| Al Jazeera, Oct 7, 2008 |
|||||
The Palestinian group Hamas that governs Gaza says it will stop recognising Mahmoud Abbas as the Palestinian president in three months. Hamas, citing a Palestinian law, said one of its own leaders must fill the top post after Abbas’s tenure officially expires on January 8. The announcement came after Hamas legislators voted on a resolution in Gaza City on Monday, a move seen as at attempt to step up pressure on Abbas and his Fatah party ahead of talks brokered by Egypt over a power-sharing deal between the rival camps. A Fatah member said the vote was simply “an attempt to sabotage the Egyptian effort to reconcile the Palestinian division”. The Basic Law, a forerunner to a Palestinian constitution, says that both president and parliament are elected to four-year terms. Legal loophole But a loophole in the law, which Fatah is relying on, suggests that Abbas’s term could be extended another year if it were deemed to be in the “national interest”.
Abbas was elected president in January 2006 but a year later Hamas defeated his movement by a landslide in parliamentary elections in Gaza.Neither Hamas nor Fatah appear keen to share power in governing the Gaza Strip, which has been under Hamas control following a violent takeover in June last year, leaving Abbas with only nominal control of the occupied West Bank. During Monday’s vote, Hamas threatened to install Ahmed Bahar, the deputy parliamentary speaker, as Abbas’s temporary successor if Abbas fails to announce a new presidential election by Wednesday. Shalit talks Meanwhile, Khaled Mashaal, the exiled Hamas political leader, said talks with Israel over the possible release of an Israeli soldier have stalled and blamed Israeli negotiators for continuing to rehash previously-agreed issues. He was quoted in Le Figaro newspaper on Monday blaming “a lack of reliability of Israeli negotiators” in discussions pertaining to Sergeant Gilad Shalit who was captured two years ago. |
Posts Tagged ‘Palestine’
Hamas says Abbas must step aside
October 7, 2008
President Ahmadinejad accepts Israel’s right to exist
September 30, 2008The Iranian president has said he would accept a two-state solution if the Palestinians agree. So where are the headlines?
-
-
- guardian.co.uk, Monday September 29 2008 19:30 BST
Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made a remarkable announcement. He’s admitted that Iran might agree to the existence of the state of Israel.
Ahmadinejad was asked: “If the Palestinian leaders agree to a two-state solution, could Iran live with an Israeli state?”
This was his astonishing reply:
If they [the Palestinians] want to keep the Zionists, they can stay … Whatever the people decide, we will respect it. I mean, it’s very much in correspondence with our proposal to allow Palestinian people to decide through free referendums.
Since most Palestinians are willing to accept a two-state solution, the Iranian president is, in effect, agreeing to Israel’s right to exist and opening the door to a peace deal that Iran will endorse.
Ahmadinejad made this apparently extraordinary shift in policy during an
interview last week when he was in New York to address the UN general assembly.
He was interviewed on September 24 by reporters Juan Gonzalez, writing for the New York Daily News, and Amy Goodman for the current affairs TV programme, Democracy Now.
You can watch the full interview and read the full text on the Democracy Now website.
Surprisingly, Ahmadinejad’s sensational softening of his long-standing, point-blank anti-Israeli stance was not even headlined by the two reporters. Perhaps this was a decision by their editors? Did they not want to admit that Ahmadinejad may have, for once, said something vaguely progressive?
Equally odd, the story wasn’t picked up by the world’s media. For many years, the Iranian president has been vilified, usually justifiably. Now, when he says something positive and helpful, the media ignores it. Is this because of some anti-Iran or pro-Israel agenda?
Why ignore a statement that is, from any political and journalistic perspective, a radical departure from Ahmadinejad’s previous unyielding anti-Israel tirades? Only a week earlier in Tehran he was saying that the Israeli state would not survive.
Confused? Aren’t we all. Will the real Mahmoud Ahmadinejad please stand up?
Is he a deceiver and an unprincipled opportunist who will say anything to further Iran’s political agenda? Or could it be that beneath his often demagogic public rhetoric against Israel he is, in fact, open to options more moderate than his reported remarks about wiping the Israeli state off the map?
I am not defending or endorsing Ahmadinejad in any way, shape or form. Indeed, I am on record as being one of Ahmadinejad’s harshest critics. I’ve protested dozens of times outside the Iranian Embassy in London and written scores of articles exposing his regime’s persecution of trade unionists, students, journalists, human rights defenders, women’s equality campaigners, gay people, Sunni Muslims and ethnic minorities such as the Arabs, Kurds, Azeris and Balochis.
You can watch my Talking with Tatchell online TV programmes on the Iranian regime’s anti-Arab racism here, and on the rising popular resistance to its police state methods here.
