Israel has been expanding illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land for decades, but it is only now emerging just how far-reaching this policy is. Israeli building in East Jerusalem as shown above has not skipped a beat.
It is really difficult in these times of political change, principally the election of Barak Obama as president of the US, to summarize the status of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict one year later, except to assert that the status quo, Israeli colonialism, persists. Obama’s backtracking from his optimistic Cairo speech is pulling a black curtain over Palestinian aspirations for freedom and self-determination in a country of their own, Palestine.
A recent survey of Palestinian opinion makes clear that the Obama hope is practically dead.
Palestinian hopes that US President Barack Obama will bring an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory have significantly declined in recent months, a public opinion poll published Wednesday found.
Only 9.9 per cent of Palestinians now believe that Obama’s policies will increase chances of achieving a “just peace,” down from 23.7 per cent in October last year and 35.4 per cent in June. The poll also found that over 78 per cent of Palestinians interviewed believe the US-Israel dispute over the issue of West Bank settlements is “not serious.”
One crack in Likud government intransigence appeared when Labor ministers recently threatened to leave the government.
Labor party ministers threatened Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday that if significant steps won’t be taken soon to advance the peace process, they will consider quitting the government.
Senior Labor party officials have said that this was the first time Labor ministers discussed the diplomatic freeze since the formation of the Netanyahu government “The main message from the discussion was that the status quo cannot continue,” said a senior official. “We emphasized to Barak that in the coming weeks we will reach a political decision.”
Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer had the harshest criticism of the government and warned of Israel’s growing international isolation, and pointed at the crisis of relations with the United States, saying it will only strengthen Israel’s de-legitimization in the world. “We must make important decisions very soon.”
Last week, the leader of the Labor party, Ehud Barak also spoke at a Memorial Day ceremony
JERUSALEM — Israel must recognize that the world will not put up with decades more of Israeli rule over the Palestinian people, the country’s defense minister said in unusually frank remarks Monday. Ehud Barak’s comments came against the backdrop of severe friction between the U.S. and Israel’s hawkish government over an impasse in peacemaking. (snip)
Barak told Israel Radio that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has “done things that didn’t come naturally to it,” such as adopting the vision of two states for two peoples and curtailing settlement construction. “But we also shouldn’t delude ourselves,” he added. “The growing alienation between us and the United States is not good for the state of Israel.”
The way to narrow that gap is to embark on an Israeli diplomatic initiative “that doesn’t shy from dealing with all the core issues” dividing Israelis and Palestinians, he said. Chief among these are the status of contested Jerusalem, final borders and a solution for Palestinian refugees from the war around Israel’s 1948 independence.
In a New York Times op-ed published on Monday, even the Zionist hawk and Israel Lobby denier, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, spoke up in defense of the Obama administration concerns:
“This is no longer just about helping a special ally resolve a debilitating problem. With 200,000 American troops committed to two wars in the greater Middle East and the U.S. president leading a major international effort to block Iran’s nuclear program, resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become a U.S. strategic imperative.”
Today, all seems quiet on the Middle Eastern front, except for those bulldozers eating up more Palestinian land in East Jerusalem. But there are also stirrings behind the scene that we don’t hear much about.
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(The Majlis) – Ehud Barak’s Labor party; it would receive just 8 seats in this mock election, down from the 13 it currently holds. Most of those votes transfer to Kadima.
Labor’s falling support is no surprise. The party reluctantly joined Netanyahu’s coalition last year after the prime minister pledged to restart peace talks with the Palestinians. Those talks are still stalled, of course, and Labor’s voice within the coalition is increasingly marginalized (exactly what many Labor members predicted).
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Another hope dashed, Oui.
I guess it is time for Obama to make that Israel trip and talk to the Israeli people directly.
Labor has never been any greater gift to peace than any other party in Israel. They have talked the talk, but they have never once really walked the walk.
It is too late for Labor per se, but Barak in this case may be serious. It is just not clear how he defines a Palestinian state. In 2005, it was what everyone hopes it will be at this stage. Israel sets it borders and withdraws tens of thousands of settlers behind it. And East Jerusalem????
Charlie Rose interview with Barak on Jan 25, 2005.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/1076
Nice talk, and all, but he has yet to walk the walk, and when he had the opportunity, the result was the well-known “generous offer”, and the walk-out at Taba. And surely you have not forgotten that as so-called “Defense” minister it was he whose ministry planned and led the weeks-long 2008-09 Gaza massacre; not to mention that it was he whose ministry was planning the criminal assault on Gaza even as they were negotiating the terms of the ceasefire that his MOD would ultimately willfully violate using an obvious and well-worn pretext in order to provoke an excuse to launch the assault. If this is where we must place our hopes, heaven help us.
In all reality, we might be better off with the current insanely right wing uber-hubristic government Israel has right now. They do not pretend to be anything other than what they are, they do not pretend to have anything different from the prefectly odious goals they have, and they do not hesitate to use sledge-hammer tactics that should appall any decent person. One of the problems with Labour governments is that they have skillfully lulled people in to a false sense of well-being by successfully pretending to be sincere peace-seekers while they were quietly stealing and colonizing more and more land, breaking up the Palestinian territories in to every-smaller and more isolated enclaves, tightening what Jeff Halper very realistically calls the “matrix of control”, not to mention killing, maiming, detaining, and torturing Palestinians on a regular basis, including a disproportionate number of children, in order, as the saintly peace-seeker Yitzhak Rabin said, to “create…conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the west Bank to Jordan.” In other words, to make life in the occupied territories so untenable for the Palestinians that they would simply leave the land for Israel to take over – and all, of course, while convincing the world that they are really sincerely seeking peace.
The brazenness of Israel’s government as it executed the unspeakably criminal Operation Cast Lead caused widespread and major changes in perceptions of Israel’s nature, and raised awareness to a whole new level. It had a profound effect on many Jews who have, at the least, dropped the reflexive “Israel right or wrong” responses they were indoctrinated with from birth, as illustrated in this eloquent example. There has been a momentous change of world opinion in the right direction. Sadly, putting in place someone like Barak, who knows how to issue nice-sounding talky-talk but who has no real record of good-faith follow-through is likely to reverse that trend without gaining anything real for the Palestinians.
I don’t disagree: Barak is a monster. But what major Israeli party leader is not? No doubt that Cast Lead was a political ploy to counteract Netanyahu’s grandstanding claim that Kadima and Labor were “soft” on Palestinians, whatever that could possibly mean. And yes, Camp David/Taba was a hoax, as Barak admitted in the Rose interview that not even his own party would have voted to remove (disengage) a single settlement, had he conceded to the conditions Arafat stipulated. Forget East Jerusalem. Even Rabin said that it would never be divided again, and Kissinger let out that what Rabin had in mind for the Palestinian state was 75% of the West Bank plus Gaza.
The trouble in dealing with Israel, is that when you exclude the bastards, there is no one else left to deal with.
But I sense your cynicysm and it is well taken.
Exactly right, Shergald. My point was that we are better off dealing with monsters like Netanyahu and his gang who are open about their monstrousness than with monsters who disguise themselves as good guys. A wolf in sheep’s clothing is far more dangerous than a wolf that proudly wears its own identity.
There’s a long history out there of deception and enough lies to make one wary of anyone professing to believe that Israel has benign intentions, and certainly Netanyahu is frank about. His are not benign. But there are others who look at the future, and see an ugly Israel that can no longer be hidden from view, especially to the Americans.
Netanyahu may be unambiguous about his intentions to annex all of original Palestine, but the downside of that action is also clear: Apartheid inevitable, as Tanya Reinhart put it. Others, monsters perhaps in their own right, people like Barak, Olmert, and even Livni, see what that conclusion will bring down on the head of Israel. This is a people who just 60 years ago experienced the Holocaust, who are now creating a world that is not any better than the world created by the Nazis for Jews, at least during the 1930s. I don’t like to make these analogies, but a wake up call is needed. Call them redeemed monsters, but there are only a few voices left in Israel with the power to speak out.
People like Barak, Olmert, and Livni (and Rabin) offer Palestinians a less visible, less irritating to the world, and perhaps slower death than do people like Netanyahu. That is the only real difference. The end result is intended to be the same, and those who, like Barak, Olmert, Livni, and Rabin will disguise what they are doing are more likely to succeed than the Netanyahu types because they can do it quietly while seeming to be making peace. Therefore, we are better off in the end with someone like Netanyahu, who will piss off enough people and disillusion enough Jews that Israel and Zionism will lose support.
“there are only a few voices left in Israel with the power to speak out.“
Those voices are not the likes of Barak, Olmert, and Livni. They are all cut from the same cloth as Netanyahu. They are just more clever than he is. They will create apartheid while winning Nobel Peace Prizes.
Speaking of Nobel Prizes, Obama now has a burden to show that he is worthy of that kind of recognition, because a big part of it no doubt stemmed from the Cairo speech. If he backtracks too far, I think it will eventually diminish his presidency. At this point, we just don’t know the background politics, and no president wants to be a one-termer.
But there is limited time to act before Israel pushes the envelope and creates a de jure (as opposed to a de facto) Apartheid state.
Apartheid is what the Barak-Olmert-Livni group fear most. They have certainly talked about it publically. And it is something to fear, because it will finally ignite public opinion in the US and Europe, and that prospect is even more fearful. It is also why AIPAC demanded that it express its differences with Israel privately and not publically. I think that is why Clinton’s phone call to Netanyahu was publicized, because the White House is clued in.
If Israel loses the American people, it is good-bye, because complaints about supporting Israel financially while Americans themselves suffer will increase dramatically. That would be intolerable, as the shouters of anti-Semitism are drowned out.
Therefore, in the interest of a decent end result, our best bet is the Netanyahus of the world, and not wolves in sheep’s clothing like Rabin, Barak, Olmert, and Livni, who will quietly devour the flock while diverting attention by winning awards from the “save the animals, eat no meat” crowd.
I have no idea what anyone can expect from Netanyahu, who is beholden to the religious settlers (expect no settlement withdrawal) and the extreme right wing, the Likuds, whose political platform is no state. Now we have a compromise, an Apartheid state, since not even the recent military ruling to eject the “infiltrators” can transfer that many Palestinians.
Most people like honesty too, but this kind of honesty if carried to a conclusion will not result in peace. History awaits us.
I don’t think I am making myself clear, Shergald. What I am saying is that the Barak, Olmert, Livni, and Rabin types are good at concealing their true intentions, their true goals, and their true actions from the world by fraudulent activities such as the 2008 ceasefire, Oslo and Camp David/Taba (though they badly miscalculated the reaction they would get in 2008-09) while the Netanyahus are not. The Netanyahu types are waking the world up to reality, and Israel IS losing support big time. Another “peacemaker” in power will put the world back to sleep while they work on finish the job, and before you know it, there will be a fait accompli with the Baraks, Olmerts, and Livnis shrugging, smiling benignly, and saying “we wanted a two-state solution, but we had no partner”, or “what can we do, they all left, so we moved in”.
Then there is Obama to explain.
You have a point of view, Hurria, that everyone playing this game is, in the end, when all the masks are removed, Likudniks, dreamers of the Great Israel of King David, only some are honest about it, the King Likudnik.
I’m not sure I can agree with this view totally because of the specter of Apartheid around the corner. Let’s wait to see what unfolds. You may be right, but…and there’s always that “but”.
Shergald, every single Israeli government has had the same goal toward the Occupied Territories. They have pulled off almost completely in the Golan Heights, which almost no one thinks about except Syrians other Arabs, and some scholars and activists. It’s been tougher with the Palestinian Territories because the Syrians who were ethnically cleansed from the Golan kept their full status as citizens and have been able to settle elsewhere in Syria, though many of them have had serious struggles. Every single Israeli government since 1967 has contributed to the colonization of Palestine, and to the creation of conditions intended to obviate the two state solution. That includes the saintly Rabin.
As for Olmert, his record as mayor of Jerusalem told us what kind of PM he would be, and he fulfilled the promise pretty well. They have all created the current de facto apartheid in the OPT, and I don’t see them voluntarily rolling back any of the advances they have made up to now unless an outraged world forces them to in the same way an outraged world forced South Africa to end their official apartheid.
The bottom line for me is that I do not see Barak/Olmert/Livni as any better than any other possibility, and I see them in some ways more dangerous because they can create an unrealistic expectation of Israel’s government just as Rabin did, and just as Barak did.
I respect that you see a different possibility, and if you are right, I will be only to happy to concede that in the end, but I have spent too many decades of my life watching and studying how the Zionists and then Israeli governments have behaved in regard to these matters to expect any of them to behave differently now.
The history is on your side of the argument, true, and others like Abuminah, probably agree with it and have been proposing one state solutions. But Palestinians are clearly not welcome in the “Jewish state,” an ethnocracy, and they would likely be pushed into or restricted to life in bantustans, even though the world would condemn it as Apartheid.
IMO, that is the fear now being expressed by the middle: it is either two states, integration and destruction of the Jewish state, or Apartheid. Make no mistake. Concern for Palestinian freedom is not at all what motivates the Barak-Olmert-Livni kind of Israeli. Barak repeatedly talks about maintaining Israel as a Jewish state. The Israelis have put themselves in a bind. So right now I have to leave room for this viewpoint and continued movement toward two states on what is left of the West Bank and Gaza.
I do agree that history is on your side, but the context and choices have also changed and need to be taken into account.
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(JPost) – But there was one passage of the interview, nonetheless, that merits attention.
In the course of his comments on Jerusalem, and his restating of his “red lines” against halting building, Netanyahu drew a distinction between the city’s post-1967 Jewish neighborhoods and its Arab neighborhoods, and he specified that the permanent fate of the Arab neighborhoods was indeed a subject for final-status discussion with the Palestinians – a position frequently espoused by Kadima and Labor, but not normally by the Likud.
“Why do I have to give in on Jerusalem?” he asked indignantly, referring to Jewish neighborhoods built over the Green Line such as French Hill. “Why? Where’s the logic in that?” But where Arab neighborhoods like Abu Dis and Shuafat, which lie within Israel’s self-declared sovereign city limits, were concerned, he said, “That’s a different question.” The question of the status of the Arab neighborhoods, he allowed, was “legitimate.”
IRAN MAY GAIN INFLUENCE IN EAST-JERUSALEM
“No one,” he elaborated, “wants to add a greater Arab populace to Jerusalem.” Still, he went on, there were some who worried that “if you get out of there,” Iran would fill the vacuum in one guise or another, as it had done in Lebanon and Gaza. “If we get out of [the Arab neighborhoods of east] Jerusalem, Iran might come in. That’s [a] legitimate [concern],” said Netanyahu.
Coalition may back PM on J’lem freeze; Beiteinu still threatens with crisis
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Via Cole, XinhauNet reports that a Palestinian with a family and residential history in the West Bank is released from an Israeli jail into Gaza, where he hasn’t lived for 16 years.
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(al-Jazeera) – The Israeli move drew condemnation from Palestinian political leaders, who denounced Sabah’s deportation as “inhumane”.
Issa Qaraqi, the minister of prisoner affairs in the government of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, said that Sabah should have been released to the West Bank.
“He has no connection to Gaza, no relatives there, nothing.”
He said that the deportation was an example of Israel invoking the controversial new military orders that allow “illegal” residents of the West Bank to be expelled.
But Israeli authorities denied the orders were behind the decision. “The individual’s release to the Gaza Strip was done in accordance with the Prison Service’s decision and in light of the location of his place of residence, and was not due to a repatriation order issued by any military commander,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
Sabah’s case follows that of Saber al Bayari, who was deported to Gaza after seeking medical treatment in an Israeli hospital on Wednesday.
Albayari had been living in Israel for the past 15 years, but was returned to Gaza when Israeli authorities discovered that he had been born there.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
It is not just humane, it is also clearly and unequivocally a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and therefore a war crime.
And when did Israel ever give a damn abut the Furth Geneva Convention or that its behavior often amounts to war crimes. Israel’s propaganda machine is now so sophisticated that it is capable of absolving itself from any criminal action.
Forgot to add the direct link.
From the same post, Clemons reports on some questionable statements by Schumer.
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(The Forward) – One day, the landlord himself dropped by the building. I shuddered when I saw his long black coat, black hat and bushy beard. Would the other tenants, mostly Latino families, think that all Jews treated others with such neglect?
So when The Village Voice recently published its annual list of New York City’s 10 worst landlords, I scanned it anxiously, hoping I wouldn’t find too many Jewish names. Unfortunately, I can’t say I was surprised to find that out of the 10 worst landlords identified by the Voice, Jews appear to account for about half.
And some of these offending landlords have more than Jewish names. At least a couple have been accorded positions of leadership and prominence in their Jewish communities because of the money they give to Jewish groups and causes.
There’s Moishe Indig, who, according to the Voice, controls a Brooklyn building infested with rats and bed bugs, where tenants were without heat for three years. The Voice describes Indig as “a rabbi and developer in Williamsburg’s Satmar community” who “has built a well-known synagogue on Hooper Street, and acts as something of a Hasidic community spokesman in the mainstream press.”
Then there are the brothers Aaron and Solyman Yashouafar of Milbank Real Estate, which, the Voice reported, bought up a number of buildings in the Bronx, many of which are now in foreclosure, while other buildings went without heat and hot water for months at a time or have hundreds of outstanding violations. Aaron Yashouafar’s online biography on the Web site of a bank where he serves as a director points to his service on the boards of Jewish organizations.
After the Madoff scandal, the Jewish community performed a communal al cheyt, a confessional for embracing someone who turned out to have defrauded thousands of investors of billions of dollars. It seemed like a moment of collective repentance, or teshuvah. But Moses Maimonides famously declared that the test of true teshuvah comes when one finds oneself in the same situation that previously caused one to sin, and resists the temptation to again go astray.
“New York’s Ten Worst Landlords”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
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… come together in American and Israeli society in suppression of the Palestinian people. Plenty diaries have been published here at ET to highlight the problem of American money flowing to Israel and building homes in the illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land. I’m stunned that the Jewish elite in the U.S. have such prominence as New York slumlords. Shame on them and all others who fail their local community in providing just care for the tenants.
I just find it a big mess when real estate corporations are able to purchase property in Oklakoma City and Los Angeles, file for bankruptcy, possess hundreds of millions, yet fail in upkeep of living conditions in New York. A moral corruption in the states can only lead to a moral devaluation of people with dual loyalty having prominence in Israel and it’s policy of targeting Palestinian land.
Just to mention a few diaries:
● Palestinian Neighborhood Sheik Jarrah, East Jerusalem
● Money Laundering I.M. and E-Jerusalem Settlements
● Holyland Real-estate in Jerusalem, Bribes and Olmert
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."