That the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world’s conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement. In this case, not only is it possible, but there is near-universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognised (pre-June 1967) borders – with “minor and mutual modifications”, to adopt official US terminology before Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970s.
US-Israel
When I envision Israel ending settlement expansion and living in equality with the Palestinians – while Netanyahu’s government confiscates more Palestinian land and builds more settlements every single day – I wonder who is misguided?
Matan Cohen, Israeli who disrupted PM’s speech: We were raised on human rights. Youngster who heckled Netanyahu during GA address in New Orleans says US Jews distancing themselves from community due to “expectation of blind loyalty to Israel.”
IOA Editor: “Raised on human rights” is well intentioned, and an understandable comment when facing the likes of Netanyahu and Lieberman, but it is misleading. Although plenty of individual Israeli (Jewish) families raised their children “on human rights,” Labor Zionism was racist from the very start but, unlike today, mostly below the surface: instituting land laws designed to deprive Arab citizens of most natural and national resources; putting activists under administrative detention without trial, and much more.
Now things are far more out in the open: raiding people’s homes in the middle of the night and putting them away — via trials without the standard rules of evidence that would be required in the West (e.g., most recently, Ameer Makhoul); the ability to legally exclude any Arab citizen from living in much of Israel that is, in effect, designated as Jewish-only; and an “informal,” but well organized and sanctioned by “Higher Authority,” terror campaign against renting to Palestinians when they venture into Jewish towns (even when those had been mostly-Arab towns before 1948), lest their sort mix with our precious daughters (see Jonathan Cook’s Rabbis’ edict bars renting to Arabs). Today’s conditions are far more blatant, and outright scary, but they evolved over a long period of time, starting from the political foundation put in place by Labor Zionism.
“Technically, it would be very easy to stop these plans, but what they are doing is promoting them,” [Peace Now spokeswoman] said, saying it was highly unlikely Netanyahu was unaware the plans were to be made public during his US visit.
The American left is a phantom. It is conjured up by the right wing to tag Barack Obama as a socialist and used by the liberal class to justify its complacency and lethargy. It diverts attention from corporate power. It perpetuates the myth of a democratic system that is influenced by the votes of citizens, political platforms and the work of legislators. It keeps the world neatly divided into a left and a right. The phantom left functions as a convenient scapegoat. The right wing blames it for moral degeneration and fiscal chaos. The liberal class uses it to call for “moderation.” And while we waste our time talking nonsense, the engines of corporate power—masked, ruthless and unexamined—happily devour the state.
Turkish newspaper reports agencies stopped exchanging intelligence and conducting joint operations following Turkish government decision.
Former US president Jimmy Carter and two other Elders visit the weekly Friday Sheikh Jarrah demonstration in Jerusalem.
If Israel is the Jewish state, then what right do we Palestinian interlopers have to be here at all? None. And so it should be little surprise that Lieberman is simultaneously pushing a plan to trade Palestinian citizens of Israel into a rump state in the West Bank.
Director of Mossawa advocacy center for the Palestinian minority: “The police have already repeatedly demonstrated their hostility to Palestinian citizens, but this move proves that the authorities want to extend and deepen our oppression.”
Israeli officials said they discussed the construction with the U.S. administration and cut the number of planned units to temper American displeasure. The Palestinian Authority has insisted that it will not return to peace talks unless Israel ceases construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
ADL’s Foxman: “These groups are not promoting peace, they are spreading propaganda to assault Israel’s legitimacy. We want to Americans to know who these groups are and what it is they really stand for, which is to delegitimize the Jewish state.”
IOA Editor: From one of Israel’s propaganda chiefs, himself. We’d be honored to join the list.
A ghost of the Camp David talks of summer 2000 haunted the meeting of the Arab League in Libya, as its foreign ministers decided to give a little more time to the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians – not wanting to expose Mahmoud Abbas to the responsibility for the breakdown of the negotiations.
“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.
