The truth that the ‘Palestine Papers’ has broken into the mainstream: Israel is the obstacle to peace

The release of the “Palestine Papers,” Al Jazeera’s leak of thousands of documents relating to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, is creating space in the American mainstream for this central truth:  it is Israel’s fault that there has not been a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Jonathan Cook, a journalist based in Nazareth, writes that “hundreds of leaked confidential Palestinian documents confirmed the suspicions of a growing number of observers that the rejectionists in the peace process are to be found on the Israeli, not Palestinian, side.”  This fact, which has been obscured by Israeli propaganda since the collapse of the Camp David talks, is pushing its way into U.S. media coverage as well as into the reactions of liberal American Jewish groups to the papers.

The Washington Post reports:

For Israel, the documents could prove problematic because they show the earnestness with which the Palestinians pushed for a deal, despite Israeli protestations that they have no partner for peace

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the executive director of J Street, told the Jerusalem Post that the documents highlight “the ongoing intransigence of the Israeli government.”

In a statement, Americans for Peace Now said:

These documents — if authentic — highlight a reality that peace process cynics have long sought to deny: Israel has a far more real “partner” than it has ever been willing to admit. The documents underscore the fact that, sadly, Israel has not capitalized on the opportunity for peace this partner represents.

The Los Angeles Times‘ Edmund Sanders similarly writes:

For one thing, the documents show that Palestinian leaders appeared to be far more willing to cut a peace deal than most Israelis — and even many Palestinians — believed.

In contrast to Israelis’ portrayal of Palestinian leaders as rejectionists, the Palestinians come across in the papers as the side best-prepared, with maps, charts and compromises, even broaching controversial tradeoffs that went beyond what their own people were likely ready to accept.

Even the Wall Street Journal has something similar to say:  Charles Levinson writes that “Israel, meanwhile, is portrayed in the documents as slowing the Mideast peace process by turning down unprecedented Palestinian concessions.”

The only major American newspaper that didn’t report this central theme that has emerged from the “Palestine Papers” is the New York Times, which published Ethan Bronner’s “analysis” claiming that the documents “open a door” on peace talks.

While this initial coverage is just a start, the release of the “Palestine Papers” should, and has to potential to, upend U.S. media’s understanding of the conflict

Jonathan Cook: Israel Has to Manage, Control Narrators of Conflict

Jonathan Cook, an independent British journalist living in Nazareth, Israel, has a must read piece here on journalism, censorship, the Israel lobby and attacks on the press in Israel/Palestine.

I would recommend reading the whole piece, but here’s the money quote:

Since the visible collapse of the peace process a decade ago at Camp David, Israel has been in the increasingly uncomfortable position of not only being but, more importantly, looking like the rejectionist party to the conflict. The impression that Israel has no interest in engaging in meaningful peace talks to create any kind of viable Palestinian state has grown with the almost complete cessation of Palestinian attacks, both the suicide bombers who were once dispatched from the West Bank and the Qassam rocket attacks from Gaza.

In order to justify continuing military assaults on the Palestinians in the occupied territories and its studious avoidance of real negotiations, Israel has had to invest an ever larger share of its energies in managing and controlling the narrators of the conflict—chiefly the Western news organizations and, especially, those in the United States.

Israel needs to maintain its credibility in the U.S. because that is the source of its strength. It depends on billions of dollars in aid and military hardware, almost blanket political support from Congress, the White House’s veto of critical resolutions at the United Nations, and Washington’s role as a dishonest broker in sponsoring intermittent talks propping up a peace process that in reality offers no hope of a just resolution. The occupation would end in short order without U.S. financial, diplomatic and military support. For that reason Israel makes significant efforts, as we shall see, to put pressure on the journalists themselves. It also targets their news editors “back home” because they make appointments to the region, set the tone of the coverage, approve or veto story ideas, and edit and package the reports coming in from the field.

One other thing worth highlighting:  I’ve spent some time on this blog documenting the distortions and falsehoods in most Western reporting on Israel/Palestine.  Cook’s piece is a great tool for understanding why it is that the press continues to be so tone deaf and blind on the conflict.

I have criticized Joel Greenberg, a correspondent for the Washington Post who writes on Israel/Palestine, and his shoddy reporting in a couple of places (here and here.)  Apparently, Greenberg used to the work for the New York Times, and before that, the Israeli army.

Cook writes this on Greenberg, partially explaining why, perhaps, Greenberg’s reporting is so skewed in Israel’s favor (emphasis mine):

The NYT’s other Jerusalem correspondent, Isabel Kershner, is an Israeli citizen and is married to an Israeli. A recent predecessor of Bronner’s, Joel Greenberg, did reserve duty in the Israeli army while he was reporting for the paper, apparently a fact known by the editors but also not considered a conflict of interest. Most of the NYT’s correspondents in the past two decades appear to have been Jewish.

Gaza’s Ongoing Crisis Is Not News: Routine killing, hunger off TV’s agenda

The following article originally appeared in the August 2010 issue of Extra!, the monthly magazine of the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.  The trend highlighted in the article of corporate media completely ignoring the crisis in Gaza unless there are headline grabbing events like the raid on the Gaza aid flotilla continues to hold steady.

Since the Islamist movement Hamas won democratic elections in the Palestinian territories in January 2006, Israel has been waging what it has referred to as “economic warfare” (McClatchy, 6/9/10) to collectively punish Gazans for their choice. The economic sanctions increased after Hamas’ June 2006 capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit; a full-blown air, land and sea blockade was imposed by Israel (and Egypt) in June 2007 after Hamas routed an attempted coup by the rival, U.S.-backed Fatah party and took control in the Gaza Strip.

The blockade against the coastal strip has had devastating consequences for the one-and-a-half million Palestinians living in Gaza, including near-total economic collapse, and has been repeatedly condemned by international bodies (e.g., International Committee of the Red Cross, 6/14/10), but corporate media in the United States have largely ignored it. While Gaza gained some attention when Israel was pummeling the Strip in its 2008–09 assault, and again in the wake of the deadly Israeli raid on the Gaza aid flotilla in May 2010, the dire situation there got scant coverage in the period between those headline-grabbing events.

Despite Israel’s recent claim of “easing” the siege (6/10/10), the civilian population, over half of whom are children, remains trapped in what NBC reporter Tom Aspell (6/8/10), in a rare critical take, referred to as “a 140-square-mile prison.” Freedom of movement for Gazans is severely restricted, people still can’t export goods and the naval blockade remains in place. A May 2010 report on Gaza from the UN Development Program paints a disturbing picture: 75 percent of infrastructure damaged during the 2008–09 Israeli invasion remains unrepaired due to the near-total ban on imports of construction materials, more than 90 percent of Gaza’s drinking water is unfit for consumption, over 40 percent of people are unemployed and over a million Gazans depend on food aid.

Between February 2009 and May 2010—from just after the 2008–09 Gaza conflict until shortly before the Israeli assault on the Gaza aid flotilla—there were 43 on-the-ground news reports related to the situation in Palestine from the television news outlets ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN. Only eight stories dealt specifically with the humanitarian crisis and the effects of war in Gaza: four on CNN, three on ABC and one on NBC.

The rest largely focused on the Israeli/Palestinian “peace process” and the short-lived U.S./Israeli tensions over illegal Israeli settlements. CNN also aired three reports critical of what it portrayed as Islamist indoctrination of Gazan children, depicting summer camps and children’s TV as promoting suicide bombing and terrorism. None of these segments mentioned the nearly 1,000 Gazan children killed by Israel in the past 10 years, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, as a possible motivation for violent resistance.

None of the outlets ran a report on the UN’s Goldstone report, which accused both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes during the 2008–09 conflict. Nor did these outlets mention any of the 67 Israeli killings in Gaza counted by B’Tselem during this time period—including 23 civilians, eight of whom were children.

Despite the sparse coverage, there was no lack of compelling stories in this 14-month period—like that of Ahmad Suliman Salem Deeb, the 19-year-old Gaza City resident who was killed by Israeli soldiers during a non-violent demonstration against the Israeli “buffer zone” that prevents 30 percent of Gaza’s arable land from being farmed (International Solidarity Movement, 4/28/10). Or Mutassim Dalloul, whose dairy factory in Gaza was blown up not once but twice by U.S.-funded Israeli bombs—first during the Israeli invasion and again on April 1–2, 2010 (Electronic Intifada, 4/5/10)–continuing the targeting of Gaza’s means of sustenance that the Goldstone report deemed illegal.

Had such stories showing the blockade’s human effects been told, had Gazans been given names and faces, the commentary after the Israeli raid on the aid flotilla trying to break the blockade might have sounded much different. With so little attention paid to the humanitarian situation there, though, it’s unsurprising that one commentator after another (Extra!, 7/10) could contend, like Monica Crowley on Fox Business News (6/2/10), “There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza at all!”

Jackson Diehl’s Settlement Delusion

Weeks after an awful October 18 column in the Washington Post which argued that it was President Barack Obama’s fault that the “peace process” is faltering because “insisting on an Israeli freeze” created a “near-insuperable obstacle to the peace process,” neoconservative Jackson Diehl is at it again.  This time, he penned a column that similarly claimed that it was “Obama who first turned the settlement issue from a minor to a major one.”

The settlement issue is a minor one?

Is it minor that the matrix of Israeli settlements controls 42 percent of the land in the occupied West Bank, land that is supposedly meant for a future Palestinian state?

Is it minor that Israel steals land from Palestinians to build settlements and confiscates more land to build a separation barrier that, de facto, annexes some 60 settlements?

Is it minor that in occupied Hebron, hundreds of extremist Jewish settlers have been inserted into the heart of a city with a population of about 150,000 Palestinians and wreak terror and havoc on the Palestinian residents there, with the full support of the Israeli army?

Is it minor that raw sewage from settlements flood Palestinian areas and destroy crops and contaminate drinking water?

Is it minor that the International Court of Justice, in a 2004 advisory opinion on the separation barrier, declared that “settlements have been established in breach of international law”?

Only in a world where delusions about Israel/Palestine are routinely published in the one of the nation’s top newspapers are the settlements a “minor” issue.

No Coincidence New Settlements were Announced While Netanyahu Visits US

Back in March of this year, when plans were announced for the construction of 1,600 new housing units for the illegal settlement of Ramat Shlomo in occupied Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reportedly “embarrassed” by the announcement because Joe Biden was in town.

New plans for settlements over the Green Line in Jerusalem were announced yesterday, and corporate media, like the New York Times, is reporting that “it was not immediately clear whether Mr. Netanyahu knew in advance” about them.  But that misses the mark.  Any new settlement plans announced by the Israeli government are completely on purpose and calculated.

As Palestinian-Canadian human rights lawyer Diana Buttu told me in an interview last March, the practice of Israel announcing new settlements plans and land confiscations while their leaders are meeting with the U.S. is not new:

The fascinating thing—again, if you look at history—all the way as far back as Baker, when he was purportedly interested in doing something with the Palestinians, Baker himself acknowledges that every visit he made to Jerusalem was marked by an announcement of settlement expansion, or settlement construction, or land confiscation or home demolition.  So, this is not new.  When Hillary Clinton came there was an announcement, when Secretary of State Rice came there were similar announcements, when Powell came there were similar announcements, with Albright.  Every single administration since Bush the father has been met with the same sort of announcements and proclamations.

In this most recent case, it is Netanyahu visiting the United States, rather than Biden visiting Israel.  But the principle remains the same:  Israel can give the middle finger to the United States, and absolutely nothing will happen, because of an lobby that backs Israel no matter what it does.  Announcing new settlements while professing to be interested in “peace talks” with the Palestinians are likely to continue to happen at an even more furious pace because the Republican Party now controls the House of Representatives.

Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now does a great job at showing how off-mark any analysis that implies Netanyahu did not approve of the latest plans or was not aware of them is:

1. Neither the issuing of the tenders last week (for construction in Pisgat Zeev and Ramot) nor the subsequent deposit of the plans (for construction in Har Homa and Ramot) could have taken place without the personal authorization and blessing of the Prime Minister.

2. The timing and context of these moves were chosen by the Prime Minister.

3. The scope of these events go beyond simple tactical maneuvering.  It appears that Netanyahu has opened up the East Jerusalem settlement floodgates.

4. It appears that the Prime Minister has a special weakness for Vice President Biden – or at least for embarrassing the man.  Their last very public interaction in March 2009 was marked by the government of Israel’s promotion of a new settlement plan for Ramat Shlomo, leading to a diplomatic debacle.  This weekend, Prime Minister Netanyahu met Vice President Biden in New Orleans on the margins of the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly — after which Biden delivered a speech pledging America’s unconditional support for Israel and saying that there should be “no daylight” between the US and Israel when it comes to security.  It was a speech that – given Israel’s failure to play ball with the Obama Administration over settlements and the peace process – Netanyahu could rightfully cast as a huge diplomatic victory.  And he has rewarded this victory – and Vice President Biden for his staunch support of Israel – by publicly humiliating the Vice President once again and sticking a finger in they eye of the Obama Administration.

Queen Noor Brings Palestinian Struggle to MSNBC; Scarborough Repeats Israeli Talking Points

It’s not often that the story of Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation gets told in a fair way to American consumers of media, but today on MSNBC‘s “Morning Joe” that’s exactly what happened.  Queen Noor of Jordan was a guest on the show, promoting the powerful documentary “Budrus,” which tells the story of how the West Bank village of Budrus successfully beat back Israeli attempts to confiscate Palestinian land as part of the Israeli effort to build a “separation barrier,” which was ruled to be illegal by the International Court of Justice in a 2004 advisory opinion.

Noor gets these often-squelched messages out on MSNBC:  that Israel confiscates Palestinian land; that Israelis, Palestinians and internationals can work together in a common pursuit of justice; that Israel has imprisoned the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza; and that Israel is cracking down on the growing nonviolent resistance movement against the wall.  After discussing the growing crackdown on Palestinian dissent, Noor asks, “are [Israelis] trying to reach a peaceful settlement?  Because these are their partners.”  These messages are not something you often hear voiced on corporate television.

Unfotunately, after Noor asks that question, host Joe Scarborough launches into tired cliches about Hamas, asking how Israel is expected to make peace when “next door” is a movement that “doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist” and whose “stated goal is to drive them into the sea.”

Scarborough has some problems with the facts about Hamas.  As I wrote in the July 2010 issue of Extra!, the magazine of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting:

The truth about Hamas is much more nuanced than what corporate media repeat. While it is true that the 1988 founding charter of Hamas includes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and calls for the establishment of an Islamic state in all of historic Palestine, Hamas’ leadership has largely abandoned that rhetoric. In the run-up to the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, Hamas dropped its call for the destruction of Israel from its manifesto (Guardian, 1/12/06).

In recent years, leaders of the Islamist movement have stated that Hamas is ready to make peace with Israel as long as a settlement is based on full sovereignty in the 1967 borders, East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital and the right of return for Palestinian refugees—positions that have their basis in international law and United Nations resolutions. Israeli daily Ha’aretz (11/9/08) reported that “the Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said…his government was willing to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.” And Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas’ political wing, recently said (Charlie Rose Show, 5/28/10) that “Hamas accepts a Palestinian state on the borders of 1967 with its capital Jerusalem and with the right of return.”

Still, regardless of Scarborough’s inaccurate questions, it’s important that Noor was on MSNBC getting out those vitally important messages.

And go see Budrus.  It’s really excellent.

(H/T Matt Duss for pointing this MSNBC segment out.)

The Real Yitzhak Rabin

Today marks the fifteenth anniversary of when former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli extremist for Rabin’s signing of the Oslo Accords with Yasir Arafat.  With the anniversary comes the obligatory mourning of Rabin as a “man of peace,” as the Israeli leader who, had he survived, might have been the one who brought lasting peace to Israel and Palestine.

While that’s the conventional wisdom of Rabin, it’s based on a total erasure of his sordid role in the Israeli military establishment as well as a fundamental misreading of what the Oslo accords were intended to do.  The only way that wisdom holds is if you shut out Palestinian views of Rabin, which is what happens in U.S. media and political discourse.

Former President Bill Clinton’s Op-Ed in today’s New York Times is emblematic of the narrative about Rabin in the United States.  Clinton says Rabin had a “vision for freedom, tolerance, cooperation, security and peace”; that had he lived, “I am confident a new era of enduring partnership and economic prosperity would have emerged”; and that the “the cause for which Yitzhak Rabin gave his life” was “building a shared future in which our common humanity is more important than our interesting differences.”

The reality of Rabin is that he was a key player in the expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians during the 1947-49 war that led to Israel’s founding, which Palestinians refer to as al-Nakba, or the Catastrophe.  During the First Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, Rabin infamously gave orders to “break the bones” of Palestinians participating in the uprising against the then-twenty year old Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.  And the Oslo accords were never really about peace; it was a successful attempt to “subcontract” the occupation out to the newly formed Palestinian Authority, as Israeli professor Neve Gordon puts it in his excellent book Israel’s Occupation.

In The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappe writes:

Israel’s ‘peace’ axioms were re-articulated during the days of Yitzhak Rabin, the same Yitzhak Rabin who, as a young officer, had taken an active part in the 1948 cleansing but who had now been elected as prime minister on a platform that promised the resumption of the peace effort. Rabin’s death – he was assassinated by one of his own people on 4 November 1995 came too soon for anyone to assess how much he had really changed from his 1948 days: as recently as 1987, as minister of defence, he had ordered his troops to break the bones of Palestinians who confronted his tanks with stones in the first Intifada; he had deported hundreds of Palestinians as prime minister prior to the Oslo Agreement, and he had pushed for the 1994 Oslo B agreement that effectively caged the Palestinians in the West Bank into several Bantustans.

Ha’aretz columnist Amira Hass gave voice to what Palestinians think of Rabin in this article:

Before the handshake on the White House lawn, before the Nobel Prize and before the murder, when Palestinians were asked about Rabin, this is what they remember: One thinks of his hands, scarred by soldiers’ beatings; another remembers a friend who flitted between life and death in the hospital for 12 days, after he was beaten by soldiers who caught him drawing a slogan on a wall during a curfew. Yet another remembers the Al-Amari refugee camp; during the first intifada, all its young men were hopping on crutches or were in casts because they had thrown stones at soldiers, who in turn chased after them and carried out Rabin’s order.

As for the goals of the Oslo accords, here’s what Gordon writes:

The Oslo process was, to a large extent, the result of Israel’s failure to crush the intifada, and Israel’s major goal in the process was to find a way of managing the Palestinian population while continuing to hold on to their land.  As Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, and several others pointed out from the outset, Oslo was not an instrument of decolonization but rather a framework that changed the means of Israel’s control in order to perpetuate the occupation.  It constituted a move from direct military rule over the Palestinians in the OT to a more indirect or neocolonial form of domination.

And what has the creation of the Palestinian Authority, perhaps the most lasting legacy of the tenure of Rabin, brought to the Palestinian people?  Collaboration with Israel and repression of dissent.

Let’s save the lauding of Rabin as a “man of peace” for someone who is really working towards peace and justice in Israel and Palestine.

Associated Press Hasbara: Palestinians of Israel ‘enjoy equal rights under Israeli law’

An Associated Press article on yesterday’s clashes between Palestinian citizens of Israel and Israeli police and extreme rightists marching through the the town of Umm el-Fahm states:

Israeli Arabs, who represent a fifth of the country’s population, have grown jittery as nationalist elements in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition have questioned their loyalty to the state.

They are ethnically Palestinian, but enjoy equal rights under Israeli law, unlike Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Still, they often endure discrimination and are statistically poorer and less well educated than Israeli Jews. Tensions run deep.

While the AP does include the caveat that Palestinian citizens of Israel “often endure discrimination,” it’s simply inaccurate to say that they enjoy equal rights under Israeli law.  The AP is boosting the conventional narrative of Israel as a “democracy,” while ignoring the legalized, entrenched and systematic discrimination Palestinian citizens of Israel face.

According to Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel:

Israel’s Declaration of Independence (1948) states two principles important for understanding the legal status of Palestinian citizens of Israel. First, the Declaration refers specifically to Israel as a “Jewish state” committed to the “ingathering of the exiles.” While such references to the Jewish nature of the state permeate the Declaration, it contains only one reference to the maintenance of complete equality of political and social rights for all its citizens, irrespective of race, religion, or sex. There is a tension between these two principles, in that the first emphasizes the Zionist character of the state, which privileges one group, the Jewish people, and the second mentions the universal status of each citizen in a democracy.

Discriminatory laws

Adalah’s report to the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, issued August/September 2001 and entitled Institutionalized Discrimination Against Palestinian Citizens of Israel, identifies more than 20 laws that discriminate against the Palestinian minority in Israel. The report shows that the Jewish character of the state is evident in numerous Israeli laws. The most important immigration laws, The Law of Return (1950) and The Citizenship Law (1952), allow Jews to freely immigrate to Israel and gain citizenship, but excludes Arabs who were forced to flee their homes in 1947 and 1967. Israeli law also confers special quasi-governmental standing on the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency, the Jewish National Fund and other Zionist bodies, which by their own charters cater only to Jews. Various other laws such as The Chief Rabbinate of Israel Law (1980), The Flag and Emblem Law (1949), and The State Education Law (1953) and its 2000 amendment give recognition to Jewish educational, religious, and cultural practices and institutions, and define their aims and objectives strictly in Jewish terms.

Government discrimination

Further, the discretionary powers entrusted to various government ministries and institutions – including budget policies, the allocation of resources, and the implementation of laws – results in significant de facto discrimination between Jewish and Palestinian citizens. For example, a report issued by the Ministry of Interior confirmed that Arab municipalities received a fraction of the total funds allocated by the national government per resident to Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories and to development towns populated exclusively by Jews. Moreover, the Ministry of Religious Affairs affords a small percentage of its budget to the Arab Muslim, Christian, and Druze religious communities. Funds for special projects such as the renewal and development of neighborhoods and improvements in educational programs, services, and facilities are also disproportionately allocated to Jewish communities. To date, Israeli authorities have rarely used their discretionary powers to benefit the Palestinians minority.

Land expropriation

Most importantly, the Israeli government has maintained an aggressive policy of land expropriation, adversely affecting Palestinian land and housing rights. For example, the National Planning and Building Law (1965), retroactively re-zoned the lands on which many Arab villages sit as “non-residential.” The consequence of this is that despite the existence of these villages prior to the establishment of the state, they have been afforded no official status. These “unrecognized Arab villages” receive no government services, and residents are denied the ability to build homes and other public buildings. The authorities use a combination of house demolitions, land confiscation, denial of basic services, and restrictions on infrastructure development to dislodge residents from these villages. The situation is severely acute for the Arab Bedouin community living in these unrecognized villages in the Naqab.

The laws and practice detailed above by Adalah are a long cry from enjoying “equal rights under Israeli law.”

Groundwork Laid for Media Narrative of Failed Peace Talks: It’s the Palestinians’ Fault

With direct “peace talks” between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government headed nowhere fast after the Netanyahu government let the so-called “settlement freeze” lapse, the groundwork for the media narrative on who to blame if the “peace talks” officially break off is being laid.  Predictably, it will be, and already is, a narrative of Palestinian rejectionism versus Israeli generosity.

Matt Duss, a must-read blogger on Middle East issues over at Think Progress’ Wonk Room, picks up on this, pointing to the headlines written after the Palestinian Authority pointedly said “no” to Netanyahu’s “offer” of a partial extension of the “settlement freeze” in exchange for the Palestinians recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.  The Palestinians recognizing Israel as such would effectively sign away the Palestinian right of return and relegate once and for all Palestinian citizens of Israel to institutionalized and official second-class status (which is the case already.)

Duss writes:

As opposed to a settlement freeze, the demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish State is an entirely new one. What Netanyahu is essentially saying to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, then, is that, in return for Abbas meeting this new demand, Netanyahu generously offers to partially, temporarily meet one of Israel’s already existing obligations.

Of course the Palestinian Authority has refused this “offer.” Is it really unclear why? Now let’s look at some of the headlines:

The Washington Post: “Israeli prime minister offers conditional settlements freeze”

Associated Press: “Israeli PM offers conditional settlements freeze”

Ha’aretz: “Netanyahu pleads to save talks as Palestinians threaten walkout”

Jerusalem Post: “PA quashes PM’s offer for renewed building freeze”

And thus, magically, the Palestinians have threatened the talks by rejecting yet another generous Israeli offer.

Here’s some more headlines on that theme:

-Palestinians Reject Israel’s Offer on Settlement Freeze, Voice of America News

-Palestinians Reject Israel Offer, Wall Street Journal

-Palestinians reject Israeli offer on settlement freeze, BBC News

-Palestinians reject Israeli demand, Reuters

You get the picture.  Israel is now essentially saying: we will partially obey international law for 60 days (and then go back to violating it), as long as you sign away basic human rights–refugees and their descendants returning to homes they were expelled from and equality for all–forever. And media, both in the U.S., in Israel and around the world, are adopting Israel’s framing of the issue.

The media narrative of Israeli generosity and Palestinian rejectionism is an old one that was prominently displayed in the aftermath of the collapsed Camp David peace talks in 2000.

Seth Ackerman, writing for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s Extra! magazine in July/August 2002, documented the U.S. media’s telling of the Camp David story in an excellent article:

The seemingly endless volleys of attack and retaliation in the Middle East leave many people wondering why the two sides can’t reach an agreement. The answer is simple, according to numerous commentators: At the Camp David meeting in July 2000, Israel “offered extraordinary concessions” (Michael Kelly, Washington Post, 3/13/02), “far-reaching concessions” (Boston Globe, 12/30/01), “unprecedented concessions” (E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, 12/4/01). Israel’s “generous peace terms” (L.A. Times editorial, 3/15/02) constituted “the most far-reaching offer ever” (Chicago Tribune editorial, 6/6/01) to create a Palestinian state. In short, Camp David was “an unprecedented concession” to the Palestinians (Time, 12/25/00).

But due to “Arafat’s recalcitrance” (L.A. Times editorial, 4/9/02) and “Palestinian rejectionism” (Mortimer Zuckerman, U.S. News & World Report, 3/22/02), “Arafat walked away from generous Israeli peacemaking proposals without even making a counteroffer” (Salon, 3/8/01). Yes, Arafat “walked away without making a counteroffer” (Samuel G. Freedman, USA Today, 6/18/01). Israel “offered peace terms more generous than ever before and Arafat did not even make a counteroffer” (Chicago Sun-Times editorial, 11/10/00). In case the point isn’t clear: “At Camp David, Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians an astonishingly generous peace with dignity and statehood. Arafat not only turned it down, he refused to make a counteroffer!” (Charles Krauthammer, Seattle Times, 10/16/00).

This account is one of the most tenacious myths of the conflict. Its implications are obvious: There is nothing Israel can do to make peace with its Palestinian neighbors. The Israeli army’s increasingly deadly attacks, in this version, can be seen purely as self-defense against Palestinian aggression that is motivated by little more than blind hatred.

As they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Ignoring International Law, Ethan Bronner Writes that East Jerusalem, Golan Heights ‘Count as Israeli territory’

Nestled in this all over the place article written by Ethan Bronner in today’s New York Times is this factually challenged nugget:

Both East Jerusalem and the Golan were officially annexed by Israel through parliamentary votes, so by Israeli law they count as Israeli territory. That is not true of the West Bank, which the Palestinians want as their future state and where Israel has settled more than 300,000 Jewish citizens.

That paragraph is in the middle of an article that, in part, is about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s support for a bill that would require a national referendum in Israel on giving up the occupied territories.

Bronner’s reporting gives readers no substantive understanding of why East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights are a huge part of the Israel/Palestine conflict.  Those territories, captured by Israel during the 1967 War, were indeed unilaterally annexed by the Israeli government.  So it’s true, as Bronner writes, that they “count as Israeli territory” under Israeli law.

But not under international law, which is really the relevant body of law to look at when discussing Israel/Palestine.  This is how the United Nations’ Goldstone report describes East Jerusalem:

After 1967, the two areas [referring to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip] were administered directly by military commanders until 1981 and since then through a “Civil Administration” established by the Israeli armed forces. “Military orders” were used to rule the civil affairs of the Palestinian population superimposing and often revoking pre-existing Jordanian laws in the West Bank and Egyptian laws in the Gaza Strip. East Jerusalem was annexed to the Israeli municipality of the city and in 1980 the Knesset passed a law which declared that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. With Security Council resolution 478 (1980), the United Nations declared this law “null and void”, condemning any attempt to “alter the character and status of Jerusalem”.  No member of the United Nations, apart from Israel, recognizes the annexation of East Jerusalem.

This is how UN Security Council Resolution 497, passed in the aftermath of Israel’s declaration of the Golan Heights in Syria as falling under the laws, jurisdiction and administration of the State of Israel, characterized the Syrian territory:

The Security Council,

Having considered the letter of 14 December 1981 from the Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic contained in document S/14791,

Reaffirming that the acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible, in accordance with the United Nations Charter, the principles of international law, and relevant Security Council resolutions,

1. Decides that the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect;
2. Demands that Israel, the occupying Power, should rescind forthwith its decision;
3. Determines that all the provisions of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 continue to apply to the Syrian territory occupied by Israel since June 1967;
4. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council on the implementation of this resolution within two weeks and decides that in the event of non-compliance by Israel, the Security Council would meet urgently, and not later than 5 January 1982, to consider taking appropriate measures in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.

The whole focus on whether Israelis will voluntarily give up illegally occupied territory is irrelevant.  International law is crystal clear, and it doesn’t bend to the popular will of Israeli citizens.