Israel's War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands
“This is the core of the Arab peace initiative, which proposes normalisation by Arab states of relations with Israel in exchange for a comprehensive peace which establishes an independent Palestinian state linked to the withdrawal by Israel from all Arab lands it has occupied since 1967.”
IOA Editor: Entirely reasonable. As is “No normalization under Occupation.”
Under the understanding, the U.S. has not pressured Israel to disclose its nuclear weapons or to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which could require Israel to give up its estimated several hundred nuclear bombs.
Obama was right in speaking out against the delay in movement in the peace process. Instead of this false symmetry in which charges are fabricated to appear balanced, the US president should simply lay out who was responsible for the delay. Only by chiding the right party can there be hope of real progress in this decades-old conflict.
On Iran: Asked if they would support American military action, 56% of American Jews said they would, while just 36% opposed it…
On the Occupation: While 51% oppose the American freeze demand (though a substantial 41% agree with it), fully 60% said Israel should dismantle all (8%) or some (52%) of the West Bank settlements in the context of a permanent settlement with the Palestinians.
“The decision by the Spanish government to disqualify the Israeli researchers is unwarranted, biased and clearly discriminatory,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “This unacceptable action introduces politics into an important scientific competition where politics has no place.”
IOA Editor: Despite its lofty motto, the ADL is not fighting for “justice and fair treatment to all.” It never protested the closure of Birzeit University or other Palestinian academic institutions, or rejected Israel’s closure of Gaza which prevented even pencils and paper from arriving at Gaza’s shattered schools in time for the current school year. Now, by joining Israel’s propaganda war against international law, the ADL is endorsing Israel’s occupation and settlement program.
The top PLO negotiator, Dr Saeb Erakat, condemned what he termed Israeli violence against worshippers. “This attack on ordinary civilians and worshippers at Al-Aqsa is unacceptable…” Israeli settlers were “determined to destroy Jerusalem as it once was, an open and multicultural city, and home to the world’s three great monotheistic faiths… Israel’s actions are both illegal and are designed to make Jerusalem a ‘united city’ for Israeli settlers only, while Israel continues to target the city’s Christian and Muslim population.”
An organization committed to populating East Jerusalem with Jewish residents has said that it has six properties in the Old City to sell to 22 Jewish families, which would bring the number of Jews living in the Arab quarters of the walled city to 1,000.
For Netanyahu, the threat of peace has passed. At least for the time being. It is difficult to understand how Obama allowed himself to get into this embarrassing situation.
The report’s findings demand action by the international community, including the United States. The importance of U.S. action is elevated because the U.S. currently holds the Presidency of the U.N. Security Council, the U.N. body charged with enforcing the report’s conclusions.
Only one thing does bother the Israelis, according to the polls: fear of a diplomatic embargo and an international boycott. The Goldstone Report and the International Court of Justice in The Hague are arousing concern and interest, far more than Obama’s peace speeches.
IOA Editor: The importance of this commentary is the confirmation of the growing public concern in Israel about possible global isolation due to the boycott campaign and the increasing, however slowly, diplomatic pressure. The assessment of Obama’s ME failure is rather narrow, leaving out the close alliance between the US and Israel – the fundamental reason for Obama’s non-action. See: US ships arrive ahead of joint drill, covered here earlier this week.
While Obama, Abbas and Netanyahu are posing for the photos, President Obama should use the presence of the press to state what the Road Map obliges the Quartet to do. Publicly point his finger to the party which has not fulfilled its obligation to the international will.
MPAC leaders joined more than 30 of the nation’s most prominent and diverse religious leaders in signing onto a public letter in support of “strong U.S. leadership to achieve a negotiated sustainable resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In the letter, which was coordinated by Churches for Middle East Peace, the leaders said that the opportunity for a two-state solution for achieving peace and security was “rapidly closing.”
Write your Senator: The threat that cluster munitions pose to civilian populations is well known due to their wide area effect and large number of unexploded submunitions or bomblets. In some cases, up to 40% of cluster submunitions fail to explode initially and, in effect, become de facto landmines.