But I also hope I am open-minded and fair. Even I can see that Ahmadinejad appears to have moderated his position and is now apparently willing, with Palestinian agreement, to accept the co-existence of two states: Israel and Palestine.
Many Israelis and their allies will no doubt say Ahmadinejad can’t be trusted; that his comments were part of a manipulative charm offensive during his visit to the UN in New York. They may be right. But even if he is being disingenuous, that fact that he’s made this public concession on Israel at all is a softening of sorts.
News of what he said will filter back to Tehran and he’ll have to account for his words to his government, including the hardline anti-Israel ayatollahs and revolutionary guards. I wonder what they think?
Call me naive, but in my view Ahmadinejad’s words were of major significance. He ought be pressed by world leaders, and Israel, to repeat them and to clarify them. His statement might, and I emphasise might, be evidence that Iran is open to some negotiation on the future of the Israeli state.
If Israel’s leaders had any sense, they would ignore past provocations by Iran and seize this moment to have dialogue with the Palestinian and Iranian leaders on a two-state solution. What Ahmadinejad has said could be an opening to diffuse the stand-off between Iran and Israel.
I am not relenting one inch in my condemnation of Ahmadinejad’s regime, with its grisly torture chambers, execution of juvenile offenders and neocolonial subjugation of national minorities. But I do find myself in considerable agreement with the Iranian president’s analysis of why the Middle East peace process has stalled. He told Gonzales and Goodman:
The first reason is that none of the solutions have actually addressed the root cause of the problem. The root cause is the presence of an illegitimate government regime that has usurped and imposed itself on, meaning they have brought people from other parts of the world, replaced them with people who had existed in the territory and then forced the exit of the old people out, the people who lived there, out of the country or the territories. So there have been two simultaneous displacements. The indigenous people were forced out and displaced, and a group of other people scattered around the globe were gathered and placed in a new place … A second reason is that none of those peace plans offered so far have given attention to the right to self-determination of the Palestinians. If a group of people are forced out of their country, that doesn’t mean their rights are gone, even with the passage of 60 years. Can you ignore the rights of those displaced? How is it possible for people to arrive from far-off lands and have the right to self-determination, whereas the indigenous people of the territory are denied that right?
Much as I loathe his regime, Ahmadinejad is basically right. The key to peace in the Middle East is concessions from the occupying power. As the stronger, wealthier and conquering partner, Israel should take the initiative and help kick-start the peace process by withdrawing unilaterally and totally from the territories it has occupied illegally (according to international law) since the 1967 war. This means pulling out from all of the West Bank and dismantling all the illegal Israeli settlements.
The West Bank, plus Gaza, should become the independent, sovereign state of Palestine, backed with international aid and investment to create the infrastructure for economic development and for social provision (new houses, schools, hospitals, transport links and sports facilities).
Jobs and prosperity in Palestine will undercut and isolate the men of violence. They will lose support and become marginalised in a self-governing state where ordinary Palestinians experience the tangible benefits of peace.
This is so damn obvious. When will Israel’s leaders wake up and realise that peace with justice is the only way to give their people lasting security?
Remembering Edward Said Five Years On
September 29, 2008 |
| Edward Said. ‘He stood for everything that is virtuous.’ |
By Stephen Lendman – Chicago | The Palestine Chronicle, Sep 22, 2008
Said was passionately against Palestine being turned into an isolated prison wherein Israel repeatedly attacked mostly defenseless civilians with tanks and F-16s.Born in West Jerusalem in 1935. Exiled in December 1947. Said was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 1991, a malignant cancer of the bone marrow and blood. At 6:45AM on September 25, 2003, he succumbed (at age 67) after a painful courageous 12 year struggle. Tributes followed and resumed a year later. In a testimony to his teacher, Professor Moustafa Bayoumi called him “indefatigable, incorruptible, a humanist and devastatingly charming….leav(ing behind) legions of followers and fans in every corner of the world. I am lost without him….I miss him so.”
Chomsky called his death an “incalculable loss.” A year later, Ilan Pappe said “his absence seems to me still incomprehensible. What would have happened if we still had Edward with us in this last year….another terrible (one) for the values (he) represented and causes he defended.” Tariq Ali referred to his “indomitable spirit as a fighter, his will to live, (my) long-standing friend and comrade,” and described his ordeal:
“Over the last eleven years one had become so used to his illness – the regular hospital stays, the willingness to undergo trials with the latest drugs, the refusal to accept defeat – that (we thought) him indestructible.” Leukemia kills, and in response to Ali’s questions, his doctor said there was “no medical explanation for (his) survival.” No doubt Dr. Kanti Rai made a difference. Said spoke of him reverentially – of his “redoubtable medical expertise and remarkable humanity” that kept him going during his darkest times, and there were many. He later described months in and out of the hospital, “painful treatments, blood transfusions, endless tests, hours and hours of unproductive time spent staring at the ceiling, draining fatigue and infection, inability to do normal work, and thinking, thinking, thinking.”
