By Hasan Abu Nimah
The Jordan Times
27 December 2006
Finally the long awaited meeting between Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman
Mahmoud Abbas has taken place. Hastily planned, it came as
a surprise, grabbing headlines that suggested renewed
"hope."
While the media try to analyse it in conventional terms,
as to whether it advances the "peace process," in reality
it was a show designed to shore up Abbas in his battle to
usurp power from the democratically elected Hamas
authority. As such, it represents the "soft" component of
a two-pronged Western strategy that includes political and
military support for Abbas.
There has been a lot of talk among Abbas' Western sponsors
about the need to take measures to "strengthen" him
against Hamas. US funds are being used to arm and train
Abbas' so-called "presidential guard", a militia
accountable only to him. This militia is an ugly reminder
of Saddam's Republican Guards, which often made people
wonder why any president should need an entire army to
protect him, especially from his own people.
EU and US officials have also reportedly visited the "Badr
Brigade" training camps in Jordan. This unit is planned to
be moved to Gaza, with Israeli approval, to boost Abbas'
potential to impose his will through violence.
Of course, all these measures, even if they strengthen
Abbas on the ground and increase the risk of Palestinian
civil war, rob him even further of legitimacy and expose
him as a Western quisling in the eyes of his people; hence
the need for a political show to make him appear of use to
the Palestinian people.
This is where the Abbas-Olmert meeting came in.
Absolutely intransigent on substance, the meeting
represented the maximum Israel was willing to give
superficially. The event was stripped of any official
status by holding it over dinner at Olmert's residence in
Jerusalem, although it did produce pictures of Olmert
ostentatiously planting kisses on the cheeks of his
visitors.
The meeting was meant to improve Abbas' staggering
position, by demonstrating that he can go places and do
deals that the boycotted Hamas leadership cannot, but it
exposed his weakness and vulnerability even more.
Some Israeli commentators suggested it would secure
"confidence building measures", but it will quickly become
clear that it produced, at best, only hollow promises to
which prohibitive conditions were, as usual, firmly
attached, and no measures.
Olmert agreed to release to Abbas some $100 million of the
$600 million of the Palestinian people's tax money
illegally seized and impounded by Israel since last
January. But the money will not be paid until a mechanism
is devised whereby funds do not end up in the hands of the
Hamas "terrorists." That is a comfortable excuse for
indefinite delay. Of course this money ought to be
released to the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of
Finance, where it can be used to meet the needs of the
people and can be properly accounted for. Instead, if
Israel releases any of it, it will disappear into the
unaccountable hands of the rival shadow government made up
of the Palestinian Authority's "institution of the
presidency." like so many hundreds of millions before it.
And once a mechanism is discovered or invented to release
the seized money without going to the "terrorists", why
only limit the amount to one hundred million? Should not
the entire amount be released then?
Olmert also made the promise to ease a few checkpoints in
the West Bank, something that US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice had been urging since her last visit to
the region. This is the mentality that believes that
briefly and temporarily relieving the excruciating pain of
Israel's brutal military tyranny in the occupied
territories will accrue to the credit of Abbas as an
"achievement" to be celebrated by the Palestinian people.
Such gimmicks cannot disguise the apartheid reality Israel
is imposing with an iron fist.
Who is going to decide which are the unnecessary
roadblocks to be removed, or if ever any will be removed
at all, or if removed today, they will not be reinstalled
the day after on the basis of renewed security
requirements? Did the Palestinians not experience such
games with the pretended "removal" of the unauthorised
posts -- settlements -- and the staged scuffles between the
settlers and the Israeli soldiers for the benefit of the
invited media?
The hollowness of the meeting did not stop Abbas' Fateh
entourage from overblowing it as evidence of the imminence
of revived "peace negotiations". Such pointless activity
is all that is left to justify their existence on the
scene.
Many continue to believe that solving the Arab-Israeli
conflict, as prescribed by the Baker-Hamilton report among
others, requires bypassing Hamas or removing it from the
equation. The excuse for this is that Hamas refuses to
accept reasonable conditions and the "language" of the
"international community" (which means in practice Israel,
the United States, the United Kingdom and the European
Union, and ignores the vast majority of states that
continue to vote in the UN General Assembly in support of
fundamental Palestinian rights that this handful of powers
deny and oppose).
Abbas, by contrast, who was the "international
community's" choice to lead the Palestinians following the
death of Arafat, is supposed to be the one who can
deliver. But after two years in office, Abbas is as
hopeless as ever, on the verge of launching a war against
his own people and completely dependent on foreign
backing. Neither he nor those who back him ever mention
fundamental Palestinian rights and demands.
Israel continues to expand its racist colonies and
apartheid wall on occupied land, relentlessly pursues the
ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, and escalates its violence
against any and all who try to resist, peacefully or
otherwise.
With these realities off the agenda, there is renewed talk
in Washington of declaring a Palestinian state without any
borders in 2007. That way, Abbas can appear to have made a
great breakthrough on the path to full independence,
President George Bush and perhaps British Prime Minister
Tony Blair can claim it as part of their legacies, and
Israel can rid itself of political responsibility for the
Palestinians without giving up any control or changing any
of its practices.
Such empty schemes and gimmicks can lead nowhere. Neither
recycling old ideas nor recycling failed leaders will
bring the region closer to peace. What is urgently needed
is more seriousness and, indeed, courage in dealing with
this historic conflict and with a situation fast
deteriorating.
Ali Abunimah, The Wall Street Journal, 26 December 2006
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6310.shtml
President Carter has done what few American politicians
have dared to do: speak frankly about the Israel-Palestine
conflict. He has done this nation, and the cause of peace,
an enormous service by focusing attention on what he calls
"the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied
Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required
passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens
and Jewish settlers in the West Bank."
The 39th president of the United States, the most
successful Arab- Israeli peace negotiator to date, has
braved a storm of criticism, including the insinuation
from the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League that his
arguments are anti-Semitic.
Mr. Carter has tried to mollify critics by suggesting that
his is not a commentary on Israeli policy inside Israel's
own borders, as compared with the West Bank, Gaza Strip
and East Jerusalem -- territories Israel occupied in 1967.
He told NPR, "I know that Israel is a wonderful democracy
with equal treatment of all citizens whether Arab or Jew.
And so I very carefully avoided talking about anything
inside Israel."
Given the pressure he has faced, it may be understandable
that Mr. Carter says this, but he is wrong. In addition to
nearly four million Palestinians living under Israeli rule
in the occupied territories, another one million live
inside Israel's pre-1967 borders. These Palestinians are
descendants of those who were not forced out or did not
flee when Israel was created in 1948.
They have nominal Israeli citizenship, and unlike blacks
in apartheid South Africa, they do vote for the country's
parliament. Yet this is where any sense of equality ends.
In Israel's history, no Arab-led party has ever been asked
to join a coalition government. And, among scores of
Jewish ministers, there has only ever been one Arab
minister, of junior rank.
Discrimination against non-Jewish citizens both informal
and legalized is systematic. Non-Jewish children attend
separate schools and live in areas that receive a fraction
of the funding of their Jewish counterparts. The results
can be seen in the much poorer educational attainment,
economic, health and life outcomes of Palestinian citizens
of Israel. Much of the land of the country, controlled by
the quasi-governmental Jewish National Fund, cannot be
leased or sold to non-Jews. This is similar in effect to
the restrictive covenants that in many U.S. cities once
kept nonwhites out of certain neighborhoods.
A 2003 law stipulates that an Israeli citizen may bring a
non- citizen spouse to live in Israel from anywhere in the
world, excluding a Palestinian from the occupied
territories. A civil rights leader in Israel likened it to
the American anti-miscegenation measures from the 1950s,
when mixed race couples had to leave the state of Virginia
to marry legally.
For Palestinians, the most blatant form of discrimination
is Israel's "Law of Return," that allows a Jewish person
from any country to settle in Israel. Meanwhile, family
members of Palestinian citizens of Israel, living in
exile, sometimes in refugee camps just a few miles outside
Israel's borders, are not permitted to set foot in the
country.
The rise of Avigdor Lieberman, the new deputy prime
minister, who openly advocates stripping Palestinians in
Israel of citizenship and transferring them outside the
state, reflects increasingly extremist politics. In
response to growing discrimination, leaders of
Palestinians inside Israel recently issued a report, "The
Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel." It
calls for Israel to become a state where all citizens and
communities have equal rights, regardless of religion.
Many Israeli commentators reacted angrily, calling the
initiative an attempt to dismantle Israel as a "Jewish
state." However, even if Mr. Carter's recommendations are
implemented, and Israel withdraws from the territories
occupied in 1967, the struggle over the legitimacy of a
state that privileges one ethno- religious group at the
expense of another will not disappear.
As other divided societies, like South Africa, Northern
Ireland and indeed our own are painfully learning, only
equal rights and esteem for all the people, in the
diversity of their identities, can bring lasting peace.
This is an even harder discussion than the one President
Carter has courageously launched, but ultimately it is one
we must confront if peace is to come to Israel-Palestine.
---
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and
author of "One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the
Israeli-Palestinian Impasse" (Metropolitan Books, 2006).
By Jonathan Cook
The Electronic Initfada
19 December 2006
The era of the Middle East strongman, propped up by and
enforcing Western policy, appears well and truly over. His
power is being replaced with rule by civil war, apparently
now the American administration's favoured model across
the region.
Fratricidal fighting is threatening to engulf, or already
engulfing, the occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon
and Iraq. Both Syria and Iran could soon be next, torn
apart by attacks Israel is reportedly planning on behalf
of the US. The reverberations would likely consume the
region.
Western politicians like to portray civil war as a
consequence of the West's failure to intervene more
effectively in the Middle East. Were we more engaged in
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or more aggressive in
opposing Syrian manipulations in Lebanon, or more hands-on
in Iraq, the sectarian fighting could be prevented. The
implication being, of course, that, without the West's
benevolent guidance, Arab societies are incapable of
dragging themselves out of their primal state of
barbarity.
But in fact, each of these breakdowns of social order
appears to have been engineered either by the United
States or by Israel. In Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq,
sectarian difference is less important than a clash of
political ideologies and interests as rival factions
disagree about whether to submit to, or resist, American
and Israeli interference. Where the factions derive their
funding and legitimacy from -- increasingly a choice
between the US or Iran -- seems to determine where they
stand in this confrontation.
Palestine is in ferment because ordinary Palestinians are
torn between their democratic wish to see Israeli
occupation resisted -- in free elections they showed they
believed Hamas the party best placed to realise that goal
-- and the basic need to put food on the table for their
families. The combined Israeli and international economic
siege of the Hamas government, and the Palestinian
population, has made a bitter internal struggle for
control of resources inevitable.
Lebanon is falling apart because the Lebanese are divided:
some believe that the country's future lies with
attracting Western capital and welcoming Washington's
embrace, while others regard America's interest as cover
for Israel realising its long-standing design to turn
Lebanon into a vassal state, with or without a military
occupation. Which side the Lebanese choose in the current
stand-off reflects their judgment of how plausible are
claims of Western and Israeli benevolence.
And the slaughter in Iraq is not simply the result of
lawlessness -- as is commonly portrayed -- but also about
rival groups, the nebulous "insurgents", employing various
brutal and conflicting strategies: trying to oust the
Anglo-American occupiers and punish local Iraqis suspected
of collaborating with them; extracting benefits from the
puppet Iraqi regime; and jockeying for positions of
influence before the inevitable grand American exit.
All of these outcomes in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq could
have been foreseen -- and almost certainly were. More than
that, it looks increasingly like the growing tensions and
carnage were planned. Rather than an absence of Western
intervention being the problem, the violence and
fragmentation of these societies seems to be precisely the
goal of the intervention.
Evidence has emerged in Britain that suggests such was the
case in Iraq. Testimony given by a senior British official
to the 2004 Butler inquiry investigating intelligence
blunders in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was
belatedly published last week, after attempts by the
Foreign Office to hush it up.
Carne Ross, a diplomat who helped to negotiate several UN
security council resolutions on Iraq, told the inquiry
that British and US officials knew very well that Saddam
Hussein had no WMDs and that bringing him down would lead
to chaos.