US Navy missile ships started arriving in Israel on Sunday ahead of next month’s joint missile defense exercise between the IDF and the American military’s European Command.
The all-too-long history of the “peace process” has taught us that a summit can be a desirable goal, but also a place of unsurpassable danger. When participants come with insufficient preparation, and without a safety net, the depth of the fall can be as high as the summit itself.
IOA Editor: Eldar rightly points out that Hamas will not miss “an opportunity to present the summit as yet more proof of its claim… that support for Fatah is flimsy.” But he does not analyze what a shift in favor of Hamas would mean for Israel. Historically, Hamas has been Israel’s preferred enemy: the argument that Hamas cannot be a partner, although fundamentally wrong, has been readily accepted in the West. Thus, as Hamas’ popularity among Palestinians grows stronger, Israel can more easily repeat the convenient untruth that “there is no Palestinian partner,” when it is the Israeli government itself that refuses to become a partner to a peace agreement.
Read the following IOA items for coverage of Hamas and its attitude toward agreements with Israel:
1. Israel could have made peace with Hamas under Yassin
2. Adam Shatz: Mishal’s luck
“My greatest frustration this year has been the Palestine situation,” he told the 192-nation assembly in his final address on 14 September… He found it “disgraceful” the way influential members of the UN Security Council had shown “passivity and apparent indifference” about the long and cruel Israeli blockade of Gaza.
IOA Editor: Thank you, Messrs Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and our very own Mr. Obama.
“What if [the Israelis] fly over anyway?”
“Well, we have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a Liberty in reverse.”
American failure to pressure Israel is increasingly frustrating the Palestinian leadership which dreads a repetition of the futile peacemaking efforts that characterised the Bush administration. One Palestinian official was quoted this week as saying that the Mitchell approach was “unconvincing and raises a lot of question marks”.
Netanyahu’s message is that the Goldstone Commission report hinders the United States’ war on terror. The Foreign Ministry decided Wednesday to focus their efforts to combat the report’s accusations on the United States, Russia and a few other members of the United Nations Security Council and the Human Rights Council that are involved in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
IOA Editor: The Israeli propaganda machine is going full blast. To protect democracy from terrorism, the UN report deserves every possible rejection, naturally.
See also Norman Finkelstein’s interview and Gideon Levy’s commentary on the UN report.
The U.S. intelligence community is reporting to the White House that Iran has not restarted its nuclear-weapons development program, two counterproliferation officials tell NEWSWEEK. U.S. agencies had previously said that Tehran halted the program in 2003.
Jonathan Cook: Israeli peace activists are planning to ratchet up their campaign against groups in the United States that raise money for settlers by highlighting how tax exemptions are helping to fund the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank. Gush Shalom, a small peace group that advocates Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories, is preparing to send details to the US tax authorities questioning the charitable status of several organisations.
[A]ny plan, proposal or initiative for peace in Israel-Palestine must be filtered through the following set of critical questions: Will this plan really end the occupation, or is it merely a subtle cover for control? Does this plan offer a just and sustainable peace or merely an imposed and false quiet? Does this plan offer a Palestinian state that is territorially, politically and economically viable, or merely a prison-state? Does this plan genuinely and justly address the refugee issue? And does this plan offer regional security and development?
Three days after the U.S. administration criticized the decision of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to authorize the construction of hundreds of new housing units in settlements, the Israel Lands Administration published tenders for the construction of 486 apartments in the neighborhood of Pisgat Ze’ev in East Jerusalem. The new construction project is designated for the outer edge of the northeastern municipal boundary of Jerusalem, and will narrow the distance between the homes on the edge of the neighborhood and the nearby Palestinian communities.
Thus the absurdity: In Beitar Ilit, which will stay under Israeli control, construction will cease. But in Mitzpeh Yitzhar and the agricultural lands nearby, business will go on as usual, even though the settlers’ success there will mean a death blow to the two-state solution… The Americans will know what is happening; they don’t miss much between the satellites and CNN. What they do miss will be filled in by Peace Now and its associate organizations.
