Monday, May 29, 2006

[ePalestine] What did Bush signal? / crucible of trouble / Surrender vs. the Right to Exist

A few worthwhile readings...and an attached cartoon that speaks volumes...

---------------------------------------------------

What did Bush signal? 

- George Bisharat 
Monday, May 29, 2006 
San Francisco Chronicle

Did President Bush give Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert a red light or a green light for his plan to unilaterally annex parts of the Palestinian West Bank? That is what many are asking in the aftermath of Olmert's visit to Washington, D.C., last week. The confusion arises from President Bush's clear admonition that Olmert must attempt to negotiate with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, coupled with his approving remarks regarding Olmert's "bold ideas." 

The particular "bold idea" in question is what Olmert and his Kadima Party call their "convergence" plan. While they market the plan as a "withdrawal" that will ostensibly reduce conflict with the Palestinians, the plan, in fact, would allow Israel to seize large parts of the West Bank, including some of the best agricultural land and most valuable water resources. An estimated 60,000 to 70,000 Israeli settlers will be relocated from settlements more distant from Israel's pre-1967 borders to larger settlements that are closer to Israel, but still on the West Bank. 

This would continue long-term Israeli policies of racial gerrymandering, aimed at absorbing maximum Palestinian land while minimizing the number of Palestinian residents it governs. Most settlers would be relocated to the west of the wall being built by Israel primarily in the West Bank -- and accordingly judged illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. 

Over the last year, Israel has quietly declared the Jordan Valley -- almost one-third of the West Bank -- a "closed area" to Palestinians, and Israeli officials have repeatedly stated that they would never surrender control over Israel's eastern border. In aggregate, this could mean that Israel will eventually assert sovereignty over nearly half of the West Bank, far more than the 10 percent on which the large settlement blocs sit. 

Palestinian areas of the West Bank would be divided into three isolated cantons. It is not clear to what extent relocation of Israeli settlers will be accompanied by a reduction in Israeli military forces from Palestinian areas. There is no doubt, however, that "convergence" would snuff out the chance for the two-state solution that the Palestinians, the Arab world and the international community have favored for decades. 

It would further violate international law, which bars territorial acquisition by war and is the foundation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 calling for Israeli withdrawal from the territories it seized in the Six-Day War in 1967. 

The Israeli government has threatened to implement this land grab unilaterally, claiming that it "lacks a Palestinian partner for peace." In fact, what it lacks is a Palestinian partner for surrender. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly expressed willingness to enter negotiations since his democratic election in January 2005. Israel has done everything possible to ignore Abbas and undermine his standing, simply because it cannot achieve through negotiations what it can achieve by unilateralism, backed up by overwhelming military force. 

No Palestinian leader could agree to further erosion of the tiny land base for a Palestinian state, and encirclement by Israeli settlements and troops within "Bantustans," is increasingly reminiscent of apartheid. 

The election of a Hamas-dominated Palestinian Legislative Council has given Israel a new pretext for avoiding negotiations. In fact, the Palestinian Authority is responsible for internal administration in the Gaza Strip and the small islands of land it controls in the West Bank. It is the Palestine Liberation Organization -- also led by Mahmoud Abbas -- that is the legal representative of the Palestinians and is authorized to negotiate for them. Very few West Bank and Gaza Palestinians support the Hamas program of establishing an Islamic state in the area -- 3 percent, according to a December 2005 poll -- while more than two-thirds continue to support negotiations with Israel. Hamas leaders themselves have, on numerous occasions, signaled willingness to enter talks with Israel without preconditions. An intense internal debate is occurring now among Palestinians, the outcome of which is yet unclear, but many signs portend a unified stance in support of negotiations with Israel. 

None of this will matter, of course, if Israel continues to demand concessions that are impossible for responsible Palestinian leaders to accept. Time will tell whether President Bush is a partner in Israel's charade, or will genuinely demand that Israel negotiate with the Palestinians in good faith, and on the basis of international law. Our standing in a critical region of the world will turn on the answer. 

George Bisharat, a professor of law at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, writes frequently on law and politics in the Middle East. 

Page B - 5 

URL: 

©2006 San Francisco Chronicle 

---------------------------------------------------

Punishment of Palestinians will create a crucible of trouble for the world 

George Bush's policies helped build Hamas; now a dangerous linkage with Iran and Iraq threatens a mega-crisis 

David Hirst 
Monday May 29, 2006 
Guardian 


---------------------------------------------------

CounterPunch 

Weekend Edition 
May 27-29, 2006 

"The Palestinians Must Pay a Price for Their Choice" Surrender vs. the Right to Exist 

By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON 
Former CIA analyst 




-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Everything about this list:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/epalestine

To unsubscribe, send mail to:
epalestine-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net

To subscribe, send mail to:
epalestine-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

Thursday, May 25, 2006

[ePalestine] World Council of Churches: The time is ripe to do what is right

World Council of Churches (WCC)

The WCC is a fellowship of churches, now 347 in more than 120 countries in all continents from virtually all christian traditions 

Executive committee statement on Israel/Palestine:

The time is ripe to do what is right 

With the responsible powers and authorities providing little prospect of a viable future for both Israelis and Palestinians, with concern rising around the world at the recent course of events in the conflict, and with various peace plans and numerous UN resolutions languishing unimplemented, the World Council of Churches Executive Committee, meeting in Geneva, 16-19 May, 2006, comes to a sober conclusion: Peace must come soon or it may not come to either people for a long time.   

Failure to comply with international law and consequences thereof has pushed the situation on the ground up to a point of no return. The disparities are appalling. One side is positioning itself to unilaterally establish final borders on territory that belongs to the other side; the other side is increasingly confined to the scattered enclaves that remain. On one side there is control of more and more land and water; on the other there are more and more families deprived of land and livelihoods. On one side as many people as possible are being housed on occupied land; on the other side the toll mounts of refugees without homes or land. One side controls Jerusalem, a city shared by two peoples and three world religions; the other—Muslim and Christian—watches its demographic, commercial and religious presence wither in Jerusalem. From both sides, military forces or armed groups strike across the 1967 borders and kill innocent civilians. On both sides, authorities countenance such attacks.   

Finally, the side set to keep its unlawful gains is garnering support from part of the international community. The side that, despairing at those unlawful gains, used legitimate elections to choose new leaders is being isolated and punished.   

All parties to the conflict and the foreign powers implicated in it now face a world dangerously divided over this conflict, a world increasingly convinced that the goal of peace for all has been traded away for gains by one side.   

At this critical juncture the contribution of churches can be to speak from the perspective of ethics. The actions noted above and others like them cannot be justified morally, legally or even politically.   

Late in the long civil rights struggle in the U.S., Dr. Martin Luther King wrote:   

“[T]ime…can be used destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. … We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.” [‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ 1965]  

The same hard diagnosis applies to the struggle for a just and durable peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Impunity toward international law, the United Nations Charter, resolutions of the UN Security Council and rulings of the International Court of Justice has long characterized actions on the ground. Now the same phenomenon is apparent in international policies toward the conflict as well. Legal norms that bear so heavily on this conflict—territorial integrity, the peaceful resolution of conflict, the right to self-determination and the right to self-defence, among others—are being more widely ignored.   

Calls for the application of these norms anchor six decades of church policy toward the conflict, including WCC Statements on ‘The Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel’s Annexation of Palestinian Territory’ (2004), ‘The Ecumenical Response to the Israeli- Palestinian Conflict’ (2002 and 2001), ‘Jerusalem Final Status Negotiations’ (2000), ‘The Status of Jerusalem’ (1998), ‘The Middle East’ (1993, 1983, 1974, 1969, 1968 and 1967), ‘Jerusalem’ (1980, 1975 and 1974), and ‘The Emergence of Israel as a State’ (1948). One theme stands out: “What we desire is equal justice for both Palestinian people and Jewish people in the Middle East,” (WCC Executive Committee, Bad Saarow, GDR, 1974), but international law has not been conclusively applied for the collective good.  

Most recently, the WCC has requested the Middle East ‘Quartet’ to give the new Palestine authorities time to develop and demonstrate their policies. The WCC also called Quartet members—the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations—to exercise even-handedness when dealing with the conflict and be the determined and objective third party needed to bring Israeli and Palestinian authorities into equitable negotiations.   

Respect for existing agreements is required of both sides. Democracy must be protected where it is taking root. The use of violence pre-empts normal bilateral relations for Israeli as well as Palestinian authorities.  

Ending double standards is a prerequisite for peace. The current impasse must be broken. All parties must see the necessity and human benefit in re-aligning current political decisions with long-standing legal commitments and undeniable moral obligations. The precious, life- saving opportunity is now.   

The Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches, meeting in Bossey, Switzerland, 16-19 May 2006:  

Urges the international community to establish contact and engage with all the legitimately elected leaders of the Palestinian people for the resolution of differences, and not to isolate them or cause additional suffering among their people;  

Strongly supports, and calls the international community to support, two-way and equitable negotiations as the path to mutual recognition between Israel and Palestine and to the resolution of other contentious and substantive obstacles to peace as noted in the succession of United Nations Security Council and General Assembly resolutions.   

Recommends that, in the interests of equitable treatment and as a new foundation for peace, both parties to the conflict be held to one and the same standard for ending violence, meeting their existing agreements and recognizing each other’s existence including the 1967 borders. 

Insists that all High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention (including Israel, the U.S., States of the European Union, Russia, and the repository state, Switzerland) ensure the well-being of the occupied population. Urgent actions include ending the punitive measures imposed on the Palestinian people in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and its prohibition of collective punishment—including the tax, aid and travel restrictions imposed after their recent democratic elections—and requiring the occupying power to fulfil its responsibilities for the well-being of the population in all areas it controls, including the Gaza Strip.   

