ei Weekday Press Picks

For 2010, please show your support for EI's independent reporting on Palestine

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:51:00 GMT

On this New Year's Eve we thank every person who has made a donation for The Electronic Intifada's work in 2010. If you haven't yet done so, it's not too late to show your support for powerful independent reporting and analysis about Palestine, with a tax-deductible gift. To learn more about how your support makes our award-winning coverage of Palestine possible, please see our Appeal: <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10951.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10951.shtml</a> To make a tax-deductible donation now, go to: <a href="https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=10090">https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=10090</a> Wishing you and yours a safe and happy 2010, The Electronic Intifada Team -- ABOUT US: The Electronic Intifada (EI) is a not-for-profit, independent publication committed to comprehensive public education on the question of Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the economic, political, legal, and human dimensions of Israel's 39-year occupation of Palestinian territories. EI, found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net">http://electronicIntifada.net</a> provides a needed supplement to mainstream commercial media representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More information about our work can be found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml">http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml</a> To find out about other EI/eIraq lists available, see: <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi">http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi</a> SUPPORT OUR PROJECT: Our work needs funding. We accept donations via credit card and cheque. U.S. donations are tax deductible. More information can be found at: <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2162.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2162.shtml</a> The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following list: ei Weekday Press Picks Using the following email: example@example.com You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL: <<a href="http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi/u/eimedia/[email_name]/[email_domain]/1234/&gt">http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi/u/eimedia/[email_name]/[email_domain]/1234/&gt</a>; If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism. You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen: <<a href="http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi?f=list&l=eimedia&gt">http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi?f=list&l=eimedia&gt</a>; If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at: <<a href="mailto:news@electronicintifada.net&gt">mailto:news@electronicintifada.net&gt</a>; The following physical address is associated with this mailing list: MECCS/EI Project 1507 E. 53rd Street, #500 Chicago, IL 60615, USA <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net">http://electronicIntifada.net</a> Mailing List Powered by Dada Mail <a href="http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/">http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/</a>

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EI Reader Appeal: Your support makes our work on Palestine possible

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:03:00 GMT

EI READER APPEAL: YOUR SUPPORT MAKES OUR WORK ON PALESTINE POSSIBLE The Electronic Intifada, 17 December 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10951.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10951.shtml</a> "The 'Electronic Intifada,' which appears to be more effective than any of its predecessors, has caught us with our pants down. Suddenly, even our most senior officers and cabinet ministers, who are holed up inside the country for fear of lawsuits abroad, have begun to realize that it is not possible to respond to everything with fire." --Doron Rosenblum, Haaretz, 31 October 2009, after EI's exclusive video of the Chicago protest against former Israeli Prime Minister Olmert protest was broadcast on Israeli national television Dear Friend, AS THE year closes, The Electronic Intifada (EI) asks our readers to make a donation to support our independent, fearless reporting and analysis about Palestine in 2010. It's easy, quick and secure and your donation is tax-deductible if you are a US taxpayer (<a href="https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=10090">https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=10090</a>). We want to tell you why your support is so vital. This year began with Israel's massive attack on the civilian population and the very foundations of civilized life in the Gaza Strip -- homes, schools, universities, public facilities, factories, shops and food warehouses. An editorial in Ireland's Sunday Business Post observed that "with the Western media self-censoring the most terrible images from Gaza -- particularly those of young children murdered en masse -- one has to go onto websites such as Electronic Intifada ... to see the reality." The mainstream media's myopic gaze quickly turned away from Gaza once the intensive bombing stopped, but EI has kept a constant focus on the people there -- their analysis, struggles, celebrations, tragedy and steadfastness. Thousands of people come to The Electronic Intifada every single day to learn the truth about what is happening all over Palestine and in the growing global solidarity movement. We have seen our traffic grow by 17 percent since the start of the year not including a huge surge during Israel's attack on Gaza a year ago. Many of our original stories were picked up by mainstream media, reaching even bigger audiences, and were republished or translated by countless print publications and websites all over the world. At a time when traditional media models -- focused on profits -- are failing, The Electronic Intifada has pioneered a thriving model of independent nonprofit journalism. It works only because individuals like you understand the value of what we do and are prepared to support it. Your tax-deductible donation will make a real difference whether it is for $60, $100, $1,000 or more. We've included below some links to highlights of EI's unique reporting and analysis in 2009. These are only a small sampling of the high-quality original reporting and analysis that your support makes possible. Every day, reporting like this is motivating more people to learn about how they can become part of the movement for justice. Show your support for independent journalism about Palestine today. Please donate now by credit card, Paypal or check using the links below With thanks and best wishes for 2010 The Electronic Intifada Team TO DONATE BY CREDIT CARD: <a href="https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=10090">https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=10090</a> TO DONATE BY PAYPAL OR CHECK: <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2162.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2162.shtml</a> THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA: HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2009 *Israel's righteous fury and its victims in Gaza By Ilan Pappe, 2 January 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10100.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10100.shtml</a> *Israel collaborator recruiter punked, 4 January 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10114.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10114.shtml</a> *Israel's fabricated rocket crisis By Jim Holstun and Joanna Tinker, 6 January 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10123.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10123.shtml</a> *Sharpeville 1960, Gaza 2009 By Haidar Eid, 22 January 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10232.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10232.shtml</a> *The writing on the wall spells "freedom" By Arjan El Fassed, 20 April 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10475.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10475.shtml</a> *Palestinian farmers use permaculture to challenge occupation By Sarah Irving, 4 June 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10575.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10575.shtml</a> *Despite Israel's efforts, Palestinian festival celebrates literature By Sousan Hammad, 4 June 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10569.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10569.shtml</a> *The Western media and Iran By Matthew Cassel, 23 June 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10616.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10616.shtml</a> *New short films showcase breadth of Palestinian cinema By Maymanah Farhat, 24 June 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10617.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10617.shtml</a> *Hiyam, a Gaza teenager killed as she offered aid By Rami Almeghari, 5 July 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10643.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10643.shtml</a> *Breakdance breaks out in the Gaza Strip By Rami Almeghari, 14 July 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10661.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10661.shtml</a> *"The best place one could be on Earth" By Alice Walker, 24 July 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10675.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10675.shtml</a> *Young love in Gaza By Eman Mohammed, 17 August 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10714.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10714.shtml</a> *Obama's peace effort has failed but our struggle continues By Ali Abunimah, 24 September 2008 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10791.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10791.shtml</a> *Volvo providing armored buses for Israeli settlements By Adri Nieuwhof, 7 October 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10818.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10818.shtml</a> *EI exclusive video: Protesters shout down Ehud Olmert in Chicago By Maureen Clare Murphy, 16 October 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10834.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10834.shtml</a> *Book review: Shlomo Sand's "The Invention of the Jewish People" By Raymond Deane, 22 October 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10848.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10848.shtml</a> *Israeli Jews and the one-state solution By Ali Abunimah, 10 November 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10883.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10883.shtml</a> *Winning prize for peace while advocating war By Sayed Dhansay, 11 December 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10942.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10942.shtml</a> -- ABOUT US: The Electronic Intifada (EI) is a not-for-profit, independent publication committed to comprehensive public education on the question of Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the economic, political, legal, and human dimensions of Israel's 39-year occupation of Palestinian territories. EI, found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net">http://electronicIntifada.net</a> provides a needed supplement to mainstream commercial media representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More information about our work can be found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml">http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml</a> To find out about other EI/eIraq lists available, see: <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi">http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi</a> SUPPORT OUR PROJECT: Our work needs funding. We accept donations via credit card and cheque. U.S. donations are tax deductible. More information can be found at: <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2162.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2162.shtml</a> The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following list: ei Weekday Press Picks Using the following email: example@example.com You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL: <<a href="http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi/u/eimedia/[email_name]/[email_domain]/1234/&gt">http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi/u/eimedia/[email_name]/[email_domain]/1234/&gt</a>; If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism. 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Abbas helps Israel bury its crimes in Gaza