"I remember on several occasions the UK team stating this
view in terms during our discussions with the US (who
agreed)," he said, adding: "At the same time, we would
frequently argue, when the US raised the subject, that
'regime change' was inadvisable, primarily on the grounds
that Iraq would collapse into chaos."
The obvious question, then, is why would the US want and
intend civil war raging across the Middle East, apparently
threatening strategic interests like oil supplies and the
security of a key regional ally, Israel?
Until the presidency of Bush Jnr, the American doctrine in
the Middle East had been to install or support strongmen,
containing them or replacing them when they fell out of
favour. So why the dramatic and, at least ostensibly,
incomprehensible shift in policy?
Why allow Yasser Arafat's isolation and humiliation in the
occupied territories, followed by Mahmoud Abbas's, when
both could have easily been cultivated as strongmen had
they been given the tools they were implicitly promised by
the Oslo process: a state, the pomp of office and the
coercive means to impose their will on rival groups like
Hamas? With almost nothing to show for years of
concessions to Israel, both looked to the Palestinian
public more like lapdogs rather than rottweilers.
Why make a sudden and unnecessary fuss about Syria's
interference in Lebanon, an interference that the West
originally encouraged as a way to keep the lid on
sectarian violence? Why oust Damascus from the scene and
then promote a "Cedar Revolution" that pandered to the
interests of only one section of Lebanese society and
continued to ignore the concerns of the largest and most
dissatisfied community, the Shia? What possible outcome
could there be but simmering resentment and the threat of
violence?
And why invade Iraq on the hollow pretext of locating WMDs
and then dislodge its dictator, Saddam Hussein, who for
decades had been armed and supported by the US and had
very effectively, if ruthlessly, held Iraq together? Again
from Carne's testimony, it is clear that no one in the
intelligence community believed Saddam really posed a
threat to the West. Even if he needed "containing" or
possibly replacing, as Bush's predecessors appeared to
believe, why did the president decide simply to overthrow
him, leaving a power void at Iraq's heart?
The answer appears to be related to the rise of the
neocons, who finally grasped power with the election of
President Bush. Israel's most popular news website, Ynet,
recently observed of the neocons: "Many are Jews who share
a love for Israel."
The neocons' vision of American global supremacy is
intimately tied to, and dependent on, Israel's regional
supremacy. It is not so much that the neocons choose to
promote Israel's interests above those of America as that
they see the two nations' interests as inseparable and
identical.
Although usually identified with the Israeli right, the
neocons' political alliance with the Likud mainly reflects
their support for adopting belligerent means to achieve
their policy goals rather than the goals themselves.
The consistent aim of Israeli policy over decades, from
the left and right, has been to acquire more territory at
the expense of its neighbours and entrench its regional
supremacy through "divide and rule", particularly of its
weakest neighbours such as the Palestinians and the
Lebanese. It has always abominated Arab nationalism,
especially of the Baathist variety in Iraq and Syria,
because it appeared immune to Israeli intrigues.
For many years Israel favoured the same traditional
colonial approach the West used in the Middle East, where
Britain, France and later the US supported autocratic
leaders, usually from minority populations, to rule over
the majority in the new states they had created, whether
Christians in Lebanon, Alawites in Syria, Sunnis in Iraq,
or Hashemites in Jordan. The majority was thereby
weakened, and the minority forced to become dependent on
colonial favours to maintain its privileged position.
Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, for example, was
similarly designed to anoint a Christian strongman and US
stooge, Bashir Gemayel, as a compliant president who would
agree to an anti-Syrian alliance with Israel.
But decades of controlling and oppressing Palestinian
society allowed Israel to develop a different approach to
divide and rule: what might be termed organised chaos, or
the "discord" model, one that came to dominate first its
thinking and later that of the neocons.
During its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel
preferred discord to a strongman, aware that a
pre-requisite of the latter would be the creation of a
Palestinian state and its furnishing with a well-armed
security force. Neither option was ever seriously
contemplated.
