Israel's War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands
Arab minister: “We have all been colluding in a gigantic confidence trick, and here we go again”…
[T]he heart of the question remains the continuing Israeli occupation. It is essential to remember that the biggest single increase of Jewish settlers on Arab land – a 50 per cent rise – took place in 1992-96 … at the high-water mark of the Oslo peace accords.
“In the long term, the more Israel appears to reject peace and to be the one that opposes a two-state solution, the more it will be perceived as a regional bully that possesses nuclear weapons. So the world will be a lot less forgiving on the nuclear issue. The situation of ambiguity, in which you don’t have real legitimacy, is not a good place to be.”
Avner Cohen: “International support for Israel and its opaque bomb is being eroded by its continued occupation of Palestinian territory and the policies that support it, such as settlement construction, house demolitions, and restrictions on the movement of Palestinians.” Cohen fears Israel’s insistence on ambiguity will leave Israel increasingly vulnerable to the charge that it is a nuclear-armed pariah state.
IOA Editor: It already is.
Netanyahu’s decision to cancel his meeting with Amano raised eyebrows on Monday, particularly given the premier’s fixation on Iran’s nuclear program. The prime minister and his aides have also been working feverishly to minimize the effects of last May’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference, which adopted a resolution calling for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons.
Israel’s demand that Palestinians recognize it as a Jewish state sounds reasonable — unless you understand 1948.
President Barack Obama has personally warned Turkey’s prime minister that unless Ankara shifts its position on Israel and Iran it stands little chance of obtaining the US weapons it wants to buy.
Barak: “The F-35 is a fighter jet of the future that will enable Israel to continue its air superiority and mainatain its qualitative edge in the region… The plane will provide the air force with better long-range and short-range capabilities in a manner that will help ensure national security.”
Two of the US closest allies in the ME, Israel and Saudi Arabia, are on the brink of signing large arms deals with the US in a move designed to ratchet up the pressure on Iran, according to defence analysts. [T]he joint strengthening of the Saudi Arabian and Israeli militaries was seen as a key regional interest for the US.
The Obama administration plans to sell advanced F-15 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia but won’t equip them with long-range weapons systems and other arms whose inclusion was strongly opposed by Israel, diplomats and officials said.
Israel quickly reined back expectations yesterday over its agreement to co-operate with a UN investigation into the Israeli army’s lethal raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla two months ago.
We have to be careful not to reduce everything to BDS; it’s one of several strands, but probably the least significant, in my opinion. It may acquire more significance, but I think the major fronts right now are the international law and the nonviolent civil resistance.
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Israeli defense companies have scored one of the biggest deals in the industry’s history: They will be making about $4 billion worth of parts for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter [manufactured by] Lockheed Martin… The discussions about Israel’s involvement were led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
IOA Editor: There’s no business like War Business, to misappropriate Irving Berlin.
Amnesty International: “Ameer Makhoul is a key human rights defender, well-known for his civil society activism on behalf of the Palestinian citizens of Israel” and “his arrest and continued detention smacks of pure harassment, designed to hinder his human rights work.”
Many countries violate human rights in one way or another – but few have the consistent backing a Permanent Member in the UN Security Council. Most proposed resolutions condemning acts by the government of Israel get aborted by the US veto.
Saeb Erekat: “We are in a situation where we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. There is a cost if we agree [to direct talks] and a cost if we don’t.” Mr Erekat stressed the dismay among ordinary Palestinians over the lack of diplomatic progress. Supporters of a two-state solution like himself were losing legitimacy, he added.
“The situation in Gaza has to change,” he told businessmen in Ankara. “Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.”
According to the reports, the talks conducted in Saudi Arabia with the head of Israel’s espionage agency dealt with Iran and its nuclear program. The account follows a series of recent reports on increasing secret cooperation between Israel and the Saudis, including defense coordination on matters related to possible military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“This process of exaggeration was gradual, and proceeded by accretion … in a way that allowed those participating to convince themselves that they were not engaged in blatant dishonesty. But this process led to highly misleading statements about the UK assessment of the Iraqi threat that were, in their totality, lies…” Why is all this so important? … There is now a ratcheting up of the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Pending court approval, government could assume control over properties of people who moved to enemy states during the War of Independence, as well as structures that belong to people now residing in the [occupied] territories.
IOA Editor: Not “legal” and not “abandoned.” The term “abandoned property” was created by the Israeli legal system after Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine’s Arab population in 1948, specifically to acquire Palestinian owned properties. In many cases, then and now, the “abandoned” properties belong to a population that was forcibly evicted, or kept out, of the very property that was subsequently deemed “abandoned.”
Jonathan Cook: The “one video Benjamin Netanyahu … must be praying never gets posted on YouTube with English subtitles… Its contents threaten to gravely embarrass not only Mr. Netanyahu but also the US administration of Barack Obama.”
Gideon Levy: “Outrageous”
IOA Editor: Here it is, with English subtitles, the ‘smoking gun’ with which Netanyahu killed the “peace process.” And continues to do so.
An expanded security aid package should allow Israel to reach tough decisions in its peace talks with the Palestinians, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Andrew J. Shapiro said Friday, adding that Washington planned to provide Israel with its most extensive security aid package in history.
IOA Editor: If you believe this, we have a local bridge to sell you. An important update from an Administration that, when it comes to the ME, is no better than its predecessors, and possibly even worse. Wearing his horse-blinds tightly, Mr. Obama is telling us he didn’t mean a word he said in Cairo last year (“A New Beginning“).
Vague promises to extend the partial freeze on settlement building and to alleviate some of the daily hardships encountered by Palestinians are no more than the blackmail tactics Israel has always employed against those under its control.
According to the investigation … the goods could have been used to manufacture nuclear weapons and missile programs… It is worth mentioning that in the 1980s … Israeli companies and individuals have been involved in all sorts of technological espionage, steeling US secrets, technology and equipment.
It has become impossible to supervise the defense budget … It is utterly opaque. The system does everything to deflect true supervision… [T]he army is completely opaque to us. There is no civilian supervision over the IDF.
IOA Editor: This is an important story, confirming Amira Hass’s assertions, made regularly, about the power of the Israeli defense industry — from the professional classes of the IDF to the private sector arms manufacturers, dealer/exporters, “consultants,” and the rest — and the inherent financial and personal interest it has in continuing the Occupation. The Occupation is an essential part of the “business environment” of Israel’s largest and most influential economic sector. Civilian financial oversight of the IDF is only one aspect of a much bigger picture. See also:
Amira Hass: Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay
Jonathan Cook: Remote-Controlled Killing
The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation
Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people — Palestinians in Gaza — who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick. The [Israeli] female soldiers, located far away in an operations room, are responsible for aiming and firing remote-controlled machine-guns mounted on watch-towers every few hundred metres along an electronic fence that surrounds Gaza.
Israel’s diplomatic and defense establishments will hold several meetings this week on how to contend with what some officials described as a “barrage” of international investigations into Israel’s conduct. Officials say particularly concerned over UN probe of country’s court system in the wake of the Goldstone report on the Gaza war.
The secrecy surrounding the attack on the nuclear plant in eastern Syria in September 2007 was justified only for the period immediately after the operation, according to the CIA head at the time, Gen. Michael Hayden. That secrecy had been meant to save President Bashar Assad from embarrassment that could have provoked him to retaliate.
A question for Obama and Netanyahu: Where to? … Where are they headed? What will improve in another year? What will be more promising in another two years? The Syrian president is knocking at the door begging for peace with Israel, and the two leaders are ignoring him. Will he still be knocking in two years? The Arab League’s initiative is still valid; terror has almost ceased. What will the situation be after they have finished compromising over the freeze in construction of balconies and ritual baths?
Israel’s botched raid against the Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla on May 31 is the latest sign that Israel is on a disastrous course that it seems incapable of reversing. The attack also highlights the extent to which Israel has become a strategic liability for the United States. This situation is likely to get worse over time, which will cause major problems for Americans who have a deep attachment to the Jewish state.
A new “anti-boycott bill”, the third in a series of proposed laws that aim to curtail the ability of civil society to criticise Israeli government policy, will punish Israelis or foreign nationals who initiate or promote a boycott of Israel.
6,800 Detainees are currently imprisoned by Israel, including 300 children, 34 women, 213 detainees in administrative detention, and 11 elected legislators. Nearly 1,500 detainees are ill and need urgent medical attention, dozens of them requiring surgeries and constant hospitalization… Gilad Shalit is the only Israeli held by the Palestinians.
ALSO: Boy receives second administrative detention order
Hassan Jabareen (Adalah): “Under international law, an occupying power cannot demand loyalty from the the people it occupies. Palestinians in East Jerusalem are ‘protected persons’ in law and cannot be expelled.”
Successive Israeli cabinets have worked to enforce on the ground in Jerusalem and the Occupied Territories a situation that they could present as irreversible. Have they now reached the point where the biblical book of Daniel’s prophecy is once again relevant?
Senior Turkish diplomat: If Israel fails to meet the demands, Turkey will downgrade its diplomatic representation to the level of a charge d’affaires … Ankara would consider no new cooperation agreements with Israel … [and] existing deals were being reviewed.
The Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee is set to approve an unprecedented master plan that calls for the expansion of Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, a move largely based on construction on privately owned Arab property.
So an “occupation” becomes a “dispute”. Thus a “wall” becomes a “fence” or “security barrier”. Thus Israeli acts of colonisation of Arab land, contrary to all international law, become “settlements” or “outposts” or “Jewish neighbourhoods”. It was Colin Powell … who told US diplomats to refer to occupied Palestinian land as “disputed land” – and that was good enough for most of the US media.
NOAM CHOMSKY:
