Posts Tagged ‘Netanyahu’

Newer Entries »

From the River to the Sea

November 13, 2009

By Gilad Atzmon, Information Clearing House, Nov. 12, 2009

Let’s once and for all stop getting excited about America mounting pressure on Israel to  freeze West Bank settlements. The entire fascination with the topic is a product of  Zionist spin. It is there to divert attention from the root cause of the conflict: The robbery of Palestine and Palestinians in the name of a ‘Jewish home coming’. The call to stop Israeli construction in the West Bank is there to leave us with the false impression that the robbery of Palestine started in 1967. The facts are known to many of us, but not to all. The vast majority of Palestinians were expelled from their towns, villages, fields and orchards in 1948.

What seems as an American peace initiative putting pressure on Israel to halt its expansion into the West Bank is in fact an agenda that is promoted by Zionists within the US Administration who realise like the late Sharon, that the only chance for the Jewish state to survive the next decade, is to shrink into a little Jewish shtetle (ghetto). The Two state solution is indeed the last effort to keep Zionism alive.

Netanyahu is far from being stupid. He understands it all. He knows that his Zionist Revisionist father’s dream of ‘greater Eretz Yisrael’ is unattainable.

Haaretz reported today that the Israeli PM admitted in Washington that he was committed to ‘two states living side by side’. However, he stressed that the “the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the homes from which they were expelled, would not be on the table.” Seemingly, an Israeli hawkish PM is voluntarily confronting the Israeli original sin namely the expulsion of the vast majority of the Palestinians people. However, the fact that he insists that it won’t be ‘on the table’ can only mean that it is on the  table already.  “They”, continues Netanyahu, “must abandon the fantasy of flooding Israel with refugees, give up irredentist * claims to the Negev and Galilee, and declare unequivocally that the conflict is finally over”.

Clearly, Netanyahu expresses here a wish that is shared by most if not all Israelis. They all dream to open their eyes in the morning just to find out that all Goyim, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims just left the region.

I am here to advise Netanyahu and every Israeli who is willing to listen that this is not going to happen. As much as being flooded by ‘refugee’ Palestinians is a deep Israeli nightmare, it is far from being a Palestinian fantasy. It is actually a reality waiting to happen. Israel has lost its opportunity to reconcile with its neighbours. It failed to settle its conflict with the indigenous people of the land. The fate of Israel will be determined by ‘facts on the ground’ namely demography. In terms of reconciliation, Israel has past the no return Zone. Its fate is doomed. One Palestine from the river to the sea is not any more a matter of ‘if’ but rather a question of ‘when’.

Unlike most Israelis who dismiss the Palestinian cause, Netanyahu admitted today that Palestinians were indeed expelled. For the first time Palestinians’ “irredentist claims” are being addressed by an Israeli PM. And yet, Netanyahu should stop deluding himself and his people. It is not just the Negev and Galilee. It is actually every piece of land between the river and the sea: Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Be’er Sheva and every village, orchard, field, river and tree in between. The only question that is left open is how long will it take for the Shekel to drop? How long will it take before Israelis grasp that they dwell on stolen land? How long will it take before the Israelis realise that the battle is lost? How long will it take for the Israelis to internalise the obvious fact that they have once again managed to get on the wrong side of their Neighbours?

*Irredentist: One who advocates the recovery of territory culturally or historically.


Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Palestine, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, Zionism. | Leave a Comment »

‘Declare Independence of Palestine Now’

November 11, 2009

 

Nasir Khan’s  Note:  The betrayal and isolation of the Palestinian people has run its full course. The imbecile Arab regimes  (in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan,  etc.,)  more in the nature of prehistoric shapeless oddities, have failed to support meaningfully the cause of the  occupied, oppressed and brutalized fellow Arabs of  Palestine. Instead,  they have furthered the U.S. imperialism’s  geopolitical interests in the Middle East so that the United States  controls the Middle East and it  remains the prime  guarantor of the continued support to their corrupt and decadent dynastic rule and their antidemocratic system.

The present leadership of the Palestinian people is divided; the myopic PA President Abbas has been dancing to the tunes of Tel Aviv and Washington for long. A growing number of the  suffering people of Palestine regard him a traitor and puppet of the U.S. and the Israeli Zionists.

The talk of peace and peace negotiations under  various U.S. administrations served only Zionist expansion and further colonization of the occupied Palestine. If President  Obama had any intention to stop Israel’s ever-increasing expropriation of the Palestinian land then he has failed miserably. Obviously,  Secretary of State  Clinton, Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli lobby struck at his intentions and nullified him. It leaves no doubt about who control American  foreign policy.

Where can the Palestinians go from here? The question of establishing a viable independent state is in the doldrums. The occupied land has been eaten up by Israel. That leaves the possibility of one-state solution the only alternative for the Israelis and the Palestinians.

But if Israel turns its back on its previous history of colonization and expropriation, accepts the UN resolutions and reverts to the pre-1967 borders by vacating all its illegal settlements then the two-state solution has a chance to materialize. But this is more of a long shot in the  dark.

Mr Yesh Prabhu’s advocacy of declaring an independent state by Palestinians can be instrumental in breaking the present impasse. At least, the Palestinians will not lose anything. On the contrary, it can take the matters out of the hands of Washington and Tel Aviv and this  may create a new momentum. But one major  hurdle remains: the divided Palestinian leadership of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. If Abbas disappears then even worse traitors like Mohammad Dahlan  may be waiting for a complete sell-out to Washington and Tel Aviv.

*********************************

Declare Independence of Palestine Now

Yesh Prabhu, A Sane Voice For Peace Blog, Nov. 10, 2009

It is now abundantly clear that the stalled negotiation for peace in the Middle East is now dead.

During Secretary of State Clinton’s recent short sojourn through the region, in her joint press conference with Mr. Netanyahu in Jerusalem, she effusively praised Netanyahu’s intransigence regarding Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank. The peace process died when she bizarrely described as “unprecedented” Mr. Netanyahu’s paltry concession to slow down the feverish tempo of building illegal housing units in the occupied territories. Even though she hastily tried to back-track, the damage to the peace process had been done. It was as if she had given the peace process a death blow. The Palestinian negotiators were deeply shocked. Did not President Obama, and even Mrs. Clinton herself, say only a month ago that the Israeli settlements in the occupied land were illegitimate? It dawned on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that the peace process was dead, and so he announced that he will be resigning from his position soon. He had threatened to resign a couple of times on previous occasions, of course, but this time it seems that he means to carry out his threat.

Continues >>

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, imperialism, Palestine, Peace Movement, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, Zionist Israel | 1 Comment »

President Obama’s Peace Mask Has Cracked

November 6, 2009

Yesh Prabhu, A Sane Voice For Peace In The Middle East, Nov 4, 2009

On the political stage, a short period of five months might as well be an eternity. As the world turns on its axis, events least expected can and often do happen, and spin out of control; and carefully laid out plans go awry.

On Thursday June 4, 2009, President Obama spoke to the world from the august Major Reception Hall at Cairo University in Cairo, Egypt. Appropriately titled “A New Beginning”, the speech was grand and impressive. He described Palestinians’ statelessness as “intolerable”, and recognized their aspirations for statehood and dignity as legitimate, just as legitimate as Israel’s desire for a Jewish homeland. And, of course, he reaffirmed, as he had done several times before, America’s alliance with Israel, calling their mutual bond “unbreakable”. He was wearing his peace mask. That was only five months ago, and already it seems so very long ago.

Continues >>

 

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Palestine, Peace Movement, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Obama agrees to keep Israel’s nukes secret

October 2, 2009

By Eli Lake, The Washington Times, Oct 2, 2009

President Obama has reaffirmed a 4-decade-old secret understanding that has allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections, three officials familiar with the understanding said.

The officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing private conversations, said Mr. Obama pledged to maintain the agreement when he first hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in May.

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.

Israel had been nervous that Mr. Obama would not continue the 1969 understanding because of his strong support for nonproliferation and priority on preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The U.S. and five other world powers made progress during talks with Iran in Geneva on Thursday as Iran agreed in principle to transfer some potential bomb fuel out of the country and to open a recently disclosed facility to international inspection.

Mr. Netanyahu let the news of the continued U.S.-Israeli accord slip last week in a remark that attracted little notice. He was asked by Israel’s Channel 2 whether he was worried that Mr. Obama’s speech at the U.N. General Assembly, calling for a world without nuclear weapons, would apply to Israel.

“It was utterly clear from the context of the speech that he was speaking about North Korea and Iran,” the Israeli leader said. “But I want to remind you that in my first meeting with President Obama in Washington I received from him, and I asked to receive from him, an itemized list of the strategic understandings that have existed for many years between Israel and the United States on that issue. It was not for naught that I requested, and it was not for naught that I received [that document].”

The chief nuclear understanding was reached at a summit between President Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir that began on Sept. 25, 1969. Avner Cohen, author of “Israel and the Bomb” and the leading authority outside the Israeli government on the history of Israel’s nuclear program, said the accord amounts to “the United States passively accepting Israel’s nuclear weapons status as long as Israel does not unveil publicly its capability or test a weapon.”