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:13:00 GMT

Abbas helps Israel bury its crimes in Gaza By Ali Abunimah The Electronic Intifada 2 October 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10807.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10807.shtml</a> Just when it seemed that the Ramallah Palestinian Authority (PA) and its leader Mahmoud Abbas could not sink any lower in their complicity with Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the murderous blockade of Gaza, Ramallah has dealt a further stunning blow to the Palestinian people. The Abbas delegation to the United Nations in Geneva (officially representing the moribund Palestine Liberation Organization) abandoned a resolution requesting the Human Rights Council to forward Judge Richard Goldstone's report on war crimes in Gaza to the UN Security Council for further action. Although the PA acted under US pressure, there are strong indications that the commercial interests of Palestinian and Gulf businessmen closely linked to Abbas also played a part. The 575-page Goldstone report documents evidence of shocking Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity during last winter's assault on the Gaza Strip which killed 1,400 Palestinians, the vast majority noncombatants and hundreds of them children. The report also accuses the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas of war crimes for firing rockets into Israel that killed three civilians. Goldstone's report was hailed by Palestinians and supporters of the rule of law worldwide as a watershed; it called for suspects to be held accountable before international courts if Israel failed to prosecute them. Israel has no history, ever, of holding its political and military leaders judicially accountable for war crimes against the Palestinians. Israel was rightly terrified of the report, mobilizing all its diplomatic and political resources to discredit it. In recent days, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that if the report were acted on, it would "strike a severe blow to the war against terrorism," and "strike a fatal blow to the peace process, because Israel will no longer be able to take additional steps and take risks for peace if its right to self-defense is denied." Unsurprisingly, an early ally in the Israeli campaign for impunity was the Obama Administration, whose UN ambassador, Susan Rice, expressed "very serious concerns" about the report and trashed Goldstone's mandate as "unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable." (Rice was acting true to her word; in April she told the newspaper Politico that one of the main reasons the Obama Administration decided to join the UN Human Rights Council was to fight what she called "the anti-Israel crap.") Goldstone, whose daughter has publicly described her father as a Zionist who loves Israel, is a former judge of the South African Supreme Court, and a highly respected international jurist. He was the chief prosecutor at UN war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. That the Goldstone report was a severe blow to Israel's ability to commit future war crimes with impunity is not in doubt; this week bolstered by the report, lawyers in the UK asked a court to issue an arrest warrant for visiting Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. That action did not succeed, but Israel's government has taken extraordinary measures in recent months to try to shield its officials from prosecution, fearing that successful arrests are just a matter of time. Along with the growing international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions, the fear of ending up in The Hague seems to be the only thing that causes the Israeli government and society to reconsider their destructive path. One would think, then, that the self-described representatives of the Palestinian people would not casually throw away this weapon. And yet, according to Abbas ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi, the Ramallah PA shelved its effort at the request of the Americans because "We don't want to create an obstacle for them." Khraishi's excuse that the resolution is merely being deferred until the spring does not pass muster. Unless action is taken now, the Goldstone report will be buried by then and evidence of Israel's crimes -- necessary for prosecutions -- may be harder to collect. This latest surrender comes less than two weeks after Abbas appeared at a summit in New York with US President Barack Obama and Netanyahu despite Obama abandoning his demand that Israel halt construction of Jewish-only settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Also under US pressure, the PA abandoned its pledge not to resume negotiations unless settlement-building stopped, and agreed to take part in US-mediated "peace talks" with Israel in Washington this week. Israel, meanwhile, announced plans for the largest ever West Bank settlement since 1967. What makes this even more galling, is the real possibility that the PA is helping Israel wash its hands of the blood it spilled in Gaza for something as base as the financial gain of businessmen closely linked to Abbas. The Independent (UK) reported on 1 October: "Shalom Kital, an aide to defense minister Ehud Barak, said today that Israel will not release a share of the radio spectrum that has long been sought by the Palestinian Authority to enable the launch of a second mobile telecommunications company unless the PA drops its efforts to put Israeli soldiers and officers in the dock over the Israeli operation." ("Palestinians cry 'blackmail' over Israel phone service threat," The Independent, 1 October). Kital added that it was a "condition" that the PA specifically drop its efforts to advance the Goldstone report. The phone company, Wataniya, was described last April by Reuters as an "Abbas-backed company" which is a joint venture between Qatari and Kuwaiti investors and the Palestinian Investment Fund with which one of Abbas' sons is closely involved. Moreover, Reuters revealed that the start-up company apparently had no shortage of capital due to the Gulf investors receiving millions of dollars of "US aid in the form of loan guarantees meant for Palestinian farmers and other small to mid-sized businesses" (See "US aid goes to Abbas-backed Palestinian phone venture," Reuters, 24 April 2009). Just a day before the Abbas delegation pulled its resolution in Geneva, Nabil Shaath, the PA "foreign minister" denounced the Israeli threat over Wataniya as "blackmail" and vowed that the Palestinians would never back down. The PA's betrayal of the Palestinian people over the Goldstone report, as well as its continued "security coordination" with Israel to suppress resistance and political activity in the West Bank, should banish all doubt that it is an active arm of the Israeli occupation doing tangible and escalating harm to the Palestinian people and their just cause. Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. -- ABOUT US: The Electronic Intifada (EI) is a not-for-profit, independent publication committed to comprehensive public education on the question of Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the economic, political, legal, and human dimensions of Israel's 39-year occupation of Palestinian territories. EI, found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net">http://electronicIntifada.net</a> provides a needed supplement to mainstream commercial media representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More information about our work can be found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml">http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml</a> To find out about other EI/eIraq lists available, see: <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi">http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi</a> SUPPORT OUR PROJECT: Our work needs funding. We accept donations via credit card and cheque. U.S. donations are tax deductible. More information can be found at: <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2162.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2162.shtml</a> The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following list: ei Weekday Press Picks Using the following email: example@example.com You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL: <<a href="http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi/u/eimedia/[email_name]/[email_domain]/1234/&gt">http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi/u/eimedia/[email_name]/[email_domain]/1234/&gt</a>; If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism. You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen: <<a href="http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi?f=list&l=eimedia&gt">http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi?f=list&l=eimedia&gt</a>; If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at: <<a href="mailto:news@electronicintifada.net&gt">mailto:news@electronicintifada.net&gt</a>; The following physical address is associated with this mailing list: MECCS/EI Project 1507 E. 53rd Street, #500 Chicago, IL 60615, USA <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net">http://electronicIntifada.net</a> Mailing List Powered by Dada Mail <a href="http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/">http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/</a>

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Obama's peace effort has failed but our struggle continues

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:45:00 GMT

Obama's peace effort has failed but our struggle continues By Ali Abunimah The Electronic Intifada 24 September 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10791.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10791.shtml</a> There is the old joke about a man who is endlessly searching on the ground beneath a street light. Finally, a neighbor who has been watching him asks the man what he is looking for. The man replies that he lost his keys. The neighbor asks him if he lost them under the streetlight. "No," the man replies, pointing into the darkness, "I lost them over there, but I am looking over here because here there is light!" The intense focus on the "peace process" is a similarly futile search. Just because politicians and the media shine a constant light on it, does not mean that is where the answers are to be found. The meeting hosted by US President Barack Obama with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas at New York's Waldorf Astoria hotel on 22 September signaled the complete and terminal failure of Obama's much vaunted push to bring about a two-state solution to the Palestine/Israel conflict. To be sure, all the traditional activities associated with the "peace process" -- shuttle diplomacy, meetings, ritual invocations of "two states living side by side," and even "negotiations" -- will continue, perhaps for the rest of Obama's time in office. But this sterile charade will not determine the future of Palestine/Israel. That is already being decided by other means. Before coming to that, let's recall those heady days in May when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set out the Obama Administration's firm policy on Israel's colonization of the West Bank: "We want to see a stop to settlement construction -- additions, natural growth, any kind of settlement activity -- that is what the president has called for." Obama's envoy, former Senator George Mitchell, traveled to the region almost a dozen times to convince Israel to implement a freeze. Every proposal he took, the Israelis rejected. And to emphasize the point, the Israeli government accelerated the approval of major new settlement plans. Instead of threatening consequences for such intransigence, Mitchell simply diluted American conditions to meet Israeli objections until finally there was little left of the American demands -- or credibility. So it was that in his remarks at New York, Obama's call for a total construction freeze was reduced to a polite request to Israel merely to "restrain" itself from devouring more Palestinian land. Speaking to reporters after the New York meeting, Mitchell dropped the demand for a settlement freeze and made the US surrender official. "We are not identifying any issue as being a precondition or an impediment to negotiation," Mitchell said, adding, "We do not believe in preconditions. We do not impose them and we urge others not to impose them." This is of course completely untrue. The Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration before it, continues to boycott Hamas (which has a legitimate electoral mandate to represent Palestinians under occupation) on the grounds that Hamas has refused to meet one-sided American preconditions! The next day in his UN speech, Obama repeated the call for negotiations without preconditions. He did not explain why such negotiations would be any more fruitful than the 200-odd negotiating sessions held between the PA and the previous Israeli government headed by Ehud Olmert. Obama may have told the UN that the peace process must "break the old patterns," but he is simply repeating them. The New York meeting produced yet another image of an American president cajoling reluctant Israeli and Palestinian leaders to shake hands, a kitschy and tiresome reprise of the famous 1993 White House lawn handshake between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin with President Clinton looking on, that sealed the ill-fated Oslo accords. Unsatisfied by its failures to date, the Obama Administration apparently craves more. It aims for a resumption of "negotiations" within weeks, to be inaugurated with what a US official called a "launch event." Ideas under discussion, the unnamed US official told the Israeli daily Haaretz, include "a meeting in Sharm al-Sheikh in Egypt." That this is the level of thinking within the Obama Administration is utterly depressing. I can see it now -- as we have so many times before -- another meeting at the Egyptian resort attended by all the usual suspects: Israeli and Palestinian leaders (except of course Hamas), "moderate" leaders of repressive US client regimes like Jordan's King Abdallah and Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, and the whole pack of peace process parasites led by Quartet representative Tony Blair and EU "High Representative" Javier Solana. We can expect more statements that there is a "window of opportunity," that this is "the only game in town," and that "time is running out." If this is not absurd enough, consider what the US is really saying to the Palestinians in the wake of Mitchell's failure: "We, the greatest superpower on Earth, are unable to convince Israel -- which is dependent on us militarily, economically and diplomatically -- to abide by even a temporary settlement freeze. Now, you Palestinians, who are a dispossessed, occupied people whose leaders cannot move without an Israeli permit, go and negotiate on much bigger issues like borders, refugees, Jerusalem and settlements, and do better than we did. Good luck to you." Even if Israel agreed to a settlement freeze and negotiations resumed, there is no chance for a viable two-state solution or any just resolution coming out of such talks. So like its predecessors, this administration is substituting process and gimmicks for substance. If the "peace process" is not driving events, then what is? Israeli colonization -- as Obama initially understood -- is the major factor determining the present and future of Palestine/Israel. Geographer and former Israeli deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Meron Benvenisti, has observed that Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip effectively ended the 1948 partition. "The decades since the war have proved that 1967 was not a disjunction but quite the opposite, a union, and that the preceding period was merely a reprieve," Benvenisti wrote in 2007. After more than 40 years, Benvenisti views the "occupier/occupied paradigm" as too limited and misleading to describe the post-1967 reality. It is, he writes, an "anachronism that hides behind the portrayal of a temporary condition." He proposes instead that we call the situation in Palestine/Israel a "de facto binational state ... because it describes the mutual dependence of both societies, as well as the physical, economic, symbolic and cultural ties that cannot be severed except at an intolerable cost." Repartition of Palestine would only change the shape of the conflict, not solve it. Even if Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were given a state, an unreformed, ultranationalist "Jewish state" of Israel would be more likely to turn its aggression and ethnic cleansing against its own 1.5 million Palestinian citizens than live in peace. After all, as Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has asked repeatedly, what is the point of a two-state solution that doesn't produce an exclusively Jewish state? The 1967 boundary may have legal and political salience, but it does not demarcate geographically compact, ethnically homogenous and economically independent geo-political units. Ramallah Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Salam Fayyad may harbor fantasies about creating a "de facto" Palestinian state in the West Bank, but the close collaboration between Israel and the PA only confirms the trend towards binationalism -- of the wrong sort to be sure. Isn't it ironic that the most enthusiastic boosters of the ugly collaboration between the Israeli occupation army and US-trained PA militias to suppress resistance to the occupation, simultaneously insist that it is implausible for Palestinians and Israelis to build a joint society under conditions of equality? Apparently Palestinians and Israelis can collude to maintain oppression and injustice but not to transcend them! A second factor determining the present and future is the resistance in all its forms that Israeli colonization continues to generate: the movement of Palestinians within Israel for full equality in a state of all its citizens; the refugees' steadfast insistence that Israel not be allowed to prevent them returning home just because they are the wrong religion; the refusal of Palestinians in Gaza to buckle under a crippling blockade. During Ramadan, hundreds of thousands of fasting Palestinians endured unbelievable hardships to break Israel's ring of steel around Jerusalem to enter the occupied city for Friday prayers at al-Aqsa Mosque. This spirit of resistance is expressed in millions of daily acts and refusals by individual Palestinians, but also in highly directed, creative and organized ways such as the weekly demonstrations against Israel's apartheid wall in the West Bank, or the rapidly expanding Palestinian-directed international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS). These forms of organized resistance and solidarity are changing the balance of moral and political power and have the potential to force Israeli Jews to abandon their quest for ethno-religious purity and domination just as Afrikaners did in South Africa, Unionists did in Northern Ireland, and white Americans did in the southern US. They are bolstered by the growing calls for international accountability, the most recent of which include the Goldstone report's recommendation that Israeli leaders be prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Official complicity with Israel's crimes -- such as the Obama Administration's despicable decision to attack and quash the Goldstone report -- are likely only to spur further support for BDS. These sources of power are still comparatively small compared to Israel's military and diplomatic might, but their momentum is increasing and official Israel's panic in the face of the growing challenge is palpable. For years, scholars and activists calling for serious research and discussion about a unified state guaranteeing the rights of all who live in it, were ignored or ridiculed by defenders of the failed two-state solution. But the growing appeal of a vision that inspires and attracts individuals because of its universalism is terrifying the high priests of partition. The peace process industry, its think tanks and "experts," understand that they can no longer monopolize the discussion. Peace will not be made at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan; it will be made everywhere that people of conscience are prepared to join the struggle for liberation, justice and equality for all the people who live in Palestine/Israel. In one sense then, the significance of the New York meeting was its utter insignificance. The real struggle for justice carries on regardless. Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. -- ABOUT US: The Electronic Intifada (EI) is a not-for-profit, independent publication committed to comprehensive public education on the question of Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the economic, political, legal, and human dimensions of Israel's 39-year occupation of Palestinian territories. EI, found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net">http://electronicIntifada.net</a> provides a needed supplement to mainstream commercial media representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More information about our work can be found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml">http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml</a> To find out about other EI/eIraq lists available, see: <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi">http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi</a> SUPPORT OUR PROJECT: Our work needs funding. We accept donations via credit card and cheque. U.S. donations are tax deductible. 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Liberation, not a fictitious Palestinian "state"

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:40:00 GMT

Liberation, not a fictitious Palestinian "state" By Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah The Electronic Intifada 2 September 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10748.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10748.shtml</a> Late last month, Salam Fayyad, the appointed Palestinian Authority (PA) prime minister in Ramallah, made a surprise announcement: he declared his intention to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip before the end of 2011 regardless of the outcome of negotiations with Israel. Fayyad told the London Times that he would work to build "facts on the ground, consistent with having our state emerge as a fact that cannot be denied." His plan was further elaborated in a lengthy document grandly titled "Program of the Thirteenth Government of the Palestinian National Authority." The plan contains all sorts of ambitious ideas: an international airport in the Jordan Valley, new rail links to neighboring states, generous tax incentives to attract foreign investment, and of course strengthening the "security forces." It also speaks boldly of liberating the Palestinian economy from its dependence on Israel, and reducing dependence on foreign aid. This may sound attractive to some, but Fayyad has neither the political clout nor the financial means to propose such far-reaching plans without a green light from Washington or Tel Aviv. Fayyad aims to project an image of a competent Palestinian administration already mastering the craft of running a state. He boasts, for instance, that the PA he heads has worked to "develop effective institutions of government based on the principles of good governance, accountability and transparency." But what is really taking shape in the West Bank today is a police state, where all sources of opposition or resistance -- real or suspected -- to either the PA regime, or the Israeli occupation are being systematically repressed by US-funded and trained Palestinian "security forces" in full coordination with Israel. Gaza remains under tight siege because of its refusal to submit to this regime. In describing the Palestinian utopia he hopes to create, Fayyad's plan declares that "Palestine will be a stable democratic state with a multi-party political system. Transfer of governing authority is smooth, peaceful and regular in accordance with the will of the people, expressed through free and fair elections conducted in accordance with the law." A perfect opportunity to demonstrate such an exemplary transfer would have been right after the January 2006 election which as the entire world knows Hamas won fairly and cleanly. Instead, those who monopolize the PA leadership today colluded with outside powers first to cripple and overthrow the elected Hamas government, and then the "national unity government" formed by the Mecca Agreement in early 2007, entrenching the current internal Palestinian division. (Fayyad's own party won just two percent at the 2006 election, and his appointment as prime minister by PA leader Mahmoud Abbas was never -- as required by law -- approved by the Palestinian Legislative Council, dozens of whose elected members remain behind Israeli prison bars.) From 1994 to 2006, more than eight billion US dollars were pumped into the Palestinian economy, making Palestinians the most aid-dependent people on earth, as Anne Le More showed in her important book International Assistance to the Palestinians after Oslo: Political Guilt; Wasted Money (London, Routledge, 2008). The PA received this aid ostensibly to build Palestinian institutions, improve socioeconomic development and support the creation of an independent state. The result however is that Palestinians are more destitute and aid-dependent than ever before, their institutions are totally dysfunctional, and their state remains a distant fantasy. PA corruption and mismanagement played a big part in squandering this wealth, but by far the largest wealth destroyer was and remains the Israeli occupation. Contrary to what Fayyad imagines, you cannot "end the occupation, despite the occupation." A telling fact Le More reveals is that the previous "programs" of the PA (except those offered by the Hamas-led governments) were written and approved by international donor agencies and officials and then given to the PA to present back to the same donors who wrote them as if they were actually written by the PA! Everything we see suggests Fayyad's latest scheme follows exactly the same pattern. What is particularly troubling this time is that the plan appears to coincide with a number of other initiatives and trial balloons that present a real danger to the prospects for Palestinian liberation from permanent Israeli subjugation. Recently, the International Middle East Media Center, an independent Palestinian news organization, published what it said was the leaked outline of a peace plan to be presented by US President Barack Obama. That plan included international armed forces in most of the Palestinian "state"; Israeli annexation of large parts of East Jerusalem; that "All Palestinian factions would be dissolved and transformed into political parties"; all large Israeli settlements would remain under permanent Israeli control; the Palestinian state would be largely demilitarized and Israel would retain control of its airspace; intensified Palestinian-Israeli "security coordination"; and the entity would not be permitted to have military alliances with other regional countries. On the central issue of the right of return for Palestinian refugees, the alleged Obama plan allows only an agreed number of refugees to return, not to their original homes, but only to the West Bank, particularly to the cities of Ramallah and Nablus. It is impossible to confirm that this leaked document actually originates with the Obama administration. What gives that claim credibility, however, is the plan's very close resemblance to a published proposal sent to Obama last November by a bipartisan group of US elder statesmen headed by former US national security advisors Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Moreover, recent press reports indicate a lively debate within the Obama Administration about whether the US should itself publish specific proposals for a final settlement once negotiations resume; so there is little doubt that concrete proposals are circulating. Indeed there is little of substance to distinguish these various plans from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's concept of "economic peace" and a demilitarized Palestinian statelet under overall Israeli control, with no right of return for refugees. And, since all seem to agree that the Jordan Valley -- land and sky -- would remain under indefinite Israeli control, so would Fayyad's airport. Similar gimmicks have been tried before: who remembers all the early Oslo years' hullabaloo about the Gaza International Airport that operated briefly under strict Israeli control before Israel destroyed it, and the promised Gaza seaport whose construction Israel forbade? There are two linked explanations for why Fayyad's plan was launched now. US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has repeatedly defined his goal as a "prompt resumption and early conclusion" of negotiations. If the kinds of recycled ideas coming from the alleged Obama plan, the Scowcroft-Brzezinski document, or Netanyahu, are to have any chance, they need to look as if there is a Palestinian constituency for them. It is Fayyad's role to provide this. The second explanation relates to the ongoing struggle over who will succeed Mahmoud Abbas as president of the PA. It has become clear that Fayyad, a former World Bank official unknown to Palestinians before he was boosted by the George W. Bush Administration, appears to be the current favorite of the US and other PA sponsors. Channeling more aid through Fayyad may be these donors' way of strengthening Fayyad against challengers from Abbas' Fatah faction (Fayyad is not a member of Fatah) who have no intention of relinquishing their chokehold on the PA patronage machine. Many in the region and beyond hoped the Obama Administration would be a real honest broker, at last bringing American pressure to bear on Israel, so that Palestinians might be liberated. But instead, the new administration is acting as an efficient laundry service for Israeli ideas; first they become American ones, and then a Palestinian puppet is brought in to wear them. This is not the first scheme aimed at extinguishing Palestinian rights under the guise of a "peace process," though it is most disappointing that the Obama Administration seems to have learned nothing from the failures of its predecessors. But just as before, the Palestinian people in their country and in the Diaspora will stand stubbornly in the way of these efforts. They know that real justice, not symbolic and fictitious statehood, remains the only pillar on which peace can be built. Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative of Jordan at the United Nations. Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006). A version of this article first appeared in The Jordan Times and is reprinted with the authors' permission. -- ABOUT US: The Electronic Intifada (EI) is a not-for-profit, independent publication committed to comprehensive public education on the question of Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the economic, political, legal, and human dimensions of Israel's 39-year occupation of Palestinian territories. EI, found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net">http://electronicIntifada.net</a> provides a needed supplement to mainstream commercial media representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More information about our work can be found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml">http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml</a> To find out about other EI/eIraq lists available, see: <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi">http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi</a> SUPPORT OUR PROJECT: Our work needs funding. We accept donations via credit card and cheque. U.S. donations are tax deductible. 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Obama's prizes for Israel are not "pressure"

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:51:00 GMT

Obama's prizes for Israel are not "pressure" By Ali Abunimah The Electronic Intifada 16 July 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10665.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10665.shtml</a> On 13 July, President Barack Obama received 16 leaders of the most prominent pro-Israel organizations at the White House. The gathering was an effort to assuage American Jewish concerns about US pressure on Israel over a settlement freeze in the occupied West Bank. One participant argued that in the past any progress toward peace has only been made when there was "no light" between American and Israeli positions. "I disagree," the president responded according to one witness, and pointed out that during eight years of the Bush administration, "there was no light between the United States and Israel, and nothing got accomplished." Obama reaffirmed his commitment to achieving a settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict and emphasized the short window and special opportunity that he had to produce one given his outreach efforts to Arabs and Muslims. All of this will reinforce the faith of those convinced that Obama's policies mark a decisive shift from his predecessors, a rupture in the Israeli-American relationship, and can produce what has eluded all others: a workable and agreed two-state solution. Obama has consistently stressed his belief in the "unbreakable" US-Israeli relationship. Considering his actions and words so far, there is little reason to doubt him. But unless he is prepared to go much further than anyone has publicly contemplated in pressuring Israel, his peace initiative has negligible chances of success. For months the focus has been on Obama's demand that Israel agree to a complete cessation of settlement construction, including the subterfuge called "natural growth." It was during a similar "freeze" in the early 1990s that Israel built thousands of settler housing units on occupied land. Arab optimism and Israeli anxiety were amplified as Obama and his Middle East Envoy George Mitchell said repeatedly that this time they wanted a total halt. Yet the firmness shows signs of erosion. Israeli press reports spoke of a "compromise" taking shape in which Israel would be allowed to complete thousands of already planned housing units. Although those reports were denied by the United States, several participants in the White House meeting said Obama alluded to an unspecified compromise in the works. Anything short of a complete cessation of settlement construction will mark an achievement for Israel; what is important is not the number of units the United States may approve, but the principle that this administration, like its predecessors, will license Israel's illegal colonization. Once that principle is established, Israel may present more faits accomplis and build at will. And even if Israel does agree to a verifiable cessation, the US has structured the matter as a quid pro quo in which Israel is not required to do anything without receiving a reward. The president has appealed to Arab states to normalize ties with Israel if it freezes settlements, including opening diplomatic missions and allowing overflights by El Al aircraft (recall that when en route to bomb Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981, Israeli warplanes reportedly falsely identified themselves as commercial aviation). Given how little leverage the Arab side has, it would be totally disarmed if it conceded any such gestures in exchange for so little. Israel's settlements violate numerous UN Security Council resolutions and the Fourth Geneva Convention. It should no more be rewarded for ending settlement construction than Iraq should have been rewarded for withdrawing from Kuwait after Iraq invaded in 1990. While today US-occupied, war-torn Iraq is still paying Kuwait billions of dollars annually in compensation for a seven-month long occupation that ended almost two decades ago, the US is offering Israel prizes not for ending a 42-year-old occupation but merely for ceasing to commit some crimes. This can hardly be described as anything other than a net gain for Israel, especially since the settlement project is reaching its natural conclusion. There are already 500,000 settlers in the West Bank, who with their infrastructure consume more than 42 percent of the land. Nothing Obama has ever said indicates he will deviate from his predecessors' policy of recognizing these facts and demanding that Palestinians agree to let Israel keep settlements already built. While all the attention is focused on the freeze, Israel maintains its siege of Gaza -- despite Obama's calls to loosen it -- and continues to build the West Bank wall five years after the International Court of Justice ordered it torn down. The United States itself continues to undermine chances for intra-Palestinian reconciliation, and therefore credible negotiations, by fueling the smoldering civil war between US-backed Palestinian militias on the one hand and resistance factions led by Hamas on the other. On the outside Israelis may be crying about US "pressure" but on the inside they must be quietly smiling. Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. This article was originally published by <a href="http://www.bitterlemons-international.org">http://www.bitterlemons-international.org</a> and is republished with permission. -- ABOUT US: The Electronic Intifada (EI) is a not-for-profit, independent publication committed to comprehensive public education on the question of Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the economic, political, legal, and human dimensions of Israel's 39-year occupation of Palestinian territories. EI, found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net">http://electronicIntifada.net</a> provides a needed supplement to mainstream commercial media representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More information about our work can be found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml">http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml</a> To find out about other EI/eIraq lists available, see: <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi">http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi</a> SUPPORT OUR PROJECT: Our work needs funding. We accept donations via credit card and cheque. U.S. donations are tax deductible. 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Hamas' choice: Recognition or resistance in the age of Obama

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:55:00 GMT

Hamas' choice: Recognition or resistance in the age of Obama By Ali Abunimah The Electronic Intifada 6 July 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10647.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10647.shtml</a> In a major policy speech on 25 June 2009, Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas' political bureau, tried to do what may be impossible: present the Islamist Palestinian resistance organization as a willing partner in a US-led peace process, while holding on to his movement's political principles and base. [1] This is the dilemma that every Palestinian leadership, and perhaps almost every liberation movement, has eventually had to confront. It is a choice, as political scientist Tamim Barghouti has pointed out, between recognition and legitimacy.[2] According to Barghouti, the old-guard Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership, when confronted with the same dilemma, chose recognition and forfeited its legitimacy, opening the way for Hamas to emerge. Now it is the turn of Hamas: the price demanded by the US and its allies for Hamas to be taken as an interlocutor is the abandonment of the very principles on which the movement built its mass support. Meshal's nearly hour-long "address to the Palestinian people and the world" was billed as a response to the speeches of US President Barack Obama in Cairo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in June. In his Cairo speech, Obama called for Americans and Muslims to engage in a "sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground." If he is serious about that, he -- and others -- should pay close attention to what Hamas is saying to domestic, regional and international audiences. Meshal's goals -- very much in tension -- were to show that his movement is ready to do business with the US, set out political red lines, reassure the movement's supporters and Palestinians generally and deal with internal Palestinian divisions. To begin with, the speech sought to present Hamas as a nationalist movement whose Islamism fits within a mainstream Palestinian consensus. Meshal used an explicitly ecumenical message to counter Netanyahu's exclusivist Jewish claims to the land of Palestine. According to Meshal, Palestinians' roots stretched back thousands of years "in this blessed land of prophets and messages, of [Muhammad's] night ascension, of Muslim and Christian holy sites -- al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, the Nativity Church and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre." More generally, he sought to portray Muslims as representing the very values Westerners claim to cherish most and dissociate Hamas from lurid and false comparisons to such groups as the Taliban. "We [Muslims] are the ones who introduced the world and humanity to science, civilization, culture and lofty humanitarian values," Meshal declared, "values such as justice, freedom, equality, compassion and tolerance, and the values of interaction between civilizations and not a confrontation between them." Meshal welcomed a "change of tone" from President Obama but emphasized repeatedly that only a change of policy would matter. He nevertheless claimed the new tone as the fruit of the "stubborn steadfastness of the people of the region, while resisting in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan." Such resistance, according to Meshal, frustrated the former US President George W. Bush administration's plans for regional domination, prompting American voters to seek a different path to extricate their country from mounting crises and quagmires. He chided regional leaders who had "marketed and promoted" Bush's policies. "Had the people of the region listened to them," Meshal said, "the policy of Bush and the neoconservatives might have succeeded and the region's situation would be worse than imaginable." Meshal voiced the widespread skepticism and perhaps hopes that Obama's promises amounted to more than the similar words about Palestine heard from the Bush Administration. Responding to Obama's recital of history, Meshal did not seek to deny the Nazi Holocaust but to appropriate it. He took Obama to task for dwelling in detail on the "suffering of the Jews and their holocaust in Europe, while ignoring our present suffering and Israel's holocaust against our Palestinian people that has been continuing for decades." Meshal emphasized that even though Palestinians have heard only words, they were prepared to judge the US by its actions, which would have to "begin with reconstruction of Gaza and the lifting of the blockade, lifting the oppression and security pressure in the West Bank, and allowing Palestinian reconciliation to take its course without external pressures or interference." The "only thing" that can convince Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, Meshal stated, "is genuine American and international will and efforts to end the occupation and lift the oppression from our people, to allow them to exercise their right to self-determination and the fulfillment of their national rights." When the Obama administration makes such an initiative, Meshal said, "then we and all our people's forces will be ready to cooperate with it and with any international effort in that direction." Obama's "new language toward Hamas," Meshal underlined, "is the first step in the right direction towards direct dialogue without conditions." And that is the crux of the matter. Dealing with Hamas, Meshal said, must be based on the recognition of its democratic mandate and not via the imposition of arbitrary conditions such as those of the Quartet which call on the movement to recognize Israel, abandon violence and commit by previously signed agreements. Meshal reasserted Hamas' political red lines while maintaining a sense of flexibility. In particular, Meshal: *Rejected the Palestinian state envisaged by the Israeli leader as a "deformed entity, a large prison for detention and suffering, and not the national home a great people deserves." *Rejected Israel's demand to be recognized as a "Jewish state" -- and warned against any Arab or Palestinian acquiescence -- "because it means canceling the right to return to their homes of six million refugees, and the forced expulsion of our people in the 1948 areas [Palestinian citizens of Israel] from their cities and villages." Israel's demand, according to Meshal, is no different than racist demands made by fascist Italy and the Nazis. * *Reaffirmed Hamas' previous acceptance of "the program that represents the minimum demands of our people," for "the establishment of a Palestinian state whose capital is Jerusalem with complete sovereignty on the borders of 4 June 1967, after the withdrawal of the occupation forces, and the dismantling of all the settlements, and the realization of the Right of Return." * *Reaffirmed that "the refugees' Right of Return to the homes from which they were expelled in 1948 is a national right and an individual right held personally" by the refugees "and no leader or negotiator can waive it or compromise on it." Meshal also offered a nuanced response to Obama's call on Palestinians to abandon "dead end" violence in favor of nonviolent resistance. "We reaffirm our adherence to resistance as a strategic choice to liberate the homeland and restore our rights," Meshal said, citing armed European resistance to Nazi Germany, American resistance to British rule and the Vietnamese and South African anti-colonial struggles as precedents for Palestinians. "Nonviolent resistance is appropriate in a struggle for civil rights," Meshal argued, "But when it comes to a military occupation using conventional and nonconventional weapons, such an occupation can only be confronted with armed resistance." Palestinians were forced to take up arms, Meshal said. He could also have been implying that if Palestinians changed the definition of their struggle as being one for civil rights then the appropriate means of resistance would also change. "Resistance is a means and not an end," Meshal said, "and it is not blind. Indeed it perceives the changes underway." Yet, while staunchly defending the right to armed resistance -- and even threatening new operations to take Israeli soldiers prisoner if it was the only way to free Palestinians prisoners -- Meshal also recognized other forms of struggle. He called for increased Palestinian, Arab and international solidarity efforts, including ongoing efforts to break the siege on Gaza, to resist the apartheid wall and settlements and to prevent home demolitions and "Judaiziation" in Jerusalem. For Hamas leaders, the dangers of submitting to western preconditions can be seen merely by looking at the trajectory of the Palestine Liberation Organization leadership which recognized Israel in 1993, renounced armed struggle and signed the Oslo accords. Since that time, Meshal argued, the occupation and its oppression deepened as the number of Israeli settlements and Palestinian prisoners grew. As Meshal put it, "These conditions do not end; as soon as the Palestinian negotiator commits to one, more conditions are imposed. For example, first the condition was to recognize Israel, now it is to recognize the Jewishness of Israel. Then, that Jerusalem is its eternal capital, giving up the Right of Return, accepting that settlement blocks will remain. Then [Palestinians] must not only abandon resistance, but themselves work to oppress, pursue and disarm the resistance." The latter point was a reference to the arrest campaign in the West Bank and what Meshal called other "oppressive measures undertaken by the [Palestinian] Authority and the government of Salam Fayyad and its security forces under the supervision of the American General [Keith] Dayton." Meshal presented this ongoing cooperation between the Ramallah security forces, Israel and the US as the biggest obstacle to Palestinian reconciliation talks in Cairo aimed at restoring a unified national leadership. After Hamas won the 2006 legislative election, the Bush administration began a program overseen by Dayton to arm and train anti-Hamas militias nominally loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The campaign has been accompanied by what Hamas and some human rights groups have described as a systematic crackdown on politicians, professors, charities and journalists suspected of sympathy or links with Hamas. Hamas has often retaliated by arresting Fatah-linked individuals in the Gaza Strip. In recent weeks, the Dayton-supervised militias have killed several members of Hamas in the West Bank ostensibly while trying to arrest them. Meshal cleverly drew attention to the external role in fueling Palestinian divisions -- and how little has actually changed from the Bush Administration -- by "calling on Obama to withdraw Dayton from the West Bank and return him to the United States, in keeping with the new spirit of change." Throughout the speech, Meshal sought to reassure Palestinians that Hamas would not abandon its core principles in pursuit of recognition and power. "The land is more important than authority, and liberation before a state," he said at one point, and "no Palestinian leadership has the right to waive Palestinian national rights and interests as the price for recognition." Some Palestinians worry that despite such assurances, Hamas has already set off down the very path Meshal warned about and risks squandering the sacrifices Palestinians made, especially in Gaza. Haidar Eid, an independent analyst in Gaza, wrote before Meshal's speech that some of the early enthusiastic Hamas responses to Obama's Cairo speech, as well as acceptance of the two-state solution, indicated "the beginning of a process of deterioration -- even Osloization -- not only in rhetoric, but also in action." This writer has heard similar fears voiced by Palestinians from the West Bank and recently in Amman. Given that many Palestinians consider that a previous generation of resistance leaders turned their backs on their people's most fundamental interests and rights -- all the while claiming to uphold them -- such fears are far from irrational or uncommon. Another analysis of Hamas' shift currently circulating argues that Hamas has accepted the Palestinian "consensus" position of a two-state solution on every inch of the 1967 occupied territories with removal of all settlements and with the Right of Return. But it knows that no potential peace deal coming from the Obama initiative will ever reach even these minimal conditions, and that if Abbas and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could not reach even the outlines of an agreement after two years of negotiations, the chances of any deal with a Netanyahu-Lieberman government are even tinier. In this scenario, Hamas need not stand in the way of a two-state solution because it will fail anyway. But by saying it would accept that minimalist outcome, it would avoid blame for the failure and its adherence to resistance would be vindicated. What we do know is that Hamas' leaders, and the Palestinians generally, have been placed under intense pressure, occupation, blockades, starvation sieges and recurrent Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the vast majority so far has not submitted to Israeli conditions. But while emphasizing the role of resistance and struggle to achieve liberation, Hamas has not offered a clear vision of what liberation looks like other than the unconvincing and increasingly unrealistic two-state vision (leaving aside its long, outdated, though much-cited charter that offers no guide to the movement's current thinking). Meshal's speech confirms Hamas' long-term shift away from Islamist rhetoric toward mainstream Palestinian nationalist discourse. It indicates that Hamas is highly sensitive to international and Palestinian public opinion and is aware that Palestinians need to build real international solidarity as part of a strategy to level the glaring power imbalance with Israel. But it is not prepared to seek recognition at any price. All this has implications for the movement's message and methods. This leaves the field open for an urgent debate among Palestinians about what that future vision should be and what role resistance in all its legitimate forms should play. No group of leaders, whether from Hamas or any other organization, could or should carry the burden of restoring Palestinian rights by itself. Hamas, like other Palestinian organizations, can only be a guardian of fundamental rights to the extent that it is embedded in a broader movement mobilized in Palestine and globally to defend those rights. And if Hamas' potential interlocutors are sincerely seeking ways to recognize the democratic mandate of the movement without trying to force it to forfeit its legitimacy, there are precedents. South Africa's African National Congress and the Irish Republican Army were both able to take part in successful political negotiations that got their respective countries out of disastrous political and military stalemates without being required to submit to unacceptable preconditions. That took a measure of leadership, foresight and political courage by others that has been notably absent in international dealings with Hamas. Editor's note: An earlier version of this article was published with the last two lines in the second paragraph inadvertently deleted. Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Abunimah also co-founded The Electronic Intifada. This analysis was originally published by the Palestine Center. Endnotes [1] The speech is in Arabic. All excerpts quoted in this article are the author's translation. A transcript and recording of the speech were made available by the Palestinian Information Center, a Hamas-affiliated website. See: <a href="http://bit.ly/mK7kS">http://bit.ly/mK7kS</a>. [2] In a paper given at the Annual Symposium of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University on the theme: "Palestine and the Palestinians Today," 2-3 April 2009, Washington, DC. -- ABOUT US: The Electronic Intifada (EI) is a not-for-profit, independent publication committed to comprehensive public education on the question of Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the economic, political, legal, and human dimensions of Israel's 39-year occupation of Palestinian territories. EI, found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net">http://electronicIntifada.net</a> provides a needed supplement to mainstream commercial media representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More information about our work can be found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml">http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml</a> To find out about other EI/eIraq lists available, see: <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi">http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi</a> SUPPORT OUR PROJECT: Our work needs funding. We accept donations via credit card and cheque. U.S. donations are tax deductible. 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Netanyahu's "brilliant" peace plan

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:56:00 GMT

Netanyahu's "brilliant" peace plan By Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah The Electronic Intifada 17 June 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10606.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10606.shtml</a> Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed a peace plan so ingenious it is a wonder that for six decades of bloodshed no one thought of it. Some people might have missed the true brilliance of his ideas presented in a speech at Bar Ilan University on 14 June, so we are pleased to offer this analysis. First, Netanyahu wants Palestinians to become committed Zionists. They can prove this by declaring, "We recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in this land." As he pointed out, it is only the failure of Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular to commit themselves to the Zionist dream that has caused conflict, but once "they say those words to our people and to their people, then a path will be opened to resolving all the problems between our peoples." It is of course perfectly natural that Netanyahu would be "yearning for that moment." Mere heartfelt commitment to Zionism will not be enough, however. For the Palestinians' conversion to have "practical meaning," Netanyahu explained, "there must also be a clear understanding that the Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel's borders." In other words, Palestinians must agree to help Israel complete the ethnic cleansing it began in 1947-48, by abandoning the right of return. This is indeed logical because as Zionists, Palestinians would share the Zionist ambition that Palestine be emptied of Palestinians to the greatest extent possible. Netanyahu is smart enough to recognize that even the self-ethnic-cleansing of refugees may not be sufficient to secure "peace": there will still remain millions of Palestinians living inconveniently in their native land, or in the heart of what Netanyahu insisted was the "historic homeland" of the Jews. For these Palestinians, the peace plan involves what Netanyahu calls "demilitarization," but what should be properly understood as unconditional surrender followed by disarmament. Disarmament, though necessary, cannot be immediate, however. Some recalcitrant Palestinians may not wish to become Zionists. Therefore, the newly pledged Zionist Palestinians would have to launch a civil war to defeat those who foolishly insist on resisting Zionism. Or as Netanyahu put it, the "Palestinian Authority will have to establish the rule of law in Gaza and overcome Hamas." (In fact, this civil war has already been underway for several years as the American and Israeli-backed Palestinian "security forces," led by US Lt. General Keith Dayton, have escalated their attacks on Hamas). Once anti-Zionist Palestinians are crushed, the remaining Palestinians -- whose number equals that of Jews in historic Palestine -- will be able to get on with life as good Zionists, according to Netanyahu's vision. They will not mind being squeezed into ever smaller ghettos and enclaves in order to allow for the continued expansion of Jewish colonies, whose inhabitants Netanyahu described as "an integral part of our people, a principled, pioneering and Zionist public." And, in line with their heartfelt Zionism, Palestinians will naturally agree that "Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel." These are only the Palestinian-Israeli aspects of the Netanyahu plan. The regional elements include full, Arab endorsement of Palestinian Zionism and normalization of ties with Israel and even Arab Gulf money to pay for it all. Why not? If everyone becomes a Zionist then all conflict disappears. It would be nice if we could really dismiss Netanyahu's speech as a joke. But it is an important indicator of a hard reality. Contrary to some naive and optimistic hopes, Netanyahu does not represent only an extremist fringe in Israel. Today, the Israeli Jewish public presents (with a handful of exceptions) a united front in favor of a racist, violent ultra-nationalism fueled by religious fanaticism. Palestinians are viewed at best as inferiors to be tolerated until circumstances arise in which they can be expelled, or caged and starved like the 1.5 million inmates of the Gaza prison. Israel is a society where virulent anti-Arab racism and Nakba denial are the norm although none of the European and American leaders who constantly lecture about Holocaust denial will dare to admonish Netanyahu for his bald lies and omissions about Israel's ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Netanyahu's "vision" offered absolutely no advance on the 1976 Allon Plan for annexation of most of the occupied West Bank, or Menachem Begin's Camp David "autonomy" proposals. The goal remains the same: to control maximum land with minimum Palestinians. Netanyahu's speech should put to rest newly revived illusions -- fed in particular by US President Barack Obama's Cairo speech -- that such an Israel can be brought voluntarily to any sort of just settlement. Some in this region who have placed all their hopes in Obama -- as they did previously in Bush -- believe that US pressure can bring Israel to heel. They point to Obama's strong statements calling for a complete halt to Israeli settlement construction -- a demand Netanyahu defied in his speech. It now remains to be seen whether Obama will follow his tough words with actions. Yet, even if Obama is ready to put unprecedented pressure on Israel, he would likely have to exhaust much of his political capital just to get Israel to agree to a settlement freeze, let alone to move on any of dozens of other much more substantial issues. And despite the common perception of an escalating clash between the Obama administration and the Israeli government (which may come over minor tactical issues), when it comes to substantive questions they agree on much more than they disagree. Obama has already stated that "any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state," and he affirmed that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided." As for Palestinian refugees, he has said, "The right of return [to Israel] is something that is not an option in a literal sense." For all the fuss about settlements, Obama has addressed only their expansion, not their continued existence. Until the Obama administration publicly dissociates itself from the positions of the Clinton and Bush administrations, we must assume it agrees with them and with Israel that the large settlement blocks encircling Jerusalem and dividing the West Bank into ghettos would remain permanently in any two-state solution. Neither Obama nor Netanyahu have mentioned Israel's illegal West Bank wall suggesting that there is no controversy over either its route or existence. And now, both agree that whatever shreds are left can be called a "Palestinian state." No wonder the Obama administration welcomed Netanyahu's speech as "a big step forward." What is particularly dismaying about the position stated by Obama in Cairo -- and since repeated constantly by his Middle East envoy George Mitchell -- is that the United States is committed to the "legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own." This formula is designed to sound meaningful, but these vague, campaign-style buzzwords are devoid of any reference to inalienable Palestinian rights. They were chosen by American speechwriters and public relations experts, not by Palestinians. The Obama formula implies that any other Palestinian aspirations are inherently illegitimate. Where in international law, or UN resolutions can Palestinians find definitions of "dignity" and "opportunity?" Such infinitely malleable terms incorrectly reduce all of Palestinian history to a demand for vague sentiments and a "state" instead of a struggle for liberation, justice, equality, return and the restoration of usurped rights. It is, after all, easy enough to conceive of a state that keeps Palestinians forever dispossessed, dispersed, defenseless and under threat of more expulsion and massacres by a racist, expansionist Israel. Through history it was never leaders who defined rights, but the people who struggled for them. It is no small achievement that for a century Palestinians have resisted and survived Zionist efforts to destroy their communities physically and wipe them from the pages of history. As long as Palestinians continue to resist in every arena and by all legitimate means, building on true international solidarity, their rights can never be extinguished. It is from such a basis of independent and indigenous strength, not from the elusive promises of a great power or the favors of a usurping occupier, that justice and peace can be achieved. Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative of Jordan at the United Nations. Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006). A version of this article first appeared in The Jordan Times and is reprinted with the authors' permission. -- ABOUT US: The Electronic Intifada (EI) is a not-for-profit, independent publication committed to comprehensive public education on the question of Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the economic, political, legal, and human dimensions of Israel's 39-year occupation of Palestinian territories. EI, found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net">http://electronicIntifada.net</a> provides a needed supplement to mainstream commercial media representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More information about our work can be found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml">http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml</a> To find out about other EI/eIraq lists available, see: <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi">http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi</a> SUPPORT OUR PROJECT: Our work needs funding. We accept donations via credit card and cheque. U.S. donations are tax deductible. 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Mr. Abbas Goes to Washington

Fri, 29 May 2009 06:20:00 GMT

<a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090615/abunimah">http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090615/abunimah</a> Mr. Abbas Goes to Washington BY ALI ABUNIMAH May 28, 2009 If the Oval Office guest list is an indicator, President Obama is making good on his commitment to try to revive the long-dead Arab-Israeli peace process. On May 18 President Obama received Israel's new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu; today he met with Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. As this process gets under way, the United States--Israel's main arms supplier, financier and international apologist--faces huge hurdles. It is deeply mistrusted by Palestinians and Arabs generally, and the new administration has not done much to rebuild trust. Obama has, like President Bush, expressed support for Palestinian statehood, but he has made no criticisms of Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip--which killed more than 1,400 people last winter, mostly civilians--despite evidence from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and UN investigators of egregious Israeli war crimes. Nor has he pressured Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza, where 1.5 million Palestinians, the vast majority of whom are refugees, are effectively imprisoned and deprived of basic necessities. Obama has told Netanyahu firmly that Israel must stop building settlements on expropriated Palestinian land in the West Bank, but such words have been uttered by the president's predecessors. Unless these statements are followed by decisive action--perhaps to limit American subsidies to Israel--there's no reason to believe the lip service that failed in the past will suddenly be more effective. On the Palestinian side, Obama is talking to the wrong man: more than half of residents in the occupied territories do not consider Abbas the "legitimate" president of the Palestinians, according to a March survey by Fafo, a Norwegian research organization. Eighty-seven percent want the Fatah faction, which Abbas heads, to have new leaders. Hamas, by contrast, emerged from Israel's attack on Gaza with enhanced legitimacy and popularity. That attack was only the latest of numerous efforts to topple the movement following its decisive victory in the 2006 legislative elections. In addition to the Israeli siege, these efforts have included a failed insurgency by Contra-style anti-Hamas militias nominally loyal to Abbas and funded and trained by the United States under the supervision of Lieut. Gen. Keith Dayton. If Obama were serious about making real progress, one of the first things he would do is ditch the Bush-era policy of backing Palestinian puppets and lift the American veto on reconciliation efforts aimed at creating a unified, representative and credible Palestinian leadership. None of these problems is entirely new, though the challenges, having festered for years, may be tougher to deal with now. Netanyahu did add one obstacle, however, when he came to Washington. In accord with his anticipated strategy of delay, he insisted that Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist as a "Jewish state" as a condition of any peace agreement. Obama seemingly endorsed this demand when he said, "It is in US national security interests to assure that Israel's security as an independent Jewish state is maintained." Israel has pressed this demand with increasing fervor because Palestinians are on the verge of becoming the majority population in the territory it controls. Israel wants to ensure that any two-state solution--something that looks increasingly doubtful even to proponents--retains a Jewish majority. This explains the state's longstanding opposition, in defiance of international humanitarian law, to the return of Palestinian refugees who were expelled or fled from homes in what is now Israel. But can Israel's demand be justified? A useful lens to examine its claim is the fundamental legal principle that there is no right without a remedy. If Israel has a "right to exist as a Jewish state," then what can it legitimately do if Palestinians living under its control "violate" this right by having "too many" non-Jewish babies? Can Israel expel non-Jews, fine them, strip them of citizenship or limit the number of children they can have? It is impossible to think of a "remedy" that does not do outrageous violence to universal human rights principles. What if we apply Israel's claim to the United States? Because of the rapid growth of the Latino population in the past decade, Texas and California no longer have white majorities. Could either state declare that it has "a right to exist as a white-majority state" and take steps to limit the rights of non-whites? Could the United States declare itself officially a Christian nation and force Jews, Muslims or Hindus to pledge allegiance to a flag that bears a cross? While such measures may appeal to a tiny number of extremists, they would be unthinkable to anyone upholding twenty-first-century constitutional principles. But Israeli leaders propose precisely such odious measures. Already, Israel bans its citizens who marry non-citizen Palestinians from living in the country--a measure human rights activists have compared with the anti-miscegenation laws that once existed in Virginia and other states. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has long advocated that the nearly 1.5 million Palestinians who are citizens of Israel be "transferred" from the country in order to maintain its Jewish majority. Recently, Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party has sponsored or supported several bills aimed at further curtailing the rights of non-Jews. One requires all citizens, including Palestinian Muslims and Christians, to swear allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state. Another proposes to punish anyone who commemorates the Nakba (the name Palestinians give to their forced dispossession in the months before and after the state of Israel was established) with up to three years in prison. Ironically, Lieberman is an immigrant who moved to Israel from Moldova three decades ago, while the people he seeks to expel and silence have lived on the land since long before May 1948. And as Obama continues to remind us of America's "shared values" with Israel, another proposed bill passed its first reading in the Knesset this week. According to the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, the law would prescribe "one year in prison for anyone speaking against Israel's right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state"--making it a thought crime to advocate that Israel should be a democratic, nonracial state of all its citizens. It would be sad indeed if the first African-American president of the United States were to defend in Israel exactly the kind of institutionalized bigotry the civil rights movement defeated in this country, a victory that made his election possible. Ali Abunimah is the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and the co-founder of the Electronic Intifada website. -- ABOUT US: The Electronic Intifada (EI) is a not-for-profit, independent publication committed to comprehensive public education on the question of Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the economic, political, legal, and human dimensions of Israel's 39-year occupation of Palestinian territories. EI, found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net">http://electronicIntifada.net</a> provides a needed supplement to mainstream commercial media representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More information about our work can be found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml">http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml</a> To find out about other EI/eIraq lists available, see: <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi">http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi</a> SUPPORT OUR PROJECT: Our work needs funding. We accept donations via credit card and cheque. U.S. donations are tax deductible. 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No hope or change from Obama-Netanyahu meeting

Thu, 21 May 2009 12:53:00 GMT

This article was first published by BitterLemons International and can also be found on their site here: <a href="http://www.bitterlemons-international.org/inside.php?id=1117">http://www.bitterlemons-international.org/inside.php?id=1117</a> Ali Abunimah *************************************************************** No hope or change from Obama-Netanyahu meeting By Ali Abunimah The Electronic Intifada 21 May 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10546.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10546.shtml</a> Seldom has an encounter between an American and Israeli leader been as hyped as this week's meeting between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As expected, Obama committed himself to diplomacy with Iran and pledged an enormous effort to achieve a two-state solution. Netanyahu continued to incite confrontation with Iran and refused to commit himself to a Palestinian state. On the surface it may seem there are real differences and that the forces arrayed on each side -- including the formidable Israel lobby -- are gearing up for an epic battle to determine the fate of US-Israeli relations. But Obama offered little new, reaffirming well-worn US positions that view Palestinians, particularly Hamas, as the aggressors, and Israel as the innocent victim. While calling for Israel to halt settlement construction (as US presidents have done for decades), Obama offered no hint that he would back those words with action. Quite the contrary, the president said he would urge Arab leaders to normalize relations with Israel, rewarding it in advance of any renewed peace talks. Let us assume for the sake of argument that Obama applies unprecedented pressure to force Israel to make a deal with the Palestinians. What would such a deal look like? The outlines were suggested in the recent report sent to Obama by a group of US elder statesmen headed by former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft. The document, warning that there was only a "six to twelve month window" before all chances for peace evaporated, called on the US to forcefully advocate the creation of a Palestinian state. But this would be a demilitarized truncated state "based on" the 1967 borders. Israel would annex large West Bank settlements and there would be no right of return for Palestinian refugees. This "state" would be occupied indefinitely by a NATO-led "multinational force," which the Scowcroft group suggests could also include Israeli soldiers (see "A last chance for a two-state Israel-Palestine agreement, 2009). Of course the Scowcroft proposal does not necessarily represent Obama administration thinking, but it expresses the pervasive peace process industry consensus that views such an outcome as "reasonable," "pragmatic" and all but inevitable, and it accords with Obama's own statements opposing the right of return and supporting Israel's demand to to be recognized as a "Jewish state." In other words, what the vast majority of Palestinians would view as a horrifying plan to legitimize their dispossession, grant Israel a perpetual license to be racist, and turn the apartheid regime set up by the Oslo accords into a permanent prison, is now viewed as bold and far-reaching thinking that threatens to rupture American-Israeli bonds. Netanyahu has little to lose by embarking on another "peace process" after making a show of resisting American pressure (or extracting more American concessions or money). He knows the chances of ever getting to the stated destination are nil. Obama will not apply significant pressure, and even if he did, it is unclear on whom he would apply it, since on the Palestinian side there are no leaders ready, willing and able to carry off a second Oslo-style fraud against their people. Obama reportedly believes peace in Palestine is the key to transforming US relations with the "Muslim world." If he were serious about this, the US would have to break with all its past policies and support peace based on democratic and universal human rights principles and equality -- something incompatible with a commitment to Israel as a "Jewish state" practicing legalized discrimination. All the signs are however that the Obama administration will push to try to force Palestinians and Arabs to accept and normalize Israel as it is and that the US will continue to underwrite a morally and politically bankrupt Zionist settler-colonial project with a permanent American military, economic and diplomatic bailout. The real problem for US-Israeli relations is not to be found in whether Netanyahu utters the magic words "two-state solution." Rather it is that after Gaza it is impossible to keep peddling the fiction that Israel is a brave, self-reliant liberal democracy deserving of unconditional support. No matter what this administration does, this will eventually result in pressure on Israel -- such as growing American public support for the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006). This article was originally published by bitterlemons-international and is republished with permission. -- ABOUT US: The Electronic Intifada (EI) is a not-for-profit, independent publication committed to comprehensive public education on the question of Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the economic, political, legal, and human dimensions of Israel's 39-year occupation of Palestinian territories. EI, found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net">http://electronicIntifada.net</a> provides a needed supplement to mainstream commercial media representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More information about our work can be found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml">http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml</a> To find out about other EI/eIraq lists available, see: <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi">http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi</a> SUPPORT OUR PROJECT: Our work needs funding. 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One Voice: manufacturing consent for Israeli apartheid

Fri, 01 May 2009 14:41:00 GMT

One Voice: manufacturing consent for Israeli apartheid By Ali Abunimah The Electronic Intifada 1 May 2009 <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10497.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10497.shtml</a> How do Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation and siege see their world, especially after Israel's massacre of more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, in the occupied Gaza Strip three months ago? Two recent surveys shed light on this question, although one -- published on 22 April by the pro-Israel organization One Voice -- appears intended to influence international opinion in a direction more amenable to Israel, rather than to record faithfully the views of Palestinians or Israelis ("OV Poll: Popular Mandate for Negotiated Two State Solution," accessed 30 April 2009). The other -- a more credible survey -- was published in March by the Oslo-based Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies and funded by the Norwegian government ("Surveying Palestinian opinions March 2009," accessed 30 April 2009). The One Voice survey (of 500 Israelis and 600 Palestinians conducted from November to February) received considerable media attention. The group's press release unabashedly spun the results to claim popular legitimacy for the two-state solution and to discredit alternatives: "The results indicate that 74 [percent] of Palestinians and 78 [percent] of Israelis are willing to accept a two state solution (an option rated on a range from 'tolerable' to 'essential'), while 59 [percent] of Palestinians and 66 [percent] of Israelis find a single bi-national state 'unacceptable.'" The press release failed to note that 53 percent of Palestinians polled were also willing to embrace or tolerate "one joint state" (as opposed to a federated "bi-national" state) in which "Israelis and Palestinians are equal citizens." Curiously, Israelis were not asked about this option. The high-level of potential support for a single democratic state (confirmed by Fafo as we shall see) is remarkable given the incessant drumbeat of peace process industry propaganda that there is no solution but the two-state solution. One Voice asserts that a "very conscious effort was made in this poll to cover as wide a range of potential solutions as possible." But except for the initial question about the type of state, all the other questions assume, and are primarily relevant to, a two-state solution. Colin Irwin, of the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool, who authored the One Voice poll, has written that his techniques were used to help politicians shape political agreements in Northern Ireland and the Balkans. The method consists of using polls to "explore" opinions on each side of a divide and find areas where there is consensus and on which an agreement could be built. Such an approach might have some relevance among two equal communities, but the way he has applied it here merely legitimizes and obscures the radically unequal power relations between Israelis and Palestinians rather than providing a way to transcend them. It is only through a stretched interpretation that One Voice manages to find a consensus around a "two-state solution" -- which looks suspiciously like long-standing Israeli proposals for a Palestinian bantustan. The treatment of refugees is a good example of this questionable approach. The poll finds that 87 percent of Palestinians under occupation consider the "right of return AND compensation" for refugees to be "essential" to a final agreement, but notes that this option was "rejected by 77 [percent] of Israelis as unacceptable." Therefore, the Palestinian preference is pushed off the table in favor of a proposal where Israel "recognizes the suffering of refugees," and all but a handful can return only to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Thus, Israeli bigotry against non-Jewish Palestinian refugees is accorded the status of a "preference" that must not only be respected, but trumps the Palestinians' universally recognized legal rights. This special privilege is often granted to Israelis but not to others. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees assisted hundreds of thousands of refugees to return to their original homes, many in areas dominated by hostile majority communities. It did not matter if those majorities did not want to see refugees from another group return; rather it was the refugee's individual right -- a universal human right -- that trumped appeals to ethno-national purity. The One Voice survey does confirm that the minimal consensus needed to sustain a two-state solution, were it practicable, is absent. While 78 percent of Palestinian respondents considered a full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories to the June 1967 line "essential," 60 percent of Israelis consider that "unacceptable." Predictably, the proposed "compromise" is that Israel withdraws partially. Once again 60 percent of Israelis are allowed to outvote 78 percent of Palestinians in order to maintain Israeli control of land occupied, colonized and annexed in violation of international law. Thus, One Voice's analysis treats universal rights and international law as having less weight than Israeli prejudices and legitimizes the "facts on the ground" established through criminal behavior in open violation of UN resolutions and the International Court of Justice. It subjects these rights to a popular referendum in which the abusers exercise a permanent veto over the claims of their victims. One Voice bills itself as "an international mainstream grassroots movement" commanding the support of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Israelis. In fact, One Voice has support from no Palestinian grassroots organizations. It is a slick marketing outfit funded, according to its website, by "Israeli, Palestinian and other" sources. Much of its money comes from "major foundations" such as the Ford Foundation, IBM, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. One Voice also boasts of receiving money from "businessmen" including Yasser Abbas, the son of Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, who has been plagued by allegations of corruption. Among One Voice board members are State Department Special Advisor Dennis Ross, former Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Efraim Sneh, and former Israeli military ruler of the occupied West Bank General Danny Rothschild, in addition to many American Zionists, some Hollywood celebrities and a few token Palestinians. In October 2007, One Voice canceled a planned "peace concert" in Jericho after the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) called on Palestinians to withhold their support. At the time, PACBI asserted that the concert was "being organized to promote a 'peace' agreement that is devoid of the minimal requirements of justice," and was nothing more than a "public relations charade." One Voice's modus operandi is to recruit college students to sign a "Commitments Platform" pledging support for a two-state solution, but as PACBI pointed out, the statement is "without any commitment to international parameters -- assumes equal responsibility of 'both sides' for the 'conflict,' and suspiciously fails to call for Israel's full compliance with its obligations under international law through ending its illegal military occupation, its denial of Palestinian refugee rights (particularly the right of return), and its system of racial discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens." It is based on these signatures that One Voice claims to represent the "grassroots." Oddly, the platform has recently been removed from the official One Voice website. There is a laudable intent to Irwin's polling approach. It attempts to identify ideas that could appeal to Israelis and Palestinians. Ultimately any new order must be able to gain consent. But the choice to exclude justice, law and rights from shaping an agreement is not a neutral one; it is in effect an affirmative choice to include, legitimize and endorse the permanence of injustice and inequality. But that is what One Voice's agenda has been all along. Two-state solution loses support as Western strategy fails The Fafo survey of more than 1,800 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and almost 1,500 in the West Bank offers some real insights into the state of Palestinian public opinion in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (international funders never sponsor surveys of all Palestinians, which would include those inside Israel as well as those in the Diaspora). Fafo found that just 35 percent of Palestinians still support a two-state solution. One third preferred an Islamic state throughout Palestine, and 20 percent wanted "one state with equal rights for all," in Palestine/Israel. Palestinians did not even agree with the common claim that the two-state solution is clearly the more "pragmatic" and "achievable" one. In the West Bank, 64 percent thought the two-state solution was "very" or "somewhat" realistic, as against 55 percent for a single democratic state. In Gaza, 80 percent considered a single democratic state to be "very" or "somewhat" realistic as against 71 percent for a two-state state solution. This is a moment when no vision carries a consensus among Palestinians, underscoring the urgent need for an inclusive debate about all possible democratic outcomes. The American effort, started by the Bush Administration with European and Arab accomplices, and continued by US President Barack Obama, to impose an Israeli-friendly Palestinian leadership has failed. The Fafo survey indicates that Hamas emerged from Israel's attack on Gaza with enhanced support and legitimacy. Palestinian Authority leaders in Ramallah and their Arab, Israeli and Western allies, did all they could to portray the Israeli attack on Gaza as the result of "recklessness" and provocation by Hamas and other resistance factions. This narrative has taken hold among a minority: 19 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip viewed Hamas as having "great" responsibility for the attack on Gaza (this rose to 40 percent among Fatah supporters). Overall, 51 percent agreed that Hamas had no responsibility at all for the attack (48 percent in the West Bank, 58 percent in Gaza). Just over half of those polled agreed with the statement "All Palestinian factions must stop firing rockets at Israel." All the financial, diplomatic and armed support given by the West to Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader whose term as Palestinian Authority president expired in January, has done little to shore up his standing among Palestinians. Only 44 percent of respondents overall (41 percent in the West Bank) considered him the "legitimate" president of the Palestinians, while 56 percent did not. Near universal dissatisfaction with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is reflected in the finding that 87 percent of respondents agreed that it was time for Fatah to change its leadership. Unsurprisingly, 93 percent of Hamas supporters wanted change, but so did 78 percent of Fatah supporters. Palestinians expressed very low confidence in institutions (by far the most trusted were UNRWA -- the UN agency for Palestine refugees -- and the satellite channel Al-Jazeera). But a plurality in the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- 32 percent overall -- considered Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's Western-boycotted Hamas-led government in Gaza to be the legitimate Palestinian government. Only a quarter overall (31 percent in Gaza, 22 percent in the West Bank) thought the Ramallah-based "emergency" government headed by Abbas's appointed and US-backed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was the legitimate one. Hamas leaders performed well during and after Israel's attack on Gaza. Haniyeh had an overall positive rating of 58 percent while Abbas's was only 41 percent. But among Palestinians who said they would vote in an election, 41 percent would support Fatah against 31 percent for Hamas. If that was out of step with the rest of the survey, there is a clear trend: support for Fatah was down sharply from a year earlier and Hamas doubled its support in the West Bank from 16 to 29 percent, according to Fafo. There were some issues on which there was a strong consensus. Ninety-three percent of respondents wanted to see a "national unity government" formed, and the vast majority (85 percent) rejected maintaining the West Bank and Gaza Strip as "independent regions" if efforts to form one foundered. Palestinians still overwhelmingly support a negotiated settlement, but the "peace process" and its sponsors have lost all credibility. Just one percent thought the US had a "great deal" of concern for the Palestinian cause, and 77 percent thought it had none at all. The "Quartet," the self-appointed ad hoc grouping of US, EU, UN and Russian representatives that monopolizes peace efforts earns the trust of just 13 percent of Palestinians. Post-Gaza, Palestinians hold jaundiced views of all Western countries and the Arab states aligned with them. Iran and Turkey, which took strong public stands in solidarity with Palestinians, have seen support surge. If the Fafo poll confirms that the Western-backed effort to destroy Hamas, impose quisling leaders, and blockade and punish Palestinians until they submit to Israel's demands has failed, a useful conclusion from the One Voice survey is that given a free choice, Israelis reject all solutions requiring them to give up their monopoly on power and to respect Palestinian rights and international law. The right response to such findings is to support the growing international solidarity campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to force Israel to abandon its illegal, supremacist and colonial practices, and to build a vision of a democratic future for all the people in the country. Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006). -- ABOUT US: The Electronic Intifada (EI) is a not-for-profit, independent publication committed to comprehensive public education on the question of Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the economic, political, legal, and human dimensions of Israel's 39-year occupation of Palestinian territories. EI, found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net">http://electronicIntifada.net</a> provides a needed supplement to mainstream commercial media representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More information about our work can be found at <a href="http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml">http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/aboutEI.shtml</a> To find out about other EI/eIraq lists available, see: <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi">http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/kebab/mail.cgi</a> SUPPORT OUR PROJECT: Our work needs funding. We accept donations via credit card and cheque. U.S. donations are tax deductible. More information can be found at: <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2162.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2162.shtml</a> The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following list: ei Weekday Press Picks Using the following email: example@example.com You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL: <<a href="http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi/u/eimedia/[email_name]/[email_domain]/1234/&gt">http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi/u/eimedia/[email_name]/[email_domain]/1234/&gt</a>; If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism. 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