| Al Jazeera, March 19, 2009 |
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Israel has detained at least 10 senior Hamas members in the occupied West Bank, according to officials from the Palestinian group. Nasser al-Shaer, a former Palestinian deputy prime minister, was among the men held on Thursday. The arrests took place in the West Bank cities of Hebron, Bethlehem and Nablus. The Israeli army confirmed the arrests, saying the men were wanted by Israeli security and intelligence services and that they “were taken in for questioning”. Hamas says the detainees include four Hamas politicians, three of whom have already served time in Israeli custody. The wife of al-Shaer told Al Jazeera that Israeli occupation forces stormed their home at dawn, placed her husband under arrest and took him to an undisclosed location. ‘Failed’ Shalit deal The Israeli military said in a statement: “These men have been the leaders of the ongoing effort to restore the administrative branch of the Hamas terror organisation in the region, while attempting to strengthen the power and influence of Hamas.”
Thousands of Palestinians are held in Israeli jails. The latest detentions are being seen as an effort to pressure Hamas to release an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas-linked fighters near the Gaza border in June 2006.Egyptian efforts to mediate the release of of the soldier, currently being held in the Gaza Strip, in return for the release of hundreds of Palestinians, collapsed this week. Mahmoud Musleh, a Hamas politician, told the Reuters news agency: “These arrests are an angry reaction by Israel because of the failure of the [Gilad] Shalit deal. “This won’t do Israel any good.”
An Israeli military spokesman denied the detentions were connected.Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Israeli prime minister, had hoped to secure the release of the soldier before leaving office. Israeli arrests are part of daily incursions and raids in the villages and towns of the West Bank. Hamas has been demanding the release of more than 400 Palestinian prisoners. |
Posts Tagged ‘West Bank’
Israel arrests Hamas members
March 19, 2009
What Israeli Peace Process?
March 12, 2009By Franklin Spinney | Counterpunch, March 12, 2009
On March 2, 2009, the Israeli advocacy group Peace Now issued a report saying that the Israeli housing ministry plans to build 73,ooo housing units in the West Bank. Peace Now said 15,ooo of these units had already been approved, with another 58,000 awaiting approval. On March 7, 2009, the Guardian reported that a confidential report issued by the EU said Israel continues to annex property in East Jerusalem. It said Israeli housing authorities had submitted plans for 5,500 new housing units (3,000 of which have already been approved) since the Annapolis “peace” conference in November 2007. Readers may recall that the Annapolis conference was supposed to resuscitate George W. Bush’s moribund so-called Road Map to Peace. Assuming these housing plans are implemented, and only 2.5 Israelis on average inhabit each new unit, the entire program could add as many as 196,ooo Israelis to the 490,000 Israelis already living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Yet as recently as September 30, 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert said Israel should withdraw from almost all of the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem in order to achieve peace. Of course, Olmert’s profession of normative behaviour would be deemed gratuitous nonsense in an international court of law, because all these settlements are clearly illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention. So what gives?
Nothing. What you see is what you get — simply business as usual. There is no real peace process, only an illusion of one, but an illusion that has been and continues to be used cynically by the Israelis to ethnically cleanse the best land for Eretz Israel (“best” by definition includes access to the water in the West Bank aquifers — more on that later) by relentlessly creating irreversible “facts on the ground.”
All one has to do is look at the historical record. For the last 20 years, the U.S government and its wholly owned subsidiaries in the thinktanks, academia, and the media have promoted the soothing vision of an ongoing Arab-Israeli peace process. This process has been centered on the ideal of attaining a two-state solution — namely, establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Dutifully, the mainstream media in the United States (MSM) has inundated the American people with stories describing how the ongoing peace process is a road leading to a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But to date, that road has led into the nightmare of the West Bank’s roadblocked cantons and the hellish Gaza Ghetto, and the preponderance of MSM reporting, at least in the United States, leans toward blaming the Palestinians for their fate.
