Mondoweiss Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS


News update from day 64 of Khader Adnan’s hunger strike
Feb 19, 2012
Today in Palestine

RAMALLAH (Reuters) — The health of a Palestinian prisoner on hunger strike for 61 days to protest against his detention, has significantly worsened, his wife said Thursday after visiting her husband in an Israeli hospital. Khader Adnan, 33, a member of Islamic Jihad, has been refusing to eat since mid-December, shortly after his arrest in the occupied West Bank by Israeli forces.
Jerusalem (CNN) — A 33-year-old West Bank baker who has become a symbol of Palestinian resistance to Israeli detention policies entered the 63rd day of a hunger strike Saturday despite a doctor’s warning that he could die any time. “Mr. Khader Adnan is in immediate danger of death,” according to a report issued this week by the Israeli branch of the nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights, which sent a doctor to examine him. Adnan’s two-month protest is the longest hunger strike in Palestinian history and is a high-stakes gamble that increased scrutiny on Israel’s arrest and detention policies of Palestinians.
RAMALLAH (Ma’an) – Palestinian prisoners in Israel’s Ashkelon prison have started an open hunger strike to support Islamic Jihad affiliated prisoner Khader Adnan, the Palestinian prisoners’ society said Sunday. Prisoner Nasser Hmeid told the society’s lawyer Kareem Ajwah that six prisoners already started a hunger strike and that another group joins them every day, a statement from the society said. In a week, he added, all inmates in Ashkelon will be on hunger strike in an attempt to exert pressure on Israel to release Khader Adnan.

Palestinians rally for prisoner
Thousands have rallied in Gaza and the West Bank in support of a Palestinian on the 62nd day of a hunger strike in protest at his detention by Israel.
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-middle-east-17079461

Today marked the seventh anniversary of protests by the village of Bil’in, in the occupied territories, of Israeli confiscation of village land to make way for a Jewish settlement, but the focus of today’s demonstration was imprisoned hunger striker Khader Adnan.
link to mondoweiss.netkhader-adnan-is-honored-at-bilin-protest.html
Jewish Voice for Peace and Ta’anit Tzedek: Jewish Fast for Gaza are calling for a one day fast (from sunrise to sunset) on Friday, February 17, 2012 in solidarity with Khader Adnan, who today is in his 61st day of a hunger strike. Khader began his hunger strike on December 18th, 2011  after he was arrested  in a nighttime Israeli military raid on his home in the West Bank village of Arraba. Since his arrest, Khader has been held in “administrative detention”–without trial or charges against him.  It has been reported that he is affiliated with Islamic Jihad, but no evidence of that affiliation has been presented.  Regardless of his political beliefs, administrative detention and the interrogations which sparked his hunger strike are entirely unacceptable according to international law.
Today Khader Adnan began the 62nd day of his hunger strike in protest of his administrative detention by Israel. He is chained to a bed in Ziv Hospital in Safed even though he has been too weak to walk for several days. In an interview today with The Independent, Randa Adnan — his wife — said “I know my husband. He will not change his mind. I expect him to die.”
Washing your hands of Khader Adnan: My response to weasel words of EU’s Catherine Ashton, Ali Abunimah
Today my colleague David Cronin wrote about the weasel worded response of the EU High Representative Catherine Ashton, for comment on the case of Khader Adnan. Here is my response, which I sent her by email.

If #KhaderAdnan was a Jewish terrorist, he might be free, Max Blumenthal

As I write this, Khader Adnan is near death, on the 63rd day of a hunger strike to protest his detention without charges by Israeli occupation authorities. Having been seized on December 17 in the middle of the night by Israeli soldiers, jailed without trial, humiliated and abused, Adnan is waging one of the longest hunger strikes in Palestinian history.

Standing in solidarity with Khader Adnan
Nehad Khader – Electronic Intifada “We are in solidarity because we can all imagine ourselves as Khader Adnan. Maybe if his jailers thought for one moment that they could also be Khader Adnan they would have more compassion.”

Day 62 and counting. Adnan’s hunger strike continues. On February 15, Israel let his wife Randa see him for the second time. She said “(h)is health has drastically deteriorated from the last time I saw him” a week ago. “I expect the worst. He insists on continuing with the hunger strike.” He wants to live but will die for justice. PLO official Saeb Erekat said Abbas pressed Russia, China, Britain, and EU authorities to help during meetings with acting EU representative to Palestine John Gatt-Rutter, UK Consul-General Vincent Fean, Russian representative Alexander Rudakov, and Chinese PA ambassador Yang Wei Guo.
Today Khader Adnan entered his 63rd day on hunger strike. A trend has taken place on twitter under the name #hungerstrike63days, in an effort to spread the news of a subject that has gotten little to no attention by western media outlets. Even Haaretz the Israeli left wing newspaper only mentioned the strike as it entered its 60th day. One person commented on the trend saying “freedom is more important than food”, another commented “and the world is still indifferent to the injustice”. This trend has taken place not only to spread the news, but also show solidarity with Khader Adnan and the whole Palestinian people.  It’s not clear whether there will be a  #hungerstrike64days, as Khader Adnan’s health is deteriorating minute by minute, and the Israeli court has already rejected his appeal, and blamed him for his own health situation.  PNN will keep you updated on the situation on our website, and through our twitter page @pnnenglish.
After sixty days on hunger strike, Palestinian detainee Khadr Adnan remains shackled to a bed in an Israeli hospital in Safad. Mr Adnan is not an Israeli citizen and no criminal charges have ever been brought against him. He is a Palestinian who was abducted from his home in the occupied West Bank and taken forcibly to Israel. International humanitarian law prohibits “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not… regardless of their motive.” We must assume that the only reason why this matter has been allowed to continue for so long is because the Israelis believe that in this, as in other instances when they treat international law with contempt, they have the power to act with impunity.

Watch: Huwaida Arraf and Ali Abunimah discuss Palestinian strategy, Khader Adnan and BDS on The Stream, Ali Abunimah
On 16 February, Ali Abunimah and Huwaida Arraf appeared on Aljazeera English’s The Stream. Major topics included Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan, the “reconciliation” deal between Hamas and Fatah, and the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

Land Theft & Destruction / Ethnic Cleansing / Apartheid & Occupation

Israel Demolishes Buildings in South Hebron-Area Villages
On 15 February, the Israeli military demolished five buildings in the Palestinian village of Saadet Tha’lah and destroyed a water tank and tore down 50 trees in the Palestinian village of Ar Rakeez.

Israeli national park expropriates Palestinian land
Israel’s use of national parks to expropriate Palestinian land and prevent development in East Jerusalem is the subject of Bimkom’s latest, January, report.
Bedouins in E1: “I said that this was my home, that I was born here, and he told me to go to Ramallah”
Yousef Thayafeen, 37, lives with his wife and their five children in Wa’r al Beik, an area bordering the town of Anata, a suburb of East Jerusalem cut off from the city by the separation wall.

Attacks on Palestinians
Israeli airstrikes early Thursday morning injured six persons, including rescue workers. Meanwhile, area residents say this is not the first time they have been subjected to Israeli strikes.
The Israeli occupation forces carried out a small-scale incursion into northern Gaza Strip on Friday evening and bombed a residential area east of Al-Bureij camp without any reported injuries.

Palestinian medical sources in the Gaza Strip reported that two residents were wounded, on Saturday evening, when the Israeli Air Force bombarded a blacksmith workshop in Az-Zeitoun neighborhood, east of Gaza City.

Detainees

Detained Hamas commander goes on hunger strike
Hassan Salame, a commander in the armed wing of Hamas, has decided to go on an open-ended hunger strike starting on Thursday.

Detainees In Ramon Punished For Protesting Abuse
The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) reported Friday that Palestinian political detainees held at the Ramon Israeli prison, are being punished for protesting abuse against their families, who are being ordered to undergo humiliation and strip search before they visit their detained family members.

Palestinian’s Trial Shines Light on Justice System

As a grass-roots leader goes on trial, having been incriminated by a teenager, questions are being raised about the legal system Palestinians are placed into.

Ex-political prisoner shares journey though Israeli jails
Alexis Thiry–There were 4,937 political prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention centers in November 2011 according to Adameer, a Palestinian non-governmental organization. Yazan Abdulhadi was one of them before he was released on November 28, 2011, between the two swaps of the deal between Israel and Hamas to free Gilad Schalit (not as part of the deal). On January 7, 2012, he agreed to give an interview that would be published in +972 Magazine

Popular Protests

IOF quell peaceful march of Kafr Qaddum village
Dozens of Palestinians and foreign activists suffered different injuries on Friday when their peaceful anti-settlement march were violently attacked by Israeli soldiers in Kafr Qaddum village.

BDS
Veteran British pop star Engelbert Humperdinck faced calls to refrain from returning to Israel on Saturday, ahead of a planned trip to Lebanon in March. Humperdinck, famous for his hits “Release Me” and “The Last Waltz,” performed in Tel Aviv in December despite a campaign led by British university students. He is due to perform at Casino Du Liban in Jounieh on March 9 and 10. A letter from the Campaign to Boycott Supporters of Israel in Lebanon (CBSI) condemned Humperdinck for performing in Israel but did not call for his performances to be cancelled.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) will vote on a resolution to divest from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola at its next General Assembly to be held June 30 – July 7, 2012 in Pittsburgh, Pa. The church is considering divestment because “products made by those companies are used in nonpeaceful ways in the Israel-Palestine conflict” and dialogue and shareholder actions with the companies have not yielded results.
A new handbook for BDS activists around the world offers tactical and practical suggestions for strengthening global boycott actions.

Video: right-wing groups attack U.S. professors over Ilan Pappe speaking tour, Allison Deger

A group called the AMCHA Initiative, founded by University of California faculty, launched a campaign against three California professors over an upcoming Ilan Pappe speaking tour.  The organization currently has two campaigns, one against Cal State Northridge professor David Klein (also highlighted in the latest video), and one against the University of California system, both over charges of anti-Semitism.
So Norman Finkelstein gave an interview in London on the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Campaign (BDS). I noticed that Finkelstein’s views on the subject have been attracting a lot of attention and criticism. I was asked about such views during my UK university tour last month and in each case I stated that I would not publicly criticize Finkelstein although I disagree with some of the views he holds. But his recent remarks, I felt, went too far.
Bahrain
Bahrain released all females political prisoners bar one on Thursday, with prominent activist Zainab Al-Khawaja detained indefinitely, according to activists. Twelve female protesters were released on Thursday evening in a move welcomed by pro-democracy campaigners. Khawaja, who has become the leading female activist in the country after writing about the protests under the Twitter name @angryarabiya, remains in jail. Khawaja was arrested last Sunday as she tried to approach the Pearl Roundabout, the scene of large-scale protests last year until Bahraini and Saudi security forces crushed the revolt.
Saudi-backed Bahraini security forces have launched a fierce overnight crackdown on anti-regime protesters across several regions of the country, Press TV reports.

Bahrain police, protesters clash, Western activists held (Reuters)
Reuters – Bahraini police detained two Western activists who had joined a women’s protest on Friday, after clashing overnight with protesters in Shi’ite districts of the Gulf Arab state.

People & Power – Bahrain: Audacity of hope 
One year on from the suppression of pro-democracy protests in Bahrain, activists are still hoping that political reform can be achieved. Is the hope that inspired last year’s uprising still shining brightly?

Why Bahrain is not Syria, Pepe Escobar
How poignant that the first anniversary of a true Arab pro-democracy movement in the Persian Gulf – then ruthlessly crushed – falls on February 14, when Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the West. Talk about a doomed love affair. And how does Washington honor this tragic love story? By resuming arms sales to the repressive Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty in power in Bahrain. So just to recap; United States President Barack Obama told Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad to “step aside and allow a democratic transition to proceed immediately” while King Hamad al-Khalifa gets new toys to crack down on his subversively pro-democratic subjects. Is this a case of cognitive dissonance? Of course not; after all Syria is supported by Russia and China at the United Nations Security Council while Bahrain hosts the US’s Fifth Fleet – the defender of the “free world” against those evil Iranians who want to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

Egypt

Moussa: The peace treaty with Israel should be reconsidered

Amr Moussa, a likely candidate for the presidential elections in Egypt, said on Thursday that his country should reconsider some sides of its peace treaty with Israel.
Lebanon
BEIRUT (Ma’an) — A Lebanese military court has handed down three death sentences for spying for Israel, two of them in absentia, the Now Lebanon news website reported Friday. It cited a report from the state National News Agency saying the court ordered the sentences for Haitham Sahmarani, who is in custody, and Sahira Sahmarani and her husband Mohammed Amin Khazaal, who are both at large. More than 100 people have been arrested on suspicion of spying for the Israeli Mossad since April 2009, including members of the security forces and telecom employees, Now Lebanon reported.

Nasrallah: our enemy knows how we avenge Mughniyeh
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said his party was not involved in recent bombings that took place in India, Georgia, and Thailand earlier this month, while reiterating the party’s intention to avenge the killing of its leader Imad Mughniyeh four years ago. “It is insulting for Hezbollah to avenge its great leader by killing ordinary Israelis, as fr those who are our target, they know who they are and they are taking measures and I tell them to remain doing so for we shall avenge Imad Mughniyeh in an honorable way,” Nasrallah said.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi women hold sit-in protest in Qatif
A group of Saudi women have staged a sit-in protest in the kingdom’s oil-rich Eastern Province to draw international attention to their sufferings.

Saudi authorities should free Hamza Kashgari and drop any charges against him based on comments he made on Twitter expressing his personal religious views. On the morning of February 12, 2012, Malaysian authorities deported Kashgari back to Saudi Arabia to face charges of apostasy there, hours before lawyers obtained a Malaysian High Court injunction against his deportation.

Those who threaten ‘Twitter blasphemy’ writer Hamza Kashgari should stop and remember what Islam is for | Tehmina Kazi
Islam is not a sword or shield for the global political stage, but a belief system designed to purify the human heart. As of 6pm (UK time) today, 7,894 people had signed a petition urging the Saudi government to drop all charges of blasphemy against Hamza Kashgari, a columnist for the Jeddah-based daily Al-Bilad. Kashgari, 23, had sparked outrage for detailing an imaginary conversation with the prophet Muhammad on his Twitter account, in which he addressed him as an equal: “I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.”

IOC/Saudi Arabia: End Ban on Women in Sport
As the world prepares for the 2012 Olympics, the Saudi government is systematically discriminating against women in sports and physical education, and has never sent a female athlete to the Olympics, with no penalty from the international Olympic authorities. Human Rights Watch called on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to make ending discrimination against women in sports in the kingdom a condition for Saudi Arabia’s participation in Olympic sporting events, including the 2012 London Games.

“Mustapha Ouanes, an Algerian-born engineer and a member of the Saudi royal family’s entourage, has been convicted of rape in New York, the Atlantic Wire reported.  Ouanes was charged for bringing two women back to his hotel room after a night of drinking in January 2010 and raping one of them after they fell asleep, according to the Atlantic….Ouanes, a Canadian citizen, works for a firm that contracts with the Saudi royal family, and spent about half his time working and traveling with a Saudi prince, the Atlantic reported.”  Let me tell you what I know about the story and which has not been reported yet: the Prince in question is none other than Prince `Abdul-`Aziz bin Fahd, and the man in question works for Saudi Oger (owned by the Hariri family).
Syria

Syria: Fears for activists arrested in Damascus raid

The Syrian authorities must release or charge a group of at least 14 people arrested on Thursday in a raid on the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression in Damascus, Amnesty International said today. A lawyer based in Syria told Amnesty International that the centre’s director Mazen Darwish and Syrian-American blogger Razan Ghazzawi were among those detained.
Israel’s Efraim Halevy believes a collapse of the Assad regime in Syria could deal a blow to ally Iran’s regional ambitions and nuclear program. Instability in Syria poses stark security risks for Israel, but it also offers a chance to deliver a stinging blow toIran’s regional ambitions and even its nuclear program, Israel’s former national security advisor says.

Analysis / Op-ed

“Four days in Ramallah through the lens of dehumanization” – remembering Anthony Shadid, Paul Mutter

I didn’t know Anthony Shadid personally, but I respected his writing. His last story for the NYT, on militias running amok in Libya, was perhaps the best one I’d read about the country’s internal conflict since it began in 2011. It reminded readers – well, those few who care to recall Libya – that “interventions” do not end when the last bomber flies back to base, whether we’re claiming “mission accomplished” in the name of neoconservatism or the “responsibility to protect.”

The end of the ‘two-state solution’ is the beginning of a more just future
Feb 19, 2012
Jeff Halper
Even as I write this, the bulldozers have been busy throughout that one indivisible country known by the bifurcated term Israel/Palestine. Palestinian homes, community centers, livestock pens and other “structures” (as the Israel authorities dispassionately call them) have been demolished in the Old City, Silwan and various parts of “Area C” in the West Bank, as well among the Bedouin – Israeli citizens – in the Negev/Nakab. This is merely mopping up, herding the last of the Arabs into their prison cells where, forever, they will cease to be heard or heard from, a non-issue in Israel and, eventually, in the wider world distracted from bigger, more pressing matters.
An as-yet confidential report submitted by the European consuls in Jerusalem and Ramallah raises urgent concerns over the “forced expulsion” of Palestinians – a particularly strong term for European diplomats to use –from Area C of the West Bank (the 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli control but which today contains less than 5% of the Palestinian population). Focusing particularly on the rise in house demolitions by the Israeli authorities and the growing economic distress of the Palestinians living in Area C, the report mentions the fertile and strategic Jordan Valley (where the Palestinian population has declined from 250,000 to 50,000 since the start of the Occupation), plans to relocate 3000 Jahalin Bedouins to a barren hilltop above the Jerusalem garbage dump and the ongoing but accelerated demolition of Palestinian homes (500 in 2011).
At the same time the “judaization” of Jerusalem continues apace, a “greater” Israeli Jerusalem steadily isolating the Palestinian parts of the city from the rest of Palestinian society while ghettoizing their inhabitants, more than 100,000 of which now live beyond the Wall. Some 120 homes were demolished in East Jerusalem in 2011; over the same period the Israeli government announced the construction of close to 7000 housing units for Jews in East and “Greater” Jerusalem. “If current trends are not stopped and reversed,” said a previous EU report, “the establishment of a viable Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders seems more remote than ever. The window for a two-state solution is rapidly closing….”
In fact, it closed long ago. In terms of settlers and Palestinians, the Israeli government treats the whole country as one. Last year it demolished three times more homes of Israeli citizens (Arabs, of course) than it did in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The demolition of Bedouin homes in the Negev/Nakab is part of a plan approved by the government to remove 30,000 citizens from their homes and confine them to townships.
None of this concerns “typical” Israelis even if they have heard of it (little appears in the news). For them, the Israeli-Arab conflict was won and forgotten years ago, somewhere around 2004 when Bush informed Sharon that the US does not expect Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders, thus effectively ending the “two-state solution,” and Arafat “mysteriously” died.
Since then, despite occasional protests from Europe, the “situation” has been normalized. Israelis enjoy peace and quiet, personal security and a booming economy (with the usual neoliberal problems of fair allocation). The unshakable, bi-partisan support of the American government and Congress effectively shields it from any kind of international sanctions. Above all, Israeli Jews have faith that those pesky Arabs living somewhere “over there” beyond the Walls and barbed-wire barriers have been pacified and brought under control by the IDF. A recent poll found that “security,” the term Israelis use instead of “occupation” or “peace,” was ranked eleventh among the concerns of the Israeli public, trailing well behind employment, crime, corruption, religious-secular differences, housing and other more pressing issues.
A for the international community, the “Quartet” representing the US, the EU, Russia and the UN in the non-existent “peace process” has gone completely silent. (Israel refused to table its position on borders and other key negotiating issues by the January 26th “deadline” laid down by the Quartet, and no new meetings are scheduled). The US has abandoned any pretense of an “honest broker.” Months ago, when the US entered its interminable election “season,” Israel received a green light from both the Democrats and Republicans to do whatever it sees fit in the Occupied Territory. Last May the Republicans invited Netanyahu to address Congress and send a clear message to Obama: hands off Israel. That same week, Obama, not to be out-done, addressed an AIPAC convention and reaffirmed Bush’s promise that Israel will not have to return to the 1967 borders or relinquish its major settlement blocs in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. He also took the occasion to promise an American veto should the Palestinians request membership in the UN – though that would merely amount to an official acceptance of the two-state treaty that the US claims it has been fostering all these years. No, as far as Israel and Israeli Jews are concerned, the conflict and even the need for pretense is over. The only thing remaining is to divert attention to more “urgent” global matters so that the Palestinian issue completely disappears. Voila Iran.
Oh, but what about the “demographic threat,” that “war of the womb” that will eventually force a solution? Well, as long as Israel has the Palestinian Authority to self-segregate its people, it has nothing to worry about. While the Palestinian Authority plays the “two-state solution” game, Israel can simply herd the Palestinians into the 70 tiny islands of Areas A and B, lock the gates and let the international community feed them – and go about placidly building a Greater Land of Israel with American and European complicity. Indeed, nothing demonstrates self-segregation more than Prime Minister Salem Fayyad’s neoliberal scheme of building a Palestinian …something… “from the ground up.” By building for the well-to-do in new private-sector cities like Rawabi, located safely in Area A, by building new highways (with Japanese and USAID assistance) that respect Israeli “Greater” Jerusalem and channel Palestinian traffic from Ramallah to Bethlehem through far-away Jericho, by expressing a willingness to accept Israeli territorial expansion in exchange for the ability to “do business,” Fayyad has invented yet a new form of neoliberal oppression-by-consent: viable apartheid (viable, at least, for the Palestinian business class). And as in the Bantustans of apartheid South Africa, the Palestinian Authority maintains a repressive internal order through its own American-trained/Israeli-approved militia, a second layer of occupation. (During the 2008 assault on Gaza, one of the few places in the world in which there were no demonstrations was the West Bank, where they were forbidden by the Palestinian Authority. Then-Prime Minister Olmert crowed that this was evidence of how effectively the Palestinians had been pacified.)
Indeed, by clinging to the two-state solution and continuing to participate in “negotiations” years after they have proven themselves a trap, the Palestinian leadership plays a central role in its own people’s warehousing. The reality – even the fact – of occupation gets buried under the diversions set up by the fraudulent yet unending “peace process.” This only enables Israel not only to imprison the Palestinians in tiny cells; witness today’s mini-ethnic cleansing, just one of thousands of micro-events that have the cumulative effect of displacement, expulsion, segregation and incarceration. It also enables Israel to then blame the victims for causing their own oppression! When a Palestinian leadership assumes the prerogative to negotiate a political resolution yet lacks any genuine authority or leverage to do so, and when, in addition, it fails to abandon negotiations even after they have been exposed as a trap, it comes dangerously close to being collaborationist. For its part, Israel is off the hook. Instead of going through the motions of establishing an apartheid regime, it simply exploits the willingness of the Palestinian Authority to perpetuate the illusion of negotiations as a smokescreen covering its virtual imprisonment of the Palestinian “inmates.” Once the current mopping up operations are completed, the process of incarceration will be complete.
Today the only alternative agency to the Palestinian Authority is segments of the international civil society. The Arab and Muslims peoples for whom Palestinian liberation is an integral part of the Arab Spring, stand alongside thousands of political and human rights groups, critical activists, churches, trade unions and intellectuals throughout the world. Crucial as it is for keeping the issue alive and building grassroots support for the Palestinian cause that will steadily “trickle up” and affect governments’ policies, however, civil society advocacy is a stop-gap form of agency, ultimately unable to achieve a just peace by itself. We, too, are trapped in the dead-end personified by the two-state solution, reference to a “peace process” and their attendant “negotiations.” There is no way forward in the current paradigm. We must break out into a world of new possibilities foreclosed by the present options: a “two-state” apartheid regime or warehousing.
In my view, while advocacy and grassroots mobilization remain relevant, several tasks stand before us. First, we must endeavor to hasten the collapse of the present situation and subsequently, when new paradigms of genuine justice emerge from the chaos, be primed to push forward an entirely different solution that is currently impossible or inconceivable, be that a single democratic state over the entire country, a bi-national state, a regional confederation or some other alternative yet to be formulated. The Palestinians themselves must create a genuine, inclusive agency of their own that, following the collapse, can effectively seize the moment. Formulating a clear program and strategy, they will then be equipped to lead their people to liberation and a just peace, with the support of activists and others the world over.
A necessary and urgent first step towards collapsing the otherwise permanent regime of oppression in Israel/Palestine is that we stop talking about a two-state solution. It’s dead and gone as a political option – if, indeed, it ever really existed. It should be banned from the discourse because reference to an irrelevant “solution” only serves to confuse the discussion. Granted, this will be hard for liberals to do; everyone else, however, has given up on it. Most Palestinians, having once supported it, now realize that Israel will simply not withdraw to a point where a truly viable and sovereign state can emerge. The Israeli government, backed by the Bush-Obama policies on the settlement blocs, doesn’t even make pretence of pursuing it anymore, and the Israeli public is fine with the status quo. Nor does the permanent warehousing of the Palestinians seem to faze the American or European governments, or the Arab League. Even AIPAC has moved on to the “Iranian threat.”
Behind the insistence of the liberal Zionists of J Street, Peace Now, the Peace NGOs Forum run out of the Peres Center for Peace and others to hang on to a two-state solution at any cost is a not-so-hidden agenda. They seek to preserve Israel as a Jewish state even at the cost of enforcing institutional discrimination against Israel’s own Palestinian citizens. The real meaning of a “Jewish democracy” is living with apartheid and warehousing while protesting them. No, the liberals will be the hardest to wean away from the two-state snare. Yet if they don’t abandon it, they run the risk of promoting de facto their own worst nightmare of warehousing while providing the fig-leaf of legitimacy to cover the policies of Israel’s extreme right – all in the name of “peace.” This is what happens when one’s ideology places restrictions on one’s ability to perceive evil or to draw necessary if difficult conclusions. When wishful thinking becomes policy, it not only destroys your effectiveness as a political actor but leads you into positions, policies and alliances that, in the end, are inimical to your own goals and values. Jettisoning all talk of a “two-state solution” removes the major obstacle to clear analysis and the ability to move forward.
The obfuscation created by the “two-state solution” now out of the way, what emerges as clear as day is naked occupation, an apartheid regime extending across all of historic Palestine/Israel and the spectre of warehousing. Since none of these forms of oppression can ever be legitimized or transformed into something just, the task before us becomes clear: to cause their collapse by any means necessary. There are many ways to do this, just as the ANC did. Already Palestinian, Israel and international activists engage in internal resistance, together with international challenges to occupation represented by the Gaza flotillas and attempts to “crash” Israeli borders. Many civil society actors the world over have mobilized, some around campaigns such as Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), others around direct actions, still others engaged in lobbying the UN and governments through such instruments as the Human Rights Council, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and international courts. There have been campaigns to reconvene the Tribunal that, under the Fourth Geneva Convention, has the authority and duty to sanction Israel for its gross violations. Dozens of groups and individuals alike engage in public speaking, mounting Israel Apartheid Weeks on university campuses and working through the media. And much more.
And here is where Palestinian civil society plays a crucial role, a role that cannot be played by non-Palestinians. If it is agreed that the Palestinian Authority must go if we are to get beyond the two-state trap – indeed, the dismantling of the PA being a major part of the collapse of the present system – then this call must originate from within the Palestinian community. Non-Palestinians must join in, of course, but the issue of who represents the Palestinians is their call exclusively.
Non-Palestinians can lso suggest various end-games. I’ve written, for example, about a Middle East economic confederation, believing that a regional approach is necessary to address the core issues. The Palestinian organization PASSIA published a collection of twelve possible outcomes. It is obvious, though, that it is the sole prerogative of the Palestinian people to decide what solution, or range of solutions, is acceptable. For this, and to organize effectively so as to bring about a desired outcome, the Palestinians need a new truly representative agency, one that replaces the PA and gives leadership and direction to broad-based civil society agency, one that has the authority to negotiate a settlement and actually move on to the implementation of a just peace.
As of now, it appears there is only one agency that possesses that legitimacy and mandate: the Palestinian National Council of the PLO (although Hamas and the other Islamic parties are not (yet) part of the PLO). Reconstituting the PNC through new elections would seem the most urgent item on the Palestinian agenda today – without which, in the absence of effective agency, we are all stuck in rearguard protest actions and Israel prevails. Our current situation, caught in the limbo between seeking the collapse of the oppressive system we have, and having a Palestinian agency that can effectively lead us towards a just resolution, is one of the most perilous we’ve faced. One person’s limbo is another person’s window of opportunity. Say what you will about Israel, it knows how to hustle and exploit even the smallest of opportunities to nail down its control permanently.
“Collapse with agency,” I suggest, could be a title of our refocused efforts to weather the limbo in the political process. Until a reinvigorated PNC or other representative agency can be constituted, a daunting but truly urgent task, Palestinian civil society might coalesce enough to create a kind of interim leadership bureau. This itself might be a daunting task. Most Palestinian leaders have either been killed by Israel or are languishing in Israeli prisons, while Palestinian civil society has been shattered into tiny disconnected and often antagonistic pieces. At home major divisions have been sown between “’48” and “’67” Palestinians; Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank have been effectively severed; and within the West Bank restrictions on movement among a bewildering array of “areas” – A, B, C, C-Restricted, H-1, H-2, nature reserves, closed military areas – have resulted in virtual, largely disconnected Palestinian mini-societies. Political divisions, especially among secular/traditional and Islamic factions, have been nurtured, not least by Israel. Overall, the Palestinian population, exhausted by years of sacrifice and resistance, impoverished and preoccupied with mere survival, has been left largely rudderless as many of its most educated and skilled potential leaders have left or are forbidden by Israel to return.
For its part, the Palestinian leadership has done little to bridge the wider divisions amongst those falling under PA rule, Palestinian citizens of Israel, residents of the refugee camps and the world-wide Diaspora, divisions that have grown even wider since the PLO and the PNC fell moribund. Indeed, major portions of the Palestinian Diaspora (and one may single out especially but not exclusively the large and prosperous communities of Latin America), have disconnected from the national struggle completely. The Palestinian possess some extremely articulate spokespeople and activists, but they tend to be either a collection of individual voices only tenuously tied to grassroots organizations, or grassroots resistance groups such as the Popular Committees that enjoy little political backing or strategic direction.
Ever aware that the struggle for liberation must be led by Palestinians, our collective task at the moment, in my view, is to bring about the collapse of the present situation in Palestine in order to exploit its fundamental unsustainabilty. The elimination of the Palestinian Authority is one way to precipitate that collapse. It would likely require Israel to physically reoccupy the Palestinian cities and probably Gaza as well (as if they have ever been de-occupied), bringing the reality of raw occupation back to the center of attention. Such a development would likely inflame Arab and Muslim public opinion, not to mention that of much of the rest of the world, and would create an untenable situation, forcing the hand of the international community. Israel would be put in an indefensible position, thus paving the way for new post-collapse possibilities – this time with an effective and representative Palestinian agency in place and a global movement primed to follow its lead.
But given the underlying unsustainability of the Occupation and the repressive system existing throughout historic Palestine – the massive violations of human rights and international law, the disruptive role the conflict plays in the international system and its overt brutality – collapse could come from a variety of places, some of them unsuspected and unrelated to Israel/Palestine. An attack on Iran could reshuffle the cards in the Middle East, and the Arab Spring is still a work in progress. Major disruptions in the flow of oil to the West due an attack on Iran, internal changes in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, instability in Russia and even the fact that China has no oil of its own could cause major financial crises worldwide. Sino-American tensions, environmental disasters or Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the Taliban with unpredictable Indian reactions may all play an indirect yet forceful role. Who knows? Ron Paul, President Gingrich’s newly appointed Secretary of State, might end all military, economic and political support for Israel, in which case the Occupation (and more) would fall within a month.
Whatever the cause of the collapse – and we must play an active role in bring it about – it is incumbent upon us to be ready, mobilized and organized if we are to seize that historic moment, which might be coming sooner than we expect. Effective and broadly representative Palestinian agency will be critical. Collapse with agency is the only way to get “there” from “here.”

Media critic calls out pundits for ignoring Khader Adnan, their long awaited ‘Palestinian Gandhi’
Feb 19, 2012
Adam Horowitz
Peter Hart, Activism Director for FAIR, writes in the Huffington Post:

For years prominent corporate media pundits have told us that the world — and the media — would embrace a dramatic, non-violent Palestinian resistance movement. If only such a movement — perhaps led by a Gandhi-like figure — were to finally emerge, we are told, the media coverage will come, and sympathy from across the world will strengthen support for the Palestinian cause.
This is nonsense — there has been non-violent Palestinian resistance for years. But that fact hasn’t stopped pundits like Time’s Joe Klein, as recently as last year, from wondering why Palestinians haven’t found their Gandhi. Or New York Times columnist Tom Friedman from writing a column (5/24/11) arguing that if Palestinians would simply adopt peaceful resistance, “it would become a global news event. Every network in the world would be there.”
Or consider New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, writing (7/10/10) under the headline “Waiting for Gandhi,” that if Palestinians would finally pursue nonviolent resistance, “Those images would be on televisions around the world.”
“So far there is no Palestinian version of Martin Luther King Jr.,” Kristof wrote — though he singled out one possible candidate, activist Ayed Morrar, who “spent six years in Israeli prisons but seems devoid of bitterness.”
Perhaps that is the standard — jailed by the Israelis, but not bitter.
But what about someone, right now, resisting Israeli detention practices? Someone whose hunger strike is attracting attention around the world? That is Khader Adnan.

Hart’s piece ends, “[Adnan’s] plight is sparsely covered in the U.S. corporate media, and would seem to go unmentioned by these pundits who seem eager to tell stories like his. It might lead one to believe that Friedman and his ilk don’t really mean what they write.”

If Khader Adnan was a Jewish terrorist, he might be free
Feb 19, 2012
Max Blumenthal
This post originally appeared on Al Akhbar English:
As I write this, Khader Adnan is near death, on the 63rd day of a hunger strike to protest his detention without charges by Israeli occupation authorities. Having been seized on December 17 in the middle of the night by Israeli soldiers, jailed without trial, humiliated and abused, Adnan is waging one of the longest hunger strikes in Palestinian history. A 33-year-old baker, Adnan has been an activist in the popular resistance faction Palestinian Islamic Jihad for several years, but has never been implicated in any act of violence. As with the more than 300 Palestinians held by Israel in administrative detention, Israeli military authorities refuse to say why Adnan was imprisoned. Human Rights Watch has demanded that Israel “immediately charge or release” Adnan, as has Amnesty International. But the Israeli authorities continue to ignore the pleas of human rights groups.

Unfortunately for Adnan, he was not a Jewish terror suspect.

ChaimPearlman
Chaim Pearlman (Photo: Getty Images)

In July 2010, Jerusalem police arrested a Jewish extremist named Chaim Pearlman. Pearlman was the prime suspect in a cold-blooded settler stabbing spree that left four Palestinians dead. Pearlman had previously engaged in acts of random violence against Palestinians, while maintaining an active role in the Kach terrorist organization. For ten days, the Shin Bet intelligence service subjected him to harsh interrogations while denying him access to legal counsel. Finally, Israeli High Court Justice Edmund Levy admonished the Shin Bet for refusing to produce evidence of Pearlman’s guilt. “Never in my life have I seen such behavior,” Levy  claimed,  despite having presided over numerous cases of Palestinian Israelis detained in a similarly lawless fashion.
Haaretz, the liberal Israeli daily, reacted with shock to Pearlman’s treatment, proclaiming in an editorial that “the Shin Bet must mend its ways.” The editors declared that while prosecuting Jewish terrorism is important, “the ends do not justify the means.” “Even the war against terror must be conducted using legal means,” the Haaretz editors harumphed. After Justice Levy refused to extend Pearlman’s detention by 8 days, Pearlman was set free and greeted by a cheering crowd of Jewish extremists.
The Israeli High Court has yet to demand evidence of Adnan’s guilt. Nor have any voices in the mainstream of Israeli opinion expressed their indignation at his treatment. Instead, a military appeals court has ruledthat Adnan must stay in detention until at least May. One of Adnan’s hands and both of his feet are shackled to a bed at a hospital in Safed. His wife keeps a poster in the family’s living room that features his image above a caption. It reads, “My honor is more important than my food.”

Troubled Jeopardy!: Travels through Trebekistan
Feb 19, 2012
Nima Shirazi

jeopardy

Back in January, a $1000 first-round clue on Jeopardy!, falling under the category “Judea,” asked, “Galilee, Samaria & Judea in the south were the 3 traditional divisions of this ancient area with a still-current name.” The correct question was “What is Palestine?”
None of the three contestants even buzzed in to respond. (Incidentally, this was a question a number of GOP presidential candidates had been answering incorrectly

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