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Paul Merrell

Palestinians in Israel clash with police over Gaza assault | Maan News Agency - 0 views

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war & peace Israel Palestine Gaza protests

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • NAZERETH, Israel (AFP) -- Palestinian citizens of Israel clashed with police in the northern city of Nazareth on Monday, police said, at the end of a protest against Israel's deadly military strikes in the Gaza Strip.The clashes came as Nazareth and cities in the West Bank observed a general strike to mourn the victims of the Gaza conflict between Israel and Hamas -- the bloodiest since 2009 -- that has cost more than 500 Palestinian lives in two weeks.Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said about 200 Palestinian citizens of Israel in Nazareth clashed with security forces, who responded with a water cannon and stun grenades, arresting 16 people after the 3,000-strong demonstration in Israel's largest Palestinian city.
  • Israeli forces kill Palestinian in protest near Bethlehem
Paul Merrell

Qatars Emir crosses into Hamas-run Gaza on landmark visit - Al Arabiya News - 0 views

english.alarabiya.net/...un-Gaza-on-landmark-visit.html

war & peace Gaza Hamas Qatar-Emir economico-development

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • The Emir of Qatar entered the Gaza Strip on Tuesday for a visit that will raise the prestige of its isolated Islamist rulers in the Hamas movement, but disappoint Israel and mainstream Palestinian leaders in the West Bank. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani crossed into Gaza from Egypt at the head of a large delegation on what is billed as a humanitarian visit to inaugurate a multi-million-dollar worth of reconstruction projects. “The emir agreed to increase Qatari investment from $254 million to $400 million,” Gaza’s Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya said during a press conference in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza to mark the emir’s visit.
  • The Qatari leader, who has led Arab efforts to support rebels in Syria and Libya during Arab Spring revolts, had earlier left Doha with a large delegation including his wife Sheikha Moza, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassim and other ministers.Gulf Arab states are trying to lure Hamas away from its alliance with Iran, whose nuclear energy program has raised the prospect of a war with Israel.
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Jul 14
     
    This is from 2012, 
Paul Merrell

Hamas not complicit in teens' kidnap: Israeli police | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR - 0 views

www.dailystar.com.lb/...ens-kidnap-israeli-police.ashx

war & peace Israel false-flag Gaza murder-3-settler-teens lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • he Israeli Police Foreign Press Spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, appears to have falsified the Israeli government’s claim that Hamas was responsible for the killing of three Israeli settler teens in June, by saying responsibility lies with a lone cell that operated without the complicity of Hamas’ leadership. The kidnapping and subsequent killing of three Israeli settler teens last month is considered to be a flashpoint for the escalated violence in Gaza -- that as of day 19 of the conflict has left 926 Palestinians, mostly civilians, dead. At the time Israeli authorities placed the blame squarely on Hamas, with Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu saying "They were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by animals in human form. Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay." Friday however, there appeared to be break in the official line when BBC journalist Jon Donnison tweeted a series of statements he attributed to the Israeli Police Foreign Press Spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld.
  • “Israeli police MickeyRosenfeld tells me men who killed 3 Israeli teens def[initely] lone cell, Hamas affiliated but not operating under leadership1/2.” “Seems to contradict the line from Netanyahu government. 2/2” The journalist then goes on to tweet a further statement from Rosenfeld which, given that Israeli authorities used Hamas’ culpability as a pretext for its crackdown of the West Bank that saw hundreds of Palestinians arrested and several killed, could cast serious doubts on the Israeli government’s justifications. “Israeli police spokes Mickey Rosenfeld also said if kidnapping had been ordered by Hamas leadership, they'd have known about it in advance.”
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Jul 14
     
    There went Israel's excuse for launching war against Hamas in Gaza.
Paul Merrell

Where global solutions are shaped for you | News & Media | HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL OPENS S... - 0 views

www.unog.ch/...9CDF7FE83E0581C1257D1E00434418

war & peace Palestine Israel Gaza UN-Human-Rights-Council

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Kyung-wha Kang, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, stated that at least 18 medical facilities, including five UNRWA health clinics, had been hit by airstrikes and shelling since the beginning of the fighting.  The seven-year blockade had destroyed Gaza’s economy, with high unemployment rates and growing dependence on international assistance.  The United Nations was feeding 67 per cent of the population.  The international community and the parties to the conflict had to live up to their obligations.  Lance Bartholomeusz, Director of Legal Affairs of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, said that by yesterday evening, 22 July, approximately 118,000 Palestinians had sought refuge in 77 UNRWA schools.  That was about 6 per cent of the population of Gaza and double the peak in UNRWA shelters during the 2008 to 2009 conflict.  The conflict had not spared UNRWA premises.  Makarim Wibisono, Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, speaking on behalf of the Coordination Committee of the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council, said in addition to at least 599 Palestinians killed, the destruction of numerous houses had left several thousand families homeless.  At the same time, the right of the Palestinian people to resist occupation could not justify the launching of thousands of rockets and mortars directed against Israeli civilians. 
  • NAVI PILLAY, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said since Israel announced its military operation “Protective Edge” on 7 July, Gaza had been subjected to daily intensive bombardment from the air, land and sea, employing well over 2,100 air strikes alone.  The hostilities had resulted in the deaths of more than 600 Palestinians, including at least 147 children and 74 women.  As in the two previous crises in 2009 and 2012, it was innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip, including children, women, the elderly and persons with disabilities, who suffered the most.  According to preliminary United Nations figures, around 74 per cent of those killed so far were civilians, and thousands more had been injured.  Hundreds of homes and other civilian buildings, such as schools, had been destroyed or severely damaged in Gaza, and more than 140,000 Palestinians had been displaced.  Two Israeli civilians had also lost their lives and between 17 and 32 others had been reported injured as a result of rockets and other projectiles fired from Gaza, and 27 Israeli soldiers had been killed during military operations in Gaza.  The indiscriminate firing by Hamas and other armed groups of more than 2,900 rockets and mortars from Gaza continued to endanger the lives of civilians in Israel, and Ms. Pillay once again condemned such indiscriminate attacks.  It was unacceptable to locate military assets in densely populated areas or to launch attacks from such areas.  However, international law was clear - the actions of one party did not absolve the other party of the need to respect its obligations under international law.
  • he also warned that the current situation in Gaza overshadowed the backdrop of heightened tensions in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem and expressed concern about a significant rise in incitement to violence against Palestinians, including through social media.  Only those responsible for criminal acts could legitimately be punished, she said, individuals should not be subject to collective penalties. 
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  • LANCE BARTHOLOMEUSZ, Acting Director of Legal Affairs, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA), said UNRWA was deeply alarmed and affected by the escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip and the devastating human and physical toll it was taking on civilians, including Palestine refugees.  Far too many lives were being lost and the traumas resulting from the military operations would mark the population for years to come.  Among ordinary Palestinians there was a profound crisis of confidence in the ability of international law and international mechanisms to protect civilians, and to prevent and address violations of international law.  Because of military operations, and because over 40 per cent of Gaza’s territory was affected by Israel evacuation warnings or declarations of “no-go zones”, thousands of people continued to flee to shelters run by UNRWA and by partners.  By yesterday evening, 22 July, approximately 118,000 Palestinians had sought refuge in 77 UNRWA schools.  That was about 6 per cent of the population of Gaza and double the peak in UNRWA shelters during the 2008 to 2009 conflict.
  • The conflict had not spared UNRWA premises, 77 of which had been damaged by air raids and other fire, which was totally unacceptable.  All parties to the conflict must respect at all times the neutrality and inviolability of UNRWA’s premises.  The situation of the population of Gaza and of Palestine Refugees in Gaza had become completely unsustainable.  Israel’s illegal blockade had deepened poverty levels and Gaza's aquifer would be entirely contaminated in the next three to four years making the Strip essentially unliveable.  Today, these indicators paled in comparison to the intensity of the bombardments, fighting and the immediate fears for security and survival. 
Paul Merrell

Jimmy Carter blames Paris attacks on Israeli-Palestinian conflict | i24news - See beyond - 0 views

www.i24news.tv/...n-israeli-palestinian-conflict

war & peace Charlie-Hedbo Israel Palestine Jimmy-Carter

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Muslim frustration over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the factors that led to the attacks on satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris last week, former US President Jimmy Carter told Jon Stewart on the Daily Show on Monday. When Stewart asked Carter what he believed led to the massacre, which claimed the lives of 17 people, the latter replied: "Well, one of the origins for it is the Palestinian problem. And this aggravates people who are affiliated in any way with the Arab people who live in the West Bank and Gaza, what they are doing now [and] what's being done to them. So I think that's part of it." Carter, a Georgia Democrat who served as president from 1977 to 1981 and who in 2002 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, said the world is in the midst of a "new evolutionary development in terrorism." "I think this is a new evolutionary development in terrorism, where people go into Syria, they get trained there, they have a passport from France, from Great Britain or from the United States," he said. "They stay there for a few months and learn how to be a terrorist and then they come back through Turkey and you know they have been there and you know who they are. And I think this event in Paris is going to waken up the people in charge of security to watch those people more closely than they have in the past - and not single out all of the Muslims in the country." Carter has repeatedly slammed US administrations for failing to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and has advocated direct negotiations with the Islamist group Hamas.
Paul Merrell

