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Obama, Mitchell and the Palestinians

February 7, 2009

By James Abourezk | Counterpunch, Feb 6 – 8, 2009

Abe Foxman, head of the “Anti-Defamation League”, claims that George Mitchell is too fair to be a broker between Israel and the Palestinians.  I guess that Foxman, in denouncing the choice of Mitchell for Middle East negotiator, shows that he is accustomed to such impartial mediators as Dennis Ross, who, when he left the Clinton Administration returned to the Israeli Lobby, whence he came.  Or he possibly could be making a comparison between George Mitchell and Alan Dershowitz, the notorious Israeli propagandist.  (I once called Dershowitz a “snake” on Al Manar TV, which prompted him to write a column in the Jerusalem Post calling me an anti-Semite.  My mistake was to forget to apologize to the snakes.)

I’m sorry to say that, as much as I admire George Mitchell for the public service he has provided over the years, being fair will not be enough to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the brutality that accompanies it.

The gyrations of various administrations over the years, all of whom have put on great shows of “settling” the conflict, has done nothing but waste a great deal of newspaper ink and television time reporting peace efforts, as though the media believed what snake oil salespeople, such as Condi Rice, were selling to the public.  What someone in our government should have realized by now is that Israel absolutely does not want to give up the West Bank for a Palestinian state, even though there are warnings that if a “two state solution” is not reached, the Palestinians will be forced into a state of apartheid for the rest of the century.  Certainly, the Israelis have no intention of allowing the Palestinians to outvote them in Israel, which leaves South African style apartheid as the only solution.

One can count all the reasons given by the Israelis for not achieving the “peace” that Israel claims it wants, reasons such as:

    1. We have no negotiating partner.
    2. The Palestinians have to recognize Israel’s right to exist first before we talk to them.
    3. They have to end terrorism first.
    4. We made the Palestinians the best offer they could ever have gotten, but they turned it down.

These are just some of the shopworn excuses trotted out to avoid cutting a deal.

It seems that very few people have caught on to this scam, even though it has been exposed for many years.  So, as the establishment continues to blather about achieving “peace,” Israel continues to swallow up Palestinian lands, beating up, imprisoning and massacring Palestinians on a daily basis.

It is very clear to me, as well as to anyone else who declines to see the conflict through an Israeli prism, that only when an American President flatly tells the Israelis that they must move the settlers out of the West Bank, there will be no peace, only more occupation, more brutality, more violations of international law, and more bloody slaughters of civilians such as the one we only recently witnessed in Gaza.  Anything short of that leaves the Israelis in complete control, and it will leave America with more and more enemies not only in the Middle East, but around the world.

President Obama mentioned recently that if he doesn’t get the economy turned around in his first term, he will most likely not have a second term. What he has not yet calculated is that the Israeli occupation results in angry terrorism against American interests all over the world.  He is faced with the choice of either angering the Likud Lobby by demanding that the Israeli settlers be kicked out of the West Bank, or of continuing the heavy spending required to maintain Israel’s occupation against the wishes of the people they are occupying.  What is your guess as to what he will do?

Surely we should have learned by now that America can no longer afford to listen to the Abe Foxmans and the Alan Dershowitzes of the world.  As a nation, we are out of money, bereft of ideas, and incapable of curbing the moral and financial corruption in Washington, D.C., which includes the corruption brought about by the Likud Lobby.

The result is that the rich get richer, the poor and the middle class become more and more desperate, searching for jobs that no longer exist, and for homes they can no longer afford.

The likes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have brought the world down around our collective ears, and after having done so, they have ridden off into the sunset, happy in the knowledge that they’ve taken care of their rich friends, who have profited from the wars they have started.  The oil price surge, the conflicts in the Middle East, which have brought about the surge in military spending has created fortunes for their cronies, all paid for by the people of this country.  We are, unfortunately, not finished paying the price for Mr. Bush’s costly — in terms of human lives and of money — puerile adventures for the past eight years.  We will be reaping the hatred and the violence caused by their wars, in addition to suffering  the economic fallout resulting from their policies of greed and corruption.  And we have not yet counted the kinds of misery and poverty and corruption these two heroes have spawned as a result of the Iraq War.

The cowardice of our presidents and of our Congress keeps Israel in the driver’s seat so far as continuing the occupation.  Brutality is the natural product of an occupation that is necessary to keep the land they’ve stolen from the Palestinians.  We are in desperate need of “change,” and we hope and we pray that Mr. Obama will have the courage to put it in motion.

James G. Abourezk is a lawyer practicing in South Dakota. He is a former United States senator and the author of two books, Advise and Dissent, and a co-author of Through Different Eyes. This article also  runs in the current issue of Washington Report For Middle East Affairs.  Abourezk  can be reached at georgepatton45@gmail.com

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Hamas Is Not Going Away

February 7, 2009

Analysis by Mel Frykberg | Inter Press Service

RAMALLAH, Feb 6 (IPS) – Despite intensive efforts by Israel, the international community and a number of Arab leaders to weaken and destroy Hamas through economic, punitive and military action, the Islamist organisation continues to be a force to reckon with.

Hamas won free and fair democratic elections in January 2006. The U.S. pushed for these elections, which were monitored by international observers including ex-U.S. president Jimmy Carter, and Israel permitted them to be held.

Hamas has since then been dominant, though it took effective control in June 2007, more than a year after its election victory. The Gaza Strip, which the resistance group controls, took a serious battering during Israel’s 22-day military assault, codenamed Operation Cast Lead.

The coastal territory has also been economically crippled by nearly two years of an Israeli embargo which has hermetically sealed Gaza off from the rest of the world, preventing the import of all but a tiny flow of humanitarian aid and goods.

Israel purportedly carried out the military operation to stop Palestinian rockets from hitting Israeli cities and towns bordering the Gaza Strip.

However, rocket fire on Israel had virtually ceased in the five months of ceasefire between Israel and Hamas which preceded an Israeli cross-border military operation into Gaza on Nov. 4. This operation provoked a barrage of retaliatory missiles on Israel.

Prior to Operation Cast Lead, a delegation of British parliamentarians met with Hamas leaders in Gaza. The parliamentarians were told that Hamas would be prepared to accept Israel’s existence, within the internationally recognised borders of 1967, provided the Jewish state legitimised the rights of Palestinians in return.

Despite the immense scale of death and destruction wrought by Operation Cast Lead, which left over 1,300 Palestinians, mostly civilians dead, rockets continue to be fired at Israel in spite of disproportionate responses from the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

Following the recent ceasefire most of Hamas’s leadership emerged from underground bunkers unscathed. The digging of smuggling tunnels for everyday necessities as well as arms has resumed.

Furthermore, there are also growing signs that the Europeans, some Israelis and previous Arab opponents are resigned to factoring Hamas into any political equation to address a resolution of the conflict.

Last week after several days of intensive diplomatic pressure, the Israeli government managed to stymie a French initiative to weaken the Jewish state’s stance on Hamas.

Following a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, France tried to change a pre-written closing statement released by the ministers regarding the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.

Paris wanted the statement to say that the EU would be prepared to hold talks with a future Palestinian unity government which included Hamas as long as it agreed to honour the principles of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Additionally, the French delegation to Brussels proposed opening Israeli border crossings into Gaza immediately without any conditions. A previous agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 2005 stipulated that the PA had to control the crossings.

However, following intervention by Israel, the Czech Republic – the current holder of the EU presidency – Germany, Italy and the Netherlands pushed the French initiative off the agenda.

Israel viewed the French move as an attempt to get the Quartet for Middle East peace – the UN, the U.S., Russia and the EU – to soften its conditions for international recognition of Hamas.

A senior Israeli official said that since the end of the Gaza operation, his country was concerned about a possible break in European support for the boycott of the Hamas government in Gaza.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, met French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in Paris recently.

During the meeting the Gaza ceasefire was discussed and Kouchner stressed the need for inter-Palestinian dialogue and for the border crossings into Gaza to be reopened.

Kouchner again suggested France was open to the idea of a unity government if Hamas softened its stance.

Meanwhile, Irish Foreign Minister Michael Martin told reporters in Damascus on Monday that some kind of engagement with Hamas may have to feature in future European Union policy.

Hamas’s erstwhile foe and bitter rival Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who controls the West Bank, also discussed the issue with French President Nicholas Sarkozy in Paris on Monday.

Abbas too called for a unity Palestinian government and said Hamas’s inclusion was imperative as long as it recognised his supreme authority.

On Monday Sarkozy also met Qatar’s Prime Minister, Sheik Hamad bin Jassem Al-Thani, whose Persian Gulf country has emerged as a regional mediator since helping to resolve a political crisis in Lebanon last year. Al-Thani insisted Hamas should not be sidelined from peace efforts.

“We must work for a government of national unity between the Palestinians. There should not be efforts to delete or distance one of the Palestinian parties present on the ground,” Al-Thani told reporters.

Israeli columnist and analyst Akiva Elder noted in the daily Haaretz that Israel’s continual denial of the reality of Hamas as a legitimate political entity was short-sighted.

For 20 years Israel has tried to destroy the movement using carrots and sticks alternately. The only difference between the ruling Kadima party’s leader and minister of foreign affairs, Tzipi Livni, and the more right-wing opposition Likud party leader Binyamin Netanyahu is the size of the clubs to be used, argued Eldar.

“Precisely because of the many children killed in Gaza, Cast Lead has been assured a place of honour in the ethos of the struggle of the Palestinian David, armed with primitive Qassams, and the Israeli Goliath, with his F-16s,” said Eldar.

“When they hear the proud declarations of Israel’s leaders, to the effect that deterrence has been restored, Hamas’s leaders certainly laugh themselves to death, and not just because of the rockets that continue to fall on the people of Ashkelon.

“The threat of a few more bombs on Gaza deters them like the death penalty deters a suicide bomber on the way to carry out an attack,” said Eldar.

Only a long-term ceasefire, it seems, accompanied by a real diplomatic context, can pull the rug of popular support out from under Hamas and restore it to its natural proportions.

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Lieberman was a member of the Kach Terrorist Group

February 6, 2009
author Wednesday February 04, 2009 03:11author by Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies Report this post to the editors
Israeli online daily, Haaretz, reported Tuesday that Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Yisrael Betinu Party and a current candidate for Prime Minister in the upcoming elections, was a member of the Kach terrorist group which is outlawed by Israel.

Image source - Knesset website
Image source – Knesset website

Yossi Dayan, secretary-general of the movement, said that when Lieberman first immigrated into Israel, he joined the movement, and Dayan himself was the person who issued his membership ID card.

At the time, Lieberman emigrated from Moldovia, and became an active member in the movement.

Dayan added that he is willing to testify in front of any committee to confirm his statements, and added that Lieberman was a Kach member for a short period.

Also, Ultra-nationalist activist, Avigdor Eskin, said that he met Lieberman several times at the movement’s office in Jerusalem, Haaretz reported.

Eskin described Lieberman as a nice man, and that he was only a “Kach member in his ideology that hates Arabs”.

He added that Lieberman was active in the movement for several months, adding that part of his activities included distributing statements and leaflets for the movement at the Jerusalem University.

Kach members refuse statements that attempt to place resemblance between Lieberman and the former leader of the terrorist movement, Me’er Kahane, who immigrated to Israel from the United States.

The Kach movement is a group that believes in greater Israel, expelling all Arabs from the area and using violence to achieve these goals. It was formed in 1971 by Me’er Kahana, shortly after he immigrated to Palestine. He was assassinated in the United States in 1990.

When the movement was established, it set its goal to have a Jewish state in both banks of the Jordan River, which means taking over Jordan and Palestine.

The Kach movement participated in the 1984 elections in Israel and won one seat; in 1988 the movement was barred from participating in the elections for its racist ideology and was officially declared a terrorist movement in 1994.

After Kahane was killed, the Kach movement was divided, and Zeev Kahane formed the Kahane Hai (Kahane is alive) movement after rifts erupted on who should lead the movement.

Lieberman is well known for his ideas and speeches against Arabs and Palestinians. He considers them as demographical threat to the state of Israel and has always called for the massive expulsion of all Arabs and Palestinians from “Greater Israel”.

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Self-Defense Against Peace

February 6, 2009

Israel’s Unjust War on Gaza

By Michael Mandel | Counterpunch, Feb 5, 2009

Did self-defence justify Israel’s war on Gaza?

Objections have been raised to this claim on grounds of a lack of both proportionality and necessity. To kill over 1000            Palestinians in 3 weeks, hundreds of them children, and wound thousands more, in order to deter a threat from rockets that did not kill or injure anybody in Israel for the six months the truce was declared by both sides, or even before Israel launched its attack on December 27, is so disproportionate as to be intolerable in any ethical system that holds Palestinian lives equal in value to Israeli lives. It is also so disproportionate as to defy belief that defence against these rockets was the real motive of the war. To ignore the many diplomatic avenues available to avoid even this threat, such as lifting the suffocating 18-month siege, suggests the same thing.

A more fundamental objection, however, is the self-evident legal and moral principle that an aggressor cannot rely upon self-defence to justify violence against resistance to its own aggression. You can find this principle in domestic law and in the judgments of the Nuremberg tribunals.

To quote one Nuremberg judge:

On of the most amazing phenomena of this case which does not lack in startling features is the manner in which the aggressive war conducted by Germany against Russia has been treated by the defense as if it were the other way around. …If it is assumed that some of the resistance units in Russia or members of the population did commit acts which were in themselves unlawful under the rules of war, it would still have to be shown that these acts were not in legitimate defense against wrongs perpetrated upon them by the invader. Under International Law, as in Domestic Law, there can be no reprisal against reprisal. The assassin who is being repulsed by his intended victim may not slay him and then, in turn, plead self defense. (Trial of Otto Ohlendorf and others, Military Tribunal II-A, April 8, 1948)

So who was the aggressor here?

There would have been no question as to who was the aggressor had this attack taken place before Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza strip in 2005. At that point Israel had been committing a continuous aggression against Gaza for 38 years, in its illegal and violent occupation of it, along with the rest of the Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, after its conquest in 1967.

By 2005, the occupation had been condemned as illegal by the highest organs with jurisdiction over international law, most notably the International Court of Justice in its 2004 opinion on the separation barrier. A central illegality of the occupation for the International Court lay in Israel’s settlements, which violate the law against colonization, and which are central to the occupation. The fifteen judges of the International Court were unanimously of the opinion that the settlements were illegal and the wall itself was held by a majority of 13-2 to be illegal, partly because it was there to defend the settlements, and not Israel itself, and thus could not qualify as self-defence.

The rocket attacks from Gaza started in 2001 and took their first Israeli victim in 2004. Since then, there had been 14 Israeli victims prior to the current war. Tragic, indeed, but obviously paling in comparison to the 1700 Palestinians killed in Gaza during the same period. One death is indeed a tragedy, but many deaths are not just “a statistic”, as Stalin had it; they are the tragedy multiplied many times over. Given Israel’s illegal, aggressive and violent occupation, prior to the withdrawal, Gaza rockets could only be regarded as necessary and proportionate self-defence, or as reprisals against Israel’s aggression.

Did Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 change the situation?

It has been forcefully argued that the 18-month siege of Gaza, a major reason for Hamas’ refusal to extend the truce, was itself an act of aggression, giving rise to a right of self-defence.

But even more important, though usually ignored, is Israel’s continued illegal and aggressive occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem after the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. Indeed, the withdrawal from Gaza was intended to strengthen the hold on the other territories and was accompanied by a greater increase in the number of settlers there than those removed from Gaza.

The occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem figured equally with Gaza in the condemnations of the World Court and the Security Council. Furthermore, in the Oslo Accords, Israel and the Palestinians agreed that “The two sides view the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a single territorial unit, the integrity and status of which will be preserved during the interim period.” Indeed, when Hamas won the elections in 2006, elections declared impeccably fair and civil by all international observers, it won them for the whole of the Palestinian Authority, including the West Bank (it was not allowed by Israel to campaign in East Jerusalem). Many Hamas West Bank legislators remain in Israeli jails.

And the basic fact is that the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza are one people, however separated they are by walls and fences and check-points. Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from one part of that people’s land cannot turn that people into aggressors when they resist the illegal occupation of the rest.

So self-defense cannot justify this attack, or the siege that preceded it. What can? That Hamas is a “terrorist organization”? But terrorism is about deliberately killing civilians for illegal political ends, and in that enterprise, Israel has topped Hamas by many multiples. That Hamas does not recognize Israel’s “right to exist”? But Hamas has offered many times to make a long-term truce with Israel on the basis of the legal international borders, something it is clearly entitled to insist upon. Israel says that’s not good enough, that Hamas first has to recognize Israel’s legitimacy, in other words, it has to concede the legitimacy of the Jewish state and all it has meant to the Palestinians. In other words, as one Israeli journalist ironized, Israel is insisting that Hamas embrace Zionism as a condition of even talking peace with it.

These are not justifications for violence on this or any scale. Indeed, they point to the most plausible reason Israel is fighting Hamas (and the PLO before it): self-defence, if you will, not against rockets and mortars, but against having to make peace with the Palestinians on the basis of the pre-1967 borders as required by international law.

Michael Mandel is Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto, where he teaches the Law of War. He is the author of How America Gets Away with Murder.

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Settlement Expansion Cutting Into Peace

February 6, 2009

By Daan Bauwens | Inter Press Service

TEL AVIV, Feb 6 (IPS) – A secret government database revealed last week the real extent of settlement construction on the West Bank. In violation of the Road Map to peace agreed with the U.S., Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, it turned out, agreed to the construction of another settlement on the West Bank. Many now question how devoted Israeli leaders really are to the idea of achieving peace.

A comprehensive official database on settler activity, compiled systematically by order of the Israeli Ministry of Defence, shows that in 75 percent of the West Bank settlements, construction has been carried out without the permits that were issued, or contrary to them. Furthermore, the database reveals that in more than 30 settlements, extensive construction of roads, schools, synagogues and even police stations was carried out on private land belonging to Palestinian residents.

The data-gathering project began four years ago. Brigadier-General Baruch Spiegel, aide to former Minister of Defence Shaul Mofaz, was put in charge. The idea was to have credible and readily accessible information to counter legal action by Palestinian residents, human rights organisations and leftist movements who challenge the legality of settlement construction in the West Bank.

The Ministry of Defence has always refused to publicise the data, arguing that it would endanger Israel’s national security, or harm its foreign relations. The report was recently obtained and published on the Internet by the Israeli daily Haaretz.

The information on the database demonstrates that the state does not abide by its own rules. The website of the Foreign Ministry says: “Israel’s actions relating to the use and allocation of land under its administration are all taken with strict regard to the rules and norms of international law – Israel does not requisition private land for the establishment of settlements.”

And yet, in many of the settlements it was the Ministry of Construction and Housing that was responsible for the construction. A large part of the newly built infrastructure involves roads, schools and police stations. Besides, the large extent of building violations demonstrates the poor functioning of the Israeli Civil Administration which is in charge of supervision of construction in the territories.

Earlier last week, Israel’s largest peace movement Peace Now published a report with the title ‘Settlers do not need to wait for Bibi’, referring to the right-wing Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, and the fact that settlers do not necessarily need a right-wing government to carry on with their mission of occupying the Biblical promised land. Among other things, Peace Now’s Settlement Watch discovered that the construction of settlements increased almost 60 percent in 2008.

Freezing of all settlement construction is the cornerstone of the road map to peace. The road map was founded on the findings of the Sharm-el-Sheikh fact-finding committee on the second Intifadah (Palestinian uprising) chaired by George Mitchell, currently U.S. special envoy to the Middle East.

After the mission, Mitchell formulated the “settlement-terrorism equation” in 2001 that demanded an immediate stop to terror from the Palestinian side and halting of all settlement activity, including construction for natural growth from the Israeli side.

Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon and former U.S. president George W. Bush adopted the Mitchell agenda, suppressing Palestinian terrorism by building a separation wall that left most of the settlements on the outside, and then by evacuating settlers from the Gaza Strip. Israel was allowed to keep on building within the settlements enclosed by the fence.

At the peace negotiations in 2007 in Annapolis (in Maryland in the U.S.), the centre-left Kadima-Labour government again pledged to freeze all construction in order to make a two-state solution to the conflict possible. In November 2008 Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared he was cutting off funding for illegal outposts, thereby admitting that the state had until then financed the construction of these officially unrecognised, illegal settlements on Palestinian land.

“It is political weakness,” says Hagit Ofran, head of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch. “Religious people, ideologists want to hold on to the West Bank and in order to achieve that, they build as much as possible. They threaten with violence if they will be evacuated, they swear to strike back against Israeli police and forces. That’s something the government prefers not to see happening, so they turn a blind eye.”

As far as government support by active aid is concerned, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has only recently approved the construction of a new settlement in the Binyamin region in return for settlers’ agreement to evacuate the illegal outpost of Migron. Binyamin is located to the northeast and northwest of Jerusalem. According to human rights lawyers Michael Sfard and Shlomi Zacharia, who already advocated the evacuation of Migron two years ago, Barak is expanding settlements and outposts under the guise of evacuation.

Currently there are approximately 290,000 Jews living in 120 official settlements and dozens of illegal outposts in the West Bank, most of them opposed to a two-state solution as they lay claim to the whole land. The alternative to a two-state solution is one state, which according to the demographic evolution would mean a secular and bi-national state with a Jewish minority, which is unacceptable to most Jewish Israelis.

In the meantime, the expansion of Jewish settlements is slowly occupying land Palestinians demand in any final agreement. “This lack of political courage is weakening our Palestinian peace activists,” says Hagit Ofran. “They don’t see the use of peace negotiations if Israel in the meantime keeps building and occupying their land. Some stop believing in peace or justice and become militants or terrorists. That’s the main problem.”

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party is leading the polls for the coming elections of Feb. 10. He has opposed creation of new settlements, but said he would allow “natural growth”. Over the last decade, Israel has officially not built any new settlements, but termed all new settlement construction necessary to “natural growth”. Netanyahu has also promised the Yesha council, the umbrella organisation of Jewish municipal councils in the West Bank, not to be party to evacuation of any West Bank settlement. (END/2009)

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War on Gaza: Israeli Action, Not Reaction

February 5, 2009

Nicola Nasser| PEJ News, Feb 4, 2009

Stubbornly insisting on getting the carriage before the horse as the approach to a “durable and sustainable” ceasefire in Gaza Strip, U.S. and European diplomacy in particular is building on an Israeli misleading premise that the 22 – day military operation, dubbed “Cast Lead,” against the Palestinian Gaza Strip was a reaction and not a premeditated long planned scheme that found in the change of guards in Washington D.C. an excellent timing. It was “not simply a reaction,” but “a calculation,” Daniel Klaidman wrote in Newsweek on January 10.

U.S. and European diplomats are reiterating the Israeli propaganda justification: “What would any normal country do if they were threatened by rocket fire? They would act.” U.S. President Barack Obama was the last western leader to uphold this Israeli claim. “But Israel is not a normal country, it is an occupying country,” former Palestinian – Israeli member of Knesset Azmi Bishara said. Moreover what country would tolerate an eight–year siege and not consider it an act of war without any national reaction? Why should western diplomacy judge Palestinians in Gaza as universally abnormal?

Western diplomacy is building on the Palestinian reaction in self–defense as the igniting cause of violence and on the Israeli aggressive action as the resulting effect. It is a non starter. It could win EU high representative Javier Solana, the international middle East quartet of peace mediators’ envoy Tony Blair, who are regular visitors to the region, and U.S. newly appointed Middle East envoy George Mitchell some audience among their Arab and Palestinian peace partners who might still hope that the United States and the European Union may yet be able to deliver on their two–state promise, but this audience was not and is still not the key player in Gaza. Israeli and Hamas’ non–abiding reaction to the UN Security Council resolution 1860 proved British Foreign Secretary David Miliband right when he said immediately thereafter that “peace is made on the ground while resolutions are written in the United Nations.”

Hamas has survived the Israeli “Operation Cast Lead,” which failed to remove it as a key player, to remain the only player on the ground in Gaza and not only as a key player there as well as a major much stronger player among Palestinians in the West Bank and the Diaspora. To build their diplomacy for a “durable and sustainable” ceasefire on the recognition only of the Israeli player while bypassing or sidelining the other protagonist is a dead end approach that could only encourage more Israeli aggressive actions and would for sure invoke more Palestinian violent reaction.

Unfortunately this has been the focus of UN resolution 1860, the so–called Egyptian initiative, the recent European summit meetings with Arab and Israeli leaders, the Israeli–US memorandum of understanding of January 19, George Mitchell’s Middle East eight–day tour, a focus that President Obama had subscribed to two days after his inauguration. It might not be too long before western diplomacy regrets this approach. Hamas should be “engaged … as there could be no solution to the issue” by keeping it out in the cold, Nathan J Brown, an expert from Carnegie Endowment, was quoted as saying by Indian “The Hindu” on January 25, a view shared also by former US president Jimmy Carter.

In historical perspective, nothing proves the Israeli action and the Palestinian reaction more than the very existence of Hamas. While founding the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was the reaction of the Palestinian refugees in exile to the Israeli action of forcing them out of their homeland in 1948, the founding of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Gaza was the Palestinian reaction to the Israeli military expansion in 1967, which led to the occupation of the rest of historic Palestine.

More recently, the Palestinian reaction managed to develop some locally–made primitive rockets in self–defense, and to smuggle in some “Grad” systems, which Israel used in addition to the tunnels under the Gaza–Egypt borders as justification for military action, while imposing a media blackout to hide the horrible humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza as the result of its eight year blockade of the territory, which left the besieged Palestinians with one of two choices: Either to starve slowly to death or die instantly en masse in “Operation Cast Lead.” Israel imposed siege, in itself an act of war, as a collective punishment against Gaza civilians. US and European strong advocates of Humanitarian Intervention, led by French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, who call now for such interventions in Darfur, Myanmar and Zimbabwe and who did intervene militarily for humanitarian reasons in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo, have kept mum on Gaza.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt hit directly at the root cause of the Gaza conflict. “They will dig tunnels out of desperation and there will be no way of stopping all these tunnels if you don’t open up the border,” he said. Bildt was joined by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who urged ending, “Gaza’s economic isolation by reopening the crossings that link it to the outside world.” European leaders seem to have finally awakened to the real equation of cause and effect in the conflict. However they are calling for opening Gaza border crossings as a sideshow, as the effect and not as the root cause of Palestinian reaction, as a prerequisite for a “durable and sustainable” ceasefire and not as an obligation that Israel must abide by in its capacity as the occupying power under international law, as merely a humanitarian outlet for the besieged civilian population and not as a national right of the Palestinians in Gaza Strip in the context of the Israeli unilateral military redeployment from the coastal strip in 2005.


Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit of the Israeli –occupied Palestinian Territories. He can be reached at nicolanasser@yahoo.com

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The War on Terror is a Hoax

February 5, 2009

By Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch, Feb 4, 2009

According to US government propaganda, terrorist cells are spread throughout America, making it necessary for the government to spy on all Americans and violate most other constitutional protections.  Among President Bush’s last words as he left office was the warning that America would soon be struck again by Muslim terrorists.

If America were infected with terrorists, we would not need the government to tell us.  We would know it from events.  As there are no events, the US government substitutes warnings in order to keep alive the fear that causes the public to accept pointless wars, the infringement of civil liberty, national ID cards, and inconveniences and harassments when they fly.

The most obvious indication that there are no terrorist cells is that not a single neocon has been assassinated.

I do not approve of assassinations, and am ashamed of my country’s government for engaging in political assassination.  The US and Israel have set a very bad example for al Qaeda to follow.

The US deals with al Qaeda and Taliban by assassinating their leaders, and Israel deals with Hamas by assassinating its leaders.  It is reasonable to assume that al Qaeda would deal with the instigators and leaders of America’s wars in the Middle East in the same way.

Today every al Qaeda member is aware of the complicity of neoconservatives in the death and devastation inflicted on Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza.  Moreover, neocons are highly visible and are soft targets compared to Hamas and Hezbollah leaders.  Neocons have been identified in the media for years, and as everyone knows, multiple listings of their names are available online.

Neocons do not have Secret Service protection.  Dreadful to contemplate, but it would be child’s play for al Qaeda to assassinate any and every neocon.  Yet, neocons move around freely, a good indication that the US does not have a terrorist problem.

If, as neocons constantly allege, terrorists can smuggle nuclear weapons or dirty bombs into the US with which to wreak havoc upon our cities, terrorists can acquire weapons with which to assassinate any neocon or former government official.

Yet, the neocons, who are the Americans most hated by Muslims, remain unscathed.

The “war on terror” is a hoax that fronts for American control of oil pipelines, the profits of the military-security complex, the assault on civil liberty by fomenters of a police state, and Israel’s territorial expansion.

There were no al Qaeda in Iraq until the Americans brought them there by invading and overthrowing Saddam Hussein, who kept al Qaeda out of Iraq.  The Taliban is not a  terrorist organization, but a movement attempting to unify Afghanistan under Muslim law.  The only Americans threatened by the Taliban are the Americans Bush sent to Afghanistan to kill Taliban and to impose a puppet state on the Afghan people.

Hamas is the democratically elected government of Palestine, or what little remains of Palestine after Israel’s illegal annexations.  Hamas is a terrorist organization in the same sense that the Israeli government and the US government are terrorist organizations.  In an effort to bring Hamas under Israeli hegemony, Israel employs terror bombing and assassinations against Palestinians.  Hamas replies to the Israeli terror with homemade and ineffectual rockets.

Hezbollah represents the Shi’ites of southern Lebanon, another area in the Middle East that Israel seeks for its territorial expansion.

The US brands Hamas and Hezbollah “terrorist organizations” for no other reason than the US is on Israel’s side of the conflict.  There is no objective basis for the US Department of State’s “finding” that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations.  It is merely a propagandistic declaration.

Americans and Israelis do not call their bombings of civilians terror. What Americans and Israelis call terror is the response of oppressed people who are stateless because their countries are ruled by puppets loyal to the oppressors.  These people, dispossessed of their own countries, have no State Departments, Defense Departments, seats in the United Nations, or voices in the mainstream media.  They can submit to foreign hegemony or resist by the limited means available to them.

The fact that Israel and the United States carry on endless propaganda to prevent this fundamental truth from being realized indicates that it is Israel and the US that are in the wrong and the Palestinians, Lebanese, Iraqis, and Afghans who are being wronged.

The retired American generals who serve as war propagandists for Fox “News” are forever claiming that Iran arms the Iraqi and Afghan insurgents and Hamas. But where are the arms?  To deal with American tanks, insurgents have to construct homemade explosive devices out of artillery shells.  After six years of conflict the insurgents still have no weapon against the American helicopter gunships.  Contrast this “arming” with the weaponry the US supplied to the Afghans three decades ago when they were fighting to drive out the Soviets.

The films of Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza show large numbers of Gazans fleeing from Israeli bombs or digging out the dead and maimed, and none of these people is armed.  A person would think that by now every Palestinian would be armed, every man, woman, and child.  Yet, all the films of the Israeli attack show an unarmed population.  Hamas has to construct homemade rockets that are little more than a sign of defiance.  If Hamas were armed by Iran, Israel’s assault on Gaza would have cost Israel its helicopter gunships, its tanks, and hundreds of lives of its soldiers.

Hamas is a small organization armed with small caliber rifles incapable of penetrating body armor.  Hamas is unable to stop small bands of Israeli settlers from descending on  West Bank Palestinian villages, driving out the Palestinians, and appropriating their land.

The great mystery is:  why after 60 years of oppression are the Palestinians still an unarmed people?  Clearly, the Muslim countries are complicit with Israel and the US in keeping the Palestinians unarmed.

The unsupported assertion that Iran supplies sophisticated arms to the Palestinians is like the unsupported assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.  These assertions are propagandistic justifications for killing Arab civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure in order to secure US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

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Destruction of Gaza and the crimes of Hosni Mubarak

February 4, 2009

Collusion, Complicity and Sheer Insanity

By Rannie Amiri | Counterpunch, Feb 2, 2009

As staggering as the statistics detailing Gaza’s destruction may be, they still do not present a complete picture of the unique travesties and tragedies suffered by individuals, families, neighborhoods and villages during Israel’s savage 22-day assault on the tiny territory. Yet, they bear repeating. From the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (www.pcbs.gov.ps) and various NGOs:

  • 1,334 killed, one-third of them children (more children than ‘militants’ were killed)
  • 5,450 injured, one-third of them children
  • 100,000 displaced, 50,000 made homeless
  • 4,100 residential homes and buildings destroyed, 17,000 damaged (together accounting for 14 percent of all buildings in Gaza)
  • 29 destroyed educational institutions, including the American International School
  • 92 destroyed or damaged mosques
  • 1,500 destroyed shops, factories and other commercial facilities
  • 20 destroyed ambulances
  • 35-60% of agricultural land ruined
  • $1.9 billion in total estimated damages

In the face of such massive devastation and hardship—and this after the crippling 18-month siege had already reduced Gazato a state of bare subsistence—the behavior and actions of the regime of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak remain as contemptible after the war as they were before.

On Dec. 25, just two days prior to the onset of the vicious aerial bombardment of Gaza, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni met with Mubarak in Cairo. It is understood that Egypt gave the green light for the attack in the hope that the ruling (and democratically-elected) Islamist group Hamas would be toppled and the more pliant Fatah faction, led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, would supplant it.

Rafah crossing sealed

The reasons for Mubarak’s animus toward Hamas, and by extension, for his reprehensible decision to keep the vital Rafah border crossing with Gaza closed to humanitarian supplies was explained earlier.

Apologists for the dictator will say the 2005 agreement between Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the European Union (EU) that regulates movement across the border prohibits it from being opened in the absence of PA and EU observers.

It makes no mention, however, of barring critical humanitarian goods from reaching the territory, where conditions were becoming ever more desperate. Additionally, Egypt was a non-signatory to the treaty, which had already expired after one year and was never renewed.

If keeping the Rafah crossing—the only gateway to non-Israeli territory from Gaza—closed before and during the war was not a criminal act, doing so in its aftermath must surely be.

Preventing Gaza’s children from obtaining medical care

Reporting for The National, Jonathan Cook details four cases of children in Gaza who required urgent, life-saving surgery in France, but were denied entry into Egypt via Rafah. As the aunt of the one of the war’s child casualties remarked, “Each morning we arrived at the crossing and the Egyptian soldiers cursed us and told us to go away.”

Doctors accompanying the children were allowed to pass into Egypt, but the ambulances carrying them were not. Their exclusion was attributed to the Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah who did not authorize their exit, stating there was “no more reason to refer any more children for treatment abroad.” Egyptian authorities abided by their ruling, not wanting to create diplomatic trouble.

But that is no excuse.

First, Hamas, democratically elected to power in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, is the legitimate governing authority. Second, the term of Mahmoud Abbas as president of the PA expired on Jan. 9. Finally, emergency medical situations always take precedent over (alleged) bureaucratic considerations. Those in control of the Rafah crossing must be held directly responsible.

Feeding Israeli soldiers, not Gaza’s people

In light of catastrophic circumstances due to lack of basic foodstuffs (75 percent of Gaza’s children are thought to be malnourished and 30 percent are stunted in growth), a recent report by the popular Egyptian weekly Al-Osboa was all the more shocking. It revealed that an Egyptian company was allowed to provide Israel Defense Force soldiers with food during the war while Gazans were starving.

Iranian Red Crescent ship kept offshore

An Iranian ship sent by the country’s Red Crescent Society carrying 2,000 tons of medical supplies and other humanitarian aid for Gaza continues to be anchored 15 miles off Gaza’s shore. It had already been intercepted and prevented by the Israeli navy from reaching Gaza. Now, it awaits permission to dock in the Egyptian port of Al-Areesh to unload its cargo. To date, permission has not been grated.

In light of the above, blistering criticism of the Egyptian regime’s behavior has come from Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah:

“[Egypt] told the Arab and Islamic world that the Rafah border was opened and it was not … The opening of the Rafah crossing is crucial to the Palestinian people, the Resistance and the living conditions there … its closure is one of the biggest crimes in history.”

The reply from the Egyptian government was all too predictable:

“Hassan Nasrallah’s criticism of Egypt confirms once more that he is nothing more than an agent of the Iranian regime and takes his orders from Tehran.”

Irrespective of whether Nasrallah takes orders from Tehran or Tokyo, there were no substantive answers to his accusations. Instead, Egypt reverted to parroting tired anti-Iranian rhetoric which increasingly is falling on deaf ears.

Abetting the siege of Gaza, giving sanction to the Israeli onslaught and its crimes against humanity, and afterward, preventing aid from getting into the territory and the injured from getting out, are all egregious offenses.

Just as many call for Olmert, Barak, Livni and the generals and soldiers who participated in this war to be prosecuted for violating international law and committing war crimes, Mubarak’s own complicity makes him equally liable in facing similar charges.

Rannie Amiri is an independent commentator on the Middle East. He may be reached at: rbamiri at yahoo dot com.

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“Why the Only Solution for Jews and Palestinians is a One State Solution”

February 4, 2009

By Elie Elhadj, author of The Islamic Shield | Arab Democracy, Feb 3, 2009

For a durable solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Bible and the Quran must be de-politicized. In political terms, de-politicization means a single secular democratic state for Jews and Palestinians.

De-politicize the Bible and the Quran

The Arab Israeli conflict has become a religious war. Politicizing the Bible’s Genesis 15:18 politicized the Quran. Genesis 15:18 declares: “The Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying, unto thy seed have I given this land from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.”

Defeated in 1948, powerless and humiliated in every war since that time, Arabs took refuge in Islam. They invoked hostile Quranic Verses (such as chapter 2: verse 65, 2:120, 5:51, 5:60, 5:78), recounted purported stories of the Prophet Muhammad’s troubled relationship with the Jewish tribes in Medina (Banu Qurayza, Banu Al-Nadir, and Banu Qainuqa), and drew lessons from the symbolism of substituting Friday for the Sabbath and of changing the direction during prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca. Other Quranic verses urge jihad against Muslims enemies (2:191, 2:193, 8:60, 9:5, 9:29) and promise (2:82) the martyred the delights of paradise; wine (47:15), beautiful women (44:54), silk, brocade, and gold (18:31), etc… Combined, these verses made a jihadist’s career worthwhile. In the hands of jihadist leaders, these verses transformed political frustrations into religious crusades and the jihadists into walking bombs.

For thirteen centuries, however, these were non-issues. Hundreds of thousands of Jews lived harmoniously among Muslims in Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen.

Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Britain’s first and thus far the only person of Jewish parentage to reach the premiership (1868 and 1874-1880), described in his novel Coningsby the “halcyon centuries” during the golden age of Muslim Spain in which the “children of Ishmael rewarded the children of Israel with equal rights and privileges with themselves.” Disraeli described glowingly how Muslims and Jews alike “built palaces, gardens and fountains; filled equally the highest offices of the state, competed in an extensive and enlightened commerce, and rivaled each other in renowned universities.”

In 1492 the Muslim Ottoman Sultan Bayezid-II (1481-1512) encouraged great numbers of Jews to settle in the Ottoman Empire following their expulsion from Spain and Portugal.

Islam venerates Judaism. Arabs believe they share a common ancestry with the Jewish people going back to the sons of Abraham, Ismail and Ishaq. The Quran praises Abraham as the first Muslim, describing Islam as the Religion of Abraham. The Quranic Chapter 14, with its 52 Verses is named after Abraham and to Joseph the Quran names Chapter 12, with its 111 Verses. Muslim men are allowed to marry Jewish women, without the need to convert them to Islam (the children must be Muslims). Today, Jewish-derived Arabic names like Daoud, Ibrahim, Ishaq, Mousa, Sara, Sulaiman, Yacoub, Yousef, Zakariyya are common in every Arab society.

Politicizing the Bible politicized the Quran. A vexing religious confrontation has been created pushing the moderates among Arab Muslims into orthodoxy and the orthodox into Islamism and Jihadism. The victory of Hamas in the January 25, 2006 parliamentary elections in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as the popularity of Islamic Jihad, are reminders that this conflict has been delivering the Muslim masses into the hands of the Islamists. History suggests that this religious war could go on for a20thousand years. Military action alone against the Jihadists will breed more Jihadists. Experience suggests that, like its previous victories, Israel’s latest battle against Hamas in the Gaza strip that started on December 27, 2008 will strengthen jihadism.

Unless the Arab Israeli conflict is resolved politically and quickly, Islamism and Jihadism will continue on their march. Avraham Berg, speaker of Israel’s Knesset in 1999-2003 and former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, articulated in sobering terms what Israel should do in order to bring peaceful coexistence between the Jewish and Palestinian peoples.

The Bible and the Quran Must be De-politicized

For a durable solution to the Arab Israeli conflict, a single democratic and secular state for Jews and Palestinians needs to evolve. A single state promises a more durable long-term solution than the two-state solution, currently in vogue. The two-state solution is inherently unstable for four reasons:

1. First, demographically, a purely Jewish state is impossible to attain. Had Palestine been uninhabited at the time of Israel’s creation a refugee problem would not have arisen and a purely Jewish state could have been possible. However, around the time of Israel’s creation Palestine was a home to around 1.4 million Palestinian Arabs.

