Direct Action www.directaction.org.au
Home » Issue 23: June 2010
PA capitulation clears way for 'proximity talks'
By Kim Bullimore
On May 7, US-backed “proximity talks” began two months after US special Mideast envoy George Mitchel, announced that the Fatah-led Palestine Authority (PA) and Israel had agreed to resume “indirect” negotiations. The “proximity talks” have been hailed by the Obama administration as a way of supposedly kick-starting the failed Arab-Israeli “peace process”. The talks have commenced despite the fact that Israel has not adhered to the 10-month “settlement freeze” demanded by the Obama administration.
Under the 1949 Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, also known as the “Fourth Geneva Convention”, an occupying power may not transfer parts of its own civilian population into occupied territory. All of the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories militarily occupied by Israel since June 1967 are therefore illegal under international law. This has been repeatedly acknowledged by the UN Security Council and reaffirmed by the UN’s International Court of Justice in its December 2003 advisory opinion on Israel’s apartheid wall.
In May 2009, US President Barack Obama told Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, whose electoral mandate as PA president expired in January 2009, that Washington would press Israel to meet its obligations under a 2003 “road map for peace” endorsed by the UN, the US, the European Union and Russia, which included stopping the construction of new Israeli settlements and the expansion of existing settlements. By that time these settlements housed close to 500,000 Israeli citizens in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.
However, according to an Israeli Peace Now NGO Settlement Watch project report published in February 2010 there have been repeated violations of the supposed settlement freeze announced by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu last November. The report noted that in response to a parliamentary question, “Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai admitted that 29 settlements [had] breached the settlement freeze order”.
PA capitulation
Relying on Washington’s support, Abbas had previously stated that the PA would not engage in negotiations with Israel until the Netanyahu government froze settlement building and expansion. On May 2, however, Abbas sought Arab League approval for the PA’s capitulation to US and Israeli pressure to accept indirect negotiations without an Israeli settlement freeze. At a Cairo meeting of the Arab Peace Initiative Committee, only Syria and Lebanon, both of which have been the victims of Israeli military aggression, opposed giving the green light to the US brokered “proximity” talks.
At a press conference after the meeting, Syrian representative Yousef al-Ahmed said: “This committee has exceeded its authority and given the Palestinians the green light to start indirect talks without the Israelis taking steps on the ground … It was clear that the meeting ... was aimed at providing an Arab cover for an already-taken Palestinian decision to hold indirect negotiations with Israel with no guarantees”.
Nabil Abu Rudeina, a PA spokesperson said: “There is currently no idea to hold direct negotiations. The Palestinian and Arab positions on this matter are clear — there must be a clear reference for negotiations and the complete halt of settlements.” The PA’s engagement in the proximity talks confirms that it has opted to continue to pursue its failed strategy of diplomatic reliance on Washington, while informally abandoning its demand that Israel freeze settlement expansion as a precondition for negotiations.
On May 8, Yasser Abed Rabbo, Abbas’ chief adviser, told Israel’s YNet news website, that the decision to engage in the proximity talks was “mostly premised on pledges and guarantees made by the Americans to the Palestinian side in respect to the issues of settlements and the basis of negotiations — Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the Road Map, and the Arab peace initiative”. Rabbo stated that Washington had pledged to ensure all core issues of the conflict would be discussed and that it would supposedly “adopt a very determined stance” against any Israeli provocations to disrupt the talks.
This confirms that the PA leadership continues to view Washington as supposedly a “neutral broker” in the Arab-Israeli conflict. However, Washington is an active participant in the Israeli colonisation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). As British freelance journalist Jonathan Cook reported in a May 15 article in the Abu Dhabi newspaper, The National, that the US government’s US Agency for International Development (USAID) has “helped to build 114 kilometers of Israeli-proposed roads [in the West Bank], despite a pledge from Washington six years ago that it would not assist in implementing what has been widely described as Israel’s ‘apartheid road’ plan”. Cook noted that USAID had “paid for the construction of nearly a quarter of the segregated road network put forward by Israel in 2004”.
These roads are designed to provide alternative routes to connect Palestinian communities, often by upgrading circuitous dirt tracks or by building tunnels under existing routes, while Israeli-only roads are maintained in order to facilitate Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank. Cook correctly pointed out that USAID’s “involvement in building a segregated West Bank road infrastructure would run counter to Washington’s oft-stated goal, including as it launched ‘proximity talks’ last week, to establish a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity”.
Fayyad plan
While the Abbas and the Fatah leadership have continued to pursue a failed strategy of reliance on the US government as a “neutral broker”, appointed Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad has continued to pursue economic policies to entrench and normalise Israel’s illegal occupation of the OPT. Over the past year, with the endorsement of Israel, the US and the EU, Fayyad, who has been hailed by both Israel and the US as “the Palestinian Ben Gurion”, has sought to implement an economic policy in the West Bank which is little different from the one proposed by Netanyahu in his Bar Ilan speech in June 2009.
Melbourne-based Palestinian writer Samah Sabawi, in her March 10 article on the Palestine Chronicle website, notes that, “Contrary to all the hype that surrounds economic peace, it is important to acknowledge the fact that it represents more of the same old policies Israel has pursued in the Occupied Territories for decades”. Sabawi noted that since 1967, Israel has “wanted the land the resources but not the people” of the OPT.
As Sabawi correctly argues, Netanyahu’s economic peace plan is a continuation of Israel’s attempt to economically integrate the natural resources of OPT into the Israeli economy. Fayyad, who initially opposed Netanyahu’s economically peace plan, has since fully embraced it. This is most clearly illustrated by in the way in which the PA continued to engage in monthly Joint Economic Committee meetings throughout the period when the PA had supposedly stopped talking with Israel until there was settlement freeze. The primary task of the JEC meetings is to foster joint Palestinian-Israeli business ventures.
Joseph Massad, a professor of Modern Arab politics at New York City’s Columbia University, noted in an April 14 article on the Electronic Intifada website that Fayyad is a “pioneer in normalisation” and that “Fayyad’s plan to establish a Palestinian state in August 2011 is in effect an acceptance of the Camp David proposals offered to and rejected by the late Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat in 2000”.
Given that Fayyad is aggressively promoting an “economic peace” policy which suits Israeli government and business interests, it is not surprising that Zionists around the world have started to be more vocal in their support for Fayyad. On May 13, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who is described by Jerusalem Post as “one of Israel’s most committed and articulate advocates”, told the Post that Fayyad was “the best [partner] Israel has, and probably the best Israel has ever had”.
Similarly, Bren Carlill an analysis at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, in an article in the May 13 Melbourne Age, while admonishing the Palestinian people for “their sense of victimhood”, observed that “There is one Palestinian, however, who is breaking the mould. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is building Palestinian infrastructure, fighting Palestinian corruption and laying the foundations for a viable Palestinian state.”
In an interview with the April 2 Tel Aviv Haaretz daily, Fayyad indicated that he was prepared to give up the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homes and properties in what is now the Israeli state. In response to the question of whether or not his plan takes into consideration the need to absorb Palestinian refugees, Fayyad responded, “Of course, Palestinians would have the right to reside within the State of Palestine”. The Palestinian state Fayyad refers to is what many analysts have come to regard as little different to the phony “independent homelands” (Bantustans) that apartheid South Africa tried, unsuccessfully, to get its indigenous African population to accept as a substitute for equal citizen rights.
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Monday, September 7, 2009
Israel continues to steal Arab land
Direct Action Issue 15: September 2009
http://directaction.org.au/issue15/israel_continues_to_steal_arab_land
By Kim Bullimore
On August 26, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu offered to freeze the building of new Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank for nine months. Netanyahu’s announcement has been presented in the Western corporate media as a “victory” for US President Barack Obama, who has been pressing Israel to halt its illegal settlement activity in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in order to be able to get the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” restarted.
Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, had been pressing for a 12-month freeze on illegal settlement activity in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem, both illegally occupied by Israel since June 1967. Netanyahu, however, has ruled out any halt to the Israeli takeover of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, which Israel formally annexed in 1980 through its “Jerusalem Law”. This declared that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. This Israeli law was declared “null and void” and a violation of international law by UN Security Council Resolution 478, approved by 14-0 votes (with the US abstaining) in August 1980. A July 2004 statement of the International Court of Justice expressed the view that all countries are under an obligation not to recognise Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem.
According to the August 27 Tel Aviv Haaretz daily, Netanyahu’s settlement “freeze” offer excludes some 2500 housing units on which construction has already started and allows the erection of new “public buildings”, mainly schools, in existing settlements. Following the meeting with Mitchell, at which Netanyahu made his phony “freeze” settlement offer, the two issued a joint statement saying that “good progress” had been made in their discussions.
Writing in the August 12 Jordan Times, Hasan Abu Nimah, a former Jordanian ambassador to the UN, observed that “by demanding a temporary freeze [on Israel’s illegal settlements], the US is indirectly accepting what has been built so far, as well as the idea that Israel is entitled at the end of the agreed period to resume construction if its ever-escalating demands are not met”. He went on to argue that the notion of a “temporary freeze” allows Israel to shift the debate “from the illegality, under international law, of Israel’s settlements towards something totally superficial: the pace of construction”.