There is no formal record of the agreement nor have Israeli nor American governments ever publicly acknowledged it. In 2007, however, the Nixon library declassified a July 19, 1969, memo from national security adviser Henry Kissinger that comes closest to articulating U.S. policy on the issue. That memo says, “While we might ideally like to halt actual Israeli possession, what we really want at a minimum may be just to keep Israeli possession from becoming an established international fact.”

Mr. Cohen has said the resulting policy was the equivalent of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

The Netanyahu government sought to reaffirm the understanding in part out of concern that Iran would seek Israeli disclosures of its nuclear program in negotiations with the United States and other world powers. Iran has frequently accused the U.S. of having a double standard by not objecting to Israel’s arsenal.

Mr. Cohen said the reaffirmation and the fact that Mr. Netanyahu sought and received a written record of the deal suggest that “it appears not only that there was no joint understanding of what had been agreed in September 1969 but it is also apparent that even the notes of the two leaders may no longer exist. It means that Netanyahu wanted to have something in writing that implies that understanding. It also affirms the view that the United States is in fact a partner in Israel’s policy of nuclear opacity.”

Jonathan Peled, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, declined to comment, as did the White House National Security Council.

The secret understanding could undermine the Obama administration’s goal of a world without nuclear weapons. In particular, it could impinge on U.S. efforts to bring into force the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, two agreements that U.S. administrations have argued should apply to Israel in the past. They would ban nuclear tests and the production of material for weapons.

A Senate staffer familiar with the May reaffirmation, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, said, “What this means is that the president gave commitments that politically he had no choice but to give regarding Israel’s nuclear program. However, it calls into question virtually every part of the president’s nonproliferation agenda.The president gave Israel an NPT treaty get out of jail free card.”

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said the step was less injurious to U.S. policy.

“I think it is par for the course that the two incoming leaders of the United States and Israel would want to clarify previous understandings between their governments on this issue,” he said.

However Mr. Kimball added, “I would respectfully disagree with Mr. Netanyahu. President Obama’s speech and U.N. Security Council Resolution 1887 apply to all countries irrespective of secret understandings between the U.S. and Israel. A world without nuclear weapons is consistent with Israel’s stated goal of achieving a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction. Obama’s message is that the same nonproliferation and disarmament responsibilities should apply to all states and not just a few.”

Israeli nuclear doctrine is known as “the long corridor.” Under it, Israel would begin to consider nuclear disarmament only after all countries officially at war with it signed peace treaties and all neighboring countries relinquished not only nuclear programs but also chemical and biological arsenals. Israel sees nuclear weapons as an existential guarantee in a hostile environment.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said he hoped the Obama administration did not concede too much to Israel.

“One hopes that the price for such concessions is Israeli agreement to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty and an acceptance of the long-term goal of a Middle East weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone,” he said. “Otherwise, the Obama administration paid too much, given its focus on a world free of nuclear weapons.”

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

The Comic Genius of Netanyahu

September 29, 2009

Middle East Online, Sept 29, 2009

Nearly every offensive remark he makes about Iran and Palestine can be flung back in his face because Israel is no better and in most respects far worse. Netanyahu’s speech to the UN was the most hilarious example in history of the pot calling the kettle black, notes Stuart Littlewood.


Knowing that Iran won’t surrender its right to civil nuclear power, the schemers in Tel Aviv and Washington were bound to mount a hysterical campaign to scare the rest of the world into believing this would bring terror to our own streets.

And at the United Nations we saw the process swing into action as Netanyahu tried to whip up support for another Middle East war for Israel’s benefit.

Continues >>

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, crime, Gaza, Human rights, Uncategorized, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Obama’s Israel Albatross

August 10, 2009

Elections and Dissonance in the Middle East

By Elaine C. Hagopian, Counterpunch, Aug 7 – 9, 2009

Obama came into office vowing to resolve the Palestine question. He also vowed to approach the ME with civility and diplomacy, especially Iran, to iron out issues of mutual concern.  The two-pronged plan was aimed at removing the Palestine question from the regional agenda, clearing the deck for improved relations with area states and resolution of existing US/ME issues. The February Israeli election yielded Netanyahu as Prime Minister presiding over an ultra right wing government.  Netanyahu rejected Obama’s call for establishing a Palestinian state.  He argued that Iran’s nuclear program with its assumed threat to Israel and to US interests was the primary issue to address, not Palestine.  With the June election of anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, Holocaust denier Ahmedinejad, Netanyahu claimed that the danger Iran represents increased precipitously, and aggressive action was required. Therefore, Palestine should be put on the back burner. Public dissonance between the U.S. and Israel over Obama’s Palestine and Iran agenda amplified after Iran’s presidential election.  The dissonance threatens Obama’s efforts to defuse ME volatility.

