NOVANEWS
Dear Friends,
10 items below—too many items, I know, but Obama’s visit took precedence over other items also important. Am trying to catch up, and with that, have left aside a couple of items that I much want to send, but that can wait for a day when there is less to distribute.
Item 1 is about education and racism in Israel. The article was published in the Hebrew print edition of Haaretz about 4 days ago. I have been checking since, and debated translating to English if it would not have been by Haaretz. Thank goodness it is here. Hopefully the incoming Minister of Education will be vastly different from his predecessor, Gideon Sa’ar. Time will tell. One thing is fairly certain: he (the new minister) could not be much worse. Sa’ar was one of the most nationalistic Ministers of Education that Israel has had. However, he was not the only one. Limor Livnat was not better.
Item 2 reports that the UN Human Rights Council has urged removing all the settlers from the WB. Of 48 votes, the only negative one was that of the US. Sickening.
Item 3 reveals the main aspects of the 1-state plan of the right-wing settlers.
Item 4 argues that Israeli governments and the military have a goal and that its ‘no strategy’ is in fact a strategy.
Item 5 relates Israel’s foreign ministry’s handling of PR on ‘The Gatekeepers.’
Item 6 reports that Iran is considering possibly talking with the US over its nuclear plans.
Item 7 informs us that Endogen is planning on visiting Gaza in April.
Item 8 argues that for peace talks to proceed, it is necessary to take into consideration Palestinian politics.
Item 9 is an Al Jazeera assessment of Obama’s ME trip.
Item 10 is Today in Palestine for Friday, March 22, 2013. Here you will read all that you have missed during Obama’s visit to the area. One thing that I learned is that Hares (a village that I have close friends in, and that I visit relatively often) is going to lose more land, this time to an Israeli military watch tower. Hares already has one on its western end. Now it will have another on its eastern end. The village has lost much land for road 5 and entrance to it, as well as to colonists on its western end. Disgusting! But that’s (disgusting) true of much that we learn from Today in Palestine.
All the best,
Dorothy
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1 Haaretz
Saturday, March 23, 2013
When racist expressions are no longer the exception
School educators who want to deal with the phenomenon head-on sometimes find themselves on their own.
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/when-racist-expressions-are-no-longer-the-exception.premium-1.511305
By Or Kashti
The nation’s schools were asked this week to mark the UN-sponsored International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (March 21 ). The Ministry of Education’s website offered study materials on the subject, and Dalit Stauber, the ministry’s director general, instructed principals to devote a full hour to discussion of a racially motivated assault on two female teachers in Jerusalem 10 days ago. (On separate occasions, two Arab teachers were assaulted by Jewish teens, for no apparent reason. )
So, everything is fine. We can relax – anyone who has been unsettled by the proliferation of attacks against Arabs in recent weeks may be saying. The Ministry of Education is handling the problem. But there could be no greater delusion.
Racism is not restricted to schools with students of any particular social background. Teachers in Jerusalem relate that it has infiltrated prestigious institutions, both civics and history classes and also schoolyard recesses. Once the school day is over, they say, it makes its way into the shopping mall and public transportation. This is also the case elsewhere in the country. Over the past four years, the Education Ministry has been apathetic, at best, to efforts to battle racism and to promote the study of coexistence between Jews and Arabs. In other cases, it has even censored information relating to more than a few incidents. This was the sort of spirit imparted by the commander in chief, Gideon Sa’ar (until this week education minister ), within a short period of time. Racism only spread under the patronage of this sort of apathy, and teachers and principals who see the struggle against ethnic prejudice as part of their educational role were left to wage that struggle alone.
“I am a proud racist,” said a teenage boy at Jerusalem’s Malha mall, draped in a Beitar Jerusalem scarf, shortly before last week’s game against Maccabi Haifa. “The menorah of Beitar symbolizes the Jewish people. The menorah is holy, Jerusalem is holy, and we are holy. That is why no Arab may set foot [on the field] in Teddy Stadium. This is a team of Jews and only Jews.”
His friends, standing around him – all high-school students from the capital’s northern Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood – blurted out that they, too, hate Arabs and are proud of it. Added one, “an Arab is preferable to a leftist. The worst of all are those from among your own people who defend people whose object in life is to slaughter you.”
These statements cannot be considered merely harsh rhetoric spewed out prior to a soccer game (incidentally, one that Beitar lost ). Hatred of Arabs is constant; it is categorical.
“I do not want to see Arabs anywhere – not in the streets, not at the mall, not on the light railway,” says Ron (the name is a pseudonym, as are those of the other students ), a 12th-grader at the Sieff and Marks High School in Jerusalem’s Beit Hakerem neighborhood. “There is a small part within every Arab, even those who say they want to live with us in peace, that can without warning jump on you and stab you with a knife. There is nothing you can do about it: In their roots they are against Jews.”
Sieff is an ordinary, middle-class school, as are its students. Polls conducted around the country in the past two to three years offer data suggesting that the statements made by Ron and his peers should not come as a surprise. In one survey, about one-half of Jewish youngsters responded that Israel’s Arab citizens do not deserve the same rights as Jews; 56 percent agreed that they shouldn’t be allowed to serve in the Knesset. Another poll revealed that 60 percent of Jewish youths believe that strong leaders are preferable when it comes to imposing the rule of law, and that 46 percent do not believe in the possibility of Jewish-Arab coexistence.
Even if it did not take note of these polls, the Ministry of Education should have at least listened to the statements of civics teachers, who allege that it’s become almost impossible for them to even conduct a class discussion about human rights. But the ministry did just the opposite.
“We have to be strong, and stand up against an environment that doesn’t want us here,” continues Ron. “I would not be willing to have an Arab boy learn in my school, because of the part of him that wants to kill me. I have my people, that is what is important, and I don’t care about anyone else.”
And he is not atypical.
The sign “Beitar is pure forever” that was held aloft by fans of the soccer team a few weeks ago does not shock such high-schoolers.
“The sign was wrong, but a Muslim should not play on the team,” says Nir, an 11th grader. The issue came to the fore several months ago when the team announced that it was taking on two Muslim players from Chechnya. Fans reacted with anger and outrage.
“There are Arab teams where Muslim players can play. Beitar is a team with a Jewish character. If there would be a Muslim player, I would be unable to identify with the team,” Nir says, adding, “I feel hatred for them, for all of them, but that is not racism. Racism is when you hate a person without reason. I don’t feel safe near them. They brought it upon themselves, with all the terror attacks. Because they are here, part of my life is ruined.”
“If they would open an Arabic-studies major at school, no one would take it,” he continues. “I do not want to get to know Arabs or to come into contact with them. True, they live near us, but they are of no interest to me and it does not suit me to learn about their culture, because they are the enemy. There’s no need to learn about them. Only my team, the Jews and Judaism, are of interest to me.”
Visitors from Kafr Qassem
Sieff and Marks High School is one of the institutions that have decided not to give in. Its 11th-grade classes recently returned from a Jewish-Arab seminar at the Givat Haviva center for democracy education; students from the 12th grade visited the Israeli Arab town of Kafr Qassem and also hosted students from there. This was not so simple.
When the Arab students arrived at Sieff, there were pupils who said, “Look how low the school has fallen.” During the initial moments of the seminar at Givat Haviva, several Sieff students wrapped themselves in large Israeli flags and sang songs of Beitar Jerusalem, “in order to show the Arabs what we think of them,” as one of them put it later. When a student hung a sign in the hall bearing the slogan “Beitar should be pure,” the teachers discussed in the classroom how it was that no one – even the most determined and blatant opponent of racism in the school – apparently thought to tear it down immediately. Educational success will be determined by a reduction in the number of students who take part in the next lynching. This cannot be discounted, particularly not when the common response to less extreme expressions of racial hatred is to look the other way.
“There are moments during lessons when I am afraid,” says a civics teacher at another Jerusalem high school. “Subjects such as human rights, freedom of expression and majority-minority relations are perceived as being something that belongs to leftists, and the discussion very quickly devolves into political arguments. It isn’t exactly an argument, but rather screaming between students and directed at me – how dare I give our enemies an opportunity to be heard? There is no tolerance. I leave these classes drained and frustrated. I have noticed that this year I am devoting fewer classes to these ‘problematic’ subjects. I no longer have the strength to enter this mine field.”
A conversation with young people on these subjects can drive one to despair. Fear of every encounter with Arabs dominates a great deal of what they say, and it stems from an undermining of the self-identity they have formed, part of which has to do with denial of the “other.” There is nothing quite like fear to ensure obedience and maintenance of the existing order. The teenagers express a lack of faith, not only in the chance of reaching a political settlement with the Palestinians, but also in the media and in some of their teachers.
Many of them are proud to say that they are repeating things that they have heard at home. Lilly Halperin, an educator who developed a program to battle racially based violence, which has been implemented in Jerusalem and elsewhere, says the tendency to express shock at the racism of young people is actually a way for adults to absolve themselves of responsibility. The youth are the scapegoat, she says: “They are a weak target that is easy to attack, enabling society to avoid the painful coming-to-terms with the true problem.”
Nonetheless, the staff at Sieff refuse to give in to despair. Last year, in the framework of a preparatory session prior to the traditional school trip to Poland, one student said: “We should do a Holocaust to the Arabs.” Other students, clearly upset, reacted by saying that one mustn’t say such things. Ido Plezental, a teacher of civics, history and Arabic, decided to discuss these issues rather than stifle them. After they returned to Israel, the same student told Plezental that she understood she had been wrong and that now she had nothing against Arabs.
A conference was to be held last Sunday at the Seminar Hakibbutzim Teachers College, in conjunction with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, focusing on the war the educational establishment should be waging against racism – not only that expressed toward the Muslim athletes on Beitar or against Arabs, but against every group, ranging from immigrants from Ethiopia to labor migrants.
“We must dismantle the students’ fear,” says Amnon Rabinovich, a civics teacher at Sieff. “This is an extremely powerful emotion, and there are good reasons for it, as well. We have students here who lost family members in terror attacks. To get a child to say that he is afraid is the start of an educational process, and is the antithesis of everything that these students see around them. It is particularly difficult for educators to deal with racism. It take a lot of courage to talk about education in favor of loving your fellow man.”
“School is the only place where we can deal with racism,” adds Plezental. “Putting them in jail won’t help. The only way is to try to free the racist from the classical perception of victims, which is largely based on ignorance. That is something that the school can correct.”
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2 The United Nations Human Rights Council has urged Israel to withdraw all settlers from the occupied West Bank and compensate Palestinians affected by its settlement policy.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/03/22/294810/un-urges-israel-to-withdraw-settlers/
photo shows the construction site of an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.
The United Nations Human Rights Council has urged Israel to withdraw all settlers from the occupied West Bank and compensate Palestinians affected by its settlement policy.
The top human rights body also called on Israel to end human rights violations associated with settlement construction, DPA reported.
It also called on Israel to stop settler violence against Palestinians and prosecute settlers who attack Palestinians.
Israel’s arbitrary arrests of Palestinians were also condemned during the debate of the council in Geneva on Friday.
The UN’s top human rights body passed five resolutions critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. The US was the only member of the 47-nation council to vote against the resolutions.
Israel did not participate in Friday’s debate, claiming it was biased in favor of Palestinians.
Israel has built thousands of settler homes in the West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem) since it occupied them in 1967.
The Israeli settlements are considered illegal by much of the international community. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the settlement construction is part of Tel Aviv’s policy and will not stop.
Construction of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian lands violates the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prevents an occupying power from transferring its own population into occupied territory, which could be equal to war crimes that fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
Palestinians want East al-Quds as the capital of their future state.
HM/JR
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3 +972 Magazine
Friday, March 22, 2013
The one-state plan according to Israel’s top settlement councilThough it is the establishment opinion that two-states will happen, those opposing it literally are executing on a plan to kill it.
http://972mag.com/the-one-state-plan-according-to-israels-top-settlement-council/68088/
By Joel Braunold
Carmel settlement in South Hebron Hills (Mairav Zonszein)
NEW YORK — With President Obama visiting Israel, many groups are trying to get his attention so they can let the president know what they think he should do. Included within the pleas from the peace camp and the ‘Free Pollard’ camp is a document prepared by the Yesha council titled, “Judea and Samaria – It’s Jewish, It’s Vital, It’s Realistic.”
Questions answered within this Kafkaesque document include: why the demographics are on the settlers’ side, why the Palestinians are stealing water from Israel, and what is the legal history of Israel’s settlement enterprise. Most interesting, however, is the nine-step plan that the Yesha council has created at the end of the document to fulfill their vision.
The main tool that the Yesha council has to achieve its vision are its political advocates in the Knesset and in the government. Their building in the West Bank happens through the good graces of the state authorities. Of course the main party for the Yesha council is the Jewish Home party (Habayit Hayehudi), but they also have representation through Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu and a scattering of MKs in some of the center parties. Members of their communities operate across the center and right of the Israeli political spectrum.
Looking at the nine steps we can see the underlying Jewish Home strategy during the coalition talks. Additionally we can start to make sense of some of the other Knesset moves and statements by members of the settler community on the national stage.
Step 1: Renewing the strong belief in the supremacy of the Jewish claim to the Jewish Homeland and the justness of taking measures to maintain control of it
In the coalition agreement between Likud and Jewish Home was a bill to make the Jewishness of the state supreme. This is a redo of the Avi Dichter bill from the last Knesset. No one is quite sure of which version will hit the Knesset, if it gets through Tzipi Livni, but it is part of a big move to decouple the concepts of Jewish and democratic state as equal and promote the former at the expense of the latter. The motivations behind this become clear in a strategy that is tied into biblical land claims and preparing for a situation where the civil rights of millions of Palestinians are going to have to be restricted.
Step 2: Uniting the nation and its leadership
Throughout the coalition talks, Bennett was the peacemaker between Yair Lapid and Benjamin Netanyahu and has pledged to be a leader for all of Israel, not just the settlers. His party has also taken over key ministries that can affect the cost of living across Israel. Bennett has been very keen to be seen as responding to the J14 protests and be a transformative politician who can transcend the tribal politics of the moment and be one of the new leaders of Israel alongside Lapid. By also slipping in the raising of the electoral threshold into the coalition agreement, he can ride the wave of Jewish Home’s current popularity and force others from his camp to work with him if they want any representation at all. By forcing people into a broad tent he gives himself a broader appeal and solidifies himself and by extension the Yesha council firmly into the mainstream.
Step 3: Military strength and control of the territory by the security establishment
Though many ex-military and security men veer to the left after they retire from service (just see The Gatekeepers), the new Defense Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, most definitely veers to the right and was the first choice of the settler community. Though the security establishment is pretty much entrenched in the West Bank already, Ehud Barak had been the thorn in the side of the Yesha council. With him removed the security establishment can work in concert with the Yesha council in helping it expand both from the Knesset and on the ground itself.
Step 4: The elimination of terror and cessation of incitement in Palestinian schools
While all Israelis want to see an end to terror and incitement, the previous government’s flat-out rejection of the State Department’s school textbook report demonstrates a complete unwillingness to examine the issue of incitement on both sides of the border. It is essential to demonize the Palestinian national narrative while maintaining that individual Palestinians are ok and stating that the settlements actually have had great relationships with the communities pre the first intifada.
Step 5: Creating a situation where it becomes clear to the international community that another state west of the Jordan River is not viable
The serious policy community is split about whether the two-state solution has already been killed by the settlements and the Yesha council or if it is merely on life support. Needless to say, the Yesha council is well on its way to pulling the plug. The new Deputy Foreign Minister, Ze’ev Elkin, already ascribes to this point of view. Though many advocates of one-state agree that the settlements have killed the two-state solution they do not share the Yesha council’s vision of what a one-state solution would look like. The power and establishment will be with the Yesha council and in doing so it will have a tremendous momentum on the ground when two-states is officially abandoned to fulfill its vision before anyone else gets a look in. Yes, Israel will lose friends and allies and there might be a brain drain that could seriously affect the economy. But I sadly have less faith that pressure will force Israel to give up its raison d’état of providing the Jewish people with self-defense and power by giving those they have been occupying full civic rights. The death of the two-state solution will mean the Yesha council has won, and read the rest of their document to see how they view Palestinians.
Step 6: The further immigration of one million Jews to Israel to secure a permanent Jewish majority in Israel
In the coalition talks, Bennett managed to carve the Diaspora portfolio out of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and into his own portfolio. The reason for this now becomes crystal clear, as he is desperate to get more Jews to immigrate. Bennett demanding this portfolio always seemed odd. The settlements are often the largest bone of contention between Israel and her Diaspora (amongst Jews who are engaged at least). Passing on this responsibility to the former general secretary of the Yesha council looks on the surface to be a recipe for disaster. This step helps us understand the real consequence of why this demand was made. What will be interesting to see is how Bennett attempts to bring Diaspora Jews to Israel and how their aliyah will be tied to step 7. Is the aim just to lock in the demographics regardless of where the Jews live or to get them to move to the West Bank and lock in the settlements? We will have to wait and see but watch to see where new job incentives will be made for new immigrants, as Bennett has the ability through Trade and Industry to create incentives where he chooses.
Step 7: One million Jews in Judea and Samaria, tripling its Jewish population
With the housing and trade ministries, Jewish Home can now start working on this. The proof will be in where the new low-income housing is built. Even if just restricted into the settlement blocs, if this plan is being followed the aim will be a massive increase in settlers. As with step 6, we will have to see if alyiah and settlement are linked. President Bush (41) conditioned the aid to help resettle the Russian Jews on them not being housed in the West Bank. One other important step to remember is that Bennett received the public diplomacy portfolio as well. Through this he can push the settlements into the official Israeli government narrative both at home and abroad.
Step 8: The creation of large residential areas surrounding the current communities of Judea and Samaria
Housing, Trade, Knesset Finance chair – between these three portfolios and a willing defense minister the sky is the limit on step 8. I predict the concept of settlement bloc will expand and large scale projects will begin to be planned as expansions in key areas. Even more so then Yaalon, Danny Danon is a particular fan of the Yesha council and he is Deputy Defense Minister.
Step 9: The execution of a construction, development and economic plan for the million residents of Judea and Samaria
The Jewish Home party has already indicated that they would rather release prisoners and transfer taxes to the PA than freeze settlement construction. Looking at this nine-step plan, it is easy to see why Bennett would rather give any other ‘confidence building measure’ than allow the slowing of the settler population. The one thing that the party cannot allow is a settlement freeze as it destroys the plan above.
All of this should be seen as nothing less than a strategic effort to kill the two-state solution. Keep in mind that Prime Minister Netanyahu just committed his new government to two states for two peoples in his joint press conference with President Obama on Wednesday. Looking at how this is planned out, it is clear that the only thing that could stop this from happening is freezing settlement construction. The sad fact is that a settlement freeze has already been tossed by the US administration as a failed attempt.
The Yesha council is very open about its aims, objectives and methods. If people want to do more than pay lip service to the idea of two states, they must not only oppose the Yesha council at every turn of this plan but offer their own step by step approach to how to create a two-state reality today. Though it is the establishment opinion that two-states will happen, those opposing it literally are executing on a plan to kill it. Those of us who wish to see it come about must equally set out a plan and today start building facts on the ground to make it so.
Joel Braunold is the Strategic Partnerships Officer for the OneVoice Movement and a senior fellow at the Alliance for Youth Movements. He is a regular contributor to Haaretz Online and to the Open Zion Blog. This article was originally published on Ottomans and Zionists blog.
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4 +972 Magazine
Saturday, March 23, 2013
The ‘no-strategy’ strategy: The Gatekeepers and soldier testimonies. Do not be misled by the paranoid helplessness of the six powerful men in Dror Moreh’s film – the end goal of Israel’s military rule is the complete demise of the dream of Palestinian independence.
http://972mag.com/the-no-strategy-strategy-the-gatekeepers-and-soldier-testimonies/68073/
By Oded Na’aman
A Palestinian woman shows her ID to an Israeli border policeman, while Palestinian security forces stand in the background, as she crosses from the Qalandiya checkpoint on the first Friday of Ramadan, July 20, 2012. (photo: Oren Ziv/ Activestills.org)
Ami Ayalon, former head of the Israeli Shin Bet, grew up on a kibbutz near the Sea of Galilee. “I had a wonderful childhood,” he says toward the end of Dror Moreh’s Oscar nominated documentary, “The Gatekeepers”:
I knew that there’s a house in Jerusalem, and on the second floor there’s a long corridor. At the end of the corridor there’s a door, and behind the door is a wise man, who makes decisions, who thinks. Years later, after the Yom Kippur War [1973], I went to Jerusalem, and I went to that same building. I was on the second floor, and found no door at the end of the corridor, and behind the missing door, no one was thinking for me.
Ami Ayalon is one of six former heads of the Shin Bet who are the protagonists of Moreh’s highly praised documentary. Again and again, they repeat the same lesson: no one is navigating the ship; we (i.e., Israel) have no strategy, only tactics; we are winning the battles but losing the war. The film’s main contention is that Israel, and its security apparatus, has merely been responding to changing circumstances, chasing the next threat. Rather than shaping its political reality, Israel has been passively shaped by it.
Breaking the Silence, a veterans’ group of which I am a member, has collected testimonies from more than 900 hundred IDF soldiers. At first sight, the testimonies of hundreds of soldiers seem to accord with the diagnosis of the six gatekeepers. In describing their missions and experiences in the occupied territories, Israeli soldiers constantly invoke the notion of “prevention” and the importance of “showing presence” to deter any hostile attack. Military force is ostensibly exercised to preempt organized Palestinian resistance, to thwart the next blow, not in order to change the landscape or set new facts on the ground.
But it is a mistake to conclude from this that Israel is in fact a slave to threats against its security. Analyzing the soldiers’ testimonies helps to extrapolate the systemic features of Israel’s military rule. IDF soldiers are a particularly valuable source of information because they are not mere witnesses of military rule: We are the men and women who carry out the orders, who implement the instructions. We embody military rule. By listening to what soldiers have to say about their own actions, we can connect words with deeds and actions with consequences. One of the main lessons we learn from what soldiers tell us is the true meaning of “prevention.”
The testimonies show that seemingly defensive terms such as “prevention” and “deterrence” are used to describe and justify almost any use of military force by the IDF. Behind this sweeping interpretation lies the assumption that every Palestinian, man and woman, is suspect, constituting a threat to Israeli citizens and soldiers; consequently, the thought goes, deterring the Palestinian population as a whole, will reduce the probability of opposition and thereby prevent hostile activity. Thus, “preventive” military actions are not only ones that address immediate threats, but all actions which fall under this overarching strategy.
On grounds of prevention, we, Israeli soldiers, control the movement of people and goods through the separation barrier and within the occupied territories; we decide whether and which businesses open; we decide how children are transported to school and university students to their campuses, and how people in need of medical attention will get to hospitals and clinics. We impose preventive curfew. We preventively take over the property of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Houses, agricultural land, vehicles, electronic goods, and farm animals may all be taken at the discretion of a regional commander or a soldier in the field, as preventive measures. We carry out preventive assassinations, arrests, and “mappings”—operations in which we enter every house in a given neighborhood or town and line up all the residents to take down ID numbers and names to be handed to the Shin Bet. These operations occur even in areas that are officially under the complete control of the Palestinian Authority.
Even the ongoing project of Israeli settlement and expropriation of Palestinian lands in the West Bank is portrayed by many as “forced” upon the state of Israel by the settlers themselves. But the West Bank settlements and those who inhabit them have been encouraged, enabled, orchestrated, protected, and armed, by Israeli authorities. Indeed, the very distinction between Jewish settlers and Israeli authorities is cast into doubt by soldiers’ testimonies about operations initiated by armed settlers and briefings given by settlers’ security teams. The settlements’ project is part and parcel of Israel’s military rule: by taking Palestinians’ lands and natural resources the settlements and the settlers tighten Israel’s grip on Palestinians. Thus, the settlements are a feature of Israel’s strategy of “prevention.”
The Israeli security apparatus has effectively defined offensive, unprovoked, military action out of existence. Israel seems to imagine any possible action it might take as one that is a reaction. This rationale is common to the 18-year-old private, to military generals, to Ami Ayalon, and to the other former heads of the Shin Bet. In fact, “prevention” is not used as a description of Israel’s actions, but as a name for Israel’s strategy of military rule.
We, Israeli soldiers, rule Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip through constant intimidation, threats, arbitrary violence, and disruption of normalcy. These “preventive measures” constitute Israel’s strategy of control. The settlements, which we protect, enable, and expand, manifest and deepen Israel’s control over the Palestinian people and territories. The picture that arises from the testimonies of hundreds of IDF soldiers is unequivocal: The end goal of Israel’s military rule is the complete demise of the dream of Palestinian independence. Do not be misled by the paranoid helplessness of the six powerful men in Dror Moreh’s film: having no strategy is a strategy.
Oded Na’aman is a member of Breaking the Silence and served in the Artillery Corps of the Israeli army from 2000-2003. He is currently writing his PhD in Philosophy at Harvard and is co-editor of Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010.
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5 Haaretz
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
In a flurry of telegrams, Israeli diplomats respond to ‘The Gatekeepers’
From their bases across the world, Israeli ambassadors grapple with international screenings of the controversial Oscar-nominated film, debating whether or not, at its core, the film is anti-Israel.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/in-a-flurry-of-telegrams-israeli-diplomats-respond-to-the-gatekeepers.premium-1.510699
By Barak Ravid
Mar.20, 2013
Former heads of the Shin Bet in ‘The Gatekeepers.’ Clockwise from top left: Jacob Perry, Avraham Shalom, Avi Dichter and Yuval Diskin. Photo by Screenshot
On February 17, 280 people crammed into the main hall of the Light House Cinema in Dublin, where the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival was being held. Despite the crush, dozens of disappointed visitors still couldn’t get tickets to the sold-out screening of the Israeli documentary “The Gatekeepers,” directed by Dror Moreh.
The following morning, the deputy Israeli Ambassador in Ireland, Nurit Tinari-Modai, sent a cable to the Division for Cultural and Scientific Affairs at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.
Nurit Tinari-Modai is considered the leader of the more militant stream of thought at the Foreign Office with respect to public relations and fighting anti-Israeli elements. She also has years of experience in promoting Israeli culture abroad.
Contrary to what many may have expected, the deputy ambassador wasn’t uncomfortable that the film had been shown, and even painted the event in a positive light.
“Why is there a large demand to see the film?” she wrote. “Well, it was nominated for an Oscar – which automatically attracts attention and curiosity; the obsession with Israel applies to film-lovers as well, and finally the nature of the film [attracts interest].”
She also added another interesting remark: “There wasn’t an anti-Israeli demonstration outside the cinema.” This is big news when it comes to Ireland.
“The Gatekeepers” was screened in dozens of capitals and cities around the world, and received an unprecedented amount of media exposure. Even before the Oscars – and especially after – nearly all the Israeli embassies around the world have been busy asking the question: Does the film benefit the country or does it do it a disservice?
Dozens of cables like the one from the Dublin embassy have arrived at the Foreign Ministry’s offices over the last few months. The internal debate between Israeli diplomats raises the question of whether the film reinforces the anti-Israeli narrative in the West, or alternatively paints a more complex and positive picture of Israeli society and the internal arguments that take place within it.
Some Israeli diplomats, like Israel’s ambassador to Serbia, Yossi Levy, strongly criticized Dror Moreh and his films, even if they did so indirectly. In a cable the ambassador sent several days after the one from Tinari-Modai, he claimed that Israeli directors make films about the Palestinian issue only so that they can win prizes abroad.
In contrast, Israel’s ambassador in Peru, Modi Ephraim, was positive about “The Gatekeepers,” and presented the film as a means of influencing the opinions of worldwide audiences. In a cable he sent to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, he told them about an article written by the Nobel Prize for Literature winner Mario Vargas Llosa, in the newspaper La Republica.
Llosa – who is an outspoken critic of the Israeli occupation in the West Bank, but also sees himself as a friend of Israel – wrote that every time he becomes more pessimistic over the process of radicalization in Israel, “something happens that gives me hope,” like the film “The Gatekeepers.” Llosa said that the film was “evidence of the level-headedness and clarity of some elements in Israeli society.”
Yaron Gamburg, spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Paris, was one of those who dealt delicately with the dilemma that “The Gatekeepers” posed to Israel’s official representatives abroad. He wrote a telegram describing the French media’s reactions to the film and stating that coverage was placing Israel in an extremely negative light.
Rafi Gamzu, head of the Cultural and Scientific Relations Division at the Foreign Ministry and an experienced veteran diplomat, replied to Gamburg with a telegram of his own.
“As one who served as a spokesman both in Europe and at home, I understand the challenges that an Israeli spokesman faces. Few, if any, spokesmen must deal with what we face, certainly in Europe. ‘The Gatekeepers’ definitely does not make a spokesman’s life any easier, but the ‘mandate’ imposed on filmmakers and people in the various creative fields in a democratic and open society is not to make things easier for us.
“‘The Gatekeepers,’ particularly because of the ‘collaboration’ of the six Shin Bet heads, is proof of the highest order of Israeli democracy. We will have to keep on dealing with the tension between ‘the government’s position,’ which we represent, and the spirit of Israeli democracy with its many various and even contradicting opinions and its constant engagement in self-inspection and self-criticism, and we will represent it, too, with our heads high and with professional pride.”
On February 28, “The Gatekeepers” was screened in Toronto. The audience was comprised of 350 people from the cultural field, journalists, students and representatives of the Jewish community and other ethnic communities there. After the screening, former Shin Bet head Ami Ayalon, one of the six Shin Bet heads whom Dror Moreh interviewed, gave a lecture. Israel’s Consul General in Toronto, D.J. Schneeweiss, also attended the screening and commented that it testified to the open public discourse held in Israel.
“The film is not easy to watch, particularly for Israeli viewers,” wrote the deputy consul general in Toronto, Hadas Wittenberg Silberstein, in a telegram she sent to the Foreign Ministry. “This is a powerful film that brings viewers into confrontation with the political-security dilemmas Israel faces…. The film is not completely unequivocal, but it is certainly tendentious in its portrayal of Palestinian suffering. Beyond those difficulties, we found the film to be a source of great pride because of its willingness to engage in soul-searching.”
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Yigal Palmor is one of the busiest diplomats on earth. Every day, he answers hundreds of questions asked by journalists all over the world. The media response to “The Gatekeepers” made him even busier. Every day, Israeli missions abroad ask him for advice on how to deal with the questions journalists may ask about the film.
After the questions piled up, Palmor decided, together with Foreign Ministry Director-General Rafael Barak, to send all Israeli missions worldwide a recommendation on how he feels the film should be approached.
“We must understand that this is part of the internal discourse in Israel,” he wrote in part. “The one expressing this penetrating criticism is not a dissident fighting against the government, but rather people at the highest levels of the defense establishment who think in an independent and professional manner, and despite – or thanks to – their way of thinking, continued carrying out their security-related tasks for years in the belief that their work was vital and justified.”
Palmor also wrote that the justification for the Shin Bet’s activity in the territories does not appear in the film. The reason for that, he says, was a legitimate choice on the part of the director, Dror Moreh, together with the fact that the Shin Bet heads were speaking to the Israeli public, who knows the situation from their day-to-day lives.
“Other audiences need more explanation of the background to understand how the three Shin Bet heads who appear in the film went into politics and how they are an inseparable part of a whole policy, some of which they criticize from within while agreeing completely with other aspects of it. None of them is a rebel who broke the rules and quit, or a subversive who tried to carry out a revolution. They see themselves as part of the establishment and as they see it, the purpose of their criticism is to improve it, not to smash it.”
Yaakov Hadas-Handelsman, Israel’s ambassador to Germany, responded to Palmor’s telegram as follows:
“I agree completely with your approach … I used the screening of the film here as an opportunity to emphasize the strength of Israeli democracy … and the doubts that policymakers in Israel must face before they order the killing of terrorists … There are not many democracies where one can view such a discussion at all, particularly considering Israel’s security situation. This message was received here very well.”
Shahar Azani, the consul for media affairs at the Consulate General of Israel in New York, sent a response as well. “Indeed, we agree with every word. The Israeli audience in New York feels that this is an ‘important’ film that speaks ‘Israeli,’ while our supporters in the Jewish community and outside it claimed that the lack of information about circumstances and background leads viewers to draw a conclusion that is clearly anti-Israeli.”
But the one who responded to the film in an amazingly extreme way, which was also completely the opposite of what the Foreign Ministry’s staff recommended, was Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador in Washington, D.C. For reasons that remain unclear, Oren came out strongly against the film several days ago in an interview on the Israel Web portal Ynet.
“The problem is that those interviewed are not Israeli citizens of a certain opinion, but rather former Shin Bet chiefs. One of them (Carmi Gilon) says that Israel causes daily suffering to millions of Palestinians. Then another former Shin Bet head (Avraham Shalom) compares Israel to Nazi Germany, not exactly, but kind of … and I’ve been hearing about Jews leaving the screening asking why we should keep supporting Israel.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who sent Oren to Washington as a political appointment, said even before the Academy Awards ceremony that he had no intention of viewing Dror Moreh’s film. In Oren’s defense, it may be said that unlike his boss, he at least viewed the film. However, Oren’s statements angered quite a few higher-ups in the Foreign Ministry who felt that the interview was unnecessary and compromised the united front that they were trying to present regarding the film.
The Israeli diplomats are not film critics, but the internal controversy over “The Gatekeepers” will continue to keep the Foreign Ministry busy for a long time to come. Over the next few weeks, the film’s director, Dror Moreh, will be attending a special screening of the film at the Foreign Ministry with hundreds of Israeli diplomats in attendance. Readers and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, take note.
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6 The Back ChannelReporting and dispatches from Washington to the Middle Iran intensifies debate on US talks
http://backchannel.al-monitor.com/index.php/2013/03/4731/iran-leaders-intensify-debate-on-direct-us-talks/
March 14, 2013
by Laura Rozen
Iranian leaders have intensified debate on the pros and cons of direct talks with the United States in recent days, suggesting Tehran may be mulling whether to take President Obama up on the offer and under what conditions. The flurry of debate comes as arms control officials from Iran, Washington and five world powers are due to meet in Istanbul next week, to discuss a revised international nuclear proposal that Iranian negotiators greeted favorably in Kazakhstan last month.
Iranian Supreme Leader’s longtime foreign policy advisor Ali Akbar Velayati, former Iran nuclear negotiator Hossan Rowhani, and two Iranian diplomats involved in 2007 talks with the United States on the issue of Iraq, have all weighed in on the merits of possible US-Iranian talks in recent days, in interviews with Iranian media and, notably, in photos of US and Iranian officials meeting in Iraq six years ago, newly published on the Supreme Leader’s website.
“It is not the Supreme Leader’s view that Iran and the United States should not have negotiations and relations until the Day of Judgment,” Rowhani, former Iranian nuclear negotiator and a candidate in June’s presidential elections, was cited by Iranian media Thursday.
“If there is a situation where the country’s dignity and interests are..served, he will give permission for dialogue…as…negotiations have been held between the two countries on issues related to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the nuclear (issue),” Rowhani continued.
“Our red line, according to the Leader, was to negotiate only for the issue of Iraq and nothing else,” Hussein Amir Abdollahian, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab-African affairs who was involved in the Iraq talks with the Americans, said in an interview published on the Supreme Leader’s website this week, Iran news site Iran’s View reported Thursday.
“If you ask me about the US’ willingness to negotiate, as a person who has had the experience, I would say they are willing, but they are not intending to solve the problem,” Amir Abdollahian continued.
Then US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, pictured above right, told the Back Channel Friday that the publication of the photos by the Iranian leadership was “interesting,” and said they were from meetings that occurred in Iraq in 2007.
Crocker and Iran’s envoy to Iraq Hassan Kazemi-Qomi held two meetings in Iraq in the summer of 2007, on May 28 and July 24, 2007, according to media reports at the time. “Their May 28 meeting marked the first public and formal talks between U.S. and Iranian representatives since the United States cut off diplomatic relations 27 years ago,” CNN reported at the time.
But though the Bush White House authorized Crocker to meet Iran’s Iraq envoy, it decided against authorizing US Iraq commander General David Petraues to meet with Iran’s Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani, the New York Times‘ Michael Gordon reported last year. Soleimani had relayed a message to Petraeus through an Iraqi minister in August 2007, saying Iran would reduce its destabilization of Iraq if Coalition forces released an Iraqi Shiite militant in their custody, Gordon reports in his newly updated book on the Iraq war, The EndGame, written with Bernard Trainor.
Soleimani’s message to Petraeus “was that Iran would decrease activity in Iraq dramatically if the Coalition would release Jaish al-Mahdi (JAM) Special Groups leader Qais Khazali,” Crocker relayed in an August 2007 cable, according to Gordon’s summary of the document, which is part of an archive of US government documents compiled by EndGame. “Solemani pledged ‘you will see results in two months.’”
In an interview on the Supreme Leader’s website this week, Iran’s former Iraq envoy Kazemi Qomi described his American interlocutors, however, as “not sincere, Irrational and inconsiderate,” according to Iran’s View.
Iran analysts said the Iranian leadership’s airing of the 2007 US-Iran contacts in Iraq was interesting in the current context.
“The more they say they have done it in the past, the more they achieve three objectives,” Iran analyst Trita Parsi, author of a book on Obama’s Iran diplomacy, A Single Role of the Dice, told the Back Channel Thursday. “They de-dramatize talking to the US; prepare for a shift in that direction, or a shift away from it, on the basis of saying ‘We have no problem talking to the US–we’ve done it in the past–but the US is not offering anything right now.’”
Longtime Khamenei confidant Velayati, who is also an Iranian presidential candidate, told Iranian journalists Wednesday the Supreme Leader has already explained his conditions for dialogue with Washington. A US-educated doctor and former Iranian foreign minister, Velayati has previously denied rumors of being involved in secret talks with Washington.
“Velayati said that as long as Americans have not changed their behavior and methods of conduct with Iran, the stance of the Islamic Republic of Iran will remain unchanged,” IRNA reported.
“The words and actions of American officials are irrational and unreasonable,” Khamenei said in a February 16th speech to the people of Tabriz/Iran’s Eastern Azerbaijan region. “They expect others to surrender to their irrational actions and coercion… but the Iranian nation, the Islamic Republic will not surrender.”
President Obama, speaking ahead of his first presidential trip to Israel next week, said he thinks there is at least a year before Iran could produce a nuclear weapon, but the diplomatic window may be shorter than that.
“Right now, we think it would take over a year or so for Iran to actually develop a nuclear weapon, but obviously we don’t want to cut it too close,” Obama told Israel’s Channel 2, Wednesday, the Associated Press reported.
“So when I’m consulting with Bibi…my message to him will be the same as before,” Obama continued. “If we can resolve it diplomatically that is a more lasting solution. But if not I continue to keep all options on the table.”
(Top two photos of then US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker meeting with Iranian and Iraqi officials in Iraq in 2007 from the Supreme Leader’s official website. In top photo, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is at head of table; to Maliki’s left is Barham Salih, who was then Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister; to the left of Salih in the tan suit is Mowaffak Rubaie, Maliki’s national security adviser at the time. On Crocker’s right, is Ali Debagh, Maliki’s spokesperson. Bottom photo of Crocker meeting with Iranian and Iraqi officials via Iran’s View.)
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7 Ynet
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Hamas PM Haniyeh: Erdogan to visit Gaza in April
After Israel apologizes to Ankara over deaths during raid on Gaza-bound ship in 2010, Hamas PM says Turkish PM to visit Strip in mid-April. Flotilla organizer: Struggle will continue until blockade lifted
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4360151,00.html
Elior Levy
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is scheduled to visit Gaza in mid-April, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said on the same day Israel apologized to Turkey for killing nine Turkish citizens in a 2010 naval raid on a Gaza-bound ship.
Haniyeh made the announcement Friday night at a commemoration ceremony for Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was killed by Israel in 2004. Haniyeh further stated that Erdogan spoke to Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal on the phone and said Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to “lift the siege on the Palestinian people.”
On Friday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Turkish counterpart Erdogan spoke by telephone and agreed to normalize relations in a surprise breakthrough announced by US President Barack Obama.
The 30-minute call was made in a runway trailer at Ben-Gurion Airport, where Obama and Netanyahu huddled before the president boarded Air Force One for a flight to Jordan, US officials said.
In an official statement, Netanyahu’s office said: “In light of Israel’s investigation into the incident, which pointed to a number of operational mistakes, the prime minister expressed Israel’s apology to the Turkish people for any mistakes that might have led to the loss of life or injury.”
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8 LATimes
Friday, March 22, 2013
Palestinian politics do matter
For any peace process to proceed, the U.S. has to acknowledge Palestinian politics, divisions and all. It’s only fair, given the consideration shown to Israel.
President Obama is seen during his visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum in Jerusalem, Israel. (Uriel Sinai / Getty Images / March 22, 2013)
With President Obama’s visit to Israel and the occupied territories now behind us, attention is likely to turn to how we might restart the peace process. But if the past is any indication, one crucial element will be largely ignored in the discussion: Palestinian politics.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-elgindy-palestinian-politics-20130324,0,6362616.story
By Khaled Elgindyv
In contrast to the almost limitless deference shown to the pressures of Israeli domestic politics (as when Obama abandoned calls for a settlement freeze in 2010 because of the composition of Israel’s governing coalition), American officials remain remarkably tone deaf to Palestinian political needs. But there are some realities they need to understand about the deeply divided Palestinian body politic.
It has now been seven years since Hamas defeated Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction in a parliamentary election for control of the authority. That 2006 electoral victory emboldened Hamas’ forces to seize control of the Gaza Strip, ending nearly half a century of Fatah domination of Palestinian politics. Although Abbas has managed to cling to his position as president of the Palestinian Authority, he and his leadership have little to show for their rule other than a series of failed negotiations, a cash-strapped government on the verge of collapse and an unprecedented schism in the Palestinian national movement.
Meanwhile, Abbas’ term has long since expired, and the Palestinian parliament has not convened in nearly six years — both testaments to the paralysis of Palestinian politics as well as the waning legitimacy of Palestinian leaders.
Palestinians today are deeply frustrated with this divided and ineffective leadership, Israel’s ongoing repression and ever-expanding settlement enterprise, and a so-called peace process that has done little more than enable all of these.
Despite all of this, the United States continues to operate as though Abbas’ West Bank leadership has no political opposition or public opinion to answer to. For too long, American policymakers have treated Palestinian politics as something that can be avoided, suppressed or, if need be, reshaped. Indeed, if an accommodation is to be made, it is usually Palestinian politics that must bend to the perceived needs of the peace process rather than the other way around.
Even today, the United States continues to pressure Palestinian leaders to return to talks, despite their slim chance of success and the enormous costs incurred by repeated failures. And, despite the strong desire of Palestinians to see an end to the seven-year rift between Fatah and Hamas, the Obama administration continues to oppose internal Palestinian reconciliation efforts.
As convenient as it might seem, the idea that Palestinian politics don’t matter, or that they can somehow be reengineered by outside actors, is both wrongheaded and dangerous. Hamas may be a problematic actor, but it cannot simply be wished away or boycotted out of existence. Despite its record of violence, including horrific attacks against Israeli civilians, Hamas remains a major force in Palestinian politics; it has also shown a willingness to play pragmatic politics, both in terms of Israeli security and a two-state solution.
Attempting to exclude Hamas or any other political group is a recipe for perpetual internal conflict; it is also self-defeating. As the recent Gaza conflict has demonstrated, the policy of isolating Hamas while building up the Palestinian Authority in
the West Bank has been a spectacular failure. Hamas has more international legitimacy today than before, while the authority is on the brink of collapse.
Even thorny issues such as the fate of Palestinian refugees, another important political constituency long neglected by both the peace process and their own leaders, cannot be ignored indefinitely.
Palestinians may not have a state yet, but that doesn’t exempt their political leaders from very real domestic constituencies and political pressures that they must answer to, whether inside the occupied Palestinian territory or in the diaspora. Just as we intuitively understand the constraints imposed on the administration by Congress and by powerful domestic lobbies, or remain preoccupied with the ever-present concerns of Israel’s coalition politics, so too should the U.S. begin to acknowledge and accommodate Palestinian politics.
Although it is true that Palestinians do not enjoy anything like the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel, simple logic ought to dictate that a weak and divided Palestinian leadership with questionable domestic legitimacy is in no position to negotiate a comprehensive agreement with Israel. More important, for such an agreement to hold, it must have buy-in from key Palestinian political constituencies, including both supporters and opponents of the current leadership. The same is true of Israel, or any other nation — a point President Obama alluded to in his speech to Israeli students in Jerusalem when he stressed that “peace must be made among peoples, not just governments.”
“As more governments respond to popular will,” the president said, “the days when Israel could seek peace with a handful of autocratic leaders are over.” Although the president was referring to Arab states in the throes of revolutionary change, the point applies equally to the Palestinians.
The United States does not have to like Palestinian politics or endorse its themes or outcomes — any more than it needs to embrace the appointment of pro-settlement and anti-peace figures to Israel’s Cabinet — but it does need to acknowledge them. No political leadership should have to choose between international acceptance and domestic legitimacy. Indeed, any credible peace process must allow the Palestinians to have both.
Khaled Elgindy, a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, served as an advisor to the Palestinian leadership on permanent status negotiations with Israel from 2004 to 2009.
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9 Al Jazeera
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Assessing Obama’s Middle East trip
Marwan Bishara answers three questions on Obama’s recent trip to the Middle East.
Despite multiple embarrassments during his first term, Obama is determined to improve relations with Israel [AP]
What got your attention most about the visit of President Obama’s to Israel and Palestine?
I am amazed by how much he spoke and how little he said that is new or actionable in terms of the diplomatic process and the two-state solution, particularly since Obama said quite firmly last October, “When I go to Israel, I want to make sure that we are actually moving something forward.”
With all that’s happening right now with Iran, Syria and overall tension in the greater Middle East, I wonder how Obama can talk for so long and say absolutely nothing. On this visit, all we’ve seen are long speeches with dreamy language and no concrete substance.
Of course, this is not entirely a surprise. Last week, US Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes emphasised, “We’ve been very clear that this visit [to Israel] is not about trying to lay down a new initiative or complete our work on a particular issue.” No, it’s all about face.
Obama embraced the Zionist narrative about Palestine as the historic home of the Jewish people more than any American president that came before him. This rendered Palestinians – the indigenous inhabitants – guests in their own homeland.
He incorporated all of Israel’s security arguments into his own political lexicon. Arab anti-Semitism, terrorism and rejection of Israel’s existence, he reasons, are to blame for six decades of war, occupation and dispossession.
Obama pitched a vision of peace, free of occupation and dispossession, to be achieved through Israeli “sacrifices”, not as the long-delayed and necessary restoration of the inalienable Palestinian right to live in liberty and security in their own homeland.
Amid the pleasantries, Obama was sending an implicit warning to Israel. While it can bank on America as an ally, Israel will be far less secure, democratic and more isolated, should it fail to achieve peace.
Obama, however, was not prepared to offer the Palestinians anything remotely upsetting to the Israeli Right and, instead, restricted his comments to lofty narratives about the future, and the importance of economic exchanges to achieve coexistence: the mirror image of Netanyahu’s “economic peace”, albeit between occupied and occupier.
Inside Story
Can the tone of US-Israeli relations be reset?
Obama appeared casual and personable with both Israelis and Palestinians, but was uncommitted to rectify the injustice in Palestine. The US commander-in-speech seemed bent on achieving peace one speech at a time.
Obama’s relations with Israel seemed to suffer over the last four years. Is that the reason for this visit?
The personal relationship between Obama and Netanyahu has been anything but close over the last four years, ever since the US turned Left and Israel continued to steer to the Right. But the inter-state relationship hardly suffered. In fact, it prospered.
America’s relationship with Israel has continued to thrive through heightened and, at times, unprecedented bilateral security and economic exchanges. As former Israeli Minister of Defence Ehud Barak put it, the relationship has never been stronger than under Obama.
This is especially important because it testifies to the fact that their “special relationship” continues despite the personal chemistry of its leaders, and regardless of the dramatic changes in both countries as well as in the Middle East region.
Political tensions have surfaced on more than a few occasions, notably after Obama’s Cairo speech in 2009 when he called for a freeze on settlements, and again in the spring of 2010 when Israel announced the build-up of 1,600 new ones, coinciding with US Vice President Joseph Biden’s visit to Jerusalem.
But Netanyahu’s popularity in the US Congress – thanks to the Israeli lobby – and his rejection of any settlement freeze as a precondition for restarting “peace talks” has left Obama with fewer supporters domestically, and less room to manoeuvre on the “peace process” front.
That’s why Obama is visiting at the outset of his second term. He’s trying to repair his administration’s relations with the Israeli government and its public opinion, and allow more leeway within the Democratic Party as well as in the Republican-dominated Congress.
It also allowed him to try to manage the deepening crisis caused by a dangerous political void in Israel/Palestine and pre-empt an explosive situation over Iran’s nuclear programme from deteriorating further in an ever-unstable region.
Was the visit successful in this regard?
Any serious analysis of Obama’s policies must begin with his pragmatism. That’s how he functioned throughout his political career, and especially over the last four years.
Despite his vision of change, he is a realist to the core. He sounds like an idealist but leads pragmatically. And although he cited Israel’s founding father David Ben-Gurion in saying that “in order to be a realist in Israel, you must believe in miracles”, Israel’s continuous dependence on the US and its own military is a demonstration of its realism.
Be that as it may, Obama’s visit to the region, first and foremost, had a domestic objective. He has made it clear that his domestic agenda is the main priority of his second term. But to ensure a constructive political atmosphere at home, Obama had to avert a major Middle East catastrophe, with Israel at its heart.
This meant assuring Israelis once and for all that America does indeed have their back when it comes to Iran’s nuclear programme, and making it clear to Iran that diplomacy is the best option.
If he succeeds, managing expectations in Palestine and the crisis with Iran will ease the pressure on his administration back home, allowing the President to implement his agenda.
Wishful thinking or not, Obama has already made new political appointments to his cabinet – starting with John Kerry as Secretary of State and Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defence – that will allow him to downsize the US military and its involvement in the Middle East.
Paradoxically, Obama has moved Washington the closest it has ever been to Israel (perhaps) in order to begin decoupling US strategic doctrine from Israel’s. The two have become overly entangled during his predecessor’s terms in office culminating in a mindset that led to the war and occupation of Iraq, a mindset Obama vowed to end.
Marwan Bishara is the senior political analyst of Al Jazeera English and the author of The Invisible Arab: The Promise and Peril of the Arab Revolution.
Follow him on Twitter: @marwanbishara
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10 Today in Palestine
Friday, March 22, 2013
http://blog.theheadlines.org/theHead/