Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem Chair of West Midland PSC
Dear Friends,
Of the 8 items below 6 are reports, one is a video (about 4-5 minutes), and one (the final one) is an opinion piece.
Item 1 reports the trials of an 11 year old Palestinian child who was captured by the police and mistreated and has a video attached to it showing the police running after him, and a woman (presumably his mother) hysterically yelling ‘yelled’ (child) –but that made no difference. The child was stuffed into a police van and finally released, but with bodily injury. What do the police and soldiers think when they behave in this way? Do they really believe that they are going to bring security to anyone? Do they think that they will make that child so afraid that as a teen ager or adult he will not fight for his rights, and perhaps do so violently thanks to their treatment of him as a child. Hopefully he will not practice violence. Violence breeds violence. Hopefully he will use bds or other non-violent means of bringing about change.
Item 2 reports that the young man who killed an Arab (and whom we saw yesterday that the judge decided not to charge with murder) hated Arabs and, according to his mother, wanted to kill them.
In item 3 Gideon Levy writes about the trials and tribulations of people from Sussia in the South Hebron Hills. The Israeli military has been trying to get them out for years. But people who love their land are often hard to move. So it is in this case.
Item 4 is a video of a Gaza woman confronting (in English) a member of the Israeli Knesset (i.e., parliament).
Item 5 reports that Israel is closing the Karmi crossing at the expense of the Palestinian Gazans.
In item 6 hundreds marched today in Tel Aviv to protest the planned deportation of 400 children who were born here, but are not Jewish, having a parent or parents who came here as foreign labor. These children’s language is Hebrew and they know no other country. But because they are not Jewish, they will not be allowed to stay! Ugly? Indeed. Would Israeli Jews wish their children to be so treated elsewhere?
In item 7 President Obama insists that Israel must show seriousness in desiring peace.
Item 8, as I said, is an opinion piece. It is by Roger Cohen who believes that Obama must come to Jerusalem to get the peace process running. I do not agree with Cohen. Were Obama to threaten to cut off, or actually cut off, all military aid to Israel, it would be much more effective than his coming to Jerusalem. Still, Cohen is not wrong in most other things, and especially not wrong when he insists that “A new Middle East deserves more than an old Israel.”
All the best,
Dorothy
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1. Ynet,
March 04, 2011
M: I was afraid Photo: Omri Efraim
Palestinian boy claims police beat him
Eleven-year-old boy caught throwing stones in east Jerusalem suffers head, stomach trauma
An 11-year old boy arrested in east Jerusalem for throwing stones claims officers beat him while his hands were tied. Hospital tests confirm the boy sustained injuries to the eye, head, and stomach.
M. was arrested on Monday in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. It was his fifth run-in with the law, and his two brothers were also arrested. The three were interrogated in the presence of their father, an imam and one of the leading figures in Silwan residents’ protest against Israeli forces.
But during the interrogation M. complained he was not feeling well and was released home. Later that evening, he vomited blood and his parents took him to the hospital.
There, doctors found that the boy was suffering from a fractured bone in his eye cavity as well as head and stomach wounds.
Upon being discharged Thursday, M. told Ynet that officers disguised as Arabs (aka Mista’arvim) had tied his hands beat him. “After school I went to a friend’s house,” he recounted.
“Then five officers caught me – I recognized them because they had pepper spray. After they tied me up they beat me in the stomach and head. They handed me to the police but I didn’t feel well and vomited blood.”
He added, “When they hit me I was afraid because all the kids ran away. I started crying and told the Mista’arvim: ‘I’m a little boy and I didn’t do anything, leave me alone’.” Now, he says, he is no longer afraid, but his eye still hurts.
M. and his parents, who plan to complain (Photo: Omri Efraim)
M.’s father, against whom a restraining order from Silwan is in effect, believes his son suffered for his reputation. “I’m afraid because I feel I cannot protect him from the police,” he said. “I have been arrested in the past but that’s no reason to hit my boy.”
The father added that his son had not been throwing stones on the day he was beaten. “The officers that beat him have no brains and no limits. They say Israel is democratic, but law and democracy don’t protect us,” he said.
M.’s mother says he has nightmares “that police knock on our door and take the children away”.
‘Police violent towards kids’
Now the parents plan to file a complaint with the Police Investigations Unit. Attorney Nasrin Alian, of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) told Ynet that “Jerusalem Police must launch an investigation and not allow those responsible for the boy’s injuries to evade trial and punishment”.
Alian warned that officers were becoming violent towards children in Silwan, citing numerous cases that have been brought to the ACRI’s attention.
“Our investigation revealed that despite all of these complaints no one has been brought to trial and the police’s investigations have mostly been closed without results. Police brutality against children is something that must be stopped, and we demand that the internal security minister and the chief of police intervene.”
According to data collected by ACRI, 1,267 cases were opened between November 2009 and October 2010 in which Palestinian minors were accused of throwing stones. The organization claims that police have adopted a routine of arresting children in the middle of the night as a scare tactic.
Jerusalem Police stated in response, “The minor was caught red-handed throwing stones, and was interrogated in the presence of his father. During the interrogation he felt poorly and was released to receive medical treatment.”
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Children and Stone-Throwing
Video: 11-year-old Palestinian stone-thrower arrested / Elior Levy
(Video) Footage shows officers chasing down boy who took part in West Bank riot, taking him to police station. B’Tselem: Stop treating kids as if they are dangerous wanted criminals
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2. Ynet,
March 04, 2011
Lethal Brawl
Hussam Rawidi, the victim Reproduction Photo: Adi Sastiel
Alleged stabber ‘hated Arabs’
‘He told me, I feel like killing them,’ says mother of teen charged with killing Arab in Jerusalem
The teen who allegedly killed a 24-year old Arab resident of east Jerusalem told his mother that he hates Arabs and wants to kill them, Ynet learned Thursday.
Four teens were arrested after the lethal fight that took place in early February. Of them, the alleged stabber was charged with manslaughter while his three friends have been charged with aggravated assault.
At his interrogation, the teen refused to admit his participation in the brawl. Only after his mother was brought in did he recount the events.
“That night we drank, we sat and got high,” he said. “Afterwards we went out just walking around, it was around 1 or 2 am, and then these two Arabs came.”
The teen said the two had picked a fight because one of the boys was wearing the scarf of Jerusalem’s Beitar soccer team, which is identified with right-wing politics.
At this point, he said, Hussam Rawidi, the victim, jumped on his friend, so he attacked the assailant and cut him in the face. Rawidi’s friend began to run away, and Rawidi ran off in the same direction, only to be pursued by the alleged stabber.
“I ran after him and then I saw him slip on the floor. I told my friends to get the knife because he had fallen and that was it,” he said.
The teen did not know of Rawidi’s death until the news report on it, he claims. “My friend called me while I was on the bus,” he recalled. “He said that there was one who had been killed. I nearly fainted at that moment… I was stressed out from the whole thing, but I didn’t want to just turn myself in because I was stressed, I didn’t know what to do.”
After his mother told him to turn himself into police, he says, he took her advice. “There’s something I want to say, that the fight was just because we fought. It wasn’t because he was an Arab, even if he had been Jewish we would have fought… I was afraid of him, I didn’t know he was Arab,” he told police.
One of the defendants in court (Photo: Gil Yohanan)
He also explained why he had used a knife. “I wanted to help, and suddenly I saw how big he was so I took out a knife. At first I went at him with nothing, the first thing I did was punch him but then I saw him go crazy so I wanted to take him down. I aimed there because I wanted to hurt him,” he said.
“If I hadn’t been high I wouldn’t have stabbed him. I regret what happened, and I want to make a change,” the teen said. He admits that he does not like Arabs, “but I wouldn’t get into trouble over an Arab,” he said.
‘They heard us speaking Arabic’
His mother, who was also questioned, told police, “He doesn’t like Arabs, he says he hates them. He has a lot of anger and hate, he hates them. He told me, ‘I feel like killing them.’ But I told him, ‘To kill an Arab, is that worth your life?'”
One of the alleged stabber’s friends also admitted to harboring hatred for the Arab race. “I live in a settlement and they committed terror attacks in my community,” he explained, recounting a case in which terrorists had killed a woman and her three children. “I’ve never liked Arabs,” he said.
Marad, Rawidi’s friend, gave a different account of the fight. He said the boys had heard them speaking Arabic and said, “Arab jerks.” Then the alleged stabber hit Rawidi in the head with his fist, Marad recounted.
“I came to separate between them, everything happened so fast, and then they let him go and started to hit me. They punched me in the head, the face, the neck, and the back,” he said.
“My glasses fell and I couldn’t see anything so I started running. More guys came, about four, and everyone was hitting us and my friend ran away and slipped in the middle of the road. I started to run after him and I saw that his shirt was all bloody in the front.”
Marad said he picked up Rawidi and carried him into a nearby restaurant. “I sat him down, took of his hat and put it on his face. I saw a scary cut on his face with streams of blood coming down,” he recounted. Then, while trying to stop the blood, he called the police and paramedics.
“When I sat him down he was conscious,” Marad said. “He said, ‘There goes my face.’ I told him an ambulance was on its way, that he only had to stay awake, but when the ambulance arrived he lost consciousness.”
When asked by interrogators whether they had provoked the boys, Marad answered in the negative. “We didn’t even speak to them. I was just speaking with my friend in Arabic, and we were laughing as usual,” he said.
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3. Haaretz,
March 04, 2011
West Bank chaos, just a stone’s throw away
An old rattletrap, some despondent villagers, a unit of Civil Administration soldiers and some of the most beautiful landscapes in the country.
We’re talking about a clunker – the skeleton of an old van, a Peugeot J5, without any wheels, without an engine. It cost NIS 800 at the junkyard in the village of Yatta. The residents of Palestinian Sussia, a handful of elderly farmers and shepherds, thought they might find refuge in it from the wind and the rain.
Last Sunday, Taleb Jabur’s son loaded the rattletrap onto a tow truck from Yatta and brought it to his parents’ home, a ramshackle tarpaulin tent secured by wooden stakes, which was erected in place of the tent that the bulldozers of the Civil Administration plowed under the week before. As soon as the tow truck carrying the van reached the tent, in an encampment located between the settlement of Sussia and the site of ancient Susiya (we’ll get to the latter later ), an armored military jeep and a white Mitsubishi SUV appeared out of nowhere. It was carrying Civil Administration forces under the command of Maj. Nabil Tafash, whom everyone in the area calls “Captain Nabil,” even though he is already a major.
The old van, on the tow truck.
Photo by: Miki Kratsman
For our part, we arrived late in the morning at the encampment, a collection of International Red Cross tents erected in place of the demolished dwellings, and near the water wells which had also been destroyed. Nabil sat in the SUV next to a young man in civilian clothes, with fashionable sunglasses perched on his shaved head; in the jeep sat the soldiers who had been designated for the security detail. The farmers were pleading while their wives wept.
The land is private property that belongs to the farmers. About this, evidently, there is no dispute. But living on it is prohibited. The tents therefore constituted “illegal construction” – as did the presence of the junky old van. There is no possibility of obtaining building permits.
It is pretty now in the south Hebron Hills. The squills are still in bloom, as are the almond trees. The meadows are full of grass and hay, some covered in fine spiderwebs that look like a bed of dew on the green carpets. There are white flowers in crevices, well-tended olive groves, their soil a dark brown. A farmer turns over his land with an ancient plow harnessed to his mule. These would be magnificent expanses if they were not on disputed land; indeed, they are among the most beautiful parts of the country. Even the red-tiled roofs on the houses of the settlement of Sussia blend in with this glorious biblical landscape.
Captain Nabil stood his ground: The van must go. Ezra Nawi, a plumber from Jerusalem who belongs to the Ta’ayush Jewish-Arab activist group and rarely leaves this area, did everything he could to stop this. Meanwhile, a photographer from Britain who came here to do a project about the landscapes of Palestine, documented the incident with his sophisticated camera, and two volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement, who came here from faraway Wisconsin, were fuming with anger. But the van was finally put back on the tow truck that brought it, and the truck headed back to Yatta.
On the way, Nabil’s forces ordered the tow-truck driver to change course: straight for the Etzion base, where the truck and its cargo were impounded for entering a closed area. In another 30 days the old van might be returned.
Meanwhile, back in the encampment, Nawi made a heated telephone call to the lawyer for the Rabbis for Human Rights organization, asking how to rescue the van and the tow truck.
Rasmiya Jabur, whose husband Taleb is a farmer, wept copiously at the entrance to her tent. Her guests were served steaming tea steeped over a fire of kindling sticks. Nawi leaned on his stylized cane and said he hoped the water from the tea was not from the well that was blocked up with dirt last week by the Civil Administration. It is undrinkable now, he says.
Suddenly the residents discovered that one of the van’s seats was left behind. Someone had stealthily removed it, and now an old farmer couple was reveling in it.
Sussia is on private land. About a year ago its owners – members of the Jabur clan, residents of Yatta – returned to it. They had had enough of living in the crowded village and, seeking to protect their land, they pitched tents on it for themselves and their sheep and goats. Nawi says that the settlers do not want to have to look at a “transit camp.” The Messiah will come, he says, before the Palestinians get building permits.
On Saturday the white tents of the Red Cross were set up, with the help of volunteers from Ta’ayush. The Civil Administration arrived at once, but in view of the large presence of neighbors and volunteers, both local and international, they did not succeed this time to destroy them again. The indefatigable Nawi says that the Palestinians have lost their fear.
A line of armed soldiers filed through the valley, an officer at its head, crossing the olive and almond groves and another Palestinian tent encampment, this one belonging to the Nawaja clan from across the road. The pair of Wisconsin volunteers wished to return to the village of Tawana: It was time for them to escort children home from school.
Isa Jabur, 73, and his wife Zohara, 68, have two sons living in America, they have no idea where. They haven’t seen them in seven years; sometimes they call. As their little grandson, 5-year-old Mahmoud, scurries back and forth between them, the couple rushes to whip out the confirmation of title to their land (called tabu, in Hebrew ) though no one asked them to do so. Every farmer here walks around with the laminated tabu certificate in his pocket, along with a note containing Ezra Nawi’s telephone number, just in case. Another couple was standing nearby: Omar Jabur, 53, and his wife Safiya, 52, who also had their grandson with them. A few roosters clucked about and a sheepdog found shelter beneath a ruined tent. A can of tomato paste made by the Hasharon canned goods plant in Karkur and bearing a “kosher” label rolled around in the debris.
By comparison to the dwellings here, Taleb and Rasmiya Jabur’s abode was unusually elaborate: Their tent was covered in plastic sheeting. But still there was no water, no electricity and no protection against the elements.
My cell phone rang: A television producer from Channel 2 asked me if I was watching the current season of “Big Brother.” I looked at a shattered television set sprawled amid the garbage.
A spokesman for the coordinator of government activities in the Territories, told Haaretz: “The activity referred to involves routine law enforcement that is carried out with respect to both Palestinians and Israelis, with an emphasis on preventing an expansion of illegal construction – among other places in the area of the illegal outpost in ancient Susiya.”
We walked over to see this Jewish heritage site, where development and expansion work is being carried out by Palestinian laborers from Yatta and Beit Safafa. A sign read: “We apologize for the temporary inconvenience. Completion of work: May 2011.” Inside the compound, alongside the antiquities, stood three wooden huts with an old Israeli Renault car parked out front.
So the rattletrap was removed but the homes in the illegal outpost of ancient Susiya are still standing.
“This Jewish town reached its high point in the 7th and 8th centuries C.E., under Muslim rule,” a colorful brochure proclaims. Admission is NIS 16, including entry to the synagogue with its ancient mosaic floor.
A field trip of boys from Susan’s House, a program for troubled teens in Jerusalem, with a police escort, arrived at the site directly from the Tomb of the Patriarchs, in Hebron. “The meat is glatt kosher,” promised Avital Goel, the thick-bearded ultra-Orthodox man who runs the program.
Cold cuts and industrially made hummus on disposable plates for our travelers, a learned explanation about the synagogue, from the 4th century, C.E. – but not a word about what is happening right now, a stone’s throw away.
—
There is difference and there is power. And who holds
the power decides the meaning of the difference. June Jordan There’s a world of difference between truth and facts.
Facts can obscure the truth. Maya Angelou
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5. LA Times,
March 3, 2911
Israel closes Gaza commercial crossing, leaving just one
Military officials cite unspecified security concerns for the closure of the Karni crossing and say all goods would now go through the Kerem Shalom checkpoint.
After agreeing last year to relax its blockade around the Gaza Strip, Israel moved Wednesday to tighten the security cordon by permanently closing what was once its largest commercial crossing point.
Israeli military officials cited unspecified security concerns for the closure and promised that all goods that would have passed through at the Karni crossing, southeast of Gaza City, would go through the Kerem Shalom checkpoint, the last operational commercial crossing, which is about 21 miles to the southwest at the point where Egypt, Israel and the Gaza Strip meet.
In recent years, Israeli authorities had restricted Karni — which, like other crossings, has been occasionally targeted by mortar rounds and other forms of militant attack from Gaza — to only two days a week to handle the flow of wheat, animal feed and gravel into Gaza. Officials said the relocation of Karni’s conveyor belt to Kerem Shalom would eventually enable increased capacity at the remaining crossing.
“Because we will be able to open Kerem Shalom more days a week and it won’t be under the same threat, we will be able to dramatically enlarge the operation,” said Maj. Guy Inbar, an Israeli military spokesman.
But critics predicted that the closure would worsen congestion at the smaller Kerem Shalom terminal, increasing delivery costs and hindering economic cooperation between Gaza and the West Bank, which Palestinians hope one day to turn into a linked independent state.
“Forcing humanitarian organizations through the bottleneck of Kerem Shalom will do little to relieve the humanitarian suffering of the people of Gaza,” said Chris Gunness, spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which assists Palestinian refugees.
He said current deliveries to Gaza were at only 40% of their levels before the current Israeli embargo was imposed in 2007 and that shifting to the smaller Kerem Shalom facility would make it impossible for Gaza to return to that volume even if restrictions on certain goods were lifted. He predicted that redirecting traffic to Kerem Shalom would increase the U.N.’s delivery costs by 20% because of the size and type of equipment available at the terminal.
Since the 2007 takeover of Gaza by the militant Islamic group Hamas, Israel and Egypt have imposed a tight cordon around Gaza’s land borders, sea access and airspace, crippling the territory’s already fragile economy. About 45% of Gaza’s residents are unemployed and 80% require international aid, U.N. officials estimate.
Karni, which currently can handle up to 1,000 trucks a day, is the third crossing point Israel has closed since 2007. Kerem Shalom now handles as many as 250 trucks daily, though Israeli officials have promised to enlarge it.
Israel’s Gaza blockade came under international scrutiny in May after Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish activists, including one with U.S. citizenship, who took part in a protest flotilla seeking to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza. The commandos opened fire after coming under attack from passengers with knives and clubs when they boarded the ship.
In response to criticism about excessive use of force in the maritime incident in international waters, Israel soon after began to relax its restrictions on the passage to Gaza of food, household goods and many other items, though cement and certain other construction materials remain restricted because Israel worries that such items could be used by militants to build bunkers or weapons. Israel also pledged to increase the capacity for delivery of goods and allow more exports.
“We’re concerned that despite promises last summer to open additional crossings, Israel is actually closing crossings, further limiting the movement of goods into and out of Gaza,” said Sari Bashi, executive director of Gisha, an Israeli group opposed to the restrictions.
Bashi alleged that Israeli authorities wanted to eventually seal the border between Israel and Gaza to break the link with the West Bank and direct the traffic of all goods and people through Egypt. She said maintaining interaction between Gaza and the West Bank was “important for the economy and fabric of society; being cut into two is not a viable option.”
In Gaza, Hamas officials condemned Karni’s closure.
“Closing all the crossings with Gaza and keeping only Kerem Shalom point is meant to increase the suffering of the 1.5 million people of Gaza,” said Hamas spokesman Sami abu Zuhri
edmund.sanders@latimes.com
Special correspondent Ahmed Aldabba in Gaza City contributed to this report.
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6, Haaretz,
March 04, 2011
Hundreds march in Tel Aviv to protest deportation of foreign workers’ kids
A counter-protest took place at the entrance to Meir Park, where the relief organizations were demonstrating, with south Tel Aviv residents shouting, “Enough with the baby visas!”
Relief organizations staged a demonstration in Tel Aviv Friday in a renewed effort to prevent the deportation of foreign workers’ children, which is expected to occur imminently.
A counter-protest took place at the entrance to Meir Park, where the relief organizations were demonstrating, with south Tel Aviv residents shouting, “Enough with the baby visas!”
The deportation of families that do not meet the criteria set by the Israeli government is expected to commence in the coming week, coinciding with the completion of preparations for arrests and the endorsement of a facility to be set up at Ben Gurion Airport, devised to detect families with children.
