Speaking of Livni

See here for previous comments regarding Israel’s Foreing Minister, Tzipi Livni.

Bethlehem – Ma’an – Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni seems to be preparing to back up the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert following the publication of the Winograd report on the failures of the Israeli army in the 33-day war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006, according to the Israeli daily newspaper Ma’ariv.

Analysts expect the Winograd report to result in the collapse of Olmert’s Kadima party if Labour Party chair Ehud Barak and Avigdor Liberman from the Israeli Beteno decide to take advantage of the report.

Livni provoked a crisis between Egypt and Israel last week when she claimed that the Egyptian authorities had not exerted enough efforts to combat the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip through underground border tunnels. This irritated the Egyptians and Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak was swiftly despatched to Egypt to calm them down.

During a meeting with dozens of American students in Jerusalem on Thursday, Livini extended her criticism to the whole world when she dismissed the international community’s calls on Israel to stop settlement constructions in Jerusalem. [It’s everyone’s fault but Israel’s!]

“The world asks us about settlements and sometimes criticizes us. Does the world know about the killing of two Israelis in Hebron last week by Palestinian security officers? We realize that the Palestinian dreams of an independent state should materialize, but on condition that Israeli security becomes a Palestinian interest as it is an Israeli interest,” Livni explained.

She added that the international community’s resolutions often rely on imagination rather than on reality and historic justice.  [Chutzpah!]

 Ma’an News

Picture from Ma’an images

A step in the right direction

But, what must be remembered is that any such theoretical aid will be moot if Israel continues to violate international law by expanding the settlements. Israel’s clear desire is to succeed in the fait accompli of rendering a Palestinian state impossible. They have accomplished this – which is why such talk of a ‘Palestinian state’ is absurd. Also, one should take note of Israeli Foreign Minister, and former Mossad agent, Tzipi Livni’s remarks. And for one of the most sycophantic ‘interviews’ in the history of journalism, see this servile nonsense by the New York Times’ Roger Cohen, and learn all about the “tall, well-groomed, crocodile-skin boot wearing” minister. 

Officials from 68 countries in Paris have pledged a multi-billion dollar aid package for Palestinians, in the biggest such meeting for a decade.

To help set up a viable Palestinian state, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wants $5.6bn (£2.8bn) by 2010.

He warned the one-day donors’ summit that Palestinians were facing a “total catastrophe” and challenged Israel to freeze all settlement activity.

‘Moment of truth’

Appealing for aid, Mr Abbas told donors in Paris a “moment of truth” had arrived.

“Without the payment of aid … we will be facing a total catastrophe in the West Bank and Gaza,” he said

A key element of the renewed peace talks is the US-backed road map, which requires Israel to freeze settlement-building activity and the Palestinians to disarm militants.

“I expect [Israel] to stop all settlement activities, without exceptions,” Mr Abbas also said.

After the Annapolis talks, Israel unveiled plans to expand a settlement on occupied land between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Mr Abbas told the conference that both the Palestinians and Israelis should each meet their road map commitments “without excuses”.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told the summit that Israel was committed to its obligations, “including in relation to settlement activities”, but did not elaborate.

She added: “We do not want the image of Israel in the Palestinian mind to be a soldier at a checkpoint”.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the summit that people in Gaza were living in the “most abhorrent conditions” that had “devastating effects on the economy and on family livelihoods”.

The World Bank and several aid organisations have said that until Israel lifts its system of restrictions on the movement of Palestinian people and goods, giving more money will not rebuild the Palestinians’ economy.

The new envoy of the Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators, ex-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, told donors their pledges would be “indispensable” to the creation of a Palestinian state.

BBC

A historical glance of media bias against the Palestinians

As an historical perspective is always helpful in analyzing policies and behaviors, I offer this a 1993 analysis done by FAIR, which sows the ingrained racism (e.g., “It was not in them, or in the ways of their culture, to make such a daring leap”) we’ve come to expect from major press sources in the US. Also on full display is the constant concern over the strong’s (i.e., Israel’s) well-being – which is belied by the Israeli PM even saying “the Palestinians will never be able to present a military threat to Israel.” FAIR has also done an admirable job showing the history of Palestinian willingness to make peace.

Media Not Doing Justice To Mideast PeaceBy Sam Husseini

As virtually all media outlets celebrated the “magnificent spectacle of peacemaking” in Washington (Newsweek 9/27/93), leading media voices were often more jubilant than accurate in their reporting. Even as the Israelis and Palestinians were lauded for “emerging from the clutches of history” (Time, 9/13/93), too many journalists clung to past habits of bias in their coverage.

Most of the press showed more interest in the choreography of the signing ceremony than in what the agreement actually said. Thomas Friedman, the New York Times‘ Mideast expert, claimed the parties are “finally acknowledging that they each have an equally valid claim” to the land (9/10/93). Similarly, Time magazine (9/13/93) happily reported that the Palestinians and Israelis “are now free to live with each other, separate but equal.”

In the new agreement, the PLO recognizes the Israeli state, while accepting on behalf of Palestinians only limited autonomy under continued Israeli rule in the impoverished Gaza Strip and the small West Bank town of Jericho. The question of whether Palestinians will ever have a state is left open for future negotiations. This would hardly seem to be an “equal” arrangement As Edward Said noted in The Nation (9/20/93), the agreement “leaves Palestinians very much the subordinates.”

“The First Acknowledgment”

Some periodicals tried to be even-handed, but got their facts wrong in the process: Time (9/13/93) magazine attempted to show an equivalence of history, claiming that this is “the first acknowledgment by Israelis and Palestinians that they can share the land both call home.” In fact, since 1976, the PLO has backed a string of U.N. resolutions calling for an Israeli and a Palestinian state side by side. In 1984, the Los Angeles Times (5/6/84) quoted PLO head Yasir Arafat as saying, “I would be in favor of a mutual recognition of the two states.” Arafat repeated such a willingness at a 1988 U.N. meeting in Geneva.

But U.S. News & World Report (9/ 13/93) ignored this history, reporting on “the quarrelsome PLO’s newfound willingness to abandon its goal of destroying Israel.” What Arafat has done, in reality, is retreat from his demand that recognition be mutual; Israel only had to recognize the PLO as a representative of the Palestinian people, not the national rights of Palestinians.

The standard media line was to equate the pain of the occupied and the occupier. But some commentators still needed to paint the Arabs as villains. Despite the record of Palestinian willingness to compromise, Fouad Ajami (U.S. News & World Report, 9/27/93) commented of Palestinian leaders, “It was not in them, or in the ways of their culture, to make such a daring leap.”

The question of trust was rarely asked in a balanced fashion. PBS‘s Jim Lehrer repeatedly asked what would happen if, after the Palestinians achieve autonomy, a Palestinian attacks an Israeli (MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, 9/9/93, 9/13/93). But few reporters seemed worried that harm might befall some of the 1 million Palestinians who will still be under occupation outside of Gaza or Jericho.

Time (9/13/93) asked, “Can Palestinians be trusted with a truly independent state?” What other people would that be asked of? Such reporting also overlooks Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin‘s own statement (MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, 9/13/93) that “the Palestinians will never be able to present a military threat to Israel.”

US/Israeli Role in fomenting civil war in Palestine

The below is from an excellent journalistic source FAIR. In the below, they have analyzed (1) the role of US and Israel in causing the violence in Gaza; rather than discussing this externally imposed impetus for violence, the dominant discourse in the US is “Arabs killing each other over Jewish land” and (2) the silence of the US press in informing the public of (1).   

‘I Like This Violence’
Censoring the U.S. role in Gaza’s civil war
By Seth Ackerman

The big story from the Middle East last June was the factional fighting in Gaza that ended in a victory for the Hamas party and the routing of forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement. The violence made the front pages of the major papers—the New York Times (6/14/07), Washington Post (6/14/07), the Los Angeles Times (6/15/07)—and the cover of Newsweek (6/25/07). The overall message was simple: As the Washington Post’s Scott Wilson described it (6/15/07), the episode represented “a sharp escalation in intensity, brutality and ambition on the part of Hamas forces.”
As for the events that led up to Hamas’ takeover and the Bush administration’s role in them, these were hardly a secret—at least for the specialists who follow politics in the region closely. But Americans who rely on the mainstream media for their news were left in the dark as reporters did their best to keep any hint of the crucial background out of their coverage.

The facts are no mystery. The previous February, Hamas and Fatah had joined together in a national unity government in an effort to put an end to street fighting and factionalism within the Palestinian administration (Extra!, 9–10/06). The announcement of the power-sharing agreement, forged under Saudi auspices at a summit in Mecca, was greeted with nearly universal relief: “In the streets of Gaza, Palestinians broke out in celebration as the agreement was being announced, with members of Hamas and Fatah firing into the air,” the New York Times reported (2/9/07).
Over the months that followed, reports rolled in of weapons being shipped to Fatah forces with an Israeli green light (Ha’aretz, 12/28/06); the arrival in Gaza of hundreds of fighters trained under U.S. auspices in neighboring countries (Washington Post, 5/18/07); and a White House request for $83 million from Congress to finance “non-lethal aid” to Fatah forces (AP, 1/19/07).

In Israel, it was obvious what was going on. Ha’aretz’s chief diplomatic correspondent, Akiva Eldar, noted (4/24/07) that “arming the [pro-Abbas] Palestinian Presidential Guard is part of Elliott Abrams’ plan to bury the Mecca agreement.” (See The Return of Elliott Abrams)
If any proof were needed that the U.S. was trying to foment a civil war, it arrived just as the violence in Gaza was reaching a crescendo—in the form of an internal report by Alvaro De Soto, the U.N. envoy to the Quartet, that was leaked to the London Guardian (6/13/07). In De Soto’s report, the full text of which can be found at the Guardian’s website, the Peruvian diplomat wrote:

The U.S. clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas —so much so that, a week before Mecca, the U.S. envoy [presumably Assistant Secretary of State David Welch] declared twice in an envoys’ meeting in Washington how much “I like this violence,” referring to the near–civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured, because “it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas.”

To summarize: At a moment when violence in Gaza was a top story in the world media, it was disclosed by a U.N. diplomat who worked closely with the U.S. that a leading American policymaker in a private meeting had openly rejoiced at the violence and saw it as proof that American policy was working.

The complete article here.

Israeli policy of denying medical care to Palestinian children

This article discusses one of the saddest manifestations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Because occupied Palestine is forced to be economically dependent on Israel, it cannot afford modern equipment in its hospitals, even medicine faces long delays at Israeli checkpoints. Now that Gaza has been declared “a hostile entity”, children are dying of things like chicken pocks because they are not being allowed to seek medical treatment. But, as Palestinians, they are “unworthy victims” and simply ignored in the US press. Indeed, today’s New York Times upbraids the Palestinian leadership for presenting a map showing an “erased Israel”. I have no idea what that even means, although it is clearly meant to sound scary. But, how does one show something that is erased? The major news outlets in the US must not cease to portray Palestinians as ruthlessly out to eradicate Israel, which, though an absolutely ludricous proposition is the discourse used to excuse or ignore any action by Israel – even the denial of medical care to children who happen to live in the wrong area.  

 

“A matter of revenge”: Israel denying medical treatment to Gaza By Rami Almeghari

We have been waiting for an urgent referral to an outside hospital for the past six days, until he died today,” said Dr. Ismail Yassin Monday, in response to the death of one more patient at the Gaza Children’s Hospital.

Tamer al-Yazji, a 12-year-old chicken pox patient, died on Monday in his hospital bed after his referral to an Israeli hospital was delayed.

Dr. Yassin explained that Tamer’s condition had worsened over the past few weeks. He was showing symptoms of blood problems in his brain, so the ill-equipped hospital requested his urgent referral for an MRI scan and follow-up, which meant accessing medical care facilities in Israel or Egypt.

Working in less than ideal conditions with fuel supplies cut and medicine not entering the Gaza Strip, Gaza Children’s Hospital is currently treating a number of patients, including many infants and 10 cases of cardiac disease patients.

The director of the hospital’s infant intensive care unit, Dr. Shirin Abed, said that her unit provides care to a number of infants who are in dire need of medication.

Ahmad Abu Nada is 21 days old. Dr. Abed said, has not been able to feed properly since he was born and his condition is getting much worse.

“This baby’s condition has been deteriorating and unless he is referred for [outside] medical care, his brain could be damaged in the course of few days or few weeks, so we are asking for help. We filed a request to the concerned authorities for his referral, yet we have not received any response,” she stated.

According to the health care workers at the hospital, usually the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza determines to where a patient will be referred: either to the Israeli Haddasah hospital or to the Palestinian-run Al-Maqased hospital in East Jerusalem.

Now that the Hamas government has been in complete control of the Gaza Strip since June, the processing of such medical care transfer requests is taking longer than ever.

Earlier this month, a breast cancer patient died as her entry to Israel for treatment was delayed.

According to hospital officials, Gaza hospitals in general lack basic equipment such as MRI scanners or dialysis machines; therefore, many cases are being referred to outside Gaza every month.

In addition to the delay of access of Gaza patients to outside hospitals, mainly Israeli ones, the internal Israeli intelligence agency, the Shabak (Shin Bet) is reportedly pressuring applicants to give information in exchange for permission.

“Upon arrival at the Erez crossing in northern Gaza, the Shabak officers start interrogating patients, demanding them to give the Shabak information about friends and neighbors. When a patient refuses to give such information, the Shabak sends him back to Gaza,” explained Miri Weingarten of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR), based in Tel Aviv.

Weingarten said that PHR has filed a petition to the Israeli High Court requesting three demands: allowing treatment for 11 patients listed in the petition, allowing all those in need for referral outside Gaza to travel and stopping the Israeli Shabak’s interrogation of Gaza patients who cross the Erez checkpoint.

“Among the eleven patients for whom we requested entry, was Na’el al-Kordi, 21, who died early this week after having been denied access, while four others got permission, with only two of them managing to enter the Erez checkpoint,” Weingarten added.

Neither the Israeli government, nor the Israeli High Court, has yet responded to PHR’s petition or to any other appeals by various local and international bodies to allow smooth access of Gaza patients to treatment outside Gaza.

According to PHR, Israel delays the access of 40 patients every month, thus causing death or deterioration of health condition in many cases.

In September, Israel declared Gaza a “hostile entity,” stepping up attacks on the coastal strip and cutting large quantities of fuel supplies to the 1.4-million-strong population which is dependant on Israel for many basic needs, from water to medication.

Israel cites security reasons for all its actions against the Gaza Strip, namely preventing Palestinian resistance factions from firing homemade rockets at nearby Israeli towns.

However, in the words of Weingarten, “It is not a matter of security, it’s rather a matter of revenge.”

Pro-settlement sentiment in young Israelis

It is noteworthy that this made it into the Times at all. Of course, the writer mentions an example Palestinian violence, but not the daily and far more deadly occasions of settler violence against the Palestinians. The settler movement is the single biggest obstacle to peace; unfortunately  there is obviously a continuing problem as the younger generation continues the pogrom against Palestinians. 

December 8, 2007

Young Israelis Resist Challenges to Settlements By ISABEL KERSHNER

SHVUT AMI OUTPOST, West Bank — For two months, Jewish youths have been renovating an old stone house on this muddy hilltop in the northern West Bank. The house is not theirs, however. It belongs to a Palestinian family. And their seizure of it, along with the land around it, for a new settlement outpost is a violation of Israeli law. The police have evicted the group five times, but they keep coming back.

Yedidya Slonim, 16, one of the renovators here, who grew up in another West Bank settlement, Tzofim, said of the police: “We come back straight away, as soon as they’ve gone. They come every week for half a day. It doesn’t bother us so much.”

The cat-and-mouse contest here lays bare a key dilemma of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute: Israel has pledged that it will permit no new settlements in the territory it has occupied since the 1967 war, no more expropriation of Palestinian land and dismantle unauthorized outposts — like this one — erected since March 2001, but it has never applied the muscle needed to do so.

“Shvut Ami is a chronicle of failure of law enforcement,” said Michael Sfard, an Israeli lawyer who represents the Palestinian owners of the house on behalf of Yesh Din, an Israeli volunteer organization that fights for Palestinian rights. In this respect, he said, the area is “a jungle.”

So the settlers continue building a patchwork of communities to try to preclude the drawing of a border between Israel and a future Palestinian state. At the vanguard are the hilltop youth, teenagers like Yedidya, who work to complicate the demographic map ever more.

A settler organization called the Land of Israel Faithful has promised to set up seven more outposts over the eight-day Hanukkah holiday, which began Tuesday night — and to “strengthen” Shvut Ami.

According to Peace Now, an Israeli advocacy group that tracks settlement activity, most of the hundred or so outposts already in existence are built at least partially on private Palestinian land.

Shvut Ami sits across a valley from Mitzpeh Ishai, a new neighborhood of the Jewish settlement of Kedumim. Kedumim was established in the 1970s between the Palestinian villages of Funduk, Kadum and Imaten, about seven miles east of the 1967 lines.

Most of the world considers all Jewish settlement in the West Bank a violation of international law. But Israel asserts that the territory is disputed, and the hilltop youths believe it was promised to them by God.

Sometimes, a price is paid in blood. On Nov. 19, a 29-year-old local settler, Ido Zoldan, was shot dead in his car by Palestinian gunmen at the entrance to Funduk. Mr. Zoldan, who grew up in Kedumim, had worked in his father’s construction company, which builds settlement homes all over the West Bank.

The Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militia affiliated with the mainstream Fatah movement headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, took credit for the attack.

Five nights after the killing, hundreds of settlers converged at the entrance of Funduk in protest. They rampaged through the village, smashing house and car windows.

Villagers said the Israeli soldiers and police accompanying the protesters mostly stood aside while the settlers ran wild.

Military officials said the Funduk protest had not been authorized by the army. Soldiers and police officers had dispersed the riot, they said.

For years, the settlers have exploited the ambivalence displayed toward them by the Israeli authorities.

The Shvut Ami outpost sits on private Palestinian land inherited by the two wives and children of Abd al-Ghani Salah Amar, of Kadum, according to ownership records produced by the family.

Mr. Amar built the stone house in 1963, 10 years before he died. The roughly 17 acres of land are planted with hundreds of olive and almond trees, some figs and some vines. The estate is managed by one of Mr. Amar’s daughters, Badriya Amar, a 61-year-old widow who still lives in Kadum.

Mrs. Amar filed an official complaint with the Israeli police in early October for trespassing on her family land. Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said the ownership documents were being examined by the authorities for authenticity.

In the meantime, the site has been declared a closed military zone. Behind the settler youths who are building here are the guiding hands of adults. One of the leading ideologues of the outpost movement is Daniella Weiss, a former mayor of Kedumim.

Yedidya says that “someone” from Kedumim connected them to the water mains, and local supporters bring food and raise funds. Nachman Zoldan, Ido’s father, helped out a lot in the beginning; Ido also provided equipment and advice before he was killed.

Based on experience, there is no guarantee when Shvut Ami, Hebrew for “my people’s return,” will be restored to Mrs. Amar.

Another illegal outpost, Migron, was established on private Palestinian land in 2002. More than 40 families now live there in trailer homes. Peace Now successfully petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court in 2006 to order its removal, but in Migron, nothing has changed. At the latest hearing, on Nov. 1, Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, asked for a two-month extension to allow him to formulate a comprehensive plan for the removal of illegal outposts.

Mrs. Amar last visited her orchards in early November, to try to pick a few olives. She was chased away by the settlers, she said.

Yedidya suggests that Mrs. Amar could move to Jordan or Egypt or one of the other Arab states. “God gave this to us,” he said. “Now that we’re here, I don’t think we’re going to move.”

Deconstructing the Dominant Discourse

Below is today’s editorial from The New York Times, a.k.a, The Paper of Record. Owned by the Sulzberger family, its writing on the Israel-Palestine conflict has historically been rather biased towards Israel. What makes its editorial page so important is the sheer numbers of readers the paper reaches. Either directly or indirectly – as many smaller papers run what the NYT runs – it has a great deal of influence. For the purposes of this analysis, I include the editorial in its entirety, and my analysis will be within the text, in red. 

November 24, 2007Editorial

Thinking Beyond Annapolis

The invitations have been delivered and it looks as if there will indeed be an American-led conference next week in Annapolis to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After six years of neglecting the issue, President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are to be commended for finally trying. Just getting all the key players in the same room, however, assuming they can pull that off, will not be enough. So far, so good. It is important to remember that a paper like the NYT will not usually be overtly biased. The subtle nature of its slant is precisely what makes it so dangerous.Another photo-op, even one this big, will only feed the region’s cynicism and violence. True. What the meeting needs to produce is a disciplined process of negotiations, addressing all the core issues that the Israelis, Palestinians and Mr. Bush have so far refused to grapple with. The Americans have not been getting anything close to the help they need. Many of the key Arab states — most notably Saudi Arabia — spent weeks playing coy about whether they would attend and whom they would send. Finally, the Saudi foreign minister confirmed yesterday that he would be there. And here we have our first unconcealed Arab bashing. The clever design is commendable, as the reader may have been lulled into to a sort of flowing consciousness while reading the above paragraphs teeming with commonsense. No mention of Israeli violence or intransigence; the subtext screams “those damn Arabs -mucking things up, as always.” It is no surprise that even moderate Arab leaders [as opposed to the terrorist majority?]do not have much confidence in either Ms. Rice’s diplomatic skills or Mr. Bush’s willingness to press the Israelis to compromise. And why should they? But they all insist they want a settlement. Which, is better than daily bombings from US provided weapons. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, is too weak and under too much pressure from Hamas militants to make serious compromises without their support, while Israel needs to know that if it is serious about an agreement, it will be welcomed in from the cold. Has Israel been in the cold? As my posting below points out, at more than 7 million dollars a day in free money from the US – it sure doesn’t seem that Israel is “in the cold”.The White House showed unexpected flexibility, inviting Syria to attend. If Damascus wants to be a player in the region, rather than a satellite of Iran, it needs to come and be willing to help. Slam to Syria. Hamas, the Islamic faction that seized Gaza last June from Mr. Abbas’s Fatah forces, did not get an invitation. It is still refusing to accept Israel’s right to exist. A productive meeting, with a high-powered Arab guest list, might prompt Hamas’s leaders to rethink their obstructionism, or Gaza’s residents to rethink their support for Hamas. Nothing about the daily killings of Gazan residents by Israel Defense Forces, or the group punishments doled out by Israel – such as cutting off electricity and generally making life unbearable for all the residents of this area. With such an inadequate description – which is ubiquitous in the US press – the reader cannot be blamed for thinking that the residents of Gaza are simply militants for the sake of militancy. Wrong.Israel has moved to bolster Mr. Abbas ahead of Annapolis, releasing some Palestinian prisoners, [yes; big kudos for releasing some illegally held political prisoners] approving the shipment of ammunition and armored trucks to Mr. Abbas’s security forces in the West Bank and once again promising to halt new Jewish settlements [Israel has already illegally placed 205 settlements in the West Bank itself] — all welcome steps. To be credible, the conference needs to begin serious, detailed and sustained talks on the core issues: the borders of a Palestinian state, the fate of refugees, the future of Jerusalem and a guarantee for Israel’s legitimate security concerns. No mention of Palestinians “legitimate security concerns” – at an average rate of three adult Palestinians killed for every Israeli, and nine Palestinian children killed for every Israeli child, this is a grave insult, as such discourse actually serves to erase one side’s suffering from the debate. The broad outlines of a deal have been apparent since President Bill Clinton’s 2000 push. The best way to move forward is for the conference to produce a document laying out agreed parameters and a timetable for negotiations. President Bush is to open the meeting with what we hope will be a precedent-setting speech. He must demonstrate that he has a clear post-Annapolis strategy and the political will — not yet evident — to keep with this throughout his last 14 months in office. A conference that withers away once the TV cameras leave Annapolis could be worse than no conference at all. Which is what this blogger’s best guess as to what will happen is.

NYT

Israeli settlers attack two Palestinians on road near Nablus

Settlers can engage in such banditry with impunity as Israel is slow in investigating such violence as long as it is directed against the Arab non-Jew population. This type of settler on occupied violence is a common, sad, and humiliating experience.

Jenin – Ma’an – Israeli settlers smashed a Palestinian man’s car in the village of Huwwara, near the West Bank city of Nablus at 9pm Tuesday night.

The driver, thirty-five-year-old Hatim Qash from the village of Birqin, and another passenger survived the attack, in which a group of settlers attacked the car with stones and clubs.

Qash said: “I was on my way back to Jenin, in my taxi. One passenger only was in the car, who is a friend of mine. We were coming from Ramallah. As I came close to Yitzhar settlement, I saw a dim light in the horizon. I thought it was a military checkpoint, and so I slowed down.”

“As I came closer,” he continued, “I became worried, so I dimmed up the car’s front lights. I saw a large number of settlers on the road side who attacked the car with stones, clubs and metal objects.”

He added that after the attackers broke all the car’s windows and smashed the body of the car, he was able to speed up and escape.
Ma’an News

Israel, Palestine, Crab Cakes

Not a bad analysis from the New York Time’s Roger Cohen. He succinctly hits on some major themes and problems that all (even the New York Time’s editorial page staff) can agree need – but will not receive – acknowledgement and solving. Cohen’s basic point is that the upcoming conference will be an utter failure – this blogger concurs. Of course, he stops short of real criticism of Israel, but one column at a time…

November 19, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

ROGER COHEN

I would like to invest hope in the Annapolis Middle East peace conference, or meeting, or parley, or whatever the term is. Really, I would. The 59-year battle for the same land of Zionist and Palestinian national movements has not been good for anyone.

I’d like to feel hopeful although no firm date has been set, and it’s not clear who’s coming, and it’s six years too late, and Israel has chosen to lure tourists for its 60th anniversary next year with a photo of an Israeli “cowboy” on a Golan Heights ranch, which hardly seems the ad campaign of a country about to trade land for peace.

I don’t want to despair although Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, is beset by criminal investigations, and President Bush is forlorn, and the only man who makes both these leaders look powerful is the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who controls only the West Bank wing of his national movement.

Hopelessness is no option although the current “West Bank first” strategy comes just two years after a “Gaza first” approach. This had Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declaring in 2005 how critical it was to “seize the moment” — before the moment evaporated and Hamas grabbed control of Gaza.

Remember all the faith placed in Gaza and its greenhouses, all the talk of a “trial run” for Palestinian statehood after Israel’s withdrawal? Remember the way Palestinian elections were talked up? It’s not good to remember. There’s too much memory in the Middle East, too many graves. They get in the way.

Eyes to the future, I refuse to allow the latest fighting in Gaza between Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah to make me despondent, even when Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader, tells me in a phone call that: “Without unification of the West Bank and Gaza, Abbas cannot represent the Palestinian side at Annapolis.”

Zahar, a doctor, predicts the get-together in Annapolis, Md., will be “a unique example of failure.” He counters my inquiries about a Hamas recognition of Israel with three questions:

“First, what is the border of Israel? And what happens to Jerusalem? And what happens to Palestinian refugees in the camps?”

Here we go — the old conundrums. Hamas cannot be ignored forever. But I console myself that the Annapolis meeting, tentatively planned for Nov. 26, is not about a peace settlement. It is about setting a framework for talks, defining principles, rallying regional support.

Perhaps the Saudis, under heavy U.S. pressure, will show up, although they are so risk-averse and have staked so much on Palestinian unity, I doubt King Abdullah will. Perhaps the Syrians will ignore Golan cowboy ads and appear, but I wonder. Perhaps fear of Iran will lead Sunni Arab states to show public support for Israel. Perhaps.

Still, despair is a nonstarter, even if a minister in Olmert’s government is already voting for legislation to block any eventual division of Jerusalem. So what if Annapolis looks like Rice’s transparent, last-gasp bid for a “legacy achievement”?

What matters are the two peoples. But even basic principles are problematic. One core demand of Olmert and his foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, is for up-front Palestinian recognition of Israel “as a Jewish state.” But Saeb Erekat, a moderate Palestinian negotiator, has said that “Palestinians will never acknowledge Israel’s Jewish identity.”

Livni wants clarity on the Jewish character of Israel, which has a large Arab minority, as quid pro quo for recognition of Palestine and as insurance against mass Palestinian return.

She’s right to want this; she’s wrong to push for the principle now. Why should Palestinians offer anything when the West Bank is a shameful place offering a primer on colonialism and Israeli settlements have grown almost unabated? Nascent Palestine is in pieces, invisible behind a reassuring fence-wall.

While the Bush administration looked away, Israelis and Palestinians lost sight of each other. Perhaps, in the end, the only way to stave off hopelessness is to think that at least Annapolis will enable them to commit to seeing each other more. They can set up working groups, renounce violence, set deadlines.

All the “final-status issues” — Jerusalem, borders, refugees, settlements, water and security — will have to be left for later. Even protracted attempts to frame the principles for discussion of these matters have failed.

“The best we can hope for is an agenda of conflict management and not have illusions of conflict resolution,” said Shlomo Avineri, an Israeli political scientist.

More than 200,000 Israeli settlers, the jihadist infiltration of the conflict and the deep split in the Palestinian movement have created physical and mental barriers even a strong U.S. president would find hard to shift. Bush is weak.

Hope is a shrinking refuge. Annapolis looks like a looming photo-op. Even photo-up-plus would be something at this stage.

NYT

Ma’an News Interview with Tony Blair

Former British PM, Tony Blair, is trying to do the impossible: Help the Palestinians without the support of the US. It’s nice to try, and it might make westerners feel good to see, but there is only one country that matters when it comes to Palestine and Israel’s treatment of the occupied people: the US.  

Bethlehem – Ma’an Exclusive – Middle East envoy Tony Blair told Ma’an on Sunday that building the Palestinian economy is key to ending what he described as the “suffocating pressure of the occupation.”
Ma’an’s correspondent: “What can we expect from you in your role as Middle East envoy to the Quartet?” Blair: “The best thing I can do is offer people a strategy to get to a Palestinian state and that means not just obviously the politics of it but also trying to build institutions in the Palestinian side to make sure that we get real change on the ground and to find a way of reuniting Gaza with the West Bank. The next few months will obviously be critical. There will be the meeting in Annapolis and the donors meeting in Paris in December. Both of those meetings will be critical in offering one a political perspective and two a viable Palestinian plan for capacity building – for institution building.Ma’an: “What do you feel you have achieved since your appointment in June?”

Blair: “I think when I came I would say that things were going absolutely nowhere but I think people can now see a strategy to move forward and whether that is implemented or not is another matter that is what the next few weeks will tell. But we have now got a meeting in Annapolis that will give us a political perspective, I hope. We have got the December meeting which should give us both the financial support for the Palestinians and also a proper plan for dealing with the long-standing issues in the Palestinian side. Thirdly we are working on, and I hope we will be announcing soon, the economic projects that we are working on with both the Palestinians and the Israelis that will get some real economic movement.”

Ma’an: “What will that mean for Palestinians?”

Blair: “What it will mean is that we are looking at a whole series of projects including, for example, the project that Japan has had under consideration for a long time around Jericho and the proposals for industrial parks. There are many other things, housing projects and so on, but not housing projects for refugees as has been falsely claimed. I hope that we will be in a position in the next few weeks to announce some of those projects and others will be taken forward to the next stage of planning.

For complete interview see Ma’an News Agency.