Breaking the Israel-Palestine Deadlock

Truthout | by Noam Chomsky | 3 January 2011

While intensively engaged in illegal settlement expansion, the government of Israel is also seeking to deal with two problems: a global campaign of what it perceives as “delegitimation” – that is, objections to its crimes and withdrawal of participation in them – and a parallel campaign of legitimation of Palestine.

The “delegitimation,” which is progressing rapidly, was carried forward in December by a Human Rights Watch call on the U.S. “to suspend financing to Israel in an amount equivalent to the costs of Israel’s spending in support of settlements,” and to monitor contributions to Israel from tax-exempt U.S. organizations that violate international law, “including prohibitions against discrimination” – which would cast a wide net. Amnesty International had already called for an arms embargo on Israel. The legitimation process also took a long step forward in December, when Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil recognized the State of Palestine (Gaza and the West Bank), bringing the number of supporting nations to more than 100.

International lawyer John Whitbeck estimates that 80-90 percent of the world’s population live in states that recognize Palestine, while 10-20 percent recognize the Republic of Kosovo. The U.S. recognizes Kosovo but not Palestine. Accordingly, as Whitbeck writes in Counterpunch, media “act as though Kosovo’s independence were an accomplished fact while Palestine’s independence is only an aspiration which can never be realized without Israeli-American consent,” reflecting the normal workings of power in the international arena.

Given the scale of Israeli settlement of the West Bank, it has been argued for more a decade that the international consensus on a two-state settlement is dead, or mistaken (though evidently most of the world does not agree). Therefore those concerned with Palestinian rights should call for Israeli takeover of the entire West Bank, followed by an anti-apartheid struggle of the South African variety that would lead to full citizenship for the Arab population there.

The argument assumes that Israel would agree to the takeover. It is far more likely that Israel will instead continue the programs leading to annexation of the parts of the West Bank that it is developing, roughly half the area, and take no responsibility for the rest, thus defending itself from the “demographic problem” – too many non-Jews in a Jewish state – and meanwhile severing besieged Gaza from the rest of Palestine.

One analogy between Israel and South Africa merits attention. Once apartheid was implemented, South African nationalists recognized they were becoming international pariahs because of it. In 1958, however, the foreign minister informed the U.S. ambassador that U.N. condemnations and other protests were of little concern as long as South Africa was supported by the global hegemon – the United States. By the 1970s, the U.N. declared an arms embargo, soon followed by boycott campaigns and divestment. South Africa reacted in ways calculated to enrage international opinion. In a gesture of contempt for the U.N. and President Jimmy Carter – who failed to react so as not to disrupt worthless negotiations – South Africa launched a murderous raid on the Cassinga refugee camp in Angola just as the Carter-led “contact group” was to present a settlement for Namibia. The similarity to Israel’s behavior today is striking – for example, the attack on Gaza in January 2009 and on the Gaza freedom flotilla in May 2010.

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When President Reagan took office in 1981, he lent full support to South Africa’s domestic crimes and its murderous depredations in neighboring countries. The policies were justified in the framework of the war on terror that Reagan had declared on coming into office. In 1988, Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress was designated one of the world’s “more notorious terrorist groups” (Mandela himself was only removed from Washington’s “terrorist list” in 2008). South Africa was defiant, and even triumphant, with its internal enemies crushed, and enjoying solid support from the one state that mattered in the global system.

Shortly after, U.S. policy shifted. U.S. and South African business interests very likely realized they would be better off by ending the apartheid burden. And apartheid soon collapsed. South Africa is not the only recent case where ending U.S. support for crimes has led to significant progress. Can such a transformative shift happen in Israel’s case, clearing the way to a diplomatic settlement? Among the barriers firmly in place are the very close military and intelligence ties between the U.S. and Israel.

The most outspoken support for Israeli crimes comes from the business world. U.S. high-tech industry is closely integrated with its Israeli counterpart. To cite just one example, the world’s largest chip manufacturer, Intel, is establishing its most advanced production unit in Israel.

A U.S. cable released by WikiLeaks reveals that Rafael military industries in Haifa is one of the sites considered vital to U.S. interests due to its production of cluster bombs; Rafael had already moved some operations to the U.S. to gain better access to U.S. aid and markets. There is also a powerful Israel lobby, though of course dwarfed by the business and military lobbies.

Critical cultural facts apply, too. Christian Zionism long precedes Jewish Zionism, and is not restricted to the one-third of the U.S. population that believes in the literal truth of the Bible. When British Gen. Edmund Allenby conquered Jerusalem in 1917, the national press declared him to be Richard the Lionhearted, finally rescuing the Holy Land from the infidels.

Next, Jews must return to the homeland promised to them by the Lord. Articulating a common elite view, Harold Ickes, Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of the interior, described Jewish colonization of Palestine as an achievement “without comparison in the history of the human race.”

There is also an instinctive sympathy for a settler-colonial society that is seen to be retracing the history of the U.S. itself, bringing civilization to the lands that the undeserving natives had misused – doctrines deeply rooted in centuries of imperialism.

To break the logjam it will be necessary to dismantle the reigning illusion that the U.S. is an “honest broker” desperately seeking to reconcile recalcitrant adversaries, and to recognize that serious negotiations would be between the U^.S.-Israel and the rest of the world.

If U.S. power centers can be compelled by popular opinion to abandon decades-old rejectionism, many prospects that seem remote might become suddenly possible.

(Noam Chomsky’s most recent book, with co-author Ilan Pappe, is "Gaza in Crisis." Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.)

© 2011 Noam Chomsky

Het CIDI en "de harten van de betrokkenen"

De nonsens die het CIDI uitkraamt in haar persbericht heeft geen enkele rationele proportie. Trekt u even een pak zakdoeken open:

"Er dient een tweestaten oplossing te komen. Maar eenzijdige dwang op een democratie werkt niet. Het zal nooit lukken een duurzame vrede te bereiken als het niet uit de harten van de betrokkenen, in casu de kiezers, zelf komt."

"De harten" van de Palestijnen waren met Hamas, die in 2006 met grote meerderheid de democratische verkiezingen wonnen. Die verkiezingen werden 1. door het Westen afgedwongen, en 2. door het Westen gecontroleerd op legaliteit. Alles was in orde. Maar aan wat de Palestijnen willen heeft Israël, en natuurlijk 'de vrienden van Israël', geen enkele boodschap. Nooit gehad. Meteen begon Israël Gaza te belegeren, als collectieve straf. En later het gecreëerde gevangenkamp bombarderen. Dus is het helemaal niet voor een "duurzame vrede" met de Palestijnen.



"De kiezers" en de "betrokkenen" waar het CIDI over schrijft zijn niet de Palestijnen. Het CIDI meent namelijk dat Israël, als een echte ouderwetse kolonisator, mag bepalen wat "duurzame vrede" inhoudt voor de Palestijnen. Waarom is dat? Omdat het CIDI meent dat Palestijnen blijkbaar zulke minderwaardige mensen zijn dat ze niet eens "betrokkenen" zijn in hun eigen toekomst. Ze mogen ze niet over hun eigen levens beslissen. Net als vroeger in onze koloniën: wij wisten wel wat goed was voor de inboorlingen. En wanneer het slachtoffer, na jaren van landjepik, niet met de dief in zee wil gaan omdat hij nog meer van hem wil stelen, dan heet het volgens het CIDI dat de Palestijnen 'niet willen onderhandelen' en 'geen vrede willen'. Het lijkt wel een sekte.

In donkergroen ziet u wat volgens het CIDI Palestijnse autonomie en "duurzame vrede" is.

Wat het CIDI verzwijgt is dat de "tweestatenoplossing" die Israël voorstaat er op neerkomt dat de Palestijnen 'souvereine', maar wel gedemilitariseerde, autonomie krijgen over 11% van de Westelijke Jordaanoever. In de rest van het gebied mogen de Palestijnen nog geen een rioolpijp onder hun huis aanleggen. Míts dat idee genade kan vinden in de harten van de Israëli's!

Dit verkoopt het CIDI hardnekkig als "vredesproces".

Meer:
» NRC: Er is helemaal geen vredesproces (2009)
» The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam (2007)
» Google "no peace process"

Israel’s religious extremists send the peace process up in smoke

Population changes are transforming the country’s politics for the worse, argues Con Coughlin.

The Telegraph | By Con Coughlin | 10 Dec 2010

Over the past week, fierce forest fires have devastated large swathes of Israel, killing 42 people – including the country’s most senior female police officer. So you could be forgiven for thinking that the emergency services needed all the help they could lay their hands on.

It is not hard to imagine the firefighters’ anger – and disbelief – on discovering that the country’s interior minister, Eli Yishai, had rejected an offer by a Christian charity in North America to donate some fire engines. Given that the country often struggles to provide adequate cover during such emergencies, the proposal by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews could have made a vital contribution to the attempts to bring the fires under control.

But Mr Yishai, who represents the ultra-Orthodox Shas party in the ruling coalition, had other ideas. Shas, which speaks for Israel’s burgeoning ultra-Orthodox community, is deeply suspicious of non-Jewish organisations, even those that are committed to Israel’s well-being. Many of its supporters fear any help offered by Christian groups is part of some sinister plot to convert the Jews.