Yet, as Ali recounted, in the end the “monster (overpowered him), devouring his insides (but when) the cursed cancer finally took him the shock was intense.” Palestinians had lost their “most articulate (and powerful) voice….(he’s) irreplaceable.”
Veteran Palestinian-American journalist Ramzy Baroud agrees. He called 2003 a bad time for Palestinians to lose one their iconic best and described him like many others: He “stood for everything that is virtuous. His moral stance was even more powerful than (his) essays, books and music (as critic, scholar and consummate artist)….He was an extraordinary intellectual, thoughtful….inimitable” and never silent or compromising in his beliefs or virtue. No “wonder he….was adored by (his) people (and) detested by the” forces he opposed.
Phyllis Bennis called him “one of the great internationalist intellectuals of our time….a hero of the Palestinian people (and) the global peace and justice movement as well….(my) great mentor, a challenging collaborator, a remarkable friend….his passion, vision, wit (and fury against injustice) will be terribly missed.”
Daniel Barenboim called him a “fighter and a compassionate defender. A man of logic and passion. An artist and a critic….a visionary (who) fought for Palestinian rights while understanding Jewish suffering.” In 1999, they jointly founded the West-East Divan – an orchestra for young Arabs and Jews who collaboratively “understood that before Beethoven we all stand as equals….Palestinians have lost a formidable defender, the Israelis a no less formidable adversary, and I a soulmate.”
Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia where Said taught for nearly 40 years as a Professor of English and Comparative Literature. He called him “a man of vast erudition and learning, of extraordinary versatility and remarkable (interdisciplinary) expertise.” We’ve lost “one of the most profound, original and influential thinkers of the past half-century (and) a fearless independent voice speaking truth to the entrenched powers that dominate the Middle East.”
On September 30, 2003, Columbia University paid tribute as well. It mourned the passing of its “beloved and esteemed university professor.” Called him one of the world’s most influential scholars, and said “the world has lost a brilliant and beautiful mind, a big heart, and a courageous fighter.”
When he learned of his illness and its seriousness, Said decided to write (from memory) a biographical account of his childhood, upbringing and early years in Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt. Titled “Out of Place, A Memoir,” he called it “a record of an essentially lost or forgotten world….a subjective account of (his life) in the Arab world” of his birth and formative years. Then in America where he attended boarding school, Princeton for his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and Harvard for his doctorate.
He began “Out of Place” in 1994 while recovering from three early rounds of chemotherapy and continued to completion with the help and “unstinting kindness and patience” of the “superb nurses” who spent months caring for him as well as his family and friends whose support helped him finish.
He recounted a young man’s coming of age. Of coming to terms with being displaced. An American. A Christian. A Palestinian. An outsider, and ultimately the genesis of an intellectual giant. An uncompromising opponent of imperialism and oppression, and an advocate for his peoples’ struggle for justice and self-determination. No one made the case more powerfully or with greater clarity than he did – in his books, articles, opinion pieces, and wherever he spoke around the world. He made hundreds of appearances and became a target of pro-Israeli extremists. They threatened him and his family. Once burned his Columbia University office, but never silenced him or ever could. Nor did the FBI in spite of over 30 years of surveillance the way it monitors all prominent outspoken activists and intellectuals and many of lesser stature.
Said’s great writings include Orientalism (1978) in which he explained a pattern of western misinterpretation of the East, particularly the Middle East. In Culture and Imperialism (1993), he broadened Orientalism’s core argument to show the complex relationships between East and West. Colonizers and the colonized, “the familiar (Europe, West, us) and the strange (the Orient, East, them).”
His writings showed the breath of his scholarship, interests and activism – on comparative literature, literary criticism, culture, music and his many works on Israeli-Palestinian history and conflict – combining scholarship, passion and advocacy for his people in contrast to the West’s one-sided view of Arabs and Islam. He championed equity and justice. Denounced imperialism, and believed Israel has a right to exist but not exclusively for Jews at the expense of indigenous Palestinians.
The 1967 war and illegal occupation changed everything for him. It radicalized him. Set the course of his intellectual career and activism, and made him the Palestinians’ leading spokesperson for the next 37 years until his death. He advocated a one-state solution and wrote in 1999: “The beginning is to develop something entirely missing from both Israeli and Palestinian realities today: the idea and practice of citizenship, not of ethnic or racial community, as the main vehicle of coexistence.”
