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June 19, 2007
Talk, talk, talk …
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Here is what Haniyeh, the prime minister and Hamas leader wants
What are your intentions?
My government will continue its work. As for our program, it is clear. We want the creation of a Palestinian State within the borders of 1967, i.e. in Gaza and the West Bank with East Jerusalem for its capital. The PLO remains in charge of negotiations on this point. We are committed to respecting all the past agreements, signed by the Palestinian Authority. We want the implementation of a reciprocal, comprehensive, and simultaneous truce with Israel.
But Olmert can’t have that so he will reluctantly talk, talk, talk with others …
From an opinion piece in Haaretz today:
MUnmoved by the Humanitarian Crisis
by Nehemiah Shtrasler
~Snip
Israel has used the resources of the West Bank and Gaza shamefully, taking full advantage of the occupied areas. For years, Israel prevented the Palestinian territories from developing and setting up factories due to opposition from Israeli industrialists, but exploited the cheap and humiliated labor pool. Palestinians stood on endless lines at the Erez Crossing starting at 2 A.M. to land a day’s work in Israel. Israel also saw the 3.5 million residents of the West Bank and Gaza as a captive market for Israeli products, generally those of inferior quality. To this day, Israeli factories in the fashion industry continue to take advantage of the cheap labor in Gaza for simple sewing work.
In addition, Israel prevented the Palestinian Authority from setting up a large power station so that it could remain dependent on the Israel Electric Corporation. Israel also prevented the construction of a port so it could control all the imports and exports, and put Dor Energy in charge of supplying the territories with gas.
For 40 years, Israel imprisoned 1.4 million people in the large, neglected and backward refugee camp that is the Gaza Strip, turning them into “the poor that are cast out,” as Isaiah would have it. There is a 60-percent unemployment rate in Gaza, and residents depend for sustenance on the rice and hummus they get from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. It is a hopeless situation. Parents are unable to provide their children with food, the housing is dismal, the poverty is humiliating, and the filth, neglect and overcrowding cause despair and aggression.
There is virtually no family in Gaza that has not had relatives killed or wounded, that has not suffered degradation. In such a situation, they have nothing to lose other than life itself. It has become clear that when despair goes sufficiently deep, even life holds no attraction. Last week a woman in her ninth month of pregnancy, a mother of eight children, was arrested on her way to carry out a suicide bombing.
When the Palestinians had a strong and widely accepted leader, Yasser Arafat, with whom one could arrive at a final-status solution, Israel depicted him as a monster and imprisoned him in his Muqata headquarters until his death. When Abbas, an easygoing leader, came along afterward, Israel humiliated him and weakened him and damaged the Palestinian Authority. Israel wouldn’t agree to let him have even the accomplishment of the withdrawal from Gaza. No wonder then that Hamas won the elections.
There is a lot of talk over here about the large gaps between the income of the top Israeli decile and the bottom decile, gaps that are said to endanger the stability of Israeli society. But what about the gaps between us and the Palestinians? Don’t they endanger us? After all, no one wants to live in a “villa in the jungle,” as Labor Party leader Ehud Barak put it. No one wants his neighbor to be poor, unemployed and bitter, to be planning to take revenge on him. But that is precisely our situation. That is where our leaders have brought us. Netanyahu and Hendel, though, aren’t bothered by this. They want to continue to lead the country on the path of destruction and bereavement – because Rachel’s Tomb is more important.
Posted by: Bea | Jun 19 2007 14:39 utc | 2
Further developments:
Israel has second thoughts about cutting off the fuel supply to Gaza (which would have also meant cutting off electricity, since it is fuel-dependent in Gaza). This decision is rescinded.
However, Israel does decide to block, at the stroke of a pen, all shipments bound for Gaza (but allow those bound for the West Bank to reach their destinations).
Israel has also blocked passage out of Gaza in the wake of a “shooting incident” at the Erez border crossing in which 3 Palestinians of hundreds trying to leave were killed by the army. The Israeli army said a Palestinian gunman fired first. Seven ambulances were not allowed to aid the dead and wounded. Israel has also ruled that those Palestinians wishing to flee Gaza will not be allowed into the West Bank.
Now how and why is this within Israel’s authority, and not for Palestinians to decide? Because everything of any consequence to do with Gaza and the West Bank remains under Israel’s sole control.