President Obama entered office with a promise of business not as usual.  Although American foreign policy objectives were not changed, Obama insisted on the priority of dialogue and diplomacy to realize them, Afghanistan (and Pakistan) notwithstanding. Obama articulated two immediate goals he sought in the Middle East:  1) to resolve the Palestinian/Israeli conflict in accordance with the international consensus for a two-state solution without significantly alienating Israel.  Israel is still considered important – wrongly as Mearsheimer and Walt  (“The Israel Lobby,” LRB, 23 March 2006) would have it – to securing American economic interests and political hegemony in that region.  As such, the US must guarantee key Israeli ME interests including area dominance.  And 2) to dissolve, or at least checkmate the only regional alliance challenging US/Israeli designs in the ME,  i.e., the alliance of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and political elements in Iraq.  Moving to resolve the Palestine question is seen by Obama as contributing to deflating the Iranian-led anti-US/Israel alliance by removing it as its cause célèbre, and thus making key alliance members amenable to American outreach. The thinking is that achieving these two interdependent goals would allow less hindered US maneuverability in taming Islamist movements in the region and prevailing in the energy grand game there.

Continues >>


Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, imperialism, Palestine, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

As Dangerous as Netanyahu

March 4, 2009

barak_livni_olmert_reuters.jpg

By Hassan Afif El-Hasan | The Palestine Chronicle, Mach 3, 2009

The Palestinians in the occupied lands and the refugee camps must have been puzzled by those Palestinian leaders’ declarations and commentators’ peppy articles lamenting the loss of the butchers of Gaza, Kadima-Labor coalition, to the Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu coalition. Have the Palestinian leaders in the West Bank established mystical bonds with the butchers of Gaza who became their only accepted partners for peace? I can’t see the teeniest difference between the policies of the two camps. If there is any difference, it is that unlike Kadima and Labour leaders, Netanyahu practices what he preaches. Netanyahu is a dangerous leader but Olmert, Livni, Peres and Barak are no less dangerous. The only competition among these leaders is the level of the horrors inflicted on the Palestinians and the blood wantonly spilled under their leaderships.

When Peres was the minister of defense under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin he helped Gush Emunim movement followers launch several settlements next to the Arab population centers in the West Bank. For the Gush Emunim members, the right of the Jewish people to Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) is non-negotiable. At Peres order, the Israeli army provided water and electricity for Elon Moreh settlers and the military invited the settlers to establish a settlement at the military camp inside the Arab village of Kufur Qadum. The Israeli military declared the main road to the village as Jews-only-road and its Arab residents had to build new road leading to their homes and schools.

Peres personally helped establish Ofra settlement in the West Bank. In 1996 Peres approved and defended the shelling that killed and injured hundreds of Lebanese civilians who had taken refuge at a Fijian UNIFIL compound in Qana village. According to the Human Rights Watch, the death toll was 116 and the injured exceeded 120. And at the recent World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Peres defended Israel’s 22-day offensive against the Palestinian people in Gaza that killed hundreds of children and women and destroyed the civilian infrastructures of the ghettos where 1.5 million live under complete siege imposed by Israel. While Gaza had been under siege and its population was starved the unrepentant Peres said in the Forum “There is no siege against Gaza…..Why do they fight us? There was never a day of starvation in Gaza”. Peres is a sociopath liar and a war criminal, and that does not make him and his cohorts moderates.

How can the Palestinian leaders refer to Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak and Olmert as moderates? The trio followed a policy of terrorizing the Palestinians who have been under occupation for forty years, building and expanding settlements, Judaisation of Jerusalem, confiscating Arab lands and building the apartheid wall. They carried out the barbarous massacres of the starved and besieged survivors of the 1948 Nakba in Gaza. And they deny the right of return for the refugees living in camps since 1948.

Under Olmert municipal administration in Jerusalem, Arab land was confiscated; public land was sequestrated; Olmert fostered Jews only settlements; and he cordoned off the city Arab inhabitants from their West Bank hinterland. Mayor Olmert and Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered the excavation of the so called “Hasmonean Tunnel” under the Muslim Haram Asharif shrine to facilitate movement of Israelis directly from the Western Wall area to Haram Asharif. The act is part of the plans to Judaize the character of the whole area. And on September 28, 2000, Olmert accompanied Sharon, a man anathematized by the Palestinians as “the butcher of Sabra and Shatila”, in the provocative walking visit to Haram Asharif that triggered the second intifada.