Only briefly under international pressure was Israel
forced to relent and partially adopt the strongman model
by allowing the return of Yasser Arafat from exile. But
Israel's reticence in giving Arafat the means to assert
his rule and suppress his rivals, such as Hamas, led
inevitably to conflict between the Palestinian president
and Israel that ended in the second intifada and the
readoption of the discord model.
This latter approach exploits the fault lines in
Palestinian society to exacerbate tensions and violence.
Initially Israel achieved this by promoting rivalry
between regional and clan leaders who were forced to
compete for Israel's patronage. Later Israel encouraged
the emergence of Islamic extremism, especially in the form
of Hamas, as a counterweight to the growing popularity of
the secular nationalism of Arafat's Fatah party.
Israel's discord model is now reaching its apotheosis:
low-level and permanent civil war between the old guard of
Fatah and the upstarts of Hamas. This kind of Palestinian
in-fighting usefully depletes the society's energies and
its ability to organise against the real enemy: Israel and
its enduring occupation.
The neocons, it appears, have been impressed with this
model and wanted to export it to other Middle Eastern
states. Under Bush they sold it to the White House as the
solution to the problems of Iraq and Lebanon, and
ultimately of Iran and Syria too.
The provoking of civil war certainly seemed to be the goal
of Israel's assault on Lebanon over the summer. The attack
failed, as even Israelis admit, because Lebanese society
rallied behind Hizbullah's impressive show of resistance
rather than, as was hoped, turning on the Shia militia.
Last week the Israeli website Ynet interviewed Meyrav
Wurmser, an Israeli citizen and co-founder of MEMRI, a
service translating Arab leaders' speeches that is widely
suspected of having ties with Israel's security services.
She is also the wife of David Wurmser, a senior neocon
adviser to Vice-President Dick Cheney.
Meyrav Wurmser revealed that the American Administration
had publicly dragged its feet during Israel's assault on
Lebanon because it was waiting for Israel to expand its
attack to Syria.
"The anger [in the White House] is over the fact that
Israel did not fight against the Syrians ... The neocons
are responsible for the fact that Israel got a lot of time
and space ... They believed that Israel should be allowed
to win. A great part of it was the thought that Israel
should fight against the real enemy, the one backing
Hizbullah. It was obvious that it is impossible to fight
directly against Iran, but the thought was that its
[Iran's] strategic and important ally [Syria] should be
hit."
Wurmser continued: "It is difficult for Iran to export its
Shiite revolution without joining Syria, which is the last
nationalistic Arab country. If Israel had hit Syria, it
would have been such a harsh blow for Iran that it would
have weakened it and [changed] the strategic map in the
Middle East."
Neocons talk a great deal about changing maps in the
Middle East. Like Israel's dismemberment of the occupied
territories into ever-smaller ghettos, Iraq is being
severed into feuding mini-states. Civil war, it is hoped,
will redirect Iraqis' energies away from resistance to the
US occupation and into more negative outcomes.
Similar fates appear to be awaiting Iran and Syria, at
least if the neocons, despite their waning influence,
manage to realise their vision in Bush's last two years.
The reason is that a chaotic and feuding Middle East,
although it would be a disaster in the view of most
informed observers, appears to be greatly desired by
Israel and its neocon allies. They believe that the whole
Middle East can be run successfully the way Israel has run
its Palestinian populations inside the occupied
territories, where religious and secular divisions have
been accentuated, and inside Israel itself, where for many
decades Arab citizens were "de-Palestinianised" and turned
into identity-starved and quiescent Muslims, Christians,
Druze and Bedouin.
That conclusion may look foolhardy, but then again so does
the White House's view that it is engaged in a "clash of
civilisations" which it can win with a "war on terror".
All states are capable of acting in an irrational or
self-destructive manner, but Israel and its supporters may
be more vulnerable to this failing than most. That is
because Israelis' perception of their region and their
future has been grossly distorted by the official state
ideology, Zionism, with its belief in Israel's inalienable
right to preserve itself as an ethnic state; its confused
messianic assumptions, strange for a secular ideology,
about Jews returning to a land promised by God; and its
contempt for, and refusal to understand, everything Arab
or Muslim.
