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Paul Merrell

Fanatic Israeli Settlers attack Cars of US Diplomats | nsnbc international - 0 views

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war & peace Israel Palestine settlers U.S.-diplomats

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • A number of extremist Israeli settlers hurled stones at cars of an American diplomatic delegation who drove along with Israeli police vehicles to an area near the central West Bank city of Ramallah on Friday. The delegation was on its way to inspect vandalism by Israeli settlers that had targeted hundreds of Palestinian olive trees.
  • The police confirmed that the attackers are from the illegal settlements, and that an investigation is underway; no arrests were made. According to Reuters, an Israeli settler told its correspondent that the US delegates, in two cars, came within some 50 yards from the settlement, accompanied by Palestinian civilians, and alleged that a member of the delegation also withdrew his weapon. The settler told the reporter that he and other settlers then began attacking the delegation. But the Israeli police challenged that account, saying that no one from the U.S. delegation had drawn a weapon, and the consular representatives were attacked by the settlers without provocation. The settlement in question, Adi-Ad, is known as a site of frequent attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians. It was established by armed Israeli militias on stolen Palestinian land, and is now home to 40 Israeli families, who live under the protection of armed Israeli soldiers and militias, and frequently invade the surrounding Palestinian villages to attack the unarmed Palestinian civilians who live there.
Paul Merrell

U.S. is even more implicated in Israeli settlement project than we thought - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...implicated-settlement-thought

war & peace Israel Palestine settlers American-Jews

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • The Israeli colonies are an American problem in a whole new way. Nearly one out of six settlers in the West Bank is an American. Haaretz broke the story. Oxford scholar Sara Yael Hirschhorn says Americans are starkly overrepresented among West Bank settlers: Roughly 60,000 American Jews live in West Bank settlements, where they account for 15 percent of the settler population, according to figures revealed Thursday by an Oxford University scholar and expert on this population. Newsweek’s Jack Moore reports the American policy angle: Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said that the new figures revealed that the settlement enterprise in the West Bank was not only an internal issue but “an international problem.” “Unfortunately, while the Obama administration has been persistently vocal against settlement developments, some 60,000 American citizens are taking an active part in an attempt to make the two state solution impossible,” says Anat Ben Nun, Peace Now’s director of development and external relations. The study leaves out all the settlers in East Jerusalem: 200,000 of them three years ago, per the United Nations. And remember that the settlement movement is funded not just by the Israeli government but tax-deductible donations from American Zionists. An issue the US media has refused to deal with.
Paul Merrell

Netanyahu: I won't forcibly evacuate settlements | The Times of Israel - 0 views

www.timesofisrael.com/-forcibly-evacuate-settlements

war & peace Israel Palestine negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • he Israeli government will not force West Bank settlers to leave their homes, even under a permanent peace agreement with the Palestinians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a TV interview.
  • The prime minister said it was clear that Israel would not be able to extend its sovereignty under a permanent accord to encompass all of the settlements, but he was adamant that “there will be no act of evacuation.” The comment marked the first time that he has indicated that he would not countenance a repeat of the 2005 forced evacuation of Gaza’s settlements, overseen by the late prime minister Ariel Sharon, which he opposed at the time. Asked in the Channel 2 interview on Friday how he could hope to reach a deal with the Palestinians within such limitations, and whether he expected settlers to leave their homes voluntarily, Netanyahu said it was not yet clear where the borders of a two-state solution would run, and that he did not “want to go into the details” of how an accommodation regarding the settlers might be achieved. “Of course some of the settlements won’t be part of the deal, everyone understands that,” Netanyahu said. “I will make sure that [number] is as limited as possible, if we get there.” He pledged that no Israeli will be “abandoned.” Netanyahu’s comments marked the closest he has come to confirming The Times of Israel’s exclusive report from last month, which quoted a well-placed official in the Prime Minister’s Office as saying that Netanyahu would insist that settlers who find themselves on the far side of a two-state border be given the choice between remaining in place and living under Palestinian rule, or relocating to areas under Israeli sovereign rule.
  • The prime minister charged, however, that the Palestinians under PA President Mahmoud Abbas were “a very long way” from readiness for viable peace terms. They had to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, abandon the demand for a “right of return” for millions of refugee descendants to Israel, and agree to an “end of the conflict” accord, he said, and were giving no signs of being prepared to do so. Asked about the stern interview given by Barack Obama to Bloomberg on the eve of his meeting with Netanyahu in Washington Monday — the US president had castigated the settlement enterprise in a wide-ranging critique — Netanyahu said vaguely that “lots of people say lots of things.” He said he’d “stood up to pressure” in the past, and added that he had done so again while in the US this week, but did not elaborate. More important than any critical interview, he said, was the “positive” meeting he had with Obama at the White House.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • he Israeli government will not force West Bank settlers to leave their homes, even under a permanent peace agreement with the Palestinians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a TV interview.
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Mar 14
     
    Netanyahu serves up yet another deal-breaker in the ongoing Israel-Palestine negotiations led by John Kerry. Let's keep in mind that most of the Israeli settlements in Palestine territory are built on land forcibly stolen from Palestinians and served by stolen Palestinian water rights.
Paul Merrell

Violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories - the Guardian briefing | News | The... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-territories-guardian-briefing