Israel soldiers on the outskirts of illegal Israeli colony
Jerusalem resident Joharah Baker, a regular writer for the Media and Information Program at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH), made a similar point two months ago. In a June 29 article on the Palestine Chronicle website, she argued that “a ‘temporary’ freeze is just that, temporary, which implies that later down the line Israel will not be obligated to maintain this offer and resume construction”. She correctly noted that the notion of a “temporary freeze” is simply part of Israel’s decades-long policy of trying “to stall a final agreement and permanent solution”, in order to allow the Israeli rulers to create “facts on the ground, which then must be negotiated”. Baker added that “today, instead of talking about a complete dismantlement of illegal settlements and outposts on occupied Palestinian land, we are talking about the minutest of details”, such as a “temporary freeze” of construction of illegal settlements.
Settler poster issued by illegal settlers in Binyamin colony opposing settlement freeze
Racist settler poster denouncing US President, Barak Obama
In 2003, as part of the US president George Bush’s “Road Map” for peace, Israel agreed to freeze settlement construction. However, the August 19 Washington Post noted that since then “the Jewish population in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, has increased from about 224,000 to about 290,000”. There are another estimated 180,000 Israelis living in illegal settlements built in East Jerusalem.
The Obama administration and the corporate media have also sought to play up Netanyahu’s pledge to remove 23 “illegal outposts” in the West Bank. However, very little has been said about the fact that most of these illegal outposts are not populated. As Khaled Amayreh noted in July 23-29 Egyptian Al Ahram weekly, these outposts are “merely used as rallying point[s] for settlers who are bent on preserving the occupation”.
Where illegal outposts are populated, the Israeli government has repeatedly dragged its feet on removing the settlers living there. A point in case is the illegal outpost of Migron, which was built in 2002 on privately owned Palestinian land. Despite Israel’s courts in 2006 recognising that the land is legally owned by Palestinians and that it should be evacuated, the Israel government has petitioned the Israeli courts to not be compelled to remove the illegal settlers until mid 2010. According to Amos Harel, writing in the July 7 Haaretz, when the settlers are removed from Migron, they will simply be transferred to the neighbouring illegal colony of Adam, where Israel is planning to build 50 new homes for the settlers.
Among the new illegal settlements in East Jerusalem that Israel is planning to build is Ma’aleh David, which is to be constructed in the middle of the Palestinian neighbourhood of Rasa al-Amud. According to the August 25 Haaretz, this new Israeli colony will consist of 104 “high-end” housing units, a swimming pool, a country club, library, synagogue, kindergarten and mikveh (a Jewish ritual purification bath). Haaretz noted that the new colony will be connected to the existing illegal colony of Ma’aleh Zeitem, which houses 51 settler families. Currently, Ma’aleh Zeitem is undergoing “natural growth” with another 66 housing units being built. The joint colony blocs will then form the largest Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, with more than 1000 illegal settlers situated in the heart of the Ras al-Amud neighbourhood, home to 14,000 Palestinians.
Israeli settler children being taught how to use automatic weapons
Armed Israeli settlers
While the Netanyahu government has continued to build and expand illegal Israeli colonies on stolen Palestinian land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, it has also continued to carry out, with impunity, other human rights abuses against the Palestinian people in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Figures from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reveal that in the 11 weeks since Obama’s June 4 speech in Cairo, Israeli occupation forces have carried out at least 217 military incursions into the West Bank (an average of around three per day), plus several incursions into Gaza. In addition, at least 169 Palestinian civilians, including 40 children, were kidnapped by Israel and placed in Israeli detention without charge or trial in this same period, while dozens of hectares of Palestinian land was razed.
During the same period, Israel continued to build its apartheid wall, which has been ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice, while also continuing its collective punishment of the Palestinian people in Gaza by carrying out an illegal blockade of the tiny territory. Despite mounting evidence that Israel carried out a range of war crimes both during and after its war on Gaza in December-January, and the humanitarian crisis that has resulted from that war and the continuing siege of Gaza, Obama has continued to defend Israel’s “right” to blockade the Gaza Strip.
Illegal Israel settlers move into a Palestinian home in Sheik Jarreh (East Jerusalem) The Palestinian family was forcible evicted, along with their possessions which now lay on the street.
Campaign by Palestinian community in Sheik Jarreh to oppose illegal Israel settlers taking over Palestinian homes.
Israel’s continuing colonial drive to steal more and more Palestinian land and the unwillingness of both the US administration and other Western governments to do anything to stop it highlights the need for the continued support for and participation in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. The campaign, which was launched by more than 170 Palestinian organisations in 2005, is starting to have an impact, with more and more unions and other organisations around the world signing onto the campaign. This impact has not gone unnoticed by the Israeli government or its supporters. In a May 7 speech, Howard Kohr, executive director of American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said that the BDS campaign is now part of “ordinary political discourse on our TV and radio talk shows; in the pages of our major newspapers and in countless blogs, in town hall meetings, on campuses and city squares . . . More and more they are invading the mainstream discourse, becoming part of the constant and unrelenting drumbeat against Israel.”
http://directaction.org.au/issue15/israel_continues_to_steal_arab_land
By Kim Bullimore
On August 26, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu offered to freeze the building of new Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank for nine months. Netanyahu’s announcement has been presented in the Western corporate media as a “victory” for US President Barack Obama, who has been pressing Israel to halt its illegal settlement activity in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in order to be able to get the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” restarted.
Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, had been pressing for a 12-month freeze on illegal settlement activity in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem, both illegally occupied by Israel since June 1967. Netanyahu, however, has ruled out any halt to the Israeli takeover of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, which Israel formally annexed in 1980 through its “Jerusalem Law”. This declared that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. This Israeli law was declared “null and void” and a violation of international law by UN Security Council Resolution 478, approved by 14-0 votes (with the US abstaining) in August 1980. A July 2004 statement of the International Court of Justice expressed the view that all countries are under an obligation not to recognise Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem.
According to the August 27 Tel Aviv Haaretz daily, Netanyahu’s settlement “freeze” offer excludes some 2500 housing units on which construction has already started and allows the erection of new “public buildings”, mainly schools, in existing settlements. Following the meeting with Mitchell, at which Netanyahu made his phony “freeze” settlement offer, the two issued a joint statement saying that “good progress” had been made in their discussions.
Writing in the August 12 Jordan Times, Hasan Abu Nimah, a former Jordanian ambassador to the UN, observed that “by demanding a temporary freeze [on Israel’s illegal settlements], the US is indirectly accepting what has been built so far, as well as the idea that Israel is entitled at the end of the agreed period to resume construction if its ever-escalating demands are not met”. He went on to argue that the notion of a “temporary freeze” allows Israel to shift the debate “from the illegality, under international law, of Israel’s settlements towards something totally superficial: the pace of construction”.
Israel soldiers on the outskirts of illegal Israeli colony
Jerusalem resident Joharah Baker, a regular writer for the Media and Information Program at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH), made a similar point two months ago. In a June 29 article on the Palestine Chronicle website, she argued that “a ‘temporary’ freeze is just that, temporary, which implies that later down the line Israel will not be obligated to maintain this offer and resume construction”. She correctly noted that the notion of a “temporary freeze” is simply part of Israel’s decades-long policy of trying “to stall a final agreement and permanent solution”, in order to allow the Israeli rulers to create “facts on the ground, which then must be negotiated”. Baker added that “today, instead of talking about a complete dismantlement of illegal settlements and outposts on occupied Palestinian land, we are talking about the minutest of details”, such as a “temporary freeze” of construction of illegal settlements.
Settler poster issued by illegal settlers in Binyamin colony opposing settlement freeze
Racist settler poster denouncing US President, Barak Obama
In 2003, as part of the US president George Bush’s “Road Map” for peace, Israel agreed to freeze settlement construction. However, the August 19 Washington Post noted that since then “the Jewish population in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, has increased from about 224,000 to about 290,000”. There are another estimated 180,000 Israelis living in illegal settlements built in East Jerusalem.
The Obama administration and the corporate media have also sought to play up Netanyahu’s pledge to remove 23 “illegal outposts” in the West Bank. However, very little has been said about the fact that most of these illegal outposts are not populated. As Khaled Amayreh noted in July 23-29 Egyptian Al Ahram weekly, these outposts are “merely used as rallying point[s] for settlers who are bent on preserving the occupation”.
Where illegal outposts are populated, the Israeli government has repeatedly dragged its feet on removing the settlers living there. A point in case is the illegal outpost of Migron, which was built in 2002 on privately owned Palestinian land. Despite Israel’s courts in 2006 recognising that the land is legally owned by Palestinians and that it should be evacuated, the Israel government has petitioned the Israeli courts to not be compelled to remove the illegal settlers until mid 2010. According to Amos Harel, writing in the July 7 Haaretz, when the settlers are removed from Migron, they will simply be transferred to the neighbouring illegal colony of Adam, where Israel is planning to build 50 new homes for the settlers.