Fanning the flames of intolerance: the rejection of Christian help to fight the forest fires has caused tension within Israel

So Mr Yishai vetoed the American charity’s offer – and in doing so, further inflamed tensions between more secular-minded Israelis, who form the majority of the population, and the religious hardliners whose growing influence over government policy is a source of mounting friction between the communities. The anger only grew when Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Shas, publicly declared that the fires were divine retribution for the failure of secular Israelis to observe the Sabbath.

But then, such acrimonious exchanges have become the norm rather than the exception, in a country whose very future is, many fear, being placed in jeopardy by the growth of the extremists. And this week’s decision by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, to reject an American request to extend the freeze on building in settlements, provides a graphic illustration of the trend.

After last year’s general election produced an inconclusive result, Mr Netanyahu took advantage of Israel’s complex electoral system to form what is arguably the most Right-wing government in its history. Thus, while his Likud party remains dominant within the coalition, it relies heavily on the support of Shas and the even more hardline Yisrael Beiteinu (“Israel is our home”), led by Avigdor Lieberman, the hawkish foreign minister. Mr Lieberman, who was born in Soviet-controlled Moldova and emigrated to Israel in the 1970s, finds his greatest support among the million or so Russian Jews who have become Israeli citizens since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The real problem, however, is that while many Israelis resent the growing influence of the likes of Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu, the coalition is in many respects a reflection of the demographic changes that have transformed the political landscape over the past 20 years.

Modern Israel is barely recognisable from the country I was first posted to 25 years ago. Then, the overwhelming consensus favoured peaceful co-existence with its Arab neighbours. Shimon Peres, the Labour leader who now serves as Israel’s president, was at the forefront of official efforts to make peace with the country’s enemies, which ultimately resulted in the signing of treaties with Egypt and Jordan.

In my district of Jerusalem, Jews and Arabs lived happily side by side; it was not uncommon for Palestinians to babysit Israeli children while their parents enjoyed a night out, perhaps at one of the Palestinian restaurants that catered for Israeli tastes.

Today, the divisions between the communities are so entrenched as to make such cosy arrangements unthinkable. The current attitude is better reflected by a recent rabbinical edict that forbids Jewish landlords from renting properties to Palestinian tenants.

Looking back, it seems clear that the rapid expansion of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, together with the mass immigration of Russian Jews, has been a major factor in this sharp shift in political orientation.

The closest Israel has come to making peace with the Palestinians was in 1993, when Bill Clinton signed the ground-breaking Oslo Accords with Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister, who was subsequently murdered by a Jewish extremist opposed to any deal. Reflecting on recent efforts to revive the dialogue by his wife Hillary, now Secretary of State, Mr Clinton singled out Russian immigrants as the central obstacle, identifying “children of Russians and settlers” as “the hardest-core people against a division of the land”.

That is a view shared by many senior officials in Whitehall, who tell me they are pessimistic about the prospects for a Middle East peace settlement. “Israel is a very different country today to what it was 20 years ago,” one recently admitted. So long as the country’s fate lies in the hands of religious and nationalist extremists, I find it almost impossible to contemplate the day when Israelis can once again co-exist peacefully with their Palestinian neighbours.

Een lege stoel voor Vanunu

Massale media-aandacht voor de lege stoel voor Liu Xiaobo bij de uitreiking van de Nobelprijzen voor de Vrede. zo ook bij de NRC. Journalist Stan van Houcke schtijft hierover:

"Ovationeel applaus,' jazeker en dat van vooral ook mensen die de westerse en Israelische terreur in het Midden-Oosten volmondig steunen. Dit valt natuurlijk de westerse media niet op, want daar worden ze niet voor betaald. Degenen die Abu Ghraib mogelijk maakten zijn dolblij dat ze weer eens publiekelijk voor zichzelf kunnen appaludiseren. Vorig jaar was de grote vredesprijsman Obama die nu nog meer geld naar oorlogvoering en terreur laat vloeien dan onder zijn voorganger Bush. 'Ovationeel applaus' svp!!!"

Vandaag bericht het ANP:

Klokkenluider Israël mag prijs niet ophalen

BERLIJN (ANP) - Israël staat niet toe dat Mordechai Vanunu, die een lange celstraf heeft uitgezeten wegens onthulling van het Israëlische kernprogramma, een prijs gaat ophalen in Duitsland. De organisatoren van de Carl von Ossietzkyprijs hebben dat vrijdag gemeld.

Vanunu zou de prijs zondag in Berlijn krijgen voor zijn werk voor ontwapening. De organisatoren hebben nu besloten de uitreiking te annuleren. In plaats daarvan houden ze een betoging voor de 56-jarige kerngeleerde.

Vanunu onthulde in 1986 de bouwtekeningen van de kerncentrale Dimona. Na achttien jaar celstraf is hij in 2004 vrijgelaten, maar hij moet steeds toestemming vragen voor buitenlandse reizen en contact met buitenlanders.

Vrijdag kon ook de Chinese winnaar van de Nobelprijs voor de Vrede zijn prijs niet ophalen. De Chinese overheid gaf hem en zijn familieleden geen toestemming naar Oslo te reizen.

Schmidt, Solana en Van Agt: "Europese druk op Israël moet opgevoerd"

Vroegere regeringsleiders in Europa hebben de Europese Unie vrijdag opgeroepen Israël meer onder druk te zetten. De unie moet Israël donderdag tijdens de EU-top een ultimatum stellen om de bouw van nieuwe nederzettingen op de Westelijke Jordaanoever te staken.

Tot de ondertekenaars van de brief behoren de Nederlandse oud-premier Dries van Agt, de vroegere West-Duitse bondskanselier Helmut Schmidt en de Spaanse oud-premier Felipe González. Ook de vroegere EU-buitenlandcoördinator Javier Solana ondersteunt de oproep.

De vroegere toppolitici menen dat de activiteiten van Israël in de bezette gebieden "een existentieel gevaar" vormen voor de tweestatenoplossing waarnaar de unie streeft. De Europese Unie is voorstander van een staat voor de Palestijnen naast Israël. (De Morgen

Brazilië erkent Palestijnse staat

AMSTERDAM - Brazilië erkent de Palestijnse staat op grond van de grenzen zoals die waren op het moment van de Israëlische bezetting van de Westelijke Jordaanoever in 1967. Dat heeft de Braziliaanse minister van buitenlandse zaken gezegd.

De minister zei dat de erkenning een antwoord is op het verzoek van de Palestijnse president Mahmoud Abbas aan de Braziliaanse president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vorige maand.

Lula stuurde Abbas op 1 december een brief met daarin de boodschap dat Brazilië de staat erkent en hoopt dat de erkenning ertoe zal leiden dat Israël en de Palestijnen 'in vrede en veiligheid kunnen samenleven'.

Volgens het Braziliaanse ministerie van buitenlandse zaken is de erkenning 'geheel in lijn met de historische bereidheid van Brazilië bij te dragen aan vrede tussen Israël en de Palestijnen'. (nu.nl)

Avi Shlaim: 'Netanyahu gelooft niet oprecht in vrede'

De Standaard | Bart Beirlant | 3 december 2010

BRUSSEL - De Israëlische premier Benjamin Netanyahu en rechts in Israël geloven niet in onderhandelingen met de Palestijnen, zegt de Israëlische historicus Avi Shlaim.

Avi Shlaim, professor internationale relaties aan de University of Oxford, schreef in 2000 het opmerkelijke boek ‘The Iron Wall'. Daarin betoogde Shlaim dat het Israëlische beleid tegenover de Palestijnen geleid wordt door de doctrine van de ‘IJzeren muur', die in 1923 bedacht werd door Zeev Jabotinsky, ‘de spirituele vader van joods rechts'. Volgens die doctrine kan Israël alleen onderhandelen met de Palestijnen op basis van een positie van militaire suprematie.

‘Wat aanvankelijk een strategie van de rechtervleugel binnen het zionisme was, is een nationale strategie geworden van de opeenvolgende Israëlische premiers sinds 1948: van Ben Goerion tot Benjamin Netanyahu – van BG tot Bibi', zei Shlaim tijdens een voordracht voor het Studie- en Onderzoekscentrum Oorlog en Hedendaagse Maatschappij (SOMA) in Brussel. De enige uitzondering op die regel was Yitzhak Rabin, die in 1993 de Oslo-akkoorden sloot en daarom in 1995 vermoord werd door een joodse extremist.

Na de verkiezingen van 1996 werd Benjamin Netanyahu een eerste keer premier. ‘Bibi' greep terug naar de strategie van de ‘Iron Wall', zegt Shlaim. ‘Hij maakte er geen geheim van dat hij gekant was tegen Oslo, en probeerde als premier de Oslo-akkoorden te ondermijnen. Oslo werd een mislukking wegens de Israëlische confiscatie van Palestijns land. ‘Land afpakken en vrede sluiten gaan niet samen.'

Apartheidssysteem

Sinds de mislukking van de onderhandelingen in Camp David in 2000 onder leiding van toenmalig Amerikaans president Bill Clinton, geloven de Israëli's volgens Shlaim niet langer dat vrede met de Palestijnen mogelijk is. Daarvoor draagt toenmalig Labour-premier Ehud Barak, nu minister van Defensie, een grote verantwoordelijkheid: ‘Hij vertelde na Camp David dat hij aan Yasser Arafat bijna alles had aangeboden wat deze vroeg, maar dat de Palestijnse leider desondanks weigerde. Dat klopt niet, het maakt dat de Israëli's steeds meer voor rechtse partijen stemmen, en niet meer geloven in vredesonderhandelingen.'