ICC launches initial inquiry into potential war crimes in Palestinian territ... - Israe... - 0 views

www.ynetnews.com/...0,7340,L-4615851,00.html

war & peace Israel Palestine Gaza ICC war-crimes-investigation

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court says she has opened a preliminary probe into possible war crimes in Palestinian territories. Fatou Bensouda said in a statement Friday she will conduct the preliminary examination in "full independence and impartiality."
  • Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Friday the ICC's scandalous decision intended to hurt Israel's right to defend itself from terror. "The same court which – with more than 200,000 dead in Syria – has not found cause to intervene there, or in Libya, or in other places, finds it appropriate to 'examine' the most moral military in the world, in a decision based entirely on anti-Israeli political considerations."
  • On January 1, a day before requesting ICC membership, the Palestinian government asked the prosecutors to investigate alleged crimes committed on its territory since June 13, 2014, the day three Israeli teens were kidnapped and murdered in the West Bank, leading Israel to launch a military operation in Palestinian territories.   "The office will conduct its analysis in full independence and impartiality," said the prosecution office in a statement, adding that it was a matter of "policy and practice" to open a preliminary examination after receiving such a referral.   "The case is now in the hands of the court," said Nabil Abuznaid, head of the Palestinian delegation in The Hague. "It is a legal matter now and we have faith in the court system."
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  • Official sources in Jerusalem said "Israel categorically denies the announcement by the prosecutor on the opening of a preliminary examination based on the scandalous request by the Palestinian Authority."   "The PA is not a country and thus there is no cause for the court, even accords to its rules, to undertake such an inquiry. The decision is absurd, even more so given that the PA cooperates with terror organization Hamas, which commits war crimes against Israel – who is fighting terror," added the sources.   Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki welcomed the move and said the Palestinian Authority would cooperate.
Paul Merrell

No, Obama, Russia's Economy Isn't 'in Tatters' - Bloomberg View - 0 views

www.bloombergview.com/...ia-s-economy-isn-t-in-tatters-

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Russia sanctions oil-prices economy

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Western politicians and pundits should be more careful with their predictions for the Russian economy: Reports of its demise may prove to be premature. Bashing the Russian economy has lately become a popular pastime. In his state of the nation address last month, U.S. President Barack Obama said it was "in tatters." And yesterday, Anders Aslund of the Peterson Institute for International Economics published an article predicting a 10 percent drop in gross domestic product this year -- more or less in line with the apocalyptic predictions that prevailed when the oil price reached its nadir late last year and the ruble was in free fall. Aslund's forecast focuses on Russia's shrinking currency reserves, some of which have been earmarked for supporting government spending in difficult times. At $364.6 billion, they are down 26 percent from a year ago and $21.6 billion from the beginning of this year. Aslund expects $166 billion to be spent on infrastructure investments and bailing out companies, and another $100 billion to exit via capital flight and other currency outflows. As a result, given foreign debts of almost $600 billion, "Russia's reserve situation is approaching a critical limit," he says.
  • What this argument ignores is that Russia's foreign debts are declining along with its reserves -- that's what happens when the money is used to pay down state companies' obligations. Last year, for example, the combined foreign liabilities of the Russian government and companies dropped by $129.4 billion, compared with a $124.3 billion decline in foreign reserves. Beyond that, a large portion of Russian companies' remaining foreign debt is really part of a tax-evasion scheme: By lending themselves money from abroad, the companies transfer profits to lower-tax jurisdictions. Such loans can easily be extended if sanctions prevent the Russian side from paying. The declining price of oil is also less of a threat than many have warned. True, the Russian government's revenues from energy exports will fall in dollar terms. But because Russia's central bank has allowed the ruble's value against the dollar to decline, the ruble value of the revenues will be higher than they otherwise would be. As a result, Russia no longer requires $100 oil to balance its budget -- and the effect of lower oil prices on the broader economy will be muted.
  • Economists at the respected Gaidar Institute, for example, expect the floating of the ruble to roughly halve the negative GDP impact of the decline in oil prices. They estimate that Russian GDP will shrink by a moderate 2.7 percent this year, even if Brent oil trades at $40 (it traded at $61 today). That's just a bit more optimistic than the consensus among 39 economists polled by Bloomberg between Feb. 20 and Feb. 25: On average, they see a decline of 4 percent. Economic sanctions, which most forecasts assume will continue this year, are having less impact that many in the West would like to believe. Sergei Tsukhlo of the Gaidar Institute estimates that the sanctions have affected only 6 percent of Russian industrial enterprises. "Their effect remains quite insignificant despite all that's being said about them," he wrote, noting that trade disruptions with Ukraine have been more important.
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  • Granted, there's no avoiding a significant drop in Russians' living standards because of accelerating inflation. The economics ministry in Moscow predicts real wages will fall by 9 percent this year -- which, Aslund wrote, means that "for the first time after 15 years in power," Russian President Vladimir Putin "will have to face a majority of the Russian people experiencing a sharply declining standard of living." So far, though, Russians have taken the initial shock of devaluation and accompanying inflation largely in stride. The latest poll from the independent Levada Center, conducted between Feb. 20 and Feb. 23, actually shows an uptick in Putin's approval rating -- to 86 percent from 85 percent in January.  It's time to bury the expectation that Russia will fall apart economically under pressure from falling oil prices and economic sanctions, and that Russians, angered by a drop in their living standards, will rise up and sweep Putin out of office. Western powers face a tough choice: Settle for a lengthy siege and ratchet up the sanctions despite the progress in Ukraine, or start looking for ways to restart dialogue with Russia, a country that just won't go away.
Paul Merrell

Responding to Failure: Reorganizing U.S. Policies in the Middle East | Middle East Poli... - 0 views

mepc.org/...nizing-us-policies-middle-east

war & peace Mideast Israel Arabs Shia-nations U.S.-foreign-policy recommendations

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • I want to speak with you today about the Middle East. This is the region where Africa, Asia, and Europe come together. It is also the part of the world where we have been most compellingly reminded that some struggles cannot be won, but there are no struggles that cannot be lost. It is often said that human beings learn little useful from success but can learn a great deal from defeat. If so, the Middle East now offers a remarkably rich menu of foreign-policy failures for Americans to study. • Our four-decade-long diplomatic effort to bring peace to the Holy Land sputtered to an ignominious conclusion a year ago. • Our unconditional political, economic, and military backing of Israel has earned us the enmity of Israel’s enemies even as it has enabled egregiously contemptuous expressions of ingratitude and disrespect for us from Israel itself.
  • • Our attempts to contain the Iranian revolution have instead empowered it. • Our military campaigns to pacify the region have destabilized it, dismantled its states, and ignited ferocious wars of religion among its peoples. • Our efforts to democratize Arab societies have helped to produce anarchy, terrorism, dictatorship, or an indecisive juxtaposition of all three. • In Iraq, Libya, and Syria we have shown that war does not decide who’s right so much as determine who’s left. • Our campaign against terrorism with global reach has multiplied our enemies and continuously expanded their areas of operation. • Our opposition to nuclear proliferation did not prevent Israel from clandestinely developing nuclear weapons and related delivery systems and may not preclude Iran and others from following suit.
  • • At the global level, our policies in the Middle East have damaged our prestige, weakened our alliances, and gained us a reputation for militaristic fecklessness in the conduct of our foreign affairs. They have also distracted us from challenges elsewhere of equal or greater importance to our national interests. That’s quite a record.
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  • One can only measure success or failure by reference to what one is trying achieve. So, in practice, what have U.S. objectives been? Are these objectives still valid? If we’ve failed to advance them, what went wrong? What must we do now to have a better chance of success? Our objectives in the Middle East have not changed much over the course of the past half century or more. We have sought to 1. Gain acceptance and security for a Jewish homeland from the other states and peoples of the region; 2. Ensure the uninterrupted availability of the region’s energy supplies to sustain global and U.S. security and prosperity; 3. Preserve our ability to transit the region so as to be able to project power around the world; 4. Prevent the rise of a regional hegemon or the deployment of weapons of mass destruction that might threaten any or all of these first three objectives; 5. Maximize profitable commerce; and 6. Promote stability while enhancing respect for human rights and progress toward constitutional democracy. Let’s briefly review what’s happened with respect to each of these objectives. I will not mince words.
  • Israel has come to enjoy military supremacy but it remains excluded from most participation in its region’s political, economic, and cultural life. In the 67 years since the Jewish state was proclaimed, Israel has not made a single friend in the Middle East, where it continues to be regarded as an illegitimate legacy of Western imperialism engaged in racist removal of the indigenous population. International support for Israel is down to the United States and a few of the former colonial powers that originally imposed the Zionist project on the Arabs under Sykes-Picot and the related Balfour Declaration. The two-state solution has expired as a physical or political possibility. There is no longer any peace process to distract global attention from Israel’s maltreatment of its captive Arab populations. After years of deference to American diplomacy, the Palestinians are about to challenge the legality of Israel’s cruelties to them in the International Criminal Court and other venues in which Americans have no veto, are not present, or cannot protect the Jewish state from the consequences of its own behavior as we have always been able to do in the past. Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza are fueling a drive to boycott its products, disinvest in its companies, and sanction its political and cultural elite. These trends are the very opposite of what the United States has attempted to achieve for Israel.
  • Despite Mr. Netanyahu’s recent public hysteria about Iran and his efforts to demonize it, Israel has traditionally seen Iran’s rivalry with the Arabs as a strategic asset. It had a very cooperative relationship with the Shah. Neither Israelis nor Arabs have forgotten the strategic logic that produced Israel's entente with Iran. Israel is very much on Daesh’s list of targets, as is Iran. For now, however, Israel’s main concern is the possible loss of its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. Many years ago, Israel actually did what it now accuses Iran of planning to do. It clandestinely developed nuclear weapons while denying to us and others that it was doing so. Unlike Iran, Israel has not adhered to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or subjected its nuclear facilities to international inspection. It has expressed no interest in proposals for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. It sees its ability to bring on nuclear Armageddon as the ultimate guarantee of its existence.
  • The late King `Abdullah of Saudi Arabia engineered a reversal of decades of Arab rejectionism at Beirut in 2002. He brought all Arab countries and later all 57 Muslim countries to agree to normalize relations with Israel if it did a deal — any deal — with the Palestinians that the latter could accept. Israel spurned the offer. Its working assumption seems to be that it does not need peace with its neighbors as long as it can bomb and strafe them. Proceeding on this basis is not just a bad bet, it is one that is dividing Israel from the world, including Jews outside Israel. This does not look like a story with a happy ending. It’s hard to avoid the thought that Zionism is turning out to be bad for the Jews. If so, given the American investment in it, it will also have turned out to be bad for America. The political costs to America of support for Israel are steadily rising. We must find a way to divert Israel from the largely self-engineered isolation into which it is driving itself, while repairing our own increasing international ostracism on issues related to Israel.  
  • In a stunning demonstration of his country’s most famous renewable resource — chutzpah — Israel’s Prime Minister chose this very moment to make America the main issue in his reelection campaign while simultaneously transforming Israel into a partisan issue in the United States. This is the very opposite of a sound survival strategy for Israel. Uncertainties about their country’s future are leading many Israelis to emigrate, not just to America but to Europe. This should disturb not just Israelis but Americans, if only because of the enormous investment we have made in attempts to gain a secure place for Israel in its region and the world. The Palestinians have been silent about Mr. Netanyahu’s recent political maneuvers. Evidently, they recall Napoleon’s adage that one should never interrupt an enemy when he is making a mistake. This brings me to an awkward but transcendently important issue. Israel was established as a haven from anti-Semitism — Jew hatred — in Europe, a disease of nationalism and Christian culture that culminated in the Holocaust. Israel’s creation was a relief for European Jews but a disaster for the Arabs of Palestine, who were either ethnically cleansed by European Jewish settlers or subjugated, or both.  But the birth of Israel also proved tragic for Jews throughout the Middle East — the Mizrahim. In a nasty irony, the implementation of Zionism in the Holy Land led to the introduction of European-style anti-Semitism — including its classic Christian libels on Jews — to the region, dividing Arab Jews from their Muslim neighbors as never before and compelling them to join European Jews in taking refuge in Israel amidst outrage over the dispossession of Palestinians from their homeland. Now, in a further irony, Israel’s pogroms and other injustices to the Muslim and Christian Arabs over whom it rules are leading not just to a rebirth of anti-Semitism in Europe but to its globalization.
  • To many, Israel now seems to have acquired the obnoxious habit of biting the American hand that has fed it for so long. The Palestinians have despaired of American support for their self-determination. They are reaching out to the international community in ways that deliberately bypass the United States. Random acts of violence herald mayhem in the Holy Land. Daesh has proclaimed the objective of erasing the Sykes-Picot borders and the states within them. It has already expunged the border between Iraq and Syria. It is at work in Lebanon and has set its sights on Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. Lebanon, under Saudi influence, has turned to France rather than America for support. Hezbollah has intervened militarily in Iraq and Syria, both of whose governments are close to Iran. Egypt and Turkey have distanced themselves from the United States as well as from each other. Russia is back as a regional actor and arms supplier. The Gulf Arabs, Egypt, and Turkey now separately intervene in Libya, Syria, and Iraq without reference to American policy or views. Iran is the dominant influence in Iraq, Syria, parts of Lebanon, and now Yemen. It has boots on the ground in Iraq. And now Saudi Arabia seems to be organizing a coalition that will manage its own nuclear deterrence and military balancing of Ir
  • To describe this as out of control is hardly adequate. What are we to do about it? Perhaps we should start by recalling the first law of holes — “when stuck in one, stop digging.” It appears that “don’t just sit there, bomb something” isn’t much of a strategy. When he was asked last summer what our strategy for dealing with Daesh was, President Obama replied, “We don’t yet have one.” He was widely derided for that. He should have been praised for making the novel suggestion that before Washington acts, it should first think through what it hopes to accomplish and how best to do it. Sunzi once observed that “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." America’s noisy but strategy-free approach to the Middle East has proven him right. Again the starting point must be what we are trying to accomplish. Strategy is "the discipline of achieving desired ends through the most efficient use of available means" [John Lewis Gaddis].Our desired ends with respect to the Middle East are not in doubt. They have been and remain to gain an accepted and therefore secure place for Israel there; to keep the region's oil and gas coming at reasonable prices; to be able to pass through the area at will; to head off challenges to these interests; to do profitable business in the markets of the Middle East; and to promote stability amidst the expansion of liberty in its countries. Judging by results, we have been doing a lot wrong. Two related problems in our overall approach need correction. They are “enablement” and the creation of “moral hazard.” Both are fall-out from  relationships of codependency.
  • Enablement occurs when one party to a relationship indulges or supports and thereby enables another party’s dysfunctional behavior. A familiar example from ordinary life is giving money to a drunk or a drug addict or ignoring, explaining away, or defending their subsequent self-destructive behavior.  Moral hazard is the condition that obtains when one party is emboldened to take risks it would not otherwise take because it knows another party will shoulder the consequences and bear the costs of failure. The U.S.-Israel relationship has evolved to exemplify codependency. It now embodies both enablement and moral hazard. U.S. support for Israel is unconditional.  Israel has therefore had no need to cultivate relations with others in the Middle East, to declare its borders, or to choose peace over continued expansion into formerly Arab lands. Confidence in U.S. backing enables Israel to do whatever it likes to the Palestinians and its neighbors without having to worry about the consequences. Israel is now a rich country, but the United States continues to subsidize it with cash transfers and other fiscal privileges. The Jewish state is the most powerful country in the Middle East. It can launch attacks on its neighbors, confident that it will be resupplied by the United States. Its use of U.S. weapons in ways that violate both U.S. and international law goes unrebuked. 41 American vetoes in the United Nations Security Council have exempted Israel from censure and international law. We enable it to defy the expressed will of the international community, including, ironically, our own.
  • We Americans are facilitating Israel's indulgence in denial and avoidance of the choices it must make if it is not to jeopardize its long-term existence as a state in the Middle East. The biggest contribution we could now make to Israel's longevity would be to ration our support for it, so as to cause it to rethink and reform its often self-destructive behavior. Such peace as Israel now enjoys with Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians is the direct result of tough love of this kind by earlier American administrations. We Americans cannot save Israel from itself, but we can avoid killing it with uncritical kindness. We should support Israel when it makes sense to do so and it needs our support on specific issues, but not otherwise. Israel is placing itself and American interests in jeopardy. We need to discuss how to reverse this dynamic.
  • Moral hazard has also been a major problem in our relationship with our Arab partners. Why should they play an active role in countering the threat to them they perceive from Iran, if they can get America to do this for them? Similarly, why should any Muslim country rearrange its priorities to deal with Muslim renegades like Daesh when it can count on America to act for it? If America thinks it must lead, why not let it do so? But responsible foreign and defense policies begin with self-help, not outsourcing of military risks. The United States has the power-projection and war-fighting capabilities to back a Saudi-led coalition effort against Daesh. The Saudis have the religious and political credibility, leadership credentials, and diplomatic connections to organize such an effort. We do not. Since this century began, America has administered multiple disappointments to its allies and friends in the Middle East, while empowering their and our adversaries. Unlike the Gulf Arabs, Egypt, and Turkey, Washington does not have diplomatic relations with Tehran. Given our non-Muslim identity, solidarity with Israel, and recent history in the Fertile Crescent, the United States cannot hope to unite the region’s Muslims against Daesh.  Daesh is an insurgency that claims to exemplify Islam as well as a governing structure and an armed force. A coalition led by inhibited foreign forces, built on papered-over differences, and embodying hedged commitments will not defeat such an insurgency with or without boots on the ground.
  • When elections have yielded governments whose policies we oppose, we have not hesitated to conspire with their opponents to overthrow them. But the results of our efforts to coerce political change in the Middle East are not just failures but catastrophic failures. Our policies have nowhere produced democracy. They have instead contrived the destabilization of societies, the kindling of religious warfare, and the installation of dictatorships contemptuous of the rights of religious and ethnic minorities. Frankly, we have done a lot better at selling things, including armaments, to the region than we have at transplanting the ideals of the Atlantic Enlightenment there. The region’s autocrats cooperate with us to secure our protection, and they get it. When they are nonetheless overthrown, the result is not democracy or the rule of law but socio-political collapse and the emergence of  a Hobbesian state of nature in which religious and ethnic communities, families, and individuals are able to feel safe only when they are armed and have the drop on each other. Where we have engineered or attempted to engineer regime change, violent politics, partition, and ethno-religious cleansing have everywhere succeeded unjust but tranquil order. One result of our bungled interventions in Iraq and Syria is the rise of Daesh. This is yet another illustration that, in our efforts to do good in the Middle East, we have violated the principle that one should first do no harm.
  • Americans used to believe that we could best lead by example. We and those in the Middle East seeking nonviolent change would all be better off if America returned to that tradition and forswore ideologically motivated hectoring and intervention. No one willingly follows a wagging finger. Despite our unparalleled ability to use force against foreigners, the best way to inspire them to emulate us remains showing them that we have our act together. At the moment, we do not. In the end, to cure the dysfunction in our policies toward the Middle East, it comes down to this. We must cure the dysfunction and venality of our politics. If we cannot, we have no business trying to use an 8,000-mile-long screwdriver to fix things one-third of the way around the world. That doesn’t work well under the best of circumstances. But when the country wielding the screwdriver has very little idea what it’s doing, it really screws things up.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15
     
    Chas Freeman served as US ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the war to liberate Kuwait and as Assistant Secretary of Defense from 1993-94. He was the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on "diplomacy" and is the author of five books, including "America's Misadventures in the Middle East" and "Interesting Times: China, America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige."  I have largely omitted highlighting portions of the speech dealing with Muslim nations because Freeman has apparently lost touch with the actual U.S., Saudi, UAE, Kuwait, and Turish roles in creating and expanding ISIL. But his analysis of Israel's situation and recommendations for curing it seem quite valid, as well as his overall Mideast recommendation to heed the First Law of Holes: "when stuck in one, stop digging."   I recommend reading the entire speech notwithstanding his misunderstanding of ISIL. There is a lot of very important history there ably summarized.
Paul Merrell

French warning over business with settlements may have broader impact on Israeli econom... - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...broader-impact-israeli-economy

Israel Palestine BSD France UK Spain Germany Sweden Luxembourg

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • France today advised its citizens and companies against doing business with Israeli settlements in occupied territories. The government warned that firms could face legal action tied to “land, water, mineral and other natural resources” as well as “reputational risks.” The step could have implications for the Israeli economy far beyond activities limited to Israeli settlements themselves. The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) welcomed the move.
  • Spain, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Luxembourg are expected to publish similar guidance in coming days in what appears to be a coordinated move by European states. The French warning follows similar steps by the UK and Netherlands, prompted by an advocacy effort by civil society groups and members of the European Parliament.
  • The new guidance published by the French foreign ministry states that “The West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Golan Heights are territories occupied by Israeli since 1967. The settlements are illegal under international law.”
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  • The French warning is worded in language almost identical to that issued by the UK last December, suggesting a high degree of intergovernmental coordination.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Jun 14
     
    More than 60 years overdue, but better late than never. We're not there yet, but apartheid Israel is definitely approaching the point where it must bow to the anti Palestinian Boycott, Sanctions, and DIvestment movement, just as the apartheid South African government had to. A boatload of European nations joining the BSD movement is a powerful message to the Izzies that the era of them occupying and colonizing Palestine is quickly approaching its end. 
Paul Merrell

Virtual Economy's Phantom Job Gains Are Based on Statistical Fraud. And More Fraud Is i... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5390330

banksters oligarchy employment stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Washington can’t stop lying.  Don’t be convinced by last Thursday’s job report that it is your fault if you don’t have a job. Those 288,000 jobs and 6.1% unemployment rate are more fiction than reality.  In his analysis of the June Labor Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, John Williams (www.ShadowStats.com) wrote that the 288,000 June jobs and 6.1% unemployment rate  are “far removed from common experience and underlying reality.” Payrolls were overstated by “massive, hidden shifts in seasonal adjustments,” and the Birth-Death model added the usual phantom jobs.  Williams reports that “the seasonal factors are changed each and every month as part of the concurrent seasonal-adjustment process, which is tantamount to a fraud,” as the changes in the seasonal factors can inflate the jobs number.  While the headline numbers always are on a new basis, the prior reporting is not revised so as to be consistent.
  • The monthly unemployment rates are not comparable, so one doesn’t know whether the official U.3 rate (the headline rate that the financial press reports) went up or down. Moreover, the rate does not count discouraged workers who, unable to find a job, cease looking. To be counted among the U.3 unemployed, the person must have actively looked for work during the four weeks prior to the survey. The U.3 rate automatically declines as people who have been unable to find jobs cease trying to find one and thereby cease to be counted as unemployed. There is a second official measure of unemployment that includes people who have been discouraged for less than one year. That rate, known as U.6, is seldom reported and is double the 6.1% rate. Since 1994 there has been no official measure than includes discouraged people who have not looked for a job for more than a year. Including all discouraged workers produces an unemployment rate that currently stands at 23.1%, almost four times the rate that the financial press reports.
  • What you can take away from this is the opposite of what the presstitute media would have you believe.  The measured rate of unemployment can decline simply because large numbers of the unemployed become discouraged workers, cease looking for work, and cease to be counted in the U.3 and U.6 measures of the unemployment rate.   The decline in the employment-population ratio from 63% prior to the 2008 downturn to 59% today reflects the growth in discouraged workers.  Indeed, the ratio has not recovered its previous level during the alleged recovery, an indication that the recovery is an illusion created by the understated measure of inflation that is used to deflate nominal GDP growth.
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  • Insurance (most likely the paperwork of Obamacare) contributed 8,500 jobs. As so few can purchase homes, “real estate rental and leasing” contributed 8,500 jobs. Professional and business services contributed 67,000 jobs, but 57% of these jobs were in employment services, temporary help services, and services to buildings and dwellings.   That old standby, education and health services, accounted for 33,700 jobs consisting mainly of ambulatory health care services jobs and social assistance jobs of which three-quarters are in child day care services.   The other old standby, waitresses and bartenders, gave us 32,800 jobs, and amusements, gambling, and recreation gave us 3,500 jobs.
  • In other words, the economy did not gain 288,000 new jobs last month.   But let’s assume the economy did gain 288,000 jobs and exam where the claimed jobs are reported to be. Of the alleged 288,000 new jobs, 16,000, or 5.5 percent are in manufacturing, which is not very promising for engineers and blue collar workers.  Growth in goods producing jobs has almost disappeared from the US economy.  As explained below, to alter this problem the government is going to change definitions in order to artificially inflate manufacturing jobs. In June private services account for 82 percent of the supposed new jobs.  The jobs are found mainly in non-tradable domestic services that pay little and cannot be exported to help to close the large US trade deficit. Wholesale and retail trade account for 55,300 jobs.  Do you believe sales are this strong  when retailers are closing stores and when shopping malls are closing?
  • Another indication that there has been no recovery is that Sentier Research’s index of real median household income continued to decline for two years after the alleged recovery began in June 2009.   There has been a slight upturn in real median household income since June 2011, but income remains far below the pre-recession level.   The Birth-Death model adds an average of 62,000 jobs to the reported payroll jobs numbers each month. This arbitrary boost to the payroll jobs numbers is in addition to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ underlying assumption that unreported jobs lost to business failures are matched by unreported new jobs from new business startups, an assumption that does not well fit an economy that fell into recession and is unable to recover.   John Williams concludes that in current BLS reporting, “the aggregate average overstatement of employment change easily exceeds 200,000 jobs per month.”
  • Local government, principally education, gave us 22,000 jobs.   So, where are the jobs for university graduates?  They are practically non-existent. Think of all the MBAs, but June had only 2,300 jobs for management of companies and enterprises. Think of the struggle to get into law and medical schools.  There’s no job payoff. June had jobs for 1,200 in legal services, which includes receptionists and para-legals.  Where are all the law school graduates finding jobs? Offices of physicians (mainly people who fill out the mandated paperwork and comply with all the regulations, which have multiplied under ObamaCare) hired 4,000 people.  Outpatient care centers hired 700 people.  Nursing care facilities hired 2,400 people.  So where are the jobs for the medical school graduates? Aside from all the exaggerations in the jobs numbers of which ShadowStats.com has informed us, just taking the jobs as reported, what kind of economy do these jobs indicate:  a superpower whose pretensions are to exercise hegemony over the world or an economy in which opportunities are disappearing and incomes are falling?
  • Do you think that this jobs picture would be the same if the government in Washington cared about you instead of the mega-rich? Some interesting numbers can be calculated from table A.9 in the BLS press release.  John Williams advises that the BLS is inconsistent in the methods it uses to tabulate the data in table A.9 and that the data is also afflicted by seasonal adjustment problems.  However, as the unemployment rate and payroll jobs are reported regardless of their problems, we can also report the BLS finding that in June 523,000 full-time jobs disappeared and 800,000 part time jobs appeared. Here, perhaps, we have yet another downside of the misnamed Obama “Affordable Care Act.”  Employers are terminating full-time employment and replacing the jobs with part-time employment in order to come in under the 50-person full time employment that makes employers responsible for fringe benefits such as health care. Americans are already experiencing difficulties making ends meet, despite the alleged “recovery.”  If yet another half million Americans have been forced onto part-time pay with consequent loss of health care and other benefits, consumer demand is further compressed, with the consequence, unless hidden by statistical trickery, of a 2nd quarter negative GDP and thus officially the reappearance of recession.
  • What will the government do if a recession cannot be hidden?  If years of unprecedented money printing and Keynesian fiscal deficits have not brought recovery, what will bring recovery?  How far down will US living standards fall for the 99% in order that the 1% can become ever more mega-rich while Washington wastes our diminishing substance exercising hegemony over the world? Just as Washington lied to you about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Waco, and any number of false flag or nonexistent attacks such as Tonkin Gulf, Washington lies to you about jobs and economic recovery.  Don’t believe the spin that you are unemployed because you are shiftless and prefer government handouts to work.  The government does not want you to know that you are unemployed because the corporations offshored American jobs to foreigners and because economic policy only serves the oversized banks and the one percent. Just as the jobs and inflation numbers are rigged and the financial markets are rigged, the corrupt Obama regime is now planning to rig US manufacturing and trade statistics in order to bury all evidence of offshoring’s adverse impact on our economy.
  • The federal governments Economic Classification Policy Committee has come up with a proposal to redefine fact as fantasy in order to hide offshoring’s contribution to the US trade deficit, artificially inflate the number of US manufacturing jobs, and redefine foreign-made manufactured products as US manufactured products.  For example, Apple iPhones made in China and sold in Europe would be reported as a US export of manufactured goods. Read Ben Beachy’s important report on this blatant statistical fraud in CounterPunch’s July 4th weekend edition: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/04/we-didnt-offshore-manufacturing/ China will not agree that the Apple brand name means that the phones are not Chinese production. If the Obama regime succeeds with this fraud, the iPhones would be counted twice, once by China and once by the US, and the double-counting would exaggerate world GDP. For years I have exposed the absurd claim that offshoring is merely the operation of free trade, and I have exposed the incompetent studies by such as Michael Porter at Harvard and Matthew Slaughter at Dartmouth that claimed to prove that the US was benefitting from offshoring its manufacturing.  My book published in 2012 in Germany and in 2013 in the US, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, proves that offshoring has dismantled the ladders of upward mobility that made the US an opportunity society and is responsible for the decline in US economic growth. The lost jobs and decline in the middle class has contributed to the rise in income inequality, the destruction of tax base for cities and states, and loss of population in America’s once great manufacturing centers.
  • For the most part economists have turned a blind eye. Economists serve the globalists.  It pays them well. The corruption in present-day America is total. Psychologists and anthropologists serve war and torture. Economists serve globalism and US financial hegemony. Physicists and chemists serve the war industries. Physicists and computer geeks serve NSA. The media serves the government and the corporations. The political parties serve the six powerful private interest groups that rule the country. No one serves truth and liberty. I predict that within ten years truth and liberty will be forbidden words uttered only by “domestic extremists” who are a threat that must be exterminated without due process of law. America has left us.  We now have the tyranny of the Orwellian state that rules, not by the ballot box and Constitution, but by force and propaganda.
Paul Merrell

News Roundup and Notes: August 18, 2014 | Just Security - 0 views

justsecurity.org/...s-roundup-notes-august-18-2014

war & peace Iraq Israel Palestine mission-creep

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Over the weekend, the U.S. military carried out further airstrikes in Iraq, targeting Islamic State militants near the Mosul Dam, involving “a mix of fighter, bomber, attack and remotely piloted aircraft.” The nine strikes on Saturday and 14 strikes on Sunday were carried out under authority “to support humanitarian efforts in Iraq,” to protect U.S. personnel and facilities, and to support Iraqi and Kurdish defense forces [U.S. Central Command]. President Obama notified Congress of the latest American involvement yesterday, stating that “[t]he failure of the Mosul Dam could threaten the lives of large numbers of civilians, endanger U.S. personnel and facilities, including the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.” Obama said the operations will be “limited in their scope and duration.” The significantly expanded air campaign, including the first reported use of U.S. bombers, has strengthened the Kurdish forces’ ground offensive to reclaim the strategic dam from Islamic State control [Wall Street Journal’s Matt Bradley et al.; Washington Post’s Liz Sly et al.]. Iraqi state television reported early today that Iraqi and Kurdish forces are now in control of the dam [Reuters], although there are reports of continued heavy fighting around the Mosul Dam [Al Jazeera]. Joe Parkinson [Wall Street Journal] covers how the U.S. has gained a “controversial new ally” in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), as a number of PKK fighters joined the U.S.-backed Kurdish battle in northern Iraq over the weekend.
  • Israel-Palestine With the five-day truce between Israel and Hamas set to expire tonight, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are continuing discussions in Cairo, although significant gaps remain between the two sides. While Israel is pushing for tougher security measures, Palestine is demanding an end to the Gaza blockade without preconditions [Associated Press; Reuters’ Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Jeffrey Heller]. Israeli troops have demolished the homes of two Palestinians suspected to have been behind the abduction and killing of the three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank in June [Haaretz’s Gili Cohen]. An IDF spokesperson said that the demolition “conveys a clear message to terrorists and their accomplices that there is a personal price to pay when engaging in terror and carrying out attacks against Israelis” [Al Jazeera]. Haaretz’s editorial board notes how the Israeli offensive in Gaza has generated “a very public crisis in relations between Israel and the United States” and warns that “Netanyahu must ease the tension with Washington and act to repair the rift with Obama.” The Wall Street Journal (Joshua Mitnick) explores how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “containment strategy” in the ongoing conflict is “a contrast from the tough talk against terrorism that fueled his political ascent.”
  • ulian Borger [The Guardian] notes how the potential International Criminal Court investigation into alleged war crimes in Gaza by both Israeli and Hamas forces has become a “fraught political battlefield.” Marwan Bishara [Al Jazeera] explains how and why the UN has been “sidelined” in the Middle East conflict. Meanwhile, the British government is facing a legal challenge over its decision to not suspend existing licenses for the sale of military hardware to Israel following the launch of Operation Protective Edge in Gaza last month [The Guardian’s Jamie Doward].
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  • Texas Governor Rick Perry [Politico Magazine] writes that “[c]learly more strikes will be necessary, with nothing less than a sustained air campaign to degrade and destroy Islamic State forces.” The Hill (Alexander Bolton) notes that Democrats in both chambers have called for a vote in Congress over military strikes in Iraq, while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “almost certainly wants to avoid [a vote] as he seeks to keep the upper chamber majority in his party’s hands.” The United Kingdom has also expanded its military involvement in Iraq, with Defence Secretary Michael Fallon confirming that British warplanes are no longer confined to the initial humanitarian mission to assist Iraq’s Yazidi minority [The Guardian’s Nicholas Watt]. The UN Security Council has placed six individuals affiliated with extremist organizations in Iraq and Syria, including the Islamic State, on its sanctions list [UN News Centre]. Army Col. Joel Rayburn, writing in the Washington Post, considers the legacy of Nouri al-Maliki. While Maliki has agreed to step down as prime minister, Rayburn argues that “the damage he has wrought will define his country for decades to come.” Mike Hanna [Al Jazeera America] explains why Maliki’s ouster “is no magic bullet for Iraq,” noting that a “change of prime minister doesn’t in itself alter Iraq’s political or security equation.” And Ali Khedery [New York Times] writes how the latest change in government “really is Iraq’s last chance.”
  • Journalist James Risen, who faces prison over his refusal to reveal the source of a CIA operation story, has called President Obama “the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation” [New York Times’ Maureen Dowd]. The International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran has promised to co-operate with an investigation to be carried out by the nuclear watchdog, following a “useful” meeting in Tehran [Reuters’ Fredrik Dahl and Mehrdad Balali]. Sky News reports that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is planning to “soon” leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London, after spending more than two years inside the building. Assange said he is planning to meet with the British government to resolve his “lack of legal protection.”
  • If you want to receive your news directly to your inbox, sign up here for the Just Security Early Edition. For the latest information from Just Security, follow us on Twitter (@just_security) and join the conversation on Facebook. To submit news articles and notes for inclusion in our daily post, please email us at news@justsecurity.org. Don’t forget to visit The Pipeline for a preview of upcoming events and blog posts on U.S. national security.
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Aug 14
     
    Until about a month ago, I thought that Barack Obama would leave only two lasting accomplishments for future history books: [i] first African-American President; and [ii] ending the U.S. war in Iraq. Make it item 1 only now. It's no longer U.S. military "mission creep" in Iraq; it's full bore reinvasion topped off with a U.S. enguineered coup of the Iraqi government.   Just Security is a very high quality politico-legal site for issues involving U.S. and U.S.-sponsored violence and surveillance issues. It's based at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law. Their emailed weekday newsletter is great for the topics I try to follow.  
Paul Merrell

Top Obama official blasts Israel for denying Palestinians sovereignty, security, dignit... - 0 views

www.timesofisrael.com/s-sovereignty-security-dignity

war & peace Israel Palestine U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • ‘How can Israel have peace if it’s unwilling to delineate a border, end the occupation?’ asks White House Mideast chief, Phillip Gordon, in blistering Tel Aviv speech
  • srael’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank is wrong and leads to regional instability and dehumanization of Palestinians, a top American government official said Tuesday in Tel Aviv, hinting that the current Israeli government is not committed to peace.
  • In an unusually harsh major foreign policy address, Philip Gordon, a special assistant to US President Barack Obama and the White House coordinator for the Middle East, appealed to Israeli and Palestinian leaders to make the compromises needed to reach a permanent peace agreement. Jerusalem “should not take for granted the opportunity to negotiate” such a treaty with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has proven to be a reliable partner, Gordon said. “Israel confronts an undeniable reality: It cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely. Doing so is not only wrong but a recipe for resentment and recurring instability,” Gordon said. “It will embolden extremists on both sides, tear at Israel’s democratic fabric and feed mutual dehumanization.”
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  • Delivering the keynote address at the Haaretz newspaper’s Israel Conference on Peace, Gordon reiterated Obama’s position that a final-status agreement should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps.
Paul Merrell

What Really Matters About the Extended Negotiations with Iran « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/xtended-negotiations-with-iran

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The single most important fact about the extension of the nuclear negotiations with Iran is that the obligations established by the Joint Plan of Action negotiated a year ago will remain in effect as negotiations continue. This means that our side will continue to enjoy what these negotiations are supposed to be about: preclusion of any Iranian nuclear weapon, through the combination of tight restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program and intrusive monitoring to ensure the program stays peaceful. Not only that, but also continuing will be the rollback of Iran’s program that the JPOA achieved, such that Iran will remain farther away from any capability to build a bomb than it was a year ago, and even farther away from where it would have been if the negotiations had never begun or from where it would be if negotiations were to break down. Our side—the United States and its partners in the P5+1—got by far the better side of the deal in the JPOA. We got the fundamental bomb-preventing restrictions (including most significantly a complete elimination of medium-level uranium enrichment) and enhanced inspections we sought, in return for only minor sanctions relief to Iran that leaves all the major banking and oil sanctions in place. If negotiations were to go on forever under these terms, we would have no cause to complain to the Iranians.
  • But the Iranians do not have comparable reason to be happy about this week’s development. The arrangement announced in Vienna is bound to be a tough sell back in Tehran for President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif. The sanctions continue, and continue to hurt, even though the Iranian negotiators have conceded most of what they could concede regarding restrictions on the nuclear program. There will be a lot of talk in Tehran about how the West is stringing them along, probably with the intent of undermining the regime and not just determining its nuclear policies.
  • That the Iranian decision-makers have put themselves in this position is an indication of the seriousness with which they are committed to these negotiations. This week’s extension is of little use to them except to keep alive the prospect that a final deal will be completed. Also indicating their seriousness is the diligence with which Iran has complied with its obligations under the JPOA. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed today Iran’s compliance with its final pre-November 24th obligation, which had to do with reducing its stock of low-enriched uranium in gaseous form.
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  • Because the P5+1 got much the better side of the preliminary agreement, the P5+1 will have to make more of the remaining concessions to complete a final agreement. The main hazard to concluding a final deal is not an Iranian unwillingness to make concessions. The main hazard is a possible Iranian conclusion that it does not have an interlocutor on the U.S. side that is bargaining in good faith. We push the Iranians closer to such a conclusion the more talk there is in Washington about imposing additional pressure and additional sanctions, as people such as Marco Rubio and AIPAC have offered in response to today’s announcement about the extension of negotiations. We have sanctioned the dickens out of Iran for years and are continuing to do so, but the only time all this pressure got any results is when we started to negotiate in good faith. Surly sanctions talk on Capitol Hill only strengthens Iranian doubts about whether the U.S. administration will be able to deliver on its side of a final agreement, making it less, not more, likely the Iranians would offer still more concessions. Any actual sanctions legislation would blatantly violate the terms of the JPOA and give the Iranians good reason to walk away from the whole business, marking the end of any special restrictions on their nuclear program.
  • Indefinite continuation of the terms of the existing agreement would suit us well, but completion of a final agreement would be even better—and without one the Iranians eventually would have to walk away, because indefinite continuation certainly does not suit them. And besides, the sanctions hurt us economically too. To get a final agreement does not mean fixating on the details of plumbing in enrichment cascades, which do not affect our security anyway. It means realizing what kind of deal we got with the preliminary agreement, and negotiating in good faith to get the final agreement.
Paul Merrell

Israeli SodaStream to Close Illegal Settlement Factory after Shares drop 50% | nsnbc in... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...tlement-factory-shares-drop-50

war & peace Israel settlements Palestine BDS

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The Israeli SodaStream is closing down its factory in the illegal Mishor Adumin settlement in Palestine’s West Bank. The decision to close the factory came after intense international pressure as part of the growing international Boycott – Divestment – Sanctions campaign against Israel. 
  • The Executive Director of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between People, Geoerge Rishmawi, reported that the major Israeli exporter SodaStream announced that it will close its factory in the illegal Israeli settlement Mishor Adumin. Rishmawi points out that the decision to close down the factory followed a high-profile boycott campaign against the company that has seen retailers across Europe and North America drop SodaStream products and the company’s share price fall by more than half. The International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) reports that the international Boycott – Divestment and Sanctions Campaign (BDS) issued a statement on its website, stressing that the campaign must continue because SodaStream has yet to close the factory, and because the company is to benefit from Israel’s forcible displacement of Palestinians in Naqab.
Paul Merrell

SodaStream to close illegal settlement factory in response growing boycott campaign | B... - 0 views

www.bdsmovement.net/...growing-boycott-campaign-12782

war & peace Israel Palestine BDS Sodastream

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) activists have welcomed the news that SodaStream has announced it is to close its factory in the illegal Israeli settlement of Mishor Adumim following a high profile boycott campaign against the company. “SodaStream’s announcement today shows that the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is increasingly capable of holding corporate criminals to account for their participation in Israeli apartheid and colonialism,” said Rafeef Ziadah, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), the broad coalition of Palestinian civil society organisations that leads and supports the BDS movement. “BDS campaign pressure has forced retailers across Europe and North America to drop SodaStream, and the company’s share price has tumbled in recent months as our movement has caused increasing reputational damage to the SodaStream brand,” she added. The news of this major success against a company famed for its role in illegal Israeli settlements broke amidst intensifying demonstrations against Israel’s policies of colonisation in Jerusalem. Grassroots boycott activism saw SodaStream dropped by major retailers across North America and Europe including Macy’s in the US and John Lewis in the UK.
  • SodaStream’s participation in Israel’s forced displacement of Palestinians gained international notoriety when A-list celebrity Scarlett Johansson signed up to be a brand ambassador for the company. Following an international campaign urging Oxfam end its relationship with Johansson for endorsing SodaStream, the actor decided to quit Oxfam. SodaStream has also come under fire for its treatment of Palestinian workers in its West Bank factory, as Ziadah explains: “Any suggestion that SodaStream is employing Palestinians in an illegal Israeli settlement on stolen Palestinian land out of the kindness of its heart is ludicrous.” “Palestinian workers are paid far less than their Israeli counterparts and SodaStream recently fired 60 Palestinians following a dispute over food for the breaking of the Ramadan fast. Workers have previously said they are treated ‘like slaves’”. “Palestinians are forced to work inside settlements in sub-standard conditions because of Israel’s deliberate destruction of the Palestinian economy. There’s an urgent need for the creation of decent and dignified jobs within the Palestinian economy.”
  • SodaStream was forced to close its flagship store in Brighton in the UK as a result of regular pickets of the store. Soros Fund Management, the family office of the billionaire investor George Soros, sold its stake in SodaStream following BDS pressure. SodaStream’s share price fell dramatically in recent months as sales dried up, particularly in North America. After reaching a high of $64 per share in October 2013, the stock fell to around $20 per share this month. SodaStream has estimated its third quarter revenue will be $125 million, down almost 14 percent from the same period last year. But Ziadah warned that SodaStream will still remain actively complicit in the displacement of Palestinians in the Naqab and will remain a focus of boycott campaigning. “Even if this announced closure goes ahead, SodaStream will remain implicated in the displacement of Palestinians. Its new Lehavim factory is close to Rahat, a planned township in the Naqab (Negev) desert, where Palestinian Bedouins are being forcefully transferred against their will. Sodastream, as a beneficiary of this plan, is complicit with this violation of human rights,” she said.
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  • SodaStream have said all workers will be offered jobs at its new plant, although Israel’s apartheid wall and severe restrictions on movement will make the commute to the new plant difficult for its Palestinian workers. All of the main Palestinian trade unions have called for boycott and are members of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the civil society coalition that leads the BDS movement and helped to initiate the campaign against SodaStream.
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Nov 14
     
    The Palestine BDS Movement drew economic blood According to the NYT, SodaStream's revenues fell so far that its books needed red ink and the Israeli government chipped in $20 million to move SodaStream out of the Occupied Territories. 
Paul Merrell

ICC receives report debunking Israel's "self-defense" claims for Gaza attack | The Elec... - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...elf-defense-claims-gaza-attack

war & peace Israel Gaza Palestine ICC NLG-report

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) has submitted a report to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor debunking Israeli claims that last summer’s attack on Gaza was an act of “self-defense.” Since the court began a preliminary examination into the events in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip beginning from 13 June 2014, Israel has attempted to ward off a full investigation by claiming that its 51-day assault on Gaza was an act of defense. NLG, a US human and civil rights organization, also sent its report to US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, who have suggested Israel’s right to defend itself justified the air bombardment and ground assault that left more than 2,200 people, the vast majority civilians, dead.
  • n their cover letter to the ICC and the White House, NLG notes that numerous respected sources have alleged war crimes, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations Human Rights Council and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.  “The central message that Israeli forces were protecting Israeli citizens from Hamas rockets was so ubiquitous in the Western media as to eclipse war crimes allegations,” said report author and Vermont attorney James Marc Leas. “But the facts and law do not support the self-defense claims.”
Paul Merrell

Goldberg Sees Crisis in US-Israel Ties, Blames Bibi « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/-in-us-israel-ties-blames-bibi

U.S.-foreign-policy Mideast Israel-divorce

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • While everyone ritually insists that the bonds between Israel and the United States are “unbreakable,” yesterday’s analysis by Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here,” argues that they’re currently under unprecedented strain and that the fault lies mainly with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. The analysis argues further that, post-November, the Obama administration may no longer be inclined to protect Israel (at least to the same pathetic extent) at the UN Security Council and may even be willing to go a step further by presenting “a public full lay-down of the administration’s vision for a two-state solution, including maps delineating Israel’s borders. These borders, to Netanyahu’s horror, would based on 1967 lines, with significant West Bank settlement blocs attached to Israel in exchange for swapped land elsewhere. Such a lay-down would make explicit to Israel what the U.S. expects of it.” I’m not a big fan of Goldberg, but this analysis is definitely worth a read if for no other reason than his voice is a very important one in the US Jewish community, including among the right-wing leadership of its major national organizations. And he essentially gives over most of the article—in a way that suggests he shares their views—to anonymous administration officials who have clearly grown entirely contemptuous of the Israeli leader, calling him, among other names, “chickenshit.” Goldberg himself describes the Netanyahu government’s policy toward Palestinians as being “disconnected from reality” and stresses what he calls the “unease felt by mainstream American Jewish leaders about recent Israeli government behavior.” It seems that his chief envoy and confidante here, Ron Dermer, is not doing a good job.
  • Of particular interest to readers of this blog, however, are Goldberg’s observations about how the administration views Bibi’s bluster about Iran: The official said the Obama administration no longer believes that Netanyahu would launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to keep the regime in Tehran from building an atomic arsenal. “It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.” This assessment represents a momentous shift in the way the Obama administration sees Netanyahu. In 2010, and again in 2012, administration officials were convinced that Netanyahu and his then-defense minister, the cowboyish ex-commando Ehud Barak, were readying a strike on Iran. To be sure, the Obama administration used the threat of an Israeli strike in a calculated way to convince its allies (and some of its adversaries) to line up behind what turned out to be an effective sanctions regime. But the fear inside the White House of a preemptive attack (or preventative attack, to put it more accurately) was real and palpable—as was the fear of dissenters inside Netanyahu’s Cabinet, and at Israel Defense Forces headquarters. At U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, analysts kept careful track of weather patterns and of the waxing and waning moon over Iran, trying to predict the exact night of the coming Israeli attack.
  • Today, there are few such fears. “The feeling now is that Bibi’s bluffing,” this second official said. “He’s not Begin at Osirak,” the official added, referring to the successful 1981 Israeli Air Force raid ordered by the ex-prime minister on Iraq’s nuclear reactor. The belief that Netanyahu’s threat to strike is now an empty one has given U.S. officials room to breathe in their ongoing negotiations with Iran. This is a significant passage. It suggests that the administration has decided to essentially ignore Netanyahu and his threats to take unilateral action, including when they are conveyed by members of Congress close to the Israel lobby. It also suggests strongly that the administration will not back up Israel if it should indeed undertake a strike of its own in hopes that Washington would be dragged into to finishing the job.
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  • Goldberg’s analysis about the state of the relationship is, in some ways, mirrored by Bret Stephens’s weekly “Global View” column in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, “Bibi and Barack on the Rocks,” although he, entirely predictably given his pro-settler worldview, sees Bibi as the wronged party. And, unlike Goldberg, he doesn’t see the US as the more powerful. Noting how Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon was snubbed by senior administration officials with whom he requested to meet, Stephens, a former editor of the Jerusalem Post, writes: The administration also seems to have forgotten that two can play the game. Two days after the Yaalon snub, the Israeli government announced the construction of 1,000 new housing units in so-called East Jerusalem, including 600 new units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood that was the subject of a 2010 row with Joe Biden. Happy now, Mr. Vice President? Stephens calls for a “trial separation” by the two countries in which Israel will give up its $3 billion dollar/year US aid package to free itself from US interference
  • The administration likes to make much of the $3 billion a year it provides Israel (or, at least, U.S. defense contractors) in military aid, but that’s now less than 1% of Israeli GDP. Like some boorish husband of yore fond of boasting that he brings home the bacon, the administration thinks it’s the senior partner in the marriage. Except this wife can now pay her own bills. And she never ate bacon to begin with. It’s time for some time away. Israel needs to look after its own immediate interests without the incessant interventions of an overbearing partner. The administration needs to learn that it had better act like a friend if it wants to keep a friend. It isn’t as if it has many friends left. This is precisely where Goldberg believes current Israeli policy is leading it.
  • Netanyahu, and the even more hawkish ministers around him, seem to have decided that their short-term political futures rest on a platform that can be boiled down to this formula: “The whole world is against us. Only we can protect Israel from what’s coming.” …But for Israel’s future as an ally of the United States, this formula is a disaster.”
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14
     
    If Goldberg and Stephens have it right, a U.S./Israel divorce might just spell the end of the appartheid state of Israel. It is only the U.S. veto on the U.N. Security Council that has enabled Israel to continue to treat Palestinians with impunity and to retain control of and colonize the territory it seized in the 1967 war that it launched. (The right to acquire territory by conquest was abolished by the U.N. Charter and the Fourth Geneva Convention in the late 1940s.)  Israel is now a pariah state internationally, with only the U.S., Canada, and a few minor island nations dependent on the U.S. still voting for Israel even in the U.N. General Council. Moreover, the U.S. public is fed up with the foreign wars the U.S. has been waging in the Mideast in aid of Israel's empirical goal of destabilizing and Balkanizing Israel's Arab neighbors. A U.S./Israel divorce would almost certainly bring down Netanyahu's government. On the other hand, the Obama Administration's relationship with Israel has been a departure from the historical norm in the U.S. and Obama's likely successor, Hillary Clinton, has long been much more friendly with the Israel Lobby than Obama.  Many close observers believe that Netanyahu's strategy with Obama has been to wait until Obama is out of office, betting that his successor will be much more amenable to Bibi's desires. But with Bernie Sanders hat in the ring for Auction 2016 and possibly Elizabeth Warren as well, it's conceivable that issues they raise might push Hillary to adopt a less Israel-friendly stance. But on yet another hand, Obama's stance on ISIL is entirely consistent with Israel's longstanding goal of regime change in Syria and Balkanization of Iraq into three nations along ethnic/religious lines, an independent  Kurdistan in the north, a Shia-stan in the South, and a Sunni state in the middle. Note in this regard Obama's strategy of arming "moderate" Syrians only to defend territory ISIL has not yet seized, then to bring down t
Paul Merrell

The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...382031

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Obama Israel Netanyahu

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The other day I was talking to a senior Obama administration official about the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the State Department the most. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” this official said, referring to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by his nickname. This comment is representative of the gloves-off manner in which American and Israeli officials now talk about each other behind closed doors, and is yet another sign that relations between the Obama and Netanyahu governments have moved toward a full-blown crisis. The relationship between these two administrations— dual guarantors of the putatively “unbreakable” bond between the U.S. and Israel—is now the worst it's ever been, and it stands to get significantly worse after the November midterm elections. By next year, the Obama administration may actually withdraw diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations, but even before that, both sides are expecting a showdown over Iran, should an agreement be reached about the future of its nuclear program.
  • The fault for this breakdown in relations can be assigned in good part to the junior partner in the relationship, Netanyahu, and in particular, to the behavior of his cabinet. Netanyahu has told several people I’ve spoken to in recent days that he has “written off” the Obama administration, and plans to speak directly to Congress and to the American people should an Iran nuclear deal be reached. For their part, Obama administration officials express, in the words of one official, a “red-hot anger” at Netanyahu for pursuing settlement policies on the West Bank, and building policies in Jerusalem, that they believe have fatally undermined Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace process.
  • Over the years, Obama administration officials have described Netanyahu to me as recalcitrant, myopic, reactionary, obtuse, blustering, pompous, and “Aspergery.” (These are verbatim descriptions; I keep a running list.)  But I had not previously heard Netanyahu described as a “chickenshit.” I thought I appreciated the implication of this description, but it turns out I didn’t have a full understanding. From time to time, current and former administration officials have described Netanyahu as a national leader who acts as though he is mayor of Jerusalem, which is to say, a no-vision small-timer who worries mainly about pleasing the hardest core of his political constituency. (President Obama, in interviews with me, has alluded to Netanyahu’s lack of political courage.) “The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars,” the official said, expanding the definition of what a chickenshit Israeli prime minister looks like. “The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he’s not [Ariel] Sharon, he’s certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He’s got no guts.”
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14
     
    Netanyahu response is at http://goo.gl/bKA5TV
Paul Merrell

Occupier orders Palestinian lawmaker Khalida Jarrar held six months without charge or t... - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...r-held-6-months-without-charge

war & peace Israel Palestine political-prisoners

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • After seizing her from her home in the middle of the night last week, Israeli occupation forces have ordered that a Palestinian lawmaker be held without charge or trial for six months. Palestinian Legislative Council member Khalida Jarrar was given a so-called “administrative detention” order on Sunday, the Palestinian prisoners’ rights group Addameer said in a statement.
  • Jarrar is one of 15 Palestinian legislators and 23 female political prisoners currently detained by Israeli occupation forces, Addameer states. Jarrar, a prominent member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is closely involved in prisoner issues. Last August, Israeli occupation forces issued Jarrar with an order banishing her to Jericho. She defied the order, remaining in her home in the occupied West Bank town of al-Bireh from where she was arrested by dozens of armed soldiers.
  • There are currently six thousand Palestinian political detainees in Israeli prisons, including almost 500 administrative detainees, according to Addameer’s most recent statistics. Human rights defenders have consistently condemned Israel’s practice of prolonged detention of Palestinians without charge or trial. In a 2012 report, Amnesty International called on Israel to stop using administrative detention – a relic of British colonial rule in Palestine – and urged “the immediate and unconditional release [of] prisoners of conscience held just for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly.” Amnesty says that administrative detainees, like many other Palestinian prisoners, “have been subjected to violations such as the use of torture and other ill-treatment during interrogation, as well as cruel and degrading treatment during their detention, sometimes as punishment for hunger strikes or other protests.”
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  • Administrative detention orders are indefinitely renewable. Addameer says that it considers administrative detention to be a war crime under the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention governing the rights of civilians in occupied territory. Jarrar’s arrest, it states, is “part of the systemic targeting of Palestinian political figures in order to criminalize their work and to silence them and stop them from practicing their roles in defending and supporting the Palestinian cause.”
Paul Merrell

James Baker blasts Benjamin Netanyahu - Edward-Isaac Dovere - POLITICO - 0 views

www.politico.com/...benjamin-netanyahu-116338.html

war & peace Palestinian-Question Israel Netanyahu U.S.-foreign-policy Baker

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • It’s not just Democrats and White House officials who’ve got problems with Benjamin Netanyahu. Blasting “diplomatic missteps and political gamesmanship,” former Secretary of State James Baker laid in hard to the Israeli prime minister on Monday evening, criticizing him for an insufficient commitment to peace and an absolutist opposition to the Iran nuclear talks. Story Continued Below Baker told the gala dinner for the left-leaning Israeli advocacy group J Street that he supported efforts to get a deal with Tehran — but he called for President Barack Obama to bring any agreement before Congress, even though he may not legally be required to do so. Baker, who was the chief diplomat for President George H.W. Bush and is now advising Jeb Bush on his presidential campaign, cited mounting frustrations with Netanyahu over the past six years — but particularly with comments he made in the closing days of last week’s election disavowing his support for a two-state solution and support for settlements strategically placed to attempt to change the borders between Israel and the West Bank.
  • Baker said while Netanyahu has said he’s for peace, “his actions have not matched his rhetoric.”
  • As to Netanyahu’s opposition on Iran, Baker warned against seeking only a perfect deal. “If the only agreement is one in which there is no enrichment, then there will be no agreement,” Baker said.
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  • After all, Baker said, no military solution could work in his assessment: an American strike would only generate more support among Iranians for the fundamentalist government, and an Israeli strike would neither be as effective nor carry American support. This isn’t the only tough moment in U.S.-Israeli relations, Baker said, recounting some of his own head-butting in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In those days, the administration was dealing with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, a hard-liner who referred to Netanyahu as “too soft,” according to Baker. The danger now, Baker said, is the personalization and politicization of the disputes between the governments in Washington and Jerusalem. “This is of course a delicate moment in the Middle East, and will require clear thinking from leaders,” Baker said. “That clear thinking should not be muddled by partisan politics.”
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Mar 15
     
    Better listen, Bibi. That's the head of the American oil industry lobby speaking. 
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