Reminds the United Nations and its member states of UN responsibility to make Jerusalem an open and inclusive city for the two peoples and three religions, shared in terms of sovereignty and citizenship.   

Encourages the government of Israel to base its security on peace with all its neighbours, including the equitable negotiation of final borders with those neighbours and excluding the unilateral imposition of borders on those neighbours.  

Encourages the Palestinian Authority to include parties across the political spectrum in the processes of democracy and of non-violent conflict resolution, to protect the democratic rights of its people from external pressures as legitimate rights under international law, to maintain the existing one-party cease-fire toward Israel and extend it to cover all parties, and to demonstrate that all forms of violence and attacks across the 1967 borders between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories against innocent civilians on either side must stop.   

Calls member churches and the WCC to share solidarity with people on both sides of the conflict as a witness for peace:  

Advocate for the measures indicated above, reflecting world-wide church concern at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the implications of the conflict in different regions, and the ever more urgent need for remedial actions by the responsible authorities; use legitimate forms of pressure to promote a just peace and to end unlawful activities by Israelis or Palestinians. 

Find constructive ways to address threats experienced among the Jewish people, including the nature, prevalence and impact of racism in local, national and international contexts. 

Heed calls for help from the churches of Jerusalem at this time of trial, assist them in their service to society and support church aid work with people in need; seek help from churches in the Middle East to educate churches elsewhere about the conflict, the region and the path to peace; pray for peace. 

Send church members to Israel and Palestine as part of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel until the occupation ends. 

Engage in dialogue with churches that link current events in the Middle East with certain Biblical prophecies. Such dialogue would include concrete and legitimate political perspectives on justice, the impact of such linkages on the presence and witness of the Christian churches of the region, and discussions about the nature of Christian witness for peace in the Middle East. 

Work to enhance the security of all people in the region, in accordance with the WCC Ninth Assembly Minute, by urging relevant governments to support the establishment in the Middle East of a Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone to include Israel and Iran. 




-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Everything about this list:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/epalestine

To unsubscribe, send mail to:
epalestine-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net

To subscribe, send mail to:
epalestine-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

[ePalestine] Jeff Halper: COUNTDOWN TO APARTHEID...Olmert's speech in context...

COUNTDOWN TO APARTHEID 

By Jeff Halper 

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s address to both houses of Congress was perhaps the most skilled use of Newspeak since George Orwell invented the term in his novel 1984. (He had help: author and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Weisel reportedly drafted large sections of the speech.) Just as Orwell’s totalitarian propagandists proclaimed WAR IS PEACE and Israeli government signs placed at the Wall (sorry, fence) at the entrance to Bethlehem greet Palestinians with the blessing PEACE BE UNTO YOU, so Olmert declared in Washington: UNILATERAL REALIGNMENT IS PEACE. 

Because of Olmert’s use of Orwellian language (can anyone, including President Bush or members of Congress, explain to us what “convergence” and “realignment” mean?), we must listen carefully to what is said, what is not said and what is meant. 

What was said sounds fine if taken at face value. Olmert, extending “my hand in peace to Mahmoud Abbas, the elected president of the Palestinian Authority,” declared Israel’s willingness to negotiate with him on condition that the Palestinians “renounce terrorism, dismantle the terrorist infrastructure, accept previous agreements and commitments, and recognize the right of Israel to exist.” If they do so, Olmert held out Israel’s commitment to a two-state solution. 

What wasn’t said? While reference to a Palestinian state sounds forthcoming, two key elements set down in the Road Map defining that state were missing: an end to the Israeli Occupation and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. “A settlement,” says the text of the Road Map to which Olmert and Bush constantly declare their allegiance, “will result in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel. The settlement will…end the occupation that began in 1967.” 

Olmert’s “convergence plan” (now renamed a “realignment plan” because it sounds better in [Newspeak] English), based on the massive “facts on the ground” Israel continues to impose unilaterally with overt American support, cannot possibly give rise to a viable Palestinian state. The “Separation Barrier,” which will be declared Israel’s permanent “demographic border,” takes 10% of the West Bank. That may not sound like much, but consider this: It incorporates into Israel the major settlement blocs (plus a half-million Israeli settlers) while carving the West Bank into a number of small, disconnected, impoverished “cantons” – hardly the basis for a viable state. It removes from the Palestinians their richest agricultural land and all the water. 

The convergence plan also creates a “greater” Israeli Jerusalem over the entire central portion of the West Bank, thereby cutting the economic, cultural, religious and historic heart out of any Palestinian state. It then sandwiches the Palestinians between the Barrier/border and yet another “security” border, the Jordan Valley, giving Israel two eastern borders. Palestinian freedom of movement of both people and goods is thus prevented into both Israel and Jordan but also internally, between the various cantons. Israel will also retain control of Palestinian airspace, the electro-magnetic sphere and even the right of a Palestinian state to conduct its own foreign policy. 

The Road Map, like international law regarding the end of occupations in general, also insists on a negotiated solution between the parties. Olmert made a great issue of Palestinian terrorism (playing on American sensibilities to this buzz-word), placing pre-conditions on negotiations. Israel is willing to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority, he said, of it renounces terrorism, dismantles the terrorist infrastructure, accepts previous agreements and recognizes the right of Israel to exist (a right Israel has not recognized vis-à-vis the Palestinians). What is not mentioned is Israel’s Occupation which, regardless of an end to terror and negotiations, is being institutionalized and made permanent. For neither security nor terrorism are really the issue; Israel’s policies of annexation are based on a pro-active claim to the entire country. Virtually no element of the Occupation – the establishment of some 300 settlements, expropriation of most West Bank land, the demolition of 12,000 Palestinian homes, the uprooting of a million olive and fruit trees, the construction of a massive system of highways to link the settlements into Israel proper or the tortuous route of the Barrier deep in Palestinian territory – can be explained by security. Terrorism on all sides is wrong (let it be noted that Israel has killed four times more civilians than the Palestinians have), but to demand that resistance cease while an occupation is being made permanent is unconscionable. 

And, finally, what was meant? Apartheid. The “A” word was missing from Olmert’s speech, of course, but the bottom line of his convergence plan is clear: the establishment of a permanent, institutionalized regime of Israeli domination over Palestinians based on separation between Jews and Arabs. Within 6-9 months, according to Olmert’s timeline. Olmert may believe that Jews can succeed where Afrikaners failed, but history teaches us that in the end injustice is unsustainable. And convergence/realignment is nothing if not manifest injustice. 

(Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and a candidate, with the Palestinian peace activist Ghassan Andoni, for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. He can be reached at <jeff@icahd.org>). 


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Everything about this list:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/epalestine

To unsubscribe, send mail to:
epalestine-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net

To subscribe, send mail to:
epalestine-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

[ePalestine] Sharon's Legacy (A MUST READ) / NYT: Viable Palestinian State / The misbegotten labeling... / Reposts

Dear friends, 

Yesterday's victims were: Milad Abu-Aris, Jaafer Khaled, Aysar Kasam and Ra'ad Rabakh. 

As I write, I can hear heavy and loud gunfire coming from the Al-Amari Refugee Camp next to our home.  It is the funeral for one of the 4 Palestinians that were murdered by the Israeli military yesterday.  He lived in the camp.  I can hear the wailing of the family as the body is brought home for the family to bid farewell to their fallen loved one.  This is extremely difficult! Hundreds of demonstrators are chanting, "To the checkpoint, To the checkpoint," which is exactly how the 2nd Intifada started...an accelerated deterioration of events, one funeral after the next.  Ramallah/El-Bireh were closed today in protest of the rampant Israeli killings. 

The attached photo caption is: "A man prays next to four dead Palestinians in the morgue of the hospital in the West Bank town of Ramallah, May 24, 2006. Israeli troops killed four Palestinians and wounded at least 50 others on Wednesday in clashes that erupted during a rare daylight raid on the occupied West Bank's main city, witnesses and medics said."   

Below are some readings.  Two by Israeli/Jewish writers.  Both are superb.  Also, a rather bold, for the NYT, editorial.  Consider sending them a brief letter to the editor. 

Lastly, at the end of this message, I also repost yesterday's last post.  Due to some technical difficulty, not all received it. 

I'm off to bury our fallen...all in their 20's...hoping not to repeat today, tomorrow,
Sam

-------------------------------------------

A MUST READ...
especially if you heard Olmert's speech to the US Congress yesterday

Sharon's Legacy in Action 

By Tanya Reinhart


Tanya Reinhart is a lecturer in linguistics, media and cultural studies at Tel Aviv University and the University of Utrecht. She is the author of several books, including Israel/Palestine: How to End the 1948 War (Seven Stories Press, 2002). 

-------------------------------------------

NEW YORK TIMES

May 25, 2006
Editorial
A Viable Palestinian State

It's long been clear that getting a workable, feasible Palestinian state out of two geographically separate masses of land in the desert will be an uphill battle. Now, because of two culprits and one enabler — Hamas, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and President Bush — that hill is becoming a mountain. 

Mr. Bush handed Mr. Olmert the perfect welcome-to-Washington gift on Tuesday: conditional support for Israel's plans. Mr. Olmert wants to go ahead with Ariel Sharon's misbegotten plan to unilaterally redraw the borders of what could eventually be Palestine. The key word here is unilaterally, because the Israelis are prepared to do this without any input from the Palestinians. They would be left to try to cobble together a country out of whatever remained behind. 

To a significant degree, the Palestinians put themselves in this spot by electing Hamas to run their government, and the Bush administration is right to refuse to legitimize a government dedicated to the destruction of Israel. But Mr. Bush should not punish the Palestinian people by endorsing any unilateral proposal — doing that would punish them for exercising their democratic right to vote. 

Mr. Olmert's proposal has two parts, and the first one is fine: to withdraw Israeli settlers and troops from vast areas of the occupied West Bank. That's a worthy goal, and one that has been way too long in coming. 

The problem is with the second part of the proposal: to retain several large settlement blocs in the Palestinian West Bank. That's a recipe for disaster. 

Anyone who has ever really looked at a map of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza can see how hard it will be to form a Palestinian state. Even a future Palestine that includes all of the West Bank and Gaza is still going to be in two pieces with Israel in the middle, separating Gaza from the West Bank. 

To get an idea of this, imagine a map of Manhattan. The West Bank would be, very roughly, East Harlem and the Upper East Side. Gaza would be Battery Park City, far to the southwest. Now imagine trying to create a fully functioning city with its own economy out of those pieces while an entirely independent, antagonistic city remained in between. 

Yet that is what the Palestinians will have to do if they even manage to get back to the 1967 borders. (If the Sharon-Olmert plan, now tentatively blessed by Mr. Bush, goes into effect, they won't achieve that.) If Mr. Olmert moves forward with his plan to retain large settlement blocs in the West Bank, the Palestinians may well lose huge parts of their "Upper East Side" and be left trying to form a country out of what's left, and their "Battery Park City." 

Speaking to Congress yesterday, Mr. Olmert said Israel was willing "to negotiate with a Palestinian Authority." He added, "In a few years they could be living in a Palestinian state, side by side in peace and security with Israel." 

We'd like to see that, too. We only hope that Mr. Olmert and Mr. Bush realize that there will not be peace in the Middle East unless the Palestinians have a say in creating a state that can function. 

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company 


Consider sending the NYT a brief LETTER TO THE EDITOR thanking them for standing against unilateralism: letters@nytimes.com

-------------------------------------------

Chicago Tribune

ON LOCATION: ISRAEL 

The misbegotten labeling of reality in the Middle East 

By Emily L. Hauser
Published May 21, 2006


American-Israeli Emily L. Hauser has written about the contemporary Middle East for more than 15 years. She spent most of April traveling through Israel; she lives in Oak Park. 

-------------------------------------------

REPOST from yesterday...

FT.com

Why Israel cannot always rely on America's helping hand 

By Tony Judt
Published: May 23 2006 03:00 | Last updated: May 23 2006 03:00
Financial Times

By the age of 58 a country - like a man - should have achieved a certain maturity. After nearly six decades of existence we know, for good and ill, who we are and how we appear to others, warts and all. And though we still harbour occasional illusions about ourselves, we know they are, for the most part, just illusions. In short, we are adults.  

But the state of Israel, which has just turned 58, remains curiously immature. The country's social transformations - and its many economic achievements - have not brought the political wisdom that usually accompanies age. Seen from outside, Israel still comports itself like an adolescent: confident of its uniqueness; certain that no one "understands"; quick to take offence, and to give it. Like many adolescents, Israel is convinced - and aggressively asserts - that it can do as it wishes; that its actions carry no consequences; that it is immortal.  

That, Israeli readers will say, is the prejudiced view of the outsider. What looks from abroad like a self-indulgent, wayward country is simply an independent little state doing what it has always done: protecting its interests in an inhospitable part of the globe.  

Why should embattled Israel even acknowledge foreign criticism, much less act on it? Because the world and its attitudes have changed. It is this change - largely unrecognised in Israel - to which I want to draw attention. Before 1967 Israel may have been tiny and embattled, but it was not typically hated: certainly not in the west. Most admirers (Jews and non-Jews) knew little about the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948. They preferred to see in the Jewish state the last incarnation of the 19th century idyll of agrarian socialism - or else a paragon of modernising energy, "making the desert bloom".  

I remember in the spring of 1967 how student opinion at Cambridge University was overwhelmingly pro-Israel before the Six-Day War - and how little attention was paid either to the Palestinians or to Israel's collusion with France and Britain in the disastrous 1956 Suez adventure. For a while these sentiments persisted. The pro-Palestinian enthusiasms of post- 1960s radical groups were offset by growing public acknowledgement of the Holocaust. Even the inauguration of illegal settlements and the invasion of Lebanon did not shift the international balance of opinion.  

But today everything is different. We can see, in retrospect, that Israel's victory in June 1967 and its occupation of the territories it conquered then have been the Jewish state's very own nakba: a moral and political catastrophe. Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza have magnified its shortcomings to a watching world. The routines of occupation and repression were once familiar only to an informed minority; today, computer terminals and satellite dishes put Israel's behaviour under daily global scrutiny. The result has been a complete transformation in the international view of Israel.  

The universal shorthand symbol for Israel, reproduced in political cartoons, is the Star of David emblazoned on a tank. Today the universal victims, the emblematic persecuted minority, are not Jews but Palestinians. This shift does little to advance the Palestinian case but it has redefined Israel forever. Israel's long-cultivated persecution mania no longer elicits sympathy. The country's national narrative of macho victimhood appears to many now as simply bizarre: a collective cognitive dysfunction. Israel, in the world's eyes, is a normal state; but one behaving in abnormal ways. As for the charge that criticism of Israel is implicitly anti- Semitic, this is in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling assertion: Israel's reckless behaviour, and its insistent identification of all criticism with anti-Semitism, is now the leading source of anti-Jewish sentiment in western Europe and much of Asia.  

If Israel's leaders have been able to ignore such developments it is because they have counted on the unquestioning support of the US - the one country where the claim that anti- Zionism equals anti-Semitism is still echoed by mainstream politicians and the media. This confidence in unconditional US approval may prove to be Israel's undoing. For something is changing in America. Israel and the US appear increasingly bound together in a symbiotic embrace, whereby the actions of each party exacerbate their common unpopularity abroad. But whereas Israel has no choice but to look to America, the US is a Great Power - and Great Powers have interests that eventually transcend the local obsessions of even the closest client states. It seems to me suggestive that the recent essay "The Israel Lobby" by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, published in March in the London Review of Books, provoked so much debate. It is true that, by their own account, the authors could not have published their indictment of the influence of the "Israel lobby" on US foreign policy in a major US-based journal. But the point is that 10 years ago they probably could not have published it at all. And while the ensuing debate generated more heat than light, it is of great significance.  

The fact is that the disastrous Iraq invasion and its aftermath have set in train a sea-change in America's foreign-policy debate. It is becoming clear to prominent thinkers across the political spectrum - from erstwhile neo-conservative interventionists such as Francis Fukuyama to hard-nosed realists such as Mr Mearsheimer - that in recent years the US has suffered a catastrophic loss of international influence and degradation of its image. There is much repair work ahead, above all in Washington's dealings with economically and strategically vital regions of the world. But this cannot succeed while US foreign policy is tied by an umbilical cord to the needs andinterests of one small Middle Eastern country of little relevance to America's long-term concerns - a country that is, in the words of the Mearsheimer/Walt essay, a strategic burden. That essay is thus an indication of the direction of debate in the US about its peculiar ties to Israel. Of course, it generated fierce criticism - and, just as they anticipated, the authors have been charged with anti-Semitism. But it is striking how few people now take that accusation seriously, so predictable has it become. This is bad for Jews as it means that genuine anti-Semitism may also cease to be taken seriously. But it is worse for Israel.  

From one perspective, Israel's future is bleak. Not for the first time, a Jewish state is on the vulnerable periphery of someone else's empire: wilfully blind to the danger that its indulgent excesses might ultimately push its imperial mentor beyond the point of irritation, and heedless of its own failure to make any other friends. Yet, modern Israel still has options. Precisely because the country is an object of such universal mistrust, a truly statesmanlike shift in its policies (dismantling of big settlements, opening unconditional negotiations with Palestinians and the like) could have disproportionately beneficial effects.  

Such a radical realignment of strategy would entail a difficult reappraisal of every illusion under which the country and its political elite have nestled. Israel would have to acknowledge that it no longer has any special claim on international sympathy or indulgence; that the US will not always be there; that colonies are always doomed unless you are willing to expel or exterminate the indigenous population.  

Other countries and their leaders have understood this: Charles de Gaulle saw that France's settlement in Algeria was disastrous for his country and, with outstanding political courage, withdrew. But when de Gaulle came to that realisation he was a mature statesman, aged nearly 70. Israel cannot afford to wait that long. The time has come for it to grow up.  

The writer is director of the Remarque Institute at New York University  


------------------------------------------- 

REPOST from yesterday...

Electronic Intifada

Crushed by Gate of Occupation

Sam Bahour writing from El-Bireh, Occupied Palestine, Live from Palestine , 24 May 2006 


You may also read the same article at the link below and leave a comment, please do:



-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Everything about this list:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/epalestine

To unsubscribe, send mail to:
epalestine-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net

To subscribe, send mail to:
epalestine-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

[ePalestine] Financial Times: Why Israel cannot always rely on America's helping hand

Dear friends,

For those that were not able to open the file attached to my previous post, please find the article here:  http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4738.shtml

The below article from the Financial Times is a clear analysis of the larger picture, assuming the US will start to represent its own interests in the post-Bush era. 

Rgds,
Sam

------------------------------------------------------------------

FT.com

Why Israel cannot always rely on America's helping hand 

By Tony Judt
Published: May 23 2006 03:00 | Last updated: May 23 2006 03:00
Financial Times

By the age of 58 a country - like a man - should have achieved a certain maturity. After nearly six decades of existence we know, for good and ill, who we are and how we appear to others, warts and all. And though we still harbour occasional illusions about ourselves, we know they are, for the most part, just illusions. In short, we are adults. 

But the state of Israel, which has just turned 58, remains curiously immature. The country's social transformations - and its many economic achievements - have not brought the political wisdom that usually accompanies age. Seen from outside, Israel still comports itself like an adolescent: confident of its uniqueness; certain that no one "understands"; quick to take offence, and to give it. Like many adolescents, Israel is convinced - and aggressively asserts - that it can do as it wishes; that its actions carry no consequences; that it is immortal. 

That, Israeli readers will say, is the prejudiced view of the outsider. What looks from abroad like a self-indulgent, wayward country is simply an independent little state doing what it has always done: protecting its interests in an inhospitable part of the globe. 

Why should embattled Israel even acknowledge foreign criticism, much less act on it? Because the world and its attitudes have changed. It is this change - largely unrecognised in Israel - to which I want to draw attention. Before 1967 Israel may have been tiny and embattled, but it was not typically hated: certainly not in the west. Most admirers (Jews and non-Jews) knew little about the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948. They preferred to see in the Jewish state the last incarnation of the 19th century idyll of agrarian socialism - or else a paragon of modernising energy, "making the desert bloom". 

I remember in the spring of 1967 how student opinion at Cambridge University was overwhelmingly pro-Israel before the Six-Day War - and how little attention was paid either to the Palestinians or to Israel's collusion with France and Britain in the disastrous 1956 Suez adventure. For a while these sentiments persisted. The pro-Palestinian enthusiasms of post- 1960s radical groups were offset by growing public acknowledgement of the Holocaust. Even the inauguration of illegal settlements and the invasion of Lebanon did not shift the international balance of opinion. 

But today everything is different. We can see, in retrospect, that Israel's victory in June 1967 and its occupation of the territories it conquered then have been the Jewish state's very own nakba: a moral and political catastrophe. Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza have magnified its shortcomings to a watching world. The routines of occupation and repression were once familiar only to an informed minority; today, computer terminals and satellite dishes put Israel's behaviour under daily global scrutiny. The result has been a complete transformation in the international view of Israel. 

The universal shorthand symbol for Israel, reproduced in political cartoons, is the Star of David emblazoned on a tank. Today the universal victims, the emblematic persecuted minority, are not Jews but Palestinians. This shift does little to advance the Palestinian case but it has redefined Israel forever. Israel's long-cultivated persecution mania no longer elicits sympathy. The country's national narrative of macho victimhood appears to many now as simply bizarre: a collective cognitive dysfunction. Israel, in the world's eyes, is a normal state; but one behaving in abnormal ways. As for the charge that criticism of Israel is implicitly anti- Semitic, this is in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling assertion: Israel's reckless behaviour, and its insistent identification of all criticism with anti-Semitism, is now the leading source of anti-Jewish sentiment in western Europe and much of Asia. 

If Israel's leaders have been able to ignore such developments it is because they have counted on the unquestioning support of the US - the one country where the claim that anti- Zionism equals anti-Semitism is still echoed by mainstream politicians and the media. This confidence in unconditional US approval may prove to be Israel's undoing. For something is changing in America. Israel and the US appear increasingly bound together in a symbiotic embrace, whereby the actions of each party exacerbate their common unpopularity abroad. But whereas Israel has no choice but to look to America, the US is a Great Power - and Great Powers have interests that eventually transcend the local obsessions of even the closest client states. It seems to me suggestive that the recent essay "The Israel Lobby" by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, published in March in the London Review of Books, provoked so much debate. It is true that, by their own account, the authors could not have published their indictment of the influence of the "Israel lobby" on US foreign policy in a major US-based journal. But the point is that 10 years ago they probably could not have published it at all. And while the ensuing debate generated more heat than light, it is of great significance. 

The fact is that the disastrous Iraq invasion and its aftermath have set in train a sea-change in America's foreign-policy debate. It is becoming clear to prominent thinkers across the political spectrum - from erstwhile neo-conservative interventionists such as Francis Fukuyama to hard-nosed realists such as Mr Mearsheimer - that in recent years the US has suffered a catastrophic loss of international influence and degradation of its image. There is much repair work ahead, above all in Washington's dealings with economically and strategically vital regions of the world. But this cannot succeed while US foreign policy is tied by an umbilical cord to the needs andinterests of one small Middle Eastern country of little relevance to America's long-term concerns - a country that is, in the words of the Mearsheimer/Walt essay, a strategic burden. That essay is thus an indication of the direction of debate in the US about its peculiar ties to Israel. Of course, it generated fierce criticism - and, just as they anticipated, the authors have been charged with anti-Semitism. But it is striking how few people now take that accusation seriously, so predictable has it become. This is bad for Jews as it means that genuine anti-Semitism may also cease to be taken seriously. But it is worse for Israel. 

