Blog Post

More on AIPAC message - New talking points memo, text of senate sign-on letter

Lara Friedman — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 01:29:00 GMT

CLARIFICATION: Nothing in this post reflects secret, leaked, or internal AIPAC documents. The Senate letter was circulating widely by email among Senate staff as of late Friday afternoon. All the other documents referenced here are available for anyone to see on the AIPAC website (and links to them, on the AIPAC website, are provided).

As noted in today's Round-Up, AIPAC will be on the Hill next week lobbying members of Congress to pass "crippling" Iran sanctions and to sign on to letters to the Administration regarding US-Israel relations and the peace process.

The Senate version of that letter, being circulated by Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA), can now be read here; the Dear Colleague circulating with it can be read here. As expected, it is a carefully crafted, moderate-sounding letter -- an updated version of last year's Bayh-Risch letter. In brief, the letter (addressed to Secretary Clinton):

implies that the problem with the recent announcement of new Jerusalem settlement plans was a problem of timing, not substance, and that the construction itself is not a serious issue since it will take place sometime in the future ("We write to urge you to do everything possible to ensure that the recent tensions between the U.S. and Israel over the untimely announcement of future housing construction in East Jerusalem do not derail Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations or harm U.S.-Israel relations.")

asserts that the failure to re-start Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is entirely due to Palestinian intransigence and in no way due to Israeli actions ("Despite your best efforts, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have been frozen over the past year. Indeed, in a reversal of 16 years of policy, Palestinian leaders are refusing to enter into direct negotiations with Israel. Instead, they have put forward a growing list of unprecedented preconditions. By contrast, Israel's prime minister has stated categorically that he is eager to begin unconditional peace negotiations with the Palestinians."

implies that the Obama Administration should not publicly criticize Israel, even when Israel does things to publicly embarrass it ("We recognize that our government and the Government of Israel will not always agree on particular issues in the peace process. But such differences are best resolved amicably and in a manner that befits longstanding strategic allies."

The letter dovetails closely with AIPAC's new talking points memo on the topic, entitled "Close U.S.-Israel Ties Key to Forging Middle East Peace -- the memo goes beyond the Senate letter by asserting explicitly that "the United States and Israel should work out differences privately." The memo goes on to criticize the Obama Administration's reaction to the Biden Incident, and argue that such criticism against Israel is not only inappropriate but counterproductive:

"As in any relationship, there will be times of tension and disagreements. The best way for the United States and Israel to work through their differences is to communicate directly, privately and with an eye to the overall value of the relationship that they share. While the announcement regarding housing construction in Jerusalem made during Biden's recent trip to Israel was a deeply regrettable incident for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly apologized, the public nature and harsh wording of the criticism and demands placed on Israel by the administration are unlikely to serve to advance the peace process or efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. In fact, such public pressure could have the opposite effect. It further solidifies the Palestinian and Arab refusal to enter into direct talks with Israel, while they wait instead for the United States to press Israel to make concessions."

AIPAC has also posted a list (with hyperlinks) to Members of Congress who have made statement in the wake of the Biden Incident in Jerusalem - Statements by Members of Congress Reaffirming the U.S.-Israel Alliance.

AIPAC has also posted their talking points memo regarding making the case for final passage of "crippling" Iran sanctions and pressing for better enforcement of existing sanctions - Crippling Sanctions Needed to Prevent Nuclear Iran .

This article appeared originally on Americans for Peace Now

A Palestinian view of the role of Jerusalem in negotiations

Daoud Kuttab — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:58:00 GMT

This is not how the peace process was supposed to work. Architects of negotiations have forever talked about leaving difficult issues until last, and in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, nothing fits the bill of "difficult" as much as Jerusalem.

Israeli behavior towards the US has its own truism. You don't pick a fight in the beginning of negotiations and you certainly try not to embarrass those who are known to be among your best supporters in Washington.

But these are not normal times.

For Palestinians, the negotiating tactics have changed. Eighteen years on from the Oslo Agreement, Palestinians feel strongly that what is needed is a reversal of the process. Instead of the incremental step-by-step approach, Palestinians want to start this round with agreements on the borders of the Palestinian state. Once the borders are mutually decided upon, negotiations would focus on implementing the agreement - how long it would take, what stages, whether NATO forces will be involved, etc.

If such is the process, and since Palestinians accept the concept of an equitable land swap, the biggest question left is Jerusalem. And even in Jerusalem there is a concept that is acceptable to both parties. The parameters President Clinton set late in his second term establish the idea that Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem will be part of the Palestinian state and Jewish ones will be part of Israel.

With that concept as a target for talks, any attempts to move Jewish settlers or build in Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem is equivalent to turning the tables on the entire process.

Of course many observers feel that the most difficult of this difficult nut to crack is that one square kilometer in the walled parts of the old city of Jerusalem. For years, diplomats have been poring over ideas that will preserve the sanctity of the holy places, ensure the continuity of life for the area's inhabitants and make sure that this holiest of the holies is a beacon for peace, not for a new war.

Palestinians of all walks of life are united on the need for Jerusalem - including the Muslim and Christian holy places - to be part of the Palestinian state, with open, regular access for all. With the rest of the Palestinian areas totally detached from Jerusalem as a result of the 8ft wall, the defense of the city is left to its Arab residents as well as the support Palestinians who are Israeli citizens.

The battle for Jerusalem might have started even before the "proximity talks", and unlike the issue or refugees returning to their homeland, this issue has no wiggle room as far as Palestinians are concerned.

Poll: Labor will lose big in next Israeli election

Gregg Carlstrom — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:53:00 GMT

Yedioth Ahronoth reports on a new political poll this morning and concludes that the Likud party in Israel is losing support. But the poll numbers don't quite support that conclusion.

The survey asked voters who they would choose in a Knesset election held today. Kadima fared the best: It would increase its representation from 28 seats to 32. That would place Tzipi Livni's party three seats ahead of Likud.

Except... Likud also picked up seats: Its representation grew from 27 to 29 MKs.

Doesn't sound like Likud is losing popularity, right? Here's what's actually happening: Respondents panned Ehud Barak's Labor party; it would receive just 8 seats in this mock election, down from the 13 it currently holds. Most of those votes transfer to Kadima.

Labor's falling support is no surprise. The party reluctantly joined Netanyahu's coalition last year after the prime minister pledged to restart peace talks with the Palestinians. Those talks are still stalled, of course, and Labor's voice within the coalition is increasingly marginalized (exactly what many Labor members predicted).

Kadima, on the other hand, has positioned itself as a counterweight to Netanyahu's coalition. So it's not surprising to see Labor voters shift to Livni's party.

64 percent of respondents said the current government "does not represent their wishes," so there's clearly a desire for a new coalition. But the frustration seems mostly directed at the ultra-right-wing parties in the coalition -- Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas, for example -- and not at Likud.

One other note: Let's say these results become a reality in the next Israeli coalition. Could Kadima get to the 60 MKs it needs to form a government? Probably not. These are the full results of the poll (עברית). If Kadima joined with its natural coalition partners -- Labor, Meretz, and the Arab parties -- it would only have 58 seats. The right-wing parties (Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu, Shas, United Torah Judaism, National Union, Habayit Hayehudi) would still control a narrow majority of the Knesset.

This article was appeared on the Majlis

…to secure justice and fair treatment to all

Steve Feldman — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:41:00 GMT

At the top of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) website is the motto, "To Stop the defamation of the Jewish people... to secure justice and fair treatment for all." This is a motto and an organization to be proud of. But I think the ADL is making a big mistake in its March 11 statement that calls the Presbyterian Church USA's Middle East Study Committee report "Breaking Down the Walls" an "offensive attack on Judaism and Israel."

The ADL claims that the Church committee's report legitimizes doubts about Israel's right to exist. While the report did speak out fervently and unequivocally for Israel's right to exist, it is understandable that the good people at the ADL who read the report-people whose motto is in part "to secure justice and fair treatment for all"- would themselves find cause for doubt, considering the extent to which the report openly and honestly acknowledges the expulsions of Palestinian men, women and children from their homes and villages in 1948 and the continued violence done to these good people.

The ADL statement says that the Presbyterian committee report attacks a fundamental aspect of Jewish identity of God's promise of the land. It must be difficult for the folks at the ADL to reconcile this promise with their motto, "to secure justice and fair treatment for all." How does one reconcile justice and fair treatment for all with the idea that it is a fundamental aspect of Jewish identity to take for Jews the land on which 700,000 Christian and Muslim men, women and children were already living?

The ADL has a strong record of support for human rights, and not just for Jews.That's because a truly fundamental aspect of Jewish identity is "justice and fair treatment for all"; taking the land that other people were already living on is definitely not a fundamental element of our Jewish faith. Living in peace with others in the land of Israel, yes; forcing out others, no.The Presbyterian Church is just reminding the ADL and the rest of us that what was done and what continues to be done to Palestinian families is not consistent with our cherished Jewish principles.

Dr. Steven Feldman is author of Compartments: How the Brightest, Best Trained, and Most Caring People Can Make Judgments That are Completely and Utterly Wrong (www.compartmentsbook.com and available at amazon.com and bn.com). He is also author of A Jewish American's Evolving View of Israel

(http://www.acjna.org/acjna/articles_detail.aspx?id=529).

A Muslim store owner changes another man`s life by the grace of god

Ali Dahmash — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:21:00 GMT

An example of little things we can do to change the ugly stereotypes of Muslims in the West. Imagine if more stories were shown across US media outlets. Imagine if we had more voices of moderate Arabs and Muslims expressing thier views on TV and they are alot by the way. Things would ave been different.

I suggest to start with yourself and see how you can make a difference in any way or another.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Islam and Muslims on Judaism and Jews

Mustafa Abu Sway — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:49:00 GMT

JERUSALEM - Despite being in a protracted political conflict over the Holy Land that began around the advent of Zionism more than a century ago, Jews and Muslims have common historical roots, as well as theological commonalities.

Our common roots go beyond the Abrahamic tribal constructs. Abraham himself is considered in the Qur'an as the archetypal monotheist and a true submitter to the will of God, being "neither Jew, nor Christian" (Qur'an, 3:67). However, simple commonalities do not offer in and of themselves a way forward in interfaith dialogue. Abraham should not be turned into a comfort zone or a euphemism for avoiding issues of injustice amongst his third-millennial grandchildren.

The Prophet Moses and the Children of Israel form one of the major stories in the Qur'an. It is imperative that a Muslim believes in his prophecy and the revealed Torah, in as much as it is imperative to believe in Jesus Christ and the revealed Gospel (Injeel in Arabic). Yet, according to the Qur'an, the versions of the Torah and Gospel that exist today suffer from the vagaries of transmission and human editing, having been corrupted by scribes who altered the original text.

According to the Qur'an, Jews, Christians and Muslims share the history of revelation and have common prophets and revealed messages. Moreover, all pre-Islamic revelations had the same monotheistic message, with each prophet calling his people to only worship God without worshipping anyone or anything else along with Him. The law, however, while overlapping in certain areas, differed by design: "...To each of you we prescribed a law and a method" (Qur'an, 5:48).

Keeping the Sabbath is an example of a legal issue where there are differences amongst Jews and Muslims. The Qur'an says that the Sabbath was only required of Prophet Moses' followers, meaning that it is not required of Muslims. As for the Jews who violated the Sabbath, the condemnation of this group in the Qur'an can be read as a reflection of the sanctity of the Sabbath and as an example of contextualised criticism.

There were other actions that the Qur'an condemned such as creating and worshipping the golden calf. This historical event was considered intolerable by the prophets.

Islam softens the otherness of Jews and Christians qua "People of the Book", and entrenches their rights in the Qur'an and the traditions of the Prophet. Respecting the right of the Jew and Christian to freedom of religion is an Islamic imperative (Qur'an, 2:256).
The Qur'an made it lawful for Muslims to associate with Jews (also Christians), sharing a meal, doing business with them or even marrying their daughters.

Historically, Jews, like Moses Maimonides, contributed to Islamic civilisation as philosophers and scientists. They also served in public offices in the Islamic state. Salah El-Din Al-Ayyubi appointed a Jew to serve as a high ranking minister (vizier) in his government.

Long before this, the Prophet reached out to the Jews of Medina. One of the most important historical moments between Jews and Muslims came immediately after the migration of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina. In what became known as the constitution of Medina, the Sira books (i.e. biographies of the Prophet) state that the Prophet concluded a covenant with the Jewish tribes of the city and its surroundings, the first being the "Jewish tribe of Banu 'Awf forming one Ummah with the Muslims".

Another historical moment occurred during the time of Umar Ibn Al-Khattab, the second caliph, who, according to the Cairo Jewish Geniza manuscripts, brought the Jews back to Jerusalem after the year 638 CE. This is very significant as it reflects a paradigm of Convivencia between Jews and Muslims as well as between Christians and Muslims in the heart of this holy city, in addition to Andalusia and other places.

It is not possible to fully represent 1,400 years of shared history, which includes beautiful and painful moments for both sides. Nevertheless, I would like to conclude by reflecting on the current conflict. Coming from a Palestinian Jerusalemite family and living under occupation since 1967, I comprehend the moral necessity of ending the Israeli occupation and doing justice to the Palestinians who have been wronged since 1948. However, the call for justice should never translate into creating or adopting Judeophobic narratives such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, nor should they result in acts of injustice towards Jews. This goes against Islam.

I recognise that Jews suffered in Europe and that they needed a safe haven. I am glad to say that there was never an inquisition in the Islamic world, as in a post-Islamic Andalusia (for which both Jews and Muslims suffered). Regardless of the stereotypes, I'm proud to say, there was never a kristallnacht in the Islamic world.

Cross posted from the Common Ground News Service (CGNews)

The Jewish-Islamic heritage and its contemporary significance

Rabbi Naftali Rothenberg — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:43:00 GMT

HAR ADAR, Israel - The link between Judaism and Islam is profound and is at the root of both religious cultures. Islam sanctified and interpreted sacred Jewish texts and incorporated principles from Jewish law (Halakha) and Rabbinical sources into Islamic law (Sharia). Judaism owes Islam a huge debt for the emergence of the Jewish philosophical oeuvre of the Middle Ages. This literature, which emerged from a profound dialogue with Islam and was influenced by Islamic thinkers, includes amongst others, the writings of Rabbi Saadia Gaon, Maimonides, Rabbi Bachaya Ibn Pakuda and Rabbi Yehuda Halevy and has been a foundation stone of Jewish culture to the present day.

One can talk about a common Jewish-Islamic heritage that existed since the beginning of Islam to modern times. In the last 100 years, however, Jewish-Muslim heritage has been silenced. This is not, as some may be inclined to assume, primarily due to the Arab-Jewish conflict, but to the rise and supremacy of the hegemonic European discourse and the emphasis on the "Jewish-Christian" heritage within it.

What is the significance of the Jewish-Islamic heritage in our times? Is it possible to renew an intercultural dialogue on the basis of this heritage?

The Jewish-Islamic tradition emerged from the fertile ground of a political and cultural reality that does not exist today and we, as Jews, have no reason to miss it. The Jews are no longer a minority in an Islamic empire and therefore attempts to revive this tradition are not practical. That said, it is sensible and significant to acknowledge its existence. It is important to internalise, for example, the extent to which theological and philosophical Muslim texts like the Mu'tazila specifically, and the Kalam, were significant to Rabbi Saadia Gaon and other Jewish thinkers who followed. It is important to note how Maimonides praises the writings of al-Farabi, Ibn Baja and Ibn Roshd; how Rabbi Yehuda Halevy adopted the principle of the "mystical taste" from the ideas of al-Ghazali and how the Sufi Muslim doctrine of the "objectives of the organs and the hearts" became the basis for the book "Guide to the Duties of the Heart" by our Rabbi Bachaya Ibn Pakuda.

These writings of the rabbis and many others like them are studied all the time in various Jewish frameworks. Here we have an excellent didactic opportunity to use existing educational frameworks-both in the formal and informal education systems-to reach a wide Jewish public including many young people. It is the obligation of every teacher and educator to emphasise the Arabic sources, particularly when the writers themselves, like Maimonides, emphasised this fact. Many people are under the misperception that there are great gaps or even a clash between Judaism and Islam. Underlining the importance of Islamic sources in the works of great Jewish thinkers and entrenching an awareness of the profound dialogue that has taken place between the two religions can help correct this erroneous assumption.

This educational process would be an internal Jewish endeavour and could carry important implications. First and foremost, it could ensconce the view that the political war between Arabs and Jews is not a faith war and that the two religions must encourage and prepare both sides to think positively about peace. It could promote an understanding that Islam and Judaism can co-exist and that any generalisation distorts the picture.

Despite being primarily an internal Jewish endeavour, this process could have a tangible effect on Muslim-Jewish relations. The act of representing Islamic culture not as the culture of the enemy could empower the groups within Islam who believe in the necessity and possibility of cultural coexistence between Judaism and Islam and between the bearers of both cultures.

It is possible to renew intercultural dialogue between Jews and Muslims on the basis of Jewish-Islamic heritage. The more both Jews and Muslims are confident in themselves and at peace with their own heritage the more we can hope to attain a high level of dialogue. In this way we can hope to build a broad public infrastructure that could one day become a basis for a sustainable peace.

Cross posted from the Common Ground News Service (CGNews)

Israel must talk to Hamas before it’s too late

David Zonsheine — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:33:00 GMT

TEL AVIV - Israel must talk to Hamas. Not secretly. Not indirectly. Not for a politician to rehabilitate himself on the way to taking over the leadership of a party, as Kadima's Shaul Mofaz tried to do, but openly and seriously. Just as the United States regularly talks to the Israeli opposition, Israel should maintain a dialogue with the Palestinian opposition. The dialogue should cover all core issues including a final settlement.

It's not a simple matter, of course. There is agreement across the political spectrum to reduce the debate to a demonisation of Hamas, dwelling on the organisation's external attributes as perceived by Israel-religious, extremist and desiring all the territory between the river and the sea. This debate does not focus on the Israeli interest. We should be asking ourselves the following questions: Is it worthwhile to speak with Hamas? What are our reasons for not talking to them? Is boycotting them linked to an erroneous preconception?

The full text of this article can be found at: http://www.haaretz.com.

This article was appeared on the Common Ground News Service (CGNews)

A free people in our land

Gershon Baskin — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:22:00 GMT

JERUSALEM - It was never really about the timing. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's apology to US Vice President Joseph Biden enabled the Tel Aviv University speech to conclude the visit on an up note. The ice-cold water from Washington came only after the prime minister thought that he had successfully passed through the storm.

The current government has excelled at putting the country on a collision course with the rest of the world. Unfortunately, the government and the media are focusing attention on the relationship with the US and completely missing the real point of our predicament. It is not about our relationship with Washington; it is about our existence in the region and our relationship with our direct neighbours. It is time for the Israeli public to wake up from the hibernation of a long spring of calm and comfort. The hot summer is approaching and with it disaster.

The country needs to make a choice; there is no escape from making tough decisions. The clock is ticking and soon the choice will be made for us, if we don't decide on our own. The "status quo" of business as usual, a sense of personal security and the illusion that we can keep the territories and make peace with our neighbours is about to end.

Since the signing of the Oslo agreement in 1993 the Jewish population living over the Green Line has increased by 300 percent. Even as Netanyahu repeats the "two states for two peoples" mantra, we continue to build more housing units over the Green Line. The so-called building freeze is no more than an exercise in self-delusion. The binational reality of life over the Green Line is apparent to anyone who crosses it.

The Palestinian leadership remains firmly committed to the two-state solution, but it too knows that the chances of partition based on the Green Line are rapidly fading away. Yes, the Gaza disengagement proved that settlements can be removed, but Israel is so deeply entrenched over the Green Line that a vision of peace based on an independent Palestinian state on those territories seems virtually impossible.

The country has apparently made its choice-it prefers territories to peace. By our own hands, we are putting an end to the Zionist enterprise. A people that occupies another and denies it self-determination, liberation and freedom cannot be a free people in its lands.

The average Palestinian and more so the intellectuals are voicing a new understanding: There is no longer a chance to establish an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza with east Jerusalem as its capital. A new strategy is developing and Israelis should be worried about what this strategy will mean for them.

Phase one of the strategy will be what is already being termed a "white intifada". This is a strategy for massive civil disobedience and a refusal to cooperate with the occupation. This strategy is based on non-violent confrontation with the occupation authorities. We have seen evidence of this in Bil'in, Ni'lin, Budrus, Masara and other places that are so far unfamiliar to Israeli consciousness. The Palestinian Authority is actively advancing the boycott of settlement products and will soon encourage Palestinian workers to stop working in settlements.

The challenge will be to stick to non-violence and to fine-tune their message. The political purpose of the struggle will be to give the two-state solution a final chance. The Palestinians will seek to gain international support as they will capture the higher moral ground. The world will see images of IDF soldiers shooting at unarmed crowds, including women and children, in points of confrontation at roadblocks and checkpoints, and around settlements.

Palestinians will design symbolic acts of removing roadblocks, building in Area C controlled by Israel, setting up roadblocks on settlement roads to stop and check Israeli drivers and more. Thousands will be arrested, many shot and possibly killed. Every use of force against Palestinian defiance will result in increasing support for them around the world and the continued rapid deterioration of support for Israel.

If the strategy of non-violent confrontation fails, if the price is too high to pay or if, God forbid, it turns to violence, the Palestinian national movement will drop the strategy of seeking an independent state and will call openly for full democracy within Israel-one person, one vote. This strategy will eventually be embraced by the international community as the growing delegitimising of Israel gains strength.

This year there were 40 university campuses around the world taking part in the "Israel Apartheid Week" campaign; next year it might be 400 or more. Once the Palestinians adopt the strategy of "democracy" as their solution, they cannot lose. It will only be a matter of time before the world treats Israel like it treated the last white government of South Africa.

Most of the world, and certainly the entire Arab world, has never really comprehended that the State of Israel is a nation-state of the Jewish people. Most of the world thinks of Jews as a religion and not a people. The opportunity to support a "democratic" solution to the conflict will be warmly embraced and supported because it makes more sense than partition, which gives the Palestinians only 22 percent of historic Palestine.

Israel will lose the battle. There is no longer a way to prevent the Palestinians from becoming a free people in their land. The only way to ensure that the Jewish people will remain a free people in our land is by making the decision to end its occupation over the Palestinian people. All settlement building must end now, not because of our relationship with the US but because we cannot advance peace until we do so. If we want to continue to build in those areas that will eventually be annexed to Israel, we must first negotiate an agreed border and territorial swaps.

The days of unilateralism are numbered. Israel will not be able to annex more than 3 percent of the West Bank, which would accommodate some 80 percent of the settlers. There simply is not more than that in equal territory to swap. Jerusalem must become a shared capital-if we don't share it, we will surely lose it as the eternal capital of the Jewish people.

The realities of a need for an immediate course change are so unambiguous that without it our survival as a Jewish and democratic state is sure to end.

This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews)

Middle East peace efforts: lessons from healthcare reform

Amjad Atallah — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:15:00 GMT

WASHINGTON, DC - It took a year of trying for President Obama to persuade Israelis and Palestinians to enter into "proximity talks" to resolve issues standing in the way of a final peace plan. But as we learned from the stunning announcement this week-during Vice President Joe Biden's visit to the region-that Israel had approved 112 new settlement units in the West Bank and 1,600 new settlement units in East Jerusalem, there is a lot that can go wrong.

Assuming the Israeli announcement doesn't derail the process before it gets underway, the Obama administration will need to move decisively. And in doing so, it should keep in mind three valuable lessons from the fight for healthcare reform.

The first is the importance of maintaining ownership. The administration made clear that getting affordable healthcare to all Americans was a top priority. But it then farmed out the details to legislators, who spent a year making a hash of things.

Similarly, James L. Jones, Obama's national security advisor, has made it clear that the Israeli-Arab conflict is a top priority for US national security interests in the Middle East. And it should be. Nothing would help us more in every theatre of operations than a US-engineered resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In contrast to that assessment, however, other US officials-including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton-have said that although the United States wants an agreement, "we can't want this more than the parties". But, in fact, the US may want an agreement more than this particular Israeli government.

Israel's Likud leadership may have agreed to resume talks, but their actions seem designed to ensure failure. In addition to approving new settlements, Israeli officials have signalled that they want to reopen issues that have already been resolved in previous talks-such as where borders should be drawn-rather than taking up where things last broke off, as called for by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Tzipi Livni, leader of Israel's Kadima party.

This is oddly similar to the Republican demand that Congress go back to the beginning on healthcare in the wake of Scott Brown's election to the Senate. Revisiting issues that have already been settled is not part of an honest attempt to reach an agreement, but rather an effort to run out the clock on this president.

The administration must lay down the parameters for talks and then drive the parties to discuss areas of greatest agreement. If the parties can't ultimately agree on all issues, the United States should marshal international support for proposals that can be endorsed by the UN Security Council.

A second pertinent lesson from the healthcare process is the need to act quickly. Healthcare reform efforts have dragged on so long that opponents have had time to mount one hyperbolic attack after another. Similarly, a long negotiation process on Middle East peace would allow spoilers to mount attacks that could doom an agreement.

The Arab League, which provided Abbas the cover he needed to agree to the peace talks, has threatened to pull its support for the process in the wake of Israel's settlement announcement. Assuming the league does stay engaged, it has called for a four-month deadline for concluding the talks, which would mean they would end shortly before Israel terminates its self-proclaimed moratorium on settlement construction. Although the moratorium is rife with exceptions-as this week's announcement showed-Palestinians assume Israel will launch into an even greater frenzy of construction on Palestinian land in September.

This gives the United States precious little time to get to an agreement. But the good news is that many difficult issues have already been negotiated. The indispensable ingredient now is American political will to see the process concluded with a measure of real justice for Palestinians and security for Israelis.

The Bosnian-Croatian-Yugoslavian talks lasted years while the international community playacted at being an "honest broker". When the United States finally took charge, ramming through an agreement-even an imperfect one-peace was achieved.