‘Israël maakt een leefbare Palestijnse staat steeds minder mogelijk', aldus Shlaim. ‘Het breidt de nederzettingen op de Westoever uit, bouwt omleidingswegen en tunnels die alleen joden mogen gebruiken. Dit is een apartheidssysteem. In Jeruzalem blijft Israël Palestijnen uit hun huizen zetten, woningen die nadien exclusief voor joden voorbestemd worden. En de belangrijkste functie van de afscheidingsmuur bestaat erin om land van de Palestijnen in te nemen en een toekomstige grens af te bakenen.'

Retoriek

Toch zegt Netanyahu nu uitdrukkelijk dat hij vrede met de Palestijnen wil. Moeten we hem dan niet op zijn woord geloven?

‘Mijn groot probleem met Benjamin Netanyahu', zegt Shlaim, ‘is dat hij geen hoop biedt. Bibi en rechts in Israël geloven niet in onderhandelingen. Zij zijn voorstanders van een permanent conflict en unilateralisme. Bij politici moet je een onderscheid maken tussen hun retoriek en hun daden. Bibi is nooit een grote voorstander geweest van vrede, kijk naar wat hij deed met de Oslo-akkoorden in zijn eerste ambtstermijn.

Onder druk van president Obama zegt hij nu dat hij voorstander is van een tweestatenoplossing. Maar kijk naar wat er op het terrein gebeurt: hij stemde een eerste keer in met een bevriezing van de nederzettingen voor tien maanden op de Westoever, maar niet in Oost-Jeruzalem: dat werd door Israël geannexeerd en maakt voor Netanyahu deel uit van het Israëlische soevereine grondgebied. Nu weigert hij in te stemmen met een vernieuwing van die bevriezing voor de duur van 90 dagen, ook al bood president Obama hem een pakket incentives aan. Netanyahu gelooft niet oprecht in vrede.'

Obama beloont bouwstop Israël met 3 miljoen dollar per uur

Alleen het buitenland bestaan er nieuwsmedia die de 3 miljoen dollar per uur van Obama aan de schurkenstaat Israël, om niet te bouwen in en rond de illegale nederzettingen, met uitzondering van Oost-Jeruzalem, gewoon bij de naam noemen: bribe, omkoping, steekpenning. In Nederland is dat ongekend. Hier heet het zonder uitzondering "voorstel" en "plan".

Ik heb zodoende ook een voorstel: laten we alle journalisten, die er zo over schrijven, en hun familie uit hun huizen schoppen, waarna we vervolgens met hen gaan onderhandelen over wat we eventueel terug zouden kunnen geven en op welke voorwaarden. En dat noemen we dan een "vredesproces". Ondertussen laten we ons royaal belonen door hun redacties om te voorkomen dat we niet de eigendommen van het resterende personeel stelen of platbranden. En beloven zij ons dat ze geen aangifte doen bij de politie. En de regering beloont ons vervolgens met allerlei financiële voordeeltjes en onvoorwaardelijke vriendschap en steun.

Robert Fisk: An American bribe that stinks of appeasement

The Independent | by Robert Fisk | 20 November 2010

In any other country, the current American bribe to Israel, and the latter's reluctance to accept it, in return for even a temporary end to the theft of somebody else's property would be regarded as preposterous. Three billion dollars' worth of fighter bombers in return for a temporary freeze in West Bank colonisation for a mere 90 days? Not including East Jerusalem – so goodbye to the last chance of the east of the holy city for a Palestinian capital – and, if Benjamin Netanyahu so wishes, a rip-roaring continuation of settlement on Arab land. In the ordinary sane world in which we think we live, there is only one word for Barack Obama's offer: appeasement. Usually, our lords and masters use that word with disdain and disgust.

Anyone who panders to injustice by one people against another people is called an appeaser. Anyone who prefers peace at any price, let alone a $3bn bribe to the guilty party – is an appeaser. Anyone who will not risk the consequences of standing up for international morality against territorial greed is an appeaser. Those of us who did not want to invade Afghanistan were condemned as appeasers. Those of us who did not want to invade Iraq were vilified as appeasers. Yet that is precisely what Obama has done in his pathetic, unbelievable effort to plead with Netanyahu for just 90 days of submission to international law. Obama is an appeaser.

The fact that the West and its political and journalistic elites – I include the ever more disreputable New York Times – take this tomfoolery at face value, as if it can seriously be regarded as another "step" in the "peace process", to put this mystical nonsense "back on track", is a measure of the degree to which we have taken leave of our senses in the Middle East.

It is a sign of just how far America (and, through our failure to condemn this insanity, Europe) has allowed its fear of Israel – and how far Obama has allowed his fear of Israeli supporters in Congress and the Senate – to go.

Three billion dollars for three months is one billion dollars a month to stop Israel's colonisation. That's half a billion dollars a fortnight. That's $500m a week. That's $71,428,571 a day, or $2,976,190 an hour, or $49,603 a minute. And as well as this pot of gold, Washington will continue to veto any resolutions critical of Israel in the UN and prevent "Palestine" from declaring itself a state. It's worth invading anyone to get that much cash to stage a military withdrawal, let alone the gracious gesture of not building more illegal colonies for only 90 days while furiously continuing illegal construction in Jerusalem at the same time.

The Hillary Clinton version of this grotesquerie would be funny if it was not tragic. According to the sharp pen of the NYT's Roger Cohen, La Clinton has convinced herself that Palestine is "achievable, inevitable and compatible with Israel's security". And what persuaded Madame Hillary of this? Why, on a trip to the pseudo-Palestine "capital" of Ramallah last year, she saw the Jewish settlements – "the brutality of it was so stark" according to one of her officials – but thought her motorcade was being guarded by the Israeli army because "they're so professional". And then, lo and behold, they turned out to be a Palestinian military guard, a "professional outfit" – and all this changed Madame's views!

Quite apart from the fact that the Israeli army is a rabble, and that indeed, the Palestinians are a rabble too, this "road to Ramallah" incident led supporters of Madame, according to Cohen, to realise that there had been a transition "from a self-pitying, self-dramatising Palestinian psyche, with all the cloying accoutrements of victimhood, to a self-affirming culture of pragmatism and institution-building". Palestinian "prime minister" Salam Fayyad, educated in the US so, naturally, a safe pair of hands, has put "growth before grumbling, roads before ranting, and security before everything".

Having been occupied by a brutal army for 43 years, those wretched, dispossessed Palestinians, along with their cousins in the West Bank who have been homeless for 62 years, have at last stopped ranting and grumbling and feeling sorry for themselves and generally play-acting in order to honour the only thing that matters. Not justice. Certainly not democracy, but to the one God which Christians, Jews and Muslims are all now supposed to worship: security.

Yes, they have joined the true brotherhood of mankind. Israel will be safe at last. That this infantile narrative now drives the woman who told us 11 years ago that Jerusalem was "the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel" proves that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has now reached its apogee, its most treacherous and final moment. And if Netanyahu has any sense – I'm talking abut the Zionist, expansionist kind – he will wait out the 90 days, then thumb his nose at the US. In the three months of "good behaviour", of course, the Palestinians will have to bite the bullet and sit down to "peace" talks which will decide the future borders of Israel and "Palestine". But since Israel controls 62 per cent of the West Bank this leaves Fayyad and his chums about 10.9 per cent of mandate Palestine to argue about.

And at the cost of $827 a second, they'd better do some quick grovelling. They will. We should all hang our heads in shame. But we won't. It's not about people. It's about presentation. It's not about justice. It's about "security". And cash. Lots of it. Goodbye Palestine.

Obama's 'voorstel' aan Netanyahu

Bron: Blogging the Casbah

Wait- we are giving who?? 20 F-35 stealth attack jets?? for what??

In onze nieuwsmedia lezen we niets over Obama's "omkoping" van Israël, voor een miezerige settlement freeze van 3 maanden, laat staan dat de wereld al decennialang heeft geakkoordeerd dat Israël zich terug moet trekken uit de bezette gebieden en de nederzettingen moeten verdwijnen. Bij ons heet het simpelweg "vredesoverleg", wanneer een dief onderhandelt met zijn slachtoffer over de gestolen waren.

MondoWeiss | By Virginia Tilley | November 20, 2010

With 25 years of experience under my belt analysing the Middle East conflict, and as a close observer of US foreign policy with a pragmatic attitude toward its realist exigencies, I have never seen anything as destructive, humiliating and ruinously conceived as the “incentive” package now being offered by the US to Israel for a 3-month settlement freeze. It is our country’s foreign policy nadir: a deal is so damaging to US interests that it is hard to find words for it. What can be said plainly is that US citizens – yes, even those jaded, tired, embittered, disillusioned folks who have watched this stuff for too long – have to rise up and move fast to stop this, in the name of our country’s future.



Let us briefly consider just what’s being proposed here. Israel has been asked (asked!) to freeze illegal settlement construction in the West Bank for a lousy three months in the interests of the so-called peace process.

This brief hiatus is purely cosmetic. Jewish settlements in this occupied territory have been steadily and deliberately eradicating taking over East Jerusalem and the West Bank for over 40 years. The whole full-bore settlement construction programme makes open nonsense of partition now, as well as the putative “peace process”, by “eating the pizza”. But Israel has refused even a short-term freeze. And the US, egg all over its face, is being reduced to bribing the Israelis with a mind-boggling package of incentives – $3 BILLION in military hardware, equivalent to Israel’s annual automatic US package – just for three months of a partial freeze on construction, after which construction will continue unabated.

Israel’s refusal to freeze settlements even temporarily should surprise no one: the enigma is rather that anyone still finds that refusal confusing. Israel’s strategy for annexing the West Bank is recorded in Israeli government maps and settlement Master Plans dating back decades. For reasons too complicated to summarise here, deep divisions in Israeli society and politics make changing that policy effectively impossible at this late hour, as it is entrenched in Israeli doctrine, politics, policy and practice at levels so deep that the State’s very survival is implicated in it. The entire Israeli government, from the Agriculture Ministry to the World Zionist Organisation, is fully involved in and committed to building the West Bank settlements. But no one in the White House seems to have told President Obama this. He has already been deeply humiliated in world eyes when he insisted that Israel freeze settlement construction and Israel (predictably) gave him the diplomatic finger. Ever since that debacle, he has looked like a tin man in Middle East politics. Many wondered – first when, then whether – the US might find some spine with Israel over a situation so obviously damaging to the country’s image and interests. But Obama’s language about the settlements lately has been mealy stuff about “unhelpful” and “both sides”. As billions of tax dollars sink into the Afghan morass and US soldiers are shot down in ditches, the US superpower can’t get Israel to do diddly to help out and isn’t willing even to try. On the contrary, the US is committed to helping Israel do the opposite of what it urgently needs and what its own rhetoric asks for.

Normally, of course, the US would just strong-arm the Palestinians. But the Palestinian Authority is down to its last thong of dignity and even this is ready to snap. It can’t participate in a peace process that’s so openly idiotic. Politically, and despite the partial economic benefits that appointed Prime Minister Fayyad has brought to a narrow sector of Palestinian society in the West Bank, the PA is on the brink of implosion. Looking too much like a stringed puppet dancing in an empty diplomatic theatre, “negotiating” for a territory vanishing day by day, Mr. Abbas confronts a level of shame that even hard-core PA cronies have to consider soberly. For years, he has cultivated the image of a much-abused Palestinian patriot on the brink of resignation, enduring endless insults from Israel and the US only to do his best by the Palestinian people. But that always dubious story is crumbling to reveal a sordid truth: whatever its individual members’ intentions, the PA is effectively a cluster of native clients sucking up funds and graces from enemy patrons who are happy to pay a self-serving indigenous elite to keep the native masses quiet. This classic colonial deal can be sustained only as long as the Palestinian people as a whole are not smacked in the face with it.

But why does the US care about sustaining this farce? To understand the outlandish military deal now being offered, we have to recognise the whole Middle East “peace process” as a survival pact. The US needs the PA to help keep alive the whole fake story about the PA – Oslo’s “Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority”, supposedly “interim” to full Palestinian independence but actually “interim” to Israel’s final victory – to achieve what it needs to do in Afghanistan. Israel still needs the PA, too, because otherwise Israel will be identified for what it is: an Apartheid state. The Ramallah-PA elite relies on the coloniser’s needs -- indirect rule of the natives – for its very existence. So everyone needs the game a little longer and, if all goes right, it will work out for all of them. The US and Israel assume that when Israel’s eastern border (marked by the Wall plus the Jordan Valley) is finally consolidated, the PA will serve as the “self-government authority” – language straight out of the South African Bantustans, not incidentally – that will keep the natives quiet in assigned “reserves” which may or may not be called a state. The Ramallah PA hopes to land on its feet: a native elite that can enrich itself on sweetheart deals with Israel that it will cultivate by ensuring “security”. Counting on this pact, Israel need contemplate no true change to settlement policy because, token protests aside, the PA will take whatever it can get. No one in the US government really cares where Israel decides to put its borders, so the US government will not insist on any change either. The only concern is keeping up appearances. The short-sightedness of this plan is obvious and sad: it can’t but culminate in Palestinian revolt, Israeli violence, security dilemmas throughout the region and periodic regional upheavals. But then, colonists always assume that colonialism will win out somehow.



Even sadder is that the US actually has immense power in this situation and need do very little to deploy it. All it has to do to alter the entire power balance in the Middle East – in the interest of its own desperate situation in Afghanistan and its credibility as a world power – is sit back and abstain in the UN, leaving Israel to face the monumental international opprobrium that is brewing around its multitudinous human rights violations and sins against international security. Instead, the US is now doing the opposite: promising openly to protect Israel from any such blame, however legitimate, and handing over twenty – TWENTY – F35 stealth attack jets, the latest in US military stealth equipment, as well as unnamed satellite intelligence capacity and other cutting-edge technology. And for what? A 3-month token freeze that will end with Israel bouncing back to exactly the same strategy as before, putting the US back in the same impossible situation by February 2011.

Of course, it’s unlikely that the US is really doing this. Probably the deal was in the works anyway – maybe to capacitate Israel to strike Iran, in reality or as a threat – and some pro-Israel fanatic in the White House thought it might make slightly better sense to the world if cast as a sweetener to Israel regarding the always-fictive “peace process”. The opposite is true: attaching this colossal military transfer to a 3-month diplomatic nod from Israel makes the US look like a giant on its knees to a local mafia thug, handing over the family jewels (in both senses?) to cover the next short-term protection-racket instalment. It announces to the world that the US has no foreign policy leverage whatever and is reduced to giving away its best goods for the slightest temporary cooperation by a rude ally that claims openly to control its foreign policy. It also announces to the world that we are ready to destabilise the entire planet to plead for the most immaterial of Israel’s diplomatic graces. It indicates an infatuation with Israel so craven as to betray the foundations of our country’s essential interests – to remain a credible power in world affairs. (And let’s not even go into how deeply it abuses and insults the millions of desperate jobless Americans for whom $3 billion in mortgage assistance, education and job training could make all the difference – and whose children are being killed or maimed in Afghanistan as this disgusting deal goes forward to make their lot worse.)

I don’t usually speak like this, but this is a matter for US patriots. I don’t mean tea-party dolts, I mean liberal principled citizens people who – even grown cynical after decades of disappointments and disillusionments – still in their hearts really care about the US and what we always believed it was founded to become. And I include people who don’t much care one way or the other about the Middle East. For, although it will indeed be ruinous for the Middle East, and catastrophic for US relations with the Middle East, this crisis isn’t only about the Middle East. We cannot possibly hand over vast first-strike armaments at the tune of $3 billion on the utterly shaming rationale of coaxing an arrogant local power into a minor diplomatic gesture with a dinky 90-day limit. Doing so would mark the end of the US as any kind of sensible player in the world.

Virginia Tilley is a professor of political science and international relations and author of The One-State Solution. She lives in Cape Town and can be reached at vtilley@mweb.co.za. Thanks to John Haines for circulating her piece first.

Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians: Allowing the thief to negotiate with his victim

SpinWatch | By David Morrison | 3rd November 2010

The negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are equivalent to allowing a thief to negotiate with his victim about the amount of stolen goods he is going to give back, while he keeps his boot on the victim's throat.

Direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians began in early September. President Abbas was opposed to direct negotiations without Israel calling a halt to settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.But, he came under great pressure from President Obama to do so and reluctantly gave in.

The Road Map

In May 2003, Israel agreed to freeze all settlement activity prior to the start of negotiations, when it accepted the Road Map (aka "a performance-based roadmap to a permanent two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict") [1].

Drawn up by the Bush Administration, it is the internationally accepted framework for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, endorsed by the Security Council in resolution 1515 [2]. The EU and the Quartet (the US, the EU, Russia and the UN Secretary-General) have regularly called upon both sides to fulfil their obligations under the Road Map (see, for example, a recent Quartet statement of 21 September 2010 [3]).

One of Israel's obligations is that, prior to the start of negotiations:

"Consistent with the Mitchell Report, GOI [Government of Israel] freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)"

Another obligation was to dismantle all the settlement outposts built after March 2001.

The Israeli government attached reservations to its acceptance of the Road Map, but none of them objected to the obligation to freeze settlement construction [4]. The Palestinians accepted the Road Map without reservations.

The Israeli government has reiterated its commitment to the Road Map on several occasions, for example, at the Annapolis conference held in November 2007, when, in a joint memorandum with President Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert repeated Israel's commitment [5]. However, Israel continued settlement activity while the negotiations following the conference went on.

Obama backs down

So, Mahmoud Abbas was entirely justified in resisting direct negotiations while settlement building continued.Israel's 10-month "moratorium" on settlement building was never a complete freeze, and anyway it didn't apply to East Jerusalem, so it didn't meet the Road Map requirement. And settlement outposts haven't been removed. At the time of writing, the "moratorium" has expired – and Abbas may pull out of direct negotiations.

A year ago, Obama was on Abbas's side in insisting on a freeze on the Jewish colonisation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, prior to the start of negotiations.In his speech in Cairo on 4 June 2009, he declared:

"The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements [eg the Road Map] and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop." [6]

However, a few months later, in the face of opposition from Prime Minister Netanyahu, he backed down ignominiously. Violating previous agreements and undermining efforts to achieve peace is apparently OK, as long as it is Israel that is doing it.