In a lengthy January 1999 New York Times op-ed he elaborated: “Palestinian self-determination in a separate state is unworkable (after years earlier believing otherwise). The question (now isn’t separation) but to see whether it is possible for (Jews and Palestinians) to live together (in the same land) as fairly and peacefully as possible. What exists now is a disheartening…bloody impasse. There is no way for Israel to get rid of Palestinians or for Palestinians to wish Israelis away….I see no other way than to begin now to speak about sharing the land that has thrust us together, sharing it in a truly democratic way, with equal rights for each citizen.”
This diminishes life and aspirations for neither side. It affirms self-determination for them both together in the same land where they once lived peacefully. But it doesn’t mean “special status for one people at the expense of the other.” For millennia, Palestine was the homeland for many peoples, predating the Ottomans and Romans. It’s “multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious.” There’s no “historical justification for homogeneity” or for “notions of national or ethnic and religious purity….The alternatives (today) are unpleasantly simple: either the war continues (with its unacceptable costs)” or an equitable way out is found, obstacles notwithstanding.
Oslo wasn’t the answer, and Said denounced it in its run-up and weeks later in a London Review of Books piece titled “The Morning After.” In stinging language, he referred to “the fashion-show vulgarities of the White House ceremony, the degrading spectacle of Yasser Arafat thanking everyone for the suspension of most of his people’s rights, and the fatuous solemnity of Bill Clinton’s performance, like a 20th century Roman emperor shepherding two vassal kings through rituals of reconciliation and obeisance (and) the truly astonishing proportions of the Palestinian capitulation.”
For him, Oslo was plainly and simply “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles,” and worst of all is that a better deal could have been had without so many “unilateral concessions to Israel.” The same goes for the 1978 Camp David Accords and every “peace” negotiation to the present except the “permanent status” 2000 Camp David “generous” and “unprecedented” offer that Arafat turned down and was unfairly pilloried for spurning peace for conflict.
Said was on top of everything to the end as reflected in “The Last Interview” – a documentary film less than a year before his death. After a decade of illness, he agreed to a final film interview at a time he was drained, weakened and dying, yet found it “very difficult to turn (himself) off.” It was a casual conversation between himself and journalist Charles Glass reflecting on his childhood, upbringing, writing, scholarship, involvement with Yasser Arafat, and strong opinions and activism on Palestinian issues.
It was in all his writings and outspokenness – so powerful, passionate, virtuous and a testimony to his uncompromising principles. He described “Sharonian evil.” His blind destructiveness. His terrorism in ordering the massacring of children, then congratulating one pilot for his great success. The patently dishonest media. Its one-sided support for Israel. Its suppressing other views. Its turning a blind eye to the grossest crimes against humanity, day after day after day. Of relegating public discourse to repetitive official propaganda. Of subverting truth in support of power and privilege.
Of turning Palestine into an isolated prison. Suffocating an entire people of their existence. Of impoverishing, starving and slaughtering them. Of attacking defenseless civilians with tanks and F-16s. Of blaming victims for their own terror. Of creating a vast wasteland of destruction and human misery. Of sanctioning torture and targeted assassinations as official policy. Of committing every imaginable human indignity and degradation against people whose only crime is their faith, ethnicity, and presence. Whose only defense is their will and redoubtable spirit. Of enlisting world support for the most unspeakable, unrelenting campaign of terror and genocide.
Of pursuing an endless “cycle of violence” and consigning Palestinians to a “slow death” in defense of imperial interests and the national security state. Of pursuing peace as a scheme for “pacification.” Of placing the onus for it “squarely on Palestinian shoulders.” Of “putting an end to the (Palestinian) problem.” Of placing huge demands on Palestinians and making no concessions in return. Of calling resistance “terrorism” while ignoring oppressive occupation as the fundamental problem. Of seeing Palestinians endure and survive in spite of every imaginable assault, affront and indignity. Of piling on even more and seeing an even greater will to survive and prevail.
Said was passionate on all this and more. He was uncompromisingly anti-war and denounced America’s “war on terror.” The country “hijacked by a small cabal of individuals….unelected and unresponsive to public pressure.” The Democrats supporting them “in a gutless display of false patriotism.” The entire power structure characterizing Muslims as enemies. Passing repressive laws. Creating the obscenity of Guantanamo and other prisons like it.
Their self-righteous sophistry of so-called “just wars” and evil of Islam. The near omnipotence of the Zionist Lobby, Christian fascists, and military-industrial complex. Their hostility to Arabs and claim to be “on the side of the angels.” Their inexorable pursuit of war and power. The media in lockstep supporting “hypocritical lies” masquerading as “absolute truth.” The silencing of dissent. Of mocking and betraying democracy. Of making a total sham of decency, humanity and justice. Of letting a few extremists create their own “fantasy world” to run the country for their own corrupted self-interest.
Said said it all, and ended one opinion piece as follows: “Jonathan Swift, thou shouldst be living at this hour.” But even he might have blanched in disbelief considering the current state and potential horror of its consequences. Said understood. He’s sorely missed when we need him most.
-Stephen Lendman contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. (Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com, and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM—1PM US Central time.)
Ehud Olmert warns of ‘evil wind’ of extremism in Israel
September 29, 2008- The Guardian, Monday September 29 2008
A resurgent ultranationalist religious underground movement is threatening Israel’s democracy, the nation’s outgoing prime minister, Ehud Olmert, warned yesterday.
Olmert lashed out at the extreme right for the first time in his two-and-a-half-year premiership after a prominent Israeli critic of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian West Bank was violently attacked last week.
“A bad wind of extremism, hate, evil, violence and contempt for state authorities is blowing through certain sectors of the Israeli public and threatening Israeli democracy,” said Olmert in his opening remarks to the weekly cabinet meeting.
Olmert said the police and the Shin Bet, Israel’s security service, were searching for members of the movement.
Olmert compared the attack on Prof Zeev Sternhell, a political scientist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, to the 1995 assassination of the then prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, by a Jewish ultranationalist, and to a hand grenade attack that killed a Peace Now activist in 1983.
Sternhell, a vocal opponent of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank and a Holocaust survivor, was wounded when assailants planted a small pipe bomb outside his Jerusalem home.
Police also found posters in Sternhell’s neighbourhood offering one million shekels (£159,000) to anyone who killed a member of Israel’s Peace Now movement, which also opposes Jewish settlements.
The attack on Sternhell follows numerous reports from Israeli human rights groups that the settlers’ use of violence against Palestinians and Israeli police and soldiers, who are charged with protecting the illegal colonists, is growing.
Yesterday police were investigating the latest alleged attack by settlers against a Palestinian.
The body of a 19-year-old Palestinian shepherd was found in a ravine, with 20 gunshots to his neck, in a remote area of the West Bank on the weekend.
Israel Moves to Judaise East Jerusalem
September 10, 2008By Mel Frykberg | Inter-Press Service, Sep 9, 2008
EAST JERUSALEM, – The Israeli government is attempting to Judaise Palestinian East Jerusalem, and maintain a Jewish majority against the demographic threat of a higher Palestinian birth rate.
To that end, the Israeli government is enforcing a number of policies aimed at establishing facts on the ground in order to limit the number of Palestinian residents in the city.
To make any future division of Jerusalem almost impossible, the Israeli authorities are applying a combination of strategies including limiting family reunification permits, redrawing Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries, enlarging Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and establishing new illegal ones.
Under international law the Green Line divides Jewish West Jerusalem from Palestinian East Jerusalem. However, Israel has illegally occupied East Jerusalem since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Last month Israel published tenders for the construction of 1,761 illegal housing units for Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem alone, according to the Israeli rights group, Peace Now.
Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem says there are nearly 192,000 Israeli settlers residing illegally in 12 settlements in East Jerusalem.
Jerusalem municipality’s redrawing of the city’s municipal boundaries has incorporated the illegal settlements, while the building of the separation barrier, which separates Israel proper from the West Bank, has increased the number of Palestinians on the ‘wrong side’ of the barrier or wall, thereby further limiting a Palestinian presence.
According to conservative UN figures, about 25 percent of the 253,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem have been cut off from the city by the barrier.
“The Israelis are implementing the final plan to Judaise Jerusalem completely,” Suhail Khalilieh, head of the Applied Research Institute in Jerusalem (ARIJ) settlement unit told IPS.
“The plan began when Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967. The last stage of the plan involves the completion of the barrier with the specific aim of manipulating the demographics and limiting the balance of the Palestinian population to a mere 15-20 percent, with the remainder being Jewish,” said Khalilieh.
East Jerusalem is of particular importance to Palestinians because under international law it belongs to them and is designated the capital of a future Palestinian state. They also have significant cultural, religious, educational and business ties to the city.
Al-Aqsa Mosque, the second holiest Islamic site, as well as sites where Christ is said to have been buried and crucified are in East Jerusalem. Many Palestinians are Christian, even though they are a minority.
The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) is trying to address the future status of East Jerusalem, which it considers a red line issue, within the framework of final negotiations on a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
But the PNA faces a task of Sisyphean proportions as Israel’s encroachment of East Jerusalem has steadily increased over the decades since 1967, when a third of the area was expropriated from individual Palestinian landowners during the annexation and used exclusively to build settlements.
The expropriation, in defiance of the Fourth Geneva Convention, was justified on the basis of classifying Palestinian-owned land as vacant or unused, as many Palestinians fled the war temporarily to neighbouring countries.