war & peace Israel Palestine escalating-violence

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories have been convulsed by a wave of escalating violence in recent days. The lethal tensions ratcheted up sharply last Thursday when a married couple, Jewish settlers from Neria in the northern West Bank, were shot and killed in a car in front of their four children near Beit Furik, allegedly by members of a five-man Hamas cell who were subsequently arrested. Two more Israelis were stabbed and killed in Jerusalem’s Old City on Saturday by a Palestinian youth, who was shot dead at the scene. On Sunday, an 18-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli forces in clashes near the West Bank town of Tulkarem. The mounting friction has seen attacks by settlers on Palestinians, clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces and attempted attacks continue. On Wednesday. there were incidents in Jerusalem, where a Palestinian woman stabbed an Israeli man who then shot and seriously wounded her in the Old City, the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Gat, where a Palestinian was killed after reportedly trying to seize a gun from a soldier and stabbing him, and when a female Israeli settler’s car was stoned near Beit Sahour, which adjoins Bethlehem, in an incident in which it appears other settlers fired on Palestinians, seriously injuring a youth.
  • On the Palestinian side, anger escalated earlier this week after a 13-year-old boy in Bethlehem’s Aida refugee camp was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper in an incident the Israeli military has claimed was “unintentional” as soldiers were aiming at another individual.
  • Jerusalem has remained tense now for almost a year. Most analysts blame the recent heightened tension on several factors. Key among them has been the issue of the religious site in Jerusalem known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, and Jews as the Temple Mount. A long-running campaign by some fundamentalist Jews and their supporters for expanding their rights to worship in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound on the Temple Mount, supported by rightwing members of Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s own cabinet, has raised the suspicion – despite repeated Israeli denials – that Israel intends to change the precarious status quo for the site, which has been governed under the auspices of the Jordanian monarchy since 1967.
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  • Recent Israeli police actions at the site scandalised the Muslim world and raised tensions. Israel has also banned two volunteer Islamic watch groups – male and female – accusing them of harassing Jews during the hours they are allowed to visit. That has combined with the lack of a peace process and growing resentment and frustration in Palestinian society aimed at both Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Palestinian Authority. Israel has complained in recent weeks of an increase in stone throwing and molotov cocktail attacks on West Bank roads and in areas adjoining mainly Palestinian areas of Jerusalem, where an elderly motorist died after crashing his car during an alleged stoning attack. In response, Netanyahu and his cabinet have loosened live-fire regulations over the use of .22 calibre bullets on Palestinian demonstrators. Although described by Israel as “less lethal”, it is this type of ammunition that killed 13-year-old Abdul Rahman Shadi on Monday.
  • Part of the problem is the leadership on both sides. Netanyahu leads a rightwing/far-right coalition with the smallest of majorities. Several cabinet ministers support the settler movement and have publicly criticised him for not cracking down harder on Palestinian protest. Netanyahu’s weakness is reflected on the Palestinian side, where the ageing Abbas is seen as isolated, frustrated and increasingly out of step with other members of the Palestinian leadership, who would like a tougher line against Israel over continued settlement building and the absence of any peace process.
  • In his recent speech to the UN general assembly, Abbas went further than he had ever done before in threatening to end what he claims is Palestine’s unilateral adherence to the Oslo accords, which he said Israel refuses to honour. “We cannot continue to be bound by these signed agreements with Israel and Israel must assume fully its responsibilities of an occupying power,” he said. Abbas, however, stopped short of ending security cooperation between Israel and Palestinian security forces – mainly aimed at Hamas on the West Bank – and asked the UN for international protection. His speech at the United Nations has been seen as a move to placate growing discontents in Palestinian society. Both Abbas and Netanyahu are now both engaged in a delicate balancing act, trying to avoid further escalation that would be detrimental to both while trying not to lose the support of key constituencies. On Abbas’s side, that has meant ordering Palestinian factions and security forces to desist from joining the conflict, while on Netanyahu’s side it has seen numerous warnings of harsh measures – many of which have been repeatedly announced.
  • Nentanyahu does not want to risk a position where Abbas ends security cooperation and in the local jargon “hands back the keys” – in other words revokes the Oslo accords and insists on Israel once again taking full responsibility for administering the occupied territories. For his part, Abbas is said to see a limited popular uprising as useful because of the message it delivers to both Israel and the international community of the mounting risks of a moribund peace process and how serious things could become if security cooperation were to end.
  • At the end of the last round of the peace process last year, US diplomats warned about this potential outcome and Washington has largely withdrawn from a guiding role, exhausted by the lack of progress and frustrated with Netanyahu. Despite the Palestinian desire for a new multilateral international approach, it has failed to materialise as have any US guarantees to Abbas that they intend to advance the peace process. While Syria, migration and Russia are preoccupying western governments, Israel and Palestine have been largely left to their own devices.
  • Flare-ups of violence have a habit of coming and going but hopes that this one is coming to an end appear premature for now. However, the likelihood of the current violence fading away still remains the strongest bet. The biggest risk is a miscalculation by either side, which is out of the hands of either leader, that would alter the dynamics. Individuals on both sides have led some of the worst attacks: Jewish extremists in the summer burning three members of a Palestinian family to death, and “lone wolf attacks” launched by Palestinians angry about al-Aqsa and other issues. With neither side having a clear exit strategy, there is a risk is that Netanyahu and Abbas are being led by events rather than leading.
Paul Merrell

The Peninsula Qatar - UAE 'offered to fund Israel's Gaza offensive' - 0 views

thepeninsulaqatar.com/...o-fund-israel-s-gaza-offensive

war & peace Gaza-assault Israel UAE must-read false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • DOHA: The UAE knew in advance of Israel’s plans for an offensive in Gaza and even offered to fund the operation provided the militant Palestinian outfit Hamas was eliminated in the process, Israel’s Channel 2 claimed in a recent report, according to local Arabic daily Al Sharq. The daily says in a report published today that Israel’s leading national TV station (Channel 2 in Hebrew) disclosed details of secret parleys between the UAE’s foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and his Israeli counterpart, Avigdor Lieberman, in Paris at the end of last month. Both leaders met on the sly in Paris on the sidelines of a meeting of a meeting of foreign ministers from the GCC states and Jordan with US Secretary of State John Kerry. Israel’s foreign minister was also in the city.  The meeting was to discuss the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian issue.
  • Al Sharq said the UAE was aware of Israeli’s planned military action in Gaza beforehand and Al Nahyan, at his meeting with Lieberman, expressed his country’s keenness to fund Israeli’s Gaza offensive provided the Hamas movement was annihilated since it had close links to the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Jul 14
     
    Note the phrase "at the end of last month." I.e., the assault on Gaza was planned *before* rockets started flying from Gaza to Israel. This gives further credence to the evidence that the murder of three Israeli settler teens was a false flag operation by Israel intended to inflame the Israeli public, "justifying" Israel's arrests of some 600 Hamas figures in the West Bank and former Palestinian prisoners previously released pursuant to cease-fire agreements. As I recall, eight Hamas members were also killed. Then, to set the blaze, a Palestinian youth was burned alive by three Israeli settlers, and Hamas responded with rockets. And that was the end of the PLO/Hamas "unity government" of Palestine, Israel's real goal in this mess.  
Paul Merrell

Netanyahu Promises More Settler Homes in Jerusalem If Elected | nsnbc international - 0 views

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war & peace Israel Palestine Jerusalem Netanyahu

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday that, if reelected, he will build thousands of settler homes in occupied East Jerusalem to prevent future concessions to Palestinians. Speaking ahead of Tuesday’s general election on a whistle-stop tour of Har Homa, a contentious settlement neighborhood of annexed East Jerusalem, the PM vowed that he would never allow Palestinians to establish a capital in the city’s eastern sector.
  • “I won’t let that happen. My friends and I in Likud will preserve the unity of Jerusalem,” he said of his ruling right-wing party, according to AFP, vowing to prevent any future division of the city by building thousands of new settler homes. “We will continue to build in Jerusalem, we will add thousands of housing units, and in the face of all the (international) pressure, we will persist and continue to develop our eternal capital,” he added. During the 2013 negotiations, Israeli officials announced, and, eventually, carried out in full force, plans to build thousands of additional homes in illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank, while continuing to further seize lands, demolish homes and agricultural resources and, thus, leaving scores of Palestinian families severely disenfranchised and without so much as a roof over their heads to shelter them from inclement weather. Gazans were already surviving on a mere 8 hours per day of electricity when the Palestinian negotiating team finally resigned in protest, in mid-November. Israel, soon after, made quite clear its position on securing peace with Palestinians when Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, during a meeting with young Likud Party supporters, boasted: “I was threatened in Washington: ‘not one brick’ [of settlement construction] … after five years, we built a little more than one brick…”
  • Asked about “peace talks with the Palestinians”, the PM reportedly replied, according to +972 online Israeli magazine: “about the – what?” to which his audience responded with a round of chuckling. Critics of Israel’s aggressively right-wing regime assert that such peace negotiations are simply used as a front for continued settlement expansion and military occupation, noting that settlement activity clearly increases during negotiations, while daily acts of violence against Palestinians, by both Israeli civilians and soldiers alike, remains as of yet unchallenged by the powers that be. Israel seized East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it in a move never recognized by the international community. Israel refers to both halves of the city as its “united, undivided capital” and does not see construction in the eastern sector as settlement building. Successive Israeli leaders have vowed that Jerusalem will never again be divided — in war or peace.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15
     
    Israel's election is in the morning, although it will take a bit longer to learn who will become the Prime Minister. (Much depends on which party gets the nod from the Israeli President to try to form a ruling coalition; then it takes time tio form one.)  But this campaign promise deserves more credibility than most campaign promises in the U.S.: It's a promiose to do more of what Netanyahu has been doing since he came to power.  Multiple U.N. Security Council regulations have demanded that Israel return to its pre-1967 borders. And the U.N. General Council Resolution that is Israel's claim to legitimacy (although further action that never happened was required to become effective never happened) specifically provided that its allocation of territory to the Israeli government was conditioned on the existing rights of Palestinian within that territory be preserved. Moreover, Israel took Jerusalem (and other lands) during its 1967 Six-Day War. Under the 4th Geneva Convention, Israel was required to withdraw from all occupied territories and to permit all refugees to return to their homes "immediately upon cessation of hostilities." So Obama's campaign promise is a promise to commit a war crime and crime against humanity.  The truly disgusting parts are that: [i] the majority of Israeli Jews support that position; and [ii] the U.S. government even though it routinely calls the eviction of Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank to construct Israeli homes and settlements "illegal", routinely vetoes U.N. Security Council resolutions to bring Israel into compliance with the older S.C. resolutions and international law.   
Paul Merrell

Palestinian Red Crescent Society declares state of emergency in the West Bank - Mondoweiss - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...palestinian-declares-emergency

war & peace Israel Palestine Red-Crescent emergency

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has declared a level 3 state of emergency in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, following the serious escalation of attacks by Israeli forces and violent settlers against Palestinians, which has included assaults and serious violations against PCRS staff and ambulances.
  • Over the weekend PRCS crews found themselves under attack from Israeli forces and violent settlers. PRCS: On Sunday the 4th of October, Israeli occupation soldiers attacked a PRCS’ ambulance in the line of duty in front of Al Quds University in Abou Diss, firing rubber bullets and tear gas grenades at it. On the 2nd of October, occupation soldiers attacked an ambulance in Al Eissawiyeh to the North of Jerusalem. They then proceeded to arrest an injured Palestinian from inside the ambulance. In Boureen (Nablus Governorate), settlers prevented a PRCS’ ambulance from discharging its humanitarian duty and smashed its windshield. The next day, five PRCS’ paramedics were beaten up by soldiers in Jerusalem. That same day, another group of soldiers attacked with their batons another PRCS’ ambulance in the Old City of Jerusalem Also on the same day, occupation soldiers severely beat another ambulance crew in Jabal Al Taweel (Al-Bireh), wounding two paramedics. They then kidnapped an injured Palestinian from inside the ambulance, firing tear gas grenades and rubber bullets at it. According to the New York Times, PRCS has reported “some 500 injuries in recent days”. This was published before “at least four Palestinians were shot by Israeli army live fire” last night, according to the International Middle East Media Center and countless more people will no doubt be injured in the coming days.
  • PRCS was officially recognized as part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in 2006 making these assaults on their staff and crews a blatant violation of international humanitarian law as specified in the Geneva Convention. So where’s the international community in all this? PRCS rightly points out: PRCS urges the International Community, represented by the UN General Assembly and Security Council, to shoulder their responsibilities by taking the necessary steps to make Israeli occupation authorities comply with IHL provisions, and to put an end to the targeting of civilians and their properties. It calls on these parties to compel Israel to respect IHL provisions regarding the respect of medical and PRCS’ emblems, and recalls that the occupying power is obliged to protect emergency, medical and relief personnel and to facilitate their safe access to the sick and wounded. How long are they going sit there and do nothing year after year as Palestine burns? With Jerusalem at a breaking point; incitement and provocations from all quarters, fanatical civilians, extremist elected officials and an army run amok, who is going to stop them? Unfortunately is it probably not going to be the beseeching words of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society that will thrust this crisis front and center. But it’s worth asking over and over, what’s it going to take for some outside party, like the international community, to put their collective foot down? Or are we going wait until after some random fanatic or a fanatical government has destroyed Al Aqsa?
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Oct 15
     
    Getting very ugly very fast in Palestine.
Paul Merrell

Palestinians worse off than ever as settler numbers soar, says UN | The Electronic Inti... - 1 views

electronicintifada.net/...r-settler-numbers-soar-says-un

war & peace Israel Gaza economy stats U.N.-report

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Palestinians are economically worse off than ever before as the number of Israeli settlers on their land sets records, a new report by the United Nations trade and development agency UNCTAD reveals. Israel’s longstanding restrictions on the Palestinian economy are to blame. But the situation has been made catastrophically worse by its ongoing blockade and devastating attack on Gaza last summer that killed more than 2,200 people, including 551 children.
  • Three full-scale Israeli military attacks on Gaza in the last six years, on top of eight years of blockade, have ravaged the territory’s infrastructure, destroyed its productive capacity, hindered any meaningful reconstruction and left the people poorer than any time in 20 years, the report states. Unemployment in Gaza has reached 44 percent, the highest level on record, and is at 18 percent in the West Bank. But UNCTAD says “the real depth of unemployment and the attendant waste of human resources” are even worse than the figures suggest. Even before last summer’s Israeli attack on Gaza and the further deterioration in the economy, 3 out of 5 households in Gaza and 1 out of 5 in the West Bank were food insecure – meaning they could not guarantee a reliable and sufficient supply of affordable and nutritious food. In the year 2000, just 72,000 people in Gaza were dependent on UN food rations. In May this year, that figure reached 868,000 – almost half the population.
  • The lastest Israeli assault on Gaza “effectively eliminated what was left of the middle class, sending almost all of the population into destitution and dependence on international humanitarian aid,” the report states. UNCTAD estimates the direct costs of the destruction Israel inflicted on Gaza in its attacks in November 2012 and last year at $2.7 billion. In a much publicized 2012 report, the UN concluded that if nothing changed, Gaza would be “unlivable” by 2020. This latest report notes that things have only gotten worse since then.
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

Israeli Law to be Extended to West Bank | nsnbc international - 1 views

nsnbc.me/...israeli-law-extended-west-bank

Israel Palestine Knesset egislation coloonies

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The Israeli ministerial committee approved a bill, on Sunday, to extend laws regulated by the Israeli Knesset into the occupied West Bank.
  • adings before becoming law. Israeli settlers living in the occupied West Bank are, as of now, formally subject to military rule. The area’s 350,000 settlers, however, are effectively under the jurisdiction of Israeli civilian courts because parliament has already applied a clutch of laws to them, primarily criminal, tax and military conscription. The new draft bill would make it mandatory for the commander to issue, within a month and a half of a law’s passage in parliament, an identically-phrased military order, effectively ensuring that all ratified legislation also applies to settlers.
  • Furthermore, according to the new bill, Israelis living in the occupied West Bank will be under Israeli law, while Palestinians living in the same areas would remain under military rule. Director of the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Centre, Issam Aruri, told Al Jazeera that this essentially means all Knesset permanent committees can exercise their oversight over the West Bank: “This means the Knesset may become responsible for certain parts of the West Bank, which may be a step towards the formal annexation of the occupied Palestinian territory without a formal announcement as such,” he said
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  • PNN further reports that Palestinian chief negotiator and PLO executive Dr. Saeb Erekat said that the Knesset’s approval on regulating Israeli law in the West Bank will be taken to the International Criminal Court. Dr. Erekat’s response to the news came during his meeting with UN peace envoy, Robert Serry, and councils of the US, England, Germany and France.
  • Erekat pointed out that the Foreign Affairs, Negotiation Departments, Ministry of justice and other Palestinian organizations now prepare official papers for Palestinian state joining of a number of international treaties and documents, topped by the international court. (Palestine is recognized as a High Contracting Party, according to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.) All Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, including those in East Jerusalem, have been declared illegal under international law.
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Nov 14
     
    If accurate, this news will result ion a ruckus.
Paul Merrell

Israel's Right, Cheering Donald Trump's Win, Renews Calls to Abandon 2-State Solution -... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...p-palestinian-settlements.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Israel Palestine 2-state-solution

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • Emboldened by the Republican sweep of last week’s American elections, right-wing members of the Israeli government have called anew for the abandonment of a two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians.“The combination of changes in the United States, in Europe and in the region provide Israel with a unique opportunity to reset and rethink everything,” Naftali Bennett, Israel’s education minister and the leader of the pro-settlement Jewish Home party, told a gathering of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem on Monday.Mr. Bennett, who advocates annexing 60 percent of the occupied West Bank to Israel, exulted on the morning after Donald J. Trump’s victory: “The era of a Palestinian state is over.”That sentiment was only amplified when Jason Greenblatt, a lawyer and co-chairman of the Trump campaign’s Israel Advisory Committee, told Israel’s Army Radio that Mr. Trump did not consider West Bank settlements to be an obstacle to peace, in a stark reversal of longstanding American policy.
  • Members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and other rightist politicians jumped to make hay of the change. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Yoav Kish, a Likud member of Parliament, called for the expansion of Israeli sovereignty into the West Bank; Meir Turgeman, the chairman of Jerusalem’s municipal planning committee, said he would now bring long-frozen plans for thousands of Jewish homes in the fiercely contested eastern part of the city up for approval.
  • Israel’s Supreme Court on Monday rejected a government request for a seven-month delay of the demolition of an illegal West Bank outpost built on privately owned Palestinian land. The court-ordered demolition is slated for Dec. 25, and the government had argued for the delay in part to temper a potentially violent settler response.On Sunday, a ministerial committee of rightists within the Likud party and the governing coalition approved a contentious bill to retroactively legalize illegal settlement on privately owned Palestinian land. Prompted by the effort to salvage the Amona outpost, it may be a precursor of things to come.Although the pro-settler camp was promoting the bill long before Mr. Trump’s victory, the decision was taken, unusually, over Mr. Netanyahu’s vehement objections and despite his exhortations for it to be postponed.
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  • Israeli analysts point out that the Trump campaign has spread contradictory messages. While many here assume that he will have more pressing priorities than the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr. Trump told The Wall Street Journal on Friday that he would like to seal an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, calling it the “ultimate deal.”
  • Acknowledging that Mr. Trump’s positions are not entirely clear, Mr. Bennett, the leader of Jewish Home, said, “We have to say what we want first.”
  • But Mr. Gold suggested that a Trump administration was likely to roll back the demand that Israel withdraw to the 1967 lines and support borders that are more accommodating to Israel. “Trump’s policy paper spoke about Israel having defensible borders, which are clearly different from the 1967 lines,” he said.
Paul Merrell

Israel's settlement law: Consolidating apartheid | Israel | Al Jazeera - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...eft-legal-170208083626345.html

war & peace Palestine Israel annexation apartheid

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • "Israel has just opened the 'floodgates', and crossed a 'very, very thick red line'." These were the words of Nickolay Mladenov, United Nations' Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, in response to the passing of a bill at the Israeli Knesset on February 7 that retroactively legalises thousands of illegal settler homes, built on stolen Palestinian land. Mladenov's job title has grown so irrelevant in recent years that it merely delineates a reference to a bygone era: a "peace process" that has ensured the further destruction of whatever remained of the Palestinian homeland. Israeli politicians' approval of the bill is indeed an end of an era. We have reached the point where we can openly declare that the so-called peace process was an illusion from the start, for Israel had no intentions of ever conceding the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem to the Palestinians. In response to the passing of the bill, many news reports alluded to the fact that the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, riding a wave of right-wing populism, was the inspiration needed by equally right-wing Israeli politicians to cross that "very, very thick red line". There is truth to that, of course. But it is hardly the whole story.
  • The political map of the world is vastly changing. Just weeks before Trump made his way to the Oval Office, the international community strongly condemned Israel's illegal settlements on Palestinian land occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem.
  • That date, Trump's inauguration was the holy grail for Israel's right-wing politicians, who mobilised immediately after Trump's rise to power. Israel's intentions received additional impetus from Britain's Conservative Prime Minister, Theresa May. Despite her government vote to condemn Israeli settlements at the UN, she too ranted against the US for its censure of Israel.
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  • With the UK duly pacified, and the US in full support of Israel, moving forward with annexing Palestinian land became an obvious choice for Israeli politicians. Bezalel Smotrich, a Knesset member of the extremist Jewish Home party, put it best. "We thank the American people for voting Trump into office, which was what gave us the opportunity for the bill to pass," he said shortly after the vote.
  • The so-called "Regulation Bill" will retroactively validate 4,000 illegal structures built on private Palestinian land. In the occupied Palestinian territories, all Jewish settlements are considered illegal under international law, as further indicated in UNSC Resolution 2334. There are also 97 illegal Jewish settlement outposts - a modest estimation - that are now set to be legalised and, naturally, expanded at the expense of Palestine. The price of these settlements has been paid mostly by US taxpayers' money, but also the blood and tears of Palestinians, generation after generation. It is important, though, that we realise that Israel's latest push to legalise illegal outposts and annex large swaths of the West Bank is the norm, not the exception.
  • But what is the Palestinian leadership doing about it? "I can't deny that the (bill) helps us to better explain our position. We couldn't have asked for anything more," a Palestinian Authority official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, as quoted by Shlomi Elder. WATCH: 'The settlers and the guards harass us and our children' (2:35) Elder writes: "The bill, whether it goes through or is blocked by the Supreme Court, already proves that Israel is not interested in a diplomatic resolution of the conflict."
  • The greatest mistake that the Palestinian leadership has committed (aside from its disgraceful disunity) was entrusting the US, Israel's main enabler, with managing a "peace process" that has allowed Israel time and resources to finish its colonial projects, while devastating Palestinian rights and political aspirations. Returning to the same old channels, using the same language, seeking salvation at the altar of the same old "two-state solution" will achieve nothing, but to waste further time and energy. It is Israel's obstinacy that is now leaving Palestinians (and Israelis) with one option, and only one option: equal citizenship in one single state or a horrific apartheid. No other "solution" suffices. In fact, the Regulation Bill is further proof that the Israeli government has already made its decision: consolidating apartheid in Palestine. If Trump and May find the logic of Netanyahu's apartheid acceptable, the rest of the world shouldn't. In the words of former President Jimmy Carter, "Israel will never find peace until it ... permit(s) the Palestinians to exercise their basic human and political rights." That Israeli "permission" is yet to arrive, leaving the international community with the moral responsibility to exact it.
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Feb 17
     
    Not mentioned in the article: the Knesset's Regulation Bill formally annexed territory inside the West Bank and holds that Israeli law, rather than military law, will now govern the annexed portions. That is the fact that establishes a clean break with the 2-state solution and flies in the face of international law including the Fourth Geneva Convention, which strictly prohibits annexation and requires the immediate withdrawal of invading military forces from occupied territories immediately upon cessation of hostilities, which occurred in 1967. The two-state solution is dead, although the Regulation Bill will likely be overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court. Trump gave Israel's ultra-right wing leaders way too much encouragement.
Paul Merrell

Obama to Israel -- Time Is Running Out - Bloomberg View - 0 views

www.bloombergview.com/...-to-israel-time-is-running-out

war & peace Israel U.S. foreign policy Obama interview

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the White House tomorrow, President Barack Obama will tell him that his country could face a bleak future -- one of international isolation and demographic disaster -- if he refuses to endorse a U.S.-drafted framework agreement for peace with the Palestinians. Obama will warn Netanyahu that time is running out for Israel as a Jewish-majority democracy. And the president will make the case that Netanyahu, alone among Israelis, has the strength and political credibility to lead his people away from the precipice. In an hourlong interview Thursday in the Oval Office, Obama, borrowing from the Jewish sage Rabbi Hillel, told me that his message to Netanyahu will be this: “If not now, when? And if not you, Mr. Prime Minister, then who?” He then took a sharper tone, saying that if Netanyahu “does not believe that a peace deal with the Palestinians is the right thing to do for Israel, then he needs to articulate an alternative approach." He added, "It’s hard to come up with one that’s plausible.”
  • Unlike Netanyahu, Obama will not address the annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group, this week -- the administration is upset with Aipac for, in its view, trying to subvert American-led nuclear negotiations with Iran. In our interview, the president, while broadly supportive of Israel and a close U.S.-Israel relationship, made statements that would be met at an Aipac convention with cold silence.Obama was blunter about Israel’s future than I've ever heard him. His language was striking, but of a piece with observations made in recent months by his secretary of state, John Kerry, who until this interview, had taken the lead in pressuring both Netanyahu and the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to agree to a framework deal. Obama made it clear that he views Abbas as the most politically moderate leader the Palestinians may ever have. It seemed obvious to me that the president believes that the next move is Netanyahu’s.
  • “There comes a point where you can’t manage this anymore, and then you start having to make very difficult choices,” Obama said. “Do you resign yourself to what amounts to a permanent occupation of the West Bank? Is that the character of Israel as a state for a long period of time? Do you perpetuate, over the course of a decade or two decades, more and more restrictive policies in terms of Palestinian movement? Do you place restrictions on Arab-Israelis in ways that run counter to Israel’s traditions?”
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 14
     
    Lengthy interview with Obama published March 2, 2014. Obama talks a much harder stance with Israel, conveying the view that the U.S. may not be able to continue protecting Israel diplomatically if the current negotiation between Israel and Palestine being brokered by John Kerry fails.  Get ready to put your money where your mouth is, Mr. President. Netenyahu has no intention to enter into an agreement with Palestine. He's served up one deal-breaker after another. And Netanyahu is trapped by his prior pandering to the Israeli right wing settlers in Palestine. 
Paul Merrell

Zionism's Last Card and Hope For Palestine - Alan Hart - 0 views

www.alanhart.net/st-card-and-hope-for-palestine

U.S. foreign policy Israel Palestine Israel-lobby Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Following the interim agreement with Iran the next six months will tell us whether or not the American-led Zionist lobby and Zionism itself has played its last card and lost. If it does lose President Obama will be free to use the leverage he has to try to cause Israel to be serious about peace on terms almost all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept (and which would not pose any threat to the wellbeing and security of those Jews now living in Palestine that became Israel and who wanted to stay). The stakes could not be higher. As I write I am recalling what former President Carter said to my wife and I when we met with him and Rosalyn, words I quote in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews and which bear repeating. “Any American president has only two windows of opportunity to take on the Zionist lobby – in the first nine months of his first term and the last year of his second term if he has one.”
  • I am happy to go public with this positive speculation in part because of an article by Philip Weiss. In it he noted that Netanyahu has been playing the Iran threat card “to keep the world’s eyes off the West Bank and Jerusalem.” Then, commenting on Netanyahu’s statement that Israel will not allow Iran to attain nuclear capability, he wrote this. “The ardent supporters of the Jewish state in the U.S. have never been in a worse position. They are largely supportive of this deal (as are a majority of all Americans, I add). They will have to throw Netanyahu under the bus.” Not long ago the proclaimed view of some American supporters of Israel right or wrong was that Obama was throwing Israel under a bus. The idea that American Jews should now throw Netanyahu under it appeals to me, as I am sure it does to Obama. If Congress does back away from doing Zionism’s bidding to wreck the prospects for a new-start American and European accommodation with Iran, what options if any will Netanyahu’s Israel have to distract the world’s media and political attention from Zionism’s on-going colonization – ethnic cleansing slowly and by stealth – of the occupied West Bank? Only one that I can see. War.
  • Though events may prove me wrong, my overall speculation is that Zionism’s last card is not a winner and that Obama will succeed in getting, six months or so from now, what he wants – a new-start and mutually beneficial relationship with Iran. And defeat for the Zionist lobby will, as I indicated in my opening paragraph, free him to use the presidential leverage to try to oblige Israel to be serious about peace on terms the vast majority of Palestinians could accept.
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  • In the context above what I am suggesting is that if and when he is free to put real pressure on Israel to be serious about peace with the Palestinians, Obama should make best use of the Kennedy quote – “What we want from Israel arises because our relationship is a two-way street”. And he could and should put flesh on that bone by saying, among other things, that it is not in America’s own best interests to allow Israel to go on denying the Palestinians an acceptable measure of justice. But his crunch point could and should be something like this. “What America wants and needs, in order to best protect its own interests in the Arab and wider Muslim world, is an end to Israel’s denial of an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians. Unless we get that, I as president will have no choice but to use the leverage at my disposal to press you.” Israelis would know, even if Obama didn’t spell it out, that the pressure would include an end to American vetoes of Security Council resolutions condemning Israel and sanctions. If Obama was to go public with such a position in the wake of defeat for the Zionist lobby over the Iran nuclear issue, I think it’s reasonable to assume that a big majority of Jewish Americans would signal, if only by their silence and/or refusal to condemn Obama, that their first loyalty was to America not Israel.
  • There is no certainty about how the Jews of Israel would respond, but there’s a good case for believing that because what most of them care most about is the relationship with America, a significant majority of them would say to Netanyahu and his coalition government something like: “Enough is enough. We insist that you make peace with the Palestinians on terms they can accept, even if that means a short, sharp civil war with those settlers who refuse to withdraw from the West Bank and be relocated and compensated.”
  • For those who might believe there is little or no prospect of a Jewish civil war in the event of President Obama insisting with leverage as necessary on Israel making peace with the Palestinians on terms they could accept, I recommend Chapter 12 of Volume Three of the American edition of my book. This chapter is titled The Blood Oath. It reveals that Sharon convened a secret meeting of many senior military officers to sign a blood oath committing them to make common cause with those settlers who would resist “to the death” the implementation of any government decision to withdraw from the West Bank. My named and quoted source for that dramatic story was none other than Ezer Weizman, Israel’s defense minister of the time. When Ezer told me of the secret meeting minutes after he learned about it, he asked me a question. Did I think Sharon would act in accordance with the blood oath he and others had signed? I said: “What I think is of no consequence. I’m a visiting goy. You’re Israel’s defense minister, what do you think?” He replied: “Of course, he would. He’s mad enough to nuke the entire fucking Arab world!“ The coming months will tell us how mad Netanyahu is. And also whether or not the optimism expressed in this post was justified.
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Dec 13
     
    'Twould be nice if it worked out this way. But Obama is spineless so I won't hold my breath. 
Paul Merrell

Continuing violence in Israel forces Netanyahu to cancel German trip | World news | The... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...l-netanyahu-cancel-german-trip

war & peace Israel Palestine Netenyahu escalating-violence

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Binyamin Netanyahu has cancelled a trip to Germany amid continuing violence between Palestinians and Israelis. A number of incidents on Wednesday scotched hopes the situation might be calming, after almost a week in which tensions have spiked amid clashes and lethal attacks. The postponement of Thursday’s summit, which was to mark 50 years of diplomatic ties between Israel and Germany, came as Netanyahu convened his top security advisers to discuss the worsening situation. Wednesday saw three separate serious incidents: in Jerusalem, outside Bethlehem, and in the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Gat, where a Palestinian reportedly stabbed an Israeli soldier and tried to take his weapon before fleeing into a building where he was shot dead.
  • Video footage showed armed police and soldiers running towards a building, and then in a room standing over a body lying in a pool of blood. According to police, the suspect had approached an armed Israel Defence Forces soldier after stepping off a bus and attempted to snatch his weapon. The Kiryat Gat incident will be especially worrying for Israelis, suggesting that the recent tensions – which had been largely confined to Jerusalem and the occupied territories – may be spreading to other parts of Israel. It followed clashes on Tuesday night at a demonstration in support of the al-Aqsa mosque in the seaside town of Jaffa by Israelis of Palestinian origin. The Kiryat Gat incident followed an alleged attempted stabbing by an 18-year-old Palestinian woman who was shot by an Israeli man during the incident, which took place in Jerusalem’s Old City, close to where two Israelis were stabbed to death at the weekend. In the third incident, a female Israeli settler’s car was stoned near Beit Sahour, which adjoins Bethlehem, and other settlers apparently fired on Palestinians, seriously injuring a youth. The settler attacked in her car said that a group of Palestinian youths had tried to pull her from the vehicle at the time the shooting took place. According to the Ma’an news agency, which interviewed locals, the youth who was shot was a student involved in the attack on the car. German government sources disclosed the cancellation of Netanyahu’s trip, which had already been heavily curtailed because of the situation in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. An Israeli official confirmed the cancellation. Elsewhere, clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli security forces across the West Bank led to dozens of injuries among Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Paul Merrell

Lethal Israeli - Palestinian Conflict Escalates | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...palestinian-conflict-escalates

war & peace Israel Palestine Gaza escalating-violence

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Conflict between Israel and Palestine escalates as youth throughout Palestine vent their frustrations over decades of illegal occupation and an escalation of Israeli oppression and violence. The renewed round of violence takes its toll on both Israelis and Palestinians.  
  • Violent clashes between Israeli occupation forces, settlers and Palestinians have escalated throughout Palestine since the beginning of the intensified Israeli crackdown against Palestinians at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, last month. On Sunday Israeli troops carried out a raid against the International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC). The center disseminates a lot of regional and local news coverage that otherwise only is available in Arab to English-speaking listeners and readers. The raid was carried out Sunday morning at 4.00 o’clock. Over the weekend a rocket was fired into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip. The rocket landed without causing damage. Sunday at dawn Israel responded by launching air strikes against targets in the Gaza Strip. Israeli military and government sources say that the strikes aimed at targeting militants.
  • One of these air strikes struck a family home in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City. The air raid killed a five months pregnant Palestinian mother along with her two-year-old child while several other family members were injured. The husband of the deceased 30-year-old Nour Rasmi Hassan told that a “knock on the roof rocket” woke the family from their sleep but that they were confused, shocked and that there was no time to respond and flee their home before the house was struck. Frustrated Palestinian youth are confronting Palestinian police and military in occupied East Jerusalem and other occupied Palestinian territories. Clashes in the interim Palestinian capital Ramallah turned deadly on Sunday evening when a 13-year-old boy succumbed to the his injuries. The 13-year-old Ahmad had been struck in the head by a rubber-coated steel bullet fired by Israeli occupation forces earlier that day. The fatal shooting occurred close to the Beit El settlement northeast of al-Biereh.
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  • Last week Israeli undercover agents infiltrated Palestinian protesters near Beit El, grabbing some, beating, kicking and injuring them severely. Meanwhile, some frustrated Palestinian youth have carried out knife attacks against Israeli settlers and citizens, venting their frustrations. Knife attacks began after the willful fatal shooting of an unarmed Palestinian youth by Israeli officers. A video captured the fatal shooting and the cheering words “kill him, kill him” before the fatal shots were fired. Several analysts noted that the latest round of violence has the potential to escalate into a full-scale Palestinian uprising. The Israeli crackdown against Palestinians has further soured Egyptian – Israeli relations. Last week the spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, Ahmed Abu Zeid said that Israel as the occupying power must provide Palestinian people the required protection and stop repeating its attacks that lead to more political congestion among the Palestinians and weaken the opportunities of reviving the installed peace talks between Palestinians and Israel,.
  • Notably, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas noted at his address at the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly that the PLO may no longer feel obliged to adhere to the Oslo Accords. Mahmoud Abbas stressed that Palestine could not continue to adhere to the accords as Israel continues to violate them. Several of the progressive PLO member factions, including the PFLP and DFLP have called for a renewed uprising. Both factions have repeatedly demanded that the Al-Fatah led Palestinian Authority immediately ends its so-called security cooperation with Israeli police, military, intelligence services and government. The Israeli Cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for its part, has promised a strict response to any “insurrection”. Over 150 Palestinians have been seriously injured over the course of the last week.
Paul Merrell

Recognizing Palestine, BDS and the survival of Israel | The Electronic Intifada - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...14123

war & peace Israel Palestine BDS EU-recognition

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • What is happening in European parliaments? In the last month and a half, the UK House of Commons, the Spanish, French, Portuguese and Irish parliaments have all recognized Israel’s eternal “right” to be a racist state via a much-touted recognition of an alleged Palestinian state within the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the areas of Palestine Israel occupied in 1967. These moves followed the lead of Sweden’s new center-left government which decided shortly after taking office to “recognize the State of Palestine” as part of the “two-state solution.” As there is no Palestinian state to recognize within the 1967, or any other, borders, these political moves are engineered to undo the death of the two-state solution, the illusion of which had guaranteed Israel’s survival as a Jewish racist state for decades. These parliamentary resolutions in fact aim to impose a de facto arrangement that prevents Israel’s collapse and replacement with a state that grants equal rights to all its citizens and is not based on colonial and racial privileges.
  • Unlike Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who believes he can force the world to recognize a greater racist Israel that annexes the territories Israel occupied in 1967 de jure, the European parliaments are insisting that they will only guarantee Israel’s survival as a racist state within Israel’s 1948 borders and on whatever extra lands within the 1967 territories the Palestinian Authority (PA) — collaborating with Israel — agrees to concede in the form of “land swaps.” Denmark’s parliament and the European Parliament itself are the latest bodies set to consider votes guaranteeing Israel’s survival in its present form within the 1948 boundaries only. Even neutral Switzerland agreed, upon a request from the PA, to host a meeting of signatories of the Fourth Geneva Convention to discuss the 1967 Israeli occupation only. Expectedly, in addition to the Jewish settler-colony, the world’s major settler colonies — the United States, Canada, and Australia — are opposed to the meeting and will not attend.
  • The context of these steps has to do with the recent conduct of the Netanyahu government whose impatience is exposing Israel’s liberal racist politicians — those who prefer a more patient approach to achieving the very same racist political goals — to embarrassment. The situation has become so untenable that ardent American liberal Zionists led by none other than Michael Walzer, emeritus professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, have felt compelled to act. Walzer, notorious for justifying all of Israel’s conquests as “just wars,” and a group of like-minded figures calling themselves “Scholars for Israel and Palestine,” recently called on the US government to impose a travel ban on right-wing Israeli politicians who support annexation of what remains of the West Bank. Whereas successive Israeli governments have shown an unyielding determination to strengthen Israel’s right to be a racist state over all of historic Palestine, they have done so through the ruse of the “peace process,” which they were committed to maintaining for decades to come without any resolution.
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  • This strategy has worked very well for the last two decades with hardly a peep from the Palestinian Authority, which owes its very existence to this unending “process.” More recently, Hamas’ political leadership, especially the branch in Qatar, where the group’s leader Khaled Meshal is based, has also been looking for the best way to join this project. But as the ongoing Netanyahu policies of visiting horrors on the Palestinian people across all of the territories Israel controls — policies that have exposed the “peace process” for the sham it always was as well as Israel’s claim to being “democratic” as a most fraudulent one — the international consensus that Israeli liberals have built over the decades to shield Israel’s ugly reality from the world has been weakened, if not threatened with collapse altogether. Israeli liberals realize that what Netanyahu is doing is threatening their entire project and the very survival of Israel as a racist Jewish state. It is in this context that European parliaments are rushing to rescue Israel’s liberals by guaranteeing for them Israel’s survival in its racist form through recognizing a nonexistent Palestinian state “within the 1967 borders.” It is also in this context that European governments in the last year or so have begun to speak of BDS as a possible weapon they could use to threaten the Netanyahu government if it continues in its refusal to “negotiate” with the Palestinians (the Europeans use of the threat of BDS is limited to a threat of boycotting only the products of Israeli colonial settlements in the occupied territories), that is, to maintain the illusion of an ongoing “peace process.” Herein lies the dilemma for those who support BDS.
Paul Merrell

'If UN Recognizes Palestine, Israel Must Annex' - Inside Israel - News - Arutz Sheva - 0 views

www.israelnationalnews.com/...189177

war & peace Israel Palestine Likud Danon U.N.

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Likud Central Committee chairman Danny Danon, who is challenging Binyamin Netanyahu for leadership of the party, on Saturday night called on Israel to respond to an expected UN recognition of the Palestinian Authority (PA) as the "state of Palestine" by declaring sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. "We must clarify in the clearest terms to the world that every unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state will bring Israeli sovereignty," declared Danon in a meeting with Likud activists in Judea's Gush Etzion region.
  • Erekat announced last Friday that the UN will likely vote on Monday on a unilateral PA resolution, which demands recognition, Israeli withdrawals from eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria by 2017, and prior to that a 12-month deadline for wrapping up negotiations on a final settlement. "If on this coming Monday the UN recognizes a Palestinian state, the state of Israel must respond with unilateral steps (as well), including implementing sovereignty," declared Danon.
  • Two weeks ago the European Parliament voted to recognize "Palestine," following a string of European nations voting to recognize the PA as a state - the parliamentary vote came the same day Hamas was removed from the European Union's (EU) official terrorist organization list on an alleged "technicality."
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Dec 14
     