From now on, we will be living in a new, officially approved, ethnocratic, theocratic, nationalistic and racist country. Anyone who thinks it doesn’t affect him is mistaken. There is a silent majority that is accepting this with worrying apathy, as if to say: “I don’t care what country I live in.”
Israel committed to buying the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter … using a $3 billion defense grant from the United States.
IOA Editor: The US taxpayer giveth and Lockheed-Martin/Israel taketh.
Netanyahu refused to hold a serious discussion on any of the core issues apart from security, Abbas reportedly told diplomats… Israeli and foreign sources say the main problem is that Netanyahu refuses to present fundamental positions or discuss the borders of the Palestinian state. “I heard nothing from Netanyahu but niceties,” Abbas reportedly told foreign diplomats.
IOA Editor: No surprise here: this is the man who was caught on tape saying “at that moment I actually stopped the Oslo accord.”
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.”
Although colonists do have a powerful impact on Israeli politics, this is because the majority of the public allows them to… [T]he colonists actually serve a useful function for the Israeli government. Their seeming irrationality and apparent dangerous messianic politics are used to divert attention from the Israeli public’s reluctance to recognize Palestinian rights.
October 2, march on DC with One Nation: March to Rebuild America and End War!
Do you love The Daily Show as much as we do? Maybe like a lot of us, you go to bed with Jon Stewart four nights a week, and find him a fun, smart companion at the end of the day… he included CODEPINK among the “loud folks” getting in the way of civil rhetoric. He also equated progressives calling George Bush a war criminal with right-wingers calling Obama Hitler! Jon, seriously??
World-renowned architect Frank Gehry and the legendary pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim joined the international campaign in support of the Israeli actors’ refusal to perform in the new cultural center of Ariel, according to the website of Jewish Voices for Peace.
Israeli Foreign Ministry: “We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater companies, exhibits… This way you show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.” While efforts to promote a positive image of Israel abroad persist, Palestinians continue to suffer from Israeli state policies.
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.
The more people in the West worry about Iran’s weapons, sceptics claim, the less they’ll worry about Israel’s siege in Gaza, or its own extremist clerics, one of whom – Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas party, a member of Netanyahu’s coalition – recently called for the annihilation of the Arabs.
The entire deal will be funded by American military… In a bid to maintain Israel’s technological gap ahead of Arab states, the F-35 deal was pushed through instead of upgrading the air force’s F-15s and F-16s. This approach sticks to the principle that Israel is the first country in the Middle East to receive the newest fighter aircraft.
IOA Editor: It is unclear why this is treated as though “Israel decided to buy…” while the story states that the “entire deal will be funded by American military.” Another whopping gift to Israel, and to corporate America, from the US taxpayer.
A conversation with Noam Chomsky on Palestine/Israel, covering Zionism, the nature of statehood, bi-national / one-state / two-state solutions, the right of return, and the BDS movement – its actions, and their impacts on the Palestinian people. Filmed September 2nd, 2010.
Zionism in its present meaning, in its common meaning, is contradictory to human rights, to equality, to democracy, and [Zionist leftists] don’t recognise it. It’s too hard for them to recognise it, to realise it. And therefore their position is an impossible position, because they want everything: they want Zionism, they want democracy, they want a Jewish state, but they want also rights for the Palestinians… it’s very nice to want everything, but you have to make your choice and they are not courageous enough to make the choice.
[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.
More than 150 American actors, writers, directors and other artists signed a letter of support for the Israeli actors who declared they would not perform in the West Bank.
IOA Editor: Read letter and view list of signatories HERE.
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.
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.”
Avner Cohen: “International support for Israel and its opaque bomb is being eroded by its continued occupation of Palestinian territory and the policies that support it, such as settlement construction, house demolitions, and restrictions on the movement of Palestinians.” Cohen fears Israel’s insistence on ambiguity will leave Israel increasingly vulnerable to the charge that it is a nuclear-armed pariah state.
IOA Editor: It already is.
