NOVANEWS
BDS, Settlements and Activism: News from the Other Front
Michel Platini, we are with you!
The legendary football player Michel Platini, today President of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), sharply criticized Israeli policy concerning Palestinian sports, and determined that it involves serious violations of the accepted rules of international sports associations.
He even added that cancellation of Israel’s membership in UEFA would be considered. “We accepted them (the Israelis) in Europe and furnished them the conditions for membership and they must respect the letter of the laws and international regulations otherwise there is no justification for them to remain in Europe,” he said.
At the conclusion of a meeting with head of the Palestinian football union, Jibril Rajoub, who protested the difficulties that Israel makes for Palestinian football players, Platini added “I will use my full weight to put an end to the suffering of the Palestinian player, and will raise this issue in the next meeting of the UEFA Executive Committee, in October 2010. Platini rejected a compromise on this issue: “Israel has one option: to allow Palestinian sport to continue and prosper or be forced to face the consequences of their behaviour.” Platini’s anger derived primarily from the refusal of Israel to release from the ports aid that he himself sent to Palestinian sports unions.
Dani Ayalon on the boycott of settlement products
Deputy Foreign Minister Dani Ayalon is not the brightest, to say the least, but he is most assertive about his diplomatic initiatives, as seen a while back by his bragging about humiliating the Turkish Ambassador to Israel. To his credit will be the beginning of the end of the strategic alliance between Turkey and Israel.
However, at times Ayalon lets something political slip, and recently he spoke of the decision of the Palestinian Authority to initiate a popular boycott of Israeli settlement products. As a big thinker of international economics, the deputy minister ruled that the result of the settlement products boycott is a slowing of the Palestinian economy’s growth. How? Why? He did not explain but if Dani Ayalon says, it must be true.
Peace sukkah in Sheikh Jarrah
In the recent Jewish holiday of Sukkot (Feast of the Tabernacles), the movement for solidarity with Sheikh Jarrah initiated the building of a peace sukkah (booth, a temporary dwelling for the one week holiday) near the settlers in the neighbourhood. Various cultural and educational activities, some with Palestinian activists from the neighbourhood, were supposed to be conducted in the sukkah.
It should be noted that within the movement for solidarity with Sheikh Jarrah is a substantial percentage of religious Jews, who in the past initiated in the area actions connected to the Jewish tradition, such as forgiveness rituals before Yom Kippur, a joint Palestinian-Israeli Shabbat dinner and more. Building of the sukkah was yet another initiative in this spirit.
This did not prevent the inspectors of the Jerusalem Municipality of Mayor Nir Barkat from coming and destroying the sukkah and, after activists built it again, from destroying it a second and third time.
The fact that throughout Jerusalem there are hundreds of shaky sukkahs in public spaces, with no special licenses, did not prevent Barkat’s inspectors from following his orders, and neither did the fact that nearby stood a sukkah of the settlers in a public place, having no license. Hillel Ben Sasson, one of the initiators of the sukkah, attempted to convince the supervisors and police officers who accompanied them: “we thought that the idea of a sukkah, a temporary dwelling, fits superbly with the situation of the Sheikh Jarrah residents.
The residents themselves were very excited and prepared the sukkah decorations with the children. We really established this sukkah for the holiday.” Yet what does Barkat, who each day vainly waves Judaism, know about a sukkah?
Freezing or no freezing
Will Netanyahu announce a continuation of the freeze or not? Will Barak Obama find a formula that will prevent Abu Mazen from leaving the talks? Will the Chairperson of the Palestinian Authority finally lose the little credibility he has in the eyes of his people?
It has been a long time since international politics and press has been so preoccupied with the virtual world: everyone knows, including Mahmoud Abbas himself, that there was no freezing of settlement construction and expansion. It is enough to walk around not only East Jerusalem, but throughout the West Bank to understand that the settlement project did not cease for even a second. There is building, building and more building. And sometimes there is even moving into the settlements, although the database of new settlers is drying up.
Until when will the international community and Palestinian Authority continue to play “as if”? And more importantly, until when will the Palestinians allow them to continue playing this crooked game?
Abu Mazen expressed it well at the United Nations General Assembly, when he said the choice is between the peace process and the settlement process. There is no sign and no announcement according to which the most right-wing government in Israel’s history will freeze the settlements. Why, therefore, does he continue this play in which he does not determine even one line in the dialogue, and does not choose to tell the American president that he will return to the negotiating table only when the last Israeli bulldozer has been turned off?
