Mubarak is taking his cues for impudence from the far rightwing government of Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu, which began the Middle Eastern custom of humiliating President Barack Obama with impunity… Israel was founded on the primal sin of expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in what is now Israel, and then conniving at keeping them stateless, helpless and weak ever after… The policy of the United States has been for the most part to accommodate this Israeli policy and to collaborate in the maltreatment of the Palestinians.
Occupation
The Israeli-made machinery of [occupation] repression has learned how to manufacture a protective net in the form of the Palestinian Authority. It does all it can not to upset the order of things, so no match will be lit that blows up the mirage of economic prosperity and the construction of national institutions.
PASSIA director Mahdi Abdul Hadi: “It is now much clearer to Palestinians that they are living in a prison and that the PA leaders are there only to negotiate the terms of our imprisonment.”
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Wednesday in an interview with the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television that a U.S. citizen, who worked in the U.S. State Department, and a British citizen, a former MI6 and EU official, are the ones responsible for leaking the so-called ‘Palestine papers.’
Ma’aleh Adumim Mayor Benny Kasriel has demanded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explain reports that he had secretly promised the US that Israel would not build new neighborhoods in E1, a controversial area which connects Jerusalem to the nearby settlement.
A B’Tselem report reveals that as a result, 472 Palestinians, including 223 minors, lost their homes last year, up from 217 – including 60 minors – in 2009.
Both Palestinian rivals know how to use the resilience and creativity of their people in the face of the daily torture that is foreign rule. But they do not help translate this personal and collective stamina into a strategy of unarmed popular struggle.
A summary of important articles and documents covering revelations of The Palestine Papers.
A selection of video reports from Al-Jazeera’s comprehensive coverage of the leaked Israeli-Palestinian negotiations documents.
The “Palestine Papers” demand a serious re-evaluation of two lingering, erroneous assumptions made by many Western observers: 1) the US’ self-proclaimed role as honest broker; 2) the assumption that peace talks have fallen into abeyance chiefly because of the election nearly two years ago of Netanyahu’s rightwing Israeli government. The Americans’ goal was to strong-arm him into bringing into his coalition Tzipi Livni who is widely regarded as the most credible Israeli advocate for peace. However, Livni, previously Mr Olmert’s foreign minister, emerges in the leaked papers as an inflexible negotiator, dismissive of the huge concessions being made by the Palestinians.
IOA Editor: Indeed, as we’ve said since the release of The Palestine Papers.
Al-Jazeera TV , the Guardian: PA agreed to concede almost all of East Jerusalem to Israel, accept Israeli demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and much more.
At a meeting in November 2007, [Livni] told Qureia that she believed Palestinians saw settlement building as meaning “Israel takes more land [so] that the Palestinian state will be impossible”; that “the Israel policy is to take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day we’ll say that is impossible, we already have the land and we cannot create the state”. She conceded that it had been “the policy of the government for a really long time”.
IOA Editor: US-backed Israeli rejectionism, delivered by Tzipi Livni — generally regarded as Israel’s “more flexible” opposition leader. [Ha!] Nothing that we didn’t already know, other than the details on the specific Palestinian concessions. Even more interesting is Qureia’s March 2008 comment to Condoleezza Rice “You bring back life to the region when you come.” After Israel’s mass killing campaign in Lebanon and the US slaughter Iraq, it would have been far more accurate to state “you bring death to the region.”
Al-Jazeera TV , the Guardian: PA agreed to concede almost all of East Jerusalem to Israel, accept Israeli demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and much more.
Chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat: “This is the first time in Palestinian-Israeli history in which such a [concession] is officially made.” … But the offer was rejected out of hand by Israel because it did not include … Ma’ale Adumim as well as Har Homa and several other [settlements] deeper in the West Bank, including Ariel. “We do not like this suggestion because it does not meet our demands,” Israel’s then foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, told the Palestinians.
IOA Editor: US-backed Israeli rejectionism, delivered by Tzipi Livni — generally regarded as Israel’s “more flexible” opposition leader. [Ha!] Nothing that we didn’t already know, other than the details on the specific Palestinian concessions.
The army declared the River Jordan a closed military zone in 1967 and later laid mines along much of its length to deter “infiltrators” from Jordan, both Palestinian refugees seeking to return to their homes in the West Bank and Arab fighters trying to launch attacks… [T]he Israel director of Roots of Peace, a global advocacy group opposed to landmines, said half a million remained in the Valley. He added that mines could drift from fenced-off areas during storm-floods, putting worshippers at risk if they strayed off marked paths.
“If we are building a police state — what are we actually doing here?” So asked a European diplomat responding to allegations of torture by the Palestinian security forces. The diplomat might well ask. A police state is not a state. It is a form of larceny: of people’s rights, aspirations and sacrifices, for the personal benefit of an élite. This is not what the world meant when it called for statehood. But a police state is what is being assiduously constructed in Palestine, disguised as state-building and good governance.
Attorney Kais Nasser: “Anyone who reads the documentation file can see that the request for a permit was in fact intended to take revenge on the mufti in his grave, 100 years later, for his political positions in the Arab-Jewish conflict… The request for a permit has a political and Zionist agenda.”
IOA Editor: From the Before and After photos, the demolition of this fine example of Jerusalem architecture appears to be a done deal. Yet another bit of Palestinian history erased by Israel.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat: “I think it’s the time for the US administration to officially hold the Israeli government responsible for the collapse of the peace process.”
Two years ago, Israeli shells fell on Dr Abuelaish’s family home in Gaza, killing three of his young daughters and their cousin. The horror was caught live on Israeli TV when the doctor phoned his broadcaster friend. Amazingly, the loss did not embitter Izzeldin Abuelaish. Instead he decided his girls’ deaths must not be in vain – and slowly he has turned his family tragedy into a force for peace.
Israeli Occupation soldier: “You don’t want to get into a confrontation with a Jewish settlement. They are the people that are closest to you, they are like your operations branch officer, that’s how it works.”
When people comment on [Israel] venomously around the world, we object almost instinctively and say, no, that is too much already. It is only anti-Semitic hate propaganda. But with a hand on the heart — are we not becoming, from year to year, more and more like our monstrous caricature, which is drawn by our worst enemies? For really, where are we going? Think for yourselves, as unpleasant as this may be: Are we becoming more or less racist? More or less democratic? More or less decent?
IOA Editor: It is good that Mr. Dankner has finally awakened from his self-inflicted vacuous state of mind, as former editor of Maariv, one of Israel’s two most popular rags. Unfortunately, the extent of his appreciation of Israel’s decline is remarkably limited. Indeed, very little and very late. Yet, the fact that a figure who spent decades at the heart of Israel’s propaganda machine expresses regret and disappointment in the state of Jewish State is somewhat reassuring, despite the repulsive feelings one is overwhelmed by when reading his statement.
Hilik Bar, secretary general of the Labor Party: “Judea and Samaria is the land of our fathers and the Bible, and the Labor Party and its members are not disconnected from what this region represents, historically and religiously. We should all stay true to the legacy of the nation’s Fathers and Mothers, and pass it on from generation to generation. Labor belongs to the center and not to the far left […] we feel closer to the settlements’ people here than to the far left.”
IOA Editor: As Sheizaf correctly points out, Labor has not evacuated even a single settlement, and the colonization of the West Bank started on the party’s watch in the 1970s. It was subsequently expanded greatly under Rabin and prospered under Barak, throughout the Oslo “peace talks.” Indeed, Israel’s Labor movement was responsible for the colonization of Palestine from pre-statehood and, since 1967, it has steadfastly rejected opportunities to end the conflict with the Palestinians based on Land-for-Peace, that is, ending the Occupation in return for peace. Historically, there’s little doubt that Labor had played a far larger role in dispossessing the Palestinians than than the various Likud-led governments.
MKs from the party heading the opposition recently voted in favor of two bills that should have been easy “nays”: giving mortgage help to would-be settlers and probing leftist organizations.
IOA Editor: Another, rather mundane, instance where so-called “Labor,” “Centrist” Israeli parties participate, alongside the “Extreme Right,” in the daily conduct of Israel’s colonization program: the century-long dispossession and repression of the Palestinian people, now with a new McCarthyist twist pointing to its own Jewish citizens. History doesn’t repeat itself, it simply continues.
Israel’s demolition of the Shepherd’s Hotel property in the Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, in preparation for the establishment of a new Jewish settlement is part of the larger Israeli settlement enterprise aimed at maximizing territorial contiguity for illegal settlements, while incorporating the bare minimum Palestinian population within Jerusalem’s boundaries. It is designed to fragment the Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem and separate them from the Old City and the remainder of the occupied Palestinian territory; and to preempt any negotiated solution on Jerusalem.
Documents of the Second International session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine that took place in London on November 20, 21 and 22 2010 on “Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Violations of International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law”.
The army’s seizure of land “for military and security purposes” quickly turned into large-scale appropriation for the exclusive benefit of Israel’s super-citizens, at the expense of the subpar species.
“It cannot be expected from the State of Israel to forbid Jews from purchasing private property in Jerusalem. There is no democratic country in the world that would impose such a ban on Jews and it cannot be expected that Israel will be the one to do so.”
Instead of working toward revealing the truth behind the recent death of an anti-fence demonstrator the IDF is behaving like the propaganda ministry of an authoritarian regime.
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.
“We have no problem will the people of Israel. We have a problem with the army and the occupation… We know that our land will be returned to us even if someone is killed every day. We say this to Netanyahu: The demonstrations here will not end until we get our land back. We believe in a popular struggle, a non-violent struggle. We don’t want a violent struggle.”
A resident of the West Bank village of Bil’in died on Saturday morning in a Ramallah hospital after she was exposed to tear gas that was shot by IDF soldiers to disperse the crowd of demonstrators against the separation wall in the village on Friday.
The American-Israeli special relationship is a classic example of the tail that wags the dog. As a result of its palpable partiality towards Israel, America has lost all credibility in the eyes not only of the Palestinians but of the wider Arab and Muslim worlds. The so-called peace process has been all process and no peace. It is worse than a sham. Peace talks that go nowhere slowly provide Israel with just the cover it needs to pursue its relentlessly expansionist agenda on the West Bank.
“Postponing the eviction of Beit Yonatan is a premeditated move by [Jerusalem mayor] Barkat and the settlers to use the Palestinians as an excuse to avoid the order of the court,” said Peace Now leader Yariv Oppenheimer.
Given [Israel's] predispositions, combined with the disparities in bargaining power between the parties, as well as the one-sided hegemonic role of the United States, who but a fool could think that a just peace could emerge from the such a deformed pattern of geopolitical diplomacy?
Clinton illustrated how completely the administration has bought into the Israeli discourse. In her eagerness to support an Israel that is both Jewish and democratic, she skated perilously close to racism. She warned that “the long-term population trends that result from the occupation” were endangering the Zionist vision. In other words, that another four million Palestinians might soon demand equal rights in an Israel that has effectively controlled all of mandate Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea since 1967.
Former Civil Administration head signed order expropriating 50 dunams from West Bank village for rail line connecting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Israel has denied that it recently approved expansion plans for a hotel on the Mount of Olives owned by the Jordanian royal family, but documents obtained by Haaretz prove otherwise.