Netanyahu is not the first to ally himself with Avigdor Lieberman the leader of Yisrael Beiteinu Party. Ehud Olmert struck an alliance on October 23, 2006 with Lieberman who became a minister of strategic affairs and a deputy prime minister in Olmert cabinet. Lieberman called for stripping Arab Israelis of their citizenship to make Israel more Jewish, executing lawmakers for talking to Hamas and blanket-bombing of Palestinian population centers, gas stations and banks.

Even before Gaza massacres, Ehud Barak has lots of Palestinian blood on his hands. As a commando, Barak is widely presumed that he personally assassinated many Palestinians including the poet intellectual Kamal Nasir in 1972 and the Palestinian political nationalist Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) outside Tunis in 1991. Like Netanyahu, each of Peres, Olmert and Barak declared himself uncompromising on the issue of Jerusalem and the control of Israel’s security borders defined as the borders of historical Palestine.

Much has been written and aired by the US news media and the Israeli propaganda machine about a generous offer to Yassir Arafat by then Israeli Prime Minister Barak and US President Clinton in 2000 Camp David II negotiations. Here are some facts. The Palestinian state offered by Barak would be divided into small lots without territorial continuity or sovereignty. Barak stood firm on maintaining Israel’s sovereignty over the large Jewish settlement blocs that is home to more than 80 percent of the Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The thousands of the settlers who would be evacuated would have to remain under Israeli protection until arrangements could be made to relocate them. Barak map annexed the central Givat Ze’ev/Pisgat Ze’ev/Ma’aleh Adomin bloc dividing the West Bank in two; and Efrat/Etzion/Betar Ilit bloc in the southwest of Jerusalem severed any coherent connection between Bethlehem and Hebron. The annexed areas also included the large settlement of Ariel and some small satellite settlements next to the Palestinian City of Nablus. And the offer keeps under Israel’s control the Jordan River valley and the West Bank underground aquifer.

Yitzchak Shamir appointed Netanyahu as deputy foreign minister in his 1988 government and following Shamir’s defeat in 1992, Netanyahu was selected chairman of the Likud party. Like Olmert, Livni, Peres and Barak, Netanyahu is a strong believer in the Zionist ideology. The central theme of his book, “A Place among the Nations: Israel and the World”, is the right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel (Palestine) in its entirety. He argues that it was the Arabs who had usurped land from the Jews in Palestine, not the other way around; and Israel for its own self-protection must retain security control over all the territory of Palestine.

Benjamin Netanyahu has clinched the nomination to head a coalition that has been described by Arab commentators as a far-right coalition as compared to that of Tzipi Livni-Ehud Barak. Netanyahu has a peculiar plan for peace with the Palestinians. He calls it the “economic peace” plan which does not end the Israeli occupation. It offers the Palestinians a limited autonomy that allows them to police their own population centers while Israel controls borders, air space and its military continues to control overall security. In return, Netanyahu promises improvement of the Palestinians economic conditions by building industrial zones in the occupied lands that would employ Palestinians. He never specified who would finance the industrial projects and who would own them. But since Israel never assumed economic responsibility for the Palestinians under occupation, we can be certain that his proposed industrial projects requires the international community to foot its bill as it has been financing the occupation without holding Israel any responsibility for it.

In Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan, Israel would keep and expand the settlements; East Jerusalem would remain part of Israel; and no refugees would be given the right of return to their homes in Israel proper. He effectively is offering the status quo plus employment for the Palestinian labor as the solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Netanyahu has been firm and consistent in his opposition to ending the Israeli occupation. He is a racist by ideology and actions, so as Shimon Peres, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak. All Israeli governments, the so called moderates and the right-wing share the same policy toward the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s vision of the Palestinian self-rule of disconnected non-sovereign enclaves in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is not different from the two-state solution offer made by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Foreign Minister Livni after 12 months of continuous negotiations and fifteen years after Oslo. Shaul Mofaz, Kadima’s number two leader wants his party to join the Likud government under Netanyahu because there is little disagreement between the two parties.

These realities suggest none of the major parties in Israel is for just peace; and the current situation in the occupied land is the natural outcome of a conflict between a weak oppressed occupied people struggling for survival against a strong militant occupier with one of the most powerful armies in the world, a nuclear arsenal, unconditional backing of the world only super-power and ideology of conquest.

-Born in Nablus, Palestine, Hasan Afif El-Hasan, Ph.D. is a political analyst. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Palestine, Uncategorized, War Criminals, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Newer Entries »