“Palestinians residing outside of Jerusalem for seven or more years lose their Jerusalem residency status unless they can prove Jerusalem residency within the municipal boundaries and the importance of the city in their daily life, which is imperative in order to keep their identity cards,” says B’Tselem.
This does not apply to Israelis in West Jerusalem.
According to UN figures, in 2006 at least 1,360 Palestinians had their ID cards revoked. This was five times more than in 2005, and more than in any previous year since Israel began occupying East Jerusalem.
In 2003, the Citizenship and Entry into Israel law was enacted, which denies spouses from the occupied Palestinian territories, who are married to Israeli citizens or permanent residents (Jerusalem ID card holders), the right to acquire citizenship or residency status, and thus the opportunity to live with their partners in Israel and Jerusalem.
As a result, thousands of married couples are forced to live apart from one another.
In Israel, foreign spouses who are Jewish are automatically granted citizenship under Israel’s Law of Return.
Furthermore, since 1982 the Israeli Interior Ministry has not permitted the registration of Palestinian children as Jerusalem residents if the child’s father does not hold a Jerusalem ID card, even if the mother is a Jerusalem ID cardholder.
Jerusalem’s urban planning too, has been fine-tuned to increase the Jewish population with tax incentives and massive investment in Jewish neighbourhoods, while severely restricting construction in Palestinian neighbourhoods to seven percent of East Jerusalem.
“However, even before Palestinians are permitted to build they need to obtain the requisite building permits which are both expensive and extremely difficult to obtain,” said Khalilieh.
Even if Palestinians are fortunate enough to get the permits, they are still restricted to building on only 25 percent of their land.
Again, these restrictions do not apply to Jewish residents of West Jerusalem.
Jeff Halper from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) says there is currently a housing shortage of 25,000 units in East Jerusalem, and fewer homes means higher prices.
“Despite the housing shortage, Israel’s municipality grants Palestinians only around 150 to 350 work permits a year, yet demolishes 150 or more existing homes at the same time,” said Halper.
Houses built without permits are demolished by the municipality.
B’Tselem states that both Israelis and Palestinians build illegally, but that the response of the authorities is not equal. Palestinians account for about 20 percent of illegal construction, yet more than 75 percent of the demolitions are carried out on Palestinian homes.
“While demolitions carried out in Jewish neighbourhoods target either commercial buildings or additions to a house, in Palestinian neighbourhoods such demolitions leave entire Palestinian families homeless,” added the human rights group.
ICAHD further asserts that Palestinians face discrimination in regard to budgeting and taxation as well as essential needs like water, sewage, roads, parks, lighting, post offices, schools and other services.
The PNA continues to negotiate with the Israelis despite the continued settlement building and land expropriation.
“The Palestinians are in an extremely weak position. If they stopped negotiations on this basis, Israel would put the blame on failed talks squarely on their shoulders, with the support of the U.S., and continue with establishing facts on the ground irrespectively,” Khalilieh told IPS. (END/2008)
Israel ‘doubling’ settlement growth
August 27, 2008
Israel has nearly doubled settlement construction activity in the occupied West Bank since 2007, a report by the rights group Peace Now says. The report on settlement expansion coincided with the 18th visit by Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, to the Middle East, on Tuesday. Rice urged Israel to stop expanding settlements, deemed illegal under international law, arguing that they were not helpful to the peace process. “The settlement activity is not conducive to creating an environment for negotiations,” Rice said at a news conference with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Earlier in Jerusalem, after talks with Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, Rice referred to settlements, saying “anything that undermines confidence between the parties ought to be avoided”. A US-backed “road map” for peace calls on Israel to halt all settlement activity in the West Bank and for Palestinians to rein in armed groups. Settlement ‘noise’ The report by Peace Now, a non-governmental organisation, said that at least 2,600 new homes for Israelis are currently under construction in the West Bank, an increase of 80 per cent over last year. In occupied East Jerusalem, which Palestinians want as the capital of their future state, the number of new government bids for construction has increased from 46 in 2007 to 1,761 so far this year. Palestinians say the construction of Israeli homes undermines final status talks as it runs counter to earlier agreements. But Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, said the construction will not affect talks. “The peace process is not, and should not be, affected by any kind of settlement activities,” Livni said. Livni urged the Palestinians not to use settlement building “as an excuse” to avoid negotiations, but added she understood “their frustration” at times. Peace process Nour Odeh, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Ramallah, said the issue of settlement building played into larger concerns. “The issue of settlement building is not just that they exist on occupied land in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, it’s about control over water and the territorial contiguity of any possible future [Palestinian] state,” she said. “It’s difficult for Palestinians to have any confidence in the committment to reach a solution when settlement activity has almost doubled – and by the Palestinain count more than doubled.” Rice said she still aims to reach a peace accord by January, when George Bush, the US president, leaves office, but she has played down chances of striking any partial accord in time for the September UN General Assembly. Egypt talks Separately, Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, travelled to Egypt on Tuesday where he met Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, to discuss the ceasefire in Gaza that has been in effect since mid-June. Barak hailed Egyptian efforts along the porous border which “have visibly been effective”, a statement from the Israeli defence ministry said. But Barak also said that “more effort should be put in order to further reduce” weapons smuggling into Gaza. The two leaders also discussed ways to renew talks on the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas fighters near Gaza in June 2006. On Monday, Barak ordered the closure of all border crossings into Gaza after two rockets were fired from the strip. |
The Gaza Concentration Camp: Ancient Colonialism through a Nazi Filter
August 22, 2008Visiting the Gaza strip, July 2008
When you approach the Erez frontier post to enter Gaza from the north, you notice a concentration camp straightaway even if you may never have seen one like the ones turned into museums or educational centres, or like the ones that appear in documentaries or photographs.