(It is difficult to believe that he would be as forgiving of Palestinian action that he deemed to be in violation of previous agreements and to undermine efforts to achieve peace. In the same Cairo speech, he insisted that in order "to play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations" Hamas had to "recognize past agreements". He has yet to lift this requirement on Hamas.)

So, having given up trying to persuade the stronger party to stick to past agreements, Obama has been putting ever increasing pressure on the weaker party to enter into direct negotiations while the stronger party continues to be in breach of past agreements – and in early September, with great reluctance, Abbas conceded.

The only reason anybody can think of for this disgraceful bullying of Abbas by Obama is that he wanted a foreign policy "success" before the US mid-term elections.

Mitchell reports

A report published on 30 April 2001 stated:

"Palestinians are genuinely angry at the continued growth of settlements and at their daily experiences of humiliation and disruption as a result of Israel's presence in the Palestinian territories. Palestinians see settlers and settlements in their midst not only as violating the spirit of the Oslo process, but also as an application of force in the form of Israel's overwhelming military superiority, which sustains and protects the settlements." [7]

The chairman of the fact finding mission that drew up this report was George Mitchell, now Obama's Special Envoy for Middle East Peace.Mitchell went on to recommend, inter alia, that, in order to build confidence prior to a resumption of negotiations:

"The GOI [Government of Israel] should freeze all settlement activity, including the ‘natural growth' of existing settlements."

which, as we have seen, was replicated in the Road Map two years later.

One wonders how Mitchell feels now that he has been party to pressuring the Palestinians into direct negotiations with Israel without his proposal from 10 years ago being implemented, particularly since, in the interim, Palestinians have had to endure a rapidly growing number of settlers in their midst.

The Kuwait example

The negotiations are supposed to be about ending Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, which began in June 1967.The Quartet statement of 21 September stated that "negotiations should lead to an agreement that ends the occupation that began in 1967 and results in the emergence of an independent, democratic, contiguous and viable Palestinian State" [3].

The proper international response to Israel's acquisition of these (and other) territories by force in 1967 should have been to apply what ever pressure was necessary to force Israel to withdraw.The Security Council should have told Israel to leave and, if it didn't, economic sanctions should have been applied to make it leave.If that didn't work, it should have been made to leave by the application of armed force.That's what was done to Iraq when it invaded Kuwait in 1990, and should have been done to Israel in 1967.

But, Israel was not forced to leave.Instead, today, the Israeli occupier is being allowed to negotiate with the people under its occupation about how much, if any, of the territory it acquired by armed force 43 years ago it will give up, and when it will give it up.In these negotiations, Israel holds all the cards, since it dominates the occupied territories, militarily and economically, and is therefore in a position to dictate terms.And, if the Palestinians refuse to agree to those terms, they will continue to be occupied sine die.

These negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are equivalent to allowing a thief to negotiate with his victim about the amount of stolen goods he is going to give back, while he keeps his boot on the victim's throat.

The US has made it clear that it isn't going to help the victim recover the stolen goods, Obama said at the outset the US "cannot impose a solution" [8].He meant "will not".This statement is a green light to Netanyahu to set terms which Abbas cannot accept, in the full knowledge that Obama isn't going to make his life difficult if he does.On present form, Obama is much more likely to make life difficult for Abbas if he refuses to accept Netanyahu's terms.

The US could impose a solution – all it has to do is to cut off, or threaten to cut off, some or all of the US tax dollars that Israel receives annually (around $2.5 billion in 2007 [9]) and/or to make it clear that the US is no longer prepared to protect Israel from criticism, or worse, in international fora, in particular, that the US veto might not always be exercised to protect Israel in the Security Council.

Relentless settlement building

Meanwhile, Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, on the territory that is meant to belong to a Palestinian state at the end of the negotiations.B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, recently published a report on Israel's settlement policy in the West Bank [10].The report begins:

"Some half a million Israelis are now living over the Green Line [the 1967 border] : more than 300,000 in 121 settlements and about one hundred outposts, which control 42 percent of the land area of the West Bank, and the rest in twelve neighborhoods that Israel established on land it annexed to the Jerusalem Municipality."

The Jewish state was assigned 56% of mandate Palestine by UN General Assembly in November 1947.It was expanded by force to 78% in 1947/48, and 750,000 Arabs were expelled into the rest of Palestine and the surrounding Arab states, where they and their descendants live today.That is how a viable Jewish state was established in Palestine in 1948.

In 1967, Israel occupied the remaining 22% and has set about colonising the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, thereby staking a claim to even more territory.

In 1988, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) recognised Israel's right to exist within its 1967 borders and adopted the objective of establishing an independent Palestinian state in the remaining 22% of mandate Palestine. This "historic compromise" led to the Oslo agreement in August 1993 and to a series of negotiations under that agreement, culminating in the unsuccessful Camp David talks in July 2000.

Throughout the Oslo process, and subsequently, Israel has continued relentlessly to confiscate Palestinian land and to plant Jewish settlers on it.In 1988, there were about 60,000 settlers in the West Bank and about 120,000 in East Jerusalem (see B'Tselem report [10], p 9/10).Today, those numbers have increased to around 300,000 and 200,000 respectively.The total today at 500,000 is nearly triple what it was in 1988, when the PLO formally settled for a state in 22% of mandate Palestine.

It cannot be coincidental that when Palestinians expressed their willingness to accept a state in 22% of mandate Palestine, Israel accelerated settlement building to make it ever more difficult, if not possible, for them to reach that objective.The territory which is supposed to belong one day to a Palestinian state is being steadily eaten into by Jewish colonisation.

Michael Tarazy, a legal advisor to the PLO, once said: "It's like you and I are negotiating over a piece of pizza. How much of the pizza do I get? And how much do you get? And while we are negotiating it, you are eating it".

Contrary to 4^th Geneva Convention

All of Israel's settlement building is contrary to international law, because it involves the transfer of Israeli civilians into territory occupied by Israel.This is forbidden under Article 49, paragraph 6, of the 4th Geneva Convention, which states:

"The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."[11]

The United Nations Security Council has made this clear in resolutions 446, 452 and 465, all of which demand that Israel cease settlement building and remove existing settlements.For example, in resolution 446, passed on 22 March 1979, the Security Council states that

"the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East"

and calls upon Israel

"to desist from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status and geographical nature and materially affecting the demographic composition of the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and, in particular, not to transfer parts of its own civilian population into the occupied Arab territories" [12].

UN General Assembly

Every year, the UN General Assembly passes a series of resolutions on Israel/Palestine including one demanding that settlement building cease and existing settlements be removed, most recently resolution 64/93 passed on 10 December 2009.This reiterates the General Assembly's demand

"for the immediate and complete cessation of all Israeli settlement activities in all of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan, and calls in this regard for the full implementation of the relevant Security Council resolutions, including resolution 465 (1980)" [13]

This resolution was passed overwhelmingly (as it is every year), this year by 171 votes to 7.EU states voted for the resolution.The only opponents apart from Israel and the US were Panama and four tiny Pacific states – Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru and Palau – which are US clients.

On this matter, and others concerning Israel/Palestine, Israel and the US have very few friends in the world.

The International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has also declared, in its Advisory Opinion on the construction of the Wall [14](paragraph 120), that "Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (including East Jerusalem) have been established in breach of international law", contrary to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

International Criminal Court

Under the Rome Statute of International Criminal Court (ICC), the colonisation of occupied territory is a war crime. Article 8.2(b)(viii) of the Statute defines "the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies" as a war crime [15].

Since there is no doubt that such transfers have taken place, there is a prima facie case that the many Israeli citizens responsible for these transfers have committed war crimes.However, like the US and other states, for example, Sudan, Israel has not signed up to the ICC and accepted its jurisdiction, so there is no prospect of the ICC prosecuting these Israelis.

Theoretically, the Security Council could refer the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories to the ICC (as it did the situation in Darfur in March 2005, which led to the indictment of President Bashir of Sudan and others by the ICC).Then, the ICC could prosecute Israelis for settlement building carried out since 1 July 2002, when the Rome Statute came into force.Needless to say, it is certain that the US would wield its veto on the Security Council to prevent this happening.

(Speaking of the ICC, it is possible that Israelis could be brought before the ICC for the attack on the Mavi Marmara, which although a Turkish-owned ship was registered in, and flew the flag of, the Comoros.Legally speaking, therefore, the attack took place on the territory of Comoros, which is a party to the ICC.The ICC therefore has jurisdiction over the ship at the time of the attack.This was confirmed [16] by Desmond de Silva, a British judge, who was a member of the UN Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Mission into the incident.The mission reported on 22 September 2010 [17].

It appears that the Turkish NGO, IHH, that owned the ship deliberately chose to register it in the Comoros, because the Comoros was a party to the ICC, unlike Turkey.)

What freeze?

At the time of writing, the question dominating media attention is: will Israel renew its "moratorium" on settlement building and save the negotiations?

One question that is worthy of media attention, but is receiving very little, is: what effect did the "moratorium" have on settlement building while it was in operation?The answer is very little.

Here's how Dror Etkes described its effect in a Ha'aretz article [18] entitled Settlement freeze? It was barely a slowdown:

"The official statistics supplied by the Central Bureau of Statistics describe the story behind the 10-month construction moratorium in the West Bank. The story can be called many things but ‘freeze' is certainly not one of them. What took place in the past few months is, in the best case scenario, not more than a negligible decrease in the number of housing units that were built in settlements.

"The data that appeared in the bureau's tables clearly show that. At the end of 2009, the number of housing units that were actively being built on all the settlements together amounted to 2,955. Three months later, at the end of March 2010, the number stood at 2,517. We are therefore talking about a drop of a little more than 400 housing units - some 16 percent of Israeli construction in the West Bank over that period.…

"The real story behind the PR stunt known as the freeze took place in fact in the months prior to that, during which the settlers, with the assistance of the government, prepared well for the months of hibernation foisted upon them. In the half year that preceded the declaration of the freeze, which started at the end of November 2009, dozens of new building sites sprang up, especially in isolated and more extreme settlements east of the fence.

"This piece of information is also well documented in the bureau's numbers. In the first half of 2009, they started to build 669 housing units in the settlements, and then, as the months wore on, the pace of construction increased. Thus in the second half of 2009, no fewer than 1,204 housing units were built - an increase of some 90 percent in construction starts as compared with the first half of the year. …

"If we add to these statistics the fact that the government announced in advance that it planned to approve, in any circumstances and with no connection to the ‘freeze', the construction of 600 housing units in various settlements, and the chaos and anarchy that exists in some settlements and outposts, making it possible for every person to build where and when he feels like it, we shall get quite a good picture of what really happened to the settlements in the past few months."

A real freeze (and demolitions)

By contrast, Palestinian building is severely restricted by Israel in large areas of the West Bank, and has been restricted since Israeli occupation began in 1967.This is graphically described in a fact sheet published in August 2010 [19] by the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on life for the approximately 150,000 Palestinians living in Area C of the West Bank.

As part of the Oslo process, the West Bank was divided into three zones, referred to as Areas A, B and C, A controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA), B under joint PA and Israeli control and C wholly under Israeli control.Areas A and B consist of a series of small islands within Area C, which comprises approximately 62% of the West Bank.There, the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA) is in charge of building and planning.

On this, the OCHA fact sheet comments:

"Difficulties in obtaining building permits from the ICA for construction and/or rehabilitation of buildings, prevents the construction of housing to meet natural population growth. In addition, the inability to build or rehabilitate schools and health clinics significantly impedes the adequate provision of basic services. In some cases, permit applications of a high technical standard for funded projects have been pending for years. The ability to rehabilitate rainwater harvesting cisterns and the weatherproofing of dwellings, and even their replacement by portable tents, is prohibited by the ICA.

"Due to the restrictive planning and zoning regulations in practice, the Israeli authorities generally allow Palestinian construction only within the boundaries of ICA-approved municipal plans. These cover less than one percent of Area C, and much of this one percent is already built-up. As a result, Palestinians needing to build in Area C are left with no alternative than to build without a permit and risk demolition of their structure."

And demolitions are common.

Right next to the Palestinians living under these severe building restrictions imposed by Israel are the Jewish-only settlements, which are all in Area C.There, even temporary restrictions on building are fiercely resisted by Israel.It is unthinkable, it is said, that homes cannot be extended to cater for growing families, or that schools and health clinics cannot be built or rehabilitated.

But not if the homes and schools and health centres are for Palestinians.

References:
[1]unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/0/6129b9c832fe59ab85256d43004d87fa
[2] unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/d744b47860e5c97e85256c40005d01d6/71b2c135fca9d78a85256de400530107
[3]www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2010/sg2162.doc.htm
[4]www.knesset.gov.il/process/docs/roadmap_response_eng.htm
[5]georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/11/20071127.html
[6]www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09/
[7]unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/6e61d52eaacb860285256d2800734e9a
[8]www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/09/01/remarks-president-rose-garden-after-bilateral-meetings

[9]assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL33222_20080102.pdf
[10]www.btselem.org/Download/201007_By_Hook_and_by_Crook_Eng.pdf
[11]www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/WebART/380-600056
[12]unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/d744b47860e5c97e85256c40005d01d6/ba123cded3ea84a5852560e50077c2dc
[13]unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/a06f2943c226015c85256c40005d359c/b47fb4cb4b13f63b852576b7005b84a4
[14]www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/131/1671.pdf
[15]www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/EA9AEFF7-5752-4F84-BE94-0A655EB30E16/0/Rome_Statute_English.pdf
[16]www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39402183/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa
[17]www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/15session/A.HRC.15.21_en.pdf
[18]www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/settlement-freeze-it-was-barely-a-slowdown-1.316074
[19]www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_area_c_humanitarian_response_plan_fact_sheet_2010_09_03_
english.pdf

More of David Morrison's writing is available on his website

VS 'vredesproces' lachertje

In ruil voor Amerikaanse wapens steun, moet Israël een bouwstop van 90 dagen op de Westelijke Jordaanoever afkondigen. De stop geldt niet voor Oost-Jeruzalem.

De VS belooft daarna geen verlenging van de bouwstop te eisen. Verder zal de VS Israël proberen te behoeden voor kritische VN-resoluties.
(Bron: NOS)

Hamas' Mesh'al lays out new policy direction

Since 1996, Khaled Mesh'al has been the Chairman of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) Political Bureau. After the assassination of Hamas leader Abdul 'Aziz Rantisi in 2004 by Israeli forces, Mesh'al became the movement's overall leader. He lives in exile in Damascus, from where he oversees the movement's activities both within Palestine and outside.

The most recent interview with Mesh'al was conducted by the Jordanian Arabic-language Al-Sabeel newspaper in July 2010. In it, Mesh'al laid out the policy direction of Hamas on a number of critical issues: negotiations with Israel, recognition of Israel, resistance, Jews, Christians, women, among other issues. In the Arab world, the lengthy interview is being viewed as highly significant, and is regarded as a clear indication of positions that Hamas wants to pursue, especially with regard to its future attitude towards Israel. The Afro-Middle East Centre (AMEC) translated the interview into English and publishes it here to make it accessible to a wider audience, and to allow for greater understanding of the political and other perspectives of a movement which has become one of the most important role-players in the Middle East today. It is an important piece articulating, in its own words, the perspectives of Hamas' leadership, and is critical reading for observers of the Middle East, and policy-makers for whom the Middle East is important.

» Lees het interview

Waarom Israël haar definitieve grenzen nooit zal openbaren

Ik schrijf hier regelmatig over het feit dat Israël tot op de dag van vandaag haar officiële grenzen weigert te openbaren. Want zodra het dat doet wordt een Palestijnse staat mogelijk, en dat wil Israël ten alle tijde voorkomen. Dit is altijd belangrijker geweest dat "vrede" met de Palestijnen. Ook de eis van "erkenning" van de (Israëlische dan wel "Joodse") staat is een gotspe, aangezien, door het gebrek aan definitieve grenzen, niemand weet wat er precies erkend zou moeten worden.

Why Israel will never define its borders

Redress | By Alan Hart | 17 October 2010

Alan Hart explains that Israel will never produce a map of its internationally-recognized borders because no Israeli leader would ever have the courage and leadership to stand up to and remove Jewish squatters from the occupied territories.

Better late than never! A very senior Palestinian official in Ramallah, Yasser Abed Rabbo, has found the right way to challenge Israel and the US. As reported by AFP news agency on 13 October, he said: "We officially demand that the US administration and the Israeli government provide a map of the borders of the state of Israel which they want us to recognize."

That's a completely logical and totally reasonable demand.

If Israel was interested in peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept, the map provided would show Israel with borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war. An accompanying note would say that, subject to agreement in final negotiations, Israel seeks minor border adjustments here and there. The note would also propose that Jerusalem should be an open, undivided city and the capital of two states.

If such a map with the note as above was presented, it would open the door to peace.

But the implementation of such land-for-peace deal would require the Israeli army to confront and forcibly remove illegal Jewish settlers who refused to leave; and that would open the door to a Jewish civil war – the price Israel's Jews would have to pay for 62 years of contempt for and defiance of international law.

Of course it won't happen. As I reveal in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, why not was explained to me as far back as I980 by Shimon Peres. At the time he was the leader of the Labour Party, the main opposition to Prime Minister Menachem Begin's Likud-led coalition. Peres was hoping to win Israel's next election and deny Begin a second term in office. (President Carter was hoping and possibly praying for such an outcome). My purpose in talking with Peres in private was to establish whether or not he was interested in me acting as the linkman in a secret, exploratory dialogue between himself and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat. Peres was interested but before I went off to Beirut to seek Arafat's agreement to participate in a little conspiracy for peace, he said to me, "I fear it's already too late".

I asked Peres what he meant and this was his answer:

Every day that passes sees new bricks on new settlements. Begin knows exactly what he's doing. He's stuffing the West Bank with settlers to create the conditions for a Jewish civil war. He knows that no Israeli prime minister is going down in history as the one who gave the order to the Jewish army to shoot Jews out of the West Bank. [pause] I'm not.

When Peres spoke those words to me there were 70,000 illegal Jewish settlers on the occupied West Bank. If it was "too late" then, in 1980, how much more too late is it today when the number of illegal Jewish settlers is in excess of 500,000 and rising on a daily basis?