Eight human rights organizations issue a statement calling on Israel to re-think this approach:
Over the weekend, Israel closed the border crossings between the Gaza Strip and the outside world. Karni Crossing, Gaza ‘s main artery through which essential supplies are transferred, is closed for the sixth day. Fresh food, such as meat, fruit and dairy products, have begun to diminish from the shelves. The World Food Program warns of food shortages by the end of the week if the crossings are not opened. Today, Nahal Oz, the passage way through which fuel is provided to the Gaza Strip, is closed.
Rafah Crossing on the Egyptian border has been closed for eight days and the Erez crossing into Israel has been closed since yesterday. Gaza residents who left the Strip are unable to return home and reunite with their families. Gaza residents seeking to leave to receive medical treatment in Egypt or Israel, including the chronically sick or those injured due to recent events, are trapped within Gaza. Even though a small number of blood rations arrived in the last few days to Gaza through Erez crossing, the shortage of essential medical supplies is worsening. Hundreds of refugees are attempting to escape the violence and are trapped in Erez Crossing, caught between IDF soldiers and the military wing of Hamas which is preventing these refugees from returning to Gaza .
The state of Israel cannot stand idly by at a time when fundamental human rights of Gaza residents are being violated, including the most essential of all rights – the right to life and physical integrity.
Israel controls the land crossings between Gaza and Israel , and Gaza ‘s air space and territorial waters, and does not allow the crossing of people or goods via the sea or air. To a great extent, Israel is exercising control of the border between Gaza and Egypt and completely controls the borders of the West Bank, to which refugees are trying to escape from Gaza. The closing of borders and the threat of disconnecting Gaza ‘s electricity and water grid can be interpreted as collective punishment for all Gaza residents.
There is a map of Gaza and the location of checkpoints available on the B’Tselem web site linked to above if anyone is interested.
Posted by: Bea | Jun 19 2007 15:19 utc | 3
Here is the link for the human rights organizations’ statement mentioned above.
Posted by: Bea | Jun 19 2007 15:34 utc | 4
Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University: Israel’s right to be racist
Israel’s struggle for peace is a sincere one. In fact, Israel desires to live at peace not only with its neighbours, but also and especially with its own Palestinian population, and with Palestinians whose lands its military occupies by force. Israel’s desire for peace is not only rhetorical but also substantive and deeply psychological. With few exceptions, prominent Zionist leaders since the inception of colonial Zionism have desired to establish peace with the Palestinians and other Arabs whose lands they slated for colonisation and settlement. The only thing Israel has asked for, and continues to ask for in order to end the state of war with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbours, is that all recognise its right to be a racist state that discriminates by law against Palestinians and other Arabs and grants differential legal rights and privileges to its own Jewish citizens and to all other Jews anywhere. The resistance that the Palestinian people and other Arabs have launched against Israel’s right to be a racist state is what continues to stand between Israel and the peace for which it has struggled and to which it has been committed for decades. Indeed, this resistance is nothing less than the “New anti- Semitism”.
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What Abbas and the Palestinians are allowed to negotiate on, and what the Palestinian people and other Arabs are being invited to partake of, in these projected negotiations is the political and economic (but not the geographic) character of the Bantustans that Israel is carving up for them in the West Bank, and the conditions of the siege around the Big Prison called Gaza and the smaller ones in the West Bank. Make no mistake about it, Israel will not negotiate about anything else, as to do so would be tantamount to giving up its racist rule.
As for those among us who insist that no resolution will ever be possible before Israel revokes all its racist laws and does away with all its racist symbols, thus opening the way for a non-racist future for Palestinians and Jews in a decolonised bi-national state, Israel and its apologists have a ready-made response that has redefined the meaning of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is no longer the hatred of and discrimination against Jews as a religious or ethnic group; in the age of Zionism, we are told, anti-Semitism has metamorphosed into something that is more insidious. Today, Israel and its Western defenders insist, genocidal anti-Semitism consists mainly of any attempt to take away and to refuse to uphold the absolute right of Israel to be a racist Jewish state.
The only thing Israel has asked for, and continues to ask for in order to end the state of war with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbours, is that all recognise its right to be a racist state that discriminates by law against Palestinians and other Arabs and grants differential legal rights and privileges to its own Jewish citizens and to all other Jews anywhere.
In other words, Israel’s “right to exist”.
Posted by: PeeDee | Jun 19 2007 21:44 utc | 6
@PeeDee – yes, without marked borders of course so it can expamd at will …
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Haniyeh advisor Yousef in the NYT: What Hamas Wants
From the day Hamas won the general elections in 2006 it offered Fatah the chance of joining forces and forming a unity government. It tried to engage the international community to explain its platform for peace. It has consistently offered a 10-year cease-fire with the Israelis to try to create an atmosphere of calm in which we resolve our differences. Hamas even adhered to a unilateral cease-fire for 18 months in an effort to normalize the situation on the ground. None of these points appear to have been recognized in the press coverage of the last few days.
Nor has it been evident to many people in the West that the civil unrest in Gaza and the West Bank has been precipitated by the American and Israeli policy of arming elements of the Fatah opposition who want to attack Hamas and force us from office. For 18 months we have tried to find ways to coexist with Fatah, entering into a unity government, even conceding key positions in the cabinet to their and international demands, negotiating up until the last moment to try to provide security for all of our people on the streets of Gaza.
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Our stated aim when we won the election was to effect reform, end corruption and bring economic prosperity to our people. Our sole focus is Palestinian rights and good governance. We now hope to create a climate of peace and tranquillity within our community that will pave the way for an end to internal strife and bring about the release of the British journalist Alan Johnston, whose kidnapping in March by non-Hamas members is a stain on the reputation of the Palestinian people.
We reject attempts to divide Palestine into two parts and to pass Hamas off as an extreme and dangerous force. We continue to believe that there is still a chance to establish a long-term truce. But this will not happen unless the international community fully engages with Hamas.
Any further attempts to marginalize us, starve our people into submission or attack us militarily will prove that the United States and Israeli governments are not genuinely interested in seeing an end to the violence. Dispassionate observers over the next few weeks will be able to make up their own minds as to each side’s true intentions.
This is good: Carter Blasts US Policy on Palestinians
Former President Jimmy Carter accused the U.S., Israel and the European Union on Tuesday of seeking to divide the Palestinian people by reopening aid to President Mahmoud Abbas’ new government in the West Bank while denying the same to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was addressing a human rights conference in Ireland, also said the Bush administration’s refusal to accept Hamas’ 2006 election victory was “criminal.”
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Carter said the consensus of the U.S., Israel and the EU to start funneling aid to Abbas’ new government in the West Bank but continue blocking Hamas in the Gaza Strip represented an “effort to divide Palestinians into two peoples.”
“All efforts of the international community should be to reconcile the two, but there’s no effort from the outside to bring the two together,” he said.
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Far from encouraging Hamas’ move into parliamentary politics, Carter said the U.S. and Israel, with European Union acquiescence, sought to subvert the outcome by shunning Hamas and helping Abbas to keep the reins of political and military power.
“That action was criminal,” he said in a news conference after his speech.
“The United States and Israel decided to punish all the people in Palestine and did everything they could to deter a compromise between Hamas and Fatah,” he said.
Carter said the U.S. and others supplied the Fatah-controlled security forces in Gaza with vastly superior weaponry in hopes they would “conquer Hamas in Gaza” _ but Hamas routed Fatah in the fighting last week because of its “superior skills and discipline.”
And a good LAT OpED: West chooses Fatah, but Palestinians don’t
Palestinians came to realize that the so-called peace process championed by Abbas (and by Yasser Arafat before him) had led to the permanent institutionalization — rather than the termination — of Israel’s 4-decade-old military occupation of their land. Why should they feel otherwise? There are today twice as many settlers in the occupied territories as there were when Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat first shook hands in the White House Rose Garden. Israel has divided the West Bank into besieged cantons, worked diligently to increase the number of Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem (while stripping Palestinian Jerusalemites of their residency rights in the city) and turned Gaza into a virtual prison.
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Palestinians, frankly, see a lot of hypocrisy in the West’s anti-Hamas stance. Since last year’s election, for example, the West has denied aid to the Hamas government, arguing, among other things, that Hamas refuses to recognize Israel. But that’s absurd; after all, Israel does not recognize Palestine either. Hamas is accused of not abiding by previous agreements. But Israel’s suspension of tax revenue transfers to the Palestinian Authority, and its refusal to implement a Gaza-West Bank road link agreement brokered by the U.S. in November 2005, are practical, rather than merely rhetorical, violations of previous agreements, causing infinitely more damage to ordinary people. Hamas is accused of mixing religion and politics, but no one has explained why its version of that mixture is any worse than Israel’s — or why a Jewish state is acceptable but a Muslim one is not.
I am a secular humanist, and I personally find religiously identified political movements — and states — unappealing, to say the least.
But let’s be honest. Hamas did not run into Western opposition because of its Islamic ideology but because of its opposition to (and resistance to) the Israeli occupation.