An observation balloon, innocently painted white, rocks gently to and fro in the air over the wall surrounding Gaza. It makes sure no unhappy soul moves beyond arbitrary limits set by the camp guards. The visitor is overwhelmed by the mammoth steel-reinforced wall. This imprisons a million and a half inmates inside an area approximately 38 kilometres long and 12 wide at its widest.
Apart from cases you can count on the fingers of one hand, Palestinians quite simply cannot pass through Erez. Full stop. Besides, they are not allowed out via the South, crossing into Egypt, nor via the West, since the Mediterranean Sea is barred to them, nor via the air, since that too is likewise barred, despite there being no boats or planes to travel in. In any case, the airport was destroyed by the bombs of Israel air power. Gazans are not allowed to exit by digging underground either.
Patrolling closely about the ten or so people waiting under a scorching sun before a guard post in the middle of open ground about a built-up area, various soldiers and plain clothes police, with state of the art machine guns at the ready, make very clear the people had better keep very still. At the end of a long wait, by loudspeaker, the soldier in the armed guard post lets them through into the built-up precinct. It is like a warehouse, unexpectedly high, air conditioned and with various control posts inside, although only one is in use, since not enough people go through to warrant operating the rest. One is subjected to more waiting despite the absence of movement.
For the Zionist mentality everyone who does not cooperate with the system must pay a price. It is not even necessary to be one of their declared enemies. In this case, the visitors came from a State with good relations of all kinds with Israel, namely the Kingdom of Spain. Their documents were in order and they were unarmed. Matters had been prearranged with the Israeli authorities via the Spanish Consulate in Jerusalem. They also had a return ticket to their country, money for their stay and a stated humanitarian purpose for their visit, which would last exactly three days. The reason the Israeli frontier police at Erez waste the foreigners’ time, is because the Zionists are not enthusiastic about witnesses visiting the camp. Foreigners arriving at Erez intending to pass through, are indeed that, nothing else. Israelis are forbidden to enter. Israelis attempt to discourage visitors by many means. If the sight of the wall, the wandering machinegun-totting soldiers, the wait in the sun do not work, then visitors are subjected to hostile interrogation. From behind thick armoured glass, the seated interrogator addresses the standing interrogated person. The questions vary from the reasonable to the comical, “What are you doing in Gaza? Have you been to Israel before? Do you speak Russian? Do you have a driving license? How many passports do you have? What’s your boss called?” From the higher level floor above, cameras and guards record and observe the visitors without being seen. Afterwards people have to go individually through a narrow series of metal barriers which the service personnel can shut off at will, then another couple of armoured doors operated by remote control and – all the while under closed circuit TV cameras – one leaves the precinct to enter a metal corridor and finally cross through the concrete wall into the Palestinian side.
When returning from Gaza to Israel, the process is the same except that one is forced to enter a coffin-like cubicle that is adjusted to one’s body and in which you have to place yourself, legs apart, arms apart above your head. A kind of vertical electronic belt or ribbon goes around one’s body. It is a procedure as stupid as it is impressive since the soldiers know beforehand who the visitors are and why they are visiting Gaza.
Peace and Justice Post 
Robert Fisk: When it comes to Palestine and Israel, the US simply doesn’t get it
October 4, 2008Biden and Palin hid like rabbits from the centre of the Middle East earthquake
The Independent, Saturday, October 4, 2008
Palestinians ceased to exist in the United States on Thursday night. Both Joe Biden and Sarah Palin managed to avoid the use of that poisonous word. “Palestine” and “Palestinians” – that most cancerous, slippery, dangerous concept – simply did not exist in the vice-presidential debate. The phrase “Israeli occupation” was mercifully left unused. Neither the words “Jewish colony” nor “Jewish settlement” – not even that cowardly old get-out clause of American journalism, “Jewish neighbourhood” – got a look-in. Nope.