A final lesson of healthcare is the need to sell the public on the process. Obama has finally taken to the "bully pulpit" to explain to Americans why the healthcare reform bill needs to be passed now-even if it is imperfect.

Israeli-Arab peace is an over-riding American national security objective, but it is also a hot-button issue domestically. Those who think Israel's borders are set by divine fiat probably can't be won over. But they are not the majority, and those who are worried about Israel's security can be convinced of the need to move forward. The majority of American Jews (including the 78 percent who voted for Obama), and the majority of American Muslims, American Christians and American Arabs all agree with the president's reading of this conflict. But the president needs to energize them to be his support network as he presses for an agreement.

This conflict remains an impediment to America's interests in the Middle East. We have no choice but to engage fully in ending it.

This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews)

The week that was, and the week yet to come: Testing Obama's mettle

James Zogby — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 17:54:00 GMT

This coming week will tell us a great deal about the ability of President Obama to be a strong leader and an honest broker in Middle East peacemaking.

With the President having postponed his Asia visit in order to be on hand for conclusion of Congress' year long deliberations on health care reform, he will now be in Washington during AIPAC's annual policy conference and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to the US. With both health care and Middle East peace high on the President's agenda, all eyes will be on how the White House performs on both fronts.

Should he succeed in moving enough hesitant liberal and conservative members of his own party to accept compromises and vote for health care reform, the President will have demonstrated that he has the resolve to fight and win tough battles against powerful lobbies and hardened partisan opposition. Before attention shifts to the next domestic challenge, whether that be comprehensive immigration reform or a climate/energy bill, both of which involve taking on other powerful lobbies, the White House will have to face another tough issue knocking on its front door.

AIPAC is already gearing up to take on or take down this President who had the temerity to condemn Israel's settlement plans in Jerusalem. We've seen past Administrations confront Israeli obstructionism. George H.W. Bush did it, and in subtle but clear ways, Bill Clinton did too. But the language used by this Administration in the past week has been unprecedented and remarkably tough. Vice President Biden "condemned", Secretary of State Clinton deemed Israel's behavior "insulting to the United States" and General Petraeus went further stating that Israel's actions put American lives and prestige at risk. Then, at weeks end, with Secretary of State Clinton participating, the Quartet issued the strongest statement yet reaffirming that East Jerusalem is occupied territory and condemning Israeli construction plans.

Equally remarkable has been the muted response from Congress. Except for a predictable few and some partisan shots from Senator John McCain, his ally Senator Joseph Lieberman and Congressman Eric Cantor, the Republican Whip, key leadership in both Houses of Congress have kept their silence.

But this most probably won't last for long. With AIPAC in town for their annual gathering, many Members of Congress running for reelection in November will in all likelihood make their required appearances to pay homage and express their "shock and dismay" at the Administration's treatment of Israel. The entire affair will no doubt be orchestrated as a pro-Netanyahu pep rally, with an unmistakable anti-Obama undercurrent, all of which will only serve to demonstrate just how out of touch with American Jewish and Israeli opinion the famed and still powerful lobby has become. A recent poll in Israel shows 69% of Israelis saying they believe President Obama is "even-handed" and a majority expressing their displeasure with Netanyahu's leadership.

The big test for the White House will come when Clinton and Netanyahu meet on Monday, and Netanyahu and the President meet on Tuesday. Expect talk about the enduring and unshakable relationship. But with all that out of the way, close attention should be paid to whether or not the Administration backs away from their demands on Israeli behavior. A White House melt down would doom the prospects for peace and would, as per the astute analysis of Petraeus, do grave damage to U.S. interests in the Arab World and beyond.

There are unconfirmed reports that Netanyahu may blink "and back down", but this may be mere game playing from the Israeli Prime Minister. In any case, we'll know soon enough.

Far from being the pragmatist some have claimed him to be, Netanyahu is an ideologue - a wily maneuvering ideologue - always pushing and always looking for an escape hatch. From the beginning he irritated the Obama team, but it has been his recent aggressiveness that brought them to the breaking point. Having bigger regional issues at stake in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and continuing effort to combat extremism, the White House could not tolerate Netanyahu's most recent insult and were forced to respond.

Eager to begin talks, proximity or otherwise, the US Administration got the Palestinians and the Arab League to swallow a bitter pill, dropping their demand for preconditioning the talks on a total settlement freeze. But Netanyahu upended the entire affair with a series of announcements proclaiming Israel's rights in Hebron, Bethlehem, the Jordan Valley and provocative actions in Jerusalem that would have rendered talks moot.

This is why the White House acted and why they dare not back down. To do so and create a replay of last fall when the Administration appeared to submit to Netanyahu's game playing is a problem a White House spokesman said they are keen to avoid.

There are those who question this president's mettle. If he wins on health care, and stands up to Netanyahu Obama will have shown that he is well prepared to lead in the battles yet to come. It will all play out for better or worse this week.

This article appeared originally on Huffington Post

America's "houdini recovery" under IMF-type austerity

Stephen Lendman — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 06:21:00 GMT

It's what economist David Rosenberg calls recovery given plenty of supportive evidence, including:

-- over five million homeowners behind on their mortgage payments;

-- at record levels, foreclosures are alarmingly high; moreover, "the foreclosure pipeline is enormous;"

-- "housing, the quintessential leading indicator," turning lower again in starts, sales and prices;

-- instead of a normal 5 - 6 months home supply, the market has a 21 month overhang, including shadow inventory from the foreclosure pipeline;

-- mortgage applications for new home purchases down 13.9% on top of last year's 29.4%;

-- over six million Americans unemployed for at least six months, "a record 40% of the ranks of the joblessness;"

-- over 11 million full-time jobs lost since late 2007, and well over four and a half million since Obama took office, despite pledging to create them;

-- millions of jobs lost despite massive economic stimulus, and when it slows, watch out;

-- a federal deficit over 10% of GDP, twice the 1930s ratio;

--private capital growing at its slowest rate in nearly two decades;

-- 30% of manufacturing capacity idle;

-- 19 million vacant residential housing units - about 15% of the total;

-- one in six Americans unemployed or underemployed;

-- the adult male employment-to-population ratio at a record low 67% compared to 73% when the recession began;

-- at this stage of the economic cycle (two and a half years after Fed easing began), employment typically expands at least 150,000 per month; instead, it's still contracting, the level is 8.4 million lower than before the recession began, and the economy is 12 million jobs shy of full employment, a gap that will take years of sustainable growth to close;

-- commercial real estate values down 30% in the past year and falling;

-- the average American worker $100,000 poorer (including loss of home equity), even with the stock market rally;

-- bank credit contracting at an unprecedented 15% annual rate this year "as lenders sit on a record $1.3 trillion in cash;"

-- collapsed commercial and industrial loans;

-- Falling Gross Domestic Income, approaching an annualized minus 4% compared to the 1982 recessionary low of plus 4% and 2001 low of plus 2%; "the discrepancy between the income and spending accounts has never been so wide as" today; and

-- unit labor costs down 4.7% in the past year, meaning workers earn and spend less.

Conclusion - "the era of 'green shoots' is officially dead." Now you see them, now you don't because they never were there in the first place.

A recent issue of the Economist magazine asked "Why Is the recovery jobless? Maybe because it isn't a recovery," with no lack of supportive evidence. "In February, for the twenty-fifth time in 26 months, the American economy shed jobs," and beneath the surface it's much worse.

The official 9.7% headline number (so-called U-3; U-6, including discouraged workers, is 16.8%) obscures the true figure, what economist John Williams calculates at 21.6%, minus the manipulated deception. The Economist concludes that "the American economy simply hasn't been doing as well as the output figures have suggested."

Take GDP, for example. Rosenberg explains that Q 4's 5.9% growth "came in two non-recurring items - inventories and capital spending (the former a temporary alignment of stocks with sales and the latter a late-year rush to take advantage of some tax goodies)."

Those aside, the economy slowed to less than 1%, may be revised lower, and the two headline figures won't likely repeat, given a wealth of depressing data, including retail sales. The headline February 0.3% (0.8% minus autos) rise beat an expected 0.2% decline.

However, the raw data paints a different picture - minus 1.6% month-over-month in February (a month when rises usually occur) or four times as bad as the norm, and worst February in 12 years.

This (says Rosenberg) in spite of "the greatest stimulus experience in seven decades, and retail sales are still down 5% from the pre-recession peak and on a per capita basis 8%." They're lower than in January 2006 despite a 4.3% larger population, and adjusted for inflation, they're down to 1996 levels on a per capita basis.

Some recovery, and little wonder the latest Conference Board consumer confidence survey showed only 6.2% of the public thinks business conditions are good - a record low.

As a result, several presidential tracking polls have Obama at from 44 - 49%, down from 68% in January 2009, and for Congress it's worse at around about 30%. If conditions worsen, expect further erosion, and if an economic storm erupts, they may crash.

Money Creation Madness

Through September 2008, it took the Fed nearly 14 years to double bank reserves. Bernanke did it again in less than four months, swapping good assets for bad ones, bank held toxic junk, but only a small fraction of their total holdings, so the big ones remain insolvent.

Bailouts and massive borrowing are crowding out the private sector, making it hard to impossible for most businesses and consumers to borrow. In his March 15 commentary titled, "The Great Credit Squeeze," financial expert and investor safety advocate Martin Weiss explains the dangers:

-- total government borrowing (federal, state and local) at an annual pace of over $1 trillion; while

-- businesses reduced existing debts at a near $1.1 trillion annual rate; and

-- consumers virtually shut out entirely from credit markets "cut(ting) their existing mortgages at the annual rate of $365.1 billion and their consumer credit at the rate of $145.3 billion," totaling an annualized $510.4 billion cutback.

Confirming the ongoing record bank credit contraction, "credit (overall) is actually being sucked out of the consumer and corporate economy at a torrid pace." The real economy is starved because of massive government borrowing fueling a potential sovereign debt crisis like in Iceland, Greece, and Eastern Europe, and threatening Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Spain, the UK, and America.

Author Niall Ferguson sees three possible Greek outcomes, potentially affecting all heavily indebted countries:

-- "one of the most excruciating fiscal squeezes in modern European history;

--outright default; (or)

-- some kind of bailout," but he omitted the one chosen as a long-term fix - the imposition of IMF austerity, including deficit reduction through:

-- large government layoffs;

-- a public sector 10% wage cut, including a 30% reduction in salary entitlements;

-- a 20% cut in civil service bonuses;

-- freezing pensions;

-- a two-year increase in the average retirement age;

-- increasing the current 19% value added tax to 21%;

-- higher fuel, alcohol, tobacco, and luxury goods taxes; and it's only the beginning with more painful measures to come.

IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard warns that high-debt countries like Greece face budget squeezes for a decade or two, requiring "painful sacrifices". Of concern is that spreading Greek troubles threaten a very dicey situation in Europe, America, and elsewhere - the reason David Rosenberg calls today's crisis:

"a depression because (post-WW II) recessions were merely small backward steps in an inventory cycle but in the context of expanding credit. Whereas now, we are in a prolonged period of credit contraction, especially as it relates to households and small businesses."

It's why financial expert Bob Chapman says America's financial system "is on the edge of default," and public anger is growing, a recent poll showing "92% of those surveyed wanted to unseat their current representative or Senator....and only 21% believe that government enjoyed the consent of the governed."

Given bipartisan criminality, a president beholden to power, a Congress long ago bought and paid for, and the notion of a government of, by and for the people ludicrous, but not funny given growing unaddressed human desperation - about to worsen when the full Obama package becomes law, including worsening a dysfunctional healthcare system, destroying public education, putting the Fed (Wall Street) in charge of financial reform and consumer protection, and imposing IMF-style austerity.

IMF Austerity Arriving in America

It's not coming. It's here, being incrementally rolled out, including painful structural adjustments - some legislated, others unavoidable like the possibility suggested in Jonathan Laing's March 15 Bloomberg.com article, titled "The $2 Trillion Hole" in public-employee retirement plans.

About 80% of them are defined benefit plans, meaning monthly payments are guaranteed, but can insolvent states and municipalities comply, especially given years of under-funding, fewer contributing workers at lower pay, and continuing large budget cuts, including mass layoffs and reduced benefits making a bad situation worse.

Enough for University of Chicago finance professor Robert Novy-Marx and Northwestern University's Joshua Rauh to estimate a $3 trillion + pension funding gap for states alone, and if economic conditions worsen, who knows how much higher, or if millions of retirees will, in fact, get promised benefits, despite guarantees and taxpayers hit for the shortfall.

Corporations renege on Defined Benefit Pension Plans (DBPP) by cutting benefits, switching to Defined Contribution Pension Plans (DCPP), or going bankrupt and eliminating them entirely with the help of obliging courts. So why not states and municipalities, especially given to how close to the edge they are, forcing once unthinkable actions with sweeping consequences.

What's happening regionally and locally arrived in America from reckless policies creating unsustainable rising debt levels - "debt peonage" for economist Michael Hudson that "can't be repaid." It's the core problem, and no evidence shows "countries simply grow out of their debts," according to University of Maryland Professor Carmen Reinhart and Harvard's Kenneth Rogoff, or borrow their way out for Michael Hudson. When the going gets tough, some default, others inflate, but most rely on spending cuts and higher taxes, making people pay for political indiscretions - make that crimes.

Washington may impose higher taxes and devalue the dollar, but mostly expect benefit cuts, the idea being to end core ones including Medicare, Social Security, eventually Medicaid, plus others millions rely on but won't get if tough measures are enacted. Expect them. Some are here. Others are coming through the same structural adjustments imposed on developing countries and just as painful and destructive.

Definitions

One calls structural adjustment programs (SAPs) "a series of economic policies designed to reduce the role of government," replacing its obligations with market incentives - in other words, privatize.

BusinessDictionary.com calls it "change effected in the basic framework of an economy by the impact of policy reforms, such as 'liberalization' of the economy by reducing protectionism and state intervention" - in other words, what government does, business does better so let it.

It's pure Chicago School fundamentalism, Milton Friedman (1912 - 2006) its leading advocate for public wealth in private hands, unrestrained accumulation of profits, abolition of corporate taxes, and social services curtailed or ended. He called economic freedom an end to itself; opposed minimum wages, unions and an egalitarian society; supported a flat tax for the rich; wanted Social Security and Medicare abolished; believed private schools should replace public ones; wanted everyone to be on their own "free to choose;" and called profit-making the essence of democracy - a dark world view harmful to the majority and devastating to the poor and disadvantaged, characterized by SAP harshness.

They benefit capital, not people, and the more severe, the greater the harm. They're a package of wage and benefit cuts, mass layoffs, privatization of government services, deregulation, de-unionization, currency devaluation, free capital flows, market-based pricing, free (not fair) trade, environmental harm, and at least one other few know about.

A provision in the 2008 Farm Bill lets Washington withhold up to 15% of Social Security and disability benefits from anyone with outstanding government debts, no matter how old. It applies to farm and small business loans, unpaid or disputed taxes, health care amounts veterans owe, and other government debt, potentially affecting millions late in life when they can least afford it.

Overall, the effects are devastating, including growing poverty, inequality, the destruction of the middle class and unions, hunger, homelessless, environmental harm, and police state measures to quell dissent - the essence of tyranny showing up in America and arriving at a fast clip.

Barack Obama - Neoliberal Neocon

As a candidate, he promised change, a new course, sweeping government reforms, addressing people needs, and "ensur(ing) that the hopes and concerns of average Americans speak louder in Washington than the hallway whispers of high-priced lobbyists...."

As president, he's for business as usual, not the public. Besides unbridled militarism, imperial wars, handouts to the rich, shocking lawlessness, embracing torture, political persecutions, illegal spying, and police state rule, he ignores growing poverty, joblessness, homelessness, human despair, and budget-strapped states in favor of a discretionary spending freeze from 2011 through 2013, amounting to one-sixth of the budget. Defense, national security, and business needs remain unconstrained.

That was his State of the Union message, followed up by Executive Order (EO) 13531 on February 18 titled, "National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform." In other words, soak the poor. Enrich the wealthy, the way it always works, mostly in recent decades, especially since 2000, and more than ever under Obama - central casting's poster child for power.

His EO charges the Commission with "improv(ing) fiscal sustainability over the long run (and) balanc(ing) the budget" by 2015, - impossible given trillion dollar + annual deficits as far as the eye can see. Its real aim is to dehumanize America, strip off its democratic veneer, and transform it full-blown into Guatemala, Honduras, or occupied Iraq, Afghanistan, or Palestine through imposed austerity enforced by militarized repression.

As for "fiscal responsibility," financial writer Ellen Brown calls it fear-mongering code language for:

"delivering public monies into private hands and raising taxes on the already-squeezed middle class," not a measure "to save the country from bankruptcy."

She quoted Professor Carroll Quigley from his 1966-published "Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time," saying:

Financial capitalism's "far-reaching aim (is) to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and (world) economy....This system (aims for control) in a feudalist fashion by (world) central banks....acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences."

He was prescient, former high-level government and business insider, Catherine Austin Fitts revealing "a financial coup d'etat," including engineering a "fraudulent housing and debt bubble, illegally shift(ing) vast amounts of capital" offshore, and "us(ing) privatization as a form of piracy - a pretext to move government assets to private investors at below-market prices and then shift private liabilities back to government at no cost to the private liability holder."

It's a government-business cabal to suck wealth from the many to the few, and from the wreckage propose reform, meaning sweeping austerity and greater than ever top down control, in America and globally - a cynical scheme using populist rhetoric and "slow burn" tactics for what Michael Parenti described in his 2002 "Global Rollback" article, saying:

"Throughout history (ruling classes most of all have wanted) all the choice lands, forests, game, herds, harvests, mineral deposits and precious metals of the earth; all the wealth, riches, and profitable returns; all the productive facilities; all the gainful inventiveness, and technologies; all the surplus value produced by human labor; all the control positions of the state and other major institutions; all public supports and subsidies, privileges and immunities; all the protections of the law with none of the constraints; all the services, comforts, luxuries, and advantages of civil society with none of the taxes and costs. Every ruling class has wanted only this: all the rewards and none of the burdens."

As their faithful servants, Barack Obama, Congress, and the courts are delivering the whole package, or, in other words, poverty for the many and unlimited wealth and privilege for the power elite. When will enough concerned people act in their own self interest to stop them?

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://prognewshour.progressiveradionetwork.org/

http://lendmennews.progressiveradionetwork.org/

The capital of war

Moshe Yaroni — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 06:16:00 GMT

A few months ago, I was wandering around East Jerusalem, having not been there for about eight months prior. The changes I saw were profound and frightening.

The twin phenomena of Jewish settlements expanding in East Jerusalem and Jewish families moving into Palestinian neighborhoods had grown enormously. Settler homes, often marked with Israeli flags but also otherwise well-known to the people in the area, were dotted throughout a number of Arab areas, especially near the Old City. Small Jewish enclaves, often built by private organizations such as ElAd or Ateret Cohanim, stand out with their smooth roads and superior services, indicating the full cooperation of the government.

It was not news that Israel was working to make it impossible to divide the city along the lines most draft peace agreements want: that which is Jewish remains Israeli, while that which is Arab will be Palestinian. But seeing how far it progressed made it very clear that either an explosion was imminent or Israel was close to a fait accompli that would seriously jeopardize the last hopes for a two-state solution.

When I returned to Washington, I told everyone I could that Jerusalem had to be addressed; that there was no way we could continue trying to take on "easier" issues. I was not the only one making this case, but given the difficulties the Obama Administration was and is having just trying to get the Israelis and Palestinians to talk, no one felt there was anything to be gained by going near the issue of Jerusalem.

Well, the city's planning council conveniently solved that problem for us. Now, Jerusalem is at the forefront, but it need not remain there, and in fact it almost certainly won't. But it will be important that the status quo change.

Background

Israel completed the process of annexing East Jerusalem in 1980. Thirty years later, no country, including the United States, has recognized the validity of that move. But under Israeli law, Jerusalem has been the "united capital" of Israel certainly since then and in practice since 1967.

Having gone on for such an extended period, this situation has produced a dual view of Jerusalem. For Israelis, it not only seems like Jerusalem has always been theirs in whole, but that the rest of the world has gotten used to that. Sure, it's a subject for negotiation, but anything Israel might grant the Palestinians in Jerusalem is a concession and an example of Israel giving up what is hers.

The rest of the world sees Jerusalem purely as a matter of negotiation. Most of the West sees it as a different issue than the West Bank, and most see the Israeli claim to Jerusalem (both for reasons of history and because when last the eastern part of the city was under Arab control, Jews could not get to our holiest sites) as being stronger than to the rest of the West Bank, but they see an equally strong Palestinian claim which must be settled through a diplomatic process.

The Israeli view has led to steady building over the years, and a combination of various political factors, most notably the fear that the US would take steps toward a permanent agreement in the near term, have accelerated the building in recent years.

The international community and the US in particular has never approved of Jewish expansion into East Jerusalem, but the heat around the issue has led them to generally look the other way unless forced to deal with it. Now, they have been forced to.

Can Israel Freeze Building in Jerusalem?

A Ha'aretz poll, in the wake of the current controversy showed that, by more than two to one, Israelis do not believe that Barack Obama is hostile toward Israel. But they also still endorse the job Benjamin Netanyahu is doing as Prime Minister.

A more important aspect is what Israelis said about continuing construction in Jerusalem. We repeatedly hear that there is an "Israeli consensus" that building in Jerusalem must not stop. The poll showed 48% in favor of continued building and 41% opposed.

There is a very clear implication in that result: if an Israeli Prime Minister were to make the case that construction in East Jerusalem was necessary for working toward peace and for Israel's standing in the international community, chances are a big swing would occur and clear support for such a cessation would emerge.

Israelis are a pragmatic people, and despite also being ideologically partisan, the typical Israeli has a far more nuanced understanding of international politics than the typical American. If it becomes clear to them that a temporary halt in Jerusalem construction is a diplomatic necessity, there would be support for it.

That is very different from saying that such a majority of Israelis would agree to give up a significant part of Jerusalem. But that is not the question at hand. The question these Israelis are confronting is whether or not to simply stop building in Jerusalem for a while in order to get peace negotiations back on track. Israelis understand well that, even if they don't believe the negotiations will end with an agreement, a continued peace process does them a lot of good in terms of international diplomacy and business.

Israelis understand that what is going on in Jerusalem is a clear attempt to change the facts on the ground. That is not necessarily out of bounds for them, and if it can be done without serious consequences, most will support it or at least not object. I'd venture a guess that if that same poll question had been asked before Joe Biden's recent visit, a much larger majority would have supported continued building.

So, a determined Prime Minister can make this case and get public support. The problem with Benjamin Netanyahu is that if he does, he will lose his coalition. Kadima might be willing to come in and save the government if it meant improving relations with the United States, but that would be a coalition that would put Bibi on a very different political course, one he may not wish to pursue.

American Jews and the Current Controversy

Meanwhile, the Anti-Defamation League has unfortunately stepped into the fray, not discussing Jerusalem but having then unimaginable hubris to challenge General David Petraeus on his statement (which is so obviously true and correct as to be axiomatic) that the Israel-Palestine conflict complicates American efforts in other parts of the world.

This is another part of the same issue. The ADL, like AIPAC before it, is trying to bring the Obama Administration back to the position of previous administrations, which showed enormous favoritism toward Israel, at the expense of American, Israeli and Palestinian interests and those of peace as well.

The idea that the US should not pursue its interests in the region, or the notion that Israeli interests and American ones are identical is patently false. Indeed, Foxman's outrage seems at odds with statements made by none other than Netanyahu himself, among many others.

Any confrontation between Israel and the US is naturally vexing to American Jews. And when it involves Jerusalem, it is doubly so.

In the days of Camp David, the PLO team repeatedly told Bill Clinton that when it came to Jerusalem they were accountable to the whole Muslim world. This certainly proved frustrating for Clinton, and was also part of Arafat's dodging strategy to avoid concessions he was not prepared to make.

But it was also true, and it's true for Israel as well that when it comes to Jerusalem, it is accountable to the whole Jewish world. One can recall the reaction, for one example, of the Orthodox Union when Ehud Olmert suggested that Jerusalem might just need to be shared.

This might explain why both AIPAC and the ADL (which has no business being involved in this issue at all, as it is very far from their organizational expertise or an issue Abe Foxman understands at all. At least this is AIPAC's job) have overreached and exposed themselves as clearly favoring Israeli interests over American ones. Fortunately, that view is held by only a tiny minority of American Jews, as is reflected by the much more cautious approach which has been taken by almost all other Jewish organizations.

A New Nod and Wink

Now that the Obama Administration has engaged in this question, how does it move forward? Keeping up a fight with Israel on this is not a wise course. The political waves it would cause domestically would only grow, and it moves the parties no closer to substantive talks.

Indeed, veteran diplomat Aaron David Miller believes the Obama Administration is now actively trying to wind this confrontation down. But where will it land? Politically, it is unrealistic to expect Netanyahu to announce a building freeze in East Jerusalem in the near future. But that's not the only option.

If Bibi's package of various "confidence building steps" seems reasonable to Obama, he should accept it, take the suspension of the Ramat Shlomo project and make one more thing clear to Netanyahu: I won't force you to announce a suspension of construction. But in return, I expect you to limit it, to drag out the processes so that groundbreaking is delayed for months or years, and I expect you to do everything in East Jerusalem quietly.

Until now, the US has nodded and winked at Israeli construction in East Jerusalem. Now that nod and wink must be taken by Bibi. Let him make his statements and let him avoid any sort of official freeze. But if in practice, Jerusalem building is significantly slowed, enough so that at least for the next 18-24 months the changes on the ground don't pre-determine the final status of the city, which is enough for the US.

It's far from ideal. But blaming Israel doesn't fly on this one. The situation has gotten to this point because the Clinton and Bush Administrations allowed it to. Obama is trying to clean it up, but it's a situation decades in the making. It can't be fixed overnight and a "one fell swoop" approach from Obama would almost certainly backfire. We need to understand that we, the US, are the greatest culprit here.