To be sure, the MSM also reported about bumps in the road that can be attributed to Israel, especially question of settlements in the Occupied Territories. But such reporting has been usually in the context of the settlements being temporary impediments to a solution, often couched, for example, in vague visions of Israel eventually abandoning most of its settlements, and doing land swaps for others, once the Palestinians renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist. In this context, there have been very few reports that put the question of settlements into an easily understood long term perspective, even though the information is widely available on the internet.
To be sure, the Israelis did evacuate 6000+ settlers from Gaza in 2003, and occasionally, the Israeli government evacuates a trivial number of settlers from the so-called “outposts” on the West Bank. But these Israeli moves have been anomalies to their long term pattern of settlement, which has been amazingly consistent since the rate of settlement began to accelerate in the mid 1970s. In fact, as demonstrated in the chart below, the pattern of settlement has been remarkably untouched by the deliberations of the so-called peace processes. It is based on official data produced by the Israeli government and made available to the public by the courageous Israeli human rights organization B’TSelem.
The so-called peace process, which at first was ad hoc, became institutionalized with great optimism in 1993, when the signing of the Oslo Accords ended the First Intifada. But over the next seven years, the Oslo deliberations did not alleviate the economic hardships afflicting the Palestinians, nor did it even slow down the pace of Israeli settlement, as is shown clearly by the pink shaded area of the figure. Oslo effectively ended in in Sept 2000, when Ariel Sharon’s provocative visit to the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem (Islam’s third holiest site) incited the Palestinian uprising that became known as the Second Intifada and helped to catapult Sharon into the office of Prime Minister.
A re-institutionalization of the formal peace process rose tepidly from the ashes of Oslo in June 2002, with the so-called Road Map to Peace initiated by President George W. Bush. The aim of Bush’s Roadmap was to establish an independent Palestinian state as early as 2005, and central to achieving that aim was a freeze on settlement expansion by May 2003 (called for in Phase I of the roadmap), as well as a reduction in violence and political reform by the Palestinians. The gray area in the figure spans the time of Bush’s so-called road map, and it is clear that his Roadmap, like Oslo, had absolutely no effect on Israel’s pace of settlement. Israel’s murderous assault on the Gaza Ghetto effectively dumped the detritus of Mr. Bush’s illuson into the lap of incoming President Obama in January 2009.
The assault on the Gaza Ghetto, together with a sense of frustration from not being able to weaken Hamas’s grip on Gaza, also helped to accelerate an ongoing political shift toward the radical right among the Israeli people, as became evident in the stunning results of the recent Parliamentary election. It now seems likely that Binyamin Netanyahu — the former prime minister between 1996 and 1999, who worked so assiduously to trash Oslo and increase settlements — will return to power as prime minister, this time with the neo-fascist Avigdor Lieberman as his foreign minister.
So, based on the history depicted in the chart and Netanyahu’s track record, we can expect the rate of settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to continue and probably increase. True to form, in one of his campaign speeches, Netanyahu promised he would not be not bound by Olmert’s empty promise to evacuate the settlements, and any future peace talks would not be about giving up territory, but about achieving an “economic peace” through economic development — whatever that means.
And how has Mr. Obama’s government reacted to date? The most critical comment I have been able to find is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s remark in Jerusalem that the planned expansion of the settlements cited in the first paragraph would be “unhelpful.”
One thing is certain, we can depend on being put to sleep with more somnolent visions of peace in our time while the Israelis create more facts on the ground.
Franklin “Chuck” Spinney is a former military analyst for the Pentagon. He currently lives on a sailboat in the Mediterranean and can be reached at chuck_spinney@mac.com
Does Zionism legitimize every act of violence?
February 16, 2009 |
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| By Gideon Levy | Haaretz, Israel, | |
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The Israeli left died in 2000. Since then its corpse has been lying around unburied until finally its death certificate was issued, signed, sealed and delivered on Tuesday. The hangman of 2000 was also the gravedigger of 2009: Defense Minister Ehud Barak. The man who succeeded in spreading the lie about there being no partner has reaped the fruit of his deeds in this election. The funeral was held two days ago. The Israeli left is dead. For the past nine years it took the name of the peace camp in vain. The Labor Party, Meretz and Kadima had pretensions of speaking in its name, but that was trickery and deceit. Labor and Kadima made two wars and continued to build Jewish settlements in the West Bank; Meretz supported both wars. Peace has been left an orphan. The Israeli voters, who have been misled into thinking that there is no one to talk to and that the only answer to this is force – wars, targeted killings and settlements – have had their say clearly in the election: a closing sale for Labor and Meretz. It was only the force of inertia that gave these parties the few votes they won. There was no reason for it to be otherwise. After many long years when hardly any protest came from the left, and the city square, the same square that raged after Sabra and Chatila, was silent, this lack of protest has been reflected at the ballot box as well. Lebanon, Gaza, the killed children, cluster bombs, white phosphorus and all the atrocities of occupation – none of this drove the indifferent, cowardly left onto the street. Though ideas of the left have found a toehold in the center and sometimes even on the right, everyone from former prime minister Ariel Sharon to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has spoken in a language that once was considered radical. But the voice was the voice of the left while the hands were the hands of the right. On the fringes of this masked ball existed another left, the marginal left – determined and courageous, but minuscule and not legitimate. The gap between it and the left was supposedly Zionism. Hadash, Gush Shalom and others like them are outside the camp. Why? Because they are “not Zionist.” And what is Zionism nowadays? An archaic and outdated concept born in a different reality, a vague and delusive concept marking the difference between the permitted and the proscribed. Does Zionism mean settlement in the territories? Occupation? The legitimization of every act of violence and injustice? The left stammered. Any statement critical of Zionism, even the Zionism of the occupation, was considered a taboo that the left did not dare break. The right grabbed a monopoly on Zionism, leaving the left with its self-righteousness. A Jewish and democratic state? The Zionist left said yes automatically, fudging the difference between the two and not daring to give either priority. Legitimization for every war? The Zionist left stammered again – yes to the beginning and no to the continuation, or something like that. Solving the refugee problem and the right of return? Acknowledgment of the wrongdoing of 1948? Unmentionable. This left has now, rightly, reached the end of its road. Anyone who wants a meaningful left must first air out Zionism in the attic. Until a movement that courageously redefines Zionism arises from the mainstream, there will be no broad left here. It is not possible to be both leftist and Zionist only in accordance with the right’s definition. Who has decided that the settlements are Zionist and legitimate, and the struggle against them is neither? This taboo must be broken. It is permissible not to be a Zionist, as commonly defined today. It is permissible to believe in the Jews’ right to a state and yet come out against the Zionism that engages in occupation. It is permissible to believe that what happened in 1948 should be put on the agenda, to apologize for the injustice and act to rehabilitate the victims. It is permissible to oppose an unnecessary war from its very first day. It is permissible to think that the Arabs of Israel deserve the same rights – culturally, socially and nationally – as Jews. It is permissible to raise disturbing questions about the image of the Israel Defense Forces as an army of occupation, and it is even permissible to want to talk to Hamas. If you prefer, this is Zionism, and if you prefer, this is anti-Zionism. In any case, it is legitimate and essential for those who do not want to see Israel fall victim to the insanities of the right for many more years. Anyone who wants an Israeli left must say “enough” to Zionism, the Zionism of which the right has taken complete control. |
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Israel holding 42 Palestinians in administrative detention for over two years
February 9, 2009
B’Tselem – Press Releases, 5 Feb. ’09
B’Tselem releases 2008 annual report – among the findings:
Of the 548 Palestinians Israel is detaining without trial, 42 have been held for over two years, according to figures appearing in B’Tselem’s annual report, published today. Twenty-three have been administratively detained for over two and a half years, including three who have been detained between three and four and a half years, and two over four and a half consecutive years. In fact, the vast majority of administrative detainees (372) have been held without charge or trial for at least two consecutive periods.
In 2008, the number of administrative detainees dropped gradually: from 813 in January to 546 in December. Six of the detainees in December were minors. For the first time, Israel held two female minors in administrative detention; both had their detention period extended for a second period. B’Tselem demands that Israel immediately release all administrative detainees, or try them for the offences they are alleged to have committed. The total number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli custody at the end of December was 7,904.
Casualties
B’Tselem’s annual report also includes figures on the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed during the course of the year (not including in Operation Cast Lead). Up until December 26, Israeli security forces killed 455 Palestinians (including eighty-seven minors). At least 175 of those killed (38 percent) did not take part in the hostilities.
18 Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinians inside Israel. Eight of them (four minors), were killed in the attack at the Merkaz Harav yeshiva, in Jerusalem and Four were killed by rocket attacks and mortar fire. Three Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinias in the Terrritories. Palestinians killed ten members of the Israeli security forces.
Restrictions on movement
In contrast to official Israeli claims, Palestinian freedom of movement did not improve significantly in 2008. There are sixty-three permanent staffed checkpoints inside the West Bank, eighteen of them in the city of Hebron. In addition, the army restricts Palestinian movement on 430 kilometers of roads, on which Israelis are allowed free use. On 137 kilometers of these roads, Palestinian travel is completely prohibited. Forty checkpoints serve as crossing points into Israel, although most are them are located a few kilometers inside the West Bank, and not along the Israeli border. The number of physical obstructions Israel maintained in the West Bank actually increased in 2008. In the first nine months of 2008, the average number of such obstructions was 537, compared with a monthly average of 459 in 2007.
B’Tselem’s annual report surveys many additional violations of human rights in the Occupied Territories during 2008. Among them: house demolition, the continued construction of the separation barrier within the West Bank, settlement expansion and the lack of law enforcement on violent settlers. The report also addresses the systematic lack of accountability for harm caused to Palestinians by Israeli security forces.
Settlement Expansion Cutting Into Peace
February 6, 2009By 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)
Judith Laitman and Tsela Barr: We must demand a just peace for Palestinians
January 20, 2009Judith Laitman and Tsela Barr | The Capital Times, Jan 19, 2009
As American Jews, we grew up learning to revere Israel, the “Jewish state” — the refuge of the persecuted. We had come to expect that Israel would have a highly developed moral consciousness and a collective awareness of what it means to have another group want to annihilate you. So it is shocking for those of us who grew up with these romantic myths to witness the state of Israel assuming the role of oppressor, of murderer of innocents, of desensitized military annihilator.
And it is even more grotesque for Israel and its defenders to continue to pretend that it is the Israelis who are the victims and that its recent savage assault on Gaza was just a defensive act. Worse yet, if people of conscience even express sympathy for the Palestinian victims, they are accused of anti-Semitism. These tactics purposely obscure the real obstacle to peace in the Middle East — Israel’s rapacious 40-year military occupation of Palestinian lands, and its brutal blockade of Gaza and its 1.5 million inhabitants.
So let us look at the record:
It was Israel that broke the six-month cease-fire with an incursion into Gaza on Nov. 4 in which they killed six Palestinians.
Israel dismantled its settlements in Gaza in 2005. But it retained complete control of Gaza’s land borders, airspace, and maritime access, maintaining a blockade that by itself is an act of war. This blockade resulted in a severe humanitarian crisis, even before the recent assault.
The Israeli attacks on Gaza were a violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions, which require an occupying power to protect an occupied population.
In the West Bank, which has committed no aggression toward Israel, Israel continues to expand its settlements, continues to build an illegal wall that divides Palestinian land, continues to destroy the homes of innocent Palestinians on their own land, builds roads that are Jews-only, and subjects Palestinians to daily humiliations and disruptions at hundreds of Israeli military checkpoints.
The Palestinians and the Arab League have made offers of peace that would ensure Israel’s security if it returned to the 1967 borders. This represents major concessions on the part of Palestinians, who in 1948 were mandated 45 percent of Palestine. The 1967 borders give the Palestinians less than half of that. Israel has rejected these offers.
Israel receives $3 billion a year from U.S. taxpayers. Gazans were assaulted by U.S. F-16s and Apache attack helicopters.
One-third of the more than 1,100 people killed in the recent assault on Gaza were children.
Now Israel has called a cease-fire and claimed its “objectives” have been met. Some scholars say these “objectives” relate to an Israeli policy known as “the Iron Wall.” This is a strategy of inflicting such massive pain on the Palestinians that they will either leave or accept their subjugation so that Israel can achieve its goals of a “Greater Israel.” According to Israeli historian Avi Shlaim: “Israel is practicing state terror using violence on a massive scale against Palestinian civilians for political purposes.”
The bombs may be quiet for now, but this is no time for us to be silent. Let us speak out at every opportunity against the oppression — and the terrorism — that continues to go on against the Palestinian people. Life will not return to normal for the victims in Gaza, and it shouldn’t for us either. We must demand a just peace for the Palestinians and an end to the colonial project that is destroying Israel’s soul.
Judith Laitman and Tsela Barr are members of the Madison chapter of American Jews for a Just Peace, ajjpmadison.org.
The Gaza War is Completely Stoppable
January 2, 2009Published on Wednesday, December 31, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
We have seen this movie before. In the summer of 2006, Israel invaded Lebanon. Replace “Hizbullah” with “Hamas” and “Lebanon” with “Gaza,” and much we have seen in the last few days is depressingly familiar. Once again, the Israeli military assault is justified on the basis of the need to stop rocket attacks on Israel, even though it is widely conceded that this will not be the result. Once again, establishment voices in Washington give carte blanche to the military action, even though few believe it will accomplish its stated objectives, and everyone understands that it will impose a huge political cost for the United States around the world, especially in the Arab and Muslim world.
But, although one can only be sick at the repeated, completely unnecessary loss of life, there is a silver lining to the Lebanon precedent: international outrage in 2006 effectively forced the United States government into a corner, in which it finally could no longer resist a ceasefire. And there is no reason to believe that what happened in 2006 can not and will not happen again now.
The question is then how long it will take international outrage to build to the level necessary to force the US government to stop backing the Israeli military action, and therefore how many Palestinians and Israelis will needlessly die in the meantime.
In some ways we have a head start over 2006. No-one can now plausibly claim that there is something intrinsically wrong with a ceasefire, or that there is something intrinsically wrong with negotiating with Hamas to achieve a new ceasefire. After all, just over six months ago, Israel and Hamas negotiated a ceasefire, brokered by Egypt, with the active encouragement of the United States. There was never any daylight between Israel and Hamas on whether a ceasefire was desirable; what was in dispute, and remained in dispute, was what the parameters of the ceasefire would be. Israel wanted the ceasefire limited to military calm-for-calm across the Israel-Gaza border. Hamas wanted the ceasefire to include significant easing of the economic blockade on Gaza and also to extend to the West Bank. These differences were finessed in the ceasefire agreement at the time, leading many to conclude that the disagreements would eventually explode the ceasefire agreement, as they now have.
But if you know this history, then you know that the statement “Israel had to act to protect its citizens from rocket attacks” is sorely lacking. Of course Hamas rocket attacks generated political pressure in Israel for a response. But was this the only possible response? If it was not the only possible response, was it the most effective response towards the stated goal? Among possible responses, was it moral and just?
After all, there is every reason to believe that the ceasefire could have continued and even been strengthened if Israel – and the United States – had been willing to ease the economic blockade of Gaza and extend the ceasefire to the West Bank. Since it was at least as likely – probably much more likely – that this would have done more to reduce and perhaps eliminate rocket attacks, it is reasonable to suggest that a key goal of the military assault is to maintain the economic blockade and maintain the status quo in the West Bank.
And, when you consider that former President Carter and other luminaries have denounced the economic blockade as an “abomination,” and that even Israeli Prime Minister Olmert has conceded that Israel must give up almost all of the West Bank in any political settlement, then it is extremely hard to justify the military campaign on the basis that it is necessary to defend the economic blockade, or the status quo in the West Bank.
And therefore it is likely that pressure can build more quickly now than it did in 2006, and fewer people will have to die. Already, “mainstream pro-Israel peace groups” in the US have spoken out in favor of an immediate ceasefire. Notably, J Street called not only for a ceasefire, but for lifting the blockade.
There are many ways to take action; you can write to President-elect Obama here and to President Bush and Congress here.
THIS IS GAZA – A REPORT BY AMIRA HASS
November 27, 2008
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| Image by David BaldingerUruknet.info, November 27, 2008This is Gaza Amira Hass If it`s not the power getting cut, leaving entire neighborhoods in darkness, then it`s the water not reaching the top floors or the cooking gas running out. If you have an electric generator, some small part of it is bound to be broken and unfixable, because even before the hermetic three-week siege, Israel prohibited bringing in any spare parts for cars, machines and household electric appliances. And if you somehow manage to find the money for a generator that was smuggled through the tunnels (its price has doubled or tripled since last month), it`s at the expense of buying a heater (not electric, of course), English lessons, clothes for the children and visits to the doctor. This is Gaza in November 2008. Just as Gaza is the emptying of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency storehouses and the farmers who sowed and watered, but cannot market, their tomatoes, guavas and strawberries out of the Gaza Strip because Israel forbids it, it is also the calmness with which people receive the sudden darkness and the jokes that there is not much food in the refrigerator to spoil anyway. Gaza is the ability to tell jokes in any situation, and the burning insult of having no running water for three or four days. And yet, the children go clean and neat to school. Gaza is the long Nasser Street which has been blocked to traffic for over a year. Its asphalt is torn out and it is riddled with potholes and mounds of sand. When Israel forbade bringing any construction materials and raw materials into the strip, the renovation work stopped on this thoroughfare, the main access to three hospitals, which are always in danger of equipment failure if some part breaks down. But Gaza is also parents leaving their children alone at home, without fear, or letting them go to a playground far from home, or go by themselves to their grandmother in the Jabaliya refugee camp (in the streets parallel to Nasser Street). Gaza is reports of policemen attacking Fatah supporters at a university, or the police closing a restaurant for one night because its owners didn`t report in advance about a symposium that was held in the restaurant`s hall, in which Hamas speakers participated and was organized by a research center associated with Ramallah authorities. Gaza is the teacher who forces school girls to cover their heads, although senior officials assert that this is not the education ministry`s policy. It is exaggerations and false rumors, and it is also the Fatah detainees` report that cameras were installed in the interrogation room to ensure that the interrogators act within the boundaries of the law. It is the surprise when `Hamas` police restore stolen property, even before it has been reported stolen. Gaza is the feeling among Fatah supporters that the power has been stolen from them, and their fear of the security apparatus, as it is Hamas` self confidence. It is the comparisons made with the intimidation methods in Yasser Arafat`s era and exchanging information about the suppression of Hamas activity in the West Bank. Gaza is the anger of the entire public, including Fatah members, for what appears to be Ramallah`s deliberate neglect and indifference toward the strip and its residents` fate. Gaza is those dreaming to leave it, and those who left years ago for school and work and miss it. Gaza is the people who cannot return to their families here, because even if they could find a crack and enter through the border crossings blocked by Israel, they would remain imprisoned here, and would have to renounce their freedom of movement and choice completely. Everything is so intense here. `We measure our lives in minutes, not in days or weeks,` a Fatah man said. His life has been turned upside down since June 2007, and is turned upside down every day due to the political rupture. He was referring to Fatah men like himself, convinced that Hamas people in the West Bank also `measure their lives in minutes.` But his description suits everyone. The changes are so sudden, violent, swift and frequent that the individual has no control over them – whether it is high politics or laundry times. Gaza is people`s constant attempt to cling to a normal life, although Israel foists on them abnormal terms of imprisonment, isolation from the rest of the world and deterioration to a state of humiliating dependence on international charity programs. |
Peace and Justice Post 
Israel’s secret plan for West Bank expansion
April 27, 2009Palestinians condemn ‘extremely dangerous’ scheme to grow settlement
By Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem | The Independent, UK, April 27, 2009
EPA
A Palestinian Bedoiun is restrained by Israeli forces as she protests about the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank yesterday
Israel has taken a step towards expanding the largest settlement in the West Bank, a move Palestinians warn will leave their future state unviable and further isolate its future capital, East Jerusalem
The Israeli Peace Now group, which monitors settlement growth, said it had obtained plans drawn up by experts that the interior ministry had commissioned which call for expanding the sprawling Maale Adumim settlement near Jerusalem southward by 1200 hectares, placing what is now the separate smaller settlement of Kedar within Maale Adumim’s boundaries.