Those bold contenders of the US vice-presidency, so keen to prove their mettle when it comes to “defence”, hid like rabbits from the epicentre of the Middle East earthquake: the existence of a Palestinian people. Sure, there was talk of a “two-state” solution, but it would have mystified anyone who didn’t understand the region.
There was even a Biden jibe at George Bush for pressing on with “elections” – again, the adjective “Palestinian” went missing – that produced a Hamas victory. But Hamas appeared to exist in never-never land, a vast landscape that gradually encompassed all the vast and black deserts that stretch, in the imagination of US politicians, from the Mediterranean to Pakistan.
“Pakistan’s (nuclear) missiles can already hit Israel,” Biden thundered. But what was he talking about? Pakistan has not threatened Israel. It’s supposed to be on our side. Both vice-presidential candidates seemed to think that our ally in the “war on terror” was now turning into an ally of the axis of evil. Even Islam didn’t get a run for its money.
Indeed, one of the funniest reports of the week, yet another investigation of Obama’s education, came from the Associated Press news agency. The would-be president, the Associated Press announced, had attended a Muslim school but hadn’t “practised” Islam.
What on earth did this mean, I asked myself? Would AP have reported, for example, that McCain had attended a Christian school but hadn’t “practised” Christianity? Then I got it. Obama had smoked Islam but he hadn’t inhaled!
Travelling across the US this week – from Seattle to Houston to Washington and then to New York – I kept bumping into the results of America’s White House-induced terror. A well-educated, upper-middle-class lady at a lunch turned to me and expressed her fear that Islam “wanted to take over America”. When I suggested that this was pushing things a bit, she informed me that “the Muslims have already taken over France”.
How does one reply to this? It’s a bit like being informed by a perfectly sane and rational person that Martians have just landed in Tennessee. So I used the old Fisk trick when confronted by ravers of the “admit George Bush did 9/11” school. I looked at my watch, adopted a shocked expression and shouted: “Gotta go!”
But seriously. There was Biden on Thursday night, telling us that along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan – he was referring, of course, to the old frontier drawn by Sir Mortimer Durrand which most Pushtuns (and thus all Taliban) regard as fictional – “there have been 7,000 madrassas built … and that’s where bin Laden lives and we will go at him if we have actually (sic) intelligence”.
Seven thousand? Where on earth does this figure come from? Yes, there are thousands of religious schools in Pakistan – but they’re not all on the border. In another extraordinary bit of myth-making, Obama’s man told us that “we kicked the Hizbollah out of Lebanon” – which is totally untrue.
And, of course, Israel – a word that must be uttered, repeatedly, by all US candidates – became the compass point of the entire Middle East, this “peace-seeking nation … our strongest and best ally in the Middle East” (quoth Palin) of whom “no one in the United States Senate has been a better friend…than Joe Biden” (quoth Biden).
Israel was “in jeopardy” if America talked to Iran, Palin revealed. “We have got to assure them that we will never allow a second Holocaust.” Thus was the corpse of Hitler dug up yet again – just as McCain resurrected the shadow of the Second World War last week when he blathered on about Eisenhower’s sense of responsibility before D-Day. That Israel can quite adequately defend herself with 264 nuclear warheads went, of course, unmentioned, because acknowledging Israel’s real power undermines the image of a small and vulnerable country relying on America for its defence.
Israelis deserve security. But where were the promises of security for Palestinians? Or the sympathy which Americans would immediately grant any other occupied people? Absent, needless to say. For we must gird ourselves for the next struggle against world evil in Pakistan.
Biden actually demanded a “stable” government in Islamabad, which was a little bit hypocritical only a few days after US troops had crossed its sovereign border to shoot up a Pakistani house allegedly used by the Taliban. As General David Petraeus told The New York Times this week, “The trends in Afghanistan have been in the wrong direction … wresting control of certain areas from the Taliban will be very difficult.”
It’s an odd situation. Obama and Biden want to close down Iraq and re-conquer Afghanistan. The Palin College of Clichés characterised this as “a white flag of surrender in Iraq” while continuing to warn of the dangers of Iran, the name of whose loony president – Ahmadinejad – defeated McCain three times in last week’s pseudo-debate.
But it’s the same old story. All we have learned in America these past two weeks, to quote Joan Littlewood’s Oh! What a Lovely War, is that the war goes on.
Share this:
Tags:false charges against Pakistan, Islam and Muslims, Israel, Jewish settlements, Joe Biden, Middle East, Palestine, Palestinians, Sarah Palin, United States, US candidates, war on terror
Posted in Commentary, Palestine, US policy, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »