“This is clearly a serious criminal attack,” he said. “It is hijacking in international waters and there were quite brutal murders.” But, although this case is more extreme than others, he said, Israel’s “hijacking ships in international waters, kidnapping people, killing them sometimes, bringing them to Israel, keeping them hostages in prisons for long periods” have been going on for at least 30 years, and Israel can continue those actions because it is tolerated by the United States.
Diplomacy
Norway’s foreign ministry advised that it will no longer allow us[ing] its territory for naval experiments on submarines intended for the Israeli navy. This is not Norway’s first security boycott on Israel. A year ago the Norwegian State Pension Fund announced it was dropping Elbit Systems due to the manufacturer’s involvement in building the West Bank separation fence.
Obama offered to support the presence of IDF soldiers in the Jordan Valley even after the establishment of a Palestinian state, if Israel would agree to a two month settlement building freeze, in a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Other commitments: no more building freeze extensions, veto any anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution in the next year, future fate of the settlements be dealt with only as part of a final status agreement with the Palestinians.
Bassem Eid, head of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group: “I would like to suggest that General Dayton not just train agents in the use of weapons, beating and torture … but also train them how to behave among their own people.”
The basis of the Palestinian claim to nationhood and independence rests on the fact that Israel was established on Palestinian land. But Israel is demanding that Palestinians not only forget but legitimise their own dispossession by accepting the essentially racist claim that Israel is a Jewish state.
The demand to suspend settlement building is no excuse [to torpedo direct talks] – it’s as legitimate a position as the Palestinians can have. Why should they relinquish a condition that has the support of the entire world, with the sole exception of Israel?
IOA Editor: Eldar is correct in pointing to the reasonableness of the Palestinian position on the settlement freeze. And his focus on Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman is understandable, even if not entirely logical – Netanyahu, at whose pleasure Lieberman serves, is not terribly different. Most importantly, based on past performance, Eldar’s pointing to Livni as a replacement for Lieberman misses the mark entirely: During Israel’s attack on Gaza, Livni was a leading participant in Israel’s crimes, indistinguishable from the rest. It is doubtful that Livni would move Netanyahu towards a viable peace agreement, as Eldar wishes, because there’s nothing to support the suggestion that either Netanyahu or Livni would be willing “to evacuate most [settlements] permanently.”
Abbas: “The negotiations will continue as long as the settlement (construction) remains frozen, but I am not prepared to negotiate an agreement for a single day more.”
“The Local Councils are led by mayors from all over the political spectrum for Israel’s citizens. These kinds of actions only hurt the cause of advancing peace…”
IOA Editor: This would be accurate if you substituted the word “colonization” for the word “peace.”
Israel reiterated its refusal to to extend curbs on settlement building that expire this month, despite US pressure and Palestinian threats to walk out of peace talks. “The prime minister has not changed his position on this issue, there is no question of extending the moratorium,” a senior government official told AFP.
IOA Editor: The use of the term “US pressure” is worthy of a reality check. The US has just concluded an arms deal in which it gave Israel, $2.75 billion worth of F-35 fighter jets. In view of Israel’s insistence on continued settlement construction, the US could have put that deal, or other military aid, on hold. Not doing so renders such reported “pressure” meaningless. This is part of a continuing Israeli-American game of appearances: a colonization process masquerading as a peace process.
In a move that could strike a blow at already fragile peace talks, Jerusalem city planners will in the coming weeks discuss a scheme to build over a thousand housing units beyond the Green Line.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has asked senior EU officials to renew the process of upgrading Israel’s relations with the organization, in view of the renewal earlier this month of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In April 2009, the EU suspended the upgrade process after PM Netanyahu announced a reassessment of the peace process and Israeli-PA talks were subsequently suspended.
[Netanyahu's] rhetoric has changed, but his policy can still be summed up in one ominous word: politicide – to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence in Palestine. This world view identifies him not as a genuine partner to President Abbas on the road to peace but as the proponent of permanent conflict.
It should be perfectly obvious that talks aimed at the creation of a Palestinian state cannot possibly prosper while Israel continues its strategic colonisation of the land on which that state would be built. The US and its international partners must insist on a cessation of settlement-building.
Amr Moussa: “Let us see what kind of compromise Netanyahu is offering, we have never heard from the Israeli side any initiative or any concrete position.”
The only way out of the impasse is for Jews to recognize Palestinians as their equals and negotiate with them on that basis. A fair two-state solution requires the abrogation of all laws, both in Israel and the occupied territories, that raise Jews above Palestinians. This is a point the US, notwithstanding the recent dangerous demagoguery of some of its politicians in seeking to elevate Christian and Jewish religious rights over those held by Muslim Americans, should still understand.