The expansion is on a highly sensitive piece of real estate that both sides see as holding the key to whether the Palestinians will have a viable state with their own corridor between the north and south parts of the West Bank.
Israeli plans also call for expanding Maale Adumim northward in an area known as E1, but US opposition has thus far stopped Israel from building residential buildings there, although a police headquarters has been established.
The new plan, if approved by the interior minister, Eli Yishai, will help pave the way for the building of 6000 housing units between Maale Adumim and Kedar and on other lands to be annexed by Maale Adumim, says Peace Now staffer Hagit Ofran. “What they have in their minds is the expansion of Maale Adumim and this is one step towards that,” Ms. Ofran said of government planners
The Palestinian MP Hanan Ashrawi said the plan was “extremely dangerous”. She said that the new plan, combined with Israeli plans to build at E1, plans to demolish 88 houses in the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem on grounds they were built without permits, the planned eviction of Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood and other steps reflect “a mad rush to expand settlements to complete the isolation and siege of Jerusalem. Israel is destroying any chances of an agreement.”
Hizki Zisman, a spokesman for the Maale Adumim municipality, said making Kedar part of Maale Adumim is an administrative matter of uniting local authorities and does not involve expropriating more land from Palestinians. He said the panel recommendation was “professional, not political” and that there was a great need to expand the settlement because of young couples needing bigger apartments.
An aide to Mr Yishai said the plan to make Kedar part of Maale Adumim arrived on the minister’s desk yesterday and he had not yet taken a decision on it.
Mr Yishai, from the ultra-orthodox Shas party, is supportive of settlement activity but the timing for expanding Maale Adumim may not be propitious given the international scrutiny of the new right-wing Israeli government. An official in the Prime Minister’s office declined to say what the attitude of the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was to the expansion: “Prime Minister Netanyahu has ordered a comprehensive review on a host of issues including settlements and the attitude towards peace talks. This will take a few weeks.”
Ms Ofran said expanding Maale Adumim to include Kedar was also aimed at making the route of the West Bank separation barrier that is still being constructed penetrate deeper into the occupied territory.
Israel says the barrier is aimed at thwarting suicide bombers but the International Court of Justice has ruled it illegal, for being built inside the West Bank.
The Israeli supreme court is deliberating on the route of the barrier in the Maale Adumim area and received a recommendation from the relatively dovish Council for Peace and Security – made up of former senior security officers – that Kedar should not be included within the fence.
“If the fence is supposed to become the border of Israel, than making Kedar part of Maale Adumim expands the border,” Ms Ofran said.
Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government yesterday adopted a rejectionist approach to peace talks.
The Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, ruled out opening negotiations with Syria unless it dropped all its pre-conditions relating to the Golan Heights. Days earlier, he said that Syria was not a “genuine partner for peace”.
Syria recently said it would be willing to resume indirect talks as long as they focused on a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in 1967.
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Tags:expansion, Israel, Israeli Peace Now group, Palestinians, settlements, West Bank
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