Warped politics: Robert Gates says Israel is “ungrateful,” but Obama will still veto Palestine UN bid

Jeffrey Goldberg’s latest column in Bloomberg shows exactly how the Israel lobby has warped the U.S. political system.  The lobby has such a stranglehold on U.S. policy towards Israel that a Secretary of Defense’s distaste for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu means nothing to the Obama administration’s polices on Israel.

Goldberg reports:

It was Robert M. Gates, the now-retired secretary of defense, who seemed most upset with Netanyahu. In a meeting of the National Security Council Principals Committee held not long before his retirement this summer, Gates coldly laid out the many steps the administration has taken to guarantee Israel’s security — access to top- quality weapons, assistance developing missile-defense systems, high-level intelligence sharing — and then stated bluntly that the U.S. has received nothing in return, particularly with regard to the peace process.

Senior administration officials told me that Gates argued to the president directly that Netanyahu is not only ungrateful, but also endangering his country by refusing to grapple with Israel’s growing isolation and with the demographic challenges it faces if it keeps control of the West Bank. According to these sources, Gates’s analysis met with no resistance from other members of the committee.

Gates has expressed his frustration with Netanyahu’s government before. Last year, when Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel was marred by an announcement of plans to build new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem, Gates told several people that if he had been Biden, he would have returned to Washington immediately and told the prime minister to call Obama when he was serious about negotiations.

Gates’s frustration also stems from squabbling with Netanyahu over U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies. In an encounter in Israel in March, according to U.S. and Israeli sources, Netanyahu lectured Gates at length on the possible dangers posed to Israel by such sales, as well as by Turkey and other regional U.S. allies. Gates, a veteran intelligence officer, resented Netanyahu’s tone, and reminded him that the sales were organized in consultation with Israel and pro-Israel members of Congress.

Yet the U.S. relationship with the country that so displeases sectors of the U.S. establishment will not change one bit.  Instead, the Obama administration will defend Israel full tilt later this month when the Palestinian Authority goes to the United Nations to ask for recognition of a Palestinian state.

Why is this?  It’s simple:  President Obama needs to be re-elected in 2012, and needs pro-Israel money and support.  And while Gates is part of the military establishment, the larger military industry that profits from the Israeli occupation will certainly not be pushing back against Obama’s full-throated support for Israel.  The only way to describe a political system like this is warped.

Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity movement gears up for big Palestinian independence demonstration

Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem–As they do every Friday afternoon in occupied Jerusalem, the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity movement demonstrated July 8 against illegal Jewish-only settlements in Jerusalem that continue to displace Palestinians and diminish any remaining hope that a state of Palestine could have East Jerusalem as its capital.

What made this march slightly different, though, is that the hundreds of activists who marched in Jerusalem and chanted outside the homes of settlers who have evicted Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah were eagerly looking ahead to next Friday.  On July 15, the solidarity movement is calling for a large, joint Jewish-Arab demonstration in support of a Palestinian state and the current effort for United Nations recognition of that state.  Their call reads:

Today it is clear that genuine negotiation is not going to happen under the current government. Even if the Europeans and the Americans drag Bibi to another round of talks, there will be no outcome. For a long time now, negotiations have been nothing more than yet another means of perpetuating occupation. There is no choice for anyone advocating for an end Israeli control over the Palestinians other than supporting the only realistic way left to achieve this goal: recognition of an independent Palestinian state.

Applying to the United Nations for such recognition is not merely the Palestinian people’s right, it is the sole remaining constructive step for countering unending negotiation and the threat of increased violence. As Israelis who support the Palestinian struggle for independence, it is our duty to express our backing for the Palestinian initiative.

The leaders of the movement, in between Arabic chants of “From Sheikh Jarrah to Bil’in, free, free Palestine,” were busy inviting the demonstrators who showed up in the scorching heat to join them next Friday.  Both the Israeli and Palestinian activists involved with the Sheikh Jarrah protests hope it marks a significant display of support for a free and independent Palestine.  It’s part of many efforts across Palestine to prepare for September and what could happen next.

“We are looking towards September, and the possibility of a popular uprising around Palestine,” Daniel Argo, an Israeli leader in the movement, told me.

Similarly, Sara Benninga, a well-known Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity activist who spoke at this year’s J Street conference, said, “It’s an ongoing struggle.  We have our high points, and next week is definitely going to be a high point–a big march of many Palestinians and Israelis together…It is the choice of the Palestinian nonviolent struggle to go down this road, and we in solidarity with them are supporting their decision.”

The July 8 demonstration also came on the same day that international solidarity activists attempted to fly to Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv and declare their intention to visit the occupied West Bank.  Israel deployed a beefed-up security presence, while civilian Israelis beat up and spit on the activists.  The Israeli authorities also detained and deported many activists; some remain in Israeli prison currently.

“The fact that Israel is trying to deny access to peaceful activists coming to visit Palestine, to express solidarity, just shows how much Israel is threatened from the nonviolent, joint struggle.  It gives us more power to continue because we know this is our right, and eventually, we’re going to win,” said Benninga.

Palestine Papers: Why there will never be a State of Palestine

This piece originally appeared in Mondoweiss:

One core lesson from the “Palestine Papers,” Al Jazeera‘s leak of secret documents on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations from 1999 to 2010, is that there will never be a State of Palestine, living side by side with Israel.  This was known before, but the papers confirm it.  The mainstream narrative–that Israel and the Palestinians have been talking for nearly 20 years and are very close to reaching an agreement but just have to sit at the table for a little more time–is not credible anymore.  Why has Israel refused the Palestinian Authority’s offers, which offered up most of East Jerusalem, major illegal settlement blocs and a complete denial of the rights of Palestinian refugees?

Writing in Al Jazeera, Alastair Crooke offers this explanation:

Zionists are also likely to conclude that a Palestinian state, established alongside Israel, would be active in efforts to generate international support for the principle of minority rights in Israel – and thus threaten the Zionist basis of the state by delegitimizing their state as racist.

Ultimately the issue of differential rights for Jews and non-Jews is not in principle eased by establishing a Palestinian state. Its magnitude may be reduced from 40-50% to 20%, but the inherent contradiction remains unresolved – in either outcome. Against this ambivalent calculus, it is not surprising that the Zionist argument for keeping borders undefined, leaving Palestinians in deliberate uncertainty and hostage to their good conduct, whilst holding on to water and land resources, has trumped other Israelis arguing for downsizing the differential rights problem, and improving the minority’s treatment – albeit short of granting full rights to non-Jews in all matters. This is the calculus that has predominated. This is why we do not have a Palestinian state.

Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement Expands to Lyd

Photo: Alex Kane

Lyd, Israel–For the past year and a half, Israelis, Palestinians and international activists have held weekly demonstrations in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, protesting against the evictions of Palestinian families there and the move by settlers to take over their homes.

The solidarity movement, which has garnered international attention, is now expanding to different threatened neighborhoods in East Jerusalem like Issawiya and Silwan, as well as to areas in Israel such as Al-Araqib.

The latest area in Israel to see Sheikh Jarrah activists demonstrating is the mixed Jewish and Palestinian city Lyd, where, on one of the stormiest days of the year in December 2010, the Palestinian Abu Eid family’s 7 homes were demolished by Israeli authorities.

Photo: Alex Kane

Weekly protests, like today’s evening protest, have been held in Lyd against the demolitions.  The demonstrations see Israeli activists involved in the Sheikh Jarrah struggle, as well as some Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah who have been evicted or are threatened with eviction, join the residents of Lyd.

“People outside of Israel have to know what’s happening,” said Revka Vetenberg, an Israeli activist involved in the Sheikh Jarrah struggle who was demonstrating in Lyd.  “Our Israeli government doesn’t want peace.  They want only war, to say that this is our territory.”

The demolitions left 67 people homeless, with the men sleeping in tents and the women sleeping in their neighbors’ homes.  The Israeli authorities said that the Abu Eid family did not have permits to expand their homes; permits are routinely denied to Palestinians to build, while Israeli Jews can build freely at will.

Chanting slogans of resistance and unity while marching down a street with activists drumming in the Palestinian area of Lyd, over 100 people protested the destruction of the Abu Eid family’s homes early this evening.  While a significant police presence was there, no arrests were made.  At the end of the demonstration, a concert was held with musicians from various groups joining together.

The activists from Sheikh Jarrah say they see the struggle in Lyd as the same struggle they have been fighting in East Jerusalem.  The idea, activists say, is to expand and connect the struggle from Sheikh Jarrah to other areas with similar issues.

“We believe that these things are strongly connected.  We strongly disbelieve that Jews have to demonstrate by themselves inside Tel Aviv like the Israeli left usually does–demonstrating by themselves without Palestinians and even without Israeli-Palestinians,” said Daniel Argo, a leader in the Sheikh Jarrah solidarity movement.  “All the local issues are drawing us a bigger picture.  In the longer term, this kind of activity can mobilize a bigger part of Jewish Israeli society to see with their own eyes what is happening on the ground.”

Buthaina Dabit, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who is the director of the New Israel Fund’s Shatil project, sees the oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories as similar to the oppression of Palestinian citizens in Israel.

“We are one nation.  We are oppressed by the Israeli law here and there, and by the military forces,” said Dabit.  “We are very happy to make this cooperation [with the Sheikh Jarrah movement], and to meet our Palestinian relatives because we are one part.  Together, we are more effective.”

‘This is Stolen Land’: Activists Confront Jerusalem City Council Member as Wing of Historic Hotel is Demolished

Caterpillar and Volvo bulldozers demolish a part of a historic hotel in occupied East Jerusalem. Photo: Alex Kane

Ramallah, West Bank–I was a witness to the destruction of a historic hotel in occupied East Jerusalem today, but activists bearing witness didn’t let the incident go on without making some noise.

After meeting with members of the Rifka Al-Kurd family, who now live steps away from illegal settlers who evicted members of the family to take over their home in Sheikh Jarrah, the delegation I am with received news of the hotel demolition.

Up the street from the Rifka Al-Kurd family residence is the Shepherd Hotel.  Al Jazeera reports:

The Shepherd Hotel was razed by three Israeli bulldozers, early on Sunday, as part of a plan to build a new settlement of 20 units in the heart of the occupied city.

The hotel is located on the demarcation line between two Arab neighbourhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Wadi al-Joz. The site will not only divide the two neighbourhoods but it will also change the aspects of occupied Jerusalem.

According to official documents, the hotel was owned by al-Quds Mufti, Haj Amin al-Hussaini, who was deported by the British rule in 1937. He later died in Lebanon in 1974.

The settlement project is funded by Irving Moskowitz, a wealthy Jewish-American gambling magnate.

Mammoth Caterpillar and Volvo bulldozers were working on razing a wing of the hotel.

Defending the demolition in front of the press was Elisha Peleg, a Jerusalem City Council member who is part of the right-wing Likud Party.  Peleg insisted that “Jerusalem is the united capital of Israel,” while international activists and Palestinian women yelled “this is stolen land,” “shame on you” and disrupted his interviews with the media.  In front of the gates to the hotel stood Israeli police and private security guards carrying rifles.

I told Peleg that he was a shame to Jews around the world.  He turned around and told me that journalists shouldn’t voice their own opinions and that there was nothing wrong with building for Jews.

“They want to continue to take more land,” said Nasser Ghawi, a Palestinian resident of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah who has also seen his home taken away and given to Israeli settlers.

Israeli activists hastily organized a protest against the hotel demolition.

Meet Eric Cantor: On Israel/Palestine, Contempt for International Law and Justice

With the Republican Party set to take the House of Representatives tomorrow, it’s worth taking a look at the new potential majority leader, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia and the only Jewish Republican in the House, and his positions on Israel/Palestine, an area that he is “particularly active on.” As Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy writes, “GOP lawmakers stand to play a huge role” in a variety of foreign policy areas, and their impact will be even greater if they are the majority party in the House.

Cantor’s positions on Israel are no different than most Democratic and Republican officials, but his actions and words could play a large role if he becomes the next majority leader.

I’ve done some research–by no means exhaustive–over the past day or so on Cantor’s positions and statements on Israel.  Here’s some of what I found:

-Cantor “supported Israel’s handling of the eviction of two Arab families from a house in east Jerusalem.”  The area in question here is the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, which has become a flash point in East Jerusalem and the site of weekly protests by Israeli leftists and Palestinians against the evictions.  The evictions of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah is but one manifestation of the ongoing attempts to kick Palestinians out of their homes to make way for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem.  Read more about the situation in Sheikh Jarrah here and here.

-In regards to Jerusalem as a whole, Cantor expressed anger when the White House condemned the announcement of the building of 1,600 housing units in occupied East Jerusalem last March.  He wrote, “Could the White House truly be this offended by an Israeli decision to build 1,600 homes years from now in a part of its capital city that everyone understands will remain a part of Israel in any future peace agreement with the Palestinians?”  Further underscoring his contempt for international law, Cantor said, in July 2009, that the “insistence that Israel return lands it has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day war and accept a ‘right of return’ of Palestinians who fled their homes in what is now Israel ‘is just like saying you don’t accept the historical right of Israel to exist.’”  International law is clear on the status of East Jerusalem, the occupied territories as a whole and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

-After the flotilla massacre on May 31, 2010, in which Israeli naval commandos rappelled onto the Turkish Mavi Marmara ship that was part of an effort to break the blockade of Gaza and killed nine people (including an American citizen), Cantor “pressured President Barack Obama to veto any ‘biased’ U.N. resolutions in response to an Israeli military attack on a flotilla.”  The naval raid was characterized by a U.N. fact-finding mission as resulting in a  “series of violations of international law, including international humanitarian and human rights law.”  Out of the 9 victims, 6 were found to be killed in what “can be characterized as extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions.”

-Cantor regularly paints Palestinian “culture” as being defined solely by violence.  In conservative publications like the National Review, Cantor opines that “Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch, last year best summed up the prevailing Palestinian culture by quoting from Hitler’s Mein Kampf: ‘If you want adults to be killers, teach the youth hate.’”

-Cantor and his House colleague Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) took to the pages of the Washington Times in January 2009 to defend the Israeli assault on Gaza, an attack that Amnesty International called “22 days of death and destruction.” The definitive United Nations report on the 2008-09 Gaza war, authored by respected South African jurist Richard Goldstone, found the assault to be “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population.”

 

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.

 

Washington Post Not Interested in Palestinian Account of Silwan Shooting

The "City of David" tourist center in Silwan, East Jerusalem. PHOTO: Ellen Davidson

Example number 156,783 of the U.S. corporate media doing a terrible job explaining the realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the Washington Post’s Joel Greenberg on the deadly events yesterday in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.  Like most establishment media accounts of any event in Israel/Palestine, what Israelis say is taken as the truth, while Palestinian narratives of what happened are ignored or distorted.

In the wee hours of the morning yesterday, a private Israeli security guard who protects the illegal Jewish settlement that has been inserted into the heart of Silwan shot and killed two Palestinians.  The exact circumstances are, of course, disputed, but Greenberg only reports on the Israeli version of the killings:

A police spokesman said the guard told investigators he fired into the air after his vehicle was blocked with large garbage bins and stoned from surrounding rooftops…

The trouble began before dawn in the neighborhood of Silwan – under the walls of the Old City – where about 400 Jewish settlers live among 30,000 Palestinians.

Residents and police said a confrontation developed between local youths and the security guard, who was patrolling in a jeep. Such incidents are common in the neighborhood, where tensions have risen in recent months since the announcement of plans by city hall to demolish dozens of Palestinian homes to make way for a park.

Hanan Odeh, who lives nearby, said that before the incident there was stone-throwing and a loud argument between Israelis and local youths. Later, she said, she heard a burst of automatic gunfire and saw a fleeing man, limping on one leg, who collapsed on the stairs under her house. He was identified as Samer Sarhan, 32, a father of five…

Ariel Rosenberg, a spokesman for the Housing Ministry, said the guards operate under police guidelines and have no policing functions other than protecting the settlers. He said they often display restraint in the face of rock-throwing provocations by local youths. The guard who opened fire, he said, faced “a lynching, was under a clear mortal threat and fired in self-defense.”

So, according to the Post‘s account of the shooting, the private security guard–who, by the way, is protecting an illegal settlement, though the Post never mentions that–was under imminent threat and only fired in self-defense.

Let’s take a look at other accounts of what happened.

Joseph Dana, a writer who lives in Jerusalem, reports in the Electronic Intifada:

“At 3:30 or 4am I heard some noise outside of my window,” Silwan resident Abdallah Rajmi told me as we stood on a narrow street in the middle of a battle between young Palestinian stone throwers and Israeli occupation forces from the Border Police. “I thought it was a simple drunken fight but then I heard a lot of noise coming from the people involved and my neighbors began waking up…”

Rajmi recalled the events as tear gas and rocks were being thrown from both sides onto the alley where we were standing. “At this point I went to my roof to see what was happening and I saw three settler guards with ‘small weapons’ approach a group of young Palestinian men,” referring sarcastically to the guards’ large Uzi assault riles. “The guards began shooting the men and everyone in Silwan woke up…”

“I could not believe my eyes. I saw a man lying in his own blood and dying. The settler guards had just shot him in cold blood and watched him dying. He was there, on the ground, for one hour until an Israeli ambulance arrived on the scene, of course they would not allow any of us to get near him. The Israelis did, however, bring over forty settler guards and Border Police to the scene before the he was moved.”

The dead man was named as Samir Sarhan, aged about 30 according to news reports, and the father of five children.

Phil Weiss, in his blog Mondoweiss, relays what the director of the Wadi Hilweh Information Center in Silwan told him:

I walked down the hill past the City of David settlement, a messianic Jewish colony on occupied land, with a big gold sign in English. I found my way to the Wadi Hilwah Information Center. A man with a limp– shot by a settler guard in both legs, I was later told–walked me back to Jawad Siyan, the director of the office. A thin, intense man of about 35, he vented his despair over Palestinian powerlessness as he fielded telephone calls and a teenager brought me coffee.

The 55,000 people of the village were “sad and shocked” tonight, Siyan said grimly. Villagers had continually complained to Israeli police that the settlers had taken the law into their own hands; but the complaints were ignored. Armed guards in the settlement– which has been spearheaded by a religious group called Elad– roamed the town freely, with the support of the Israeli border police. They threatened Palestinians with impunity.

The incident today began–Siyan said witnesses had told him– when Palestinians and settlers shouted abuse at one another, as they often do, and the guards had fired guns in the air. The Palestinians had run away. The guards had chased them, and shot at them. Two men were seriously injured. Israeli security forces had arrived within minutes, but Samar Sarchan, 35 years old, lay on the ground for an hour before an ambulance arrived. He later died of his injuries.

Those accounts by Dana and Weiss throw the Post‘s reporting into serious question.