Some weeks after that conversation with Peres, I had reason to talk in private with Ezer Weizman, then serving as defence minister in Begin's first-term government. He gave me extraordinary and frightening insight into why any future Israeli prime minister would not and possibly could not order the army to remove settlers from the West Bank by whatever force was necessary. At a point in our conversation he said the following, very slowly and with quiet emphasis:

This lunchtime Sharon convened a secret meeting of some of our generals and other top military and security people. They signed in blood an oath which commits them to join with the settlers and fight to the death to prevent any government of Israel withdrawing from the West Bank. [pause] I know that's what happened at the meeting because I've checked it out and that's why I was late for this appointment with you.

(I tell the full story of this conversation with Weizman in "The Blood Oath", Chapter 12, Volume Three, of the American edition of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews).

So no, there won't be a Jewish civil war because no Israeli prime minister is ever going to risk provoking it.

So there will be no map. (I mean not one that could come even close to satisfying the Palestinian demand and need). Yasser Abed Rabbo knew that when he put the demand into words.

So what was the point of his challenge?

I presume he was hoping that Israel's refusal to come up with a map based on more or less pre-June 1967 borders will help to convince more and more people, Americans especially, that Israel simply is not interested in peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept, and for which there is universal support (minus only the opposition of the Zionists and the mad, fundamentalist Christians who support them right or wrong, an opposition which in numbers of people is only a tiny, almost invisible fraction of the global whole).

If it does that, the challenge will not have been made in vain.

Footnote
The day after Yasser Abed Rabbo issued the challenge, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman had the gall (chutzpah) to say that Israel "has already made many gestures to the Palestinian Authority to facilitate restarting direct negotiations", and now "the other side must show goodwill". In one sense Lieberman was right. Israel has made many gestures to the Palestinians. But all of them have been of the "Go to hell" type.

Palestijnen willen eerst weten waar de fysieke grenzen van Israël precies liggen

Tot op de dag van vandaag weigert Israël zijn fysieke grenzen te openbaren of vast te leggen. Het is een legitieme vraag van de Palestijnen die nog steeds niet weten wat ze precies zouden moeten erkennen, wanneer het 'de staat Israël' moet erkennen. Vreemd genoeg neemt de pro-Israël horde dat de Palestijnen (en andere landen) kwalijk. Israël kan in wezen eigenlijk helemaal niet bestaan, laat staan erkend worden, want een grensloze staat bestaat gewoonweg niet. En het heeft ook geen Grondwet waarin gelijke rechten, vrijheid van religie en vrijheid van meningsuiting zijn vastgelegd voor haar burgers. Verassend is dat niet, wat Israuel wil helemaal geen gelijke rechten voor iedereen.
Alleen in België is dit nieuws:

Palestijnen vragen duidelijke omschrijving van Israëlische grenzen

De Palestijnen hebben aan de Amerikaanse regering en aan Israël gevraagd om de grenzen van Israël, zoals zij willen dat het erkend wordt, duidelijk op te stellen en aan hun voor te leggen.

"Wij vragen officieel aan de Amerikaanse en Israëlische regering om ons een kaart te geven met daarop de grenzen van Israël zoals zij willen dat we ze erkennen", aldus Yasser Abed Rabbo, een van de leiders van de PLO, de organisatie ter bevrijding van Palestina.
 
"Als deze kaart gebaseerd is op de grenzen van 1967, en als de kaart het einde voorziet van de bezetting van de Palestijnse gebieden die sinds 1967 door Israël plaatsvindt, dan zullen wij Israël erkennen in overeenstemming met het internationaal recht", zo luidt het verder.
 
De Amerikaanse regering had aan de Palestijnen een tegenvoorstel gevraagd na het aanbod van de Israëlische premier Netanyahu om een bouwstop van de kolonies te koppelen aan een erkenning van Israël als "staat van het joodse volk". Dat aanbod werd afgewezen door de Palestijnen. (afp/adb)

Leaked letter reveals Obama’s contempt for international law

Het is weer horen, zien en zwijgen bij onze zelfbenoemde "kwaliteitspers". In een gelekte brief aan premier Netanyahu beloofde Obama o.a.:

1. Israël niet meer om een bouwstop te vragen;
2. Gegaranderde veto's van de VS bij anti-Israël resoluties van de VN Veiligheidsraad (alsof dat niet reeds het geval is);
3. De illegale nederzettingen worden voor de VS alleen nog maar een issue in onderhandelingen met de Palestijnen, niet in de naleving van het internationaal recht zoals dat bij andere landen wel het geval zal blijven;
4. De huidige 3 miljard dollar militaire hulp per jaar van de VS aan Israël zal worden verhoogd.
5. De permanente bezetting van de Westelijke Jordaanoever is akkoord;
6. Het plannen van een oorlog tegen Iran.

Op deze manier geeft president Barack Obama groen licht aan Israël's diverse criminele agenda's. Maar in Nederland is dat geen nieuwsbericht waard. Geen enkel gerucht over deze schokkende brief, zo hebben de redacties beslist. En Kamervragen blijven uit. Leest u met enige regelmaat op dit weblog, dan weet u waarom.

Leaked letter reveals Obama’s contempt for international law

Redress | By Stuart Littlewood | 9 October 2010

Stuart Littlewood views US President Barack Obama’s willingness to ride roughshod over international law and the Geneva Conventions by granting Israel reckless and extravagant favours – courtesy of US taxpayers – in return for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu saving Obama’s political bacon and seeing him through November’s mid-term elections.

It has been an unsettling week watching Barack Obama’s unholy alliance with Israel take the world a step nearer the edge of the abyss.

First I read Mark Glenn's scary piece, “Exodus of Jewish advisors from Obama White House likely not an omen of good things to come”, in which he suggests the unexpected departure of Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod and Larry Summers from the top echelons of the White House might indicate that some sinister and possibly cataclysmic event is imminent.

Then I saw reports in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz and elsewhere about a leaked letter from Obama to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, showering him with gifts if he, Netanyahu, would only save Obama’s political bacon and see him through next month’s mid-term elections by extending Israel’s freeze on settlement building for just a few months.

Obama’s  reckless promise to Israel

Obama's letter, we’re told, grants a list of reckless American favours. He agrees not to ask for any more construction freezes and to veto any anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution in the year ahead. He also agrees that the future fate of the illegal settlements will be dealt with only as part of a final status agreement with the Palestinians.

In short, he gives a green light to Israel’s various criminal schemes.

As if that wasn't enough Obama, in his desperation, also offers to increase the 3-billion-dollar security aid Israel receives annually from America’s hard-pressed taxpayers and to supply advanced weapons and early warning systems, including satellites. In addition the US president guarantees to prevent the smuggling of weapons and missiles into a future Palestinian state, and he OK’s a lengthy period of interim security measures in the Jordan Valley (read permanent occupation) and a regional anti-Iran defence pact (read war plan).

Most little boys are overjoyed to receive a bike or computer game. But spoilt brat Bibi Netanyahu must have the biggest and most dangerous toys on the planet so that he can continue to terrorize all the other boys on the block. And indeed all the weak-kneed adults around the globe.

Although the White House is prepared to deliver most of what’s on his wish-list, and doesn’t ask much in return, it seems little Bibi has rejected America’s extravagant gesture. Israel-watchers say he fears being tipped out of his pram by the psychopaths and extremists who push it if he doesn’t drive an even harder bargain with big softy Obama.

Settlements “have no legal validity” and are a serious obstacle to peace - official

It’s obvious lawyer Obama needs a refresher course in United Nations rulings and codes of conduct before this pathetic relationship gets hopelessly out of hand.

Resolution 242 (1967) by the Security Council (and therefore fully binding) requires the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the conflict and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.

Resolution 242 also requires freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area, a just settlement of the refugee problem and the guaranteeing of territorial inviolability and political independence of every state in the area.

And Security Council Resolution 338 (1973) calls on the parties concerned to get on with implementing 242 immediately.
 
Security Council Resolution 446 (1979) determines that Israel’s settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 “have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East…“

It calls once more on Israel, as the occupying power, “to abide scrupulously by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, to rescind its previous measures and to desist from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status and geographical nature and materially affecting the demographic composition of the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and, in particular, not to transfer parts of its own civilian population into the occupied Arab territories".

Got that, Mr Obama?

The reason why none of it has been implemented is that US presidents up to and including Obama didn't give a toss about international law or peace in the Holy Land, preferring to let themselves be emasculated and led by the nose by the Israel lobby.

We are all in trouble if the US president takes leave of his senses and jettisons integrity. The most powerful man in the world then becomes the most dangerous. I’m sure someone (though obviously not Emmanuel, Axelrod or Summers) has reminded Mr Obama that Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention makes it crystal clear that the occupying power is forbidden to transfer parts of its own civilian population – Israel’s half-million squatters – into the territory it occupies. What's more, in 2001 the High Contracting Parties of the Fourth Geneva Convention unanimously reaffirmed its applicability to the Palestinian occupied territories, including East Jerusalem.

But he still rides roughshod and seems to think he can re-write international law and the Geneva Conventions to suit his Israeli friends.

Cuddling the quislings

The Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe), which saw more than half the Palestinian population expelled and more than 530 of their villages depopulated and completely destroyed, took place 13 years before Obama was born. And it’s still going on – on Obama’s watch. Every day more Palestinians are forced to look on while Israeli bulldozers demolish their homes, rip up their orchards and olive groves, barricade them from their farmlands and annex their water supplies.

Obama wasn't even born when Resolution 242 and the Geneva Conventions were solemnly signed. He fails in his obligation to uphold the precious principles they enshrine and snaps a contemptuous finger at the work of those men and women who thought they had brought universal fairness and justice to the community of nations.
"Don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it…” That's what Ariel Sharon told Shimon Peres at an Israeli cabinet meeting in 2001, according to Kol Yisrael radio. Israel's propaganda machine of course denies it.

Nevertheless the US House of Representatives felt obliged to endorse, by 390 votes to five, Israel's murderous assault on Gaza in the winter of 2008/9, an atrocity that killed over 1,400 (mostly Palestinian civilians, including a large number of women and children), wounded and maimed thousands more and left tens of thousands homeless. It was an act of utter barbarism coming immediately after Israel blatantly broke the ceasefire with Hamas. It horrified and disgusted the rest of the world but not, it seems, America’s politicians.

And how is Obama’s compromised democracy, or Netanyahu’s fake democracy (it’s actually an ethnocracy with a deeply offensive racist structure), superior to Palestine’s fledgling democracy which produced a Hamas government in fair and proper elections?

Perversely Obama, “king” of the free democratic world and self-proclaimed honest peace broker, refuses to recognize Palestinian democracy and rejects the people’s choice – even to the point of denying Hamas a place in peace talks. Instead, Obama props up and arms ruthless Fatah, the sore losers, and their leader, Mahmoud Abbas, whose term as Palestinian president expired long ago but who clings to power like a nasty blot that’s resistant to stain remover. Obama sets one faction against the other, cruelly undermining the Holy Land’s democratic processes and sabotaging the Palestinians’ right to self-determination – the sort of grubby act no respectable politician should ever contemplate.

The laugh is on Obama, however. Hamas are increasingly likened to the Maquis, or French Resistance, who struggled heroically against the Nazi occupation in World War II, while Fatah are seen as the hated Vichy “government” who actively collaborated with the Nazi occupier.

When liberation finally came the vengeful French rounded up and executed many of the Vichy quislings.

Abbas and his henchmen would do well to reflect on that, and so should their backers – including our own dear government here in London.

---

Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk.

Deathly Silence

Obama’s Letter, Netanyahu’s Rejection, and Media’s Non-response

MediaLens | October 07, 2010

Following Israel's capture of the West Bank in 1967, along with other territories including East Jerusalem, Israel has built and expanded Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land. The settlers enjoy the benefits of a separate, and far superior, civilian infrastructure to nearby Palestinian communities, and they are protected at great expense by the Israeli military. Under international law, the settlements are illegal. But despite private agreements with the US to rein in growth, Israel has continued the non-stop expansion of its illegal settlements. While the public stance of the United States is that it does not recognise "the international legitimacy" of the settlements, Washington has in practice provided decades-long support for Israeli policy.

Earlier this week, independent journalist Jonathan Cook reported facts that blow a hole through the standard deceit that the United States is an "honest broker" for peace in the Middle East. (Jonathan Cook, ‘Obama's Cave-In to Israel', Counterpunch, 4 October, 2010; http://www.counterpunch.org/cook10042010.html). As Cook explains, details were leaked of a letter sent by US President Barack Obama to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister:

"Obama made a series of extraordinarily generous offers to Israel, many of them at the expense of the Palestinians, in return for a single minor concession from Netanyahu: a two-month extension of the partial freeze on settlement growth."

The previous 10-month freeze on settlement growth in the West Bank, which has just ended, has not so far been renewed by Israel. This obduracy threatens to bring the negotiations to an abrupt halt. This was the deadlock that Obama's letter was supposedly designed to break.

Netanyahu reportedly declined the US offer, while Washington denies that a letter was ever sent. But according to the Israeli media, US officials in Washington are "incensed" by Netanyahu's rejection.

As Cook notes, the disclosures were made by an informed source: David Makovsky, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a close associate of Dennis Ross, Obama's chief adviser on the Middle East, who is said to have initiated the offer.

Cook continues:

"In return for a two-month extension of the settlement moratorium, the US promised to veto any UN Security Council proposal on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the next year, and committed to not seek any further extensions of the freeze. The future of the settlements would be addressed only in a final agreement.

"The US would also allow Israel to keep a military presence in the West Bank's Jordan Valley, even after the creation of a Palestinian state; continue controlling the borders of the Palestinian territories to prevent smuggling; provide Israel with enhanced weapons systems, security guarantees and increase its billions of dollars in annual aid; and create a regional security pact against Iran."

The Palestinian leadership, observes Cook, is certain to draw three major conclusions "from this attempt at deal-making over its head."

"The first is that the US president, much like his predecessors, is in no position to act as an honest broker. His interests in the negotiations largely coincide with Israel's.

"Obama needs a short renewal of the freeze, and the semblance of continuing Israeli and Palestinian participation in the ‘peace process', until the US Congressional elections in November."

"The second conclusion -- already strongly suspected by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and his advisers -- is that Netanyahu, despite his professed desire to establish a Palestinian state, is being insincere."

Finally:

"The third conclusion for the Palestinians is that no possible combination of governing parties in Israel is capable of signing an agreement with Abbas that will not entail significant compromises on the territorial integrity of a Palestinian state."

There was next to no coverage of these dramatic revelations, and their implications, in the UK news media. As far as we can determine, the Independent has remained silent, along with The Times and the bulk of the national press.

One welcome, although brief, exception appeared last week on the Guardian website by its Jerusalem-based correspondent Harriet Sherwood. (‘Obama offering Israel incentives to extend freeze on settlement construction, say reports', guardian.co.uk, 30 September 2010 18.11 BST, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/30/israel-obama-netanyahu-peace-talks). Oddly this did not appear in the print edition, as far as we can determine from searches of the Lexis-Nexis newspaper database.

A fleeting mention did, however, appear in the Guardian on Monday this week (and the following day in the paper). Stretching his journalistic muscle to all of 40 words, Guardian assistant editor Simon Tisdall wrote blandly in his "world briefing":

"Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, is likewise refusing to budge. He reportedly told US officials that a 60-day extension to the building moratorium that expired last month, as sought by Obama, would damage his political credibility and endanger his coalition."
(‘Obama faces humiliation over Middle East talks', guardian.co.uk, 4 October 2010 16.00 BST; http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/04/israel-palestine-peace-collapse)

Note the conformity to the requirements of professional journalism to report facts, but only superficially and without the context and analysis that might offend power.

As far as we can see, the only other national UK newspaper to mention the latest disclosures was the Daily Telegraph which had a printed piece titled inoffensively – indeed, deceptively - ‘Obama tries to keep peace deal on track'. The earlier online version was more honest: ‘Barack Obama "sent Israel letter outlining assurances on peace talks"'. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/8035425/Barack-Obama-sent-Israel-letter-outlining-assurances-on-peace-talks.html)

As for the BBC, the search function on its news website is notoriously cumbersome to use; so it has been difficult to verify whether BBC news online has reported it at all. But an email from Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen (see below) strongly suggests the corporation has yet to mention the disclosures about Obama's letter, Netanyahu's rejection of it, and what these latest developments might mean for a proper understanding of the Middle East "peace process".


Exchange With BBC Middle East Editor

On October 4, we wrote to Jeremy Bowen, asking whether he was aware of Obama's letter and Netanyhau's rejection of it. We also referred to Cook's report, highlighting the main conclusions that could be drawn, as we saw above: namely, that the US is no "honest broker"; the timing of Obama's letter with forthcoming US Congressional elections is unlikely to be a coincidence; and that Netanyahu, and indeed the Israeli leadership as a whole, is not a sincere negotiating partner.

We concluded in our email to Bowen:

"Were you aware of these disclosures? And do you plan to report them, and their significance?"

On October 5, Bowen emailed back:

"Yes, I am aware of the American proposals, which have been reported extensively since David Makovsky put them in the WINEP [Washington Institute for Near East Policy] site.

"I am in Lebanon working on a radio programme at the moment. I feel sure that the American offer will be part of my reporting when I am back with the Israelis and Palestinians."

We replied the following day:

"It is noteworthy that the BBC has seemingly failed to report on President Obama's letter, especially given the extensive resources at your disposal. Obama's self-serving offer to the Israelis, and Netanyahu's rejection of it, is significant for many reasons as reporter Jonathan Cook makes clear in his piece. The role of the US as 'honest broker', and the cynical realpolitik of the timing with US Congressional elections in November, are laid bare; as is Netanyahu's obstructionism and insincerity. The story is all over the Israeli media.

"There were thus compelling reasons for the BBC to bring these disclosures in a timely and fully explanatory way to the attention of the public. That the BBC's Middle East bureau is seemingly unable or unwilling to do so, regardless of whether you happen to be in Lebanon working on a radio programme, is grim news indeed.

"By denying the public vital facts that enables us to form a fully rounded picture of what's going on, you have surely neglected your professional responsibilities. This matters because ultimately people's lives depend upon the truth being reported."


SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East editor
Email: jeremy.bowen@bbc.co.uk

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Helen Boaden, BBC News editor
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Michael Lyons, BBC Trust chairman
Email: michael.lyons@bbc.co.uk

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