    Benjamin Netanyahu is facing difficulties in the new Israeli election because of single-digit popularity ratings. But his Likud Party is still expected to be tapped post-election to form a new ruling coalition. Thus the world needs to worry about who is running against Netanyahu and the positions that person, Danny Danon, takes.  Here, Danon paints himself into the corner of annexing the entire West Bank as Israeli territory if the U.N. Security Council recognizes the Palestinian Authority as the "state of Palestine" in a vote expected on Monday. But he may find himself in a position where he has to face the impact of this statement.  The U.S. has been unusually elusive on whether it will exercise its veto power on the proposed Resolution, saying only that it "does not support" the Resolution, which is diplomaticspeak for "we may abstain from voting."   The Resolution, although presented by the PA, was actually drafted by the French. The EU Parliament just went on record as supporting Palestinian statehood. And there seems to be growing recognition among Israel's friends in the U.S. that the nation needs to be rescued from itself, before the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Movement does away with the Israeli state as part of its advocated single-state solution. BDS is approaching the strength of its predecessor organization that broke the back of the apartheid state of South Africa. I would not be surprised if the resolution passes with a U.S. abstention.  If that happens, watch for extreme fireworks in Israel and Palestine. The Israeli settlers in Palestine are violent, radical, and their interests in retaining their settlements rule Israeli politics. The last published draft of the resolution sets a 2017 deadline for conclusion of peace negotiations, borders along the pre-1967 borderline, a freeze on further Israeli colonization of the West Bank, retuirn of water rights, and recognition of an independent Palestine state government.   What Israel wants,
Paul Merrell

Secret Israeli Report Sees Rift With Europe Growing - J.J. Goldberg - Forward.com - 0 views

blogs.forward.com/...t-sees-rift-with-europe-growin

war & peace Israel Europe leaked-docs

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • A classified Israeli foreign ministry document, leaked to the daily Yediot Ahronot, warns that 2015 will see Israel’s standing on the world stage steadily deteriorating. It predicts “worsening drift in Europe toward Palestinian positions, more parliaments recognizing the State of Palestine, fear of sanctions and labeling merchandise [to separate settlement products from tariff-free Israel-proper products] and no certainty that the United States will continue after Israel’s March elections to protect Israel with its veto.” The document is said to be a summary of an interministerial assessment roundtable convened by foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, and is signed by foreign ministry deputy director-general Gilead Cohen. It was circulated to Israel’s ambassadors around the world, Yediot reported. In addition to labeling settlement products and parliamentary votes to recognize Palestine, the foreign ministry document warns of European nations halting the supply of replacement parts for Israeli equipment and demanding compensation for damage caused by Israel to European projects in the territories.
  • “The Europeans are creating a clear link between political and economic relations, and in this context it should be remembered that Europe is Israel’s main trading partner.” European diplomats and politicians increasingly view Israel as responsible for the failure of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, claiming that Israel sets unreasonable conditions for a peace agreement in order to continue deepening its hold on the West Bank.
  • The tensions surrounding Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to Paris this week are an outgrowth of that growing gulf of suspicion. As Haaretz diplomatic correspondents Barak Ravid and Asher Schechter both reported, French president Francois Hollande initially asked Netanyahu not to come to Paris for the Sunday solidarity rally, because he wanted to avoid injecting the divisive Israeli-Palestinian issue into the rally’s theme of national and Europe-wide unity and solidarity. Once Netanyahu announced that he was coming, Hollande made clear to him that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas would be invited as well. Netanyahu has said repeatedly since last week’s Paris attacks, in his initial sympathy statement and again in his remarks Monday at the site of the kosher supermarket attack, that the terror plaguing Europe is the same as the terror Israel faces. He said he hoped Europe would “wake up in time” to the terrorist threat. He continued: “Israel supports Europe in its fight against terrorism and it’s time Europe supported Israel in the same fight.” His comments have caused resentment in France. Like most of Europe, French leaders regard Israel’s conflict with Arab terrorists as fundamentally different from the jihadist terrorism spreading from Syria to the European continent. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is seen as a territorial dispute, albeit with religious overtones where Hamas is concerned, while Al Qaeda and ISIS are seen as essentially nihilistic movements that seek to undermine Western civilization.
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  • As for “waking up” to the terrorist threat, French observers note that they are carrying the fight against Al Qaeda in Mali on their own, had one of the largest NATO troop contingents fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and maintain what’s considered one of the best counter-terrorism intelligence operations in the West. In effect, Netanyahu’s call for Europe to “wake up” and “support Israel” in its struggle against terrorism is seen as a demand that Europe acquiesce in his effort to entrench Israeli presence in the territories, rather than withdrawing and permitting a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 lines.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Jan 15
     
    " ... no certainty that the United States will continue after Israel's March elections to protect Israel with its veto." That would seem to indicate that the Obama Administration is doing some very tough talking to Israeli government officials behind the scenes. But I doubt that Obama would have the U.S. abstain or vote in favor of a Security Council Resolution condemning Israel unless it was on a matter that would inflicit little actual pain on the Israeli government. In that scenario, Kerry could claim plausibly that the U.S. abstention or vote in favor was a "message" to Israeli gobvernment to get serious about making the two-state solution happen. But I have to admit it would warm my heart to see a Security Council Resolution adopted authorizing the use of force to break the Gaza siege and to push Israeli troops and its settlers back to the 1967 borders.  
Paul Merrell

Jerusalem at boiling point of polarisation and violence - EU report | World news | The ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...isation-and-violence-eu-report

war & peace Israel EU-sanctions report

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • A hard-hitting EU report on Jerusalem warns that the city has reached a dangerous boiling point of “polarisation and violence” not seen since the end of the second intifada in 2005. Calling for tougher European sanctions against Israel over its continued settlement construction in the city – which it blames for exacerbating recent conflict – the leaked document paints a devastating picture of a city more divided than at any time since 1967, when Israeli forces occupied the east of the city. The report has emerged amid strong indications that the Obama administration is also rethinking its approach to Israel and the Middle East peace process following the re-election of Binyamin Netanyahu as Israel’s prime minister. According to reports in several US papers, this may include allowing the passage of a UN security council resolution restating the principle of a two-state solution. The leaked report describes the emergence of a “vicious cycle of violence … increasingly threatening the viability of the two-state solution”, which it says has been stoked by the continuation of “systematic” settlement building by Israel in “sensitive areas” of Jerusalem.
  • For its part, Israel rejects the charge of illegal settlement-building in Jerusalem, claiming the city as its “undivided capital”. Among the recommendations in the report are: Potential new restrictions against “known violent settlers and those calling for acts of violence as regards immigration regulations in EU member states”. Further coordinated steps to ensure consumers in the EU are able to exercise their right to informed choice in respect of settlement products in line with existing EU rules. New efforts to raise awareness among European businesses about the risks of working with settlements, and the advancement of voluntary guidelines for tourism operators to prevent support for settlement business.
  • The disclosure of the 2014 report – which suggests a series of potential punitive measures targeting extremist settlers and settlement products – comes days after Israeli elections which saw Netanyahu emerge as the decisive victor.
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  • According to well-informed European sources, the report – now being discussed in Brussels – reflects a strong desire from European governments for additional measures against Israel over its continued settlement-building, and comes at a time when Europe is confronting “the new reality” of a new and potentially more rightwing Netanyahu government. The report also follows a period of growing frustration within the EU over the moribund state of the peace process, which collapsed last year, and pressure to adopt a harder line over issues such as settlement-building. Since Netanyahu’s victory on Tuesday, speculation has been mounting that both the US and the EU are looking for alternative and tougher strategies to push forward the stalled peace process.
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