We need to fix it, and we need to act responsibly and wisely to do so. That's a new approach for us. Let's see if Obama, Clinton and Mitchell can make it work.

This article appeared originally on ZEEK

APN legislative round-up for the week ending March 19, 2010

Lara Friedman — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:26:00 GMT

1. Bills and Resolutions
2. Congress and the Jerusalem Settlements Dust-Up
3. AIPAC on the Hill Next Week
4. Dear Colleague Bashing PA
5. APN on Iran Sanctions, Jerusalem Settlement Issue
1. Bills and Resolutions

(Jerusalem) H. Res. 1191: Introduced 3/18/10 by Rep. Lamborn (R-CO) and 18 cosponsors, "Urging the expedient relocation of the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem." Referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Given current events, it was inevitable that some members of Congress would elect to pour fuel on the fire and try to score political points with yet another Jerusalem resolution. Stay tuned for likely further efforts related to this issue, including probable efforts to strip away the President's waiver of the Jerusalem Embassy Act (which, as noted previously in the Round-Up, Republicans have tried to do repeatedly since President Obama took office, after not attempting to do so in any serious way during the entire eight years of the Bush presidency).

(IRAN) H. Res. 1181: Introduced 3/12/10 by Rep. McCotter (R-MI) and 1 cosponsor, "Calling on the United Nations General Assembly to reject the Islamic Republic of Iran's bid to join the United Nations Human Rights Council." Referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs

(Resolution Approving Israeli military Attack on Iran): On 3/18/10 Rep. Gohmert (R-TX) began circulating a draft resolution (and seeking original cosponsors on that resolution), "Expressing support for the State of Israel's right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel."

2. Congress and the Jerusalem Settlements Dust-Up

The issue of Congressional reaction to the Jerusalem settlements dust-up between the Netanyahu government and the Obama Administration has been covered pretty comprehensively, though not always accurately, in the mainstream and Jewish press. For a few excellent pieces, see here and here.

Representative Shelley Berkley (D-NV), who is generally viewed as the furthest right-wing member of Congress when it comes to Israel, was one of the first out of the box with a press release that was harshly critical of the Obama Administration. She was gleefully joined in this view by House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), who issued a press release entitled "Administration's Stance on Israel Irresponsible and Dangerous."

House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) subsequently weighed in with a more pragmatic approach, in a press release entitled: Let's Put the Situation in Perspective.

Other members inserted statements into the record or spoke on the floor of the House or Senate, primarily by Republicans who appear to be in a clear point-scoring mode. These were: Rep. Jordan (R-OH) - with a statement entitled "No Truer Friend than Israel"; Rep. Moran (R-KS), with a statement entitled "No Closer Friend than Israel"; Rep. Burton (R-IN), with a statement entitled "Support Israel," Rep. McClintock (R-CA), with a statement entitled "Path to Conflict"; Rep. Engel (D-NY), with a statement entitled "The U.S.-Israel Relationship" and Rep. Quigley (D-IL), with a statement entitled "Reaffirm Bonds with Israel". In addition, there was the McCain (R-AZ)-Lieberman (I-CT) colloquy on the Senate floor last week (it should be recalled that long before this happened McCain and Lieberman traveled together to the Middle East where they publicly criticized President Obama's Middle East policy).

3. AIPAC on the Hill Next Week

As noted in last week's Round-Up, AIPAC's annual Washington Policy Conference kicks off this weekend, with thousands of AIPAC supporters heading to the Hill next Tuesday. On the Hill they will reportedly lobby for the swift passage of new Iran sanctions legislation that includes the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act and for enhanced enforcement and accountability regarding enforcement of existing sanctions, as well as urge members to add their names to sign-on letters (not yet circulating) promoting strong US-Israel relations (given recent events, it seems like that the message will be an updated version of last year's Bayh-Risch letter).

4. Dear Colleague Bashing PA

While there have been no initiatives in Congress to in any way censure the government of Israel for the very public slap in the face/kick in the groin delivered to the Obama Administration last week - in the form of announcing the approval of new settlement plans the day after the announcement of indirect peace talks, and the day Vice President Biden arrived in Israel - Congress has been quick to respond to a rare (but no doubt troubling) incident of "bad behavior" by the Palestinian Authority.

On March 11th, students from a youth group associated with Fatah held a memorial in an al Bireh square for a female Palestinian terrorist, Dalal Mughrabi, unofficially dedicating the square in her name on the 32nd anniversary of her death. Reportedly a senior Fatah leader and a PA security official were present.

On March 16th, Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO) began circulating a Dear Colleague letter asking members to join him in sending a letter to PA President Mahmoud Abbas "expressing anger over the recent recognition and glorification of a terrorist" and "urging PA President Abbas to rescind the naming of the circle for Mughrabi and work to ensure an end to incitement and glorification of terrorism." The letter notes that "Media reports indicate that at the dedication of the circle, representatives of Fatah described Mughrabi as a courageous fighter who held a proud place in Palestinian history. This makes us question the Palestinian Authority's commitment to peace and reconciliation. We also note that the 'road map,' which you personally agreed to in 2003, makes clear that your government is obligated to end such incitement." The letter goes on to imply that this incident threatens US assistance to the Palestinians, noting "As you know, the United States is the largest single bilateral contributor to the Palestinians. The significant increase in our assistance in recent years became possible only because your government has taken a position squarely on the side of non-violence. This dedication runs counter to these past government actions."

It is worth noting that this dedication stands out - and is thus being condemned - because the PA has been doing such a good job clamping down on the sort of incitement and glorification of terrorism that has in the past been a very real problem. The fact that this case is the exception that proves the rule, however, has apparently in no way insulated the PA from censure.

It is also worth noting that:

- Israel permits annual memorials for Meir Kahane (whose party was outlawed for its racists policies, and the two groups associated with him - Kach and Kahane Chai - are both US-designated FTOs).

- Israel has also permitted settlers in Kiryat Arba to turn the grave of Baruch Goldstein - the Israeli-American settler who on Purim in 1994 massacred 29 Palestinians at prayer in the Tomb of the Patriarchs/Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron - into a memorial shrine that has become a pilgrimage site for right-wing extremists where they celebrate Goldstein's actions and his legacy. The grave is located in a park in Kiryat Arba - a park named for the man who inspired Goldstein and inspires many Jewish extremists today, Meir Kahane (the same Meir Kahane discussed above). The 16-year anniversary of that attack was celebrated last month. Goldstein's gravestone reads "Here lies the saint, Dr. Baruch Kappel Goldstein, blessed be the memory of the righteous and holy man, may The Lord avenge his blood, who devoted his soul to The Jews, Jewish religion and Jewish land. His hands are innocent and his heart is pure. He was killed as a martyr of God on the 14th of Adar, Purim, in the year 5754."

- the week before the el-Bireh dedication, the Israeli Knesset held a special commemorative session in honor of a dozen pre-1948 Jewish underground fighters know as the "Olei HaGardom" who were executed by the British - members of the Lehi (aka Stern Gang) and Etzel (aka the Irgun) - for attacking both British military officers and British and Arab civilians. Prime Minister Netanyahu delivered an address during the session lauding the fighters and rejecting any comparison to their actions and terrorism. As noted in the settlers' news outlet "The two most famous Olei HaGardom were Shlomo Ben-Yosef and Dov Gruner. Ben-Yosef was executed on June 29, 1938 (Sivan 30) after he shot at an Arab bus carrying near Tzfat in response to frequent Arab attacks against Jews in the country's north. Gruner was executed on April 16, 1947 (Nissan 26) after attacking a British police station in Ramat Gan." Countless streets, neighborhoods, museums, public squares in Israel are named this group or the individuals associated with it. The state has also issued postage stamps commemorating them and their deeds.

5. APN on Iran Sanctions, Jerusalem Settlement Issue

There have been a number of recent APN articles dealing with issues that are prominent these days in Congress:

APN on Iran sanctions (in ForeignPolicy.com): Getting Over the Sanctions Delusion
APN analysis on Biden Incident: Ending the "business-as-usual" settlements era in East Jerusalem?
APN on the ADL's criticism of General Petraeus: Foxman should stop crying wolf
APN on AIPAC criticism of President Obama: AIPAC doesn't speak for me

This article was appeared on Americans for Peace Now

World leaders ‘condemn’ West Bank settlements, while some Israelis say Obama is ‘fair’

Eileen White Read — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:15:00 GMT

UPDATED

The international "quartet" charged by the United Nations with overseeing the Middle East peace process met in Moscow this morning and issued a strong statement against settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

In speaking for the group - which includes Russia. the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used the same language - "condemn" - that Vice President Joe Biden used last week when a new Israeli settlement in Jerusalem was announced right in the middle of his visit to restart the stalled peace process: "The quartet condemns the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem."

Watch it on Russian television:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Meanwhile in Israel, a new poll by the respected Tel Aviv University Professor Camil Fuchs shows that 51% of the Israeli public believes that Obama is "fair." While conservatives often claim that support for Obama in Israel is very low, this new data is consistent with a New America Foundation poll whose release I attended last December in Washington. The New America Foundation poll found that 52% of Israelis "think President Obama's election will be good for addressing the problems facing the world."

What happens next: Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is scheduled to travel to Washington to address the American Israel Political Affairs Committee, which will meet next week. Fox News reported last night that President Barack Obama - having cancelled a previously planned trip to the East to get health care reform passed - would be meeting with Netanyahu, but today the usually authoritative Jewish Telegraphic Agency said its reporters checked with the White House and learned that no meeting is (yet) scheduled.

As this morning's Guardian newspaper indicates, the Quartet's full court press in Moscow is designed to increase the pressure on Netanyahu to cancel the recently announced construction of 1,600 settlement units in East Jerusalem. (See my earlier reporting on this.) Read the full text of the Quartet statement here.

The quartet expected that talks between Israelis and Palestinians should lead to a negotiated settlement that "within 24 months" ends the occupation of Palestinian territories begun in 1967. The settlement should result "in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbours".

The quartet includes Hillary Clinton for the US; Russia's foreign secretary, Sergei Lavrov; Tony Blair, the quartet's special representative; and Lady Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief.

The statement expressed deep alarm at the deteriorating situation in Gaza, urging Israel to lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip for both humanitarian and commercial traffic and calling for a "durable resolution to the Gaza crisis".

Clinton said she had spoken last night to the Israel prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, following his apparent offer of "confidence-building measures" to encourage the renewal of peace talks. She described the conversation as "very useful and productive ... We don't believe unilateral action by any parties are helpful. We've made this clear."

None of the quartet parties were willing to say what pressure they were prepared to put on Israel should it ignore today's statement.

The quartet called on Israel to freeze all settlement activity "including natural growth", to dismantle outposts erected since March 2001, and to "refrain from demolitions and evictions in East Jerusalem". It also appealed for the international community to back the Palestinians' commitment to build an independent state by offering immediate and concrete support.

Will this united international pressure result in moves by Netanyahu to bring the Palestinians back to the "proximity" negotiations that were supposed to start last week? Hard to say. The Israeli PM's office floated the idea of a "don't ask, don't tell" policy about settlements yesterday via a conversation between Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren and the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl, which Diehl blogged about.

If the "don't ask, don't tell" policy means the current right-wing government will approve and build settlements without announcing them, I just don't see how this will get the peace process going again. Two highly respected Israel-based NGOs, Ir Imim and Peace Now, make it their business to follow the issue of West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements very closely - especially the ones that the government is trying to keep secret. (See my March 11 story on True/Slant citing an Ir Amim report that said the government plans to build another 50,000 settlement units in East Jerusalem.)

This article appeared originally on True/Slant

Rocket from Gaza kills 1 in Israel, which returns fire

Evan Hill — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:37:00 GMT

A rocket fired from Gaza on Thursday killed a Thai agricultural laborer at an Israeli cooperative farm on the border called Nativ Haasara. Israel responded within hours, launching air strikes on six targets in Gaza.

Although Hamas holds power in Gaza, the jihadist Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for the rocket attack, which came amid a visit by the highest-ranking European Union representative to visit Gaza since Hamas took power in 2007.

Those of you who read Lawrence Wright's New Yorker article on Gaza from last year will recall Wright's conversation with a member of the Popular Resistance Committees, a coalition of more violent and hardline Palestinian groups in Gaza, which seemed to be growing more eager to attack Israel in light of Hamas growing moderation.

Not that Ansar al-Sunna is part of the PRC, but it is important to note that this attack apparently did not come from Hamas, but from a more radical, non-governing Islamist group inside Gaza.

The Israeli airstrikes hit five smuggling tunnels, though CNN didn't say where, and a "weapons manufacturing site."

This article was appeared on The Majlis

Iraq: Elections but no stability

Jamal Dajani — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:14:00 GMT

With close to 90% of the votes tallied in Iraq's parliamentary elections, the coalition headed by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has taken a slim lead over the bloc led by his main challenger, Iyad Allawi. A day ago, it was the later.

Since March 7, Iraqis have been glued to their television screens looking for clues for the direction their seven-year-war ravaged country might be heading in the next few years. Similarly, residents in neighboring countries have been closely monitoring the Iraqi elections through the many satellite television networks operating in the region. After all, elections are not a daily happening in the Arab world, and a number of those countries, such as Jordan and Syria, permitted Iraqi refugees to cast votes in their territories.

Meanwhile, one does not have to spend a lot of time watching Iran's Arabic-speaking Al Alam TV or the Saudi-financed Al Arabia TV in order to figure out who are the regional stake holders in the Iraqi elections. At times the Iraqi elections seem to take the shape of a battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia, as both countries have been overtly and covertly supporting the two heavyweight contenders. Iran supports Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, while Saudi Arabia has been rooting for former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

Both al-Maliki and Allawi are Shiites, so why does Saudi Arabia want Allawi to win?

Al-Maliki's "cozying up" to Iran has been alarming many Arab countries. The Iraqi Prime Minister, whose Dawa Party is backed by Iran, has been flashing the sectarian card during his election campaign. With more than 500 candidates accused of links with the Ba'ath Party banned from running in the March elections, Al-Maliki's government has been accused of using the hated former regime to intimidate Sunnis in particular and opposition in general.

Iyad Allawi, although a Shiite, leads the al-Iraqiyya list, which proposes a secular agenda for the country. Many of its leading members are Sunnis or Arab nationalists who share the goal of bringing Iraq back to its Arab roots. Allawi's campaign ads have been airing on several Arab television stations, some say courtesy of Saudi Arabia.

But does this really matter to the average Iraqi citizen?

Not according to Kazem al-Dari, an Iraqi social scientist.

"What we need is stability," he says. "We've had elections before, we've tried Allawi before and now al-Maliki. Neither one brought stability and security to Iraq."

Today marks the seventh anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. In 2003, the architects of the war envisioned that the toppling of Saddam Hussein would lead to the birth of a democratic Iraq. They told us that elections in Iraq would help spread democracy and liberalism across the Middle East, but this could not have been further from the truth.

The Middle East is more chaotic than ever, and the vast majority of its citizens are leaning politically towards Islamic theocracy and not liberal democracy. Iraqis are still searching for stability.

This article appeared originally on Huffington Post

Activism is change, not academic squabbles and bickering

Ramzy Baroud — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:39:00 GMT

An activist is a person who feels strongly about a cause and who is also willing to dedicate time and energy towards advancing and realizing this cause.

This might be my own limited interpretation of what activism means. I was born and raised in a Gaza refugee camp where the daily struggles of the community included challenging military occupation while attempting to survive under the harshest of circumstances. Activism then involved civil disobedience, general strikes, confronting armed Israeli soldiers with stones and slingshots. But it also involved much more than that.

Activists in my refugee camp, whether they're identified as Islamist, secularist, socialist or any other name, ensured the community remained unified in the face of adversity. They did not always succeed, but efforts were abound. Activists provided sustainable community support to families with sons and daughters that were killed in clashes or incarcerated in Israeli prisons. They rebuilt people's homes after they were demolished by Israeli dynamites or bulldozers. Some activists even offered free haircuts to those who couldn't afford them.

Activism, as I understood it, was largely a unifying, pro-active force that kept the struggle and resistance alive. It was the ingredient that allowed the Palestinian people to maintain their relevance to the conflict, despite the brutality of their enemy and the self-serving nature of their elites.

The elitism in Palestinian society led to a breakdown in unity, culminating in the bloody consequences of the Fatah-Hamas clash. Still, despite all the attempts to undermine it, Gaza remains standing. This cannot be attributed to any factional decision or political diktat, but only to the spirit of its people, a spirit predicated on internal cohesion and a clearly defined purpose.

When I left the refugee camp, my true culture shock was in witnessing the lack of a real sense of community in the places where I lived. These were mostly in Western societies, bustling cities full of nameless people trying to advance their own lot in life, or, in the case of working-class people, to survive. Due to the nature of my work, I also travelled to numerous countries in Middle East, Southeast Asia and parts of Africa. I found it interesting and uplifting to see how societies ravaged by poverty, military occupations, civil war, sanctions, and natural disasters tended to somehow also be the most communal, forward-thinking and effective at problem-solving.

In poorer societies, entire communities can in fact be classified as "activists". They don't necessarily have websites or hold regular meetings. Some draw their strength from holy books, ancient philosophies or traditions. Their dialectics are often straightforward rather than academic. A child from Gaza who lost her family in its most recent war on the Strip said through gushing tears that her loss would not weaken her resolve to free her country. Today she is being raised by neighbors and hopes to be a journalist.

While organizing in support of the Palestinian struggle is not an easy task in most Western societies, it is still an essential one. Israel is armed and financed by US and other Western governments. It is they who hold the political key to reining in the Israeli military menace that has tormented Palestinians for generations. The activists in the West who organize in support of the Palestinians also unwittingly contribute to their suffering. Their taxes are used to arm Israel, their votes in elections validate the very parties who shield and defend Israel's crimes, and their media consumption feeds the very corporations that taint the victim as aggressor. Activism, at least in the Palestine-Israel context, is not a matter of choice in Western societies; it is a moral responsibility.

Over the course of the last 15 years, I have come across some of the world's most passionate, compassionate and sincere individuals. I can only express good things about that. But I have also become disheartened and disappointed. "Leftist" groups insist on placing Palestine into its anti-imperialist campaign merely as a rally cry, as opposed to a substantively unique issue that needs a substantively unique strategy. Disenchanted "leftists" endlessly quarrel. Some cannot even stand the sight of one another. There are the anti-Zionist Jewish groups, and the anti anti-Zionists Jewish groups. There are those who believe that the pro-Israel Zionist lobby almost exclusively dictates Washington's policies on the Middle East, and those who believe that the lobby is getting its way simply because their agenda is consistent with Washington's existing agenda. Different groups have their own meetings, petitions, rallies and merchandise, often competing with or rejecting each other. Take any issue pertinent to pro-Palestinian activism and you will find vastly differing factions that won't converge or meet.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with diversity of opinion. But when diversity becomes polarizing to this extent, the entire project loses its original value. The public disagreements may stimulate academic discussion, but they can be demoralizing and alienating when it comes to actually bringing change.

I myself strongly believe that the pro-Israel lobby has the upper hand in Washington foreign policy regarding the Middle East, and that only a one state solution can resolve the ongoing crisis and provide a semblance of justice for Palestinians. I also believe an affective boycott and divestment campaign is a must for reining in the belligerent Israeli government. While these are my own views, I still believe it is important to listen to those who disagree with them, partly or fundamentally. After all, our strong beliefs of today are only the outcome of intense discussions and dialogues in the past.

Activism should not be bound by mere personal affiliation, and nor should it unreservedly embrace or accept ideological dogmas. An activist is an ambassador to his cause; yes, he or she must be morally focused, but there should also be a willingness to serve as a unifying force, and to strategize and organize accordingly.

The day our publications, newsletters, websites, conferences and rallies include all sorts of opposing views, without slander and intimidation, will be the day that we can be sure a cohesive community of activists is in the making, a community able to achieve good things. Without this, no campaign will be effective enough to make major policy shifts, in Washington or anywhere else.

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), now available on Amazon.com.

The lawfare project's anti-democratic agenda

Stephen Lendman — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:26:00 GMT

Its web site (thelawfareproject.org) calls Lawfare:

"The use of the law as a weapon of war."

Fact Check

Provided they contradict no others, laws are sacrosanct, especially fundamental international ones like the UN Charter, Four Geneva Conventions, their Common Article 3, the Rome Statute, Nuremberg Tribunal and judgment, Genocide Convention, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and many others - ones Israel and America are sworn to uphold but consistently violate with impunity.

Lawfare Project (LP) claim: "The abuse of the law and legal systems (is used) for strategic or military ends."

Fact Check

International law is clear and unequivocal. The UN Charter explains under what conditions violence and coercion by one state against another are justified. Article 2(3) and Article 33(1) require peaceful settlement of international disputes. Article 2(4) prohibits force or its threatened use, and Article 51 allows the "right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member....until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security."

In other words, justifiable self-defense is permitted, and Articles 2(3), 2(4), and 33(1) absolutely prohibit all unilateral threats or use of force not allowed under Article 51 or authorized by the Security Council. Even then, under Fourth Geneva, civilians are "protected persons" off-limits to attack. Doing it is a war crime.

Claim: Law is used to "thwart free speech about issues of national security and public concern."

Fact Check

Free expression is recognized as a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), among other international laws.

Yet Israel has no constitution or specific laws guaranteeing equality or free expression. However, its Basic Laws protect human dignity and liberty as fundamental values in "a Jewish and democratic state," including:

-- "no violation of the life, body or dignity or any person;"

-- their property;

-- their liberty, neither by imprisonment, arrest, extradition or otherwise;

-- the right to privacy; and

-- much more, including a traditionally mostly free and open media within certain limits most states impose.

Nonetheless, Israel violates its own law and international ones by imposing censorship as it sees fit. For example, during Operation Cast Lead when it restricted on-the-scene coverage to suppress its crimes of war and against humanity, now revealed in detail but ruthlessly assailed as untrue.

Despite America's First Amendment, the dominant US media self-censor, and in war zones, the Pentagon allows no independent coverage, instead using "embedded" journalists of its choosing.

Claim: "Law (is) used to de-legitimize the sovereignty of democratic states."

Fact Check

No state, democratic of otherwise, has the right to violate fundamental international laws nor remain unaccountable when they do. Israel and America are serial offenders.

Claim: The law is used to "frustrate the ability of democracies to defend themselves against terrorism."

Fact Check

Israel and America are democracies in name only, granting rights to the privileged, not the majority, and in Israel solely to Jews.

International law permits self-defense against violence or armed attacks. Terrorism is committed by the perpetrators.

Lawfare's anti-democratic issues include:

Claim: The illegitimacy of "legal limits" in fighting "terrorism."

Fact Check

Most serious is institutionalized state terrorism, including premeditated wars and targeted assassinations, criminal acts under international law, permitting self-defense against them.

Claim: No international law restricts nations from acting within or outside their territory.

Fact Check

Universally accepted international laws place clear and unequivocal limits, calling violations crimes of war and against humanity.

Claim: An international tribunal has no authority to hold sovereign states accountable.

Fact Check

International law created a tribunal as a legal entity to prosecute individuals for crimes of war, against humanity, and genocide in cases when guilty states fail to do so.

Claim: There are legitimate and illegitimate criticisms of religion.

Fact Check

Criticism is one thing. Vilifying one religion in defense of another is clearly indefensible. Further, international laws strictly prohibit persecuting, killing, or otherwise harming persons of other faiths, practices Israel and America repeatedly commit.

Claim: Lawfare uses its own definition of inciting violence.

Fact Check

LP calls self-defense violence and terrorism, premeditated aggression self-defense, including against innocent civilians.

Claim: Undefined hate speech should be banned.

Fact Check

International law protects free expression. Only when it crosses the line egregiously can it be questioned. Banning it is another matter, and without defining it, what is hate speech? Clearly, LP means any criticism of Israeli and American policies.

Claim: LP calls Universal Jurisdiction (UJ) illegitimate when it conflicts with "national security interests."

Fact Check

UJ is a well-established principle, used by America (against Liberia's Chuckie Taylor), Israel (against Adolph Eichmann) and other nations as a legitimate law enforcement tool for crimes of war and against humanity. All nations may use it.

Claim: LP advocates denying "terrorists" and "unlawful combatants" their rights.

Fact Check

By law, everyone is innocent unless or until proved guilty with substantive facts to prove it. The term "unlawful combatant" is unrecognized in international law and has no standing.

Claim: LP wants lawyers denied "classified material" to prosecute persons accused of torture.

Fact Check

No relevant information should ever be withheld for any reason to protect alleged torturers or other criminals.

Claim: LP wants a majority bloc of UN states denied their right to enforce human rights policy.

Fact Check

International laws protect human rights. Nations and individuals in violation should be held fully accountable.

Claim: LP wants to suppress legitimate human rights reports critical of Israel and America.

Fact Check

It objects to Goldstone Commission and other human rights groups' revelations of Israeli crimes of war and against humanity during Operation Cast Lead to absolve its perpetrator's and America's (as a co-conspirator) of any culpability for their lawlessness.

Claim: LP calls Israel's Separation Wall legitimate.

Fact Check

Israel's Separation Wall is being built on 12% of confiscated Palestinian land. In 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled it illegal, and ordered it dismantled.

Claim: Like America and Israel, LP calls Hamas a terrorist entity.

Fact Check

In January 2006, Hamas was democratically elected as Palestine's legitimate government, what it remains today despite Israel and Washington's recognition of Fatah's coup d'etat regime under a president whose term expired 14 months ago.

Claim: LP calls hate speech legitimate for "radical" Islam and "terrorism."

Fact Check

Hate or any other type speech is never legitimate when it lies about or vilifies one religion in defense of another.

Claim: LP opposes applying the rule of law, due process, equal justice, civil and human rights, and fundamental democratic principles for governments or groups it opposes.

Fact Check

Advocating lawlessness is never legitimate under any circumstances, ever, for any reason.

The Lawfare Project's First Conference

Sponsored by the Committee on Foreign and International Law of NYCLA (NY Collegiate Learning Assessment) and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on March 11, its first US conference was held in New York, co-chaired by:

-- Irwin Cotler - law professor, Canadian MP, and former Minister of Justice and Attorney General from 2003 - 2006;

-- Robert Morgenthau - former District Attorney for New York County, borough of Manhattan, and US Attorney for the Southern District of New York; and

-- David Schizer - Dean, Columbia University School of Law.

Invited speakers included:

John Bolton

He's a Project for the New American Century (PNAC) member, senior fellow at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, and Bush administration's recess-appointed UN Ambassador, a man Law Professor, author, activist, and former President of the National Lawyers Guild, Marjorie Cohn, accused of "cooking intelligence to whip up US aggression against other countries," including, of course, Iraq based on bogus WMD claims.

In his UN post, he was also notorious for "hyping threats posed by Cuba and Syria, and taking a dangerously combative stance toward North Korea." He now advocates war against Iran, getting op-ed space in publications like the Wall Street Journal, again to hype fear.

Dore Gold

He's a former Israeli UN Ambassador, President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and served in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's first administration as Foreign Policy Advisor. He was also an advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and a member of Israel's delegation at the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference and 1998 Wye River negotiations with the Palestinian National Authority (PA). He's a notorious right-wing extremist, hostile to democratic principles and Palestinian rights.

David Scharia

He's a former First Senior Deputy at the Supreme Court Division of Israel's Attorney General's office, a position in which he was the lead attorney in major counterterrorism cases before Israel's High Court (HCJ). He also headed the CT Internal Investigations Unit, was Chair of the Inter-Ministerial Counterterrorism Committee, and was a member of the experts' forum on

"Democracy and Terrorism," established by the Israel Democratic Institute. Most recently, he's been Legal Officer at the Security Council's Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED).

Gabriela Shalev

She's currently Israeli UN Ambassador, former Hebrew University of Jerusalem law professor, president of the Academic Council, and Rector of Ono Academic College in Israel. She's an expert in contract law and procurement contracts, and was chief legal editor of the Judgments of Israel's HCJ and Hebrew Encyclopedia.

Francois-Henri Briard

He's a longtime litigator before France's Supreme Court, has represented US companies in France, and is active in arbitration. He also worked on economic intelligence, is a member of the Historical Society of the US Supreme Court, and is president of the Vergennes Institute, that he co-founded with Justice Antonin Scalia to foster cooperation between the US and French Supreme Courts. Briard now belongs to France's Institute for National Defense Studies.

Daniel Huff

He's Director of the Legal Project, an organization involved in "protect(ing) researchers and analysts who work on the topics of terrorism, terrorist funding, and radical Islam from lawsuits designed to silence their exercise of free speech."

He's a former Senate Judiciary Committee counsel on matters of national security, civil, and criminal matters, and once was a management consultant for McKinsey & Co.

Douglas Murray

He's Director of the Center for Social Cohesion, a UK right-wing think tank, specializing in studying radicalism and extremism in Britain. He's also a freelance journalist and author of books including, "Neoconservatism: Why We Need It."

Pierre Prosper

He's US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, and was formerly special counsel and policy advisor in the Office of War Crimes Issues, a special assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, an Assistant US Attorney for the Central District of California, and Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles County.

Jeremy Rabkin

He's a George Mason University School of Law Professor of Law and member of the US Institute of Peace, congressionally funded to promote US interests in "resolving" international conflicts. He also has a particular interest in matters of national security law and early constitutional history.

Joshua Rozenberg

His bio calls him "Britain's best-known commentator on the law," having been BBC's legal correspondent for 15 years, and since 2000 in the same capacity for The Daily Telegraph. He also writes for the London Evening Standard and the Law Society's Gazette.

Mark Shurtleff

He's Utah Attorney General, former Assistant Attorney General, and once served as Deputy County Attorney and Commissioner of Salt Lake County.

Notable by Their Exclusion

Notably absent were academics, scholars, human rights activists, and other critics of US and Israeli policies, the rule of law, and accountability for states that break it. In framing issues, Conference participants told attendees that international law doesn't apply when it conflicts with powerful state interests, the rights of their victims thereby unaddressed, silenced, and of no interest.

George Mason University's Jeremy Rabkin called "taking international law too seriously" dangerous, saying "It's not like the tax code." Audaciously, he claimed its principles are unclear with no court to enforce them, when he knows laws are clear and unequivocal and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague is a permanent tribunal established to prosecute individuals for crimes of war, against humanity, and genocide.

John Bolton told attendees:

"It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so - because over the long-term, those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrict the United States."

In other words, we're boss. What we say goes, and dissidents are legitimate enemies, an idea dominant in Nazi Germany and other past and current despotic states.

Hitler justified exterminating Jews for destroying the German nation through culture and democracy. He started WW II blaming Poland for a Nazi-staged incident. He declared war on Britain claiming its prime minister spurned his 1940 peace offer saying:

"If the Providence has so willed that the German people cannot be spared this fight, then I can only be grateful that it entrusted me with the leadership in this historic struggle which, for the next 500 or 1,000 years, will be described as decisive, not only for....Germany, but for the whole of Europe and indeed the whole world."

When he invaded Russia, he said "I sought no war. On the contrary, I did everything to avoid it (but) in view of the mortal danger from the Soviet Union (to all Europe)" he gave "the signal to attack myself (for) this moral struggle."

And when he declared war on America, he blamed it on Roosevelt and his coterie of Jews and WW I on Wilson, both men he considered mad.

He accused Roosevelt of inciting war, falsifying the causes, "then odiously wrap(ping) himself in a cloak of Christian hypocrisy...." and policies "aimed at unrestricted world domination and dictatorship (together) with England (against) the rights of the German, Italian and Japanese nations...."

When tyrants or extremists try justifying illegal actions, there's no dearth of excuses, including tried and true fear mongering and blaming victims.

Propagandizing for Israel

The Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor disseminates propaganda, debases the legitimate human rights community, and promotes a pro-Israeli agenda defending the indefensible, Anne Herzberg its legal advisor. At the conference, she assailed notable human rights organizations for promoting a "radical agenda" and "anti-state, anti-democracy, (and) anti-American" ideology.

For revealing Israeli crimes of war and against humanity, Justice Richard Goldstone was particularly assailed, David Schizer saying he:

"created standards of morality in war that leave a state without the means of legitimate self-protection," ignoring Israeli premeditated aggression and victimized Gazans, a matter clearly and unequivocally covered under international law principles.

Schizer and others didn't go there, instead focusing on ways to discredit US and Israeli critics to delegitimize them, notably human rights organizations like B'Tselem, Al-Haq, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), and, of course, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) Goldstone Commission.

Israel's Lawfare Forum

A February Jerusalem conference covered the same ground, defining Lawfare as "waging war under the cover of war," and urging help for Israel to "delegitimize its delegitimization." Speakers claimed Israel obeys international law, conforms to the laws of armed conflict in fighting "terror," has a legitimate right to kill enemies of the state, and to discredit critics like Richard Goldstone whose assertions are more suitable for discussion at "a psychiatrist's seminar," according to reserve IDF Lt. Col. David Benjamin. He and others called the Goldstone Report corrupt for accusing Israel of crimes, and to take the offensive by making Israel the plaintiff, not the accused.

DJ Schneeweiss, former Israeli deputy ambassador to China, told attendees:

"We are fighting a strategic, multi-dimentional, ideologically clothed war that uses the language of values and simple, repetitive messages against us. Anti-Zionist Israelis and Jews add fuel to the fire."

Participants at both conferences didn't let truth, justice, and democratic values impede their extremist ideology, loyalty to criminal states, and the institutionalized state terrorism they practice. Instead, they blamed victims for their crimes - another refuge for scoundrels who have no morality standards, no principles, no legitimacy, and no place to hide under the law.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

http://prognewshour.progressiveradionetwork.org/

http://lendmennews.progressiveradionetwork.org/

Why protest building a synagogue

Mazin Qumsiyeh — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 02:39:00 GMT

The Hurva synagogue was destroyed in the 1948 war by the Jordanian army.
Before 1948, synagogues were used by Zionist underground forces for illicit activities including hording weapons.* But why is there a furor over building it again? First we must recognize that International law is rather clear that East Jerusalem is illegally occupied by Israel and per the Geneva conventions, and buildings or activities in the occupied areas are subject to those conventions. Any transfer of population to the occupied areas including infrastructure for these individuals is considered proscribed settlement activity contrary to both the letter and the spirit of the law.

Second, Israel News reported that: "According to a centuries-old rabbinical prophecy that appears to be coming true, on March 16, 2010, Israel will begin construction of the Third Temple in Jerusalem. During the 18^th century, the Vilna Gaon, a respected rabbinical authority, prophesied that the Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem, which was built during his day, would be destroyed and rebuilt twice, and that when the Hurva was completed for the third time, construction on the Third Temple would begin" <http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=20063>http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=20063 Many Israelis believe this and there is a proliferation of designs, ceremonies and other events to launch this coming age of building a third temple. There are Muslim religious sites there: the first Qibla or direction of prayer for Islam and the third holiest site are the Haram Al-Sharif on this site.
There are Israeli digs underneath that threaten the site already and this only added fuel to the fire.

Third, Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and much of humanity, wonder why is it that such a synagogue is reconstructed but none of 1200 mosques and nearly 200 churches destroyed by Israel over the past 6 decades not allowed to be reconstructed? For me personally and for most Palestinains, we know the history shows Jews, Christians, and Muslims living peacefully together for 1400 years under Islamic rule (with very few exceptions). We know that it is possible to simply have a Jewish area, a Christian area, a Muslim area or even mixed areas. We know it is possible even to intermarry, have friendships, etc. But Zionism had a different idea and it did not revolve on coexisting but on ethnic cleansing and destruction of others. How elsecan we explain the destruction of 530 villages and towns? How can we explain the rapid growth of colonial settlements on Palestinian land or even inside Palestinian homes? There is surely enough space here for all. Why are Palestinians denied the right to go to school just this week (see story and picture where they even held school at the checkpoint. Why not simply live and let live. The density of population inside the Green line is now nearly 1/8th that of areas of the West Bank and Gaza that are designated reservations/ghettos for the native Palestinians. If Jews want to live in the old Jewish quarter of East Jerusalem and rebuild the synagogue there,why not allow the Palestinians to return to the old neighborhoods in West Jerusalem and rebuild the many churches and mosques there?

AIPAC issued a statement supporting Vice President Biden who claimed that there is no space between the US and Israel. In other words, the US and Israeli interests and policies are/must be one and the same including on starvation, oppression, colonization etc. (and oh yes, we have to always put Iran first now that we finished off Iraq for the sake of Israel). US General David Petreaus disagrees:"Insufficient progress toward a comprehensive Middle East peace. The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR.

Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas."

I would go much further and say the US interests and treasury have already been crippled by the subserviant relationship to Israeli lobbies. If the lobby finally succeeds in deepening the conflict with Iran, it will not be Iran that loses, but US and Israel will suffer a horrible blow. The US economy would go into a tail spin and the value of the $3 billion dollars in US military aid to Israel will be reduced even further as the US dollar accelerates its decline.

ACTION: AIPAC and Christian Zionists are mobilizing thousands to write the congress and white house to keep funding and supporting Israel in its policies of colonial settlement expansion. We can do no less write to the white house and to congress.

*This was common practice for the Haganah and other forces to fire from synagogues and use them as military outposts, see .

Israeli raids target children

Nora Barrows-Friedman — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:04:00 GMT

SILWAN, EAST JERUSALEM, Mar 16, 2010 (IPS) - Three thousand heavily armed Israeli security service forces locked down large parts of the Old City of Jerusalem on Tuesday, as battalions of police fired rounds of tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets at Palestinian protesters in the occupied eastern part of the city. Nearly 40 Palestinians were wounded and treated at nearby hospitals, as 25 were arrested during intense clashes.

Protests were aimed at the Netanyahu administration's announcement of expanded illegal settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the five-day closure of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and Palestinian institutions within the Old City. Fundamentalist settler groups held an opening ceremony for a synagogue constructed against the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which was seen as a provocation to the Palestinian community in the area.

Clashes took place in several areas of East Jerusalem, including Shu'afat refugee camp, Wadi Joz and Silwan. This comes on the heels of accelerated attacks by Israeli forces and Jewish settlers inside Silwan in particular, directed towards the community's youngest and most vulnerable population. Since January, at least 33 children from the area have been arrested, detained and interrogated by Israeli forces as home demolitions and settler takeovers continue apace.

Muslem Odeh, 10, tells IPS that he was taken by Israeli forces on Mar. 11 at 3 am, after police broke into the family's home in Silwan's Bustan neighbourhood and pepper-sprayed his father who attempted to protect him. "They were banging on the door, and demanded I come with them. They told me that I had thrown stones at a settler. But I never threw stones."

Guards inside the interrogation centre took Muslem around the jail and showed him the cells, threatening to hold him in one of them if he did not confess to throwing stones. At one point during the six-hour interrogation process, Muslem asked a guard if he could go to the bathroom. The guard refused. "I said, 'would you let me go if I were a Jewish child?'" Muslem tells IPS. "And the guard was ashamed. He finally let me use the toilet."

Muslem's mother, Hiyam Odeh, says that her son's behaviour has changed dramatically since his arrest and interrogation. "He can't sleep at night. When he does, he has intense nightmares. He has had hallucinations of police at the window who threaten to grab him," she tells IPS. "Muslem and other children in Silwan are very distracted at school. They worry about whether they'll be able to return home without getting attacked or taken by the police or whether they'll even have a home to return to at the end of the day."

Murad Shafaa of the Committee to Defend Bustan Neighbourhood says that Silwan is on the frontlines of Israeli settlement expansion policy in occupied East Jerusalem. "In Bustan, these Israeli attacks have created an enormous stress on the community," he tells IPS. "The children have been especially affected by the tension, to the point where they take their favourite toys and clothes with them to school because they fear that at any point their house could be demolished."

"The Israeli forces are threatening the families through the children," Shafaa continues. "In the cases when the police come in and arrest the children, they will only release them on an expensive bail, and every day, the community continues to fear what will happen to their kids."

Sarit Michaeli of Bt'selem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories in Jerusalem, says that the treatment of youth by Israeli forces has raised serious concerns regarding the overall protection of the rights of minors within the Israeli military court system.

"Children should be afforded extra protection under international law," Michaeli says. "However, Palestinian children who are arrested for allegedly throwing stones are being detained at very young ages. Palestinians are tried as adults at 16 years old, in contrast to the age of 18 for Israeli minors. They're being held inside prisons with the adult population."

Michaeli remarks that in the context of the increasingly tense situation in Silwan, Israel's policies of nightly raids and arrests of children especially in the Bustan neighbourhood adds to the pressure on the Palestinian community who already face imminent threats of home demolitions. She says that because the Jerusalem municipality places severe restrictions on the ability of Palestinians to obtain legal building permits in their communities, Israeli police present the policy of home demolitions as simply a matter of law enforcement.

"But the Jewish settlement expansion remains constant," she says. "And Palestinian children, in places such as Silwan, are facing disproportionate measures of punishment inside the Israeli justice system."

Defence for Children International (DCI)'s Palestine office reports that Israel's policy of arresting children is happening at an aggressive rate throughout the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.

In a recent press release, DCI says that there are six Israeli prisons that currently hold approximately 350 Palestinian children under the age of 17. "All but one of these prisons (Ofer Prison) (are) inside Israel, in contravention of Article 76 of the Geneva Convention." Moreover, adds Abed Jamal of DCI's Hebron office, "arresting, detaining and imprisoning Palestinian children is in direct violation of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child."

The Netanyahu administration, for its part, announced that it will not backpedal on its plans to continue settlement expansion in occupied East Jerusalem. "These policies of arresting and interrogating Palestinian children are meant to break the spirit of the child and their families," Hiyam Odeh says. "But we are a strong community. We will remain steadfast, and we will not leave our homes."

This article was published on IPS

The phoniness of the U.S. census

Ray Hanania — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 23:44:00 GMT

Pro-Census advocates argue that adding the word "ARAB" to the Census form might make many Arabs believe they will be easier targets for discrimination and profiling.

They also argue that there is "no difference" between having the word "Arab" added to the Census form as a separate checked box than simply having Arabs write their name (Arab) in on the form on the line for "Other."

The final argument they use is that the decision to change the Census form is not in the hands of the U.S. Census but rather must be done by the U.S. Congress.

Let me take each argument apart one at a time.

Arabs in American are already targeted. We've been targeted from day one, long before Sept. 11, 2001.

When the number of immigrants from Arab countries increased dramatically at the end of the 19^th Century, the government started to get concerned. We were eventually lumped in to a category as "Yellow People."

Later, we were classified as "White" because of the activism of Lebanese and Syrian American who felt our olive-colored skin tone and dark hair and facial features would push us into the world of discrimination then taking place against Blacks.

Ironically, even though we are classified as "White," White Americans do not consider us White. Blacks, however, argue we are not White and are in fact light-skinned blacks.

That explains why most Arabs who opened grocery stores in the 1960s and 1970s did so not in White neighborhoods where till this day they face discrimination, but in African American neighborhoods where we were accepted.

The second argument is even easier to tear down.

If there is no benefit to adding the word "Arab" as a separate category on the Census form, then why do they have 29 other ethnic groups listed on the Census form? In other words, if it does us Arabs no good, why does it "do good" for the 29 that are listed? Blacks (listed 3 times); Hispanics listed 5 times); Asians listed a dozen time, etc.?

It's a phony argument. If being listed as "Black" on the form helps get more Blacks to check that box and be counted, why isn't it beneficial to Arabs?

The final argument is purely ridiculous. Yes, the U.S. Congress has the power to decide who is and isn't listed on the Census form.

But the Congress does not listen to Arabs because we don't exist as a real American constituency; we are only considered a terrorist threat which is why we are profiled in airports but not on the Census form.

Still, we would have a better chance of getting Congress to change the form if the U.S. Census would report back to the Congress that American Arabs are demanding that they be included.

The Squeaky wheel gets the oil. It is a fundamental fact of American life.

Instead, American Arabs are being fed hallucinatory arguments to distract us from the reality by a bunch of Arab organizations that are on the U.S. Census payroll. They are being paid to tell us to write our name (Arab) in on the "Other" line. If they said anything else, they would lose their jobs and funding.

This is about money and being sold out.

The reality is that the Census has been asserting for 30 years that if American Arabs would just write in their name (Arab) on the Census form on the "Other" line, we will be empowered.

It hasn't worked. They asked us in 1980. It didn't work. They asked us in 1990. It didn't work. They asked us in 2000. It didn't work. What makes anyone think that writing it on the Census form this decade will work any better?

We can either fight for our rights, or we can be satisfied with the crumbs of federal grants and funding that "drop" our way. American Arabs get the least percentage of funding of any ethnic group in this country. We get the fewest jobs in government and in education. We get the least amount of cultural and arts grants, too.

With the exception of Detroit where Arabs have come together to assert their influence, American Arabs are excluded and dis-empowered by the American bureaucracy.

And if we don't stand up and demand our rights, no one else will do it for us.

I know younger American Arabs have swallowed the Census propaganda hook, line and sinker. Why wouldn't they, though? The fact is our American Arab leadership has lied to us, bought and paid for and serving as flaks for the U.S. Census.

The younger generation of Arabs won't realize they have been lied to until the next Census takes place, and they discover that nothing will have changed.

The easiest way to control a minority is to prevent them from knowing how many they really are. That is exactly what this Census form does.

How far is Obama willing to press Netanyahu?

Gregg Carlstrom — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 23:31:00 GMT

The conventional wisdom in Washington (and, perhaps, Jerusalem) is that President Obama wants to blow up Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition. The current governing bloc includes Likud and a smattering of right-wing parties (plus Labor, but it's clearly a junior partner); Obama supposedly wants to replace the right-wing parties with Tzipi Livni's Kadima movement.

I can't tell you whether or not this is Obama's explicit goal. But it's a guaranteed outcome if Obama decides to press Netanyahu on stopping new construction in East Jerusalem -- because the rightists in Netanyahu's coalition will never accept such a freeze.

Here's foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, for example, speaking yesterday at a press conference with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

"This demand from the international community is mainly an opportunity to increase pressure on Israel and to demand unreasonable things," the foreign minister said at a joint press conference with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

Lieberman heads the Yisrael Beiteinu party, the largest member (aside from Likud) of Netanyahu's governing coalition.

The Yesha Council -- essentially the lobbying organization for West Bank settlers -- sent a letter to U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton, insisting that "we will not negotiate on the issue of Jerusalem."

And Zevulun Orlev, the head of the right-wing Habayit Heyehudi party, told Yedioth Ahronoth that even a slight concession in East Jerusalem will mean "a serious coalition problem" for Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has to agree first

So, yes, if Netanyahu demands a halt to new construction, it's good-bye governing coalition. But this assumes two things: First, that Obama is willing to seriously pressure Netanyahu to approve such a freeze; and second, that Netanyahu will agree. Both look increasingly unlikely. Obama is already ratcheting down the public pressure on Israel -- a response in part to AIPAC and its affiliates, and to Republicans in Congress.

And on the Israeli side, the Israel Lands Authority is already soliciting bids for new construction in Neke Yaakov, a settlement in occupied East Jerusalem. Israeli president Shimon Peres said yesterday that construction should continue in Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. And Netanyahu was even more explicit in his public remarks yesterday:

"The building in Jerusalem -- and in all other places -- will continue in the same way as has been customary over the last 42 years."

The U.S. is still officially awaiting an Israeli response to the four conditions Clinton outlined last week. If the response is incomplete -- if Israel refuses to halt new construction in East Jerusalem -- how far will Obama push the issue? Not very far, it seems, if the ever-more-conciliatory rhetoric from the White House is any indication. (That's not to say the White House isn't applying pressure in private; Joe Biden spoke with Netanyahu on the phone last night, but the contents of the call haven't been made public.) If Obama doesn't press, Netanyahu's governing coalition will come through this incident intact, and we'll be right back where we started.

Finally, a quick aside: It's curious to watch Tzipi Livni's rehabilitation as a "moderate." I suppose she's moderate within the increasingly right-wing framework of Israeli politics; she's practically a leftist compared to Yisrael Beiteinu or Shas. But she was also a cheerleader for Israel's brutal war in Gaza, and insisted that there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza; she still supports maintaining the blockade.

This article was published on The Majlis

Biden's Amman meeting: Another problem for Americans?

Daoud Kuttab — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 23:18:00 GMT

It began with a short press release issued by the US embassy in Amman late last Thursday and has since mushroomed.

The 20 words given about the topic were: "Vice President Biden met with civil society representatives to discuss preparations for the upcoming Jordanian elections and ongoing domestic reforms."

No details about who among the hundreds of civil society representatives met the senior US officials, and no other information.

Attempts to get the US embassy to divulge the names of the attendees were politely refused by the justification that that was not standard US policy.

When a daily newspaper reporter tracked down one of the participants, he said that there was a gentlemen's agreement not to discuss the details of the meeting. If there is ever a signal for the press to jump all over a story, this was it. It was said that the meeting was secret, its attendees were unknown and who knows what was concocted. Just the yarn that conspiracy authors love to knit. The story was front page in an Arabic newspaper on Friday, with the headline calling the meeting a "grave interference". Within a few days, almost every columnist had his crack at this story; after all, with the US silent and the participants honouring the so-called gentlemen's agreement, there would be no one to dispute even the wildest of claims.

Naturally, some of these claims focused on some type of Israeli-sponsored conspiracy that Biden brought with him, which focuses on the upcoming elections (conspiracy writers were able to use the words of the press release to build on) in which the Palestinian refugee problem will be miraculously resolved by empowering these refugees within Jordan, and that would close a troublesome chapter in the negotiations.

The US embassy finally spoke out, saying that the meeting was not secret, that participants were not asked to remain silent, that the Jordanian government is aware and approved of the participants who were from a long list of people given to the vice president's staff, and that a small group was chosen because of time constraints and the desire of the vice president to go beyond polemics.

A senior American source detailed the two issues that dominated the discussions: the mechanics of the upcoming elections, which King Abdullah wants free and transparent, and how non-governmental organisations can help His Majesty's wishes to be translated on the ground. One participant confirmed what the US source noted that in addition, the Arab-Israeli conflict took a major part of the discussion.

Jordanian advocate and human rights activists Eva Abu Halaweh is said to have focused on the Gaza siege and the situation in Jerusalem. Ironically, the issue of external interference in local politics has been the demand of most genuinely democratic forces the world over. American officials are blamed if they meet only with the ruling powers without giving a voice to the civil society. In Jordan, it seems that the same forces that are fighting for reform and genuine power sharing refuse to discuss such issues with foreign powers, especially the US. America's foreign policy trumps everything else in countries like Jordan where local human rights activists expect all meetings with US officials to focus solely on the Palestinian issue.

The Obama administration does have a problem in this area. Barack Obama came into the White House on a strong campaign against the Bush-Cheney doctrine. Former president George W. Bush and his neoconservatives claimed that they militarily unseated Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein in order to introduce democracy to the region. And while Obama has been staunchly opposed to his predecessor's foreign policies, especially in the Middle East, his administration does not wish to let down democratic forces and the desire for democracy of peoples the world over. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a special speech outlining the US approach to issues like human rights and democratic values. US officials have regularly met with human rights activists and opposition figures in countries like Indonesia, Russia, Egypt and Pakistan.

America's financial support to Jordan is substantial. It was in the spirit of proudly presenting the robust Jordanian civil society that the US embassy pushed for the meeting with the vice president. A negative reaction to this reflects Jordan as a reactionary country rather than a progressive, liberal one.

This is not the image Jordan wants its visitors to see. The Jordanian civil society is clearly not united, nor does it speak the same tongue. In other countries, civil society leaders would go to the press as soon as they completed a meeting with a senior foreign leader.

The reluctance of the individuals who met with Biden to speak out reflects that something is wrong in this equation. Either the American choices need to be revisited or these individuals don't deserve to be considered true civil society leaders.

If the US wants to have an effective role in Jordan, American officials may wish to rethink their criteria for choosing who meets with senior foreign officials. They need to have a proactive policy regarding the dissemination of their points of view and to be conscious of the deep suspicion of influential (though not numerically large) sections of the Jordanian political map.

As Obama has said repeatedly, the US needs to understand the different countries and their need to formulate democratic reform according to their unique situation. A small political minority should not be allowed to hijack the reform process.

Any reform in Jordan must include major political forces. The Biden meeting flop has shown that the sensitivities of the Jordanian political debate must be taken seriously, especially in regards to interaction between foreign guests and local political leaders and activists.

This article originally appeared on Huffington Post

Public opinion backs Obama not Netanyahu

MJ Rosenberg — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 23:06:00 GMT

Wolf Blitzer and Jack Cafferty have it right here except where Wolf characterizes the shift in public opinion as "anti-Israel." It is not; it is against settlements and for peace and security for Israelis and Palestines. Even more, it is about supporting our own government when a foreign country publicly disses America. Wolf quickly corrects himself and notes, with Cafferty, that even Israelis hate Bibi's settlement policies. Public opinion is shifting.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Also, the first poll on the Obama administration's stand on settlements is out. It comes from the right-leaning Rasmussen reports.

And it's a doozy. It turns out that "49% of American voters believe Israel should be required to stop building settlements." Rasmussen also reports that their "national telephone survey finds that just 22% of voters disagree and believe Israel should not be required to stop building those settlements. Another 29% are not sure." H/T Laura Rozen.

This is important not only because this poll represents a significant shift in public opinion, not against Israel but for the President's approach. In fact, other poll responses indicate that the electorate remains strongly pro-Israel. It is just that American voters understand that Israeli settlements are bad for Israel, bad for Palestinians and most significantly, as General Petraeus tells us, bad for America.

Netanyahu has picked a fight he cannot win like with General Petraeus.

This article was published on TPM

It's Palin vs. Petraeus & new poll

MJ Rosenberg — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:41:00 GMT

Most right-wingers claim to be great admirers of General David Petraeus. Bill Kristol has said that he's "America's man of the year." Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) says he is "an exceptionally smart and thoughtful man." House Republican Leader John Boehner says he has "earned" the right to be listened to. John McCain calls him "a great American hero."

But now, some on the right -- most notably Sarah Palin -- don't think he's all that great. As for having earned the "right to be listened to," fugeddaboutit.

That is because General Petraeus is now saying that Israel's policies in the occupied territories harm US interests and potentially threaten American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was Petraeus' warning that led to the Obama administration's condemnation of Israel's settlement policies. And that condemnation is driving Petraeus' erstwhile friends crazy.

On her Facebook page on Tuesday, Palin wrote that the Obama administration is out of line when it criticizes Israeli plans for new settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. She writes that "the Obama Administration has decided to escalate, make unilateral demands of Israel, and threaten the very foundation of the US-Israel relationship. This is quickly leading to the worst crisis in US-Israel relations in decades, and yet this did not have to happen. More importantly, it needs to stop before it spirals out of control." She calls America's concerns about Israeli settlements "this manufactured Israeli controversy."

But that isn't how Petraeus sees it.

Speaking about the Israeli-Palestinian issue before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Petraeus said:

"The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests... Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the [region] and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas...."

So Petraeus is telling us that American interests -- and Americans in uniform -- are threatened by the Israeli-Palestinian status quo and that Iran, Hizballah, and Hamas benefit from it.

That's pretty straightforward.

Why doesn't this matter to Sarah Palin? What part of national security does she not understand? Or more accurately, what part does she understand?

UPDATE

The first poll on the Obama administration's stand on settlements is out. It comes from the right-leaning Rasmussen reports. And it's a doozy. It turns out that "49% of American voters believe Israel should be required to stop building settlements." Rasmussen also reports that their "national telephone survey finds that just 22% of voters disagree and believe Israel should not be required to stop building those settlements. Another 29% are not sure."

Click here to read this post at Media Matters Action Network.

My Mideast conference in Madrid

Ruth Eglash — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:32:00 GMT

It looks like any other shopping mall. Colorful window displays pull in patrons already overloaded with shopping bags, promotional stands selling mobile phones cater to customers searching for an upgrade and tired shoppers rejuvenate their intense outing with a coffee at one of the central cafés.

For me, being in Amman's flagship City Mall is not a straight forward shopping trip. Even though I would love to take my time and browse some of the British chain stores or local outlets, being here is a cultural eye-opener and part of an on-going process to break down my perceptions of Arabs and Muslims that have been drummed into me practically since birth.

As a British Jew with an Israeli father, I was always made to believe that Arabs were our enemies. My convictions were compounded by big and small historical events - too many to mention here - over the past century, as well as personal brushes with terrorism since moving to Jerusalem 15 years ago.

Even though I witnessed the jubilations in Israel over the 1994 peace treaty between my country and Jordan, I was under no illusion that warm relations existed between our two nations and despite several encounters with Arabs living in Israel, breaking away from the classic stereotypes and standing up against what has been ingrained into your brain is not an easy task for anyone.

As I sipped my frozen fruit juice and watched Jordanian shoppers enjoy their free-time, I realized that just by being here I had almost managed to reverse that brain-washing process and accept that all people, whatever their beliefs or views, are human beings.

It has been a difficult process but I believe there are two factors that have really helped. The first is thanks to my education in Brent, one of London's most multi-cultural boroughs, and the other is the overwhelming sense of personal curiosity about people who are different from me - something that has propelled me to want to be a journalist ever since I can remember. There is a third reason too that has contributed to my successes at understanding my enemies and that is my personal encounters with Arabic-speaking and Muslim journalists who were just as curious about me as I was about them. In some weird way, we spoke the exact same language.

I can pinpoint exactly when my journey to challenging my own stereotypes started. It was January 2009, the 14 day of Operation Cast Lead, Israel's conflict with Hamas in the Gaza strip.

As reporter for The Jerusalem Post, I'd been covering the war from a uniquely Israeli angle and I was focused on hearing the sentiments of the Israeli people, especially those based in Sderot and the south.

However, like most people around the world I could not avoid the distressing images coming out of the Gaza Strip showing the Palestinian people's suffering. It was a tough time for me -- I naturally sympathized with my own people, those who had been victims of Hamas rockets for many years - but I started questioning whether war is justified in any context.

Against this backdrop, I suddenly found myself transported to a journalists' workshop in Madrid with 20 journalists from the Arab world, including two Palestinian writers. The night before I left to the European Union-sponsored event, I found myself with palpitations and I had a deep anxiety in my heart as to how the others would react towards me.

As we sat down to the session on the first morning, the organizers asked us to introduce ourselves, our media and the country we were from. It was the first time in my life that I had been in a room with so many Arabs, even though there is a large population in Israel we rarely interact. My heart was beating fast as I mumbled to the group that my name was Ruth Eglash from the Jerusalem Post in Israel.

"Speak louder," instructed the organizer.

"Ruth Eglash from The Jerusalem Post in Israel," I said clearing my throat and trying not to catch the eyes of anyone else in the room.

There was not too much reaction to my presence on that first morning until a young Palestinian journalist broke the ice by speaking to me in Hebrew. Gathering for the introductory meal in the evening, I felt more relaxed and was ready to answer the questions of those who suddenly seemed intrigued by my presence.

They weren't nice to me. They were all journalists, after all, and they grilled me with questions about the Gaza conflict. It was tough, but they were willing to listen to me, did not shout or make it personal. It was an open dialogue about the issues on a micro and macro scale and the conclusion was amicable.

I was shocked; it was not what I had expected.

As the days past, we began to discuss different matters. We turned our attention from war and conflict to stories about our families, where the best tourist sites and shopping spots were in Madrid, and, of course, the shared passion of food.

Obviously all trying to avoid pork, I even found myself one day sharing a Big Mac Meal with two Egyptians, a Palestinian and a Jordanian, it was a surreal experience, one that most at the United Nations would be jealous of!

Health issues aside, I realized that it is exactly these experiences that are needed to dispel stereotypes about the enemy.

While our days in Spain came and passed, thanks to new technology -- email, Facebook, Twitter and more - I continued to be in touch with my new friends, especially one Jordan Times journalist who had more in common with me than most others I have met in my life.

It was this connection that pushed me to visit Jordan a few months after the Madrid conference. It was a trip I took against the advice of my father and with surprised reactions from neighbors and friends.

Arriving on the other side of the Sheikh Hussein Bridge, my newly found Jordanian journalist friend showed me traditional hospitality, insisting on showing me every historic and cultural site in Jordan. Later, I reciprocated his hospitality when he visited Israel. West Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Jaffa were all on our tour list.

From here I could go on to describe both of our reactions to visiting the others country but what is more important to point out is what we have learned from our interactions with each other. How he has felt free to ask questions about Judaism and its connection to Israel and how he has helped erase my ignorance about Islam and the Arab world.

Obviously neither of us provide a complete picture of the other persons culture and religion, there is a wide range of views that each group of people express, but we are both journalists and we can just keep on asking.

For my part, these interactions with journalists from the Arab world has helped to see the people of this region more clearly and to realized that differences aside we are all just human beings, who love eating, shopping and life. We all have more in common than we realize.

I know its clichéd, and I am sure that many in either camp will say this is naïve, but ignorance breeds hatred. It is much easier to justify hating someone that you do not know as opposed to making the effort to understand and accept the differences between you.

Anyway, I am sure you are all wondering why I am taking the time to tell you this story. My Jordanian colleague and I were trying to find a story that could highlight the commonalities between our countries but the more we investigated certain issues - refugees, education, health and more - we realized it would only show the hate, anger and strengthen the stereotypes held by all in this region.

Stories of co-existence and shared projects about our two countries are not sexy enough for the mainstream media, they do not sell papers and in some circles are frowned upon for normalizing relations. That is why we decided to tell our personal stories -- if we can change our opinions, anyone can.

US-Israel crisis could trigger geopolitical shift

Osama Alsharif — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 04:23:00 GMT

Had Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu been a superstitious man, he would have seen the breaking of a glass-framed ceremonial gift he was about to present to his esteemed US guest, Vice President Joe Biden, as ominous sign of bad things to come. Indeed few hours later, as Biden was getting ready to make the short trip from Jerusalem to Ramallah to meet President Mahmoud Abbas and to announce the resumption of peace talks, US-Israeli relations were suddenly being battered by a political storm that was quickly developing into a hurricane.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Israel's announcement to build 1600 housing units in East Jerusalem, few hours after Biden had concluded meetings with President Shimon Peres and Netanyahu, "insulting." But the media had another more fitting description: It was a slap in the face, stunning, humiliating and painful. A barrage of harsh words, statements and letters rained on the Netanyahu's head from Israel's most faithful and solid ally, the US. It was almost surreal.

President Obama, fuming, sent a harshly-worded letter to the Israeli premier, which according to media reports included warnings and conditions. Mrs Clinton made a 43-minute telephone call to Netanyahu, during which the latter did most of the listening. Israel's ambassador to Washington was summoned to the State Dept. to hear its protests. Israel's apology, for the timing of the announcement, was brushed aside. By mid-week a stunned Israel was facing the biggest crisis with Washington in decades.

US indignation could be excused. It had spent the past few months convincing Abbas and moderate Arab countries to reverse the PNA's decision to boycott peace talks until Israel freezes its settlement activities in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The pressure paid off and Arab foreign ministers provided Abbas, last week, with a political cover to return to the negotiations table, in what was dubbed as proximity talks.

Biden's visit was supposed to restore US-Israel trust, launch indirect peace negotiations and allow Washington to focus on a more serious issue; Iran's nuclear misdeeds. The vice president, the most senior US official to visit Israel since Obama took office, was buoyant; assuring the Israelis of America's commitment to their security, promising to defend it against Iranian threats and extolling the resoluteness of the US-Israel alliance. The end-result was a complete fiasco. Israel's callous announcement shattered Biden's peace mission and, more importantly, it aborted his quest to get the Arabs to join an anti-Iran alliance. Washington's latest Middle East strategy took a direct hit-no thanks to Israel!

Against an unexpected American reaction, Netanyahu's right-wing coalition government teetered. His Labor partner threatened to pull out in protest of the latest decision. Ehud Barak, Labor's leader, had just returned from the US where he assured the Americans of the Israeli government's support of the latest plan to resume peace talks and observe a moratorium on settlement expansion.

But he is not Netanyahu's only partner. The more extreme parties have warned the prime minister that they will not tolerate any backing down from an ambitious; a more apt description would be malicious, project to colonize Arab East Jerusalem. Even key members of his own Likud party called on him to hold his ground and not to compromise on his ideological beliefs.

So far he is not caving in, although it now appears that his political career is at stake. The US demand that Israel revokes all settlement plans will prove costly for his coalition government. He will have to weigh in the prospects of forming a new coalition comprised of Kadima, Labor and Likud, the closest thing to a national unity government, or take Israel into new general elections. Some analysts believe that this is what the Obama administration wants now; or at least to reign in Netanyahu who had challenged the US president on a number of occasions.

The severity of the US reaction may have surprised everyone, but it should not have shocked the Israelis. According to Foreign Policy magazine the Israelis were warned that their policies towards the Palestinians, in particular their settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, were endangering US interests in the region. One message was delivered by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen who visited Israel recently. According to FP Gen. Mullen "carried a blunt, and tough, message on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: that Israel had to see its conflict with the Palestinians in a larger, regional, context--as having a direct impact on America's status in the region."

The magazine revealed that Gen. Mullen was briefed last January by senior military officers from the US Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), on the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on American interests in the region. It added that CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus underlined his growing worries at the lack of progress in resolving the issue; that it is feeding a growing perception among Arab leaders that the US was incapable of standing up to Israel and "that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing US standing in the region."

This report was forwarded to the White House, and according to the magazine it "hit ... like a bombshell." The same message that Mullen delivered to Israel a month ago, was repeated, albeit in a less diplomatic manner, by a fuming Biden, in the aftermath of the Israeli announcement, to Netanyahu, according to Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

No matter how deep and serious this latest US-Israeli tussle is, it will not settle down soon. The United States is more involved in the Middle East, with hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, than at any recent time. Its strategic interests in the region are not one and the same as those of Israel. Arabs are frustrated and angry with so many broken US promises. The stakes are proving to be much bigger than previously thought.

How far can Obama go in his face-off with Israel? And can he, and his party, afford the political price of confronting an extremist Israeli government with its powerful Jewish lobby in Washington? Who will blink first? Skeptics believe the crisis will eventually be contained with no major casualties, except for the Palestinians and by extension the Arabs. But there are those who see the beginning of a fracture in the once-indomitable US-Israeli alliance. If this is true then we should brace ourselves for a massive geopolitical tremor that could take place at any moment!

Providing a clarity the peace process badly needs

Daniel Levy — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 04:01:00 GMT

Biden visit exposed Israeli settler truthsThis week the US saw Netanyahu's government in all its glorious stubborness-providing a clarity the peace process badly needs

There was a moment of rare clarity this week for America's efforts to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace. The US vice-president Joe Biden was on a visit, ostensibly a charm offensive to an Israel that has been heretofore neglected by the Obama administration's most senior echelons, and an opportunity to discuss broad regional issues, notably Iran. By coincidence, Biden's trip coincided with special Middle East envoy George Mitchell's launching of indirect, or proximity, talks, between the Israelis and Palestinians. Perhaps less coincidental, Biden's presence was greeted by announcements of dramatic new plans for Israeli settlement expansion in East Jerusalem. A crisis in the relaunched Israeli-Palestinian peace talks had apparently arrived a little earlier than expected - day zero to be precise. Not that those resumed negotiations were being greeted by much more than scepticism anyway. For most observers and even participants, the customary and polite suspension of disbelief that normally accompanies a new round of peace talks was barely on display.

Both sides seemed ready to settle down to a predictable and protracted game of placing blame for failure at the other's door. Then, on the day of Biden's arrival, Israel announced plans to market 112 new housing units in the West Bank and bettered that 24 hours later (shortly after the Biden-Netanyahu confab) when a district committee gave planning authorisation to 1,600 new units in East Jerusalem.

What provided this episode with refreshing clarity was the way in which it exposed the deeper dynamics that are driving contemporary Israeli realities.

Netanyahu seems to have been genuinely blindsided by this development. Israel's settlement addiction proved stronger even than the prime minister's desire to spend a few days going settlement cold turkey. Israel's leadership scrambled to summon their best explanations and apologies - the decision was insensitive, ill-timed, a local initiative, and a mere technical planning detail. If only the decision had been taken two days or two weeks earlier or later everything would have been OK. And so in one fell swoop the naked Israeli settler reality was exposed in all of its absurdity.

For the rest of the world, East Jerusalem, just like the West Bank, is occupied territory; all settlements over the Green Line are illegal (even if not everyone always uses that word). For Israel's leaders, the timing may have been unfortunate, but the impulse to settle Palestinian land is fundamentally sound. Palestinian land is claimed as state land or confiscated, plans are authorised, tenders are issued, construction begins, and settlers move in. After more than 40 years, and endless seemingly trivial and mundane bureaucratic decisions, over 500,000 Israelis now reside beyond the Green Line (for a detailed analysis of this process, read East Jerusalem settlement experts Daniel Seidemann and Lara Friedman here). The settlers and their sympathisers are entrenched in every relevant nook and cranny of Israel's bureaucracy and security establishment. The momentum that they can now generate (especially but not only when their sympathisers hold senior government office), is stronger than Israel's demographic concerns, is stronger than fear of Israel acquiring an international pariah status, and as was proven this week, is stronger than the needs of the US-Israel relationship. America's vice-president has just seen this dynamic first hand and up close.

Mainstream Israeli commentators were apparently shocked to discover the power of the settler momentum. Pundits such as Ari Shavit, known for their staunch nationalism and vilification of human rights groups working in the territories, had a rude awakening. In Ha'aretz he described "the settlements in the West Bank that serve the centrifuges in Natanz [Iran]. If sane Israel does not wake up, it will be defeated by the metastasising of the occupation and the lack of the central government's ability to stop it."

And that, in a nutshell, is why Benjamin Netanyahu may be our last, best chance for a two-state peace deal.

The extremism and excesses of his government may finally open enough eyes and lead to enough local and international action to roll back this settler behemoth. More moderate Israeli governments, even those perhaps sincerely committed to a variation on the de-occupation, two-state solution theme, have definitively failed to halt the settlements march. When Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert were negotiating on paper potential Israeli withdrawals, the settlements and the occupation were being expanded and entrenched on the ground. Even when Ariel Sharon was removing 7,500 settlers from Gaza, he was adding a greater number to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But under Netanyahu, what you see is what you get.

And perhaps this clarity and this exaggeration is exactly what is needed. Everything else, all the relevant actors, were stuck in an ugly paralysis. The Palestinians remain divided and devoid of strategy. For 20 years the Fatah-led PLO had been waiting for the US to deliver Israel for an equitable two-state outcome. The only alternative to negotiations to gain any traction had been indiscriminate and unjustifiable violence. The Arab states had produced a breakthrough peace initiative in 2002 but it never translated into a programme for public diplomacy or even pressure to be brought to bear on Israel, America, or the Quartet. The US and EU continue to place their faith in confidence-building measures and unmediated negotiations between the parties, hoping against hope that a formula which had failed for over a decade would produce a breakthrough and that rational argument might prevail.

Not surprisingly, none of this was going anywhere. It has taken a Netanyahu-led extreme right, religious government in Israel (the defunct Labor party of Ehud Barak can be justly ignored as window dressing) to send a signal strong enough to perhaps pierce this paralysis. Israelis and Palestinians, it is clear, are in an adversarial relationship, talk of partnership is premature, talk of confidence-building is naive. Transparently run Palestinian institutions and well-groomed Palestinian security forces will not remove the settler-occupation complex. And neither will gentle persuasion. The naked extremity of the Netanyahu government is producing new international initiatives and new coalitions.

In Jewish diaspora communities, there is a determination to reclaim a more moderate and progressive vision of what it means to be pro-Israel and to apply Jewish ethics and Jewish values, that helped guide civil rights struggles in the past, to contemporary Israeli reality. Such efforts are gaining ground - notably the emergence of J Street in America. Inside Israel, a new progressive discourse, still lacking real parliamentary representation, is struggling to make its voice heard in civil society-notably in weekly demonstrations at Sheikh Jarrah. On the Palestinian side, alternative strategies to the negotiation dependency or violence that dominated the past are gaining ground - especially in non-violent resistance to land confiscations and the separation barrier. Prime Minister Fayyad's plan for statehood by mid-2011 could become a significant hook if it develops some teeth.

European actors have been toying with initiatives of their own in adapting to this new reality. All 27 member states achieved a remarkable consensus in endorsing the most powerful and comprehensive statement of EU policy last December. Lady Ashton, at least declaratively, has gotten off to an impressive start and will be visiting the region next week, and crucially Gaza will be on her itinerary. Britain is taking the lead in imposing labelling on settlement products, and the French and Spanish governments are exploring options for advancing Palestinian statehood even in the face of peace process stalemate.

None of this would likely have happened if the government in Israel was nice-sounding and well-intentioned, but ultimately hapless in the face of the settler-occupation complex. Nothing is also likely to really come to fruition without the US assuming leadership. These new developments may serve to create an environment in which there is more political space for the US to operate in.

US administrations have helped generate moments of decision for Israel in the past and not only in the Egyptian peace deal and full evacuation of the Sinai brokered by President Carter. President Bush confronted Yitzhak Shamir with the withholding of loan guarantee monies, leading to the election of Yitzhak Rabin in 1992 in a campaign in which settlements and opposition to them featured prominently. Benjamin Netanyahu's first term in office ended abruptly when President Clinton challenged him to sign, and then implement, the Wye River Memorandum of 1998, something his coalition could not sustain and which led to the election of Ehud Barak, ushering in at the time a moment of great hope.

The realities today are no longer the same. The Israeli inability to confront its own settler-occupation demon is more deeply entrenched. Israel will have to be presented with clear choices, clear answers to its legitimate security and other concerns, and clear consequences for nay-saying. A successful effort will also have to be more comprehensive and more regional in its scope, almost certainly involving Syria and bringing Hamas into the equation. No one should expect this to be easy. But if one person can generate American will to lead such an effort and an international alliance to see it through, then surely that person is the Israeli leader who we saw on display in all his glorious stubbornness this week.

This article originally appeared on Israel-Palestine Blogs

It won't be easy to restore trust between U.S. and Israel

Aaron David Miller — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 03:50:00 GMT

Washington (CNN) -- The current flap over Israeli settlement construction in East Jerusalem is a real humdinger, but it isn't the worst moment in the history of U.S.-Israeli relations.

The Suez Crisis (1956), Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's reassessment of U.S.-Israeli relations (1975) and America's denial of housing loan guarantees to Israel (1991) saw relations at a much lower ebb, complete with the threat of sanctions -- and in 1991 the actual use of them.

At the same time, those who expect the latest crisis to be resolved quickly or easily are whistling past the graveyard. It won't be easy to restore trust and confidence or agreement on an approach toward Arab-Israeli negotiations.

The latest tension over Israeli building in East Jerusalem is only the latest twist in the ups and downs in the relations between the Obama administration and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Clearly, the Israelis are responsible through their inept and incoherent policies for the latest crisis. After 13 months, the Obama team is still not sure how to deal with Netanyahu. To paraphrase Shakespeare, it's not sure whether it wants to bury or praise the prime minister.

Even though the Middle East peace process sometimes feels like Shakespearean tragedy, it's the real world. And in that world, President Obama has yet to develop a coherent strategy toward the Arab-Israeli negotiations driven by the right mix of reassurance and toughness. Until he does, and gets some measure of cooperation from Israel, we can expect more soap opera than serious policy in the negotiations.

Like most everything else in Obama World, from health care to closing Guantanamo, reality seems to be the ultimate teacher and downsizer.

In January 2009, the administration came out loud, hard and fast on the Arab-Israeli issue. For the tough-minded Likud prime minister, Obama represented a real challenge. Netanyahu and many other Israelis worried that this president might jam Israel on the peace process.

Indeed, it looked like we were in for a sequel to a movie we'd seen a couple times before: a face-off between tough Likud prime ministers (Begin and Shamir) and equally steely American presidents (Carter and Bush 41).

But what is transpiring under President Obama is quite different. True, the president confronted a much more difficult environment -- big issues such as Jerusalem and refugees and big gaps between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Still, the administration lacked a coherent approach to dealing with the tough hand it had been dealt. They talked tough, calling for a comprehensive settlements freeze, which no Israeli prime minister could accept. But when the Israelis said no, the administration went into retreat; to make matters worse, the Saudis said no to even partial normalization and the Palestinians said no thank you to coming back to negotiations.

Last week's brouhaha over East Jerusalem during the trip of Vice President Joe Biden -- provoked by Israel's Ministry of the Interior but acquiesced to by Prime Minister Netanyahu's continuing willingness to flout American objections to settlement activity -- opened up a wound that will be tough to close.

It points out again the need for a coherent and effective American policy to deal with the negotiations, the only instrument that has any chance of dealing with the settlement issue.

Settlements are a huge problem. They prejudge the outcome of negotiations, humiliate the Palestinians and make America, as Israel's closest friend, look weak.

But going to verbal war with the Israelis over them is really a dog's lunch. No Israeli prime minister can halt all construction, certainly not in Jerusalem. The ensuing struggle will divert all sides from the right focus on negotiating an agreement.

Instead what the administration should do is develop a serious approach to get those talks started. Unless Obama is planning to try to get rid of the current Israeli government, he really has no choice but to work with it.

The nuclear ambitions of Iran is reason enough to want the cooperation of the Israelis and some leverage over them in the period ahead.

I'm not a great believer in the prospects of a conflict-ending agreement between Israel and the Palestinians now on the core issues.

But if Obama is serious about getting a peace agreement, he's got to identify a serious strategy to try to get one. Proximity talks, in which the two sides meet separately with American intermediaries, just won't do.

The United States needs to be talking to both sides separately at first; but also convening three-way negotiations and pushing the two to talk directly to one another. And it must be prepared to offer up its own ideas and views when the Israelis and Palestinians reach an impasse.

Finally, for this to have any chance of working, the president and prime minister will have to reset their relationship. Without Israel's confidence, this deal won't happen.

Obama shouldn't be gratuitously praising or burying Netanyahu; he should be testing and pushing Israel and the Palestinians to determine whether an agreement is possible, first on borders, then on Jerusalem and refugees. If things look promising, he should offer the incentives and reassurances necessary to make it work.

If it does work, no one will care about past tensions between America and Israel. After all, as the Bard wrote: All's well that ends well.

This article originally appeared on CNN

Hosni Mubarak is still not dead

Neal Ungerleider — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 03:40:00 GMT

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Contrary to speculation that Hosni Mubarak died last week, the Egyptian President is still alive.

Following a flurry of rumors that swept Egypt after a series of confusingly worded press releases from the Egyptian government, new video was released of Mubarak from the German hospital where he is in treatment. Mubarak, 81, had his gallbladder and a benign small intestine growth removed.

Official Egyptian press releases omitted the information that Mubarak was undergoing a biopsy, causing much of the confusion. The Egyptian government practices heavy-handed press censorship; the President's health is a closely guarded state secret.

True/Slant, CBS News and the Christian Science Monitor were among the publications and news organizations reporting on the Egyptian press rumors.

According to Dr. Markus Buechler of Heidelberg University Hospital:

"He was upbeat and in very good spirits as usual. His resolve and willpower... was very obvious this morning as he looked forward to going back to his normal life."

Upon the release of the video, shares on the Cairo Stock Exchange bounced back from a 6% loss that began after death rumors first began circulating Friday.

If Mubarak dies, there is an unclear line of succession in the country. Among those angling to replace Mubarak are the favored candidate, son Gamal Mubarak; others include Gen. Omar Suleiman and former IAEA head Mohammed el-Baradei. Mubarak has been Egypt's longest-serving leader in more than a century and surgery in an 81-year-old is never a simple matter.

All of this goes to underscore the important lesson: In an unfree society, rumors and speculation will inevitably run rampant. If you want to stop the misinformation, than free the press to do their job.

This article originally appeared on True/Slant

Progressives need to back Obama, not Netanyahu

MJ Rosenberg — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 02:43:00 GMT

The diplomatic crisis over Israeli settlements is going into its second week and there is no sign that either side is backing down. It started when the Israeli government announced that it would expand settlements in East Jerusalem while Vice President Joseph Biden was visiting Israel.

The initial reason for the blow-up was the administration's anger that the Israeli government announced the construction of 1,600 new settlement units in East Jerusalem while Vice President Biden was in Israel. This was a slap in Biden's face because the United States has always opposed settlements and, like the rest of the world, does not recognize Arab East Jerusalem as part of Israel. The United States has consistently stated that the final status of East Jerusalem, like the West Bank and Gaza, must be resolved in negotiations and not resolved unilaterally by Israelis or Palestinians.

Furthermore, by announcing the new settlements while Biden was in Israel, the Netanyahu government seemed to imply that the United States condoned the move, which was the exact opposite of the truth. That perception, if allowed to stand, would only harm US interests in the Muslim world starting with US troops. According to the Israeli daily, Yedioth Achronoth, Biden himself made that point clear to Netanyahu:

The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel's actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.

Republicans (and some Democrats) in Congress are arguing that President Obama's demand that Israel stop expanding settlements activity is somehow a unique position for a president to take. This is not true. In fact, Presidents Carter and Clinton both demanded a settlement freeze, as did Bush I and II, and President Reagan.

The President [Reagan], in a televised speech demanded a "settlement freeze by Israel" that would preclude further Jewish settlement in the occupied areas. Mr. Reagan spoke of such a freeze as essential to what he described as a new United States prescription for peace in the Middle East. [New York Times, 9/2/82]

The policy has been consistent under both Democrats and Republicans: settlements are an obstacle to peace and endanger US interests.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is urging its 100,000 members to pressure Members of Congress to urge the White House to back down. This is the text of an email AIPAC sent to its members.

Members of the Obama administration have recently made statements regarding the U.S. relationship with Israel, which have heightened tensions with America's only democratic ally in the region. We strongly urge the administration to work closely and privately with our partner Israel, in a manner befitting strategic allies, to address any issues between the two governments. Yesterday, AIPAC issued a press release addressing this important issue.

Please urge members of the House and Senate to:

1. Make statements in support of America's strong relationship with Israel and the need for the U.S. to work closely and privately with the Jewish state to address any issues between the two governments.

2. Contact Secretary of State Clinton and urge the United States to immediately defuse the current tension with Israel.

AIPAC and its friends are counting on organizing Congressional resistance so that the Obama administration will back down and accept Netanyahu's plans to expand settlements. Yesterday, Netanyahu said, "The building in Jerusalem - and in all other places - will continue in the same way as has been customary over the last 42 years."

It is critical that Members of Congress support the president rather than thwart a courageous Presidential initiative that is right for America and Israel.

Some members of Congress can be expected to do the right thing and support the Administration, despite outside pressure.

For instance, the following House members signed on to an initiative organized by J Street and other pro-Israel, pro-peace organizations to ease the blockade of Gaza that continues to devastate the people of that unhappy place. They can also be expected to back the President in his determination to stop the expansion of settlements.

They are:

Raul Grijalva (AZ)
Lois Capps (CA)
Sam Farr (CA)
Bob Filner (CA)
Barbara Lee (CA)
Loretta Sanchez (CA)
Pete Stark (CA)
Michael Honda (CA)
John Conyers (MI)
John Dingell (MI)
Carolyn Kilpatrick (MI)
Keith Ellison (MN)
Betty McCollum (MN)
James Oberstar (MN)
Peter Welch (VT)
Jim Moran (VA)
Jim McDermott (WA)
Adam Smith (WA)

Lynn Woolsey (CA)
Jackie Speier (CA)
Diane Watson (CA)
George Miller (CA)
Jim Himes (CT)
Andre Carson (IN)
Bruce Braley (IA)
Donald Payne (NJ)
Rush Holt (NJ)
Bill Pascrell (NJ)
Yvette Clarke
Maurice Hinchey (NY)
Paul Tonko (NY)
Nick Rahall (WV)
Tammy Baldwin (WI)
Gwen Moore (WI)
Glenn Nye (VA)

John Yarmuth (KY)
Elijah Cummings (MD)
Donna Edwards (MD)
Michael Capuano (MA)
William Delahunt (MA)
Jim McGovern (MA)
John Tierney (MA)
John Olver (MA)
Stephen Lynch (MA)
David Price (NC)
Mary Jo Kilroy (OH)
Marcy Kaptur (OH)
Earl Blumenauer (OR)
Peter DeFazio (OR)
Chaka Fattah (PA)
Joe Sestak (PA)
Brian Baird (WA)
Jay Inslee (WA)

But there were some House progressives who were not on that list. Some of these are strongly pro-Obama, including on issues related to the Middle East, but will need encouragement to withstand the pressure that has already been unleashed on them to back Netanyahu this time.

This list includes:

Reps. Nancy Pelosi (CA) Jan Schakowsky (IL), Henry Waxman (CA), Jared Polis (CO), Rosa De Laura (CT), Steve Cohen (TN), Nita Lowey (NY), Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (FL), Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX), Barney Frank (MA), Ed Markey (MA), Alcee Hastings (FL) and Howard Berman (CA), the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Others such as Anthony Weiner (NY), Brad Sherman (CA), Steve Israel (NY), Alan Grayson (FL), Eliot Engel (NY), Steny Hoyer (MD), Chris Van Hollen (MD) and Shelley Berkley (NV) have not only supported the AIPAC position, but have also been quite vocal about it.

It would be a remarkably positive, although unlikely, development if any of them chose to back their own president on the issue of settlements. (Weiner has already denounced the Obama administration for throwing a "temper tantrum.")

There is no Senate equivalent to the letter from House members so there is no reliable and current guide to where the progressives stand. Both Senators Chuck Schumer (NY) and Barbara Boxer (CA) tend to be down-the-line supporters of the AIPAC position. On the other hand, John Kerry (MA), Chairman of the Senate Relations Committee, and Patrick Leahy (VT), Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, are strong advocates of an "honest broker" role for America in the Middle East.

Other progressives including Harry Reid (NV), Carl Levin (MI), Sherrod Brown (OH), Tom Harkin (IA), Robert Byrd (WV), Bernie Sanders (VT), Ben Cardin MD), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Frank Lautenberg (NJ), Russ Feingold (WI), Dick Durbin (IL), Dianne Feinstein (CA), and Al Franken (MN) are more open to persuasion. They are all coming under heavy pressure to back Netanyahu on the settlements issue. They need to be reminded, as Biden said in Israel (and was echoed today by General Petraeus in his Senate Armed Services testimony), that the "perception" that the United states supports settlements "would only harm US interests in the Muslim world starting with US troops." It might also be noted that the settlements do even more damage to Israel itself and its prospects for surviving as a secure and democratic state.

Click here for more

Linkage:Iran,settlements, health care & Israel?

Steve Clemons — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:35:00 GMT

Late yesterday afternoon, I participated in an hour long Alhurra discussion program with three other Middle East specialists: Edmund Ghareeb of American University, Ori Nir of Americans for Peace Now, and David Schenker who directs the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The topic was the state of play in US-Israel relations after Vice President Biden's visit and Israel's alleged "insult" during his trip with the announced approval of 1600 new settlements in East Jerusalem.

During one of my times at bat during the interesting show, I suggested that Israel's continued settlement expansion was directly helping Iran and enhancing its pretensions and goals in the region. The Washington Institute's David Schenker responded that he really didn't see a linkage between the settlements and Iran's position. He stated that Iran really wasn't all that welcome throughout the broader Middle East today and that its nuclear activities were making other Arab states nervous.

In part, he is correct about Sunni Arab antipathy towards Iran but neglected to note that officially, all of the other major Arab states are as furious about Israel's settlements creep as the Obama national security team. But that's not the issue that most caught my attention in this exchange.

Schenker, who offered some interesting insights on the show, went on to assert that while he saw no linkage between Israel's settlement expansion and a boost to Iran's regional posture, he suggested there was a linkage between US-Israel relations and getting Obama's health care reform passed.

What?? Play that again.

So, David Schenker sees no linkage between what a huge number of observers see as Israel wrecking chances for a credible two state track -- and the use of this grievance by Iran in its support of transnational Arab networks in the region, but nonetheless sees linkage between President Obama's fragile health care reform position and the state of US-Israel relations?! Schenker's view was that Obama couldn't afford to have a testy, strained relationship with Israel because it would cost him support in Congress for his health care legislation.

If he is right, then the relationship with Israel has gone too far indeed.

The truth is that I believe that Schenker is wrong on both counts.

There is a linkage between Iran's ability to compete for the position as true defender of the Islamic faith and the controversial settlements, and on the other front, there must not be a connection between the fragile coalition Obama is building to try and achieve health care reform and the state of the US-Israel relationship.

Any US Congressperson or Senator who actually explicitly withdrew or withheld support for health care reform because of loyalty first to Israel and its needs would invite serious questions about his or her patriotism and oath to the US Constitution and American people.

I support Israel's right to exist, see it as an important ally, and believe that we should support its security -- but not at the continued expense of Arab interests in the region and certainly not at the expense of core American interests at home. The interests of Arab states and Israel must be balanced and mutually pursued. Not to do so is a false choice for the U.S., but even worse would be the practice of punishing American taxpayers and their pursuit of key social reforms in favor of Israel's interests.

I enjoyed the exchange with David Schenker and others -- but whereas David has every right to assert that he does not see a linkage between settlements and Iran's interests (though I disagree), I think that his second assertion that Obama might lose the health care battle by not keeping the Israel-tilting Members of Congress was hopefully wrong-footed.

If he's accurate, then it's time for political change in Congress again -- but this time with a different filter.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: When I wrote this piece, I tried to confirm that what I heard was heard by others on the program and had general confirmation from one of the other guests on the show. However, to be fair and up front, I also wanted to run this post by David Schenker -- who was perfectly fair and civil on the program and from whom I learned some new things.

David remembers things a bit different -- and we have not yet come up with a video segment or transcript, and I think that his own views on this should also be aired here.

I appreciate his fairness and balance in how he approached my post.

Here are his comments to me today:

Dear Steve:
I was surprised that you implied that I said the crisis with Israel would cause Congressmen or Senators to explicitly withdraw support for health care reform.

I didn't say that. What I did was point out the obvious domestic political implications that Democrats could face-in addition to their current problems-in light of the very public row with Israel, especially one concerning the disposition of Jerusalem. Considerations like the mid-term elections and controversial health care legislation, I said, would likely lead the Administration to try and end the very public spat with Israel sooner rather than later.

The linkage between foreign and domestic policy considerations is well established. (Walt has written, for example, that the escalation in Afghanistan might cost Obama democratic seats in the midterms that would make it more difficult to pass domestic legislation).

Until I read your blog, I thought my comments were uncontroversial.

Best regards,

David Schenker

I appreciate David sending this correction and wanted it posted publicly. Onward and upward.

-- Steve Clemons

Click here for more

Transatlantic Arabic reading

Natasha Tynes — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:29:00 GMT

My friend Bassam disagrees with me. He tells me he avoids reading any Arabic publications on planes heading to the US.

"It's out of respect for their fear," he tells me. "What's that supposed to mean? " I ask.

"Well, you know. I don't want to make people feel uncomfortable while flying. You know how things are now." "Come on, you're not doing anything wrong," I reply. "You should read the book that you like. It's your right."

Of course, we didn't agree, because very few people agree with me on anything, but that's okay.

Unlike Bassam, I didn't have any respect for anyone last month and decided to take the Egyptian bestselling novel Azazil (عزازيل) with me on a flight from Amman to DC. The first leg of the flight was from Amman to London. Reading a book that clearly displays "the scary language" was not a worry for me on plane leaving from Amman. ِAfter all, the plane was filled with Arabic speakers who are used to seeing and reading the language that shouldn't be named.

It was a great flight. I had three seats to myself. I kicked back, and read for five hours while drinking wine and being served food and snacks. Nothing was expected or me, and I felt elated.

The second leg of the flight was when I became nervous and started thinking about my friend Bassam and his no-Arabic-publications-on-US-flights policy. Do I really need to do this? I mean, I could just watch the in-flight entertainment and save myself all the trouble.

Of course, as soon as the plane from London to DC took off, I pulled Azazil from my carry-on bag and put it on my lap. I had to get myself in trouble because that's who I am. The middle-aged, all-American looking woman sitting next to me was reading a book that had the word Afghanistan in its title. A good sign, I told myself.

Somehow, I felt I needed to explain myself before I started reading my scary book. I felt I needed to talk to her to make her feel comfortable, as she will be spending the next eight hours of her life in very close proximity to me (you know, United economy can get very cozy).

To my surprise, she was the one who broke the ice first and started the conversation. She started telling me about the book that she was reading and how much she was enjoying it. Of course, that was my chance to show her my true colors. I showed her my novel and told her point blank that I was a bit nervous about reading it on the plane.

"Why"? she asked.

"Well you know. It's in Arabic, and I have been reading lots of stories lately about people being stopped at airports and taken off planes just for carrying Arabic books. You know, some passengers get nervous if they see Arabic script on the plane."

"Quite honestly, I'm very impressed that you actually can read it," she said.

This is a very good sign.

A few minutes after our brief conversation, the flight attendant passed by us offering drinks.

"I can't believe that on US flights they make you pay for alcohol," I told the woman next to me (whose names I can't remember now because I'm old). I felt I had to say something to keep the conversation going.

"I know," she said. "You know what? let get me you a drink."

" What? No you shouldn't. Come on. You hardly know me"

"What do you like?"

"Are you sure?"

"Of course!"

"Okay. I will have some red wine."

Just like that, a total stranger bought me a drink for absolutely no reason. It was such a random act of kindness and a nice welcome home to my newly adopted country where people are genuine, friendly, and generous.

Somehow, I proved my friend Bassam wrong. Not only can you read Arabic on the plane, but some flyers find this impressive and might even buy you a drink or two. I was hoping that by reading on the plane, I might shatter some people's stereotypes of Arabic readers, but what happened was the other way around. My own stereotypes of Americans frightened by my native language on a transatlantic flight were deconstructed. There is no reason to fear or hide from who I am. The fact of the matter is I am who I am, and it is a great thing. After all, people buy me drinks!
--

Posting graphics: http://natashatynes.com/2010/03/a-short-tale-on-reading-arabic-on-transatlantic-flights.html/united-2

Business for peace at Harvard business school

Nell Derick Debevoise — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:23:00 GMT

TYO's Founder, Hani Masri, will speak about the role of women in economic development in the Middle East at an upcoming event at Harvard Business School. Participants from TYO's project, "Fostering Women Entrepreneurs in Nablus" will also be featured.

The event is the second annual HBS conference on the Business of Peace, and will also feature:

Sir Ronald Cohen of TYO partner organization, the Portland Trust,
an HBS case study about challenges and opportunities in trade within and between Palestine and Israel and
discussion in the typical HBS case study method with businesspeople with interests in the Middle East, as well as interested Harvard professors and students from around the University.

We look forward to this chance for productive dialogue with such a diverse and talented group, and are sure that it will offer great added value for our Women Entrepreneurs project, in cooperation with the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women. Further information about the conference is included below, for those interested in attending.

Click here for more

Tension in East Jerusalem is a result of Israeli campaign to destroy Palestinian lives

Dimitri Diliani — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:53:00 GMT

Jerusalem March 15^th 2010

Dimitri Diliani, Fateh Revolutionary Council Member, said that "the political and security tension in Occupied East Jerusalem today is a result of Israeli government sponsored systematic campaign to destroy Palestinian lives in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza . This campaign has intensified remarkably since the extremist right wing government headed by Netanyahu has taken office."

Diliani assured that Palestinian anger is not directed at the opening of the Hurva Synagogue in its religious context but rather as a natural expression of protest against cumulative violations carried out by the state of Israel as an illegal occupier of East Jerusalem against the national, religious, cultural, economic rights of the Palestinian people.

"Rumors are spreading in the city that Jewish extremists will forcefully enter the Haram -Asharif tomorrow". Diliani added, "Unfortunately, Israelis have carried out so many outrageous acts against Muslim, Christian and Palestinian national interests in East Jerusalem that it has become impossible to distinguish between false rumors and genuine planned attacks, especially at a time of what must be seen as a rampage of ideologically driven settlement building".

Diliani stressed that the Palestinian people respect the religious rights of Jews, Christians and Muslims in Jerusalem as part of the diverse religious identity of the city. On the other hand, the Israeli occupation government sees otherwise as it continues to restrict Palestinian Jerusalemites' movement in and out of Al-Haram Al Sharf and prohibits 3.5 million Christian and Muslim residents of other parts of the West Bank and Gaza from visiting their holy sites in East Jerusalem.

Diliani requested that the Israeli government be put under pressure to ease tensions in Jerusalem through halting all illegal colonial settlement activity in the occupied city according to U.N. resolutions and the Quartet sponsored "Road Map" to peace, in addition to issuing guarantees that the Jewish extremist groups will not be allowed to enter Al-Haram Al-Sharif.

Diliani also said that Palestinians seek that Jerusalem would become a place where Jews, Christians and Muslims respect each other through a peace agreement between the state of Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. He concluded that unilateral actions to change the current status of the city of Jerusalem by the Israeli government in clear defiance of peace efforts clearly incite political and religious tension in the city.

Fayyad's toy gun

Yisrael Harel — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:24:00 GMT

With the Oslo wind in his sails guaranteeing his international legitimacy even after he had become a political corpse--and his Israeli partners anxious to prove that Oslo, despite endless murderous terror, was not a fatal mistake--Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat announced that on May 4, 1999 he would unilaterally declare the establishment of a Palestinian state. The political world was in turmoil. Outside of the United States and its European allies, there was a supportive anticipation that Arafat would indeed make good on his vision/threat and realize the dream of generations of Palestinians. Israel was bewildered.

So excited was the international political scene that its most veteran research institute decided to alleviate the tension by holding a simulation exercise: will he or will he not declare independence? Participants arrived from all corners of the globe. All eyes were on the Palestinian delegates, who did not move (even though every participant represented only himself) without consulting Arafat, who attached tremendous importance to the outcome.

Most of the Israelis and non-Arab observers believed Arafat would not dare declare independence. He would fear Israeli military pressure and Israel's withdrawal from the Oslo process, along with American political pressure concerning the violation of one of the fundamental rules of the Oslo agreement: no side would take unilateral measures.

I also believed Arafat would not make the declaration, but for an entirely different reason. Arafat's threat was directed at an objective that I don't fully understand, I said, but it was definitely not the realization of the dream of generations. The Palestinians, I argued at that simulation and believe to this day, do not want a state of their own alongside Israel. Accordingly, Arafat would ostensibly yield to the counsel of the Arab states and avoid declaring independence. And so it was, even though few if any agreed then with my thinking.

Arafat's retreat was at the time considered a triumph of reasoning--so deep was the faith of the media and the left in Israel that he was a true partner for peace (and the need to justify the fatal adventure of Oslo). Yet the truth, then as now, is that had the Palestinians really wanted a two-state solution, their state would now be at least ten years old and would be based on Israeli concessions of the Yossi Beilin variety. In fact, they do not want to divide the land; they want a single Arab state--not a state of all its citizens--between the river and the sea. And they believe they will eventually get there--hence all the delaying tactics, then and now.

If Arafat did not dare divide the land based on an historic Arab concession and agreement to a Jewish state, a national home for the Jewish people, then will Salam Fayyad, a technocrat bereft of charisma and leadership, dare take such an audacious step? He won't dare to defy the vast majority of his people, who reject compromise, territorial or otherwise.

Still, for the sake of argument, let's assume he does declare a state unilaterally and wins the support of his people, and that the international community overwhelmingly recognizes the new state. The territory it comprises, areas A and B, constitutes less than 50 percent of Judea and Samaria, all told some 2,500 square kilometers. In Gaza they'll breathe easy: now the Hamas state can claim parallel legitimacy. And the world? The Arab states? They will get used to a state within these borders--a state that has to worry about education, security, economy and transportation; a state that can no longer complain that all its failures are due to the absence of the instruments of state.

Nor will or should the settlers shed a tear over this course of events. Israeli public opinion will understand once and for all that if the pragmatic Fayyad, the man hosted in every important Israeli salon and even at the Herzliya conference, pulled off this stunt, then there really is no Palestinian partner. The government of Israel, confronted with this provocation, will annul the roadmap--under the circumstances, the US will be unable to prevent such a step--accelerate the pace of settlement in area C and, under pressure from the settlers, launch preparations to annex it.

The current Israeli response to Fayyad's threat is a counter-threat. But if Israel's rulers were smart and well versed in subterfuge, they would find devious ways to encourage Fayyad's folly. After all today, in the absence of a Palestinian state, the entire world, including an influential minority of Israelis, is pressuring to establish one, more or less along the 1967 lines. But the moment such a state is functioning within areas A and B, both it and the rest of the world will get used to this new reality. Certainly Israel will, with area C in its hands.

Of course Fayyad won't fall into this trap. Hence all those who take his threat seriously or even treat it as an exercise in Middle East bazaar diplomacy, are actually revealing that they don't understand either Fayyad's capabilities or the real Palestinian objective of eliminating the Jewish-Zionist entity.

One way or another, Fayyad's gun is empty. In fact, it's only a toy gun. And like a child playing with a toy gun, he doesn't always know either the purpose of the game or the outcome.

What is Israel afraid of?

Ali Jarbawi — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:17:00 GMT

The program of the 13th Palestinian government, commonly referred to as the Fayyad Plan, called for all Palestinian institutions, and Palestinian society as a whole, to unite behind a state-building effort. The program embodies an authentically Palestinian initiative to work pro-actively and constructively toward establishing the state of Palestine through non-violent means over a two-year timeframe, despite the lack of progress in negotiations and continued military occupation. The program and its ongoing implementation have demonstrated that there is a positive and engaged partner on the Palestinian side who is committed to the two-state solution. The stark contrast with decisions to further expand settlements beyond the green line is beginning to unmask Israel as the unwilling partner.

The program provides a path to independence and sovereignty that can be pursued irrespective of the status and progress of the negotiations track. In specifying a two-year time horizon, however, the program has been viewed by some observers as controversial and ambitious. Yet, after 17 years of negotiations, the formulation of new approaches to realizing the two-state solution by the Palestinian Authority was long overdue. Furthermore, the World Bank reported in September 2009 that the PA is "well-positioned for the establishment of a Palestinian state at any point in the near future", noting that "relative to other countries in the region, the public sector in the West Bank and Gaza is arguably already more effective and efficient".

The PA has quite clearly demonstrated its determination to deliver on commitments made in the program. There is a serious and ongoing effort, backed by the international community, to complete the establishment of efficient and effective state institutions. This is bearing fruit in the West Bank and, if the embargo is lifted, can be replicated in Gaza too. The program is designed to deliver tangible results in spite of the perverse system of geographical demarcations, checkpoints and other movement restrictions that have no place in a modern democratic state.

The overall objective of the program is therefore to realize, through peaceful means, the Palestinian vision of ending the occupation and establishing an independent sovereign state on the 1967 borders. This is in the Palestinian national interest and is in lock-step with the international consensus. At the same time, the PA has not turned its back on negotiations. All we are asking for is that the negotiations be credible, focused on the final status issues and subject to a time limit.

There is no doubt that Israel, on the other hand, has significant political and economic incentives to postpone resolution of the conflict. The settlement enterprise, launched and nurtured by the Israeli government, has yielded substantial gains of land and other natural resources. It has also curried favor with political factions that remain wedded to the vision of "Greater Israel" and sovereignty over both East and West Jerusalem. In this light, it is not surprising that Israel is satisfied with the status quo of open-ended negotiations. Their experience to date encourages Israelis to believe that, with the passage of time, the oppression and suppression they can apply as occupier will reliably elicit acts of violent resistance, reinforcing their stock argument that the Palestinians are not a credible partner for peacemaking.

The fact that the government program has found such favor with the international community, and that the two-year time frame has gained currency and momentum in international political circles, is a major challenge to this status quo. In effect, from the Israeli perspective, the program has poked a stick in the ever-turning wheel of the negotiations process. Israel is now having a hard time casting the PA in the role of "unwilling partner" and is in serious danger of being cast in that role itself. Israel fears that time may no longer be on its side as the international community begins to realize what Palestinians have known for years, namely that resolution of the conflict between two parties, one of which enjoys overwhelming security and economic power relative to the other, is not possible without international political intervention as well as financial support.

The ongoing implementation of the Palestinian government program represents, for the first time in years, visible and tangible progress toward making the two-state solution a reality. This is proving that we Palestinians are a real and engaged partner and are moving forward positively towards realizing a vision shared with the international community. This program is an historic opportunity to resolve the conflict that must not be missed.

A pillar of state-building

Ghassan Khatib — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:04:00 GMT

The program of the 13th Palestinian government, entitled "Ending the Occupation and Establishing the State", might have been similar to the programs of previous governments were it not for its political context.

The two-year program, which has become known as the Fayyad Plan, is meant to prepare the ground for statehood through the necessary developments and improvements in building the institutions of a state. The plan gained political momentum, first on the international level, because it was received as a possible alternative to the decaying peace process.

The announcement of the plan also coincided with a presentation by the EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, who, in a lecture in England, said that if the peace process did not succeed in securing a two-state solution, the international community should encourage and recognize a Palestinian state declared in a UN resolution, in order to realize the international community's vision of peace based on two states.

Later, growing segments of the Palestinian public and prominent individuals began to rally behind the plan. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad helped this process on by engaging in extensive field visits to reach the grassroots. The plan, indeed, includes a blueprint for the development, institution-building and reform not only of the urban areas the Oslo accords allow the Palestinian Authority to function in, but also the rest of the occupied territories including area C and marginalized areas particularly affected by Israeli settlement expansion and/or separation wall construction.

In addition, the prime minister and his government ministers took part in demonstrations and the popular resistance and lent moral support to the right of Palestinians to peacefully resist those Israeli measures that only serve to consolidate the occupation, whether through settlement construction or the building of the separation wall.

What has significantly added to Palestinian and international confidence in the plan is that it came after the impressive success of the previous Fayyad government in reforming the law and order sector, both in terms of the security forces themselves and the congruent civilian legal structure. Based on progress in providing due process of law, an improvement in the economy followed that last week allowed Fayyad to present a budget for this year that includes seven percent GDP growth.

The main importance of the Fayyad plan is that it allows Palestinians to move toward achieving the objectives of ending the Israeli occupation and establishing their state on two parallel tracks. The first is in actual developments on the ground where the Palestinian government has been taking positive steps readying Palestinians for statehood, not only in their own eyes but also in the eyes of the international community, which has been financing these efforts.

The second track is the complementary effort on the international level to build support for international recognition of an independent Palestinian state that can be enshrined in a United Nations Security Council resolution at the end of these two years and without Israeli consent if Israel continues to prevent bilateral negotiations from reaching fruition. There have been a number of significant developments in this regard, not least the European Council of Foreign Ministers statement on December 8, which was never objected to or criticized by the US.

In this way the government plan has been an important part of the overall four-pillar strategy of the PA: the reform and/or building of institutions of state; the effort to convince the international community to recognize, in due time, such a state multilaterally; fighting Israel on the international legal arena and supporting the right of popular movements to peacefully resist the Israeli occupation.

The best option

Yossi Alpher — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:53:00 GMT

Under prevailing circumstances, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's unilateral state-building plan is the best option available for all those truly concerned with advancing a two-state solution that maintains Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Not only must Fayyad succeed in the coming year, but the international community must endorse and recognize his achievement and encourage Israel to follow suit.

I say this with a heavy heart. It is not easy for an Israeli to encourage the world to ratify a unilateral Palestinian solution. But after nearly 20 years of trying, it should be clear that neither the Israeli nor the Palestinian leadership is capable of agreeing on a negotiated two-state solution. The current Netanyahu government in Israel, with its heavy right-wing bias and its focus on creating unilateral Israeli "facts on the ground", is almost certainly not a candidate for working productively with the Palestinians toward an independent Palestinian state. Perhaps most important, in view of growing frustration with the failure of negotiations, the Fayyad plan is the best non-negotiated solution we Israelis could conceivably ask for.

Fayyad's effort is the first Palestinian state-building success since the Oslo process began in 1993. For the first time, Palestinians are delivering on security, the creation of governing institutions and the systematic suppression of corruption. It is now clear that such an effort was impossible under the rule of the late Yasser Arafat, where violence was endemic and billions in aid funds went down the drain. It is also clear that Fayyad's effort is possible, despite the constraint of Israel's ongoing settlement-building, thanks to the cooperation of the Israeli security establishment and broad international financial and technical-professional support.

Fayyad, who has little or no grassroots political support, is clearly dependent on the backing of President Mahmoud Abbas to maintain the momentum of his efforts. We can only hope that the vicissitudes of Palestinian politics do not undermine them in the year-and-a-half remaining for the Fayyad plan to run its course. It is also critical that during this time Fayyad clarify for us what he intends to do with his unilateral state structure. Until recently he declared that, in the absence of Israeli-Palestinian agreement on a two-state solution by August 2011, the Palestinians would ask the United Nations Security Council to recognize the new state. But at the Herzliya Conference in Israel a little over a month ago, he told an Israeli and international audience that the fait accompli of a Palestinian state in the summer of 2011 would serve merely to pressure the parties to reach agreement.

Frankly, I prefer the first option of Security Council recognition. The second option is likely to prove as useless as all previous efforts to persuade the parties to make the necessary negotiating concessions. We saw with Abbas' rejection of PM Ehud Olmert's extraordinary 2008 peace offer that the Palestinian president is incapable of bending on the core issues. As for Netanyahu, his commitment to a two-state solution is belied by the coalition company he keeps and--even when he's more careful about the timing so as not to embarrass visiting American dignitaries--the settlements he builds. Meanwhile, time and international patience are running out.

Here's what the option of Security Council recognition of Fayyad's emerging creation appears to offer Israel: a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, partially occupied by Israel. De facto, the new state does not control most of its territory; it exercises no control at all in the Gaza Strip. Israel is confronted by the entire international community with the demand to negotiate a phased, orderly withdrawal to the 1967 lines or equivalent borders--something recent Israeli governments have in any case agreed to do. It has to make space for a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem--a sine qua non for any viable agreement. It can condition its withdrawal on the implementation of reasonable security arrangements.

But Israel does not have to confront unacceptable Palestinian demands regarding the right of return and the Temple Mount and Holy Basin in Jerusalem in order for this Palestinian state to come into existence. Those issues are no longer preconditions; they will remain in contention--but between Israel and a sovereign Palestinian state that has to behave very differently from a liberation movement. Nor will Israel be held responsible for the divide between the new state in the West Bank and the land it claims from Hamas-ruled Gaza. Whether there are one or two Palestinian states becomes Palestinian business.

Make no mistake: the emergence of an internationally recognized Palestinian state in the West Bank will not officially end the conflict in the sense of resolving all claims. But it could create an entirely new and far more stable two-state reality based on Palestinian efforts, Israeli readiness to negotiate the territorial issue based on the 1967 border--but only the territorial issue--and international recognition.

True, international recognition of the Fayyad plan effectively ends the Oslo accords, which require that neither side take such unilateral measures. A truly irresponsible Israeli government could respond by annexing those areas of the West Bank, some 60 percent, that lie beyond the autonomy borders. That's why it behooves the international community to embrace this issue now and point out to Netanyahu that this is the best deal he will ever get.

Winds of a third Intifada

Osama Abukatta — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:31:00 GMT

For almost a year now, Israeli politicians accused President Mahmoud Abbas, repeatedly, of climbing a high tree by refusing to negotiate with Israel before Benjamin Netenyahu's Government announces a full freeze of all settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In recent days, Abbas found his way down the tree by climbing the Arab League's ladder announcing his acceptance to resume peace talks with Israel. Just before Abbas' feet and the negotiations hit the ground, he had to climb back up the tree to higher latitude and retreat from his decision to resume the proximity talks. Pressured by the US, The Arab League gave Netenyahu four months to prove that he is willing to move forward with the peace process; however, Netenyahu and his government killed this initiative in its crib.

The prevailing sentiment in Israeli media towards Netenyahu's current foreign policy after the latest political blunder(announcing new settlements), reflects a great deal of dissatisfaction. The performance and attitude of Israel's foreign policy is scrutinized by the international community even by Israelis themselves. Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman was supposed to be Israel's first diplomat but he quickly became his country's number one diplo-mess. His critics accuse him of running the Israeli Foreign Ministry as if he was still "a bodyguard at a nightclub."In recent days, some Israeli newspapers argued that the current Israeli government is being run by reckless thugs who continue to undermine Israel's security and alliances around the world.

The announcement of building 1600 new housing units expanding Israeli settlements during the visit of US Vice President Joe Biden is one in a series of Israeli gaffes in the last few months. The crisis with the Turks after insulting Turkey's Ambassador in Israel, The Mossad's use of European fake passports in the assassination of Hamas' military official Mamoud Al Mabhooh in Dubai contributed to damaging Israel's image around the world. Outrage in the Muslim street fueled by Israel's plan to annex two Islamic holy sites located in the West Bank to the so-called heritage list and the show of disrespect towards Biden and the US' role in the area function as an excellent PR opportunity for the Palestinians.

Combined with their success in rebuilding the Palestinian Authority's (PA) economic and civil institutions in the last three years, the PA proved its ability to control the security situation in the West Bank in compliance with the Road Map for Peace and the Quartet's demands. After these achievements, the PA sent the message to the US and the international community that they (the PA) can't maintain the security achievements anymore. The PA insinuated that if the Peace Process does not move forward soon, Hamas will pick it up from there and gain control over the West Bank.

The Europeans applied some pressure on Israel through talk about a Spanish-French proposal to recognize a Palestinian State, keeping the details of their vision vague enough to allow the Israelis an edge to the process. On the other hand, the Obama administration, which appears to be turned-off by the Israeli government's policies, has yet to convert its dissatisfaction with Netenyahu's government into action. The Obama Administration's main priority continues to be Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran in addition to overwhelming domestic crises, such as the economy and health care. Therefore the peace process ranks low in Obama's list of priorities.

Some argue that the US will address the Palestinian-Israeli conflict before any military action is taken against Iran. However, most analysts believe that until Obama ends the war in Iraq and withdraws US troops from there, Israel will not be allowed to carry a military strike on Iran. It is true that such a withdrawal is expected to take place this summer but the ramifications and aftermath of the Iraqi elections may challenge the process.

Considering the actions of the current Israeli government and all other dynamic factors affecting the Palestinian-Israeli Peace Process, one cannot be optimistic about the peace process in the near future. While the urgency of ending the Israeli occupation is a Palestinian priority, wasting time and prolonging the path to a peace deal seems to be the best strategy for the rest of the parties involved. Observers suggest that any progress in the Palestinian-Israeli peace track will only weaken Netenyahu's coalition, but will definitely empower the PA and the Obama administration. Although peace with the Arabs is assumingly a strategic Israeli advantage, it is not necessarily in Nentenyahu government's best interest to strike a peace deal, thus making it hard to imagine Israel investing in this path in the near future.

Meanwhile, a rose scenario of progress on the Palestinian-Israeli peace track will involve the weakening of Hamas, better chances of improvements in peace talks between Israel and Syria leading to a wider support for the Obama administration agendas' in Iraq and Iran. Realistically, media reports from Palestine have been suggesting that the political scene in the West Bank and Jerusalem is ripe for a third Intifada. An uprising that is organized, peaceful and enjoys the support of both; local and international communities.

The continued unbearable pressure by the US and Israel on the PA to maintain security, without any political progress, will ultimately make the PA loose legitimacy and support from the Palestinian street. This will also make a third Intifada the only option and best alternative to a negotiated agreement for Palestinians. Many Palestinians argue that even if a third Intifada means the end of the PA, it will hopefully end Palestinians internal rifts.

Obama starts rising to the challenge

Moshe Yaroni — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:03:00 GMT

Well, color me stunned.

In my most recent article, I described Benjamin Netanyahu as having won his roll of the dice in the wake of the Israeli announcement of new Jerusalem building while Joe Biden was trying to restart the peace process.

I spoke too soon. Perhaps one can say my expectations of the Obama Administration had been lowered and so the recent developments come as a pleasant surprise. But pleasant it is, and the welcome stance from Washington is going to force some recalculations in Israel. How much of a recalculation is going to depend on how steadfast Obama can remain in the face of what is likely to be a growing backlash.

The Obama Administration may have accepted the excuse that the timing of the announcement of 1,600 new housing units in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo was a bureaucratic foul-up. But the Israeli apology, which went out of its way to make it clear that it was only the timing that was seen to be at fault, was not sufficient for Washington.

By stressing that the only problem was the fact that the announcement came while Joe Biden was in Israel trying to start "proximity talks" between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel put the Obama Administration in a bad position. If Washington accepted the apology and let the matter go, the talks were doomed because it would have meant, to the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world, that the US was not objecting to the expansion of a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem. Even if they had continued, American credibility would have been so low as to make the talks pointless.

It is almost certain that such would have been precisely the course the Clinton or Bush, Jr. Administrations would have followed. But, recalling the early days of his administration, Obama broke that pattern.

"We decide what we will keep"

In recent years, there have been tacit understandings between the US and Israel that the US will turn a blind eye to Israeli building in areas that Israel expects to keep in any final status agreement. That's a vague definition, and Israel has consistently stretched it.

But once more, it seems the Obama Administration is finally treating Israel like it would any other country, including an ally. Because a much more fundamental, and frequently stated, principle is that neither side shall take steps that pre-determine the outcome of negotiations. Therefore, Obama is objecting to all illegal Israeli building, and that means everywhere over the Green Line.

Obama is hardly being unreasonable or even unfriendly to Israel. He knows Netanyahu can't just stop all the building. But he is expecting the Israeli government to do what it can, within reason. He expects Israeli cooperation, not a constant search for how far the envelope can be pushed with regard to building. He expects Israel to help America pursue its national interests as America helps Israel pursue its own.

Thus, as Obama tries to restore faith in America's ability to broker peace talks fairly, he cannot have Netanyahu demonstrating to the world that before any agreement with the Palestinians, there are lands, especially in Jerusalem, that the US accepts as having become Israeli after 1967. This has long been the case for the US, but this administration is the first in decades to take that fact seriously.

To be fair to Bibi, he has every reason to be taken aback by the American posture. It is certainly a break from the past seventeen years. But the timing of the announcement regarding Ramat Shlomo was exacerbated by Bibi's Deputy Foreign Minister following it up by saying "We will make no more concessions" the very next day (prompting anyone paying attention to ask "What concessions have you made already?" The so-called freeze has been a very limited step). Bibi's own mantra about how important the United States is to Israel sounded empty next to the insubstantial apology he offered, filled with nice words but no deeds. Bibi's apology included a reaffirmation of the Ramat Shlomo construction. Imagine how that played in DC.

The Backlash

At first, Jewish-American political groups stayed mostly silent, apart from J Street's support of Obama. But as it became clear that Netanyahu's empty words were not defusing the situation and as subsequent statements from the State Department clarified American anger at Israel's behavior, these groups have come out swinging.

Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League (a group which is not supposed to have anything to do with this issue, as reflected by Foxman's frank ignorance of both diplomacy and the Israel-Arab conflict) began the onslaught by expressing his "shock" at the US' behavior.

But the really big guns came out when AIPAC issued an unusual and strongly worded statement, loaded with political implications, calling on the Obama Administration, and them alone, to defuse the situation.

AIPAC's statement was heavy-handed, and betrayed an agenda that held little regard for American concerns in this matter or, for that matter, for peace for Israel.

The statement's second paragraph closes with a veiled threat, stating that the US-Israel relationship enjoys strong bipartisan support in Congress. The implication for mid-term elections in November is clear and no one in the White House is missing it-tone down the rhetoric or we will act against your candidates in November.

The statement doesn't say a word about Israel's actions and how they have damaged prospects for peace, undermined months of US efforts and embarrassed Israel's closest friend and ally. AIPAC says these things should be dealt with in private-where Israel has much more leeway to ignore them.

AIPAC's public action on this is not their common practice, and they are risking much by doing it this way.

They have now put the administration in a position where if they back off from their demands on Israel, they will be seen as caving to a powerful lobby which has now clearly displayed that it is acting out of concern for Israel and not for the USA.

AIPAC has provided a litmus test for those who, like myself, do not subscribe to the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis that the "Israel lobby' controls US Mideast policy. This moment is not a small one. It represents a potential turning point away from the disastrous course Israel has pursued, one that is sacrificing the two-state solution on the altar of the settlements.

The Obama Administration has, for the first time in a long time, identified Israeli-Arab peace as a key strategic American interest. If it allows AIPAC to push the US to a different course, it will be pretty hard to argue against the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis, even if it wouldn't conclusively prove it (these are theories, and in international relations, there are rarely conclusive proofs for theories).

The way forward

It will be very interesting to see what Hillary Clinton has to say at AIPAC's annual conference next week, assuming the invitation for her to speak there is not rescinded, which I don't think is all that likely, though not impossible.

Surely she will try to appease the attendees and reassure them of what is obvious to all but the most myopic of friends of Israel (and there are a great many of those, sadly)-that the US continues to have Israel's best interests at heart and still see Israel as a key strategic partner.

But how far will she back away from the current stance? Will she narrow the focus on a few steps Bibi can take to calm the controversy, or will she maintain the need for real substance on Israel's part?

Israel's Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, has called this the worst crisis in US-Israel relations in 35 years, since Yitzhak Rabin and Henry Kissinger got into a spitting match over the American desire for a partial Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai. We'd do well to remember that Israel eventually relented in that dispute, signed the Sinai Interim Agreements and redeployed as directed and suffered no security consequences as a result. Instead, this helped pave the way for Anwar Sadat's visit to Jerusalem and subsequent peace, cold as it might be, with Egypt. Bibi, and especially his ambassador who is a professional historian, can learn some lessons from that.

The Obama Administration has begun to build some real credibility as an honest broker with their recent stances. That's pretty remarkable considering how low that credibility had been just two weeks ago. There are going to be some major political storms to weather, but if the President holds firm, he will find that voters will support him despite AIPAC and he will be able to make some real progress in the Middle East.

And Israelis will see, after a time that their interests have not been abandoned, but rather enhanced by Obama's steadfastness. If he holds it.

The United States must stick to their demand that the expansion of Ramat Shlomo (a settlement that, in the end, holds little practical significance for Israel) be abandoned. They must also hold to their demand that Israel extend significant gestures to the Palestinian Authority, including a prisoner release and further easing of travel restrictions. Most of all, they must hold to their demand that the siege on Gaza be lifted. These, especially the last, will rekindle among Palestinians some faith in the US and the belief that, whatever its motives, Israel can possibly be enticed into signing a peace agreement that is realistic and durable.

America must also act to ensure that these moves do not endanger Israeli security. They must enhance security cooperation with both Israel and the PA to prevent terrorists from taking advantage of the moves Obama is demanding of Israel. This will reassure Israelis that a good process can lead to peace without loss of security and that they can count on the United States to ensure it, so they don't have to take the risk most of them are not willing to take, trusting the intentions of the Palestinians.

Then, in short order, the US should abandon the "proximity talks" idea and move to direct negotiations that they broker and, crucially, which include an American vision (as a suggestion, not an imposition) of how to resolve the outstanding issues, based on existing agreements. These can be presented as the oft-cited "bridging proposals" but they must be based on an American vision and be brought to the table after being carefully thought out.

In the wake of such moves, Palestinian reconciliation will be much more easily accomplished and the PA will, with these sorts of gains in hand, easily trump Hamas in any sort of honest election. Israel will have a partner for peace and a broker that can bring home the goods.

And if AIPAC, ADL and other mainstream Jewish groups stand against that, no one can accuse them of dual loyalty. They'll be clearly demonstrating that their loyalties lie neither with the US nor with a secure Israel at peace, but with the settlements.

1000 days of siege

Lina Al-Sharif — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:52:00 GMT

Salamz all,

Ayman Mohyledin, AlJazeera English correspondent in Gaza, has written this blog post that describes the very minutiae of Gaza's situation after 1000 days of siege. ٌRead here.

The statistics speak for themselves; actually sometimes there is no need for them. Because it is surmised that the idea of holding 1,5 million in an open air prison can be nothing but a collective punishment that would lead every walk of life to almost complete paralysis.

Mounting from having a 6-8 blackout everyday to the 500 people died (still to die) as a result of being deprived of access to proper medical care that can not be provided in Gaza, we in Gaza live the wholesale effect of this blockade.

This siege aims at dehumanizing the people of Gaza. And to pulverize their very own spirit to aspire their minimum rights that people do not question; to make them forget the greater cause, which is freedom for all Palestine and not just Gaza.

"And yet, for 1,000 days, the people of Gaza have survived. They have survived the inhumanity of it all and they survived a war launched to protect Israel's humanity. They have defied a siege resiliently saying to the world while you have turned your back on Gaza, Gazans will not turn their back on their inalienable human rights. This indomitable spirit is what has driven them to survive for 1,000 days."

After reading the very pessimistic, yet expected facts written in the article, I found myself in tears. But I believe this paragraph in particular gave me some strength.
It's very true that despite the siege, the dehumanization, the very frustration resulting from of the very situation, the spirit of Gazans is subsisting to live, hope and dream that tomorrow will be better.

"And for 1,000 days, the people here have hoped today would be the last day of this collective punishment and that tomorrow would be the first day of their collective freedom."

US-Israel showdown?

Robert Dreyfuss — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:36:00 GMT

The Israel lobby is mobilizing for what might turn into the most significant confrontation between the United States and Israel since, well, the Suez War of 1956, when President Eisenhower told Israel -- and its covert allies, the UK and France -- to halt the unprovoked assault on Egypt. Since then, US-Israel conflicts have been relatively small and tied to side issues, such as the fight over President Reagan's sale of AWACS surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s or President Bush's showdown with Israel in the early 1990s, when the United States threatened to withhold loan guarantees to Israel after a right-wing Israeli government stone-walled the peace process.

This time, if President Obama plays his cards right, he could bring down the extremist government of Bibi Netanyahu. But that depends on whether Obama displays the guts and gumption necessary for a full-frontal challenge to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its allies.

In a piece written for Mother Jones last year, I outlined the vulnerability of AIPAC et al. to a direct challenge from Obama, especially with the emergence of J Street, the "pro-Israeli, pro-peace" Jewish lobby.

A year ago, it seemed possible that Obama was headed in that direction. He'd nominated the even-handed George Mitchell as his Israel-Palestine special representative, to the discomfort of AIPAC. He'd installed a number of aides at the White House, including General Jones, Mara Rudman, and others who had sympathies with the Palestinians and with the Israeli pro-peace camp. Obama launched a major effort to rebuild US ties with the Muslim world, including his June speech in Cairo, that all but required a stronger US effort to force concessions from Israel. And he'd ordered a showdown with Israel over its illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian lands, demanding outright that Israel stop building them.

Nearly all of that collapsed. Mitchell got nowhere. Netanyahu bluntly rejected the settlements demand, kept building them, and faced no consequences. And, worst of all, Obama utterly failed to put forward an American peace plan to restart the talks. What was needed then, and now, is for Obama to outline what a final settlement of the conflict will look like: a return to the 1967 borders (with some land swaps), the division of Jerusalem, the removal of Israeli encampments from the West Bank, a sovereign Palestinian state, a deal over the Palestinians' right to return to their land (including a Saudi- and Gulf-financed compensation package), and probably some sort of US security guarantees for Israel.

Obama didn't deliver. He never stated the end goal. Now, he has another chance. His new opportunity was handed to him last week when Netanyahu's government slapped visiting Vice President Biden in face by announcing, during a high-stakes, delicate trip, a plan to build 1,600 new Jewish homes in occupied East Jerusalem. In the aftermath of that event, the entire Obama administration has been mobilized against Israel. The key question is not whether Obama and Co. will slam Israel rhetorically, as they've done, buy whether there will be concrete consequences for Israel and whether the Obama team will finally relaunch the all-but-dead peace process by declaring the president's own vision of the terms that Israel, the Palestinians, and the Arab states must agree to.

As the New York Times editorialized last week, following the Biden visit fiasco:

"We also hope that if progress lags, the administration will be ready to put forward its own proposals on the central issues of borders, refugees, security and the future of Jerusalem.

"Mr. Obama has another chance to move the peace process forward. This time he has to get it right."

Biden, of course, used the word "condemn" in reacting to Israel's defiant action, saying: "I condemn the decision." Then rhetorically at least, the US got even nastier. Hillary Clinton -- who, like Biden, prides herself as being militantly pro-Israel -- used the word "insult" in slamming Israel: "The announcement of the settlements on the very day that the vice president was there was insulting," said Clinton.With Obama's approval, she delivered a 45-minute tongue lashing to Netanhayu over the phone. And yesterday David Axelrod, the White House political adviser chimed in, saying: "What happened there was an affront. It was an insult."

Netanyahu, while faking an apology, insists -- as does his entire right-wing regime -- that it won't change policy or back down.

The lobby is mobilizing. AIPAC, in a defensive statement, called the whole thing a "distraction," and it added:

"AIPAC calls on the Administration to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish State. ... The Administration should make a conscious effort to move away from public demands and unilateral deadlines directed at Israel."

Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, a knee-jerk defender of everything Israel does, accused the US of a "gross overreaction" to the Israeli insult, adding:

"We are shocked and stunned at the Administration's tone and public dressing down of Israel on the issue of future building in Jerusalem. We cannot remember an instance when such harsh language was directed at a friend and ally of the United States. One can only wonder how far the U.S. is prepared to go in distancing itself from Israel in order to placate the Palestinians in the hope they see it is in their interest to return to the negotiating table."

And a panoply of Israel's best friends in Congress are trying to preempt an Obama response to the Israeli insult that goes beyond rhetoric, too. Representive Shelley Berkley (D.-Nevada) called the Clinton-Axelrod statements part of an "irresponsible overreaction," and the ever-reliable John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House, told Commentary that "the tone and substance we are seeing emerge as a pattern for this Administration are both disappointing and of great concern."

Various neocons are weighing in, too. Writing in the Washington Post, Elliott Abrams accused the Obama administration of "mishandling" relations with Israel, adding: "The Obama administration continues to drift away from traditional U.S. support for Israel." In the same vein, Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute, expressed alarm about a "tectonic drift" pushing the US and Israel apart, concluding:

"Israel and the United States have been drifting apart for some time, though that pace has accelerated during the Obama administration. The currents that have set Washington and Jerusalem on different courses are complex and cannot be boiled down to one failed mission (that of Vice President Biden) nor an indifferent president (Barack Obama). There is a generational shift underway, driving apart post-Zionist Israel and 21st-century America."

And Robert Satloff of the militantly pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy warned the administration not to tilt away from Israel after the insult to Biden:

"It would be shortsighted for the administration to use this episode as an opportunity to reward the Palestinians. ... And it would be an analytical blunder for the administration to believe that this incident is an opportunity that could precipitate Netanyahu's political demise."

Underlying all this is not just the reaction to an insulting announcement during the visit of Vice President Biden. Instead, at a more fundamental level, the Obama administration is beginning to realize that Israeli intransigence -- and the Netanyahu government, in particular -- is a major obstacle to US policy in the region, from Iraq to Iran to the struggle against Al Qaeda. It still remains to be seen if the White House the courage to do anything about it. In 2009, it didn't. But this is 2010.

Tomorrow: the strategic underpinnings of Obama's unease with the Israelis.

Click here for more

Myths and Facts on U.S.-Israel Diplomatic Row

MJ Rosenberg — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:45:00 GMT

A diplomatic crisis between the Israeli government and the United States erupted last week. It began when the Israeli government announced that it would expand settlements in East Jerusalem (the Palestinian part of the city) while Vice President Joseph Biden was visiting Israel. Both the timing of the announcement (Biden was in Israel) and the substance (the United States has consistently opposed settlement activity) infuriated the Obama administration. Additionally, the United States does not recognize East Jerusalem as part of Israel; no country, other than Israel itself, does. The pro-Israel lobbying group, AIPAC, and several members of Congress jumped to criticize the White House for provoking the conflict which, in fact, began because the Israelis announced new settlements.

THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS

MYTH: Obama Administration Provoked Current Imbroglio With Israel. In a statement released on Monday, March 15, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the leading "pro-Israel" lobbying organization, directly puts the blame on the Obama administration: "Members of the Obama administration have recently made statements regarding the U.S. relationship with Israel, which have heightened tensions with America's only democratic ally in the region." [AIPAC Press Release, 3/15/10]

FACT: Tensions Started When Israel Announced Construction Of More Settlements In East Jerusalem. According to the New York Times, "Hours after Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. vowed unyielding American support for Israel's security here on Tuesday, Israel's Interior Ministry announced 1,600 new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem. Mr. Biden condemned the move as 'precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.'" [New York Times, 3/9/10]

THE EXPANSION OF SETTLEMENTS

MYTH: Decision To Expand Settlements Is A Bureaucratic Misunderstanding. Speaking on the Senate floor on Monday, March 15, Senator Lieberman (I-CT) said, "From all that Israeli government has says and I have no reason to doubt them, a bureaucratic decision was made within one department of the government, the Ministry of the Interior, to issue a permit..." [Senate floor, 3/15/10]

FACT: Israel Prime Minister Himself Says The Expansion Of Settlements In East Jerusalem Will Continue. According to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said that Israel would continue to build in Jerusalem in the same way that it has over the last 42 years. 'The building in Jerusalem - and in all other places - will continue in the same way as has been customary over the last 42 years,' said Netanyahu at a Likud party meeting. Israel drew angry reactions from the U.S. and the Palestinians by announcing last week the construction of 1,600 new housing units in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo during a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden last week." [Ha'aretz, 3/15/10]

ISRAEL'S EFFECT ON U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY

MYTH: Obama Administration Argument With Israel Is "Jeopardiz[ing] Our National Security."Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) told Politico, "For this administration to treat our special relationship with Israel, one of our closest and most strategic Democratic allies, in this fashion is beyond irresponsible and jeopardizes America's national security." [Politico, 3/15/10]

FACT: The Ongoing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Endangers Our National Security. According toGlobes, an Israeli business publication, "Commander of the US Army Central Command (CENTCOM) General David Petraeus sent a team of senior officers to meet with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen to express their concerns about the lack of progress in finding a solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The senior officers came armed with a PowerPoint presentation putting forward the position that, in the eyes of Arab leaders the US is powerless to confront 'stiff necked' Israel, and that this was harming the status of the US in the region. Petraeus also sent a position paper on this issue to the White House several weeks before Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel." [Globes, 3/15/10]

Expansion Of Settlements Threatens American Troops Serving In The Region. Writing inForeign Policy, Mark Perry explains, "When Vice President Joe Biden was embarrassed by an Israeli announcement that the Netanyahu government was building 1600 new homes in East Jerusalem, the administration reacted. But no one was more outraged than Biden who, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, engaged in a private, and angry, exchange with the Israeli Prime Minister. Not surprisingly, what Biden told Netanyahu reflected the importance the administration attached to Petraeus's Mullen briefing: 'This is starting to get dangerous for us,' Biden reportedly told Netanyahu. 'What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.' Yedioth Ahronoth went on to report: 'The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel's actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.' The message couldn't be plainer: Israel's intransigence could cost American lives." [Foreign Policy,3/13/10]

Yediot exposes police lying on suppression of East Jerusalem protests

Didi Remez — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:33:00 GMT

After an interlude, the Jerusalem police resumed arrests of Sheikh Jarrah protesters last Friday (March 12 2010.) On Sunday, the Jerusalem Post, like many other Israeli media outlets, ran the police statement on the incident nearly verbatim

Earlier on Friday, about 250 locals and left-wing protesters were stopped by police when they attempted to march toward Jewish houses in Sheikh Jarrah. Police declared that such a march would be illegal and ordered the protesters to return to the site of the demonstration. When they refused to do so, they were pushed back by force. They then began to chant slogans criticizing the Jewish presence in the neighborhood. Eight demonstrators were detained following the incident.

The protest organizers told a very different story and backed it up with photos and video. The media, however, are not usually inclined to fact check official statements. Note how the Post did not even add "police said," even though the correspondent was clearly not present at the incident.

There are valuable exceptions, however. Last year, Coteret followed Globes columnist Matti Golan as he demonstrated how the IDF spokesperson had become accustomed to Israeli journalists happily filling the role of stenographers. Fortuitously, also on Sunday, Yediot published photographic evidence of blatant lying by the police regarding another incident East Jerusalem incident on Friday: The running over of a teenage Palestinian protester in Ras Al-Amud by a police vehicle. Below is a full translation of the article, with the photos at bottom.

Hit and whitewash

Ronnie Shaked and Yaron Doron, Yediot, March 14 2010 [page 6; Hebrew original here]

Who really ran over the 14-year-old youth during the demonstrations that took place on Friday in Jerusalem's Ras el-Amud neighborhood? The police contend that he was hit by a "white Subaru, evidently driven by an Arab," but the photos shot by Yedioth Ahronoth photographer Atta Awisat expose the truth: the youth is lying underneath the tires of a police vehicle.

When rioting broke out in East Jerusalem prior to Friday morning Arab prayers, police went into action to quell the disturbances. A police vehicle traveling at high speed rushed into one of the streets of the Ras el-Amud neighborhood, in order to catch rock-throwers. En route, the vehicle hit a youth. The police in the vehicle took off in pursuit of rock-throwers, and, after detaining several of them, noticed the youth who had been hit by the vehicle's rear wheel hobbling away on his injured leg. It later turned out that he sustained a broken foot.

The police arrested the youth, brought him to the Russian Compound and contacted his family. "Your son is under arrest and injured," family members were told. "Come down to the station to pick him up and take him to the hospital," the police said. The youth's uncle, Jamil, arrived at the station. "I entered shed No. 4, and found my nephew sitting on the floor," the uncle said yesterday. "The investigator asked me to lift him, place him on a chair and bring him into the interrogation room. I did what the policeman asked, and he allowed me to be present during questioning," Jamil said.

During the questioning, the youth denied throwing stones. "It was a coincidence that I was on that street," the youth said. "A white vehicle came along very fast and hit me. The police arrested me and brought me to the Russian Compound," the youth said.

The uncle, who was not yet aware that it was a police vehicle that had hit his nephew, asked the investigator why the police hadn't stopped the car and attempted to identify it. He claimed that the police officer said, "We were in the middle of operational activity, and during a war we're not interested in motor vehicle accidents, but rather the mission itself." The investigator asked the uncle to take the youth to the hospital, and said, "because he's injured, we won't arrest him." According to the uncle, when he asked why the police didn't take the youth for medical treatment, the investigator answered, We were in the middle of a skirmish, and didn't notice that he was injured." From the police station, the youth was taken to Hadassah Mt. Scopus Hospital. An x-ray showed that he had a broken foot, which was put in a cast.

The photos taken by the Yedioth Ahronoth photographer clearly indicate that the youth was hit by a police vehicle, but the police assert that this is not the case. According to the uncle, the police at the station told him that he was hit by "a fast-traveling white vehicle, which then fled the scene." One detail in this description is correct: it was a white vehicle. But there's no denying that it was a police vehicle, according to the license plate.

In an official response, the police said: "The youth, together with several other Arab youths, were throwing stones at Border Police. In his statement to the police, the youth said he was hit by a white Subaru, evidently driven by an Arab. The vehicle fled the scene of the accident. When the youth pointed out to the investigators his minor injuries, he was released for medical treatment at the hospital." The police also say they are looking for the driver of the vehicle in question.

Yedioth Ahronoth again contacted the police, saying they had solid evidence that the youth had been, in fact, hit by a police vehicle. But police are sticking to their story that it is falsified evidence, intended to heat up an already exacerbated situation. Is the evidence faked? The photos on these pages speak for themselves.

Click here for more

Keep the heat on

Bernard Avishai — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:28:00 GMT

There are only two political parties in Israel, really, the party that dreads the loss of Greater Israel, i.e., the party of settlements, and, the party that dreads the isolation of global Israel, i.e., the party of America. Think of the country as paradigms, the first focused on Jerusalem's fire, the second on Tel Aviv's cool. The Likud is mainly in the first party, as are all of Netanyahu's coalition partners, save Labor. But the prime minister supposed he could keep a leg in both, or at least preclude the need for Israelis to choose, by focusing everybody, including American diplomats and generals, on the dread of Iran--also by activating neoconservative allies in the United States to downplay settlement activity in the face of Islamist violence.

Netanyahu's stance, or ploy, finally came unraveled last week, not only because of the dustup with Joe Biden about new construction in East Jerusalem, but because Gen. David Petreaus finally weighed in with a statement of the obvious, that the America's long acquiescence in Israel's occupation "was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region." Netanyahu is trying to pretend that the crisis with Washington was precipitated by bad timing. That's a little like saying the announcement of AIG's bonus pool was bad timing. Nobody's really buying it, and with Petreaus in the mix, the neocons can hardly sell it. We have come to a moment of truth that is long overdue. The Israeli media is, gratefully, growing preoccupied with its implications, not the least of which is just how divided the country is, and how its citizens must indeed choose.

REVEALINGLY, BIDEN'S GOOD speech at Tel Aviv University last week spent a good deal of time anticipating (or preempting) Netanyahu on Iran, reassuring Israelis-in-general about their existence-in-general. But this sounded more like a preliminary hymn than the necessary sermon. The university is ground zero of the America party. Biden looked a little surprised when he found that his only strong applause line was an unequivocal condemnation of new Jewish settlements, which would further "prejudice the result of negotiations." This caused Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin, the hack conscience of the settlers party, to issue a condemnation of his own, namely, of the Tel Aviv University audience.
The point is, there is a culture war in Israel now, and the only way the liber

al side of it can mount an offensive is if America keeps the heat on. It is futile to treat Israel as if it were the embodiment of some big Jewish psyche in need of reassurances to trust the world. In fact, Israeli governments refuse to depart from the status quo because a large and hardened minority, perhaps a third of Jewish Israelis, regards peace as an end to the divinely self-enclosed way of life they have established in and around Jerusalem. The squishy, declining, more cosmopolitan and secular majority is unwilling to confront them for the sake of Palestinians, that is, not unless they have to. Israelis have to see that there is something to lose.

NOBODY HERE KNOWS how violently the Israeli right would be prepared to defend the settlement project against the Israeli state itself. To the extent that Israeli politics are merely electoral politics, the fight is clear, however. It is over swing voters: immigrants from the former Soviet Union and their acculturated children, better educated Mizrahim, traditionalist Jews drawn to orthodoxy but who have traveled the world. In recent years--what with the collapse of Oslo, the suicide bombings, the rise of Ahmadinejad, etc.--these voters have swung sharply toward the settlers. A recent poll of high school students reveals that over half would deny Arab citizens of Israel the right to vote. To be for peace, you see, is to be naïve, trusting of "the Arabs."

The global party can win back the initiative, but this means giving swing voters something new and more urgent to be not naïve about, something like reliance on Likud, AIPAC, etc., to deliver America. Reports of Clinton dressing down Netanyahu on the phone were just a beginning. Labor's dissident former leader, Amir Peretz, was on Reshet Bet radio this morning sounding charged up for the first time in two years. He told listeners it was time to "grow up." There are rumors that Kadima's Tzipi Livni has sent Netanyhau a message that she'll join the government if he gets rid of Shas and Leiberman, in effect, if he is prepared to try to drag the whole of the Likud to the party of America, even if this means he loses absolute control over the cabinet. This is his moment of truth. If Washington lets up, critics of government policy will slump back into their corner.

THE NEXT TWO weeks may prove critical. Netanyahu is coming to Washington, or is at least scheduled to, to address the AIPAC convention. Meanwhile, Obama's international prestige will be riding on his final push to get healthcare legislation passed. The EU's foreign minister, Catherine Ashton, has rebuked Israel and strongly backed Clinton's stand over Jerusalem construction. Kadima is waiting for an answer. The Arab League is meeting in Tripoli later this month, and who knows if their 2002 offer of full regional peace with Israel, in exchange for the 1967 borders and a resolution of the refugees issue, will be renewed?

Meanwhile, in Jerualem, plans are proceeding to have Ruby Rivlin rededicate an ancient synagogue in the old city today. Arab men under 50 are being kept away from the mosques, and everyone is bracing for the closures of the Passover holiday. The anticipated proximity negotiations of George Mitchell have been deferred. There were fresh riots at Birzeit University in Ramallah. There is talk of a temporary general strike. The region, in short, will not be the same a month from now. Even the effort to reimpose the status quo ante Biden will seem a provocation.

Like all administrations since Ronald Reagan, Obama's will be tempted to have representatives to AIPAC mollify what seems the natural leadership of American Jews, though AIPAC is not anything of the kind. The temptation must be resisted. Perhaps this was inadvertent, but there is now an expectation across the West Bank, and the Israeli political class, that Washington has, in effect, finally told Israel to stop all settlements, period, even in East Jerusalem. If ever Obama needed the realism and nerves that Eisenhower had when he told Ben-Gurion to vacate Sinai, this is the time. Peretz told the radio that the government has "dried the brush," so that any match can light a wildfire. Obama's return to business as usual, that is, to the inertia from which only the Israeli right gains, can itself provide the spark.

Click here for more

Israeli extremism exposed

Ahmad Tibi — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:17:00 GMT

When diplomats won't even talk to American congressmen who disagree

With little surprise, I learned of the recent refusal of Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon to meet with members of the U.S. Congress, whose institution provides Israel with the economic wherewithal to occupy the West Bank. Through astonishing ineptness, rather than principled policy, Israel is risking the anger of its bankroller.

Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III recently noted, "United States taxpayers are giving Israel roughly $3 billion each year, which amounts to something like $1,000 for every Israeli citizen, at a time when our own economy is in bad shape and a lot of Americans would appreciate that kind of helping hand from their own government." Palestinian citizens of Israel scarcely see the American largesse, and Mr. Baker's numbers are somewhat off, but his point is well taken. With Israel's abusive treatment of Palestinians in the territories, inequitable distribution of government funds between Jewish citizens and Palestinian citizens, and the ongoing recession in the United States, it is time to put U.S. aid on the table.

The visiting members of Congress, though staunch supporters of Israel not yet questioning American aid, are beginning to raise questions about Israel's actions against the Palestinians.

Rather than meet with them, Mr. Ayalon lashed out at J Street, the new lobby group that had scheduled the meeting. Mr. Ayalon would never reject a meeting arranged by the American Israel Education Foundation, an offshoot of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, because the organization has not been critical of Israel's subjugation of Palestinians in the West Bank. But now, this serial offender of diplomatic norms and backer of transferring Palestinians from Israel, having learned nothing from his effort to humiliate Turkey's ambassador to Israel, has once again inadvertently managed to highlight the far-right political trend running riot through Israel - and extending itself into occupied Palestinian territory as well as Dubai. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeks to obscure Israel's daily human rights violations against the Palestinians, Mr. Ayalon seems oddly intent on showing the discriminatory side of Israel.

I am uncertain whether to thank Mr. Ayalon for accidentally and repeatedly exposing Israel's extremism to the world or to criticize him for harboring opinions more in keeping with white viewpoints in apartheid South Africa than a leading diplomat in Israel's Foreign Ministry. His bungling is the gift that keeps on giving in helping make plain to the world the kind of reactionary leaders Israel has chosen to run the country. Mr. Netanyahu holds similar beliefs but is an experienced enough politician to avoid making a public spectacle of himself.

The rejected members of Congress all have an open invitation to my office. In fact, it is my sincere hope that all members of Congress will make a stop at my office a crucial visit when they travel to Jerusalem. There are more than 35 Israeli laws that discriminate against the 20 percent of Israelis who are Palestinians. While we are able to vote and hold office, rank discrimination in all other aspects of life significantly hold us back. Such treatment by Israel merits American censure and calls into question the wisdom and morality of knee-jerk American support for Israel.

We are entering a time period similar to that faced by the United States 50 years ago. Then, at long last, some American allies finally were waking up to the reality of Jim Crow discrimination in the American South and not liking what they saw. Israel's policies are putting it in league with the West's most notoriously racist governments of the past five decades. So far this year, Defense Minister Ehud Barak has warned of Israel becoming "an apartheid state," and Mr. Baker expressed concern that if Israel did not find a "negotiated peace" it could become "an apartheid type of nation." Neither man thought that day had arrived yet, but we Palestinians see it every day with the separation wall running through the West Bank and East Jerusalem and different Israeli laws for Jews and Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Israel's response to its declining international standing, however, is to put out propaganda rather than wrestle with the fundamental injustices meted out to Palestinians every day. The Israeli Information and Diaspora Affairs Ministry earlier this month began handing out Hebrew pamphlets on Israeli airlines to passengers interested in contesting how the state is viewed abroad.

The ministry's approach, also posted online, wrongly suggests that Israelis are monolithic. We are not. Not all Jews agree with the suppression of Palestinians. And certainly almost all Palestinian citizens of Israel oppose the occupation.

An approach that obscures government crimes against Palestinians dallies in simple-minded foolishness and refuses to see our situation as others see it. Israelis don't need to explain away the occupation more effectively but to address it, end it and accept moral culpability for decades of ruling over another people. As for the United States, members of Congress don't need another decade of complicity with Israel's occupation, but the political courage to tell an ally and its associated lobbyists that continued domination of the Palestinians is simply not acceptable in the 21st century.

Cross posted from the Washington Times

US military demanded Netanyahu smackdown

MJ Rosenberg — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:05:00 GMT

An amazing story in Foreign Policy today by Mark Perry, the Middle East expert and security consultant. (Note: the military denies Perry's report which is, of course, to be expected. It would never admit to this kind of involvement in policy. I am relying on Perry's account).

Perry reports that the startling and unpredicted US -Israel smackdown did not really start in Jerusalem this week. It began months ago when CENTCOM Commander General David Petraeus dispatched a team to brief the Joint Chiefs and the White House on the danger continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict posed to US troops in the Middle East.

The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Admiral Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM's mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) "too old, too slow ... and too late."

The White House was also stunned by the report and decided to act. Its first move was to dispatch Vice President Biden to Israel and Palestine to announce the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Prime Minister Netanyahu''s government tried to abort the US policy shift (and avoid negotiations) by announcing the new settler units in East Jerusalem. But the attempt blew up in Bibi's face when Obama, Biden, and Clinton reacted with public fury at the unprecedented public diss of the US by an ally and #1 foreign aid recipient.

Perry concludes that the "lobby" that argued for the policy shift is even more powerful than AIPAC.

There are important and powerful lobbies in America: the NRA, the American Medical Association, the lawyers - and the Israeli lobby. But no lobby is as important, or as powerful, as the U.S. military. While commentators and pundits might reflect that Joe Biden's trip to Israel has forever shifted America's relationship with its erstwhile ally in the region, the real break came in January, when David Petraeus sent a briefing team to the Pentagon with a stark warning: America's relationship with Israel is important, but not as important as the lives of America's soldiers. Maybe Israel gets the message now.

Click here for more

Murdoch targets Abu Dhabi as international media hub

Magda Abu-Fadil — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:01:00 GMT

Abu Dhabi is slated to become the hottest new international media hub, if Rupert Murdoch and like-minded moguls have their druthers, but the region's leaders should loosen press restrictions and open up to foreign competitors to thrive.

"By welcoming foreign competition, you will call your people to their best - and cultivate a world-class industry on par with the finance and oil giants that now dominate this region," News Corp chief Murdoch told an invitation-only audience at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit 2010 (http://www.admediasummit.com) this week.

He also urged the country's leaders to ease their grip on the media and tolerate criticism if they wished to succeed in the global market.

"In the face of an inconvenient story, it can be tempting to resort to censorship or civil or criminal laws to try to bury it," he said, noting that in the long run, such measures were counterproductive.

Markets that distort their media end up promoting the very panic and distrust they had hoped to control, he added.

Murdoch also announced News Corp would set up its Middle East online advertising operations in Abu Dhabi, and move a number of Hong Kong-based satellite TV channels to the United Arab Emirates.

"We will establish a production office here for one of our documentary film-making companies," he said.

Murdoch's exhortations and announcement came on the heels of a mega deal with Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

News Corp (http://www.newscorp.com) acquired a 9.09 per cent stake of newly-issued shares in the latter's Rotana Group (www.rotana.net), a leading Middle East firm of TV satellite channels, at a cool $70 million.

News Corp also has an option to increase its stake in the 18 months following completion, allowing Murdoch to make further inroads into a growing market of over 330 million people.

Last year, Murdoch's plans for the region ruffled feathers, given his strong support for Israel, with news he'd shoved his foot in the media door through Rotana, which owns shares in Lebanon's LBC Satellite channel (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/magda-abufadil/lebanons-lbc-tv-rides-lay_b_341335.html).

But politics notwithstanding, the Abu Dhabi Media Summit is thought to have set the stage for a major transformation of that United Arab Emirate from a more reclusive presidency of the Gulf federation to an international media player.

Although flashy neighboring Dubai has to date been the undisputed leader in the region with its Media City (http://www.dubaimediacity.com) hosting countless news and entertainment organizations, Abu Dhabi's low-key approach is slowly turning it into a news hub for the likes of CNN (www.cnn.com), which began broadcasting from studios there in recent months.

An Arab media analyst credits UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdallah bin Zayed Al Nahyan for the beefed up media presence.

Sheikh Abdallah, the late ruler's son, was his country's information minister and as a young man interned at the headquarters of an international news agency, where he is thought to have acquired a taste for the industry.

Google, represented by CEO Eric Schmidt, is seeing its fastest revenue and user growth in the Middle East/North Africa region, Gulf News quoted the company chief as telling summit participants, although he apparently declined to provide specific numbers.

Schmidt also said there was a shortage of Arabic content, and that Arabic websites were slow to be developed.

The media summit drew almost 500 global media leaders and delegates, including AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, incoming Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg, Turkey's Dogan Media Group Vice Chairman Mehmet Ali Yalçindag, and Murdoch partner Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, to name a few.

But critics dubbed it a summit for CEOs and geeks that excluded journalists from covering it first-hand.

Dubai-based Gulf News (www.gulfnews.com) business features editor Scott Shuey complained in a blog post that reporters were relegated to a room away from the conference where they could watch, remotely, industry heavyweights talk about the growing interactivity that digital media provides.

Members of the media were banned from interacting with the participants, Shuey said, adding that he was joined by some 50 reporters in a room adjacent to the conference hall with access limited to two 50" or so flat screen TV sets on opposite walls.

"I'm pretty sure irony wasn't meant to be on the agenda," he wrote of the event hosted by the Abu Dhabi Media Company (http://www.admedia.ae), a three-year-old venture describing itself as one of the fastest growing, multi-platform media organizations in the region.

The company is headquartered in Abu Dhabi and has offices in Cairo, Dubai and Washington D.C.

Summit participants from the media, technology and investment sectors also focused on the growing Middle East, Indian and Chinese markets, as well as new challenges for media brand marketers in the digital age.

They debated the importance of creating quality content in the Arab world, its distribution, and expanding demand for broadband across the region.

The Middle East/North Africa region is said to have one of the highest percentages of youth in the world, and one of the fastest growing Internet penetration rates.

According to news reports, this will lead to an exponential increase in demand for Arabic-language content, both in the UAE and across the region, making Abu Dhabi an ideal venue to capitalize on the trend.

Click here for more