The Zionist dream of creating an exclusive state for the Jewish people in Palestine is unsustainable in the long-term. Presently, 1.4 million Palestinians are estimated to be citizens of Israel, or a quarter of Israel’s Jewish population. Due to their high population growth rates the Palestinian-Israelis will eventually become the majority. The Palestinian-Israelis are in addition to the 4.2 million Palestinians who live under Israel’s occupation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Outside Palestine, 2.6 millions are registered in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, plus 1.5 million scattered worldwide.

Unless the Palestinian-Israelis somehow vanish, Israel’s Jewish population will eventually become the minority and the Palestinian-Israelis the majority; the population growth rate of the Palestinian-Israelis is much greater than that of Israeli Jews. The number of Palestinians in Israel in 1948 was about 150,000. If Israel would allow the future Palestinian-Israeli majority full citizenship rights, they’ll control the government. If Israel subjects the majority to an apartheid regime, the system will eventually unravel. Apartheid regimes have short lives: Witness Rhodesia and South Africa.

2. Secondly, intractable issues stand in the way of a two-state solution: Jerusalem, borders, security for Israel and for Palestine, water rights, settlements, and the refugees’ right-of-return. Since the signing of the Oslo Agreement on September 13, 1993, none of the thorny issues has been resolved. When Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, and Yasser Arafat attempted in July 2000 to tackle these issues at Camp David, the negotiations collapsed, leading to the second intifada and to Hamas’ gains in the 2006 parliamentary elections, which culminated by the take-over by Hamas of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, and Israel’s devastating war against Hamas eighteen months later.

3. Thirdly, even if a miracle patches up a two-state agreement the extremists on both sides would undermine the agreement. The extremists believe that they are divinely ordained to keep-up the struggle until they control the entirety of the land.

4. Fourthly, the Arab masses w ill shun a Zionist state. Judging from Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt (March 26, 1979) and Jordan (October 26, 1994), relations among the Egyptian and Jordanian masses and Israelis failed to develop beyond small diplomatic missions.

Western democratic and secular ideals should inspire the development of a single, democratic, and secular state for Palestinians and Jews. There are three reasons in support of such a development:

1. First, the intractable obstacles that have bedeviled the two-state solution would disappear.

2. Secondly, a single state will commingle Palestinians and Jews into an inseparable mix. The Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, estimated at about half a million in more than 125 settlements, could become instruments of integration between Palestinians and Jews, not segregation; a mixture of Jews among Arabs as difficult to unscramble as removing the Palestinian Israelis from Israel. A single state would lead the Arab governments to recognize the new state. Muslims everywhere, Arabs especially, would no longer have an excuse to boycott their Jewish “cousins.” Economic, cultural, educational, and social interaction would follow. The two sides would quickly learn how much they could benefit from one other.

3. Thirdly, a single state solution would allow Arabs and Jews full access to the entirety of Palestine.

The secular democratic one-state solution has been gathering pace. A well attended conference by Arabs and Israelis at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) was held on November 17-18, 2007 to address the various aspects of this concept.

Arab and Jew Can Live Together in Peace

Around the time of Israel’s creation, more than 850,000 Jews migrated from Arab countries, 600,000 going to Israel. The charge that the Jews migrated because of Arab maltreatment is an unfair political expediency. The migration happened in the course of Israel’s creation. During this period, 531 Palestinian villages were depopulated and 805,000 refugees lost their homes, according to Palestinian sources (650,000 to 700,000 refugees, according to Jewish sources).

Had Zionism adhered to the stipulation in the 1917 Balfour declaration: “Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” the Muslim/Jewish conflict would not have developed.

Durable peace and the long-term prosperity of the Jewish people in the Arab World require the genuine welcome of the Arab masses. Smart bombs and nuclear weapons cannot force Arab peoples’ acceptance of a Zionist Israel. The 600,000 Jews, who had lived in Arab countries for centuries and are today a major proportion of Israel’s Jewish population, could become a positive link with the Arab World. They share with the Arab peoples many customs, habits, values, food, music, dance, and, for the older generation, the Arabic language.

Whether it would be a good bargain to exchange a partial and declining Jewish exclusivity in an unstable two-state solution for a durable single state embracing Jews and Muslims is a question Israel’s Jewish people alone can answer.

In provoking the enmity of their age-old Muslim friends, Zionism has disserved the long-term interests of the Jewish people.

Elhadj is the author of Elie Elhadj, author of The Islamic Shield: Arab Resistance to Democratic and Religious Reforms, and many articles which can be read here: www.daringopinion.com

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US Sold Phosphorus Shells to Israel

February 4, 2009

Among Israel’s Most Condemned Tactics in Gaza Was Enabled by Arkansas-Made Rounds

Antiwar.com

Posted February 3, 2009

The Pine Bluff Arsenal, a United States Army installation in Arkansas, specializes in chemical and biological weapons. The military touts them as the only facility in the Northern Hemisphere which fills white phosphorus munitions. That’s the important point here, as it once again ties the US military directly into the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip, and one of its most unseemly practices.

State Department officials told the Associated Press that the United States provided Israel with white phosphorus rounds, and photos taken during the Israeli conflict show the military readying rounds with Pine Bluff Arsenal serial numbers.

The use of white phosphorus is not in and of itself a war crime, and is generally considered acceptable as a means of obscuring troop movements or illuminating areas. Its use in civilian areas however, even if not directed at the civilian population, is banned under the Geneva Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. Preliminary investigations show indisputable evidence that Israel used white phosphorus in some of the most densely populated portions of Gaza, and still burning fragments were found after the war ended wedged into civilian buildings.

The Israeli military officially denied using such munitions during the war, though they eventually conceded to it. Their official story now is that the use was not illegal and that Hamas was the one committing war crimes by provoking such attacks. The treaty prohibits the use of such weapons against military targets in civilian regions however, and makes no exception allowing the nation violating it to transfer blame to others in case they really wanted to hit those targets. Related Stories • February 2, 2009 — Relative End to Gaza War Bolsters Israeli Right in Polls • February 1, 2009 — Israel Bombs Central Gaza as Olmert Vows ‘Disproportionate’ Response • January 30, 2009 — Israeli Envoy: Attack on Gaza a ‘Preintroduction’ to Attack on Iran compiled by Jason Ditz [email the author]

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