Caterpillar, the company which supplies the IDF with bulldozers, has announced that it is delaying the supply of D9 bulldozers during the time that the trial of Rachel Corrie proceeds.
Int’l
Turkish newspaper reports agencies stopped exchanging intelligence and conducting joint operations following Turkish government decision.
Senior army officers are under investigation for authorizing an air strike in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead that killed 21 members of the same family despite possibly receiving warnings from subordinates that there could be civilians in the area.
Former US President Jimmy Carter said on Friday that the eviction of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah is against international law. Carter spoke at a weekly demonstration held in the East Jerusalem neighborhood by Israeli and Palestinian left-wing activists, protesting a Jewish takeover of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem.
“If a solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is to be found it has to be here in Jerusalem as well,” said delegation leader and former Irish president Mary Robinson.
Let us be clear: Palestinians long ago recognized Israel and its right to exist in peace and security. Twenty-two years ago, to be precise. The peace process that began 17 years ago has repeatedly reaffirmed Palestinian recognition of Israel and its right to exist over 78 percent of our historic homeland. The internationally recognized obstacle to peace is the ongoing Israeli occupation.
ADL’s Foxman: “These groups are not promoting peace, they are spreading propaganda to assault Israel’s legitimacy. We want to Americans to know who these groups are and what it is they really stand for, which is to delegitimize the Jewish state.”
IOA Editor: From one of Israel’s propaganda chiefs, himself. We’d be honored to join the list.
A ghost of the Camp David talks of summer 2000 haunted the meeting of the Arab League in Libya, as its foreign ministers decided to give a little more time to the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians – not wanting to expose Mahmoud Abbas to the responsibility for the breakdown of the negotiations.
“This is clearly a serious criminal attack,” he said. “It is hijacking in international waters and there were quite brutal murders.” But, although this case is more extreme than others, he said, Israel’s “hijacking ships in international waters, kidnapping people, killing them sometimes, bringing them to Israel, keeping them hostages in prisons for long periods” have been going on for at least 30 years, and Israel can continue those actions because it is tolerated by the United States.
Over 100 people demonstrated against loyalty oath in Tel Aviv; warn ‘Israel is becoming a fascist state.’
From now on, we will be living in a new, officially approved, ethnocratic, theocratic, nationalistic and racist country. Anyone who thinks it doesn’t affect him is mistaken. There is a silent majority that is accepting this with worrying apathy, as if to say: “I don’t care what country I live in.”
Israel committed to buying the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter … using a $3 billion defense grant from the United States.
IOA Editor: The US taxpayer giveth and Lockheed-Martin/Israel taketh.
Livni: “Any international intervention in military operations carried out by Israel is unacceptable, just as it would be unacceptable to any other country fighting terrorism.”
IOA Editor: Israel’s “moderate,” “opposition” leader.
Norway’s foreign ministry advised that it will no longer allow us[ing] its territory for naval experiments on submarines intended for the Israeli navy. This is not Norway’s first security boycott on Israel. A year ago the Norwegian State Pension Fund announced it was dropping Elbit Systems due to the manufacturer’s involvement in building the West Bank separation fence.
Obama offered to support the presence of IDF soldiers in the Jordan Valley even after the establishment of a Palestinian state, if Israel would agree to a two month settlement building freeze, in a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Other commitments: no more building freeze extensions, veto any anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution in the next year, future fate of the settlements be dealt with only as part of a final status agreement with the Palestinians.
Bassem Eid, head of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group: “I would like to suggest that General Dayton not just train agents in the use of weapons, beating and torture … but also train them how to behave among their own people.”
Report of the international fact-finding mission to investigate violations of international law, including international humanitarian and human rights law, resulting from the Israeli attacks on the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian assistance.
UN report: “The conduct of the Israeli military and other personnel towards the flotilla passengers was not only disproportionate to the occasion but demonstrated levels of totally unnecessary and incredible violence. It betrayed an unacceptable level of brutality. Such conduct cannot be justified or condoned on security or any other grounds. It constituted grave violations of human rights law and international humanitarian law.” The panel concluded that there was “clear evidence” of wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment and wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health – all crimes under the Geneva Convention.
Israel is the only Middle East power believed to possess nuclear weapons, but it has never officially confirmed or denied this, opting instead for a policy of ambiguity.
The basis of the Palestinian claim to nationhood and independence rests on the fact that Israel was established on Palestinian land. But Israel is demanding that Palestinians not only forget but legitimise their own dispossession by accepting the essentially racist claim that Israel is a Jewish state.
The demand to suspend settlement building is no excuse [to torpedo direct talks] – it’s as legitimate a position as the Palestinians can have. Why should they relinquish a condition that has the support of the entire world, with the sole exception of Israel?
IOA Editor: Eldar is correct in pointing to the reasonableness of the Palestinian position on the settlement freeze. And his focus on Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman is understandable, even if not entirely logical – Netanyahu, at whose pleasure Lieberman serves, is not terribly different. Most importantly, based on past performance, Eldar’s pointing to Livni as a replacement for Lieberman misses the mark entirely: During Israel’s attack on Gaza, Livni was a leading participant in Israel’s crimes, indistinguishable from the rest. It is doubtful that Livni would move Netanyahu towards a viable peace agreement, as Eldar wishes, because there’s nothing to support the suggestion that either Netanyahu or Livni would be willing “to evacuate most [settlements] permanently.”
Abbas: “The negotiations will continue as long as the settlement (construction) remains frozen, but I am not prepared to negotiate an agreement for a single day more.”
“The Local Councils are led by mayors from all over the political spectrum for Israel’s citizens. These kinds of actions only hurt the cause of advancing peace…”
IOA Editor: This would be accurate if you substituted the word “colonization” for the word “peace.”
Israel reiterated its refusal to to extend curbs on settlement building that expire this month, despite US pressure and Palestinian threats to walk out of peace talks. “The prime minister has not changed his position on this issue, there is no question of extending the moratorium,” a senior government official told AFP.
IOA Editor: The use of the term “US pressure” is worthy of a reality check. The US has just concluded an arms deal in which it gave Israel, $2.75 billion worth of F-35 fighter jets. In view of Israel’s insistence on continued settlement construction, the US could have put that deal, or other military aid, on hold. Not doing so renders such reported “pressure” meaningless. This is part of a continuing Israeli-American game of appearances: a colonization process masquerading as a peace process.
The entire deal will be funded by American military… In a bid to maintain Israel’s technological gap ahead of Arab states, the F-35 deal was pushed through instead of upgrading the air force’s F-15s and F-16s. This approach sticks to the principle that Israel is the first country in the Middle East to receive the newest fighter aircraft.
IOA Editor: It is unclear why this is treated as though “Israel decided to buy…” while the story states that the “entire deal will be funded by American military.” Another whopping gift to Israel, and to corporate America, from the US taxpayer.
In a move that could strike a blow at already fragile peace talks, Jerusalem city planners will in the coming weeks discuss a scheme to build over a thousand housing units beyond the Green Line.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has asked senior EU officials to renew the process of upgrading Israel’s relations with the organization, in view of the renewal earlier this month of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In April 2009, the EU suspended the upgrade process after PM Netanyahu announced a reassessment of the peace process and Israeli-PA talks were subsequently suspended.
[Netanyahu's] rhetoric has changed, but his policy can still be summed up in one ominous word: politicide – to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence in Palestine. This world view identifies him not as a genuine partner to President Abbas on the road to peace but as the proponent of permanent conflict.
It should be perfectly obvious that talks aimed at the creation of a Palestinian state cannot possibly prosper while Israel continues its strategic colonisation of the land on which that state would be built. The US and its international partners must insist on a cessation of settlement-building.
Amr Moussa: “Let us see what kind of compromise Netanyahu is offering, we have never heard from the Israeli side any initiative or any concrete position.”
The only way out of the impasse is for Jews to recognize Palestinians as their equals and negotiate with them on that basis. A fair two-state solution requires the abrogation of all laws, both in Israel and the occupied territories, that raise Jews above Palestinians. This is a point the US, notwithstanding the recent dangerous demagoguery of some of its politicians in seeking to elevate Christian and Jewish religious rights over those held by Muslim Americans, should still understand.
[A] strategy predicated on the belief that a few more humanitarian truckloads will make the problem of Gaza go away is as deeply flawed as the notion that Ramallah’s surfeit of new high-street cafés will be a sufficient sedative for the aspirants to a Palestinian state. Gaza is a political, not a humanitarian, problem.
[I]t is not at all surprising that Mahmoud Abbas, speaking on behalf of Mahmoud Abbas, comes forward and declares that the PLO has accepted such talks when they haven’t. And declares that the Palestinian people are welcoming such talks when they are not. And has the audacity to speak on behalf of Palestine and the Palestinians when he is neither elected nor legitimate any longer.
PLO official: “We are not afraid of the outcome of the talks. There is nothing Abu Mazan (Abbas) would or could accept. But going to the talks has undermined our battle to isolate Israel.”