From one perspective, Israel's future is bleak. Not for the first time, a Jewish state is on the vulnerable periphery of someone else's empire: wilfully blind to the danger that its indulgent excesses might ultimately push its imperial mentor beyond the point of irritation, and heedless of its own failure to make any other friends. Yet, modern Israel still has options. Precisely because the country is an object of such universal mistrust, a truly statesmanlike shift in its policies (dismantling of big settlements, opening unconditional negotiations with Palestinians and the like) could have disproportionately beneficial effects. 

Such a radical realignment of strategy would entail a difficult reappraisal of every illusion under which the country and its political elite have nestled. Israel would have to acknowledge that it no longer has any special claim on international sympathy or indulgence; that the US will not always be there; that colonies are always doomed unless you are willing to expel or exterminate the indigenous population. 

Other countries and their leaders have understood this: Charles de Gaulle saw that France's settlement in Algeria was disastrous for his country and, with outstanding political courage, withdrew. But when de Gaulle came to that realisation he was a mature statesman, aged nearly 70. Israel cannot afford to wait that long. The time has come for it to grow up. 

The writer is director of the Remarque Institute at New York University 

Find this article at:


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Everything about this list:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/epalestine

To unsubscribe, send mail to:
epalestine-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net

To subscribe, send mail to:
epalestine-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

[ePalestine] A Palestinian Prodigy at UC Berkeley

Visit the online article and see the video:


Berkeley Undergrad Sets Up Mini-Clinics

KGO By Carolyn Johnson 

May 22 - KGO - The commencement speaker for hundreds of students in the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley is a remarkable undergrad who came up with a concept that could revolutionize healthcare on a global level. He's already put his plan to work in Palestine. 

Daniel Zoughbie, Global Micro-Clinic founder: "As leaders we can break down the confining barriers of insularity and hatred and guide into others into the freedom found in service." 

For Daniel Zoughbie, giving the commencement address wraps up a remarkable career at UC Berkeley 

Ananya Roy, Ph.D., associate dean & chair of Urban Studies: "He's redefined what it means to do well academically which is his ability to combine academics with public service." 

Two years ago, Daniel came up with a concept to treat and prevent diabetes in Palestine. His grandmother died in Bethlehem from complications of the disease. 

Daniel Zoughbie, Global Micro-Clinic founder: "There were restrictions on movement, tense political situation, and as I wanted to think about how we provide health care in this situation, I wanted to deal with this issue of diabetes and provide some kind of health care delivery system in the developing world." 

His plan was to create mini clinics in people's homes or businesses, turning private spaces into public ones. 

He recruited volunteers in Palestine - doctors and nurses to educate the community about diabetes and about managing their own healthcare through what he named Micro-Clinics. 

Daniel Zoughbie, Global Micro-Clinic founder: "The Micro-Clinic is basically composed of three to six individuals and we give each Micro-Clinic a machine to share a glucose monitoring system." 

There are now 50 Micro-Clinics in and around Bethlehem and Daniel sees this as only the beginning. Berkeley's Division of International Studies is launching a global Micro-Clinic fellowship program based on Daniel's model. 

Ananya Roy, Ph.D., associate dean & chair of Urban Studies: "There's been interest in applying it to Afghanistan, particularly to post conflict societies, because partly what he's building is not just an infrastructure of healthcare, but an infrastructure of peace." 

Daniel Zoughbie, Global Micro-Clinic founder: "What I intend to do is establish these programs for students not just at Berkeley but at every major university around the world." 

Daniel heads to England's Oxford University in the Fall as a prestigious Marshall scholar where he hopes to establish a fellowship program there - young man already making a world of difference. 

For more information, visit http://microclinicproject.org 

Copyright 2006, ABC7/KGO-TV/DT. 


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Everything about this list:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/epalestine

To unsubscribe, send mail to:
epalestine-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net

To subscribe, send mail to:
epalestine-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

[ePalestine] UN-OCHA: Territorial Fragmentation of the West Bank / Humanitarian Briefing Notes



Territorial Fragmentation of the West Bank

Movement restrictions for Palestinians has worsened in the past six month. Increasingly the West Bank is being divided into smaller areas with movement between them controlled by checkpoints, roadblocks and permits. | May 2006 |



Humanitarian Briefing Notes

|  Protection of Civilians  |   Physical Protection |  Shelter & Property |  Natural Resources | Access and Movement of Civilians | Protection Issues | Checkpoints Appendix | 10 - 16 May 2006 




-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Everything about this list:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/epalestine

To unsubscribe, send mail to:
epalestine-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net

To subscribe, send mail to:
epalestine-subscribe@lists.riseup.net