[A] strategy predicated on the belief that a few more humanitarian truckloads will make the problem of Gaza go away is as deeply flawed as the notion that Ramallah’s surfeit of new high-street cafés will be a sufficient sedative for the aspirants to a Palestinian state. Gaza is a political, not a humanitarian, problem.
[I]t is not at all surprising that Mahmoud Abbas, speaking on behalf of Mahmoud Abbas, comes forward and declares that the PLO has accepted such talks when they haven’t. And declares that the Palestinian people are welcoming such talks when they are not. And has the audacity to speak on behalf of Palestine and the Palestinians when he is neither elected nor legitimate any longer.
PLO official: “We are not afraid of the outcome of the talks. There is nothing Abu Mazan (Abbas) would or could accept. But going to the talks has undermined our battle to isolate Israel.”
Arab minister: “We have all been colluding in a gigantic confidence trick, and here we go again”…
[T]he heart of the question remains the continuing Israeli occupation. It is essential to remember that the biggest single increase of Jewish settlers on Arab land – a 50 per cent rise – took place in 1992-96 … at the high-water mark of the Oslo peace accords.
Israel’s demand that Palestinians recognize it as a Jewish state sounds reasonable — unless you understand 1948.
President Barack Obama has personally warned Turkey’s prime minister that unless Ankara shifts its position on Israel and Iran it stands little chance of obtaining the US weapons it wants to buy.
Israel quickly reined back expectations yesterday over its agreement to co-operate with a UN investigation into the Israeli army’s lethal raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla two months ago.
We have to be careful not to reduce everything to BDS; it’s one of several strands, but probably the least significant, in my opinion. It may acquire more significance, but I think the major fronts right now are the international law and the nonviolent civil resistance.
MORE by Norman Finkelstein
‘God Helps Those Who Help Themselves’
GRITtv interview: Results, Not Rhetoric
Many countries violate human rights in one way or another – but few have the consistent backing a Permanent Member in the UN Security Council. Most proposed resolutions condemning acts by the government of Israel get aborted by the US veto.
Saeb Erekat: “We are in a situation where we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. There is a cost if we agree [to direct talks] and a cost if we don’t.” Mr Erekat stressed the dismay among ordinary Palestinians over the lack of diplomatic progress. Supporters of a two-state solution like himself were losing legitimacy, he added.
“The situation in Gaza has to change,” he told businessmen in Ankara. “Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.”
“This process of exaggeration was gradual, and proceeded by accretion … in a way that allowed those participating to convince themselves that they were not engaged in blatant dishonesty. But this process led to highly misleading statements about the UK assessment of the Iraqi threat that were, in their totality, lies…” Why is all this so important? … There is now a ratcheting up of the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Jonathan Cook: The “one video Benjamin Netanyahu … must be praying never gets posted on YouTube with English subtitles… Its contents threaten to gravely embarrass not only Mr. Netanyahu but also the US administration of Barack Obama.”
Gideon Levy: “Outrageous”
IOA Editor: Here it is, with English subtitles, the ‘smoking gun’ with which Netanyahu killed the “peace process.” And continues to do so.
Vague promises to extend the partial freeze on settlement building and to alleviate some of the daily hardships encountered by Palestinians are no more than the blackmail tactics Israel has always employed against those under its control.
Israel’s diplomatic and defense establishments will hold several meetings this week on how to contend with what some officials described as a “barrage” of international investigations into Israel’s conduct. Officials say particularly concerned over UN probe of country’s court system in the wake of the Goldstone report on the Gaza war.
A question for Obama and Netanyahu: Where to? … Where are they headed? What will improve in another year? What will be more promising in another two years? The Syrian president is knocking at the door begging for peace with Israel, and the two leaders are ignoring him. Will he still be knocking in two years? The Arab League’s initiative is still valid; terror has almost ceased. What will the situation be after they have finished compromising over the freeze in construction of balconies and ritual baths?
Successive Israeli cabinets have worked to enforce on the ground in Jerusalem and the Occupied Territories a situation that they could present as irreversible. Have they now reached the point where the biblical book of Daniel’s prophecy is once again relevant?
Senior Turkish diplomat: If Israel fails to meet the demands, Turkey will downgrade its diplomatic representation to the level of a charge d’affaires … Ankara would consider no new cooperation agreements with Israel … [and] existing deals were being reviewed.
So an “occupation” becomes a “dispute”. Thus a “wall” becomes a “fence” or “security barrier”. Thus Israeli acts of colonisation of Arab land, contrary to all international law, become “settlements” or “outposts” or “Jewish neighbourhoods”. It was Colin Powell … who told US diplomats to refer to occupied Palestinian land as “disputed land” – and that was good enough for most of the US media.
The Council of Europe parliamentarians Thursday called on Israel to completely end its siege of the Gaza Strip, days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered an ease of the land blockade.
