History Of Jerusalem

The Weak, The Strong and The Neutral

Today Editorial by The Guardian:

Gerald Kaufman once described Labour's 1983 manifesto as the longest suicide note in history. If ever a set of documents merits this epithet, it is surely the one we publish today. Written by Palestinian officials, obtained by al-Jazeera and shared with the Guardian, the papers are the confidential record of 10 years of efforts to seek a peace agreement with Israel.

It is hard to tell who appears worst: the Palestinian leaders, who are weak, craven and eager to shower their counterparts with compliments; the Israelis, who are polite in word but contemptuous in deed; or the Americans, whose neutrality consists of bullying the weak and holding the hand of the strong. Together they conspire to build a puppet state in Palestine, at best authoritarian, at worst a surrogate for an occupying force. To obtain even this form of bondage, the Palestinians have to flog the family silver. Saeb Erekat, the PLO chief negotiator, is reduced at one point to pleading for a fig leaf: "What good am I if I'm the joke of my wife, if I'm so weak," he told Barack Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell.

Palestinian concessions roll on. The Israeli settlements around East Jerusalem? Sold, two years ago in a map which allows Israel to annex all of the settlements bar one, Har Homa. Mr Erekat called it the biggest Yerushalayim (he used the Hebrew word for Jerusalem) in history. Israel's former foreign minister Tzipi Livni acknowledges the pain involved, but refuses the offer. Israel banks the concession anyway. They are building in occupied Gilo today as if there is no tomorrow. Haram al-Sharif, the third holiest site in the Muslim world? That, too, is up for grabs. Mr Erekat said he was prepared to consider "creative ways" to solve the problem of Haram al-Sharif or the Temple Mount.

The surrender of land Palestinians have lived on for centuries prompts more demands. Not only does Israel want all of East Jerusalem, Har Homa, and the settlement blocs of Ariel and Ma'ale Adumim which carve strategic swathes out of the West Bank. Not only does it insist on a demilitarised state. It also wants Palestinian leaders to sign away their future. When Mr Erekat asked Ms Livni: "Short of your jet fighters in my sky and your army on my territory, can I choose where I secure external defence?". She replied: "No. In order to create your state you have to agree in advance with Israel – you have to choose not to have the right of choice afterwards. These are the basic pillars."

Before the extreme right politician Avigdor Lieberman rose to prominence, the papers reveal that Israel asked for some of its Arab citizens to be transferred to a new Palestinian state. Since then, state population swaps have entered the mainstream of Israeli debate, but no one is asking the Israeli Arabs themselves. Has the former nightclub bouncer from Moldova become more Israeli? Or is Israel behaving more like a Moldovan nightclub bouncer?

One requires Panglossian optimism to believe that these negotiations can one day be resurrected. Nineteen years of redrawing the 1967 borders, of expanding the boundaries of Jerusalem, of refusal to accept the return of Palestinian refugees, and of pleading for a fig leaf, has sullied the concept of peace.

The Palestinian Authority may continue as an employer but, as of today, its legitimacy as negotiators will have all but ended on the Palestinian street. The two-state solution itself could just as swiftly perish with it. If that is to be saved, three things have to happen: America must drop its veto on Palestinian unity talks and take up Hamas's offer of a one-year ceasefire; a negotiating team that represents all major Palestinian factions must be formed; and Israel has to accept that a state created on 1967 borders, not around them, is the minimum price of an end to the conflict. The alternative is to allow the cancer of the existing one-state solution to grow and to prepare for the next war. No one will have to wait long for that.

Gaza Calling

The Manifesto

"Fuck Hamas. Fuck Israel. Fuck Fatah. Fuck UN. Fuck UNWRA. Fuck USA! We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community!

"We want to scream and break this wall of silence, injustice and indifference like the Israeli F16s breaking the wall of sound; scream with all the power in our souls in order to release this immense frustration that consumes us because of this fucking situation we live in...

"We are sick of being caught in this political struggle; sick of coal-dark nights with airplanes circling above our homes; sick of innocent farmers getting shot in the buffer zone because they are taking care of their lands; sick of bearded guys walking around with their guns abusing their power, beating up or incarcerating young people demonstrating for what they believe in; sick of the wall of shame that separates us from the rest of our country and keeps us imprisoned in a stamp-sized piece of land; sick of being portrayed as terrorists, home-made fanatics with explosives in our pockets and evil in our eyes; sick of the indifference we meet from the international community, the so-called experts in expressing concerns and drafting resolutions but cowards in enforcing anything they agree on; we are sick and tired of living a shitty life, being kept in jail by Israel, beaten up by Hamas and completely ignored by the rest of the world.

"There is a revolution growing inside of us, an immense dissatisfaction and frustration that will destroy us unless we find a way of canalising this energy into something that can challenge the status quo and give us some kind of hope.

"We barely survived the Operation Cast Lead, where Israel very effectively bombed the shit out of us, destroying thousands of homes and even more lives and dreams. During the war we got the unmistakable feeling that Israel wanted to erase us from the face of the Earth. During the last years, Hamas has been doing all they can to control our thoughts, behaviour and aspirations. Here in Gaza we are scared of being incarcerated, interrogated, hit, tortured, bombed, killed. We cannot move as we want, say what we want, do what we want.

"ENOUGH! Enough pain, enough tears, enough suffering, enough control, limitations, unjust justifications, terror, torture, excuses, bombings, sleepless nights, dead civilians, black memories, bleak future, heart-aching present, disturbed politics, fanatic politicians, religious bullshit, enough incarceration! WE SAY STOP! This is not the future we want! We want to be free. We want to be able to live a normal life. We want peace. Is that too much to ask?"

Picture Of The Day

Joe Sacco

Implications Of Potential Israeli Strike on Iran

Israeli Military Strike on Iran Will Lead to a Protracted War and Will Not Solve Nuclear Crisis

The potential for an Israeli military strike on Iran over its nuclear programme has grown sharply, but its consequences would be devastating and would lead to a long war, warns a Paul Rogers in his report “Military Action Against Iran: Impact and Effects”.* The study follows Israeli reports that Syria is manufacturing Iranian M-600 missiles for Hezbollah, the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu calling Iran “the ultimate terrorist threat” and saying it was a mistake to think Iran’s nuclear ambitions could be contained, and a call from the United Arab Emirates Ambassador in Washington for a military strike on Iran.

The report builds on Rogers' briefing, "Iran: Consequences of a War" (2006), and analyses recent developments, arguing that Israel is now fully capable of attacking Iran as it has deployed many new systems including US-built long-range strike aircraft and armed drones.

The report outlines the likely shape of an Israeli strike, saying it would:

• Be focused not only on destroying ‘military real estate’ – nuclear and missile targets - but also would hit factories and research centres, and even university laboratories, in order to do as much damage as possible to the Iranian expertise that underpins the programme.
  
• Would not be limited to remote bases but would involve the direct bombing of targets in Tehran. It would probably include attempts to kill those technocrats who manage Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes.
  
• Be widely viewed across the Middle East as having been undertaken with the knowledge, approval and assistance of the United States, even if carried out solely by Israel.
  

Professor Rogers says that, “There would be many civilian casualties, both directly among people working on Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes, but also their families as their living quarters were hit, and secretaries, cleaners, labourers and other staff in factories, research stations and university departments.”

While much damage would be done to Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes, it would increase Iranian political unity, making the Ahmadinejad regime more stable.

Iran would be able to respond in many ways, argues the report, including:

• Withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and immediate action to develop nuclear weapons to deter further attacks. Such work would use deeply-buried facilities that are reported to be under construction.
  
• A series of actions aimed at Israel as well as targeting the United States and its western partners including:
  

• missile attacks on Israel;

• actions to cause a sharp rise in oil prices by closing the Straits of Hormuz;

• paramilitary and/or missile attacks on western Gulf oil production, processing and transportation facilities;

• strong support for paramilitary groups in Iraq and Afghanistan opposing western involvement.

Iran might not respond with military action immediately, but its greatest priority would be to move as fast as possible to developing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. The implications of this for international security are huge, according to Professor Rogers:

“An Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would almost certainly be the beginning of a long-term process of regular Israeli air strikes to further prevent the development of nuclear weapons and medium-range missiles. Iranian responses would also be long-term, ushering in a lengthy war with global as well as regional implications.”

The report concludes that “the consequences of a military attack on Iran are so serious that they should not be encouraged in any shape or form. However difficult, other ways must be found to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis.”

* Note: Months before the Iraq War in 2003, Oxford Research Group published a report, “Iraq: Consequences of a War”, also by Professor Paul Rogers, that warned of high civilian casualties, the development of an insurgency, increased support for al-Qaida and widespread anti-Americanism, if the war went ahead.

Hero Of The Day

Al-Nakba

The Only Democracy In The Middle East?

By Heather Sharp
BBC News, Jerusalem

The Islamic movement Hamas claims that the death of one its senior commanders, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, is the latest in Israel's history of assassinating individuals it believes to have been behind attacks on its citizens.

Israel's general policy is to neither confirm nor deny allegations about the activities of its intelligence agents but it is notable that many of its enemies meet suspicious and violent deaths.

"We are witnessing an intense intelligence struggle, most of it is covert, some of it overt," said Ronen Bergman, author of By Any Means Necessary, and other books and articles on Israel's covert operations.

“ In some cases Israel has decided to close the circle and take revenge on people who were behind symbolic acts of terrorism ”
Ronen Bergman Investigative journalist

Among the best documented of Israel's assassinations were a wave of killings of pro-Palestinian militants in Paris, Nicosia, Beirut and Athens, carried out in response to the hostage crisis at the Munich Olympics in 1972 which resulted in the deaths of 11 Israelis.

Methods used included a booby-trapped telephone, a bomb planted in a bed, and a raid in Beirut in which current Defence Minister Ehud Barak dressed as a woman.

There are even claims that a poisoned chocolate was later used to kill a commander of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in East Germany in 1978.

In 1987 Israel made no attempt to disguise their assassination of Khalil al-Wazir - known as Abu Jihad - the Palestine Liberation Organisation's military leader and second in command.

Israeli commandos crept into Tunisia, where the PLO's exiled leadership was based, and shot him several times in his own home before escaping by sea.

It was an operation in which Mr Barak is also believed to have been involved.

Covert failure

In 1997 during the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's first term in office, one special operation went humiliatingly wrong.

Israeli agents tried to kill Khaled Meshaal, who was then a fund-raiser for Hamas based in Amman.

Disguised as Canadian tourists, they injected poison into his ear - but he was rushed to hospital before it took full effect.

Mr Meshaal's life was literally saved by Jordan's then King Hussein, who was outraged by the attack and - boosted by pressure from then US President Bill Clinton - demanded the Israeli government hand over the antidote.

The agents - who had been arrested - were exchanged for an Israeli apology and the release of 20 prisoners, including Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, Hamas's spiritual leader.

Mr Meshaal has gone on to become Hamas's Damascus-based leader.

Targeted killings

As the second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, raged in the years after 2000, Israel turned its sights on militant leaders within Gaza and the West Bank.

Militant groups sent waves of suicide bombers to attack Israeli civilian targets such as buses and cafes.

Part of Israel's response was the controversial policy it described as "targeted" killings - Amnesty International described them as "extra-judicial".

Palestinians say dozens of militant figures, including Sheikh Yassin and another senior Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, were killed, in many cases by missiles launched from helicopters.

But in 2008, allegations of Israeli action farther afield intensified with the death of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, implicated in numerous bomb attacks and a wave of hostage-taking in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Hezbollah wasted little time in blaming Israel for his death in a car bomb in Damascus.

The group is thought to have been trying to avenge his death ever since.

'Revenge'

Investigative journalist Mr Bergman says the past three to four years have seen the Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Syria alliance "far more exposed" by Israeli intelligence, and on the defensive.

Even in recent weeks, the deaths of two Hamas members in a bombing in Lebanon, an attempt to bomb an Israeli diplomatic convoy in Jordan, and the mysterious killing of an Iranian scientist - though a quantum physicist, not a nuclear specialist - offer more material for speculation.

Targeting Mr Mabhouh would fit with Israel's historical policy, Mr Bergman adds.

"In some cases Israel has decided to close the circle and take revenge on people who were behind symbolic acts of terrorism - not necessary the most violent or lethal acts," he said.

And this can happen years after the incident in question.

Hamas claims Mr Mabhouh is the mastermind of the capture and killing of two Israeli soldiers, Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon, in 1989.

Sgt Sasportas's body was located seven years later, from a sketched map supplied by the Palestinians, and dug up from underneath a road that had been built over it.

The incident was an emotional one for the public in a country where most people serve in the military.

Mr Mabhouh's brother said Israel had been trying to kill him for years, and had unsuccessfully attempted to poison him six months earlier in Beirut.

But the reports remain confusing, with allegations that he was electrocuted, suffocated and poisoned all circulating - as well as reports that Hamas initially announced that he had died from bone disease a week earlier.

And this incident, like many before it, may remain shrouded in mystery, even as Hamas vows to take revenge.

Wanted (in Britain)

Gay David?

Posturing and laughter as victims rot

Mahmoud Abbas stepped further into humiliation by saying the only option for Arabs is to make peace with Israel

by Robert Fisk

The front page of the Beirut daily As-Safir said it all yesterday. Across the top was a terrible photograph of the bloated body of a Palestinian man newly discovered in the ruins of his home while two male members of his family shrieked and roared their grief. Below, at half the size, was a photograph from Israel of Western leaders joking with Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister. Olmert was roaring with laughter. Silvio Berlusconi, arms on the back of Olmert's shoulders, was also joshing and roaring – with laughter, not grief – and on Olmert's right was Nicolas Sarkozy of France wearing his stupidest of smiles. Only Chancellor Merkel appeared to understand the moral collapse. No smiles from Germany.

Europe laughs while Palestinians mourn their dead. No wonder that in the streets of Beirut, shops were doing a flourishing trade in Palestinian scarves and flags. Even some of Palestine's most serious enemies in Lebanon wore the Palestinian keffiyeh in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Over and over again, Al-Jazeera television strapped headlines on to their news reports of Palestinians carrying the decomposing corpses of their dead: "More than 1,300 dead in Gaza, 400 of them women and children – Israeli dead in the war 13, three of them civilians." That, too, said it all.

All day, the Arabs also had to endure watching their own leaders primping and posing in front of the cameras at the Arab summit in Kuwait, where the kings and presidents who claim to rule them also smiled and shook hands and tried to pretend that they were unified behind a Palestinian people who have been sorely betrayed. Even Mahmoud Abbas was there, the powerless, impotent leader of "Palestine" – where is that precisely, one had to ask? – trying to suck some importance from the coat-tails and robes of his betters.

Slipping and sliding on the corpses of Gaza, these assembled supreme beings should perhaps be pitied. What else could they do? Saudi King Abdullah announced £750,000 to rebuild Gaza; but how many times have the Arabs and the Europeans been throwing money at Gaza only to see it torn to shreds by incoming shell-fire?

It has to be said that the two cowled Hamas gunmen who announced that they had won a "victory" in the ruins of Gaza were only fractionally less hypocritical. Still they had not understood that they were not the Hizbollah of Lebanon. Gaza was no longer Beirut. Now, it seemed, Gaza was Stalingrad. But whose uniforms did Hamas think they were wearing: German or Soviet?

"Israel has to understand," the good king said – as if the Israelis were listening – "that the choice between war and peace will not always stay open and that the Arab initiative (for Arab recognition in return for an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders of Israel) that is on the table today will not stay on the table." He knew that "an eye for an eye ... did not say an eye for the eyes of a whole city". But how many times – how many bodies have to be pulled from the ruins – before the Saudis realise that time has run out?

The Israelis briskly dismissed land for peace in 2002 but yesterday they suddenly showed their interest again. "We continue to be willing to negotiate with all our neighbours on the basis of that initiative," the Israeli government spokesmen said – as if his own country's original rejection had never been thrown at the Arabs.

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, of course, dismissed the whole initiative in Qatar last week as dead, insisting that Israel be declared a "terrorist entity". But Mahmoud Abbas stepped further into humiliation yesterday by announcing that the "only option" for Arabs was to make peace with Israel. It was Arab "shortcomings" that led to the failure of the 2002 Arab initiative. Not Israel's rejection, mark you. No, it was all the fault of the Arabs. And this from the leader of "Palestine".

No wonder America's man in Egypt – a certain Hosni Mubarak – repeated the tired old slogan that "peace in the Middle East is an imperative that cannot be delayed". And then the Emir of Kuwait invited Bashar and Hosni and King Abdullah of Jordan and the other King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to have lunch together – the menu was not disclosed – to end their feuding.

Al-Jazeera showed the ever-more putrid bodies being tugged from beneath cross-beams and crushed concrete as these mighty potentates debated their little disputes. There was really no adequate comment for this charade.

The Massacre, As per Today

As per Sun 11 Jan 09, and according to international press, Israel has killed 854 and wounded more than 3,500 Palestinians. Palestinians have killed, in the other hand, 13 Israelis (10 of them, military personnel). You can reach your own conclusions.

Mass Murder

Can you imagine Palestinians killing 500 Israelis because they suffered 16 loses in 10 years due Israelli attacks? Shocking, isn't it?

Waltz With Bashir

A good film!

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