Among the new illegal settlements in East Jerusalem that Israel is planning to build is Ma’aleh David, which is to be constructed in the middle of the Palestinian neighbourhood of Rasa al-Amud. According to the August 25 Haaretz, this new Israeli colony will consist of 104 “high-end” housing units, a swimming pool, a country club, library, synagogue, kindergarten and mikveh (a Jewish ritual purification bath). Haaretz noted that the new colony will be connected to the existing illegal colony of Ma’aleh Zeitem, which houses 51 settler families. Currently, Ma’aleh Zeitem is undergoing “natural growth” with another 66 housing units being built. The joint colony blocs will then form the largest Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, with more than 1000 illegal settlers situated in the heart of the Ras al-Amud neighbourhood, home to 14,000 Palestinians.
Israeli settler children being taught how to use automatic weapons
Armed Israeli settlers
While the Netanyahu government has continued to build and expand illegal Israeli colonies on stolen Palestinian land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, it has also continued to carry out, with impunity, other human rights abuses against the Palestinian people in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Figures from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reveal that in the 11 weeks since Obama’s June 4 speech in Cairo, Israeli occupation forces have carried out at least 217 military incursions into the West Bank (an average of around three per day), plus several incursions into Gaza. In addition, at least 169 Palestinian civilians, including 40 children, were kidnapped by Israel and placed in Israeli detention without charge or trial in this same period, while dozens of hectares of Palestinian land was razed.
During the same period, Israel continued to build its apartheid wall, which has been ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice, while also continuing its collective punishment of the Palestinian people in Gaza by carrying out an illegal blockade of the tiny territory. Despite mounting evidence that Israel carried out a range of war crimes both during and after its war on Gaza in December-January, and the humanitarian crisis that has resulted from that war and the continuing siege of Gaza, Obama has continued to defend Israel’s “right” to blockade the Gaza Strip.
Illegal Israel settlers move into a Palestinian home in Sheik Jarreh (East Jerusalem) The Palestinian family was forcible evicted, along with their possessions which now lay on the street.
Campaign by Palestinian community in Sheik Jarreh to oppose illegal Israel settlers taking over Palestinian homes.
Israel’s continuing colonial drive to steal more and more Palestinian land and the unwillingness of both the US administration and other Western governments to do anything to stop it highlights the need for the continued support for and participation in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. The campaign, which was launched by more than 170 Palestinian organisations in 2005, is starting to have an impact, with more and more unions and other organisations around the world signing onto the campaign. This impact has not gone unnoticed by the Israeli government or its supporters. In a May 7 speech, Howard Kohr, executive director of American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said that the BDS campaign is now part of “ordinary political discourse on our TV and radio talk shows; in the pages of our major newspapers and in countless blogs, in town hall meetings, on campuses and city squares . . . More and more they are invading the mainstream discourse, becoming part of the constant and unrelenting drumbeat against Israel.”
Monday, July 27, 2009
Obama and Netanyahu offer Palestinians more of the same
By Kim Bullimore
Direct Action, Issue 13, July 2009
The much anticipated speeches on the Middle East “peace process” by US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month have been touted by the international corporate media as significant steps toward resolving conflict in the region. However, neither speech was a step forward. They simply regurgitated the long-held positions of both Washington and Tel Aviv, which have sought to ensure the ongoing subjugation and colonial oppression of the Palestinian people.
In his June 14 speech at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu repeated the Zionist position that “no preconditions” can be imposed on Israel in relation to negotiations. He then went on to demand that a raft of preconditions be met by the Palestinian Authority before Israel would consider recognising a Palestinian state. Veteran Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar noted in Haaretz the day after the speech : “Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a patriarchal, colonialist address in the best neoconservative tradition: The Arabs are the bad guys, or at best ungrateful terrorists; the Jews, of course, are the good guys, rational people who need to raise and care for their children,” Eldar observed that the purpose of the speech had nothing to do with the Palestinians or peace; instead it was to “appease Tzipi Hotovely, the settler Likud lawmaker, and make it possible to live peaceably with the settler foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman”.
New Israeli preconditions
According to Netanyahu, “a fundamental prerequisite for ending the conflict is a public, binding and unequivocal Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people”. Netanyahu’s second precondition for a Palestinian state was that it must be “demilitarised”. Throughout, Netanyahu also made it clear that Israel had no intention of dismantling its illegal settlements, that Palestinian refugees forcibly exiled by Zionist terrorists in 1948 would have no right of return, that Israel wouldn’t define its borders until the “final peace agreement” and that Jerusalem would be the “united” capital of Israel and therefore not the capital of any future Palestinian state.
Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians recognise Israel as “a Jewish state” is relatively new, having first been formally advocated by then prime minister Ehud Olmert at Annapolis in 2007. Prior to 2007, the key demand was the acknowledgement that Israel had the “right to exist in peace and security”. This demand, for example, was stated in a 1967 speech by Abba Eban, Israel’s then foreign minister, to the United Nations in the wake of the Six Day War, in which Israel captured and occupied the Golan Heights, the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Eban said repeatedly that the key to the conflict was the failure of the Arab states and peoples to accept Israel’s “right to exist” (not as a “Jewish state”) and that this right meant accepting “Israel’s rights to peace, security, sovereignty, economic development and maritime freedom”. From 1967 until 2007, this remained the key Israeli demand in relation to the Arab world.
The right of Israel to “live in peace and security” was recognised by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1988 in a political statement accompanying the PLO Declaration of Independence. The statement recognised UN Security Council Resolution 242, which stated in part that there should be “respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries free from acts of force”. Yasser Arafat further confirmed the PLO’s position in a September 1993 letter to Israel’s then prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, stating that he recognised “the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security”. The letter also stated that “the PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence”.
Arafat's 1993 letter to Rabin
However, Israel offered no commitment to end its violence and state terrorism against the Palestinian people or to recognise the right of the Palestinians to a state or their right to live in peace and security. Instead, it only “recognise[d] the PLO as the representatives of the Palestinian people” and agreed to begin negotiations. The demand that the Palestinians now recognise Israel as a “Jewish state” is the latest ploy to ensure that a Palestinian state doesn’t come into existence in the near future, so that Israel can continue to expand its illegal settlements and create “facts on the ground”.
Demilitarisation
Netanyahu’s demand that any Palestinian state be completely demilitarised and under Israeli military sovereignty also runs counter to previous negotiations. Resolution 242 called for the establishment of “demilitarised zones” between Israel and an independent Palestine state, not the latter’s demilitarisation. While the issue of possible “demilitarisation” was raised as part of a speech given by then US president Bill Clinton in 2000, it was in a vastly different context. In his December 2000 speech, Clinton noted that while Israel wanted a future Palestinian state to be defined as “demilitarised”, the Palestinians had proposed “a state with limited arms”. As a compromise, Clinton suggested that a Palestinian state would be “non-militarised” but would have “a strong Palestinian security force”, “an international force for border security and deterrence purposes” and “sovereignty over its airspace”
This is vastly different from what Netanyahu demanded in his Bar-Ilan speech. According to Netanyahu, any “territory controlled by the Palestinians will be demilitarised — namely, without an army, without control of its airspace, and with effective security measures to prevent weapons smuggling into the territory; real monitoring, and not what occurs in Gaza today. And obviously, the Palestinians will not be able to forge military pacts.”
Clinton had also called for the evacuation of 80% of settlers from the West Bank and Gaza, for joint control of Jerusalem’s holy places and the “acknowledg[ment of] the moral and material suffering caused to the Palestinian people as a result of the 1948 war”. Clinton called for any agreement on refugees not to “negate the aspiration of the Palestinian people to return to the area”. Netanyahu rejected all of this in his speech. As Eldar noted in his Haaretz article, “The difference between these documents and the Bar-Ilan address is not only that the former recognise the Palestinians’ full rights to the West Bank and East Jerusalem”; “the real difference lies in the tone — in the degrading and disrespectful nature of Netanyahu’s remarks”. This is “not how one brings down a wall of enmity between two nations, that’s not how trust is built”.
Obama’s advice
Netanyahu’s speech was hailed by Obama and the international corporate media as a “step in the right direction”. This is unsurprising given the tone and nature of Obama’s Cairo speech 10 days earlier. Obama’s June 4 speech revealed that Washington also has no real interest in advancing the “peace process”. Stripped of its flowery prose and flourishing references to the Koran, Obama’s speech revealed that Washington’s current Middle East policy is little different from that of his predecessor, George W. Bush.
Rather than advocating a real change in policy, Obama reconfirmed the “unbreakable” bonds between Israel and the United States, while demanding that the “Palestinians must abandon violence”. He made no demand that Israel put an end to its state violence, which has resulted in four times more Palestinian civilians killed than Israeli civilians killed by Palestinian resistance fighters. Obama, like Bush, continued to perpetrate the myth that “Palestinian violence” exists in a vacuum, separate from the greater violence of Israel’s brutal occupation.
Obama also failed to mention, even once, the word “occupation” and failed to call for the dismantling of Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, instead calling, as Bush did, simply for an end to settlement expansion. Obama also made it clear that he had no intention of cutting military or economic aid to Israel if Netanyahu failed to stop the expansions.
Instead, as respected commentator Jennifer Loewenstein noted in a June 5 Counterpunch article, Obama “sent Benjamin Netanyahu the message he most seeks, whether Netanyahu recognizes it or not: continue your colonial-settler project as you have been doing; just change the vocabulary you use to describe it. Then nobody will get upset or notice that the status quo … persists”. Netanyahu’s speech two weeks later revealed that he had heard Obama’s message loud and clear.
Direct Action, Issue 13, July 2009
The much anticipated speeches on the Middle East “peace process” by US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month have been touted by the international corporate media as significant steps toward resolving conflict in the region. However, neither speech was a step forward. They simply regurgitated the long-held positions of both Washington and Tel Aviv, which have sought to ensure the ongoing subjugation and colonial oppression of the Palestinian people.
In his June 14 speech at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu repeated the Zionist position that “no preconditions” can be imposed on Israel in relation to negotiations. He then went on to demand that a raft of preconditions be met by the Palestinian Authority before Israel would consider recognising a Palestinian state. Veteran Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar noted in Haaretz the day after the speech : “Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a patriarchal, colonialist address in the best neoconservative tradition: The Arabs are the bad guys, or at best ungrateful terrorists; the Jews, of course, are the good guys, rational people who need to raise and care for their children,” Eldar observed that the purpose of the speech had nothing to do with the Palestinians or peace; instead it was to “appease Tzipi Hotovely, the settler Likud lawmaker, and make it possible to live peaceably with the settler foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman”.
New Israeli preconditions
According to Netanyahu, “a fundamental prerequisite for ending the conflict is a public, binding and unequivocal Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people”. Netanyahu’s second precondition for a Palestinian state was that it must be “demilitarised”. Throughout, Netanyahu also made it clear that Israel had no intention of dismantling its illegal settlements, that Palestinian refugees forcibly exiled by Zionist terrorists in 1948 would have no right of return, that Israel wouldn’t define its borders until the “final peace agreement” and that Jerusalem would be the “united” capital of Israel and therefore not the capital of any future Palestinian state.
Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians recognise Israel as “a Jewish state” is relatively new, having first been formally advocated by then prime minister Ehud Olmert at Annapolis in 2007. Prior to 2007, the key demand was the acknowledgement that Israel had the “right to exist in peace and security”. This demand, for example, was stated in a 1967 speech by Abba Eban, Israel’s then foreign minister, to the United Nations in the wake of the Six Day War, in which Israel captured and occupied the Golan Heights, the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Eban said repeatedly that the key to the conflict was the failure of the Arab states and peoples to accept Israel’s “right to exist” (not as a “Jewish state”) and that this right meant accepting “Israel’s rights to peace, security, sovereignty, economic development and maritime freedom”. From 1967 until 2007, this remained the key Israeli demand in relation to the Arab world.
The right of Israel to “live in peace and security” was recognised by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1988 in a political statement accompanying the PLO Declaration of Independence. The statement recognised UN Security Council Resolution 242, which stated in part that there should be “respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries free from acts of force”. Yasser Arafat further confirmed the PLO’s position in a September 1993 letter to Israel’s then prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, stating that he recognised “the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security”. The letter also stated that “the PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence”.
Arafat's 1993 letter to Rabin
However, Israel offered no commitment to end its violence and state terrorism against the Palestinian people or to recognise the right of the Palestinians to a state or their right to live in peace and security. Instead, it only “recognise[d] the PLO as the representatives of the Palestinian people” and agreed to begin negotiations. The demand that the Palestinians now recognise Israel as a “Jewish state” is the latest ploy to ensure that a Palestinian state doesn’t come into existence in the near future, so that Israel can continue to expand its illegal settlements and create “facts on the ground”.
Demilitarisation
Netanyahu’s demand that any Palestinian state be completely demilitarised and under Israeli military sovereignty also runs counter to previous negotiations. Resolution 242 called for the establishment of “demilitarised zones” between Israel and an independent Palestine state, not the latter’s demilitarisation. While the issue of possible “demilitarisation” was raised as part of a speech given by then US president Bill Clinton in 2000, it was in a vastly different context. In his December 2000 speech, Clinton noted that while Israel wanted a future Palestinian state to be defined as “demilitarised”, the Palestinians had proposed “a state with limited arms”. As a compromise, Clinton suggested that a Palestinian state would be “non-militarised” but would have “a strong Palestinian security force”, “an international force for border security and deterrence purposes” and “sovereignty over its airspace”
This is vastly different from what Netanyahu demanded in his Bar-Ilan speech. According to Netanyahu, any “territory controlled by the Palestinians will be demilitarised — namely, without an army, without control of its airspace, and with effective security measures to prevent weapons smuggling into the territory; real monitoring, and not what occurs in Gaza today. And obviously, the Palestinians will not be able to forge military pacts.”
Clinton had also called for the evacuation of 80% of settlers from the West Bank and Gaza, for joint control of Jerusalem’s holy places and the “acknowledg[ment of] the moral and material suffering caused to the Palestinian people as a result of the 1948 war”. Clinton called for any agreement on refugees not to “negate the aspiration of the Palestinian people to return to the area”. Netanyahu rejected all of this in his speech. As Eldar noted in his Haaretz article, “The difference between these documents and the Bar-Ilan address is not only that the former recognise the Palestinians’ full rights to the West Bank and East Jerusalem”; “the real difference lies in the tone — in the degrading and disrespectful nature of Netanyahu’s remarks”. This is “not how one brings down a wall of enmity between two nations, that’s not how trust is built”.
Obama’s advice
Netanyahu’s speech was hailed by Obama and the international corporate media as a “step in the right direction”. This is unsurprising given the tone and nature of Obama’s Cairo speech 10 days earlier. Obama’s June 4 speech revealed that Washington also has no real interest in advancing the “peace process”. Stripped of its flowery prose and flourishing references to the Koran, Obama’s speech revealed that Washington’s current Middle East policy is little different from that of his predecessor, George W. Bush.
Rather than advocating a real change in policy, Obama reconfirmed the “unbreakable” bonds between Israel and the United States, while demanding that the “Palestinians must abandon violence”. He made no demand that Israel put an end to its state violence, which has resulted in four times more Palestinian civilians killed than Israeli civilians killed by Palestinian resistance fighters. Obama, like Bush, continued to perpetrate the myth that “Palestinian violence” exists in a vacuum, separate from the greater violence of Israel’s brutal occupation.
Obama also failed to mention, even once, the word “occupation” and failed to call for the dismantling of Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, instead calling, as Bush did, simply for an end to settlement expansion. Obama also made it clear that he had no intention of cutting military or economic aid to Israel if Netanyahu failed to stop the expansions.
Instead, as respected commentator Jennifer Loewenstein noted in a June 5 Counterpunch article, Obama “sent Benjamin Netanyahu the message he most seeks, whether Netanyahu recognizes it or not: continue your colonial-settler project as you have been doing; just change the vocabulary you use to describe it. Then nobody will get upset or notice that the status quo … persists”. Netanyahu’s speech two weeks later revealed that he had heard Obama’s message loud and clear.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Are Obama and Israel on a "collision course"?
By Kim Bullimore
www.directaction.org.au
Issue 12: June, 2009
Since Barack Obama’s swearing in as US president, both the Israeli and US media have peddled the idea his administration would take a strong stand with the newly-elected Israeli hard-right government of PM Benjamin Netanyahu and foreign minister Avigador Lieberman. On May 5, for example, United Press International claimed that Obama and “Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu are on a collision course” over how to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On May 7, Newsweek columnist Michael Hirsch claimed that Israel and the US were facing “a moment of truth” . Hirsch added: “for the last eight years Washington acted mainly as an unswerving supporter of Israel’s actions — some critics would say cheerleader — despite a few serious differences, such as the timing of the 2006 Palestinian elections. But the potential now exists for the most serious rupture of relations at least since 1989, when Secretary of State James Baker stunned AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] by calling on Israel to abandon its ‘unrealistic vision of a Greater Israel’ that included Gaza and the West Bank.”
Obama and Netanyahu
Despite such proclamations, there is very little chance of a serious rupture between Obama and the Netanyahu-Lieberman government. While the Obama administration has called on Israel to state publicly that it supports a two-state “solution”, it has not threatened to cut funding should Israel fail to do so. Like previous US presidents, Obama has no intention of pushing Israel to end its human rights abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The primary reason for Obama’s demand for an Israeli commitment to a two-state “solution” is that it serves US imperialist goals in the region, seeking to gain diplomatic support from US-aligned Arab capitalist regimes such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia for Washington’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to isolate anti-imperialist Arab nationalist forces in the region, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestine’s Hamas.
‘Interests don’t change’
The corporate media have spun the line that the May 18 meeting between Obama and Netanyahu was fraught with disagreements. But Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, who was Israel’s ambassador to the US during Bush junior’s administration, told the Jerusalem Post on May 20 that the Obama administration’s policy differed little from that of its predecessor. “The basic interests and objectives of the US in our region do not change with different administrations”, Ayalon said, adding: “Approaches and nuances change but the interests remain the same.”
The only difference between the two administrations, according to Ayalon, is that Obama is “adding a regional element to the diplomatic process”. By this, Ayalon means that Obama will go along with Israel’s demand that Arab countries must normalise their relations with Israel before Israel makes any concessions on its military rule over the OPT. Obama has sought to give the impression that he supports the Arab League peace initiative, which would normalise relations once Israel withdraws to its pre-June 1967 war borders and develops a “just” policy in relation to the Palestinian refugees driven out of their national homeland in 1947-48. In reality, Obama supports an inversion of the initiative. As Noam Chomsky noted in a January 26 article on the Znet website, Obama has engaged in “carefully framed deceit” by calling on Arab states “to act [immediately] on the initiative’s promise by supporting the Palestinian government under President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, taking steps towards normalizing relations with Israel, and by standing up to extremism”, while ignoring the fact that the initiative proposes “normalisation” only after a two-state settlement has been achieved.
