
USD 100 million—a measure that will require a merger of some of the
banks operating in the PA. There are currently 18 banks operating in
the West Bank and Gaza, which serve as representatives of Jordanian
and Egyptian banks, along with the global HSBC bank and small
Palestinian banks. In total, 200 bank branches operate there, and al-
Wazir’s goal is to reach a number of 12 banks and to enlarge the
number of branches.
Al-Wazir is displeased by the image of the Palestinian banks in Israel,
according to which they act as if they were in the Wild West, without
proper supervision. The governor of the Monetary Authority firmly
rejects this image, stating that the Palestinian banking system is part
of the international banking system, and the PA has all the modern
tools to supervise the banks. Thanks to the credit rating system, he
adds, we were able to permit the banks to extend credit to residents of
the villages and the poor population.
The Palestinian banks were not harmed by the global financial crisis,
although al-Wazir explains that they missed the opportunity to receive
funds from the Persian Gulf states. Regardless of the international
crisis, al-Wazir notes that a significant increase was recently recorded
in the number of mortgages given by the banks, thanks to
improvements made in this field. Among other things, a credit rating
system for private consumers was instituted, including rural areas.
The result was that an increase of over USD 1 billion was recorded in
the mortgages issued by Palestinian banks in the past year.
The Monetary Authority governor emphasizes that he also has at his
disposal an effective system working against money laundering, which
has proven itself in the past years. He says, “this supervision system
also operates in Gaza. There is a ‘Great Wall of China’ that separates
between the Hamas government and the banks. The banks know that
they have to act according to the laws preventing money laundering,
and therefore they have to be cautious in accepting large deposits.”
Q: How do you explain the fact that in the first half of 2010, the Gaza
economy grew by 16% and the West Bank economy grew by 9%?
“Until this year, Gaza was considered an economy with 0% growth and
a lack of economic activity. But the steps taken to ease the economic
blockade on Gaza made it possible to import goods and increase
consumption. Despite this, the situation there continues to be poor.
Things have to be put into perspective: After a war, there is a
considerable increase in growth, but still, a growth forecast of 16% is
too optimistic, in my opinion.
“As for the growth in the West Bank, this represents different
components, including the entry of funds from donor countries, an
improvement in the economic situation and a greater expression of
confidence in the economic system, an increase in granting mortgages
and removing some of the IDF roadblocks on West Bank roads.
Despite everything, it should be remembered that the GDP in the West
Bank dropped in the years 1994-2010 due to the Israeli occupation.
You have to understand that there is no economic development when
one is under occupation.”

Back to Top

UN will be judged on whether it upholds Palestinian

rights
By Richard Falk, The Electronic Intifada, 5 November 2010
The following is an oral presentation made by Richard Falk, Special
Rapporteur on the Situation of human rights in the Palestinian
Territories occupied since 1967, to the United Nations General
Assembly on 20 October 2010:
As this is my last report to the General Assembly in my term as Special
Rapporteur on the Situation of human rights in the Palestinian
territories occupied since 1967 it seems appropriate to describe some
of the special difficulties that have faced the mandate-holder in
discharging the functions of the position. The most salient of these
difficulties involves the non-cooperation of the Government of Israel.
Israel has refused to fulfill its obligations as a member of the United
Nations by its repeated failures to allow the special rapporteur to enter
Israel so as to visit periodically the occupied territories of the West
Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza ever since his expulsion on 14
December 2008 from Ben Gurion Airport when attempting to enter the
country. This level of non-cooperation greatly exceeds that associated
with the efforts of my predecessor, the distinguished South African
international lawyer John Dugard who was allowed to enter Israel for
purposes of the mandate, but denied access to Israeli political and
military officials charged with administering the occupation. It should
be pointed out that this record of non-cooperation was extended to
such related important UN undertakings, including the "Fact Finding
Mission on the Gaza Conflict," widely known as the Goldstone report,
and more recently in relation to the fact-finding panel appointed by the
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate the allegations
surrounding the flotilla incident of 31 May 2010. In each of these
instances Israel reinforced this posture of non-cooperation by engaging
in a politics of deflection, defaming the messenger and the auspices
rather than contesting and responding to the findings and
recommendations of the reports.
The United Nations may also be faulted by its failure to respond more
strongly to complaints arising from this Israeli pattern of non-
cooperation. It sets a most unfortunate precedent that has been
coupled by the unwillingness to implement the recommendation made
by my prior reports, as well as in relation to the Goldstone report.
Widely-held impressions of Israeli impunity are thereby encouraged, as
well as the lack of political will within the United Nations itself to take
the obligations of international law seriously, and even those
associated with its own Charter.
This mandate has also been hampered to some extent, as well, by the
Human Rights Council and by the Palestinian Authority. In my initial
report to the Human Rights Council I proposed that the mandate be
reformulated to allow for the consideration of Palestinian violations of
international human rights law, international humanitarian law and
international criminal law, but this proposal was widely criticized and
ignored. There were understandable concerns about creating the
misleading impression that both parties, the occupier and the
occupied, were equally responsible in a situation where one side was in
control and the other being victimized. The realities of fact and law
preclude an indulgence of such a false symmetry, and would only have
had the public relations advantage of balancing the apparent scope of
inquiry. Such an adjustment would have taken some account of
criticisms suggesting that an impression of bias and unfairness was
embedded in the mandate, but it was not to be due to strong
opposition among the majority of governments represented in the
Human Rights Council to making any modifications in the existing
language of the mandate. Although in recent months I have enjoyed
helpful cooperation from the Palestinian Authority by way of feedback
and the supply of helpful information pertaining to the occupation,
earlier in my tenure I felt considerable pressure from the Palestinian
Authority on my independence as a special rapporteur, particularly
with respect to reporting accurately on the situation within Gaza. I was
also disappointed by the failure of the Human Rights Council to do
more to support my independence, despite my forwarding of a formal
complaint to the Coordinating Committee. As with the issue of non-
cooperation, there is an unfortunate precedent set if the Human Rights
Council is not vigilant in its protection of the independence of its
mandate holders.
My latest report itself focuses on several important developments
pertaining to the occupation. It points out that due to the very acute
issues associated with the persisting blockade of Gaza, there has been
a tendency to overlook Israeli encroachments on the rights of the
Palestinian people living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It
concludes that the cumulative effects of the settlements, the security
wall and the extensive settler only road network has been to establish
a new political reality -- converting the conditions of de jure occupation
into a set of circumstances properly understood as de facto or creeping
annexation. In a different manner, but with comparable results, the
extension of Jewish presence in East Jerusalem by way of unlawful
settlements, house demolitions, revocations of Palestinian residence
rights, makes it increasingly difficult to envisage a Palestinian capital in
East Jerusalem, another widely-assumed premise of the Quartet
Roadmap and expectations associated with past and present inter-
governmental negotiations.
Such an assessment is important as it has been assumed that the
occupation was temporary and reversible in conformity to Security
Council Resolution 242 calling for Israeli withdrawal from territory
occupied during the 1967 War and forming the political and ethical
foundation for the widely-held assumption that Palestinian rights of
self-determination would be satisfied by the establishment of an
independent and sovereign Palestinian state on presently occupied
territories. International negotiations, including those presently
paused, have proceeded on that assumption. However, if the
conditions on the West Bank and East Jerusalem are substantially
irreversible for political and practical reasons, it becomes misleading
and diversionary to continue adherence to the two-state consensus. To
the extent that this annexationist perception is accurate it lends
credibility to the assertion that the Israeli occupation has many
features of settler colonialism, and if so, runs directly contrary to the
rights of all peoples to live free of alien rule, a position affirmed in
common Article 1 of both UN human rights covenants and an
elemental feature of international customary law. This view is
furthered by the apartheid features of the occupation based on dual
and discriminatory legal structure for the occupied Palestinians and the
unlawfully present settler population, the restrictions on Palestinian
mobility, permit and residence manipulations, and roads on which
Palestinians are disallowed. To indicate these apartheid features is not
intended to set up a comparison with apartheid South Africa, but to call
attention to the anti-apartheid norm embodied in the Convention
Against the Crime of Apartheid, and then incorporated into the Rome
Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998) that in Article 7
made apartheid a distinct crime against humanity.
Because so much attention has been devoted to Gaza during the
course of the last several years it is often assumed that material
conditions in the West Bank are acceptable. Such an impression is
strengthened by reports that economic growth in the West Bank
reached 8.5 percent in 2009, mainly as a result of capital investment
clustered around Ramallah. What is not sufficiently noticed is the
actual living realities of the people. For instance, in a 2009 study by
Save the Children, UK (STCUK) entitled "Life on the Edge" it was
reported that in Area C, which is totally under Israeli military
administration and comprises 60 percent of West Bank territory, the
conditions of the more than 40,000 Palestinians are worse than in
Gaza. According to STCUK 79 percent of the communities in Area C are
unable to provide sufficient nutritious food to the Palestinian
inhabitants as compared to 61 percent of communities in Gaza. STCUK
concluded that the overall situation in Area C for all human necessities
including health clinics, food, water and shelter had reached "a crisis
point." Another important set of issues surrounds a surge of settler
violence directed against the person and property of Palestinian living
in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including documented attacks on
mosques and the burning, and even poisoning, of many olive trees on
Palestinian land. Here, too, the response of the international
community to this unlawful violence has been disappointing, as has
been consistent failures of the Israeli occupying forces to fulfill their
obligations to protect Palestinian and their property and to apprehend
Israeli perpetrators.
The situation is Gaza remains disturbing from the perspective of
human rights and international law despite the welcome partial easing
of the comprehensive blockade in the aftermath of the 31 May attack
on the six-ship flotilla carrying humanitarian assistance. As the British
Prime Minister observed on 27 July 2010 during a visit to Turkey, "Gaza
cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp." According
to the latest available information the entry of basic necessities to
Gaza remains at one-third the level that existed prior to when the
blockade was established in June 2007. Furthermore, the economy of
Gaza had depended on the ability to export, and this has continued to
be prohibited by Israeli policy, with the resulting destruction of more
than 90 percent of Gazan entrepreneurial activity. The blockade is a
form of collective punishment, prohibited by Article 33 of the Fourth
Geneva Convention, and was declared unlawful by the Human Rights
Council panel tasked with investigating the flotilla incident on the
further reasoning that the suffering inflicted on the civilian population
of Gaza was disproportionate to any Israeli security justification. The
panel report also found, in conformity with the overwhelming
consensus among informed opinion, that the attacks on the flotilla in
international waters were contrary to international law and reliant on
excessive force. It should be pointed out that the isolation of the 1.5
million residents of Gaza for several years, including the disallowance
of study in West Bank universities and normal social contact with
family members, exerts enormous psychological pressure that is
contrary to the obligations of the occupying power to ensure as much
normalcy as possible for the occupied civilian population, subject only
to legitimate security concerns.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, it seems relevant to call attention to two of the
recommendations in the report that arise from the legal analysis of the
occupation. In particular, it is time, after 43 years, to acknowledge the
intolerable burdens of prolonged occupation on a civilian population.
The report urges a formal study of the human rights aspects of
prolonged occupation under either the auspices of the Human Rights
Council or of a respected nongovernmental organization such as the
International Committee of the Red Cross or Human Rights Watch.
Such a study should pay particular attention to the plight of persons
confined to refugee camps in the occupied territories and neighboring
countries, as well as to overall human rights, which is an aggravated
consequence of occupation. The other recommendation that seems
responsive to recent developments is to encourage UN support for
both efforts to send humanitarian assistance direct to the people of
Gaza in defiance of the persistence of the unlawful blockade and the
boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign that seeks to
respond to the failure of Israel to uphold its obligations under
international law with respect to the Palestinian people. The BDS
campaign represents a recognition that neither governments nor the
United Nations are prepared or able to uphold Palestinian rights. In this
respect, it should be recalled that the anti-apartheid campaign of the
late 1980s was strongly endorsed by the United Nations.
It is important, distinguished delegates, that urgent and tangible
attention be devoted by this body to the ongoing ordeal of the
Palestinian people whose fundamental rights are being daily violated in
numerous and ways. This intolerable, immoral and unlawful occupation
must be brought to an end, and there is no present prospect that
traditional diplomacy will achieve this goal. The United Nations will be
judged now and in the future by whether it contributes, at long last, to
the long-deferred realization of the Palestinian right of self-
determination, and thereby brings a just peace to both peoples.

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Palestinian territories: “Prolonged occupation, a new
type of crime against humanity” – UN human rights
expert
Statement of Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on the
Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories on the
International day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people:
Geneva, 29 November 2010
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights
on Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 wishes to express
sympathy for the Palestinian people who continue after more than 43
years to live under Israeli occupation that daily violates many of their
fundamental and inalienable human rights.
Above all, the failure to resolve the underlying conflict between
Palestine and Israel in such a manner as to realize after decades of
delay the Palestinians’ right to self-determination is of urgent concern.
It should be observed, also, that negotiation between the parties to the
conflict needs to be guided by the implementation of several principles
of international law if a settlement of the conflict is to achieve
Palestinian self-determination. These principles, as set forth in the
General Assembly Resolution 48/158, 20 December 1993, include the
following: (1) withdrawal from Palestinian territory occupied since
1967, including Jerusalem; (2) resolving the Palestinian refugee
problem in accordance with General Assembly Resolution 181 and
subsequent resolutions; (3) dismantling settlements established during
the occupation; (4) fixing of secure and internationally recognized
borders; (5) guaranteeing free access to sacred sites and religious
buildings throughout historic Palestine. A peace process that does not
heed these guidelines, with appropriate degrees of flexible
implementation, cannot realize either self-determination for the
Palestinian people or peace with security and justice for both
Palestinians and Israelis.
The ongoing realities of the occupation have cumulatively altered the
character of the Palestinian territories, especially due to the continuing
expansion of Israeli settlements which are unlawful under the Fourth
Geneva Convention that prohibits transfer of population from the
occupying power to the occupied territory, that disallows the
construction of a separation wall on occupied Palestinian territory held
unlawful by a 14-1 vote of the judges comprising the International
Court of Justice in 2004, that is an unlawful result of an Israeli-only
road network in the West Bank, and of a proposed rail connection,
linking large settlements to pre-1967 Israel, and that is a consequence
of concerted and accelerated Israeli annexationist efforts in East
Jerusalem by expanding existing settlements and interfering in a
variety of coercive and cruel ways with the residence rights of
Palestinians.
Finally, on this day of solidarity it is important to ponder the special
consequences of prolonged occupation and refugee status, which
inflicts serious physical and mental harm on Palestinians living under
occupation. International humanitarian law was developed under the
assumption that occupation would be temporary and short-lived. The
Palestinian experience suggests the need for a new protocol of
international humanitarian law that addresses the distinctive situation
of prolonged occupation and refugee status, imposing some outer time
limit after which further occupation becomes a distinct violation of
international law, and if not promptly corrected, constitutes a new type
of crime against humanity. The United Nations and the international
community as a whole will be judged in the future by whether effective
action is now taken to end the humanitarian catastrophe that has
befallen the Palestinian people. In this respect, the United Nations, the
governments and the peoples of the world will all be judged complicit
to the extent that this persistent violation of fundamental human rights
is endured without taking the necessary steps in a spirit of urgency
and commitment to bring this abusive occupation to an end and
achieve Palestinian self-determination in accordance with international
law and the dictates of global justice.

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Israel blocking Palestinian officials from using main

Jordan crossing
Only Palestinian President Abbas and Palestinian PM Fayyad
will be allowed to use the Allenby Bridge; nevertheless, former
PM Qureia attempts to cross.
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz, 4 November 2010
Israeli authorities have decided to block any Palestinian official aside
from the president and prime minister from crossing over the Allenby
Bridge from the West Bank into Jordan.
Coordinator of Government Activities in the West Bank Eitan Dangot
announced the decision late Wednesday.
The move seems geared specifically at two senior members of
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement – Ahmed
Qureia and Mahmoud Dahlan – who have made aggressive remarks
about Israel of late.
Despite the warning, Qureia arrived at the crossing late Wednesday
with plans of crossing into Jordan. Qureia is a former Palestinian prime
minister and negotiator.
Dangot's office described the move as an attempt to apply unified
conditions to Palestinian officials, other than Abbas and Palestinian
Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

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The Nobleman and the Horse

By Uri Avnery, 7 November 2010
"Half and half," Prime Minister Levi Eshkol is said to have answered,
when asked whether he wanted tea or coffee.
This joke was intended to parody his hesitation on the eve of the Six-
Day War. (Though secret documents published this week show Eshkol
in a very different light.)
The American public now resembles the man in the joke. They sent to
Washington a large group of Tea Party types, but the coffee drinkers in
the White house are still in control. The Israeli leadership did not know
how to treat the results of this election. Are they good for the Jews or
bad for the Jews?
The big winner of the American election is none other than Benjamin
Netanyahu. His policy is similar to that of his political mentor, Yitzhak
Shamir. It is based on the Jew who had to teach the Polish nobleman’s
horse to read and to write within a year — otherwise the whole shtetel
would be massacred. “A year is a long time,” he tried to soothe his
weeping wife, “Within a year the horse or the nobleman will be dead.”
Shamir’s game was to postpone everything, miss every opportunity to
bring peace closer, gain time. When the pressure on Israel gets
stronger, one has to evade, obstruct, cheat. Sooner or later the
nobleman or the horse will die — and with some luck, both of them.
The situation will change, the pressure will lessen, those who exert the
pressure will disappear.
This is Netanyahu’s strategy, too. To prevent any advance toward
peace, since peace means the evacuation of settlements and the
setting up of a Palestinian state. For two years now he has succeeded
in thwarting every effort by Barack Obama to compel him to start a
real peace process. He has defeated him at every turn, time after time.
Now Obama has suffered a stinging setback at home, and a new
chapter has begun. But the nobleman has not died, and neither has the
horse. How will Obama treat Netanyahu now?
In Jerusalem, there are two contradictory answers to this question.
The first assessment is that there is nothing to fear anymore from
Obama. He is in danger of becoming a one-term president. From now
on, he will be compelled to devote all his time and energy to his effort
to get re-elected. In such a situation, he cannot run the risk of losing
the votes — and the money — of the Jews.
In short: There is nothing to fear anymore. Obama can make gestures
toward the Palestinians and even flex his muscles, but in any real test
with Netanyahu and AIPAC he will be the first to blink.
The contrary assessment is much less rosy for Netanyahu.
No doubt, Obama is full of fury against Netanyahu, and this fury may
by now have turned into real loathing. But he is a man who does not
show negative emotions. He will continue to smile at Netanyahu. But
an enemy in the White house is a dangerous enemy, and a wounded
enemy is even more dangerous. Wounded or not, an American
president is still the most powerful person in the world.
True, the coming presidential election is already casting a long shadow
over Washington. But the beginning of the serious election campaign is
still a year off, and this year may be an opportunity for a determined
American peace initiative. The president may want to show his voters
an impressive achievement in the international arena, and a historic
peace agreement between Israel and Palestine would certainly
constitute such an achievement.
And even if this does not come about, a more serious danger for
Netanyahu may be lurking after November 2012. Obama may be re-
elected. In that case, he may become a very dangerous adversary
indeed. Since he will not be allowed to stand again, he will be immune
to the pressure of the Israel lobby. He will be thinking about his place
in history. And undoubtedly, making peace between Israel and
Palestine would be a historic achievement.
Moreover, the Tea Party may disappear as quickly as it appeared. This
happens in the US every few decades: A wave of madness sweeps over
the country like a tsunami and disappears as if it had never been.
As to the Congress: As far as Israel is concerned, there is no change.
The senators and congressmen dance to the tune of the Israel lobby,
and in this respect there is no difference between Democrats and
Republicans. It “crosses party lines”, as one of the leaders of the lobby
recently boasted.
In short, according to this assessment the clash between Obama and
Netanyahu is inevitable. It will come to a head within two or three
years, maximum. The nobleman will not die, nor will the horse. The
question is whether the Jew will survive.
This personal clash hides a far deeper, far more fundamental one.
There is a lot of blabber about the partnership of the two countries.
About the joint myths of pioneers, fight against the natives, conquest
of a new homeland, a nation of immigrants. About “joint values”.
It all reminds me of Shimon Peres’ blabbering in the 1950s about the
“joint values” that bound France to Israel. The joint values evaporated
the moment France made peace with the Algerian rebels. The French
stance changed overnight. As Charles de Gaulle said: “France has no
friends, France has only interests.”
The United States of America, too, has interests, and their friendships,
too, are temporary. Both in the State Department and in the Pentagon,
the experts know that the present Israeli policy is contrary to the
American national interest. This knowledge finds expression in a
growing number of books by former senior officials and academics, as
well as in the speeches of high-ranking military officers. Lately, it also
underlay an extremely unusual editorial in the New York Times, after
the editors visited this country. And this in a paper anti-Semites call
the Jew York Times!
The US is involved in two expensive wars in Muslim countries — Iraq
and Afghanistan — and in a severe crisis with a third Muslim country —
Iran. All over the “extended Middle East”, its allies are declining, while
its opponents are in the ascendancy.
The opponents are a mixed lot. There is not much all these have in
common, except their opposition to the status quo in the region.
Almost all the experts believe that the unlimited American support for
Israel is the main cause for the Islamic anti-American wave. Most of
them do not speak about this openly, because fear of the Israeli lobby
pervades the entire American political establishment. But even the
most terrifying lobby cannot withstand, in the long run, the inexorable
logic of national interests.
There is something crazy in this situation: Our government is rushing
light-heartedly toward a clash with the only remaining ally we have in
the world. No realistic alternative can be detected on the horizon.
This is, by itself, an ominous fact, because the American Empire is in a
slow but continuing decline in all areas — economic, political, military
and cultural. This is a protracted process that will take many years, but
Israel should be positioning itself to accommodate the rise of new
centers of power. The Netanyahu government is doing the exact
opposite: It is challenging the entire world and acting consistently to
isolate Israel.
Unlike the story about the Jew, the nobleman and the horse — this is
not a joke.

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Survey: 66% of Palestinians support peace

negotiations
By Michael Omer-Man, The Jerusalem Post, 12 November 2010
85% replied that they would be unsupportive of a peace deal in which
compromises were made on key Palestinian issues such as the right of
return, J'lem.
A survey of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip showed that a
66% majority of Palestinians support peace negotiations, with an even
larger majority favoring direct talks, according to a report released by
the Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD) this week.
The survey, conducted between October 20-22, covered Palestinian
attitudes towards the peace process and prospects for peace, but also
revealed rarely-seen numbers regarding popular support for Hamas in
Gaza, confidence in the Palestinian Authority and perceptions of
corruption under PA and Hamas rule.
RELATED:
Majority of Palestinians oppose return to direct talks
Palestinians oppose settlement labor ban
Survey: Palestinians unsure Obama can secure peace
While the data from the survey showed that 66% of Palestinians would
support Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in
negotiations on final status issues, a whopping 85% replied that they
would be unsupportive of a peace deal in which compromises were
made on key Palestinian issues such as the right of return, Jerusalem,
borders and settlements. However, a majority of respondents said that
they considered a two-state solution to be the most realistic/achievable
scenario. Sixty-nine percent of those surveyed rated their attitudes
toward a two-state solution to the conflict, ranging from "essential" to
"tolerable."
One of the questions posed was directly related to the current
obstacles facing the peace process: If any, what conditions must exist
for Abbas to engage in direct negotiations with Israel? the result was
that only 24% of respondents indicated a renewed settlement freeze
was necessary for talks to take place.
Responding to the poll's results that 45% of respondents declared a
one-state solution is "unacceptable," Zionist Organization of America
President Morton A. Klein said the results make it clear that "the vast
majority of Palestinians do not accept Israel's existence under any
circumstances," in a press release on Friday." He continued, "Even the
so-called 'one state solution' is not at all supported if it requires equal
rights and equal power for Jews."
Klein stated that the poll showed, "that the bulk of Palestinians want an
Arab-dominated Palestinian state on all the territory of Israel, not a
peaceful polity of their own alongside Israel." However, the AWRAD
researchers who conducted the poll wrote in their report that a two-
state peace settlement "was identified as the most desirable and most
realistic solution." The report also claimed that their results confirm a
Palestinian, "in-principle commitment" to peace, saying that hesitance
to support the process stems from disappointment in its ability to
deliver results.
Of all of the results, the differences in responses from residents of the
West Bank and those from the Gaza Strip were especially telling.
Gazans consistently gave their local governing bodies negative ratings.
Surprisingly, when asked who they would vote for if Palestinian
elections were held today, 47% of respondents from Gaza said they
would vote for Fatah with only 12% supporting Hamas. The results
showed stronger support for Fatah in the Strip than in the West Bank;
only 38% of those surveyed in the latter region expressed support for
the party.
The same trend showed even stronger support for Mahmoud Abbas in
hypothetical presidential elections. When asked which faction they
trust most, the respondents overwhelmingly stated "Fatah," with only
13% placing their trust in Hamas.
Another of the differences between Gazans and West Bank residents
were their attitudes towards direct negotiations. Eighty-one percent of
Gazans said they support direct negotiations whereas only 68% of
West Bank residents responded positively. However, Gazans were
more likely to support violence as a form of resistance.
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U.S. taxpayers are paying for Israel's West Bank

occupation
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz 16 November 2010
According to a June 2010 fact sheet on the USAID Internet site, last
year American taxpayers funded the paving of 63 kilometers of asphalt
roads in the West Bank.
Travelers along the "original" West Bank roads, the ones enabling
drivers to bypass Palestinian villages, can see signs declaring "USAID
from the American People."
The roads are one of the initiatives of the United States Agency for
International Development for building infrastructure in
underdeveloped countries. Israel has already proudly left the club of
developing countries and is not among the clients of USAID.
Nevertheless, it appears the Smith family of Illinois is making the
occupation a little less expensive for the Cohen family of Petah Tikva.
According to a June 2010 fact sheet on the USAID Internet site, last
year American taxpayers funded the paving of 63 kilometers of
asphalt roads in the West Bank. It also says completion of a road
in the southern part of the West Bank dramatically increased the
amount of trade between Dahriya and Beer Sheva.
What the site doesn't say is that a significant segment of the road goes
through Area C - the 60 percent of the West Bank under exclusive
Israeli civilian and military control and responsibility under the interim
agreement of 1995 (the second Oslo agreement ). The agreement
states: "Territorial jurisdiction includes land (and ) subsoil."
This is not the only occupation-perpetuating road funded by American
money. Dror Etkes, an expert on the settlements, noticed a few days
ago USAID workers energetically laying asphalt on two roads in the
Samaria region (northern West Bank ) that crosses Area C. Israelis
haven't been traveling these roads for years now because the taxpayer
(in this case, the Israeli taxpayer ) has already paved separate, wide,
modern roads for them.
Etkes wondered how it is possible that the Obama administration,
which is vociferously opposed to the continuation of the status quo in
the West Bank, continues to subsidize the road for Israel. "If the state
of Israel is insisting on continuing to hold on and de facto annex the
West Bank," he says, "it should also be allocating the money needed to
take care of the infrastructure."
I asked an American official why the administration isn't demanding of
Israel that it fulfill its obligations and pay the price of the occupation
out of its own pocket.
"Who told you we aren't demanding that?" replied the official. "We are
also demanding a construction freeze in the settlements and you know
at least as well as anyone else what is happening on the ground."
It is worth mentioning that the when the Palestinians sought
permission to pave a short road in Area C to enable access to the
planned town of Rawabi, Israel pulled out the Oslo accord and kicked
them down the stairs. The USAID tractors don't have access to the area
either.
However, when it suits his interest, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
is a stickler for Oslo. A few days ago he announced that unilaterally
declaring a Palestinian state would be considered a violation of the
agreement. Tomorrow, incidentally, will mark the eighth anniversary of
Foreign Minister Netanyahu's statement on Israel radio that "all the
Oslo agreements are null and void."
A USAID spokeswoman responded that the program's infrastructure
projects "respond to the needs of the Palestinian people and are
implemented in response to requests from the Palestinian Authority.
Many of the USAID funded projects cross from one area to another in
accordance with the needs of the Palestinian communities and the
specific project. There are roads and water pipelines that cross through
Area C or are adjacent to Area C as designs require and agreements
with Civil Authorities allow."
No way home
The Oslo agreement, which is so close to Netanyahu's heart, also
states that both sides see "the West Bank and Gaza Strip territory as a
single territorial unit."
Nevertheless, since the outbreak of the second intifada, Israel has cut
off almost entirely the connection between these two areas.
Security authorities make a point of expelling Gazans from the West
Bank and they do not allow residents of Gaza to reunite with their
families in the West Bank.
A year ago, in response to a petition to the High Court of Justice by the
Hamoked Center for the Defense of the Individual, the State
Prosecutor's Office said the policy does not apply to individuals who
took up residence in the West Bank before the year 2000 and "about
whom there exists no negative security material."
Be that as it may, during this past year a number of Palestinians have
been expelled from the West Bank even though they arrived their prior
to the cut-off date, and had no "negative security material" against
them. Several have applied to Hamoked for help.
One of them, M.N., 29, went to Gaza in 2004 to participate in the
mourning for his father. Since then he has been stuck and is in hiding
from Hamas, which has issued an arrest warrant for him.
The coordinator of permits at the Coordination and Liaison Office in the
Israel Defense Forces has recommended that M.N.'s request to return
to the West Bank be granted. In the opinion appended to the
recommendation, the aforementioned response by the prosecutor to
the High Court of Justice is cited.
But the High Court of Justice is one thing and the reality is another. The
Liaison Office's legal adviser rejected the recommendation and wrote
that it is necessary "to be strict about consistency, paying attention to
the fact that approving the request might be a precedent for approving
similar requests." In another case handled by Hamoked, the adviser
wrote that G.J. entered the West Bank in 2000 and should not be
expelled under the guidelines. So why has G.J. been sent to Gaza and
not allowed back in the West Bank?
"The aforementioned is a bachelor and he has no family connection in
Judea and Samaria," was the response. Truly an excellent reason. The
time has come for him to find a bride in Ramallah and marry.

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The endgame for the peace process

Future historians will argue over the precise moment when the
Arab-Israeli peace process died.
Robert Grenier, Al Jazeera 21 November 2010
Future historians will no doubt argue over the precise moment when
the Arab-Israeli peace process died, when the last glimmer of hope for
a two-state solution was irrevocably extinguished. When all is said and
done, and the forensics have been completed, I am sure they will
conclude that the last realistic prospect for an agreement expired quite
some time before now, even if all the players do not quite realise it yet:
anger and denial are always the first stages in the grieving process;
acceptance of reality only comes later.
There are growing signs, however, that the realisation is beginning to
dawn in Ramallah, Tel Aviv and, most strikingly, Washington, that the
peace process, as currently conceived, may finally be dead.
Washington: hoping for a miracle?
We should begin in Washington, in the aftermath of the seven-hour
marathon meeting between Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state,
and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, in New York last
week.
To view the apparent results of that meeting in context, one would
have to recount the gargantuan structure of US military, intelligence,
economic and diplomatic support to Israel, painstakingly constructed
over many decades, for which there would not be space to describe it
all here - if indeed one had the knowledge to do so.
The edifice is so extensive, including direct military aid, weapons
transfers, access to US emergency weapons stocks, pre-positioning of
US military materiel in Israel, US investments in Israeli technology
development, US support for Israel's foreign weapons sales, weapons
co-production agreements, all sorts of loan guarantees, assistance for
settlement of immigrants in Israel - the list goes on - that literally no
single entity in Washington is aware of it all.
In September, the US Congressional Research Service made a
noteworthy attempt to capture it, but was probably only partly
successful, having no access, for example, to classified US
assistance. The annual value of all this is literally incalculable, and well
in excess of the $3bn per year usually cited, to say nothing of critical
US diplomatic support in the UN and elsewhere.
Given all this, confronted with Israel's refusal to extend its partial
moratorium on new settlement construction in the Occupied
Territories, and with anything more than verbal pressure on Israel
literally unthinkable, the US was hard-pressed to come up with
additional inducements which might extend the peace process even a
little further.
Into the breach, as he has done so many times before, stepped the
redoubtable Dennis Ross. Ross, in discussions with an Israeli
counterpart, compiled an extensive list of motivators whose length we
do not yet know, but which was verbally agreed between Clinton and
Netanyahu in New York, and which will be presented in writing for
possible approval by the Israeli cabinet.
We are told it includes a US commitment to block any Palestinian-led
effort to win unilateral UN recognition of a Palestinian state; US
obstruction of efforts either to revive the Goldstone Report at the UN,
or to seek formal UN condemnation of Israel for the deadly Mavi
Marmara incident; an ongoing US commitment to defeat any UN
resolutions aimed at raising Israel's unacknowledged nuclear weapons
programme before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA);
vigorous US diplomatic efforts to counter all attempts to "delegitimise"
Israel in various world fora; and, most importantly, increasing efforts to
further ratchet international sanctions on both Iran and Syria
concerning their respective nuclear and proliferation efforts.
To this the US is adding a commitment to supply Israel with some 20
ultra-modern F-35 aircraft worth $3bn - so new they have not yet
entered the US inventory - as well as a mysterious "comprehensive
security agreement," whose details have not been revealed, but which
may include unilateral US endorsement of Israeli troop deployments in
the Jordan Valley, in the event of an Israeli-Palestinian peace
agreement.
And what is Israel being asked in return? Consider this carefully: in
return for the above written guarantees, Israel will consider agreement
to a brief, one-time-only 90-day extension of the partial settlement
moratorium, which excludes not only East Jerusalem, but also the
cordon sanitaire of settlements which Israel has carefully constructed
to ring the city and deny Palestinian access to it, after which the US
agrees, in writing, never again to request an Israeli settlement
moratorium.
After witnessing US policy toward Israel and the Palestinians for over
30 years, I had thought I was beyond shock. This development,
however, is breathtaking. In effect, along with a whole string of
additional commitments, including some potentially far-reaching
security guarantees which it is apparently afraid to reveal publicly, the
Obama administration is willing to permanently cast aside a policy of
some 40 years' duration, under which the US has at least nominally
labelled Israeli settlements on occupied territory as "obstacles to
peace,". All this in return for a highly conditional settlement pause
which will permit Netanyahu to pocket what the US has given him,
simply wait three months without making any good-faith effort at
compromise, and know in the end that Israel will never again have to
suffer the US' annoying complaints about illegal settlements.
Leave aside the fact that as of this writing, the Israeli cabinet may yet
reject this agreement - which seems even more breathtaking, until one
stops to consider that virtually everything the Americans have offered
the Israelis they could easily obtain in due course without the
moratorium. No, what is telling here is that the American attempt to
win this agreement, lopsided as it is, is an act of sheer desperation.
What gives rise to the desperation, whether it is fear of political
embarrassment at a high-profile diplomatic failure or genuine concern
for US security interests in the region, I cannot say. It seems crystal
clear, however, that the administration sees the next three months as
a last chance. Their stated hope is that if they can get the parties to
the table for this brief additional period, during which they focus solely
on reaching agreement on borders, success in this endeavour will
obviate concerns about settlements and give both sides sufficient
stake in an outcome that they will not abandon the effort.
No one familiar with the substance of the process believes agreement
on borders can be reached in 90 days on the merits; consider
additionally that negotiators will be attempting to reach such a pact
without reference to Jerusalem, and seeking compromise on territory
without recourse to off-setting concessions on other issues, and
success becomes virtually impossible to contemplate.
The Obama administration is coming under heavy criticism for having
no plan which extends beyond the 90 days, if they can get them. There
is no plan for a 91st day because there is unlikely to be one. The
Obama policy, absurd as it seems, is to somehow extend the peace
process marginally, and hope for a miracle. The demise of that hope
carries with it the clear and present danger that residual aspirations for
a two-state solution will shortly be extinguished with it.
Tel Aviv: buyer's remorse?
Meanwhile, in Israel, we are seeing something akin to buyer's remorse.
On the cusp of finally achieving the goal for which Likud has aimed
since its founding in 1973 - that is, an end to the threat of territorial
compromise which would truncate the Zionist project in Palestine - the
Israeli military and intelligence communities, which will have to deal
with the consequences of a permanently failed peace process and the
dissolution of responsible Palestinian governance in the West Bank
which could well follow, are actively voicing their concerns.
Even as ardent a Likudnik as Dan Meridor has recently said to Haaretz:
"I've reached the painful conclusion that keeping all the territory
means a binational state that will endanger the Zionist enterprise. If we
have to give up the Jewish and democratic character (of the state) - I
prefer to give up some of the territory."
The time for such second thoughts has passed, however. Having
succeeded in creating irrevocable facts on the ground, settlements
which no conceivable Israeli government could remove even if it
wanted to, the territory which Meridor and company would conceivably
part with now will not be enough to avoid the fate which they fear in
future: the progressive delegitimation of the current state, and the
eventual rise of a binational state in its place.
Ramallah: terminally gloomy?
The terminal gloom among the tired leadership of the Palestinian
Authority (PA) is palpable. They will not allow themselves to be openly
complicit in a negotiated capitulation to Israel, and yet they cannot
bring themselves to irrevocably abandon the process either.
The recent, relative success of Salam Fayyad, the prime minister, in
bringing some measure of security and good governance to the West
Bank notwithstanding, they know their legitimacy is tied to the hope of
their people for a just peace - a peace they also know, in their hearts,
they cannot deliver. They look to the Americans in hope of salvation,
while the Americans can only hope, impotently, for the same.
Both Israelis and Palestinians know that the relative calm prevailing in
the West Bank and Gaza cannot last indefinitely absent some prospect
for an end to Israeli occupation of the former. No one can see the way
to a near-term solution, and yet neither does anyone yet have the
courage to suggest an alternative future.
That will be the task of a new and probably distant generation of
Israelis and Palestinians.
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Referendum bill uses public as peace deal rubber

stamp
Knesset approves bill mandating referendum before decision
to withdraw from Israeli territory, but does not enable
appeal against decision to reject a peace agreement.
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, 25 November 2010
The bill mandating a referendum before any decision to withdraw from
sovereign Israeli territory enables the public to approve an accepted
peace agreement, but does not enable the public to appeal the
Knesset's decision to reject an agreement which includes withdrawing
from territories.
According to the bill, which was approved by the Knesset on Sunday
with a majority of 65 MKs, a regular majority, (for example of seven in
favor and six against), is enough to terminate a peace agreement that
was approved by the government, if the agreement entails a territorial
withdrawal from East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights or any other land
within the Green Line.
Clause 7a (1) of the bill states that "the question posed before the
voter in a referendum will be: Are you for or against the agreement
between Israel and (the name of the country) that the knesset
approved on (the date of the Knesset approval)?" The emphasis is on
the words "that the Knesset approved."
Clause 7b (2) reiterates the wording of the question that will be
presented in the referendum, that includes the words "that the Knesset
approved," from which stems that the referendum will not be carried
out if the Knesset rejects the agreement. It states that "if the
government brings the decision before the Knesset, as stated in clause
1a (b), the voter in the referendum will be presented with a question:
"are you for or against the government's decision number (the number
of the decision) that the Knesset approved on (the date of the Knesset
approval)?"
The wording of the question contradicts Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's statement that the referendum "enables to pass with
strong public support an agreement that answers the national interests
of Israel."
In fact, the referendum turns the public into an appeals court for its
constituent's decisions, even in the case that there are a majority of 79
votes – to approve a future peace agreement with Palestinians and the
Syrians. The law does not enable the public to grant its support for an
agreement which the majority believes answers Israel's national
interest, and was previously blocked by some sort of majority in the
Knesset.

Back to Top

Israel can't put occupation up for immoral referendum

Israeli democracy at its best: The entire people will decide on
the next peace arrangement, but not on the question of
settlements and annexation, and not on the question of
wars
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 28 November 2010
Israeli democracy at its best: The entire people will decide on the next
peace arrangement, but not on the question of settlements and
annexation, and not on the question of wars. Israeli trickery at its best:
Legislators pass laws relating to the day an arrangement is forged
whose point is to defer that day's arrival for as long as possible. And
Israeli morality at its best: A manifestly immoral question is formulated
for a referendum, and insult is added to injury because only we Israelis,
members of the chosen people, will decide on the fate of another
people which has for generations lived under occupation, and we dare
to call all this tomfoolery democracy. In fact, this is Israeli chutzpah at
its worst.
The question to be addressed in a referendum is immoral. The
continuation of the occupation is now subject to a ballot measure - as
though such a question can conceivably be asked. Voters will be asked
who is in favor of continued occupation, and who is against it.
Exactly as an agreement over stolen property forged in the criminal
underworld would never be acceptable in a courtroom, so too is such a
question about continuing an occupation entirely untenable.
Similarly, the thought that only we will decide whether Syrian residents
of the Golan Heights and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
will receive the right of self determination and basic liberties is utterly
preposterous, and it bears witness to the extent to which values of
morality and justice have become warped and distorted in this country.
The basic fact has long been forgotten, as though it never existed: At
issue here is an illegitimate conquest that is not recognized by any
state in the world.
Under such circumstances, Israelis do not have the right to discuss the
future of this occupation. This elementary fact is perceived here as
delusion because everything pertaining to international law is
dismissed as delusion or anti-Semitism.
If a referendum is to be carried out, it should relate to the sole relevant
question: one state or two?
These two legitimate possibilities should be on the referendum agenda:
The granting of full civil liberties to the conquered population, or the
end of the occupation. Do you really want a referendum? If so, it can
pertain solely to this issue. Do you want democracy? If so, everyone
needs to be asked, including Palestinians.
The problem is that these thoughts are light years away from Israeli
thinking; they are considered out of bounds, and we have built our own
imaginary world in which we are the only actors. The referendum
supported by Benjamin Netanyahu and his government has been
concocted for the sole purpose of throwing up more obstacles to block
a peace arrangement, and to relieve a cowardly leadership of its
duties.
The present government and its like-minded predecessors never
staged referenda about settlement construction, which is a step no less
fateful than territorial withdrawal; nor did they hold referenda about
the annexation of the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem or the
cessation of wars. None of these moves warranted referenda; but for
current decisions the people's consent is suddenly needed, apparently
out of the hope that the people will block any concessions.
Meanwhile there is neither a peace arrangement nor a referendum,
and the damage is mounting. On the other hand, the world is watching
how Israel piles up ever increasing obstacles and difficulties, in order to
preempt any peace agreement.
And why shouldn't there be a referendum under any circumstance -
even a scenario by which the Knesset rejects a proposed arrangement?
The answer is that such a "referendum in any event" arrangement
would encourage and promote the forging of an agreement.
Here's the real question: What the hell do you all want, and where are
we headed? Settlements will keep being built, the occupation will
deepen and consolidate - so what?
How many Israelis could even give an answer to the question: What do
you want to be here in another decade? In two decades? What do you
think will hold here; will the status quo continue?
Does the prime minister have an answer to such questions? Veteran
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat recently described the situation this
way: "I've met Israeli prime ministers who worried about Israeli
security in another 300 years, and somehow I understood that, but a
prime minister whose only worry is what is to be broadcast on the next
news program is something I've never imagined."
Even before the next news broadcast, the time should come for
questions and referenda. Such a moment actually came long ago. But
let's at long last summon the courage and ask ourselves the serious,
genuine questions.

Back to Top
U.S.-Israel relations: Netanyahu’s self-made problem
Netanyahu’s habit of being economical with the truth was
never more evident than in the building-freeze “deal”.
By Yossi Gurvitz, 27 November 2010
Binyamin Netanyahu has a, shall we say, complex relationship with
reality.
For starters, he is given to bouts of often embarrassing fantasy, trying
to attach himself to famous events. In the past, speaking to supporters
of the assassinated racist Rehav’am Zeevi, he said Zeevi was one of
the most important ministers of his cabinet, who used to give him
private advice; problem was, Zeevi never served in Netanyahu’s
cabinet. In a bizarre outburst in 2005, he claimed that Italy’s prime
minister, Silvio Berlusconi, asked him to become Finance Minister, but
that he rejected the offer out of patriotic feelings. The likelihood of
such an offer actually being made is vanishingly small.
In one of his weirdest fantasies, Netanyahu placed himself in Ariel
Sharon’s command APC during the Yom Kippur War. Everyone involved
agrees (Hebrew) no such thing has ever happened, and the timing of
the fantasy – Sharon’s coma – seems to indicate Netanyahu was trying
to simply bask in Sharon’s reflected glory. A few weeks back, during
the miners’ crisis in Chile, Netanyahu’s bureau published an official
communiqué, saying that Netanyahu predicted the disaster in his 1987
book on terrorism. Needless to say, he did nothing of the sort. He
merely wrote that a mining disaster “may capture the attention of a
whole nation for a long while”. Which, even in 1987, did not require
occult powers of prophecy.
Aside from flights of fancy, the man is given to quick and facile lies.
Veteran parliamentarian Yossi Sarid once remarked how, when arguing
about the pronunciation of an Hebrew word, Netanyahu convinced him
he was right because, Netanyahu said, he happened to look the word
up in the dictionary the day before. Returning home, Sarid took out his
dictionary. Needless to say, Netanyahu was lying.
So, when are looking at the strange events of the past two weeks, it
would be helpful to keep in mind this side of Netanyahu. As everyone
would recall, Netanyahu came home in triumph, saying that after a
meeting of seven hours with Secretary of State Clinton, he managed to
get the following deal. He would arrange for a settlement freeze for
three months, in return for which he will receive the following:
A. The US would use its veto to prevent anti-Israeli resolutions in the
UN.
B. Israel would receive 20 F-35 fighters as a present from the US.
C. The Americans will not insist on freezing building in Jerusalem, and
will not ask for any more freezing.
Most Israeli commentators said at the time that this deal is too good to
be true. And they were right. That was possibly the biggest whopper
Netanyahu sold the Israeli public, which is saying something. I mean,
we’re talking about a man who persuaded a large segment of the
population whom he drove into penury that he was an excellent
finance minister.
Soon after Netanyahu landed, the package started to unravel. That
epic 7-hours meeting with Clinton, reminiscent of those endless
diplomatic meetings with Assad senior? Didn’t happen. They took a
long break, long enough for Netanyahu to take his son to an Italian
restaurant. Suspiciously enough, Netanyahu demanded there would be
no protocol of the meeting.
Those F-35s fighters? Israel will get them, but it’ll have to pay for ‘em.
That veto? Israel always had it. And anyway, there’s no veto in the
General Assembly, only in the Security Council. As for the status of
Jerusalem, a “senior American official” said bluntly that when
Netanyahu says the US agreed that East Jerusalem would be exempt
from building freeze, he “was not telling the truth” (Hebrew).
So, to sum up, what Netanyahu managed to do during his meeting with
Clinton was take things which Israel used to take for granted – fighter
planes, the American veto and make them conditional on a
settlement freeze. We now learn his expert maneuvers managed to
place a long term strategic agreement with the US at risk. He then
dressed up this diplomatic fiasco as a great victory, knowing the Israeli
media will, as usual, drink unquestioningly from his lap.
For the past two weeks, Netanyahu has been trying to get the
Administration to provide him with those assurances in writings. If what
he said was true, this should have taken minutes. Since he lied, it isn’t.
His new outburst against the Palestinians, in the Western Wall affair,
should be seen in this light: an attempt to find an excuse to extricate
himself from a blind alley into which he drove himself.
But, even assuming he does, the Obama administration will be well
within its right to say that Netanyahu has forfeited US military aid and
the veto. Advantage: Obama.

Back to Top

Defense analyst on the looming US-Israel ’security

catastrophe’
By Didi Remez, 26 November 2010
Read this one in full.
Alex Fishman is Yediot’s veteran defense analyst. Besides providing a
detailed post-mortem of the latest fiasco in US-Israeli diplomacy, he
makes a very blunt allegation: Netanyahu is selling out the IDF’s self-
defined strategic interests and the good will of the US administration in
order to buy political time.
In the economic jargon that Netanyahu loves to use, this would be
called paying for recurrent expenditures with the proceeds from the
sale of national assets.
Fishman concludes with a warning:
And so the time passes. In the meantime, there is no talk about a crisis
in Israel-US relations, but rather a malfunction. If this goes on, the
malfunction is liable to turn into a diplomatic catastrophe, if not a
security catastrophe.
No (more) free gifts
Column, Alex Fishman, Yediot Friday Political Supplement, November
26 2010
People in the Ministry of Defense are worried. The National Security
Council, headed by Uzi Arad, department officials were informed, is
quietly preparing a position paper on a uniquely sensitive subject: an
Israeli proposal for a strategic defense alliance with the United States.
It turns out that the IDF is really not interested in the deal, which would
mean among other things significant limitations on Israel’s
independent ability to act against threats near and far.
But this is not the only reason that department officials are suspicious
of Arad’s secret document. For many months, together with the
Americans, they have been crafting a basket of security guarantees for
the coming 20 years, to the tune of USD 20 billion. All of a sudden
unnecessary, discordant plans are being shoved at them — coming
from the direction of the prime minister —that talk about a defense
alliance that does not link up with any clear and consistent policy
which also has some sort of goal at the end.
The strange story about the alliance that is being cooked up in the
Prime Minister’s Bureau is reminiscent of another strange story: the
strange connection between the deal for F-35 aircraft that is scheduled
to come to fruition in 2017 (!) and Israel’s agreement to freeze building
in the territories for another three months. What possible connection is
there between the defense deal, which is part of America’s traditional
commitment to retaining Israel’s military superiority, and the building
freeze? That’s it, there is no connection.
Both of these strange stories have one common denominator. The
person behind them knows full well that creating a defense alliance
would require a very problematic and complicated political process in
the United States, including approval by both houses of Congress, and
the chances of such a proposal ever being actualized are not terribly
high. Just like he knows that President Obama’s commitment to give
Israel a present of 20 planes, at a cost of more than USD 2 billion on
top of Israel’s annual aid package, is essentially impossible in today’s
economic climate. The president will have to explain to his constituents
exactly why he is distributing presents abroad at a time when factories
are closing in Detroit. It’s almost an invitation for political suicide.
And the fellow who prepared this trap for him — the prime minister of
Israel — knew exactly what he was doing. Netanyahu is doing
everything he can to buy time, to postpone the end and to get out of
making a decision about the future of the process with the
Palestinians.
Price of scorn
So Netanyahu promised the public that if there are no gifts — there will
be no negotiations; the Americans don’t know what gifts he’s talking
about, and now Israelis are racking their brains trying to figure out how
to word a statement that will get the prime minister out of the trap he
got himself into. So they are talking about the possibility that the
Americans will give a grant that will cover part of the cost of 20
aircraft, with the rest to come out of Israel’s foreign aid package. In
any event we are only talking about 2017. In the meantime, Israel-
Palestinian talks are frozen.
How did Israel get itself into this dangerous jam, which links the basic
American commitment to Israel’s security to negotiations with the
Palestinians?
It turns out that eight months ago, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff General James E. Cartwright, met with Director of the IDF
Planning Branch Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel. Around the same time, senior
IDF officials visited the Pentagon. The goal of the intensive meetings
was to map out Israel’s security needs and to create a joint package
that would answer the threats Israel is likely to face in the coming 20
years.
The deal is essentially done for the long term, and it will eventually
replace another program of foreign aid to Israel, to the tune of USD 30
billion, that is due to expire in 2017. In short: one plan to replace
another and American commitments to Israel are secure at least until
2030.
Efforts to create the current package began at the end of the Bush
Administration, when President Bush instructed his National Security
Advisor General Jim Jones, to begin negotiations with Israeli army
officials about Israel’s security needs. The goal was two-fold: one, to
make good on America’s basic commitments to Israel’s security. Two,
to give expression to a world view that said then, as it does now, that a
secure Israel is a generous Israel: by ensuring Israeli security, Israel
will cooperate with American political efforts in the Middle East.
Here, of course, we were a little bit dismissive of Jones. They sent a
colonel to meet with him, a four-star general. They were sure Jones
was coming to show just how overstated our threat assessment was,
what cry babies we are and how we demand equipment and money far
in excess of what we really need. In short: Jones came to screw us.
Eventually Jones became Obama’s national security advisor and here,
after the hazing he underwent, they still cannot figure out why he isn’t
making an effort to be nice.
It took several months until we understood that he was serious and
started to cooperate with him. And eventually, as Obama was poised to
take office, he produced a terrific paper in which he set out the
fundamental security problems facing Israel and the possible solutions.
The Jones document spoke of three circles of threat: the circle of
terrorism, the circle of nearby enemy nations and the third, outer circle
of strategic threats, including the question of Iran and the nuclear
bomb.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu adopted the paper with all his
heart, and every time he traveled to the United States he quoted from
it. The three circles of threat became Israel’s basic security assessment
to the administration.
These efforts between the Pentagon and the Defense Ministry to
implement this approach continued unabated even during the darkest
hours between the prime minister and the White House. The results of
these efforts can be seen today: information sharing with the
Americans about the Iranian threat, for example, is broader and deeper
than it has ever been. The Americans have also expanded the amount
of military equipment they store in Israel from $800 million to $1.2
billion, the F-35 deal is on the way and Israel got weapons the US
previously resisted giving.
It’s not that there are no disagreements between Israel and the United
States about the levels of threat, but the dialogue continued as long
as and is moving towards actualization that would ring the basket of
American commitments to Israel’s security for the coming 20 years.
Last July Prime Minister Netanyahu tried to patch things up with
President Obama and mentioned the three circles. But in the same
breath Netanyahu surprised Obama, saying if you give me 20 years of
security guarantees for these three circles, you’ll be surprised at the
risks I’ll take. I’ll surprise all the skeptics and move towards
negotiations. Obama shook his hand: We’ve got a deal. I’ll sew up the
security issues, and you sew up the political and diplomatic ones.
The president wouldn’t give details. When you ask his aides today why
he didn’t ask Netanyahu at the time some basic questions—what sort
of arrangement do you see with the Palestinians, what’s your stance on
Jerusalem, what about Palestinian refugees—they answer: Obama
made a deal. From his perspective if it doesn’t come to fruition,
Netanyahu will pay in spades.
Freeze equals reward
After the visit, the president instructed aides to speed up work on the
basket of guarantees. The head and deputy head of America’s National
Security Council instructed the various bodies involved with the matter
to push forward the matter of Israeli security. Slowly, an approach
started to emerge defining Israel’s security threats and the requisite
answers.
Israeli and American teams had difficulty reaching agreement on
certain issues. Israel’s political echelon couldn’t give answers about
fundamental questions like Israel’s exact borders, from which it would
be possible to carve out an answer to the security threat. The IDF and
ministry of defense were fully prepared to write up a long shopping list
of military equipment to buy with the USD 20 billion, starting with a
variety of multi-level anti-ballistic interception systems, warning and
intelligence systems, and ending with precise ammunition that Israel’s
never had before and deep intelligence agreements. In short: In 20
years the IDF would improve its equipment on all fronts.
The list also included one point that dealt with the addition of more F-
35 planes, with a goal of eventually reaching three stealth planes.
In September Defense Minister Ehud Barak traveled to Washington to
begin actualizing the deal Netanyahu signed with Obama: How to
revive the political process after the 10-month freeze during which
nothing happened and the Palestinians wouldn’t negotiate. Just before
leaving, in a conversation with the prime minister, Netanyahu floated
the idea past Barak to demand another 20 planes in exchange for
Israel’s agreement to return to the negotiating table. Something
attractive that would make it possible to convince the cabinet
ministers and the Israeli public.
During that visit Barak and Deputy National Security Advisor Dennis
Ross traded drafts of an agreement, and the issue of additional planes
was also brought up. The Americans weren’t shocked, but nothing was
written into the agreement because the president could not have
agreed to such a gift on the eve of Congressional elections. At the end
of the day they made a deal: Israel would extend the settlement
construction freeze for three additional months and the American
government would commit itself to continued Israeli presence in the
Jordan Valley for many years to come. The Americans also promised
this would be the final building freeze, that it would not include
Jerusalem, and an American promise to veto any Palestinian attempt to
gain recognition for statehood at the UN Security Council.
But then came the “but.” The last section of the agreement, that 20-
year security deal, suddenly became conditional: it would come to
fruition only after Israel reaches a final-status agreement with the
Palestinians. Rather, the connection between political negotiations and
Israel’s upgraded military ability, it is hard to forget, Netanyahu himself
created at that fateful meeting in July, at which he promised Obama he
would surprise him on the diplomatic font.
Barak returned to Israel with a final draft, agreed upon by the
Americans. Now the prime minister and the Security Cabinet had to
agree. But Netanyahu wouldn’t sign. The Americans understand the
name of the game: Netanyahu wouldn’t give Obama an agreement on
the eve of elections. The US National Security Council was furious. The
Barak-Ross agreement was leaked by the White House so that Jewish
organizations in the US would pressure the prime minister. Netanyahu,
a strong man, was unmoved.
After the mid-term elections, with Congress “in our hands,” the prime
minister goes back to the US for an additional meeting at which he
intends to open the path t renewed negotiations. In his pocket he’s got
Barak’s plan, plus some improvements to the security aid. After seven
hours with Hillary Clinton he comes back to Israel waving terrific
agreement. Even before he got home the Prime Minister’s Bureau had
leaked information that Israel would get a phenomenal security
package, worth billions. Even more, as soon as the negotiations start,
there will be another bonus: 20 more F-35s. And all this for just another
90 days building freeze, during which Israel would enter into serious
negotiations about all “heart of the matter” issues with the
Palestinians.
A diplomatic catastrophe
This is where another problematic element comes up, of how Israel
works vis-à-vis the US. Officials in Jerusalem complain that the prime
minister’s envoy to the talks with the Americans, attorney Yitzhak
Molcho, usually sits with his American counterparts alone and in
private. Netanyahu and Barak do the same. There is no official Israeli
documentation of these meetings. There are impressions, there is
understanding, there is what people remember. It comes down to how
the listener understood what he heard.
And this is how Israel was able to say that the Americans promised a
gift of another 20 planes, because that was the prime minister’s
impression in the course of his conversation with Mrs. Clinton. He, it
seems, presented her with a request to receive the planes in wake of
the huge American arms deal with Saudi Arabia, and she let him to
understand that there was a green light. It was not worked out how
this deal would be carried out and who exactly would pay for it. After
all, good will is not enough, Congress has to approve such a gift.
But Netanyahu ran to tell the guys. While Obama, who was pleased
about the understandings with Clinton, was embarrassed. Suddenly he
was being forced to hand over a gift that he had never intended to
give.
As if that were not enough, now Netanyahu is doing them another trick
and is sticking another stick in the negotiation wagon’s wheels: he
wants all these understandings in writing, as a public commitment.
Netanyahu cannot be blamed of lacking understanding of how things
work with Washington. No administration will sign a document that
gives IDF soldiers the possibility of remaining in the Jordan Valley for
decades more. This could be a term in the framework of an “
understanding” that the US would support in an Israeli demand of the
Palestinians.
Furthermore, demanding of the Americans that they sign a document
that states that they agree that there will be no freeze in Jerusalem
means breaking all the game rules. The US administration can look the
other way when there is solid construction in greater Jerusalem, but to
sign on this in a public document? After all, this is contrary to this US
administration’s and previous administrations’ avowed policy.
In fact, both the Americans and the settlers, who are wasting their
energy in demonstrations, should have understood that Netanyahu did
not actually intend to do anything, as soon as he arrived back in Israel.
Instead of capitalizing on the momentum, by convening the security
cabinet and making decisions, he convened the forum of seven, which
is merely an advisory board. Since then and until now, he has
continued to play for time.
So now both sides, the Israeli and the American, are doing all sorts of
phraseology acrobatics that will make it possible to come up with a
paper that summarizes the understandings. The Americans are now
beginning to say that after an agreement in some sort of paper is
reached, Netanyahu will come up with another excuse in order not to
make progress.
And so the time passes. In the meantime, there is no talk about a crisis
in Israel-US relations, but rather a malfunction. If this goes on, the
malfunction is liable to turn into a diplomatic catastrophe, if not a
security catastrophe.
Back to Top

U.N.: ‘The family has requested a tent as they have

nowhere else to live’ (US: ‘What, me worry?’)
By Philip Weiss , MondoWeiss, November 28, 2010
A friend just sent me a summary of a comprehensive report being
circulated inside the U.N. that details the latest house demolitions by
Israel. They are not just in the Jordan Valley, as earlier reports
suggested, but all over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Below is the
roundup in my friend's paraphrase. Note the disputed claims in
illegally-occupied territory that are always resolved in Jewish settlers'
favor, even on the Mount of Olives. This little list from 4 or 5 days of
demolitions and evictions gives a real feel for the enormity of what is
taking place daily.
If you were Palestinian, you would feel humiliated, despairing, angry--
and as afraid as my ancestors felt when pogroms were happening in
Russia 120 years ago.
Where is the United States, which claims to be supporting a two-state
solution on lands east of the Green Line? From the U.N.:
November 22
Israeli forces demolished Palestinian structures in the Al Isawiya area
between East Jerusalem and the settlement of Maele Adummin. Initial
information: at least 2 barracks used for work purposes and some
stone walls. Some fence material was also confiscated. This is the
second time that barracks here were demolished. Last time was 27
October.
November 23
As you know, Israeli police and settlers this morning forcibly evicted 3
Palestinian families from their home in Al Farouq neighbourhood of
Jabal al Mukabber in East Jerusalem. A large force of Israeli police and
border police were reported to have forcibly evicted the families
between 9.00 and 10.00. Immediately following the eviction the
building was handed over to a group of settlers that reportedly are
affiliated with the settler organization El Ad. The settler group is
currently undertaking some work on the premises -- 3 separate
apartments located on 3 floors.
It was inhabited by the Qara'in family, which includes 3 families of 14
people, among them 5 children ranging from 3 to 10 years of age. The
families are currently sheltering with neighbors, they have no place to
live. Supposedly the settler group claims to have purchased the
building from a deceased relative of the family a few years ago. The
family and their lawyer tried to challenge these claims before Israeli
courts.
November 24
Israeli forces destroyed a large number of Palestinian-owned structures
in several locations in the West Bank, forcibly displacing 23 people,
including 16 children , and destroying the livelihood of dozens of
others. Also on this day, Israeli settlers took over an uninhabited
apartment in East Jerusalem. The reports:
--In the At Tur neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem , the
Jerusalem Municipality demolished the home of a Palestinian family,
forcibly displacing 7 people, including 4 children . The family, which
has lived in the building for 8 years, had attempted to obtain an Israeli
building permit for the home. The family has requested a tent and
other basic humanitarian assistance as they have nowhere else to live.
--In the area around Hizma checkpoint , the Jerusalem Municipality
demolished 7 work-related Palestinian structures, 6 of them plant
nurseries/shops and 1 a furniture business. The demolitions reportedly
devastated the livelihoods of 13 Palestinian families and resulted in
extensive loss of materials and equipment.
--On the Mount of Olives, Israeli settlers took over an apartment on the
3rd floor of a building near an existing Israeli settlement (the one
overlooking the Old City). The apartment, which is one of 4 apartments
in the building, was uninhabited at the time; it was vacated and sealed
last year by a Palestinian family which had purchased it in 2005. Since
that time the settlers have disputed the family's ownership. The
apartment was sealed last year following an order from the District
Court.
--On Nov. 23, the Jerusalem Municipality returned to Al Isawiye and
completed the demolition of 2 Palestinian work-related structures that
were partly demolished on 11 November. This included a stable for
horses and a cement structure where some members of the family
lived when tending the farm.
--In the Abu Al Ajaj area of Jiftlik in the Jordan Valley , the IDF
demolished 3 large structures , including 2 buildings (containing 2
units each) that were used for residential and work-related purposes. 2
Palestinian families of 16 people, including 12 children , have lost their
home and been forcibly displaced. In addition, a number of young
sheep were killed as the structures were demolished on top of them. A
considerable amount of fodder was destroyed. The structures in
question received demolition orders from Israeli authorities in 2008,
but the families were challenging the orders before the Israeli High
Court. This is the same area that in recent weeks has been targeted by
Israeli settlers from Masu'a settlement, who have made repeated and
aggressive attempts to expand the settlement by taking over village
land, using illegal fencing that cuts the Palestinian herders residing in
the area from their livelihood. For information about these attempts,
please see the Humanitarian Monitor for October.
* In the village of Qarawat Bani Hassan in the West Bank, to the north
of the Ariel settlement "finger", the IDF reportedly demolished at least
1 work-related Palestinian structure. Levelling of land was reported in
nearby Wadi Qana.
November 25
Israeli forces have demolished a number of Palestinian structures in at
least 2 different locations in the West Bank, displacing at least 31
Palestinians, more than half of them children.
--In Khirbet Yasra in the Jordan Valley, Israeli forces demolished at least
7 Palestinian structures. According to the village council, this included
2 houses and 4 work-related structures, as well as a mosque. As a
result at least 2 Palestinian families of 11 have been forcibly displaced.
--In Ar Rifa'iyya village near Hebron, Israeli forces demolished a
building containing 2 apartments, forcibly displacing 2 families of 20
people, including 16 children.

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The Shift: Israel-Palestine from Border Struggle to Ethnic

Conflict
Menachem Klein
December, 2010
Cloth, 144 pages, ISBN: 978-0-231-70196-9,
$30.00
Since 2000, the Israeli army has increased the
size and strength of its operations in occupied
territories. These activities, matched with an
unprecedented rise in the construction of Jewish
settlements, have irrevocably changed the
relationship between Palestinians and Israelis.
As Menachem Klein sees it, what was once a
border conflict has now become an ethnic
struggle, with Jewish Israel establishing an
ethno-security regime that stretches from
Jordan to the Mediterranean, facilitated and
accelerated by the recent results of elections in
Israel, the United States, and the territory controlled by the Palestinian
Authority.
In a bold challenge to those who claim Israel has done nothing more
than pursue a framework of "occupation," Klein identifies a radical shift
that has put ethnicity at the center of its security initiatives. Even
Israeli citizens of Palestinian origin are at risk of becoming targets.
Klein closely reads the legal and political apparatus now cocooning
Israel's shrinking Jewish majority. Within this system, Palestinians have
been divided into several categories with different privileges: Israel's
Palestinian citizens; the residents of Jerusalem; the two groups that
occupy the West Bank, separated by the Separation Barrier; and those
who live under siege in the Gaza Strip. Grounding his work in primary
sources and hard-to-find statistics, Klein completes a groundbreaking,
unflinchingly study that portrays the realities of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. He ultimately argues that a single, non-ethnic state is not the
best solution, instead supporting a two-state compromise, as difficult
as it may be, as the only viable way to peace.
About the Author
Menachem Klein is a senior lecturer in political science at Bar-Ilan
University, and was a team member of the Geneva Initiative
negotiations of 2003. He has advised both the Israeli government and
the Israeli delegation for peace talks with the PLO (2000), and was a
fellow at Oxford University and the European University Institute, as
well as a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Klein is also the author of A Possible Peace Between Israel
and Palestine: An Insider's Account of the Geneva Initiative.
Back to Top

Israel’s post-traumatic isolation

Israel suffered truly existential threats until 1973, and then
severe blows when it gave peace a chance; now many
Israelis are deeply angry at anybody who tries to talk them
into doing it again.
By Carlo Strenger, 24th November 2010
There is a growing sense around the world, including in Europe, that
Israel is ever less a partner for dialogue with the international
community, and that it needs to be managed through pressure. The
voices that Israel must be forced into accepting a Palestinian state
through a UN and through sanctions if Israel doesn’t comply, are
gaining ground dangerously.
This unfortunate and dangerous dynamics is reinforced almost daily
through Israel’s action and legislation. Expropriation of Palestinian land
continues, and the Knesset has now passed a bill that requires a
referendum about any agreement that would return land that Israel
has annexed after 1967.
Foreign Minister Avigdor
Lieberman and Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu in the
Knesset in 2009.
Photo by: Archive/Tess
Scheflan
As today’s Haaretz editorial has pointed out, this law is a further
indication that Israel’s lawmakers simply do not see international law
as binding, because the international community has never accepted
Israel’s annexation of either East Jerusalem or the Golan Heights.
The relationship between Israel and the world can be elucidated by a
psychiatric analogy: there are patients who can be addressed by
dialogue in the hope that they can change through insight. And there
are patients who no longer seem amenable to rational dialogue, and
must be restrained in order to prevent violence. This is what happens
under certain conditions of post-traumatic stress disorder: many
American soldiers who returned from Iraq are highly susceptible to
violence. They are simply not capable of understanding that they are
no longer under threat, and behave as if they are still in the war. And
of course, they feel isolated and misunderstood by all except those
who have been there.
Israel’s situation is similar: it has suffered truly existential threats until
1973, and since then it has suffered severe blows when it gave peace a
chance. The second intifada and the shelling of southern Israel are the
analogue to a re-traumatization: Israel tried normalization, but was
injured considerably.
As a result many Israelis are now deeply angry at anybody who tries to
talk them into taking risks for peace again: "How can you ask us to rely
on Palestinians for our security? We have tried, and the result was
horrifying: our children blew up on buses; the south was shelled by
rockets. We would have to be crazy to try again."
Here, then, is the problem: as in many post-traumatic conditions,
Israel’s behavior tends to recreate the trauma, and thus reinforces its
deepest fears. The more violently Israel reacts to further attacks, as it
did in Operation Cast Lead, the more it is delegitimized. The more it is
delegitimized, the it more it rejects the political norms of the Free
World and adopts a tone of aggressive nationalism in its legislation and
rhetoric, which leads to further isolation.
Israel, quite unfortunately, is now being perceived as belonging to the
category of states that need to be coerced rather than those that can
be engaged in dialogue. It is gradually seen as a non-rational actor that
needs to be restrained by force and pressured into submission,
because it listens neither to reason nor to morals. Hence the calls for
sanctions against Israel, and the notion that the UN needs to recognize
the Palestinian state along the 1967 borders are growing.
Is there a way out of this vicious circle? Is Israel doomed to becoming a
pariah state? Is there no way around the scenario in which Israel will
become the outcast of the international order, and slide into even
more isolation?
My experience in talking to European interlocutors is that it is possible
to evoke empathy for Israel’s justified fears, if this is disconnected from
the aggressive self-righteousness of Israel’s right, and if it is not used
to justify construction in the settlements and expropriation of
Palestinian properties, as it is practiced in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan.
But Israel’s right is doing the exact opposite: by conflating real security
concerns like Iran and Hezbollah with settlement construction and land
expropriation, it indeed makes Israel look like a dysfunctional state
that must be beaten into submission either by sanctions or by the UN
simply recognizing the Palestinian state.
The right is utterly convinced of its own confusion between Israel’s
security needs and the need to move towards an ethnocracy. It has
also succeeded in convincing much of the Israeli electorate of its
paranoid worldview. It is profoundly unsettling to talk to mainstream
Israelis who, are in favor of the two-state solution in principle, but keep
repeating the right’s mantras that there is no partner, and that we just
have to hold on to the status quo, i.e. the occupation, for the
foreseeable future.
Israel is not devoid of voices of sanity; its civil society is functioning
and dissent from the right’s disastrous policies is expressed. Pundits,
writers and the occasional politician raise the option of engaging with
the peace initiative of the Arab League and cooperating with Salaam
Fayyad; they keep warning of the dire consequences of Israel’s path
into international isolation; they keep pointing out that the ridiculous
stalling of any substantial peace process will lead to a new spiral of
violence. But these voices no longer seem to be able to penetrate the
political mainstream’s wall of fear, distrust and virulent nationalism.

Back to Top

Why NGO Monitor is attacking The Electronic Intifada

Report, The Electronic Intifada, 30 November 2010
NGO Monitor has launched a campaign targeting a Dutch foundation's
financial support to The Electronic Intifada, accusing the publication
among other things of "anti-Semitism." NGO Monitor is an extreme
right-wing group with close ties to the Israeli government, military,
West Bank settlers, a man convicted of misleading the US Congress,
and to notoriously Islamophobic individuals and organizations in the
United States.
NGO Monitor's campaign of public defamation against The Electronic
Intifada has focused on a grant the publication receives from the Dutch
foundation ICCO. NGO Monitor has pressured the Dutch government,
which subsidizes ICCO, to end its support for The Electronic Intifada.
Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal has apparently already lent public
credence to NGO Monitor's campaign against The Electronic Intifada,
an independent publication established in February 2001 and read by
thousands daily.
NGO Monitor's attack on The Electronic Intifada is part of a well-
financed, Israeli-government endorsed effort to silence reporting about
and criticism of Israel by attacking so-called "delegitimizers" -- those
who speak about well-documented human rights abuses, support
boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), or promote full equality for
Palestinians. Last February, The Electronic Intifada reported that a
leading Israeli think-tank had recommended a campaign of "sabotage"
against Israel's critics as a matter of state policy ("Israel's new
strategy: "sabotage" and "attack" the global justice movement," 16
February 2010).
NGO Monitor has already been at the forefront of a campaign to crush
internal dissent by Jewish groups in Israel that want to see Israel's
human rights record improved.
The Jerusalem-based organization poses as a project concerned with
accountability for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), but as
Israeli human rights activist and journalist Didi Remez has stated,
"NGO Monitor is not an objective watchdog: It is a partisan operation
that suppresses its perceived ideological adversaries through the
sophisticated use of McCarthyite techniques -- blacklisting, guilt by
association and selective filtering of facts" ("Bring on the
transparency," Haaretz, 26 November 2009).
In a 6 November article in The Jerusalem Post, NGO Monitor president
Gerald Steinberg revealed that his group was part of a new "Israel
Action Network" established by the Jewish Federations of North
America (JFNA) and the Jewish Council of Public Affairs (JCPA) ("Turning
the tables on BDS," The Jerusalem Post, 6 November 2010).
The JFNA is funding the Israel Action Network to the tune of $6 million
over the next three years to target "delegitimization," which according
to JFNA president Jerry Silverman, "Israeli leaders identify ... as the
second most dangerous threat to Israel, after Iran's pursuit of nuclear
weapons ("Federations, JCPA teaming to fight delegitimization of
Israel," JTA, 24 October 2010).
NGO Monitor's and the Israel Action Network's goals appear to be
nothing less than to shut down independent media such as The
Electronic Intifada, as well as human rights advocacy groups in Israel,
the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and around the world. In his 6
November article, Steinberg specifically named The Electronic Intifada
and its co-founder and executive director Ali Abunimah, as well as
Sabeel, the Palestinian Christian ecumenical justice and peace
movement, and its founder Reverend Naim Ateek, as targets of the
campaign.
Steinberg explained, "To emerge victorious in this political war, the
[Israel Action] network must be armed with detailed information about
the opposition, and implement an effective counterstrategy on this
basis. This involves distributing information to college students and
active community members, so they can name and shame the groups
that lead and fund demonization."
Steinberg goes on to boast, "NGO Monitor has demonstrated that this
approach can be very effective. Based on detailed research, the
government of Canada cut funding ostensibly provided for human
rights and development, but which was actually used for hatred and
incitement. Similar discussions are under way in European
governments regarding funding for some of the more poisonous NGOs
involved in BDS."
In becoming the latest target of NGO Monitor's defamation and
sabotage efforts, The Electronic Intifada joins previously targeted
organizations including Amnesty International, Doctors Without
Borders, Human Rights Watch, Adalah, Al-Haq, Mada al-Carmel as well
as Israeli groups such as B'Tselem, Breaking the Silence, HaMoked and
New Israel Fund, among dozens of others.
NGO Monitor -- as a glance at its publications reveals -- characterizes
any documentation of, or call for an end to Israel's systematic human
rights abuses, violent colonization of the occupied West Bank including
Jerusalem, or its siege and amply documented war crimes and crimes
against humanity in Gaza as "hate," "incitement" and/or "anti-
Semitism."
Attacking funding to undermine free speech and thought
In 2007, NGO Monitor began targeting the Canadian international
development and human rights organization Alternatives which did
development work in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. After a
determined campaign by pro-Israel advocates, Canada's Conservative
government cut funding to Alternatives and several other groups that
worked on Palestinian rights ("Canada's neoconservative turn," The
Electronic Intifada, 26 February 2010).
Earlier this year, Canada's government-supported International
Development Research Centre canceled research grants to Mada al-
Carmel -- an independent research center in Haifa, the only one of its
kind in Israel, which focuses on the rights, needs and future of
Palestinian citizens. According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, the grants
which were for research on "Arab political participation in Israel and
the future of Israeli democracy," and "Palestinian women in Israel and
the political economy" may have been canceled under pressure
applied by the Israeli foreign ministry on the Canadian government
("Did Foreign Ministry lobby to stop Canadian funding of Israeli Arab
group?," Haaretz, 19 August 2010).
Turning the fire on The Electronic Intifada
On 26 November, The Jerusalem Post published an article by Benjamin
Weinthal headlined "Dutch will look into NGO funding of anti-Semitic
website."
According to Weinthal, "The Dutch government has been funding the
Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation [ICCO], a Dutch
aid organization that finances the Electronic Intifada website that, NGO
Monitor told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, is anti-Semitic and
frequently compares Israeli policies with those of the Nazi regime."
However, The Post does not cite any specific examples from almost
12,000 articles published by The Electronic Intifada since 2001 to
substantiate these lurid accusations.
With its reporting and independent commentary, The Electronic
Intifada has built a global reputation since its founding, and states on
its website that "our views on the conflict are based firmly on universal
principles of international law and human rights conventions, and our
reporting is built on a solid foundation of documented evidence and
careful fact-checking."
The Post quotes Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal stating, "I will
look into the matter personally. If it appears that the government-
subsidized NGO ICCO does fund Electronic Intifada, it will have a
serious problem with me."
If the quotation from Foreign Minister Rosenthal is accurate (which
cannot be taken for granted given the errors and false statements
throughout Weinthal's article), it should be noted that The Electronic
Intifada was never contacted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the
Netherlands before the minister apparently went on the record lending
support to the allegations made by NGO Monitor.
The Jerusalem Post also charges that "EI executive director Ali
Abunimah is a leader in delegitimization and demonization campaigns
against Israel. In his travels and speaking engagements, facilitated by
Electronic Intifada's budget, he calls for a one-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and routinely uses false apartheid rhetoric."
The Jerusalem Post never attempted to contact The Electronic Intifada
or Abunimah to verify any of these claims. Had it done so, it would
have been informed that none of Abunimah's speaking engagements
or travel has ever been funded by The Electronic Intifada's budget, but
all such engagements are paid for by the groups hosting the events
which are organized and handled entirely separately from the
publication.
Since 2006, about one-third of The Electronic Intifada's funding has
come from ICCO. The majority of the publication's funding has come
from direct donations from readers, and another small part from other
private foundations. The Electronic Intifada has never received funds
from any government. The Electronic Intifada's total expenses
amounted to $149,208 in 2008 and $183,760 in 2009, as reported on
the publicly available Form 990 filed annually with the US Internal
Revenue Service by the Middle East Cultural and Charitable Society,
Inc., the nonprofit organization of which The Electronic Intifada is a
program service.
NGO Monitor, Israel's government, military and the far-right
NGO Monitor is closely tied to Israel's far-right, its government and
military as well as leading anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim activists in
the United States. NGO Monitor states on its website that it is "a joint
venture of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs, founded jointly with
the Wechsler Family Foundation, and B'nai B'rith International."
As The Electronic Intifada reported in 2005, the Institute of
Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center on Public Affairs is a
think-tank providing a home for Israel's military and political elite.
Among the panoply of Israeli officers who speak and write for the
Institute is Doron Almog, who notoriously chose to remain on board an
El Al aircraft at London's Heathrow airport and flee back to Israel rather
than face a pending arrest warrant for alleged war crimes while he was
a division commander in the occupied Gaza Strip ("NGO Monitor should
not be taken seriously," 18 October 2005).
Among NGO Monitor's International Advisory Board are some unusual
choices for an organization focused on accountability. In addition to
Alan Dershowitz and Elie Wiesel (who has gone on record saying he
can never criticize Israel), there is former CIA chief and pro-Iraq-war
activist James Woolsey, and Elliott Abrams. Abrams was convicted in
1991 of withholding information from the United States Congress in the
Iran-Contra affair in which he was deeply involved as an official in the
Reagan administration. As deputy national security advisor during the
administration of George W. Bush, Abrams was the architect of covert
US policies intended to overturn the January 2006 Palestinian
legislative elections by arming Palestinian militias opposed to Hamas,
which had won the vote. Abrams' policies led to a Palestinian civil war
that cost hundreds of lives (David Rose, "The Gaza Bombshell," Vanity
Fair, April 2008).
NGO Monitor's "Legal Advisory Board" includes former Israeli
ambassador Alan Baker, who as an Israeli government official spent
years publicly defending Israel's violations of international law,
including its settlements in occupied territory, which are nominally
opposed by all EU governments, including the Netherlands.
Cementing the link even more closely, NGO Monitor recently published
a joint report with its partner the Institute for Zionist Strategies entitled
"Trojan Horse: The Impact of European Government Funding for Israeli
NGOs." The Institute for Zionist Strategies, as Didi Remez has pointed
out, is led by Israel Harel, a founder of the fanatical Gush Emunim
settler movement.
Calling for "accountability" but only for others
While NGO Monitor is increasingly frank that its goal is to shut down
open discussion of Israel's human rights abuses, it claims that it exists
to promote "accountability" and transparency. But this transparency
does not extend to itself or its political allies.
Some information is available about NGO Monitor's funding, but the
organization does not release the names of all its donors nor the
amounts they gave -- even as it insists that others should do so. In
addition to the Wechsler Foundation, NGO Monitor lists among its
"major donors," Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum Education Project.
Pipes has been widely criticized for purveying anti-Muslim and anti-
Arab propaganda, including by United States Senator Tom Harkin (D-
Iowa) who opposed Pipes' 2003 appointment by President George W.
Bush to the board of the United States Institute for Peace ("Daniel
Pipes nomination stalled in committee," The Baltimore Chronicle, 23
July 2003).
NGO Monitor also lists a US tax-exempt organization called American
Friends of NGO Monitor (AFNGOM) among its "major donors." While
AFNGOM received its recognition as a tax-exempt non-profit in early
2009, there was -- as of late 2010 -- still no legally-required, public
Form 990 for 2009 available for the group on the Guidestar.org
website, the information clearinghouse for US non-profits (According to
Guidestar, a 990 should appear on its website approximately two
months after being filed).
Among AFNGOM's board members is Rita Emerson. Emerson and her
husband Steven Emerson are prominent in the US pro-Israel, anti-
Muslim community and often make donations to pro-Israel causes.
They jointly fund the "Emerson Fellowships" for the anti-Palestinian
advocacy group Stand With Us (which works closely with the Israeli
military to organize speaking tours for Israeli soldiers on North
American college campuses) and are both substantial donors to the
Technion Israel Institute of Technology. "Their most passionate
concerns include cancer research, the defense of Israel on campus and
in the media, and the struggle against the global Jihad," is how the
couple was described in the program of a 2007 dinner for the American
Freedom Alliance.
The Emersons have done very well financially from incitement against
Muslims. A recent investigative report by The Tennessean newspaper
found that in 2008 Steven Emerson paid his own for-profit company
$3.4 million in fees from a non-profit charity he founded, which,
according to the newspaper "solicits money by telling donors they're in
imminent danger from Muslims." According to The Tennessean,
Emerson's non-profit effectively acts as a front for a lucrative for-profit
venture ("Anti-Muslim crusaders make millions spreading fear," The
Tennessean, 24 October 2010). Unusually, the non-profit's 990 forms
do not list any staff, board members or salaries except for Steven
Emerson who is the organization's sole officer.
Yet a search of NGO Monitor's website found no page dedicated to
exposing the lack of transparency of the Emersons' multimillion dollar
"non-profit" business.
NGO Monitor evinces a similar lack of concern for transparency when it
comes to extremist Israeli groups. As Didi Remez points out, "Hundreds
of millions of dollars in Israeli taxpayer money and US tax exemptions,
mostly hidden from public view, are the driving force of the settlement
enterprise," including organizations such as Elad which are behind the
current efforts of Israeli settlers to expel Palestinians from certain
neighborhoods in occupied East Jerusalem ("Bring on the
transparency").
Remez notes that while most of the Israeli dissenting and human rights
groups NGO Monitor targets already meet high standards of fiscal
transparency, the settler groups do not. Settler groups, Remez
observes, "depend on financial opacity for continued operations." NGO
Monitor has never said a word about it.
With international movements in solidarity with Palestine -- including
BDS -- gaining steam, Israel's leaders and apologists are becoming
more desperate and unscrupulous than ever. Nothing illustrates this
better than NGO Monitor attacking funding sources for media and
human rights organizations like The Electronic Intifada and so many
other groups doing urgently needed work.

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Carmel fire: the price of the treasury’s policy

The firefighters’ lack of readiness not accidental, but a
result of long-term economical policy.
Saturday, December 4 2010, Yossi Gurvitz
Last morning, making my Friday shopping at the local grocery, I heard
a woman hissing that we should catch those Arabs who lit the fire on
Thursday and burn them alive, like the 40 prison guards cadets. I
butted in. “And what if these were yeshiva boys?”. “What?” “I said,
what if the fire was caused by yeshiva boys, like last time (Hebrew).
Would you like to burn them, too?”. She muttered something, paid, and
was gone.
And that, more or less, is what protecting PM Netanyahu and his horde
of pygmy ministers from popular rage: the knowledge that any failure
or disaster would be immediately translated into fear of an external or
internal enemy, according to need. The knowledge that Israelis, like
the Russians, have been treating their government for a long time as a
natural disaster: there’s nothing you can do about it, it’s simply there.
The direct guilt for the shame of our firefighters being left with not
enough fire-fighting chemicals belongs to the Minister of the Interior,
Eli Yishai, who officially holds responsibility for the firefighters. But Eli
Yishai, despite being one of the most despicable Israeli politicians, is
not really a minister of the interior, one of the strongest positions in
Israel. He is merely Shas’ representative in the Ministry of the Interior.
All he’s interested in is how to use the immense power of the ministry
to harass non-Jews and promote his friends and family members. He is
not a public servant; he is but the servant of Rabbi Ovadyah Yossef.
Now he says that for years, he said the firefighters were not getting
enough funds, but anyone who followed Shas politics over the years
knows this can’t have interested him, not really. If it did, Yishai would
have threatened a coalition crisis – as he did numerous times in the
past. Such a crisis would have also bought him some badly needed
public support. Yishai was not interested in the firefighters because
he’s not interested in his office. You can’t blame him for acting
according to his nature.
The real criminals are Binyamin Netanyahu and the “treasury boys” –
as the young, highly-ideological Treasury officials are often termed.
Netanyahu, you may recall, served as Sharon’s Finance Minister, and is
now closely controlling the Treasury through his factotum, Yuval
Steinitz. As a minister, he gave a famous speech: he spoke of the “slim
man”, the private sector, who carries on his shoulders the “fat man”,
the public sector. Netanyahu was the great Israeli speaker for “trickle
down ecomomics”: the claim that if we lower taxes on the rich, they
will make more money and somehow all these riches will trickle
downwards. Netanyahu was making those moves during the times of
the first Bush administration. Following Bush, who received a treasury
with a surplus and left office with a huge deficit, many Americans
understood this is voodoo economics; most Israelis, particularly Israeli
journalists, haven’t yet.
Under Netanyahu’s watchful eye, taxes paid by companies were
lowered and the tax burden of the rich was lightened: the more you
made, the greater the bonus the government gave you (Hebrew). If
you made 4,000 NIS a month, you’d get a bonus of zero; make 5,000,
and you get a bonus of 13 shekels – less than the price of two soft
drink bottles. Make 20,000, and you get a monthly bonus of 237 NIS,
and if you manage to get more than 50,000 a month, the government
will reward you with 554 NIS. Even the OECD protested this scheme
(Hebrew), noting that Israel’s disparity of wealth is already way too
high. All those gifts to the rich, of course, cost the government heavily
in revenue.
And when revenues go down, what the treasury does is cut public
services – which they euphemistically term “cutting the budget”. Those
cuts, of which there many over the last decades, have repeatedly hit
public services – with the exception of that holiest of cows, the defense
ministry. Its budgets kept on rising, its workers kept their benefits and
retired with pensions at an early age.
So the treasury – which fights with the defense ministry over who will
run the government – cut everything else to the bone. Education,
welfare, superstructure. Israel is drying for at least a decade – but the
treasury still holds back the building of desalination facilities, which of
course have been privatized, and does not allow the country to build its
own. The power company desperately needs a new power station, but
the treasury won’t finance it. Because, you know, this is a public
service, something it is improper for the government to fund.
Accordingly, the treasury avoided giving the firefighters the funds they
needed to properly function. There are about a thousand firefighters in
Israel; the American standard is one firefighter per thousand residents,
so Israel needs some 6,000 more firefighters, but they’re not here
because, well, firefighters cost money and the priority, according to
Netanyahu and his henchmen, is making certain that a CEO will pay
less tax. The government even privatized aerial firefighting (Hebrew),
but the treasury is constantly shirking its duty and does not transfer
the funds necessary for purchasing firefighting chemicals. The budget
of the firefighters was not updated in many years, even though the
population grows at the rate of 1.8% every year, and the country is
drying. As can be seen from this video, MK Shelly Yechimovich (Labor)
accused the treasury a year ago (Hebrew) of de-funding the firefighters
so that the force will be seen by the public as inefficient, which will
allow the treasury to forcibly retire its costly veterans and hire
cheaper, younger, inexperienced firefighters.
Israeli blogger Tzvika Bassor reminded us yesterday (Hebrew) that
Netanyahu is an ideologue – until his own position is questioned. In
order to keep his coalition, Netanyahu didn’t flinch at bloating the
government with nine pointless minister and eight useless deputy
ministers. This costs 126 millions NIS a year. The cost of the missing
firefighting chemicals, depends on who you ask, ranges from two
millions to 25 millions.
Netanyahu’s “reforms” – an Orwellian use of the term if ever there was
one – did not reduce poverty, as he claimed. On the contrary: they
increased it (Hebrew), even among families with two bread-earners.
The only sector who benefited from Netanyahu-style economics is that
of the managers and the financiers. Unsurprisingly, Netanyahu strongly
opposes, at the same time, both an increase in the minimum wage –
which would increase consumption and therefore growth – and a
ceiling on CEOs and directors’ pay. After all, he and the treasury boys
are dutifully serving their kin, those who rank in the upper 1
percentage of earners.
In the meantime, they are destroying the Israeli public service, and all
too slowly we understand these are life and death decisions. When
there are less doctors in public medical care, when medicine costs
more, some of the public cuts down on its health services
consumption. When food prices rise, those who can’t afford it consume
less, and this influences their health. The government used to
subsidize bread; it no longer does. When tycoons like the Ofer brothers
disregard ecological and pollution regulations, people sicken more and
die more. Sometimes it’s their own workers dying, sometimes other
people. When the government’s number of work regulation enforcers is
a joke, when the treasury refuses to hire more – and even those
enforcers mostly serve Eli Yishai’s religious obsessions – than a huge
percentage of employers (92%, according to a 2006 estimate
(Hebrew)) will deny their employees their basic legal rights. When
there is a shortage of policemen, and those who are employed are paid
inadequate salaries, then crime becomes a national danger. When the
justice system keeps functioning with the number of judges agreed on
decades ago, then there’s no justice, either.
From time to time, a disaster occurs, reminding us we’re living in a
South-American style third world country, who has a small number of
rich people, a large segment of the population who don’t earn enough
to pay income tax, and a rapidly crumbling middle class.
And this week’s disaster, terrible as it may be, will pale before the next
expected calamity: a massive earthquake. One of these happens
around here – Israel is precariously placed on the Syrian-African Fault –
every 80 years or so. The last one took place in 1927. In 2001, an inter-
departmental committee estimated (Hebrew) that such an earthquake
will cost Israel between 5,000 and 10,000 dead; in 2010, the same
committee estimated (Hebrew) that Israel will “in all certainty”
experience such an earthquake, and another expert estimated that
96,000 (!) residence buildings will collapse during it, and that most
Israeli buildings are not strong enough to withstand it. Israel being a
necrophiliac country, some MKs immediately called for the creation
of… corpse identification teams, since Jewish law forbids burying
people in mass graves. The fact that people will drop like flies was,
apparently, of less concern. The journalist/blogger Shachar Ilan covers
the upcoming earthquake for years, to little avail.
But as long as the government keeps busy at inciting the Jewish public
against non-Jews, be they Palestinians or foreign workers, it can safely
assume no one will ask it difficult questions. Ironically, Israeli
propaganda used to describe the actions of Arab countries towards
Israel in precisely the same way: outward war mongering in order to
prevent calls for reforms at home. How beautifully we mesh in the
region’s culture.

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Israel’s deadliest fire: Eli Yishai must go

If Israel’s PM doesn’t show his racist and incompetent Interior
Minister the way out immediately – he should face consequences,
too.
by Noam Sheizaf, Friday, December 3 2010
The flames of the Carmel fire seen on the background of the town of
Nesher (photo: grebulon/flickr)
Israelis and international forces are still fighting the fire that started
yesterday morning on the Carmel Mountain near Haifa. 41 people,
most of them from Israel’s prison service, died when their bus was
trapped on a forest road. Haifa’s chief of police is in hospital, fighting
for her life. This is the biggest and most lethal fire in the country’s
history.
The direct responsibility lies with the Ministry of Interior, which is in
charge of Israel’s fire services. The fire department has suffered from
lack of funding and budget cuts for years. The results were evident
yesterday, when the firefighters failed to stop the flames in the first
critical hours.
In recent years, there were numerous reports in the press on Israel’s
deteriorating fire services. Just a week ago notable environmental
journalist Aviv Lavie (Maariv) told the story of fire department officials
that are trying to sound the alarm, claiming that they lack the means
to battle major bush or city fires. “One day our luck will end, and they
[fire department officials] will end up testifying before a national
inquiry committee,” Lavie concluded.
By yesterday evening the supply of chemicals used in fighting flames
ran out, and the firefighters had to settle for water. Israel issued an
urgent request for help to other European countries, but for the
casualties and their families it was too late. It seems the inquiry
committee will come much sooner than even Lavie expected.
Eli Yishai is the Interior Minister. Yesterday, when PM Netanyahu did
the right thing and showed up at the emergency command center in
Haifa, Yishai was nowhere to be found. Earlier, he tried to spin the
story, blaming the finance ministry for the budget cuts.
I don’t remember Yishai mentioning this issue before. The Ministry of
Interior’s main political project last year was a failed effort to have
1,200 foreign workers’ children deported out of Israel, as part of a
larger demographic battle against all non-Jews in Israel. He was also
very vocal in his insistence on continuing construction in East
Jerusalem. Apart from his attempts to sabotage the peace process and
his xenophobic initiatives, Yishay didn’t do much.
But Yishay is the easy case. This huge government – the biggest in
Israel’s history – has failed miserably on every front. Aside from picking
up fights with the international community, introducing embarrassing
pieces of legislation and deepening Israel’s hold in the West Bank, this
coalition of hawks and racists doesn’t have anything to show for. All
they offered the Israeli public was empty Zionist rhetoric – the oldest
trick in the incompetent politician’s handbook.
Yesterday they met their Katrina. Yet it’s hard to believe even this
disaster will make this government – let alone the man leading it –
change its ways.
Read more about the Carmel Forest Fire on +972 Magazine:
www.972mag.com

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