Hundreds of people demonstrated at the Tel Aviv park, calling on the government not to deport or incarcerate children that were born in Israel. The demonstration was organized by relief organizations, including the Center for Assistance of Foreign Workers, the Civil Rights Union, Doctors for Civil Rights and others.
The speakers at the event included Aliza Olmert, wife of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and Esther Akfiya, who participated in the Oscar-winning film ‘Strangers No More,’ a documentary about the Bialik-Rogozin School, whose student body comprises refugees and immigrants.
“It doesn’t matter how many pictures or decorations you put on the wall, a jail is a jail,” said Rotem Ilan, the founder of the Israeli Children’s Association. “These children do not belong behind bars.”
Ilan continued, “These are children who were born and raised in Israel, children whose parents arrived in Israel legally, at the invitation of the state. Four hundred children are not the problem, and their deportation is certainly not the solution.”
Oded Feller, a lawyer from the Civil Rights Union, claims that the imprisonment of children is supposed to be a last resort and not a part of protocol. According to Feller, “the facility [set to be stationed at Ben Gurion Airport] has been deemed by the Population Authority as a passage facility, when in reality it is a facility for arrests.”
Feller added that “even if the state believes that there is an issue with a child’s status, incarceration is always a last resort and this is the position stated in the International Declaration of the Rights of the Child.
MK Dov Hanin (Hadash) spoke at the demonstration Friday, saying “the time has come to stop abusing the children of foreign workers. These children are worthy of more than an Oscar for a touching documentary, but first and foremost to the security of their status and future.”
The MK added that “the government that imports and continues to import foreign workers must step up and take responsibility and ensure that their children receive real rights and protections.”
“These children don’t have any other home,” said Gila Almagor, an Israeli actress. “We must allow 400 children and their families to stay in Israel.”
According to the actress, “these are people the state brought here and it therefore must take responsibility for its negligence. We will only gain from it.”
More on this topic
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7. Ynet,
March 3, 2011
Obama: Israelis must show seriousness on peace
Jewish leaders say that during White House meeting president said Palestinians ‘don’t feel confident that Netanyahu government serious about territorial concessions’
WASHINGTON – US President Obama this week called on Jewish leaders to speak to their colleagues in Israel and to “search your souls” over Israel’s seriousness about making peace, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported Wednesday.
According to participants, Obama told the Jewish leaders that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is eager to secure his legacy by establishing a Palestinian state and would accept a decent offer if one were on the table.
“The Palestinians don’t feel confident that the Netanyahu government is serious about territorial concessions,” the president reportedly said.
Obama also reportedly said that the Jewish sections of Jerusalem would remain in Israeli hands as part of any peace deal, but that the Arab sections would not.
JTA reported that in an hour-long meeting at the White House Tuesday with some 50 representatives from the Jewish community’s chief foreign policy umbrella group, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Obama reiterated the US commitment to Israel.
‘Worst fears about Obama confirmed.’ White House meeting (Photo: Pete Souza)
The Jewish leaders noted the president’s affirmation of his “deep commitment to Israel’s security,” according to JTA.
Several participants at the meeting told JTA that the president also implied that Israel bears primary responsibility for advancing the peace process. They interpreted the president’s comments as either hostile, naive or unsurprising.
“Many people felt that their worst fears about Obama were confirmed with respect to Israel,” one participant was quoted as saying by JTA. “They felt an enormous hostility towards Israel.”
However, other participants disagreed and said meeting was a positive one. According to JTA, they described the president as “thoughtful” and “forthcoming” in his remarks, and said no new ground was broken.
“The people who loved Obama probably still love him, the people who had big reservations about Obama probably have more reservations than they had before,” one longtime Jewish organizational official told JTA.
JTA said most agreed that the atmosphere was cordial and gracious.
“I thought he reaffirmed his support of Israel, and I thought he did it quite well,” one participant told JTA. “Nothing that he said would I interpret in any way as being anti-Israel or opposed to Israel.”
Others suggested that the president wasn’t hostile so much as naive about Palestinian intentions and his belief about Israel’s supposed lack of commitment to peacemaking, JTA reported. Still others suggested both interpretations were flawed.
Israel is anxious. It preferred the old Middle Eastern order. It could count on the despots, like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, to suppress the jihadists, reject Iran, and play the Israeli-Palestinian game along lines that created a permanent temporariness ever more favorable to Israeli power.
Israelis are doubly worried. They wonder, Mr. President, if you like them in a heart-to-heart way. You’ve been to Cairo, you’ve been to Istanbul, so what’s wrong with Jerusalem? Why won’t you come and kvetch with us, President Obama, and feel our pain?
Israelis are triply worried. Elections are unpredictable — just look at Gaza — and now they may be held across the Arab world! There’s the Muslim Brotherhood talking a good line but nursing menace. And what if Jordan goes, too?
“America is Israel’s insurance company and right now we need the C.E.O. to come and tell us, ‘You are not alone,”’ Daniel Ben-Simon, a Knesset member who recently left the Labor Party told me. “We especially need that because Israeli policy is not just a tragedy, it’s almost criminal.”
That’s right on both fronts. A great opportunity could be squandered as the Arab Spring unfurls. I find all the Israeli anxiety troubling for moral and strategic reasons. The moral reason is simple: What could be closer to the hearts of Jews than the sight of peoples fighting to throw off oppression and gain their dignity and freedom?
If Israel has come to such a pass that these noble struggles from Benghazi to Bahrain leave it not just cold but troubled, then what has become of the soul of the Jewish state?
The Middle East’s most vibrant democracy is missing the upside of the birth of new ones. First, when Arabs can legally assemble in places other than mosques, radical Islamism is dealt a blow. Second, American double-standards in backing the likes of Mubarak long gave demagogic ammunition to Israel’s enemies, chiefly Iran.
Third, subjugated peoples are angry peoples easily manipulated, whereas the empowered focus on improving their own lives, not conflict elsewhere. Fourth, accountability in Arab governance began right next door in the West Bank with Salam Fayyad’s program: Israel should get ahead of the democratizing wave by embracing that development rather than pooh-poohing it.
There’s no reason to think Arab liberation stops at Palestine’s door.
The Arab awakening is not yet about Israel — I never heard the word “Israel” during two weeks in Cairo — but that could change if another skirmish erupts. Nothing would radicalize regional sentiment, now focused on building rather than destroying, as quickly.
So the overwhelming American, European, Israeli and Arab interest lies in breaking the volatile Israeli-Palestinian deadlock. But how?
A little thing happened between the Egyptian and Libyan crises. The United States vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement building in the West Bank.
This was, I hear, an agonizing decision for Obama in that it amounted to a veto of his own sentiments, almost his words. He has said the United States does “not accept the legitimacy” of the settlements, which should stop. America’s main allies — including Britain, France and Germany — voted in favor.
Of course it’s Obama who’s facing an election next year where censure of Israel would cost him.
Obama, I was told, tried everything to get the Palestinians to withdraw the resolution. He offered the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, a package including a Quartet statement committing to using the 1967 borders as the basis for a resolution. The United States, unlike the European Union, has never been quite that far. But Abbas, feeling vulnerable, demurred — and the U.S. veto ensued.
That was a Palestinian mistake — a tactical thrill at the expense of strategic gain. The Palestinians are in urgent need of a coherent negotiating team.
Israel is in urgent need of direction. An altercation followed the vote between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He asked how Germany could chastise Israel and she expressed outrage at Israeli stalling. When Germany, Israel’s second-closest ally, gets exercised, exasperation is running high.
There’s exasperation here, too. Obama’s word is on the line. He said last year that by the time of the U.N. General Assembly in September, “We can have an agreement that will lead to a new member of the United Nations — an independent, sovereign state of Palestine living in peace with Israel.”
September is six months from now.
I’d hoped there was an Israeli quid pro quo for that self-contradicting U.S. veto, a diplomatic nadir. There isn’t. Now Israel’s talking about “interim agreements” again. That won’t fly. Palestinians know by now who gains from permanent temporariness. Palestine wants sovereignty. Israel wants security. Those are non-negotiable demands.
Only an Obama gamble can break the logjam by September. He should go to Jerusalem in May and address the Knesset. He should spell out all the ways America will guarantee Israel’s security. He must coax Israel from the siege mentality that blinds it to the opportunities multiplying around it. He can spread the love.
A new Middle East deserves more than an old Israel.
You can follow Roger Cohen on Twitter at twitter.com/nytimescohen .