IOA Editor: “The Americans” will surely know, but will they really care enough to do something about it? Doubtful. Why now?
National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau on Monday lashed out at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan for a partial construction freeze in the West Bank, deeming the Palestinians “occupiers” and declaring any bounds on settlements a “violation of human rights.”
Israel is known throughout the world as a center for innovation and technology, particularly in Aerospace and Defense. Israel is a global leader in the development and manufacture of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), as well as a broad range of systems and technologies used in these unique aircraft.
IOA Editor: Israel’s leading export, by far, is weapons and advanced military systems which it markets and sells all over the world, from the US to the worst third world dictatorships.
It is unfortunate that the good people of Ohio – the City of Dayton and Montgomery County – are collaborating with such profoundly immoral business ventures. We hope the BDS campaign will soon become aware of this new development.
The Israel Defense Forces has canceled a number of planned arrest operations in the West Bank fearing soldiers will be seen by American diplomats touring the territories.
If there is any truth in the reports that came out of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Europe – that the United States agreed Israel can go on building in East Jerusalem – the headlines should have read “Obama has pulled out of the Middle East peace process.”
Members of the Los Angeles Jewish community have threatened to withhold donations to an Israeli university in protest of an op-ed published by a prominent Israeli academic in the Los Angeles Times on Friday, in which he called to boycott Israel economically, culturally and politically. Dr. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University in Be’er Sheva, a veteran peace activist, branded Israel as an apartheid state and said that a boycott was “the only way to save it from itself.”
IOA Editor: Haaretz leaves out the “unless” part of the threat to withhold donations: the firing of Prof. Neve Gordon from his BG University position. Is the “Only Democracy in the Middle East” about to start yet another round of harassment against a professor who dares to stare the Emperor in the eye?
See Neve Gordon: Boycott Israel on the IOA website.
The blatant attack that Ya’alon has been waging ever since he slammed the door by leaving the Israel Defense Forces has shown acute anti-democratic symptoms. Ya’alon has lashed out at the High Court of Justice in particular and the justice system in general, while expressing scandalous support for illegal settlements, making irresponsible accusations against his colleagues and superiors and stating views that are considered illegitimate even in the right wing.
IOA Editor: We continue focusing on Ya’alon because he is a central figure of Israel’s government and, as described by Haaretz, in many ways he is the government.
Peace Now secretary general Yariv Oppenheimer said yesterday that Ya’alon’s clarifications were “lip service only.”
IOA Editor: Indeed. Unlike some other Israeli leaders, General Ya’alon is highly educated, analytical, and measured. He is the opposite of a “hot-headed Israeli” who lets his tongue run ahead of himself. His violent language reflects cold and calculated thinking. He also must know that past comments from fellow members of the Israeli extreme-right were followed by violence, including the assassination of PM Rabin. If there was a mistake here, it was in considering that his comments, made in a closed meeting, would be leaked. That he may regret. Or not.
Ya’alon told the crowd: “I am not afraid of the Americans” adding, “there are moments where we must say ‘we’ve had it up to here’”.
Ya’alon also referred to the Israeli anti-settlement organization Peace Now and the so-called Israeli “elites” as “viruses… causing grave damage to the state of Israel.”
The U.S. State Department on Wednesday criticized Israeli restrictions placed on foreign nationals entering the West Bank via the Allenby Bridge, calling the new regulations ‘unacceptable’.
“We have repeatedly told the Government of Israel that the United States expects that all American citizens to be treated equally, regardless of their national origin or other citizenship,” a statement issued by the State Department said Wednesday.
For 15 years, Sabawi entered and left the country with no problems, as a senior partner in an insurance company and as chairman of a construction company. But in April, he was denied entry at Ben-Gurion International Airport.
IOA Editor: Quite a contrast to Natanyahu’s “economic peace plan” – Israel’s latest propaganda tool used to avert a meaningful dialog with the Palestinians, and to protect the Occupation.
NOAM CHOMSKY:
