Category: Israel

“Our decision to go to the Security Council does not aim to isolate Israel, nor to confront the United States, rather to achieve our dream of recognition of our sovereign Palestinian state on the territories occupied since 1967, which is only 22 per cent of the area of historic Palestine,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said.

“The government of Israel and the U.S. offered us absolutely nothing that would allow us to resume negotiations,” he said. “All they offered was more settlements and Judization, day after day. So when we felt that the road of reasonable, acceptable and legitimate negotiations is close, we said we are going to the UN.”

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The United States will stop all financial aid to the Palestinian Authority if they proceed with plans to ask the United Nations for recognition of an independent state in September, a U.S. official warned Friday.

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By Fareed Zakaria, Published: May 25
From www.washingtonpost.com/opinions

Conventional wisdom is fast congealing in Washington that President Obama was wrong to demarcate a shift in American policy toward Israel last week. In fact, it was Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who broke with the past — in one of a series of diversions and obstacles Netanyahu has come up with anytime he is pressed. He wins in the short run, but ultimately, he is turning himself into a version of Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, “Mr. Nyet,” a man who will be bypassed by history.

Here is what Netanyahu’s immediate predecessor, Ehud Olmert, said in a widely reported speech to the Israeli Knesset in 2008: “We must give up Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and return to the core of the territory that is the State of Israel prior to 1967, with minor corrections dictated by the reality created since then.” Olmert, a man with a reputation as a hard-liner, said that meant Israel would keep about 6 percent of the West Bank — the major settlements — and give up land elsewhere. This was also the position of Ehud Barak, Israel’s prime minister during the late 1990s.

The Bush administration did not have a different position, as statements from the president and Condoleezza Rice make clear. Here is George W. Bush in 2008: “I believe that any peace agreement between them will require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state is viable and contiguous.” (The 1949 armistice lines is another way of saying the 1967 borders.)

Or consider this statement from last November: “[T]he United States believes that through good-faith negotiations, the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state, based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.” That’s not Obama, Bush or Rice, but a statement jointly issued by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Netanyahu on Nov. 11, 2010.

Today, Netanyahu says that any discussion of the 1967 borders is treason and that new borders must reflect “dramatic changes” since then. So in three years, an Israeli prime minister’s position has gone from “minor corrections” to “dramatic changes.” Netanyahu’s quarrel, it appears, is with himself. Yet we are to think it is Obama who has shifted policy?

Why did Netanyahu turn what was at best a minor difference into a major confrontation? Does it help Israel’s security or otherwise strengthen it to stoke tensions with its strongest ally and largest benefactor? Does such behavior further the resolution of Israel’s problems? No, but it helps Netanyahu stir support at home and maintain his fragile coalition. And while Bibi might sound like Churchill, he acts like a local ward boss, far more interested in holding onto his post than using it to secure Israel’s future.

The newsworthy, and real, shift in U.S. policy was Obama publicly condemning the Palestinian strategy to seek recognition as a state from the U.N. General Assembly in September. He also questioned the accord between Fatah and Hamas. Obama endorsed the idea of a demilitarized Palestinian state, a demand Israel has made in recent years. Instead of thanking Obama for this, Netanyahu created a public confrontation to garner applause at home.

Netanyahu’s references to the “indefensible” borders of 1967 reveal him to be mired in a world that has gone away. The chief threat to Israel today is not from a Palestinian army. Israel has the region’s strongest economy and military, complete with an arsenal of nuclear weapons. The chief threats to Israel are from new technologies — rockets, biological weapons — and demography. Its physical existence is less in doubt than its democratic existence as it continues to rule millions of Palestinians in serf-like conditions — entitled to neither a vote nor a country.

The path to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been clear for 20 years. Israel would cede most of the land it conquered in the 1967 war to a Palestinian state, keeping the major settlement blocks. In return, it would get a series of measures designed to protect its security. That’s why the process is called land for peace. The problem is that Netanyahu has never believed in land for peace. His strategy has been to put up obstacles, create confusion and wait it out. But one day there will be peace, along the lines that people have talked about for 20 years. And Netanyahu will be remembered only as a person before the person who made peace, a comma in history.

President Obama welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House Friday, one day after the president’s policy speech on the Arab world and Israeli-Palestinian relations called for a return to pre-1967 borders, a state Mr. Netanyahu called “indefensible.” After a closed door meeting, Netanyahu reiterated that “Israel has certain security requirements.”

Washington’s instinct is to meddle in the Mideast. Tamp that urge.
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The upheaval engulfing the Arab world presents the United States with two choices. Washington can either embrace change, stand on the sidelines, and accept whatever results. Or it can intervene, insert itself in the process, and try to shape the outcome. Advocating the latter would be to assume reserves of power, not to mention wisdom, at Washington’s disposal. At the moment, however, the U.S. possesses neither.

But history, too, argues for restraint. Consider what several decades of outside meddling in the Islamic world has accomplished. Out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after World War I came a new map of the vast region, designed not to promote the well-being of its inhabitants, but to satisfy European (chiefly British) interests. The Allies drew boundaries, created nation-states, and installed monarchs to ensure Western access to oil and control of the Suez Canal.

British success proved fleeting, however. The many tasks proved expensive, and in the wake of World War II, cash-strapped Britain devolved its responsibilities onto the U.S., which had grown hungry for global leadership. Although American aims differed little from Great Britain’s, the Cold War enabled Washington to camouflage its purposes. It portrayed Iran’s Mohammad Mossadegh as a communist dupe to justify his overthrow, depicted Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser as a puppet of the Kremlin rather than as an Arab nationalist, and endorsed Israel’s image of itself as a lonely bastion of democracy in a sea of Soviet-armed authoritarians.

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While politicians are trying to bring peace to the Middle East, thousands of Palestinians say they’re living under apartheid. A barrier almost 700-km long has been dividing the West Bank for eight years. Israel says it’s for security, but Palestinians insist it’s segregation. Paula Slier went to check on what’s hiding behind the ‘peace facade’.

Hecklers disrupt Netanyahu’s speech at U.S. Jewish conference
Protesters chant ‘loyalty oath delegitimizes Israel’ during Prime Minister’s speech at Jewish Federations General Assembly. By Sara MillerTags: Israel newsJewish worldBenjamin NetanyahuPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the Jewish Federations General Assembly on Monday was marked by repeated heckling from members of the audience, who were then unceremoniously escorted from the plush ballroom.
The first heckler, who interrupted Netanyahu barely moments after he began his 30 minute speech, was ejected while shouting “the loyalty oath delegitimizes Israel”.
The prime minister, unperturbed by the interruption, responded by saying, “I was going to talk about delegitimizing Israel but they really have the wrong address.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at the Jewish Federations General Assembly in New Orleans, November 8, 2010.
Subsequent interruptions of regular intervals protested Israel’s occupation, claiming that it too delegitimizes Israel.
The unprecedented scale of interruptions did not bear well with the audience, who after the first heckler’s interruptions responded with chants of “Am Yisrael Chai” [The nation of Israel lives], and “Bibi, Bibi” [Netanyahu's nickname].
Hannah King, a 17-year-old student and member of the Jewish Voices for Peace, which organized the protests, told Haaretz that the protesters had been escorted out of the hotel, where they were handed over to the police, although she did not believe that they had been arrested.
King said that she had been driven to act as she felt Israel’s behavior went against her Jewish upbringing.

“We believe that the actions that Israel is taking, like settlements, like the occupation, like the loyalty oath, are contrary to the Jewish values that we learnt in Jewish day school,” she said. “This is not Tikkun Olam. Oppressing people in refugee camps is not Tikkun Olam. And it is a hypocrisy that I cannot abide.”
“We must be tough on all countries that abuse human rights but I care about Israel because for me it’s personal,” King explained. “I don’t believe that Netanyahu heard our message but our message was aimed at the other young Jews at the convention.”

J Street urges Israel to halt settlement building until borders finalized
Pro-Israel lobby ‘profoundly disspointed’ by news of approval to build nearly 1,000 houses beyond Green Line. By Natasha MozgovayaTags: Israel newsEast JerusalemIsrael settlementsJoe BidenBenjamin NetanyahuThe pro-Israel lobby J Street issued a statement Monday criticizing Israel’s announcement that it had approved the construction of over 1,000 Jewish homes beyond the Green Line in Jerusalem.
J Street executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami.

“J Street is profoundly disappointed that the Israeli government has chosen this moment to announce yet another large round of construction in East Jerusalem,” the statement said.
The news coincided with a trip to the United States by Netanyahu, which included a meeting with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. It was during a trip by Biden to Israel earlier in the year that a diplomatic row erupted between the allies over Israeli plans to build 1,600 new Jewish homes in another East Jerusalem neighborhood, Ramat Shlomo.
“The latest negotiations designed to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict hang by a thread, and the United States is working tirelessly to find a way to keep hope for a diplomatic two-state resolution to the conflict alive,” the J Street statement said, adding that the news was even more disappointing “Netanyahu is in the U.S. this week, participating in important discussions with Vice President Biden and other American officials over how to resume peace talks and how to address the Iranian nuclear program.”
Earlier this year, Israel announced the construction of over 1,600 new houses for ultra-Orthodox families in East Jerusalem.
“I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem,” Biden said, as the timing of the announcement was strongly criticized by both the left wing parties in Israel and the U.S. administration.
The American-Jewish lobby urged Israel to delay any further construction over the Green Line “until negotiations over the border have been finalized, in the interest of its long-term security and survival as a democracy and as the homeland of the Jewish people.”
Last month, over 120 leaders of Jewish organizations from around the world and important Jewish figures met in Jerusalem for a two-day conference for a meeting organized by the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute to deliberate the impact of the peace process and possible concessions to be expected and demanded a role in determining the fate of Jerusalem and other key issues in Mideast peace talks.
Participants in the conference were former presidential adviser Elliott Abrams; Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations; former U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer; the head of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman; the senior vice president of Bna’i B’rith International, Daniel Mariaschin; Pierre Besnainou, a leading figure of the Jewish community in France; and others.