Obama speaking at American Israel Public Affairs Committee forum
The corporate media have also been full of rumours that Obama would support the strategic outline of a “bipartisan” report submitted to him by the US/Middle East Project. The report, entitled A Last Chance for a Two State Israel-Palestine Agreement, is authored by 10 former senior US government officials, including James Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank and US special envoy on the Middle East, and Brent Scrowcroft, national security adviser to George Bush senior. The report calls for the US to broker a peace agreement based on two states, swapping land on a 1:1 basis in order to leave Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank intact.
While the report calls for addressing “the Palestinian refugees’ sense of injustice” and providing them with “meaningful financial compensations”, the report rejects the right of return and instead calls for refugees to be given “resettlement assistance”. It advocates that any Palestinian state be “a non-militarised” one for a minimum of 15 years. That is, it would have no military of its own and would be forbidden to enter military agreements with other countries, in order to ensure Israel’s security. There would be a US-led multinational “peacekeeping” force including Jordanian, Egyptian and Israeli troops. Jason Ditz noted in a May 20 article on the Antiwar.com website that over the last two years, while withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, Israel has continued to attack it regularly, so a demilitarised Palestinian state would most likely remain Israeli-occupied territory in everything but name.
Whether or not these “leaks” and rumours are true, Aluf Benn notes in a May 27 Tel Aviv Haaretz article, “Welcome to Realistan”, that Obama is a “realist” in the mould of Henry Kissinger. While Obama pays lip service to human rights, his foreign policy “is directed at a single goal: strong America as the leader of a stable world order”. In relation to Israel, Benn notes that in the meeting with Netanyahu, Obama’s focus was on “common interests” rather than anyone’s human rights. “Obama’s demand of Netanyahu to freeze the Jewish settlements in the West Bank does not derive from concern for the Palestinians whose lands are being stolen, or from opposition to violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention”, but is based on seeking to ensure that Washington’s Arab collaborators in the region, such as Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and President Mahmoud Abbas, are not ousted by popular discontent.
Netanyahu’s aims
Netanyahu, like his predecessors, will seek to deflect attention from Israel’s intransigence and refusal to enter into any real “peace process”. Since 1993, when the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation were signed, successive Israeli governments have repeatedly told US presidents that they would cease building and expanding settlements in the OPT, in line with the various US-backed agreements. But successive Israeli governments have allowed settlement building and expansion to go unchecked in order to establish “facts on the ground”. The most recent case in point was Netanyahu’s immediate predecessor, Ehud Olmert, who, while proclaiming that Israel must end its occupation, continued the expansion of illegal settlements. According to Israel’s Peace Now group, during Olmert’s prime ministership, between January 2006 and January 2009, more than 5100 illegal housing units were built in the West Bank and more than 1500 tenders were issued for housing units.
Settler racism
The primary aim of creating such “facts on the ground” is to ensure that no viable Palestinian state can be established, so that any state that is established will be politically and economically weak and militarily dominated by Israel. In 1973, Israeli general and later prime minister, Ariel Sharon, who is recognised as the “father of the settlement movement”, boasted to Winston Churchill’s grandson that the aim was to “make a pastrami sandwich” of the Palestinian territories by ”insert[ing] a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart”. Avika Elder noted on May 18 in Haaretz: “The 15 years of ‘peace process’ have served as an alibi to build more than 100 new settlements and outposts, and to enlarge the settler population from 110,000 to nearly 300,000, excluding East Jerusalem”.
Netanyahu has said while he will not stop settlement expansion, he will remove 22 illegal outposts. The offer is hollow, because the few hundred settlers from these outposts would be resettled in the bigger illegal settlements. Netanyahu’s policy is reflected in the words of his most trusted senior political adviser, Uzi Arad, the head of Israel’s National Security Council and former senior official in Mossad, Israel’s spy agency. In an interview in March with Israel National News TV, a settler television station based in the occupied West Bank, Arad stated that Israel “want[s] to relieve ourselves of the burden of the Palestinian populations — not territories. It is territory we want to preserve, but populations we want to rid ourselves of.”
Uzi Arad, former Mossad Official, now advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu
If Obama were serious about pressuring Israel to move forward in the “peace process”, he would be threatening to cut military funding to the Netanyahu-Lieberman government. However, Obama has already flagged increased funding to Israel in its 2010 budget. The Alternative Information Centre (AIC), a joint Palestinian-Israeli organisation, noted on its website on May 12 that Washington is set to increase military aid to Israel, while imposing harsher conditions on aid to the Palestinian Authority. AIC noted that Obama’s budget proposals for 2010 will increase aid to Israel by 10%, to US$2.775 billion. In addition, the budget also includes “an increase in the assistance to the production of weapons systems”. AIC also noted that the budget “calls for the administration to respect Israel’s claims on Jerusalem”, which “contradicts international law, which does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied territories of East Jerusalem”, as well as “the Oslo Agreement, which defines all of Jerusalem as a territory to be discussed during the final stages of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations”.
www.directaction.org.au
Issue 12: June, 2009
Since Barack Obama’s swearing in as US president, both the Israeli and US media have peddled the idea his administration would take a strong stand with the newly-elected Israeli hard-right government of PM Benjamin Netanyahu and foreign minister Avigador Lieberman. On May 5, for example, United Press International claimed that Obama and “Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu are on a collision course” over how to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On May 7, Newsweek columnist Michael Hirsch claimed that Israel and the US were facing “a moment of truth” . Hirsch added: “for the last eight years Washington acted mainly as an unswerving supporter of Israel’s actions — some critics would say cheerleader — despite a few serious differences, such as the timing of the 2006 Palestinian elections. But the potential now exists for the most serious rupture of relations at least since 1989, when Secretary of State James Baker stunned AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] by calling on Israel to abandon its ‘unrealistic vision of a Greater Israel’ that included Gaza and the West Bank.”
Obama and Netanyahu
Despite such proclamations, there is very little chance of a serious rupture between Obama and the Netanyahu-Lieberman government. While the Obama administration has called on Israel to state publicly that it supports a two-state “solution”, it has not threatened to cut funding should Israel fail to do so. Like previous US presidents, Obama has no intention of pushing Israel to end its human rights abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The primary reason for Obama’s demand for an Israeli commitment to a two-state “solution” is that it serves US imperialist goals in the region, seeking to gain diplomatic support from US-aligned Arab capitalist regimes such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia for Washington’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to isolate anti-imperialist Arab nationalist forces in the region, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestine’s Hamas.
‘Interests don’t change’
The corporate media have spun the line that the May 18 meeting between Obama and Netanyahu was fraught with disagreements. But Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, who was Israel’s ambassador to the US during Bush junior’s administration, told the Jerusalem Post on May 20 that the Obama administration’s policy differed little from that of its predecessor. “The basic interests and objectives of the US in our region do not change with different administrations”, Ayalon said, adding: “Approaches and nuances change but the interests remain the same.”
The only difference between the two administrations, according to Ayalon, is that Obama is “adding a regional element to the diplomatic process”. By this, Ayalon means that Obama will go along with Israel’s demand that Arab countries must normalise their relations with Israel before Israel makes any concessions on its military rule over the OPT. Obama has sought to give the impression that he supports the Arab League peace initiative, which would normalise relations once Israel withdraws to its pre-June 1967 war borders and develops a “just” policy in relation to the Palestinian refugees driven out of their national homeland in 1947-48. In reality, Obama supports an inversion of the initiative. As Noam Chomsky noted in a January 26 article on the Znet website, Obama has engaged in “carefully framed deceit” by calling on Arab states “to act [immediately] on the initiative’s promise by supporting the Palestinian government under President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, taking steps towards normalizing relations with Israel, and by standing up to extremism”, while ignoring the fact that the initiative proposes “normalisation” only after a two-state settlement has been achieved.
Obama speaking at American Israel Public Affairs Committee forum
The corporate media have also been full of rumours that Obama would support the strategic outline of a “bipartisan” report submitted to him by the US/Middle East Project. The report, entitled A Last Chance for a Two State Israel-Palestine Agreement, is authored by 10 former senior US government officials, including James Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank and US special envoy on the Middle East, and Brent Scrowcroft, national security adviser to George Bush senior. The report calls for the US to broker a peace agreement based on two states, swapping land on a 1:1 basis in order to leave Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank intact.
While the report calls for addressing “the Palestinian refugees’ sense of injustice” and providing them with “meaningful financial compensations”, the report rejects the right of return and instead calls for refugees to be given “resettlement assistance”. It advocates that any Palestinian state be “a non-militarised” one for a minimum of 15 years. That is, it would have no military of its own and would be forbidden to enter military agreements with other countries, in order to ensure Israel’s security. There would be a US-led multinational “peacekeeping” force including Jordanian, Egyptian and Israeli troops. Jason Ditz noted in a May 20 article on the Antiwar.com website that over the last two years, while withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, Israel has continued to attack it regularly, so a demilitarised Palestinian state would most likely remain Israeli-occupied territory in everything but name.
Whether or not these “leaks” and rumours are true, Aluf Benn notes in a May 27 Tel Aviv Haaretz article, “Welcome to Realistan”, that Obama is a “realist” in the mould of Henry Kissinger. While Obama pays lip service to human rights, his foreign policy “is directed at a single goal: strong America as the leader of a stable world order”. In relation to Israel, Benn notes that in the meeting with Netanyahu, Obama’s focus was on “common interests” rather than anyone’s human rights. “Obama’s demand of Netanyahu to freeze the Jewish settlements in the West Bank does not derive from concern for the Palestinians whose lands are being stolen, or from opposition to violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention”, but is based on seeking to ensure that Washington’s Arab collaborators in the region, such as Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and President Mahmoud Abbas, are not ousted by popular discontent.
Netanyahu’s aims
Netanyahu, like his predecessors, will seek to deflect attention from Israel’s intransigence and refusal to enter into any real “peace process”. Since 1993, when the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation were signed, successive Israeli governments have repeatedly told US presidents that they would cease building and expanding settlements in the OPT, in line with the various US-backed agreements. But successive Israeli governments have allowed settlement building and expansion to go unchecked in order to establish “facts on the ground”. The most recent case in point was Netanyahu’s immediate predecessor, Ehud Olmert, who, while proclaiming that Israel must end its occupation, continued the expansion of illegal settlements. According to Israel’s Peace Now group, during Olmert’s prime ministership, between January 2006 and January 2009, more than 5100 illegal housing units were built in the West Bank and more than 1500 tenders were issued for housing units.
Settler racism
The primary aim of creating such “facts on the ground” is to ensure that no viable Palestinian state can be established, so that any state that is established will be politically and economically weak and militarily dominated by Israel. In 1973, Israeli general and later prime minister, Ariel Sharon, who is recognised as the “father of the settlement movement”, boasted to Winston Churchill’s grandson that the aim was to “make a pastrami sandwich” of the Palestinian territories by ”insert[ing] a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart”. Avika Elder noted on May 18 in Haaretz: “The 15 years of ‘peace process’ have served as an alibi to build more than 100 new settlements and outposts, and to enlarge the settler population from 110,000 to nearly 300,000, excluding East Jerusalem”.
Netanyahu has said while he will not stop settlement expansion, he will remove 22 illegal outposts. The offer is hollow, because the few hundred settlers from these outposts would be resettled in the bigger illegal settlements. Netanyahu’s policy is reflected in the words of his most trusted senior political adviser, Uzi Arad, the head of Israel’s National Security Council and former senior official in Mossad, Israel’s spy agency. In an interview in March with Israel National News TV, a settler television station based in the occupied West Bank, Arad stated that Israel “want[s] to relieve ourselves of the burden of the Palestinian populations — not territories. It is territory we want to preserve, but populations we want to rid ourselves of.”
Uzi Arad, former Mossad Official, now advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu
If Obama were serious about pressuring Israel to move forward in the “peace process”, he would be threatening to cut military funding to the Netanyahu-Lieberman government. However, Obama has already flagged increased funding to Israel in its 2010 budget. The Alternative Information Centre (AIC), a joint Palestinian-Israeli organisation, noted on its website on May 12 that Washington is set to increase military aid to Israel, while imposing harsher conditions on aid to the Palestinian Authority. AIC noted that Obama’s budget proposals for 2010 will increase aid to Israel by 10%, to US$2.775 billion. In addition, the budget also includes “an increase in the assistance to the production of weapons systems”. AIC also noted that the budget “calls for the administration to respect Israel’s claims on Jerusalem”, which “contradicts international law, which does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied territories of East Jerusalem”, as well as “the Oslo Agreement, which defines all of Jerusalem as a territory to be discussed during the final stages of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations”.
Friday, July 25, 2008
A letter to Barack
On 23 July 2008, American Senator and Presidential candidate, Barack Obama, made a lightening visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The same day, the women of the Palestinian village of Ni'lin, who are fighting to protect their lands from destruction and confiscation by the Israeli state held a non-violent demonstration to protest the building of the apartheid wall and the Israeli occupation.
****
23 July, 2008
Dear Barack,
I am not American, so I won't be voting for you come the American presidential elections. However, given that the US Administration has continued to ignore Israel's human rights abuses against the Palestinian people and there is a good chance you might be the next President of the USA, I thought i would write you a few words, especially in light of your current visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Today, the Israeli newspapers said that throughout the day you had separate meetings with a variety of Israeli ministers, including the Israeli Prime Minister, President, Defense Minister, Public Security Minister and Foreign Minister. You also made a visit to Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial where you laid a wreath, as well as the Western Wall and visited Sderot in the south of Israel [1].
Throughout the course of your stay, you only managed to allocate one single hour to visit the Occupied Palestinian Territories and that hour was spent in the relatively reified atmosphere of the Muqata in Ramallah, with the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. At no stage, did you take the time visit besieged Gaza or visit the apartheid wall or the Palestinian villages it impacted on. Neither did you take the time to go to any of the military check points to see the daily human rights abuses Palestinians must endure or visit any Palestinians who have lost family members to acts of state terror carried out by Israel.
Today, you spoke of the endurance and bravery of the Israeli people, but what of the endurance of the Palestinian people who have for more than 100 years have battled against racism, colonialism, dispossession, apartheid and the destruction of their society? What of the bravery of those Palestinians, clothed only in their belief in justice and love of their homeland, who stand unarmed in civil disobedience, against the fourth most powerful military in the world? What of them?
While you were having tea and coffee with the various Israeli ministers, these ordinary Palestinians that I speak off, once again took on the might of Israel with only their voices and their convictions.
Palestinian girl from Ni'lin painting banner for demonstration on the day
Israeli refuseniks: high school seniors who have refused to be conscripted into the Israeli military join the women of Ni'lin to oppose the building of the apartheid wall
Palestinian and Israeli women in solidarity
For almost three months now the 5000 residents of a small but beautiful Palestinian village have been holding 3 - 4 non-violent demonstrations a week against the stealing of their land by the Israeli to build the apartheid wall. The village of Ni'lin is just one of many villages who are in this situation and who have chosen to defend their culture, heritage and homeland. In 1948, with the creation of the state of Israel, the villagers of Ni'lin lost more than 40,000 (4000 hectares) of their land. With Israel's construction of the wall, which was deemed illegal by the International High Court of Justice four years ago, Ni'lin will now lose another 2500 dunams (250 hectares) of its agriculture.
Women from Tulkarem arrive in Ni'lin to join the demonstration
Non-violent women's demonstration in Ni'lin
Photograph by Anne Paq, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Today, as you went from meeting to meeting with high powered politicians, never taking a moment to see what life under a brutal occupation really means, dozens of Palestinian women from across the Occupied West Bank, as well as female international human rights activists and female Israeli anti-occupation activists stood in solidarity with the women of Ni'lin. They marched with the women to their fields to protest the destruction of their livelihoods and the ongoing illegal and brutal Israeli occupation under which they have had to live for more than 40 years.
Oh if you had only seen it! It was a powerful demonstration! Full of determination and courage! Joined by women from other Palestinian villages, Israel and from around the world, the women of Nil'in showed more bravery then I doubt you could ever imagine.
Marching to the fields of Ni'lin
Marching to the fields of Ni'lin
As we approached the fields of Ni'lin, armed only with our voices, our peaceful demonstration was met with force by the Israeli military. Dozens of Israeli soldiers, many of them no more than 18, 19 and 20 years of age, began to throw sound grenades and teargas at our peaceful demonstration. This, however, did not stop the women of Ni'lin, who continued to march towards their fields. Soon the frontline of women was stopped by the Israeli soldiers who claimed that the area was a closed military zone (CMZ). When the international women and human rights workers with the women of Ni'lin demanded to see the paper which the military must have for such an order to be formally enforced, the soldiers failed to provide one. It was clear that the area was not a CMZ and that the Israeli military was simply trying to intimidate us and to act in an illegal manner.
As the women from Ni'lin demanded to go to their land, the Israeli military commander approached the lead group of women and attempted to prevent them from proceeding further. Not deterred by this, they and the women who accompanied them from Israel and from around the world, stood their ground and demanded to be allowed access to their land.
Israeli occupation forces throw teargas and sound grenades as non-violent women's demonstration approaches fields
Photograph by Anne Paq, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Women's demonstration
Photograph by Anne Paq, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Israeli army commander attempts to stop women of Ni'lin from accessing their fields
Clearly worried by the bad publicity the Israeli military had received in the last few days by the release of the video taken in Ni'lin which revealed the shocking shooting of a bound and blindfolded Palestinian man by an Israeli soldier at point blank range, the commander did his best to convince the women to leave. He no doubt realised, it would not look too good, if it were caught on film, his soldiers assaulting a bunch of unarmed women and young girls.
However, unfortunately, the soldiers under his command were not so restrained. Instead, despite the commander telling several soldiers not to fire their weapons at the peaceful crowd, the soldiers ignored him and continued to do so. What this confirmed to us was that the shooting of the bound Palestinian man by an Israeli solider the week before was not an isolated incident.
Women of Ni'lin demand to be allowed access to their land
Photograph by Anne Paq, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Women of Ni'lin demand to be allowed to go to their land
Photograph by Anne Paq, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Instead, the complete disregard by the soldiers for their commander's orders revealed that the soldiers are very use to acting with impunity and doing whatever they want, including assaulting unarmed and peaceful demonstrators who are no threat to them. Their behaviour today revealed that nothing much has changed since 2005, when Human Rights Watch Report issued their report, Promoting Impunity: the Israeli military's failure to investigate wrong doing [2].
At the time, HRW noted "the Israeli military has fostered a climate of impunity in its ranks by failing to thoroughly investigate whether soldiers have killed or injured Palestinian civilians unlawfully or failed to protect them from harm" [3]. According to HRW's Middle East director, Sarah Leah Whitson, the failure of the Israeli military to investigate wrongdoing by its soldiers had "created an atmosphere that encourages soldiers to think they can literally get away with murder".
For more then two hours, the women of Ni'lin and their supporters tried to get to their land. As the women' of Ni'lin argued their right to go to their land, the international women and Israeli women who accompanied them demanded that the Israeli military refrain from attacking unarmed women. Throughout the two hours, it was a constant battle to prevent the soldiers from pulling the pins on the teargas bombs they wore on their belts and carried dangling from their fingers. Every time it became clear the soldiers were about to throw their bombs, groups of international and Israeli women would place themselves directly in their path, trying to reason with them and to ask them why they felt threatened by unarmed women and little girls.
Israeli soldier preparing to pull pin on teargas grenade at peaceful demonstration.
Israeli soldiers attack unarmed Palestinian women demonstrators
Photograph by Anne Paq, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
The soldiers, however, were still determined to use force against us. At least half a dozen times during the course of the demonstration, the chemical weaponry was hurled amongst our unarmed group of women. The teargas was potent and stronger then anything I had experienced before.
The purpose of teargas and other such chemical weaponry is to cause psychological distress and panic. Normally one can expect their breathing to be impaired and their eyes and nose to stream with mucus. However, today, the teargas thrown by the Israeli military burned the skin all over. One Jewish Israeli woman was hit in head with a tear gas bomb and the powder from it spilled all over her neck, face and arms (luckily her long sleeves protected her somewhat). Where the chemical power reacted with her skin, she experienced a terrible burning sensation. As we tried to clean the powder from her skin with alcohol rubs (we could not use water as it causes the reaction to increase), another young Palestinian woman collapsed nearby, retching and desperately gasping for air to breath. So overcome by the chemicals she was unable to breath properly and started to go into shock. As we called for a medic, one of the young men from the village, who had been standing on the hills behind us observing the demonstration with the other men, came running down and picked her up and carried her to waiting ambulance.
Israeli soldiers attack unarmed women demonstrators
Photograph by Anne Paq, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Teargas victim
Photograph by Anne Paq, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
The tear gas was nothing like I had experience before, even though I have been assaulted with teargas many other times by the Israeli military. Even after the initial impact of the teargas, my skin continued to burn for hours. Normally, showering will remove any residue of the teargas powder from your skin, but even after two showers (3 hours apart), the burning sensation had not subsided. Unfortunately, it is not unusual for the Israeli occupation forces to use the Palestinian population as guinea pigs to test out prototype and newly developed weaponry, including chemical weapons [4]. Today after being assaulted with the burning teargas, many of us wondered if this was the case.
When the soldiers became more aggressive and began to push and shove the peaceful women, who refused to leave their land, throwing some of them and us to the ground, a number of Palestinian and international men who had been observing the demonstration from a distance attempted to intervene. Jamal, the father of the 14 year old girl who had shot the film which had made international headlines the week before of Israeli soldier firing point blank at the bound and blindfolded man was quickly arrested when he tried to protect some of the young girls from being assaulted by men twice their size. Victor, a 23 year old Canadian national, who had been shot twice previously by plastic coated -steel bullets by the Israeli military, while attempting to take supplies of food, milk and medicine into Ni'lin when it was placed under military siege, attempted to photograph the assault against us. He also was quickly seized and beaten by the Israeli occupation forces.
Today, you told the Israeli media if you became President of the USA, you would not force Israel "to accept any kinds of concession that would put their [Israel's] security at stake" [5]. Well, today in the name of its "security" the Israel state assault 150 unarmed women and girls and arrested two men who witnessed this assault. Today, the Israeli state in the name of "security", assaulted its own citizens - Israeli Jewish women and girls – who stood in solidarity with their Palestinian sisters, both Muslim and Christian, because they believed what their government is doing is wrong and has nothing to do with security. Today, the Israeli state in the name of its "security" beat and assaulted women from many countries from around the world, including Sweden, Germany, Britain, Canada, Eastern Europe, Australia, Spain and your own country, the United States.
But despite all of this and the failure of so many world leaders, including yourself, to denounce the brutality of the Israeli state and its armed forces, the women of Ni'lin and their brothers and sisters throughout out the occupied territories, in both the West Bank and Gaza, will not cower. They have taken to heart the words of another famous American leader, Martin Luther King Jnr, who said many years ago that "freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed".
As you continue your campaign for the American presidency, the people of Palestine will continue to campaign for something much more important – freedom from oppression, injustice and racism. They will not cease in their struggle against colonisation, dispossession and racism and they will display a bravery and conviction that no longer exists in your world, the world of so-called "real politics".
So while you may waive and deviate from the beliefs you once professed so many years ago in relation to the Palestinian struggle for justice and freedom, the Palestinian people will not waiver in their convictions. They will continue, as they have done for the past 60 years, to remain sumoud (steadfast) and to demand freedom from their oppressor, the Israeli Zionist state. And one day, they will be a free people once again.
In solidarity with the struggle for a Free Palestine and an end to the Israeli occupation and apartheid,
Kim Bullimore
Ni'lin women's demonstration against the Apartheid Wall, 23 July 08 (video by Keren Shayo, Active Stills)
Teargas warning: Ni'lin women's demonstration against the Apartheid Wall, 23 July 08
[1] Associated Press, (23 July, 2008) Obama arrives in Israel, vows to 'plunge' into Mideast peacemaking. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1004474.html
[2] Human Rights Watch (June 2005) Promoting Impunity: the Israeli military's failure to investigate wrongdoing. http://hrw.org/reports/2005/iopt0605/
[3] Human Rights Watch (22 June, 2005), Israel: Failure to probe civilian casualties fuels impunity http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/06/22/isrlpa11148.htm
[4] Rapoport, M., (11 October 2006) Italian probe: Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/772933.html
[5]Ravid, D.,(23 July, 2008) Obama in Sderot: Nuclear Iran would be game-changing, Haaretz, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1004747.html
****
23 July, 2008
Dear Barack,
I am not American, so I won't be voting for you come the American presidential elections. However, given that the US Administration has continued to ignore Israel's human rights abuses against the Palestinian people and there is a good chance you might be the next President of the USA, I thought i would write you a few words, especially in light of your current visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Today, the Israeli newspapers said that throughout the day you had separate meetings with a variety of Israeli ministers, including the Israeli Prime Minister, President, Defense Minister, Public Security Minister and Foreign Minister. You also made a visit to Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial where you laid a wreath, as well as the Western Wall and visited Sderot in the south of Israel [1].
Throughout the course of your stay, you only managed to allocate one single hour to visit the Occupied Palestinian Territories and that hour was spent in the relatively reified atmosphere of the Muqata in Ramallah, with the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. At no stage, did you take the time visit besieged Gaza or visit the apartheid wall or the Palestinian villages it impacted on. Neither did you take the time to go to any of the military check points to see the daily human rights abuses Palestinians must endure or visit any Palestinians who have lost family members to acts of state terror carried out by Israel.
Today, you spoke of the endurance and bravery of the Israeli people, but what of the endurance of the Palestinian people who have for more than 100 years have battled against racism, colonialism, dispossession, apartheid and the destruction of their society? What of the bravery of those Palestinians, clothed only in their belief in justice and love of their homeland, who stand unarmed in civil disobedience, against the fourth most powerful military in the world? What of them?
While you were having tea and coffee with the various Israeli ministers, these ordinary Palestinians that I speak off, once again took on the might of Israel with only their voices and their convictions.
Palestinian girl from Ni'lin painting banner for demonstration on the day
Israeli refuseniks: high school seniors who have refused to be conscripted into the Israeli military join the women of Ni'lin to oppose the building of the apartheid wall
Palestinian and Israeli women in solidarity
For almost three months now the 5000 residents of a small but beautiful Palestinian village have been holding 3 - 4 non-violent demonstrations a week against the stealing of their land by the Israeli to build the apartheid wall. The village of Ni'lin is just one of many villages who are in this situation and who have chosen to defend their culture, heritage and homeland. In 1948, with the creation of the state of Israel, the villagers of Ni'lin lost more than 40,000 (4000 hectares) of their land. With Israel's construction of the wall, which was deemed illegal by the International High Court of Justice four years ago, Ni'lin will now lose another 2500 dunams (250 hectares) of its agriculture.
Women from Tulkarem arrive in Ni'lin to join the demonstration
Non-violent women's demonstration in Ni'lin
Photograph by Anne Paq, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Today, as you went from meeting to meeting with high powered politicians, never taking a moment to see what life under a brutal occupation really means, dozens of Palestinian women from across the Occupied West Bank, as well as female international human rights activists and female Israeli anti-occupation activists stood in solidarity with the women of Ni'lin. They marched with the women to their fields to protest the destruction of their livelihoods and the ongoing illegal and brutal Israeli occupation under which they have had to live for more than 40 years.
Oh if you had only seen it! It was a powerful demonstration! Full of determination and courage! Joined by women from other Palestinian villages, Israel and from around the world, the women of Nil'in showed more bravery then I doubt you could ever imagine.
Marching to the fields of Ni'lin
Marching to the fields of Ni'lin
As we approached the fields of Ni'lin, armed only with our voices, our peaceful demonstration was met with force by the Israeli military. Dozens of Israeli soldiers, many of them no more than 18, 19 and 20 years of age, began to throw sound grenades and teargas at our peaceful demonstration. This, however, did not stop the women of Ni'lin, who continued to march towards their fields. Soon the frontline of women was stopped by the Israeli soldiers who claimed that the area was a closed military zone (CMZ). When the international women and human rights workers with the women of Ni'lin demanded to see the paper which the military must have for such an order to be formally enforced, the soldiers failed to provide one. It was clear that the area was not a CMZ and that the Israeli military was simply trying to intimidate us and to act in an illegal manner.
As the women from Ni'lin demanded to go to their land, the Israeli military commander approached the lead group of women and attempted to prevent them from proceeding further. Not deterred by this, they and the women who accompanied them from Israel and from around the world, stood their ground and demanded to be allowed access to their land.
Israeli occupation forces throw teargas and sound grenades as non-violent women's demonstration approaches fields
Photograph by Anne Paq, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Women's demonstration
Photograph by Anne Paq, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Israeli army commander attempts to stop women of Ni'lin from accessing their fields
Clearly worried by the bad publicity the Israeli military had received in the last few days by the release of the video taken in Ni'lin which revealed the shocking shooting of a bound and blindfolded Palestinian man by an Israeli soldier at point blank range, the commander did his best to convince the women to leave. He no doubt realised, it would not look too good, if it were caught on film, his soldiers assaulting a bunch of unarmed women and young girls.
However, unfortunately, the soldiers under his command were not so restrained. Instead, despite the commander telling several soldiers not to fire their weapons at the peaceful crowd, the soldiers ignored him and continued to do so. What this confirmed to us was that the shooting of the bound Palestinian man by an Israeli solider the week before was not an isolated incident.
Women of Ni'lin demand to be allowed access to their land
Photograph by Anne Paq, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Women of Ni'lin demand to be allowed to go to their land
Photograph by Anne Paq, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Instead, the complete disregard by the soldiers for their commander's orders revealed that the soldiers are very use to acting with impunity and doing whatever they want, including assaulting unarmed and peaceful demonstrators who are no threat to them. Their behaviour today revealed that nothing much has changed since 2005, when Human Rights Watch Report issued their report, Promoting Impunity: the Israeli military's failure to investigate wrong doing [2].
At the time, HRW noted "the Israeli military has fostered a climate of impunity in its ranks by failing to thoroughly investigate whether soldiers have killed or injured Palestinian civilians unlawfully or failed to protect them from harm" [3]. According to HRW's Middle East director, Sarah Leah Whitson, the failure of the Israeli military to investigate wrongdoing by its soldiers had "created an atmosphere that encourages soldiers to think they can literally get away with murder".
For more then two hours, the women of Ni'lin and their supporters tried to get to their land. As the women' of Ni'lin argued their right to go to their land, the international women and Israeli women who accompanied them demanded that the Israeli military refrain from attacking unarmed women. Throughout the two hours, it was a constant battle to prevent the soldiers from pulling the pins on the teargas bombs they wore on their belts and carried dangling from their fingers. Every time it became clear the soldiers were about to throw their bombs, groups of international and Israeli women would place themselves directly in their path, trying to reason with them and to ask them why they felt threatened by unarmed women and little girls.
Israeli soldier preparing to pull pin on teargas grenade at peaceful demonstration.
Israeli soldiers attack unarmed Palestinian women demonstrators
Photograph by Anne Paq, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
The soldiers, however, were still determined to use force against us. At least half a dozen times during the course of the demonstration, the chemical weaponry was hurled amongst our unarmed group of women. The teargas was potent and stronger then anything I had experienced before.
The purpose of teargas and other such chemical weaponry is to cause psychological distress and panic. Normally one can expect their breathing to be impaired and their eyes and nose to stream with mucus. However, today, the teargas thrown by the Israeli military burned the skin all over. One Jewish Israeli woman was hit in head with a tear gas bomb and the powder from it spilled all over her neck, face and arms (luckily her long sleeves protected her somewhat). Where the chemical power reacted with her skin, she experienced a terrible burning sensation. As we tried to clean the powder from her skin with alcohol rubs (we could not use water as it causes the reaction to increase), another young Palestinian woman collapsed nearby, retching and desperately gasping for air to breath. So overcome by the chemicals she was unable to breath properly and started to go into shock. As we called for a medic, one of the young men from the village, who had been standing on the hills behind us observing the demonstration with the other men, came running down and picked her up and carried her to waiting ambulance.
Israeli soldiers attack unarmed women demonstrators
Photograph by Anne Paq, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Teargas victim
Photograph by Anne Paq, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
The tear gas was nothing like I had experience before, even though I have been assaulted with teargas many other times by the Israeli military. Even after the initial impact of the teargas, my skin continued to burn for hours. Normally, showering will remove any residue of the teargas powder from your skin, but even after two showers (3 hours apart), the burning sensation had not subsided. Unfortunately, it is not unusual for the Israeli occupation forces to use the Palestinian population as guinea pigs to test out prototype and newly developed weaponry, including chemical weapons [4]. Today after being assaulted with the burning teargas, many of us wondered if this was the case.
When the soldiers became more aggressive and began to push and shove the peaceful women, who refused to leave their land, throwing some of them and us to the ground, a number of Palestinian and international men who had been observing the demonstration from a distance attempted to intervene. Jamal, the father of the 14 year old girl who had shot the film which had made international headlines the week before of Israeli soldier firing point blank at the bound and blindfolded man was quickly arrested when he tried to protect some of the young girls from being assaulted by men twice their size. Victor, a 23 year old Canadian national, who had been shot twice previously by plastic coated -steel bullets by the Israeli military, while attempting to take supplies of food, milk and medicine into Ni'lin when it was placed under military siege, attempted to photograph the assault against us. He also was quickly seized and beaten by the Israeli occupation forces.
Today, you told the Israeli media if you became President of the USA, you would not force Israel "to accept any kinds of concession that would put their [Israel's] security at stake" [5]. Well, today in the name of its "security" the Israel state assault 150 unarmed women and girls and arrested two men who witnessed this assault. Today, the Israeli state in the name of "security", assaulted its own citizens - Israeli Jewish women and girls – who stood in solidarity with their Palestinian sisters, both Muslim and Christian, because they believed what their government is doing is wrong and has nothing to do with security. Today, the Israeli state in the name of its "security" beat and assaulted women from many countries from around the world, including Sweden, Germany, Britain, Canada, Eastern Europe, Australia, Spain and your own country, the United States.
But despite all of this and the failure of so many world leaders, including yourself, to denounce the brutality of the Israeli state and its armed forces, the women of Ni'lin and their brothers and sisters throughout out the occupied territories, in both the West Bank and Gaza, will not cower. They have taken to heart the words of another famous American leader, Martin Luther King Jnr, who said many years ago that "freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed".
As you continue your campaign for the American presidency, the people of Palestine will continue to campaign for something much more important – freedom from oppression, injustice and racism. They will not cease in their struggle against colonisation, dispossession and racism and they will display a bravery and conviction that no longer exists in your world, the world of so-called "real politics".
So while you may waive and deviate from the beliefs you once professed so many years ago in relation to the Palestinian struggle for justice and freedom, the Palestinian people will not waiver in their convictions. They will continue, as they have done for the past 60 years, to remain sumoud (steadfast) and to demand freedom from their oppressor, the Israeli Zionist state. And one day, they will be a free people once again.
In solidarity with the struggle for a Free Palestine and an end to the Israeli occupation and apartheid,
Kim Bullimore
Ni'lin women's demonstration against the Apartheid Wall, 23 July 08 (video by Keren Shayo, Active Stills)
Teargas warning: Ni'lin women's demonstration against the Apartheid Wall, 23 July 08
[1] Associated Press, (23 July, 2008) Obama arrives in Israel, vows to 'plunge' into Mideast peacemaking. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1004474.html
[2] Human Rights Watch (June 2005) Promoting Impunity: the Israeli military's failure to investigate wrongdoing. http://hrw.org/reports/2005/iopt0605/
[3] Human Rights Watch (22 June, 2005), Israel: Failure to probe civilian casualties fuels impunity http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/06/22/isrlpa11148.htm
[4] Rapoport, M., (11 October 2006) Italian probe: Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/772933.html
[5]Ravid, D.,(23 July, 2008) Obama in Sderot: Nuclear Iran would be game-changing, Haaretz, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1004747.html
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)