NOVANEWS
Dear Friends,
7 items below, all but one (item 3) from Haaretz. It had so much to offer today that I felt it was enough.
I am beginning to cut back. We leave on April 9th, and I have to prepare for speaking in the States. I’ll return to sending materials at the beginning of June. Meanwhile, those on the New Profile list will continue to receive messages from other of our members.
As for the items below:
In item 1 Gideon Levy and Alex Levac relate the reactions of 7 and 8 year old Palestinian children to their arrests. Yes, you heard correctly. Israel arrests children. After all, they throw rocks. Imagine your child or grandchild being dragged off by soldiers, especially ones from an enemy army! Not to mention the feelings of the child, be it 7, 8, 9, 10 years old or even in his/her teens. And what good does it do? Does it win friends or make enemies? Does Israel really expect to end rock throwing, or does it want to encourage Palestinians to leave in large numbers? Whatever it expects from these tactics, we need to make these odious practices known. People have to know what Israel is!
Item 2 relates that despite a law forbidding it, applicants to teachers colleges are required to list their nationality and where their families came from. This is of course a racist practice. The main criterion for accepting applicants to colleges for teachers is the potential to be a good teacher.
Items 3-7 all deal with either the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora or with the present state of no peace and no process.
Item 3 stresses the importance of Apartheid Week in the US. The authors argue that Israel will not reform from within (with which I agree), that it will require pressure from without to bring about change, and that an effective way of informing Americans about Israel’s policies and acts is Apartheid week.
Item 4 “Next year in Jerusalem, and the Diaspora, too” recognizes that many Jews will not immigrate to Israel, and that Israel to exist needs American Jews to care about it. Interestingly, there have been an increasing number of articles on the fact that many younger American Jews do not identify with Israel. I can only hope that so long as Israel continues occupation, colonization, ethnic cleansing, and expansion that the numbers of Jews (and non-Jews) the world over wash their hands of Israel will increase.
In item 5 Ze’ev Sternhell argues that “Israeli society doesn’t possess the inner strength to end the colonialism of the settlement movement on its own” and needs massive US intervention to force it to do so.
Item 6 “We have no other country” comments on the significance of Obama’s visit here. The final line is the punch line. Don’t miss it. Essentially, Yoel Marcus in this and Ze’ev Sternhell agree on the need for American intervention.
Item 7, the last of the commentaries, presents a program—not a final plan but definite principles that must be enacted if ever there is to be peace here. For once I agree with Avraham Burg, with the exception of his comment on the Right of Return, on which he is not entirely clear. I agree that to try to right injustice by another injustice will do no good. But I firmly believe that every Palestinian who wishes to return to this land has the right to, just as I believe that every Jew who was forced out of his/her country during the Nazi regime has the right to return. The issue then becomes ‘to return to what’? Most Palestinian villages no longer exist, and in many cases Jewish communities have been built on the lands of the former villages. Yet, I feel certain that where there is a will there is also a way, and that a way can be found not to necessarily satisfy every person, but to be just towards all.
That’s it for today friends.
Dorothy
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1 Haaretz
Friday, March 29, 2013
Twilight Zone Aged eight, wearing a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, and placed in Israeli custody
27 Palestinian children never made it to school this week; IDF troops lay in ambush for them on the streets of Hebron.
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/twilight-zone/aged-eight-wearing-a-mickey-mouse-sweatshirt-and-placed-in-israeli-custody.premium-1.512461#
By Gideon Levy and Alex Levac
Mar.29, 2013
Ahmed Abu Rimaileh. The 8-year-old admits he cried when he was arrested.
We couldn’t help ourselves: The sight of the young, newly released detainee drove us into a paroxysm of laughter. But the laughter quickly morphed into sad embarrassment. The detainee was a boy of 8, in second grade. When we met him this week, on the streets of Hebron, he was on his way to his grandfather’s home. He wore a red sweatshirt emblazoned with an image of Mickey Mouse, and he had a shy smile. His mom had sent him to take something to Grandpa. Eight-year-old Ahmed Abu Rimaileh was not the youngest of the children, schoolbags on their backs, that Israel Defense Forces soldiers took into custody early on Wednesday, last week: His friend, Abdel Rahim, who was arrested with him, is only 7, and in first grade.
Twenty-seven Palestinian children never made it to school on that particular day. IDF troops lay in ambush for them from the early morning hours on the streets of the Hebron neighborhoods that are under the army’s control, and arrested them indiscriminately. Only after they were in custody did the Israeli security forces examine the video footage they had in their possession, to see which of the youngsters had thrown stones at Checkpoint No. 160 earlier that morning, which separates their neighborhood from the settlers’ quarter of the city. It was here, a few weeks ago, that IDF soldiers shot and killed a teenager, Mohammed Suleima, who was holding a pistol-shaped lighter.
Most of the young children were released within a few hours. The older ones were kept in detention for a few days, before being released on bail. One adult, who tried forcefully to prevent the arrest of a colleague’s son, was brought to trial this week.
The fact that 18 of the children were under the age of 12, the age of criminal responsibility according to the 1971 Israeli Youth Law (Adjudication, Punishment and Methods of Treatment ), was apparently of no interest to the IDF, the Israel Police or the Border Police. Nor was the severe report issued just two weeks earlier by the United Nations Children’s Fund, which condemned Israel for arresting some 7,000 Palestinian children in the past decade.
“Ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized,” the UNICEF report stated, and added, “In no other country are children systematically tried by juvenile military courts.”
The Youth Law forbids the arrest of children under the age of 12. It also appears that the provision stipulating that older children must not be interrogated without the presence of their parents and their lawyer does not apply to Palestinian children.
A volunteer from the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian activist group, who documented with a video camera the operation in which the children were arrested, forwarded the footage to B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and B’Tselem gave it to us. (The video can be viewed on the B’Tselem website and on YouTube.) One soldier is seen spitting crudely on the ground, another actually carries the schoolbag of his little detainee – as though he were a babysitter who had come to escort the child home from school. The amateur photographer from the ISM was deported from Israel that same day, after she also had the temerity to take part in a demonstration in Hebron against the visit of President Barack Obama.
Indeed, the mass arrest of the youngsters took place on March 20, the day Obama arrived in Israel, and the day before he made his remarks about Palestinian children in Jerusalem. “Put yourselves in the Palestinians’ shoes,” the president told the Israelis.
From early that same morning, Palestinian residents of Hebron noticed dozens of Israeli soldiers taking up positions in the streets and on rooftops in the neighborhood. One frightened resident called B’Tselem fieldworker Manal al-Jaabari, to ask what was going on.
Divided by age
For his part, Ahmed Abu Rimaileh woke up at 7 that morning and, with the NIS 2 he received from his mother as pocket money, set out for school; sometimes he gets NIS 1.5, sometimes 2. He attends the Hadija Elementary School down the street. Adjacent to it are three other schools that are part of an educational complex, which is located a few hundred meters from the checkpoint.
His father, Yakub, is a construction worker. His mother, Hala, is now sitting with us in their home. On the way to school, Ahmed says he stopped at the corner grocery store and bought a packet of cookies for NIS 1, and kept the other shekel for recess. As he was about to leave the store, he relates, seven or eight other children suddenly came running in, some his age, some older. Hard on their heels were soldiers, who arrested all the children in the store.
One soldier ordered Ahmed to put the cookies in his schoolbag before grabbing him by the shoulder and hauling him toward the checkpoint. Ahmed says he was very scared. He also admits that he cried, though only a little. At the checkpoint, he and all the other detained youngsters were thrust into an army vehicle – 27 children in one vehicle, some sitting, some standing, according to Ahmed’s description.
There were three soldiers with them in the vehicle. Some of the children were crying, and the soldiers told them to be quiet. One child was hit, Ahmed says. They were all taken to the nearby Israeli police station, next to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where they were told to sit on the ground, in a closed courtyard. The children above age 12 were separated from the younger ones and taken to the police station in Kiryat Arba and afterward to Ofer Prison, north of Jerusalem.
Ahmed Burkan, 13, was not released until the evening. Malik Srahana, also 13, was held in custody for three days at Ofer Prison before being released on NIS 2,000 bail. B’Tselem fieldworker Musa Abu Hashhash, who met with him immediately after his release, says the teenager showed signs of trauma.
According to a report transmitted by the International Red Cross to B’Tselem, 18 of the detained children were under the age of 12. They were kept in the courtyard, with a policeman guarding them for almost two hours. No one offered them food or water.
Children asked to go to the bathroom but were forbidden to do so, Ahmed recalls. The policeman asked who among them had thrown stones, but no one confessed. He then asked if they knew which children had thrown the stones and they named two of the older ones, who had been arrested and separated from them.
After a time, three jeeps arrived and took the younger group to Checkpoint 56, next to the settler neighborhood of Tel Rumeida. There the children were met by three Palestinian police “security coordination” jeeps, which took them to their police station. The Palestinian police gave them food and asked all those who had thrown stones to raise their hand. All the hands went up.
The parents were called to come to the station to collect the children. Ahmed’s parents and those of four other youngsters did not show up. Those five children were driven home in a car of the Palestinian Ministry of Education. Their worried parents were waiting for them.
Hala says she is not angry at her son. She only asked him not to cry the next time he is arrested by soldiers. “We are used to it,” she says, adding that her son had a dream about the arrest that night.
The IDF Spokesman’s Office provided the following statement in response to a query from Haaretz: “Last Wednesday, March 20, 2013, Palestinian minors threw stones at a force that was manning the checkpoint in Hebron. An IDF force that waited in ambush close to the site caught the stone-throwers in action. The Palestinian minors were detained on the spot, and seven of them, who are above the age of 12, were taken for interrogation by the Israel Police. As the Israel Police interrogated the minors, the question about the non-presence of a parent/lawyer during the interrogation should be addressed to them.”
The day after the incident, Ahmed did not want to go to school, but was persuaded by his parents to do so. For one day he was a hero among the children: Ahmed, the released detainee. He did not enter the classroom that day, staying instead in the principal’s office. He wants to be a doctor when he grows up, like a few others in his extended family, he tells us. His mother says he is a good student and a good boy.
Ahmed has seven brothers and sisters. The five boys sleep in one room, on two beds and on mattresses on the floor. There is an old computer in the room, which is turned off; they do not have an Internet connection. Out in the street a young peddler, of the same age as Ahmed, can be heard hawking his wares. After school the boy sells halabi, a sweet homemade pastry oozing with oil, for half a shekel.
[http://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20130320_minors_detained_in_hebron there are more reports and videos about child arrests on the B’tselem site. D]
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2. Haaretz
Friday, March 29, 2013
Despite law, teacher colleges require applicants to list nationality
Education Ministry vows to replace old form which illegally requires applicants to list their nationality and their parents’ countries of origin.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/despite-law-teacher-colleges-require-applicants-to-list-nationality.premium-1.512406
By Talila Nesher
College students (Illustrative). Photo by David Bachar
The Education Ministry has been forcing applicants to teacher colleges to provide details about their nationality and their parents’ countries of origin, in apparent violation of the law.
The ministry, which acknowledges it is using an old form and says it intends to correct the mistake, currently requires applicants to more than 20 education colleges to provide such personal details before they can register or even be admitted to the institutions.
These requirements are prohibited by the Students’ Rights Law, which forbids colleges from “discriminating against candidates or students on the basis of their or their parents’ origins, their socioeconomic background or for reasons of religion, nationality, gender or place of residence.”
The ministry notes that it does not discriminate against candidates, explaining that “every applicant to an education college who fills out the required details is accepted. … Filling out the form has nothing to do with the candidate’s acceptance.”
Nevertheless, by law colleges are allowed to request such information only if the applicant willingly agrees to provide it for the purpose of receiving certain benefits or other exceptions. Even then, the information must be provided on a separate form.
The teacher colleges − which unlike other universities and colleges are subordinate to the Education Ministry instead of the Council for Higher Education − receive the forms directly from the ministry. They require applicants to list their and their parents’ nationality, countries of origin and overall years of study.
“These details, which constitute a complete invasion of privacy, are compulsory,” says a CEO of one of the education colleges. “When you give the Education Ministry the list of students, anyone who hasn’t filled in their nationality or country of origin is required to fill out another form. You can’t omit this information.”
In addition, applicants are required to list their military service, serial number and, if applicable, their reason for exemption from service, along with a letter of confirmation from the Israel Defense Forces.
They must also list their health maintenance organization, their tuition sources, and whether they are a permanent or temporary resident.
The students’ personal details are “exposed to various service providers,” according to the college CEO.
“This is an invasion of privacy beyond any common sense,” says Zehava, a student at one Israeli education college. “People here come from many different countries. As a Jew whose parents emigrated from the Soviet Union, I find this offensive and humiliating. My own state is vetting and marking me. I come from a place where I was persecuted for my nationality and here I’m required to declare it. This division is intended to monitor the number of different kinds of students, marking them as first- or second-rate. This policy must be changed.”
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3 +972 Magazine
Friday, March 29, 2013
Making the case for Israel Apartheid Week
For two student activists in Washington D.C., Israel Apartheid Week – and using the term ‘apartheid’ – is an opportunity to alter perceptions and the discourse surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Whereas ‘occupation’ defines Israel/Palestine as a military struggle with ambiguous moral implications, ‘apartheid’ describes a civil rights struggle with a clear moral imperative.
http://972mag.com/making-the-case-for-israel-apartheid-week/68297/
By Joshua B. Michaels and Benjamin L. Mandel
Jewish Voice for Peace supporters in Washington D.C. January 19, 2013 (Photo: Joshua B. Michaels)
This month, cities and campuses across the U.S. participated in the 9th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week. As the apartheid paradigm becomes more and more pervasive throughout American political discourse when discussing Israel, it is fair to ask: what is meant by “apartheid?”
Here, clarifications are in order: We are not talking about a system of oppression identical to apartheid South Africa. What we are talking about is a system that is similar to the oppression of South Africa, but also unique. The occupation in Israel/Palestine is more extreme than the older apartheid, while the segregation inside Israel proper is somewhat milder. We believe that in law and in spirit, the term “Israeli Apartheid” is fair when describing the sum of that regime. Instead of presenting a technical argument about whether the term is appropriate (more qualified figures have already done so), we want to argue why applying this term, and supporting Israeli Apartheid Week, are so important.
One of the biggest challenges to changing the status quo in the region is that the Israeli narrative dominates American media. Framing the discussion has been one of Israel’s strongest and most successful weapons against the Palestinians for the last 66 years. In the American media, Israel is almost always the protagonist. Even unflattering reports tend to elicit sympathy for the Israeli position. This is only just beginning to change, and slowly.
The most prominent example is the widely accepted understanding of the occupation. While the occupation itself is not viewed positively, the American media portrays it on Israel’s terms. For viewers here in the U.S., the term “occupation” invokes a temporary situation (in reality it is endless) based on security needs, which paints Israel as the victim. Adopting the term “apartheid” will re-direct this discussion away from Israeli anxiety and toward the everyday suffering of Palestinians. The oppressed will become the new protagonists. Occupation defines Israel/ Palestine as a military struggle with ambiguous moral implications, whereas apartheid describes a civil rights struggle with a clear moral imperative. It is this redistribution of sympathy, which makes Israeli Apartheid Week so powerful, and it is especially valuable in reaching out to American Jews for whom civil rights is almost secular religion.
Generally, apartheid week involves campuses and cities hosting talks relating to the nature of Israel’s apartheid system, and promotes the tactics laid out in the global BDS call. This is another important development because in our own history Americans have used similar tactics to right societal wrongs, from Montgomery to South Africa. Whether or not one supports such measures against Israel at large, or only against specific targets, we believe that Israel will not reform from within and international pressure is the only way to force a change. Such pressure will only follow widespread awareness and Apartheid Week has already grown rapidly over the last nine years. We believe that if the term is used by more and more actors; the more people read it in the paper, see it on the news, and hear it on the streets, the less it can be avoided.
Apartheid Week is therefore a chance to influence communities who are not being taught the realities of the conflict or never took the time to question the accepted narrative. We hope that when these realities become obvious, the demand for change will mount.
In our own experience on American campuses, we have already seen how effective the new Apartheid lexicon can be. After a recent screening of the film Roadmap to Apartheid at American University, a score of young student activists stayed after the film to discuss the validity and effectiveness of the apartheid claim. Certainly the discussion about how to best describe and combat Israel’s system of occupation and segregation should not end here, but there was a unanimous feeling that just four years ago, when many of us started out with Palestinian activism at American University, it was much more difficult to criticize Israel at all.
We believe IAW has contributed to the growth of a community of impassioned activists who understand that there is a system in place, which makes Palestinians prisoners in their own homes and Israelis prisoners of their own fear. And among them are a growing coalition of American Jews, who are speaking out because they are Jewish, not in spite of it.
Joshua B. Michaels is a student at American University, and the founder and president of the university’s chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. Benjamin L. Mandel is the Jewish Voice for Peace liaison to the chapter at American University, where he is an alumnus.
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4 Haaretz
Friday, March 29, 2013
Next year in Jerusalem – and the Diaspora, too
We all came out of Egypt. We just happened to end up in different places. But the future of Israel depends on engaging the attention and commitment of Jews around the world, and not pushing away a younger and more critical generation.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/next-year-in-jerusalem-and-the-diaspora-too.premium-1.512530
By Yoav Schaefer and Brian Schaefer
Participants of the Avi Schaefer Symposium engage in discussions about the future of Israel. Jerusalem, February 17, 2013. Photo by Courtesy of the Avi Schaefer Fund
Every year, we end the Passover seder saying, “Next year in Jerusalem,” in the hope that we all, as a Jewish people, should end up in Israel. For most Diaspora Jews, this is merely a rhetorical statement. But that does not mean they are lesser members of the tribe.
This year, in Jerusalem, hundreds of young North American Jewish students currently living in Israel – from gap-year and study-abroad programs, yeshivas and rabbinical schools, and Jewish organizations from across the political spectrum – gathered at the third annual Avi Schaefer Symposium to discuss the challenges of maintaining the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel.
A.B. Yehoshua, Anat Hoffman, Dr. Yoram Hazony and Rabbi Shai Held, among other speakers, confronted complex questions about Israel’s status as a Jewish and democratic state, Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, and Israel’s state monopoly of religion, in an event held in honor of the memory of Avi Schaefer, an Israel Defense Forces veteran and Brown University student killed by a drunk driver in Providence, Rhode Island in 2010.
While these questions may be familiar to Israelis, they are increasingly difficult for North American Jews to digest. They demand serious engagement and rigorous intellectual debate in the open marketplace of ideas.
Ignoring these important issues, or trying to massage them away with one-dimensional hasbara (public diplomacy) or the honeymoon experience of a 10-day Birthright trip, are no longer sufficient to help young Jews from the Diaspora wrestle with the difficult and multifaceted reality in Israel today.
No amount of reciting facts about Israel’s high-tech success or gay-rights record will inspire Jewish students who are concerned about Israeli policy to support a state that some feel is becoming morally indefensible. Nor will it prepare them to participate in the difficult and heated debates over Israel taking place on many college campuses today, which, in recent years, have become hotbeds of anti-Israel scholarship and organizing.
Indeed, this new generation is distancing itself from Israel. Its disengagement is real and significant, while the reasons for why it’s happening are complex and multifaceted.
Many young American Jews have become disillusioned and alienated by the continuing occupation, the stalemate in peace talks with the Palestinians and Israel’s internal political swing to the right. For them, the current reality in Israel presents a significant challenge to the image of Israel they grew up with and to the relationship they will maintain with Israel when they return to North America as university students and Jewish professionals.
Securing the support of this new generation—their continued political advocacy, donations, human capital and enthusiasm—is critical. Make no mistake: The future of the North American Jewish community and of the State of Israel are contingent upon securing the involvement and support of young Jews who can engage in critical conversations about Israel with confidence and conviction. As Anat Hoffman put it, “Israel is too important to leave to the Israelis.”
A state will only endure, it will only remain relevant—to both Israelis and to Jews around the world—if it can be defended not only militarily but also morally, not just by our parents’ generation but by our generation as well.
This new generation of socially and politically progressive North American Jews demands a new paradigm for relating to Israel. For them, being committed to Israel compels them to speak out against policies that they see as morally indefensible (i.e. settlements and occupation) and that only serve to undermine Israel’s own strategic goals. Supporting Israel for them means working to make Israel a country that truly embodies its founding values and ideals.
The Jewish community, both in Israel and in North America, must actively work to engage this growing demographic. By promoting a more nuanced and open conversation about Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Jewish community will encourage them to build a sophisticated and authentic relationship with Israel that embraces not only Israel’s accomplishments but its faults as well.
We must empower this younger generation, one that is trying to make sense of their Jewish identity in the face of the complex reality in Israel today, and not to push them away. Israel education and advocacy must move beyond discussing only the establishment of the state and focus more on the development and betterment of the state.
To that end, we must fashion a new vision of Zionism with which these young Jews can identity— not one defined solely by the Law of Return, as keynote speaker A.B. Yehoshua suggested, or by the size of the land, but by the characteristics of the people living in it and the values to which it holds itself accountable.
Zionism must now turn inward and become an inclusive movement to build a flourishing, vibrant state at peace with its neighbors.
This vision—of a Jewish national project driven by Jews around the world, that sees world Jewry as equal partners in a symbiotic relationship of mutual-respect; of a state that upholds the values of religious pluralism and tolerance; of a state that is more imaginative in its attempts to foster a Jewish spiritual and cultural renaissance; and of a state that actively pursues peace—is the only way to ensure the continued relevance of Zionism and the State of Israel to a new generation of Diaspora Jews.
Many who attended the Avi Schaefer Symposium will celebrate Passover this year in Jerusalem but next year in the Diaspora. As a community, we need to ensure they remain just as active and invested and that their contributions are equally valued. The future of Israel depends on it.
Yoav Schaefer is the co-founder of the Avi Schaefer Fund and a student at Harvard University. Brian Schaefer is a writer for Haaretz English and a student at Bar Ilan University.
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5 Haaretz
Thursday, March 28, 1913
In favor of Pax Americana
Israel went to wars it had initiated, but never once did it come up with a peace initiative out of free choice.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/in-favor-of-pax-americana.premium-1.512333
By Zeev Sternhell
Mar.28, 2013
Begin, Sadat and Cater sealing the Israel-Egypt peace treaty. But will it outlast the present turmoil in Egypt? Photo by Government Press Office
U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit confirmed a fact that many people still like to doubt: Israel isn’t moderating its positions because of internal developments but because of the need to ensure American support for its security. In this sense, the left remains correct: Israeli society doesn’t possess the inner strength to end the colonialism of the settlement movement on its own.
Only massive American intervention, backed by an elegant threat on critical security matters, can break open the lock of the settlement movement. Indeed, there will be no solution to the Palestinian national problem, which dictates the future of Israeli society more than any other factor, unless the United States decides that American interests require it.
In that sense, it doesn’t matter who holds power in Jerusalem today. It’s doubtful whether a government with Labor and the ultra-Orthodox as partners, instead of “brothers” Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, would behave differently than the current government.
It’s reasonable to assume that researchers in Washington know that it has been this way since the state was established. Israel went to wars it had initiated, but never once did it come up with a peace initiative out of free choice. Every proposal was condemned as defeatism or rejected for fear it might undermine Israeli society’s belief that it was completely right, or that it had an absolute right to every inch of the Land of Israel. There’s no reason to believe that in our time, when the settlers hold the real power, there will be a dramatic change in these behavior patterns, which are deeply ingrained in the way we regard the Arab world.
The basic principle hasn’t changed: No territory is vacated unless overwhelming force is used. The Sinai Campaign of 1956 was a tactical victory combined with a colossal strategic failure that pushed Israel into the position of apprentice to European colonialism and required an American ultimatum. The Six-Day War was Zionism’s great catastrophe, while the Yom Kippur War was a victory on the battlefield bought at an unbearable and completely unnecessary price.
Peace with Egypt would have been possible well before the Yom Kippur War had Israel been willing to listen to Anwar Sadat and leave Sinai. When peace finally came it was a product of pressure from Washington, backed by increasing dependence on American military aid. The first Lebanon war, the last Israeli war conducted on a fairly large scale, ended in a mighty fiasco and turned Lebanon into an enemy state. The expulsion of Yasser Arafat from Beirut only strengthened the Palestinian national movement’s hold in the territories and in the national consciousness.
The withdrawal from Gaza, at the initiative of Ariel Sharon, the “hero” of the Lebanon war, wasn’t accompanied by a peace initiative. It ended, like the earlier ones, in a strategic failure.
The average citizen knows that there is no free lunch in politics, and he perceives that Israel of the settlers was forced to make a package deal and agree to a division of labor. The United States will stop Iran, and Israel will do its part for regional stability by moving toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.
It’s likely that Israeli domestic politics will force us into a situation where we must choose between the left’s ethical and ideological values, and the settler right wing. The right wing is trying not only to prevent Palestinian independence, but to turn Israel into a country whose identity is dictated by its Jewish essence while its democratic component is wiped out. It will be interesting to see on which sides “brother” Yair Lapid and “sister” Shelly Yacimovich find themselves.
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6 Haaretz
Thursday, March 28, 2013
We have no other country
Obama wasn’t here just to turn a friendly new page, but to make clear the need for a peace agreement with the Palestinians; and to get Israel and Turkey talking again.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/we-have-no-other-country.premium-1.512257
By Yoel Marcus
U.S. President Barack Obama waves before boarding Air Force One prior to his departure from Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, March 22, 2013. Photo by AP
Just look how fast the attention of the people of this country switches to from one topic to another. A few days ago we were enjoying the visit of U.S. President Barack Obama and now all of a sudden the country’s budget deficit has become the center of attention. Even before Yair Lapid settles into office, he’s already facing his first test as finance minister and a dilemma over imposing new taxes. But before we debate what tough economic measures may be on the horizon, it would be appropriate first to look at the significance of the Obama visit.
On the surface, the American president’s visit was a success. Both Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had learned from their prior terms at the helm that a contrarian approach doesn’t produce results. Granted, personal relationships among leaders are very important, but a genuine leader needs to know how to act not out of vindictiveness and not by settling personal scores, but rather in accordance with his country’s interests. Bibi in fact gave Obama plenty of reasons to settle the score after he openly supported Obama’s Republican presidential challenger, Mitt Romney.
The American media didn’t expect Obama’s trip here to be good news for Israel. What the hell was the Israelis’ long-term strategy, if they have such a thing at all, one prominent commentator asked. But Obama bent over backwards to be nice while he was here. Anyone who got a close look at his public and private appearances would have had a sense that he conveyed a clear and unambiguous message to the Israeli people, all the while delivering a friendly pat on the back.
This is because the visit came at a time when his administration was shifting its priorities to the Far East—to China and the threat posed by its power, to India, which is developing in directions that are not clear, to the belligerent threats posed by North Korea, the young leader of which is openly taunting nuclear war. And then, too, there is Iran, as much a problem for the United States as it is our own. The Middle East is unstable and in ferment with the spread of fervent Islam. America can no longer count on historic friends such as Saudi Arabia. And Washington has not forgotten that Al-Qaida leader Osama Bin-Laden grew up there. The U.S. has long achieved energy independence. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s comment to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that it would happen within a decade in fact came to pass.
The important condition that the Obama administration needs in order to concentrate its efforts on the Far East is calm in our region. It’s no accident that after Secretary of State John Kerry’s visits to Turkey, the bloodletting with the Kurds there stopped. It was also Kerry who helped deliver the technical fix that led to the reestablishment of almost normal relations between Israel and Turkey—a strategic axis that even Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, dreamed would someday materialize. The way that we handed the 2010 of the Turkish flotilla incident on the Mavi Marmara was idiotic, both with respect to the crazy operation itself and our insistence on not apologizing. But Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with his curses, and Obama, with his pats on Bibi’s back and his compliments over how beautiful the prime minister’s wife is, closed the deal. When Bibi called Erdogan, the Turkish leader asked to speak first to Obama, who was there with the Israeli prime minister.
Sooner or later, Turkey and Israel will reestablish their strategic alliance. The events in Syria provide one reason for such a goal. Will we pay a heavy price in compensation for the casualties on the Mavi Marmara? Absolutely. People in fact do pay for mistakes of such magnitude. And I would also expect that the Israeli government would take this opportunity to ask forgiveness from the Israel Navy commandos whom it sent to the Turkish ship like pirates.
Taking a break from the pending criminal corruption case against him, Avigdor Lieberman, the former foreign minister, charges that our apology does damage to nothing less than the people’s ability to survive. But actually the people have jumped en masse at the opportunity, following the apology, to book all-inclusive hotel packages in Turkey. They are plain sick of living with an atmosphere of belligerence.
In one appearance here, Obama turned directly to the Israeli people, telling them that their fate is in their own hands but there is no alternative to a two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians.
To his credit, it should be noted, he also told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that the Palestinians could not impose preconditions on peace talks with Israel. “We have your back,” Obama told us. That’s neither a threat nor an ultimatum, as it might sound to some Hebrew speakers, but rather something said among friends. It’s meant to make it clear that we have to work towards a peace agreement with the Palestinians and also make sure what is happening in Syria doesn’t spill over into Jordan.
Our fate is in our own hands and we have to decide. Because we have no other country – as the famous Israeli song goes – other than America.
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7 Haaretz
Friday, March 29, 2013
Oslo is dead, what’s next?
The time has come to replace a process that has led to violence and despair with a new framework based on restorative justice.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/oslo-is-dead-what-s-next.premium-1.512505
By Avraham Burg
President Clinton presides over the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. Photo by AP
This fall will mark 20 years since the Oslo Accords were signed. The euphoria and the hope that accompanied the birth of the peace process gave way to bloodshed, cynicism and boundless despair, anger and fear.
We’ve reached a crossroads of decisions. We could continue with the same negative feelings for years to come – more humiliation and scorn, more revenge and hatred. We can wait for new cycles of suspicion, arrogance and disregard. We’ve become used to it all.
However, things could be different.
For both Israelis and Palestinians to get on the right path, we have to go back and honestly discern what went wrong in the previous attempt. It’s easy to pin the blame on obvious external factors such as the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Palestinian leadership, George Bush’s term in office, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu and the repercussions of the Twin Towers attack. But the truth also lies in harder to reach places: One is political; the other goes far beyond politics.
On the political front, every one of us, Israelis and Palestinians, did not do enough, if at all, to rein in the peace-destroying mechanisms within us. The Israelis signed a peace accord and didn’t stop the occupation enterprise via the settlements for one moment. Israel never understood Palestinian sensitivities to the Zionist movement’s greatest colonial undertaking. The Palestinians’ expectation was, and remains, that in exchange for the great concession of the majority of their homeland, the erosion and creeping annexation of the little that remains would come to a halt. The Palestinians didn’t understand Israeli sensitivities to the continued culture of incitement and violence that emanated from the mosques and was expressed horrifically in terror attacks.
The clash between the settlements and the incitement was unavoidable. When it happened, every structure collapsed. And the result? Oslo has been dead for years; they just forgot to inform the nations and their leaders.
The Oslo Accords were not born to live forever. They were just temporary scaffolding, meant to restructure reality, from occupation and control to partnership among equals. However, the absence of a Palestinian state that can sit at the negotiation table as an equal to the state of Israel created trouble for the unequal process. The Palestinian state was the ultimate decree that Israel, in its fear, never wanted to allow. The Palestinians, for their part, were never prepared to give up, and rightly so.
Meanwhile, current events don’t wait for us. New realities now clash: The Palestinian state is an accomplished international fact. The Palestinian statesmen, by turning to the United Nations, revived the formula of two states for two peoples for the foreseeable future, while opponents of the two-state approach want to skip the stage of separating the communities and go straight to one, bi-national state. Some of the latter are positive voices, believing we can live together. Other voices, on both sides, which are stronger, are negative, violent and radical. They dream of one state in which one nation will dominate the other.
To return to the path of dialogue, reconciliation and peace, we, and everyone in our communities must bravely stand against those who are trying – both in Israel and Palestine – to kill the thirst for peace through violence and by sowing fear.
I believe the time has come to explore new paradigms that will save us from the enormous price of more humiliation and arrogance, occupation and violence.
Twenty years after Oslo, 45 years after Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, 64 years after the establishment of Israel and the Palestinian Nakba, we have reached a dead end in which there is no freedom for the Palestinian nation and no security for Israelis. We have grown no closer to a just and viable solution of two states for two peoples. We all live under one, discriminatory, Israeli regime. Moreover, many of us lost hope and are no longer able to imagine a just solution for the foreseeable future.
In an effort to pave a new way toward a historic reconciliation and a true political engagement between the nations, we must abandon the perception of the current solution based on multiple layers of separation, isolation and structural discrimination. We must replace it with completely different principles and methods.
We, an international group of Israelis and Palestinians, some from here and others from the Diaspora, have met over the past two years through the Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue, and we have reached the conclusion that a joint dialogue and understanding is both possible and essential.
These principles have no intention of offering practical and detailed solutions, rather they intend to lay totally different foundations for a fair and viable Jewish Israeli-Palestinian partnership.
Our starting point is based on the belief that the fate of both nations is inextricably tied together; that Israeli Jews and Palestinians are part of the Middle East; and also that neither of them is entitled to privileges or exclusive sovereignty over the entire territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
For this purpose:
– Every person living (or possessing residence status) between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea will be guaranteed equal personal, political, economic and social rights. These rights include: defense and security; receiving equal treatment free of discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity or religion; freedom of movement; ownership and possession of property; legal access; and election and being elected.
– The collective rights of Jewish Israelis and Palestinians – linguistic, cultural, religious and political – will be guaranteed in every political framework. It is understood that neither side will have exclusive sovereignty on the entire land area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea (including exclusive ownership of land, exclusive access to natural resources, etc.).
– All exclusive privileges currently accorded to Israeli Jews will be canceled, among them: land ownership and access to natural resources. All the resources – material and political – will be redistributed on the basis of principles of restorative justice.
– Recognizing the Palestinian right of return as expressed in UN General Assembly Resolution 194. Implementing this decision will take into account the current reality. A lack of moral and political justice of the expulsion of Palestinians in the past won’t be corrected by creating new injustices.
– The new political institutions will enact democratic immigration laws for regulating citizenship. At the same time, Jews and Palestinians living in the Diaspora will enjoy immunity in situations of danger (according to UN decisions). They will have a special status in the citizenship process relative to all other ethnic and national groups.
Like many, I believe with all my heart that mutual recognition based on these principles can bring forth an alternative political reality in which memories of exile and expulsions will turn into a comprehensive implementation of rights, citizenship and belonging. Loss will turn into life and despair will turn into hope.