Obama backs Netanyahu's position on 'peace negotiations'

By Kim Bullimore
Direct Action, Issue 16 October 2009
www.directaction.org.au


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed victory in the wake of US President Barak Obama’s first speech to the United Nations General Assembly and the September 22 meeting in New York between Netanyahu, Obama and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. In his September 23 UN speech, Obama confirmed that Washington had retreated on its previous demand that Israel halt building new illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, stating that “the time has come to re-launch [peace] negotiations — without preconditions”.

“I’m pleased that President Obama accepted my request that there should be no preconditions”, Netanyahu told Israel Radio in a telephone interview later that same day. He also said: “I commend this important speech of Obama’s and his call to renew the peace process without preconditions. I commend his unequivocal support of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.”

Obama’s accommodation to Netanyahu’s position, however, was not a surprise, as the previous day Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, revealed that Washington was about to back down on the “demand” that Israel temporarily freeze settlement building. Mitchell told Reuters news agency: “Neither the president nor the Secretary [of State, Hillary Clinton] nor I have ever said of any one issue ... that it is a precondition to negotiation.” He went onto say, “we do not believe in preconditions. We do not impose them and we urge others not to impose preconditions.”

While both Mitchell and Obama claimed that there should be “no pre-conditions” on peace negotiations, both made it clear that this only applied to Israel and that the Palestinians were expected to meet a number of “pre-conditions”, including recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state”, thus negating the right of Palestinian refugees driven into exile by the Zionists in 1948 to return to their homeland, and ending armed resistance to Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian territories seized in June 1967.



Despite claims by the Abbas and his team of negotiators that Obama had recognised the right of Palestinian state to exist in the territory seized in 1967, Obama did no such thing. Instead, while he noted that Palestinians needed a contiguous territory and that the 1967 occupation must end, he made no call for removal of all of the Israeli settlements from the occupied West Bank and East Jersusalem, nor for the dismantling of Israel’s apartheid wall. As a result, Obama has given Washington’s stamp of approval for Israel to retain some, if not all, of Israel’s illegal settlement infrastructure built on stolen Palestinian land. Ofir Akunis, an MP from Netanyahu’s Likud party told the September 24 Tel Aviv Haaretz daily that this means “construction in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] will continue alongside the diplomatic talks” with the Palestinian Authority.

With Obama’s tacit blessing, Israel will continue to create “facts on the ground”, ensuring that more and more Palestinian land is illegally annexed to Israel. Since 1993, when Israel agreed to begin peace negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel’s continued settlement construction in the occupied West Bank has resulted in the illegal Israeli settler population doubling to approximately 300,000, while the number of settlers living in occupied East Jerusalem is estimated to be around 180,000.



Prior to Obama’s UN speech, there had been much speculation in the corporate media that Obama would “pressure” Israel to stop settlement activity in order to clear the way for a resumption of peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, which has been under intense pressure from the Palestinian masses not to do so until this activity was halted. According to Paul Woodward, the editor of the well-respected web journal, War in Context, Obama’s UN speech revealed “that in the end, it turned out that ‘pressure’ from the Obama Administration amounts to strong words with no visible force behind them”. Woodward went onto point out that this “pressure” comes “in the form of sternness — no doubt quite effective when Obama insists to [his daughters] Malia and Natasha that it’s bedtime, but not very impressive when it’s directed at the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu”.

While Netanyahu has emerged in a much stronger position, the New York “tripartite summit” has resulted in the wholesale undermining of Abbas’ position. Previously Abbas had refused to meet with Netanyahu or restart negotiations without a clear commitment from Israel to halt settlement activity. Abbas has sought to salvage his reputation by claiming he was forced into the meeting by Obama, with one of his staffers telling the September 24 Jerusalem Post, Abbas “couldn’t resist the heavy pressure the Americans put on him. In fact, he went to the meeting with Netanyahu against his will.”

Abbas’ capitulation, however, reflects the fundamental flaw in the Fatah leadership’s whole strategy for advancing the Palestinian national liberation cause — reliance on getting Washington to pressure Israel to accede to Palestinian demands, rather than exerting pressure on the Israel rulers by mobilising the Palestinian masses to resist Israel’s illegal occupation. “In all honesty, we want to protect our relations with President Obama under any conditions”, Abbas told the London-based al-Hayat newspaper after the New York summit. “We don’t want to come out with a crisis with the Americans, or create a crisis.”

The assumption behind Abbas’ strategy is that Washington is a neutral mediator, when in reality it is Israel’s prime backer. And while the Israeli rulers pay lip-service to the idea of the Palestinians eventually having an independent state, their real goal, which they have continuously worked at since Israel was set up in 1948, is to assert Israeli control over the entirety of Palestine.

Since having colluded with Washington in the toppling of the popularly elected Hamas-led PA government, Abbas has increasingly lost credibility among the Palestinian masses as an effective leader of their struggle for their national rights. His capitulation on the conditions for restarting negotiations with Israel will only further erode his standing. Hamas denounced Abbas for attending the New York summit, with Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri saying, “the only person to benefit from the New York meeting is Netanyahu because it will improve his image and give him cover to continue building settlements”.

Can we talk? The Middle East "peace industry"

Dear friends,
an excellent article by Faris Giacaman on the issues of "peace", "dialogue" and "normalisation".

Originally published by The Electronic Intifada.

In solidarity,
Kim
*****

Can we talk? The Middle East "peace industry"
Faris Giacaman, The Electronic Intifada, 20 August 2009
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10722.shtml


Photo by Active Stills

Attempts to establish "dialogue" while Israel continues to oppress Palestinians only undermine the call for boycott. (ActiveStills)

Upon finding out that I am Palestinian, many people I meet at college in the United States are eager to inform me of various activities that they have participated in that promote "coexistence" and "dialogue" between both sides of the "conflict," no doubt expecting me to give a nod of approval. However, these efforts are harmful and undermine the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel -- the only way of pressuring Israel to cease its violations of Palestinians' rights.

When I was a high school student in Ramallah, one of the better known "people-to-people" initiatives, Seeds of Peace, often visited my school, asking students to join their program. Almost every year, they would send a few of my classmates to a summer camp in the US with a similar group of Israeli students. According to the Seeds of Peace website, at the camp they are taught "to develop empathy, respect, and confidence as well as leadership, communication and negotiation skills -- all critical components that will facilitate peaceful coexistence for the next generation." They paint quite a rosy picture, and most people in college are very surprised to hear that I think such activities are misguided at best, and immoral, at worst. Why on earth would I be against "coexistence," they invariably ask?

During the last few years, there have been growing calls to bring to an end Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people through an international movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS). One of the commonly-held objections to the boycott is that it is counter-productive, and that "dialogue" and "fostering coexistence" is much more constructive than boycotts.

With the beginning of the Oslo accords in 1993, there has been an entire industry that works toward bringing Israelis and Palestinians together in these "dialogue" groups. The stated purpose of such groups is the creating of understanding between "both sides of the conflict," in order to "build bridges" and "overcome barriers." However, the assumption that such activities will help facilitate peace is not only incorrect, but is actually morally lacking.

The presumption that dialogue is needed in order to achieve peace completely ignores the historical context of the situation in Palestine. It assumes that both sides have committed, more or less, an equal amount of atrocities against one another, and are equally culpable for the wrongs that have been done. It is assumed that not one side is either completely right or completely wrong, but that both sides have legitimate claims that should be addressed, and certain blind spots that must be overcome. Therefore, both sides must listen to the "other" point of view, in order to foster understanding and communication, which would presumably lead to "coexistence" or "reconciliation."

Such an approach is deemed "balanced" or "moderate," as if that is a good thing. However, the reality on the ground is vastly different than the "moderate" view of this so-called "conflict." Even the word "conflict" is misleading, because it implies a dispute between two symmetric parties. The reality is not so; it is not a case of simple misunderstanding or mutual hatred which stands in the way of peace. The context of the situation in Israel/Palestine is that of colonialism, apartheid and racism, a situation in which there is an oppressor and an oppressed, a colonizer and a colonized.

In cases of colonialism and apartheid, history shows that colonial regimes do not relinquish power without popular struggle and resistance, or direct international pressure. It is a particularly naive view to assume that persuasion and "talking" will convince an oppressive system to give up its power.

The apartheid regime in South Africa, for instance, was ended after years of struggle with the vital aid of an international campaign of sanctions, divestments and boycotts. If one had suggested to the oppressed South Africans living in bantustans to try and understand the other point of view (i.e. the point of view of South African white supremacists), people would have laughed at such a ridiculous notion. Similarly, during the Indian struggle for emancipation from British colonial rule, Mahatma Gandhi would not have been venerated as a fighter for justice had he renounced satyagraha -- "holding firmly to the truth," his term for his nonviolent resistance movement -- and instead advocated for dialogue with the occupying British colonialists in order to understand their side of the story.

Now, it is true that some white South Africans stood in solidarity with the oppressed black South Africans, and participated in the struggle against apartheid. And there were, to be sure, some British dissenters to their government's colonial policies. But those supporters explicitly stood alongside the oppressed with the clear objective of ending oppression, of fighting the injustices perpetrated by their governments and representatives. Any joint gathering of both parties, therefore, can only be morally sound when the citizens of the oppressive state stand in solidarity with the members of the oppressed group, not under the banner of "dialogue" for the purpose of "understanding the other side of the story." Dialogue is only acceptable when done for the purpose of further understanding the plight of the oppressed, not under the framework of having "both sides heard."

It has been argued, however, by the Palestinian proponents of these dialogue groups, that such activities may be used as a tool -- not to promote so-called "understanding," -- but to actually win over Israelis to the Palestinian struggle for justice, by persuading them or "having them recognize our humanity."

However, this assumption is also naive. Unfortunately, most Israelis have fallen victim to the propaganda that the Zionist establishment and its many outlets feed them from a young age. Moreover, it will require a huge, concerted effort to counter this propaganda through persuasion. For example, most Israelis will not be convinced that their government has reached a level of criminality that warrants a call for boycott. Even if they are logically convinced of the brutalities of Israeli oppression, it will most likely not be enough to rouse them into any form of action against it. This has been proven to be true time and again, evident in the abject failure of such dialogue groups to form any comprehensive anti-occupation movement ever since their inception with the Oslo process. In reality, nothing short of sustained pressure -- not persuasion -- will make Israelis realize that Palestinian rights have to be rectified. That is the logic of the BDS movement, which is entirely opposed to the false logic of dialogue.

Based on an unpublished 2002 report by the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, the San Francisco Chronicle reported last October that "between 1993 and 2000 [alone], Western governments and foundations spent between $20 million and $25 million on the dialogue groups." A subsequent wide-scale survey of Palestinians who participated in the dialogue groups revealed that this great expenditure failed to produce "a single peace activist on either side." This affirms the belief among Palestinians that the entire enterprise is a waste of time and money.

The survey also revealed that the Palestinian participants were not fully representative of their society. Many participants tended to be "children or friends of high-ranking Palestinian officials or economic elites. Only seven percent of participants were refugee camp residents, even though they make up 16 percent of the Palestinian population." The survey also found that 91 percent of Palestinian participants no longer maintained ties with Israelis they met. In addition, 93 percent were not approached with follow-up camp activity, and only five percent agreed the whole ordeal helped "promote peace culture and dialogue between participants."

Despite the resounding failure of these dialogue projects, money continues to be invested in them. As Omar Barghouti, one of the founding members of the BDS movement in Palestine, explained in The Electronic Intifada, "there have been so many attempts at dialogue since 1993 ... it became an industry -- we call it the peace industry."

This may be partly attributed to two factors. The dominant factor is the useful role such projects play in public relations. For example, the Seeds of Peace website boosts its legitimacy by featuring an impressive array of endorsements by popular politicians and authorities, such as Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, George Mitchell, Shimon Peres, George Bush, Colin Powell and Tony Blair, amongst others. The second factor is the need of certain Israeli "leftists" and "liberals" to feel as if they are doing something admirable to "question themselves," while in reality they take no substantive stand against the crimes that their government commits in their name. The politicians and Western governments continue to fund such projects, thereby bolstering their images as supporters of "coexistence," and the "liberal" Israeli participants can exonerate themselves of any guilt by participating in the noble act of "fostering peace." A symbiotic relationship, of sorts.

The lack of results from such initiatives is not surprising, as the stated objectives of dialogue and "coexistence" groups do not include convincing Israelis to help Palestinians gain the respect of their inalienable rights. The minimum requirement of recognizing Israel's inherently oppressive nature is absent in these dialogue groups. Rather, these organizations operate under the dubious assumption that the "conflict" is very complex and multifaceted, where there are "two sides to every story," and each narrative has certain valid claims as well as biases.

As the authoritative call by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel makes plain, any joint Palestinian-Israeli activities -- whether they be film screenings or summer camps -- can only be acceptable when their stated objective is to end, protest, and/or raise awareness of the oppression of the Palestinians.

Any Israeli seeking to interact with Palestinians, with the clear objective of solidarity and helping them to end oppression, will be welcomed with open arms. Caution must be raised, however, when invitations are made to participate in a dialogue between "both sides" of the so-called "conflict." Any call for a "balanced" discourse on this issue -- where the motto "there are two sides to every story" is revered almost religiously -- is intellectually and morally dishonest, and ignores the fact that, when it comes to cases of colonialism, apartheid, and oppression, there is no such thing as "balance." The oppressor society, by and large, will not give up its privileges without pressure. This is why the BDS campaign is such an important instrument of change.

Faris Giacaman is a Palestinian student from the West Bank, attending his second year of college in the United States.

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”.