If we expect rational behaviour from Israel or its neocon
allies, more fool us.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in
Nazareth, Israel. His book, Blood and Religion: The
Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State, is published
by Pluto Press.
By Amira Hass
Haaretz
19 December 2006
International organizations in the territories are still
reviewing the implications of a ban prohibiting Israelis
to give rides to Palestinians within the West Bank. The
order was issued by GOC Central Command Yair Naveh.
Officials from a few organizations, most of them United
Nations groups, told Haaretz that the issue was under
legal review. The order, dated November 19, is scheduled
to take effect on January 19, 2007. In a letter sent to
the international organizations, the Israeli human rights
group Yesh Din - whose volunteers help Palestinians file
complaints against settlers - asked the foreign groups to
tell Israeli security authorities they would not comply
with the directive, by which they must obtain permits to
drive Palestinians.
In the meantime, security authorities promised
UN-affiliated groups that the order did not apply to them,
and they would not be required to obtain permits. The
groups asked for the promise to be put in writing.
The order explicitly includes resident foreign nationals
in the ban. The order states: "An Israeli will not
transport in an Israeli vehicle within the area a person
who is not Israeli, except in accordance with a permit
given to him or given to the person who is not Israeli."
It clearly states that for this purpose, "Israeli" means
"a person registered in the Population Registry ...
including anyone given a visa and license to reside in
Israel."
A member of one of the organizations told Haaretz the
groups were aware of the threat to the rights promised to
their employees and that some recognized the possibility
that the authorities could at some point require the
groups to apply for permits - despite the verbal promise.
Anders Fange, head of United Nations Relief and Works
Agency activities in the West Bank, told Haaretz that
irrespective of the military waiver, "my personal opinion
is that the UN is obligated to oppose any order that can
be seen as a violation of human rights or international
humanitarian law. If it turns out that the law does not
meet with international norms, we will bring it up before
the Israeli authorities."
Michael Sfard, Yesh Din's attorney, wrote the
international organizations that the order was in clear
violation of international human rights law.
He drew attention to the fact that even if the foreign
nationals working for the organization are immune to
prosecution for violating the order, any Palestinians they
transport will not enjoy immunity.
Several Israeli organizations, including the Association
for Civil Rights in Israel, Machsom Watch and Yesh Din,
have already announced their intention to ignore the order
and say they will not apply for permits.
BBC News
14 December 2006
Israel's Supreme Court has rejected an attempt to declare
that the policy of targeted killings of Palestinian
militants is illegal.
The court noted that not every killing complied with
international law, but said the legality of operations
should be assessed on a "case by case basis".
The ruling came in response to a petition from two human
rights groups.
In recent years, Israeli operations have targeted many
suspected militants and left dozens of civilians dead.
The practise of targeted killings dates back to the start
of the Palestinian intifada in September 2000
Controversial tactic
The term is used by Israeli officials who argue that the
tactic is a way of killing militants who are about to
carry out an attack or are behind such attacks.
However, Israel has targeted political leaders, and
civilians have often been killed in the attacks.
The tactic is seen by many human rights groups and by some
members of the international community, including Britain
and the European Union, as contrary to international law.
Key Palestinian figures, such as Hamas founder Sheikh
Ahmed Yassin, have been killed in targeted killings.
The operations often involve air strikes, which use
intelligence from agents on the ground to target houses or
cars where suspects are believed to be.
Civilian casualties
The court rejected a total ban saying: "We cannot
determine in advance that all targeted killings are
contrary to international law."
"At the same time, it is not possible that all such
liquidations are in line with international law. The
legality of all targeted killings must be examined on a
case by case basis."
According to human rights group B'Tselem, 339 Palestinians
have died in targeted killings since September 2000, of
whom 210 were suspected militants and 129 were bystanders.
The court said that caution was needed to prevent civilian
casualties.
"Innocent civilians should not be targeted," it said.
"Intelligence on the (targeted) person's identity must be
carefully verified."
The court also allowed for the possibility of compensation
claims from civilians.
The two human rights groups, the Public Committee Against
Torture in Israel and the Palestinian Society for the
Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, filed the
suit in 2002 but a ruling has been repeatedly delayed.
