The United States has recently signed major arms deals with several Arab states. Israeli officials have expressed concern at the scope and content of the agreements. Among the recipients of the advanced arms included in the agreements are Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. The shipments are to include anti-ship and antitank missiles as well as so-called smart and bunker-busting bombs.
Int’l
The real reason for harassing Vanunu is a vindictiveness towards a man who has been impertinent enough to come out of jail unbowed. Of course, if Vanunu had been allowed to leave the country, he would have drifted out of public consciousness. Now, every time he is arrested the world is reminded that Israel has a nuclear weapons facility, a fact used by its enemies to justify their own weapons programmes.
“Suddenly, the ICC has turned into a potential threat,” warned Reisner, who was one of the architects of Israel’s policy not to have the military police investigate IDF soldiers suspected of involvement in the deaths of Palestinian civilians, a policy that has been in force since the beginning of the intifada in 2000. “If that happens, it will be a turning point in Israel’s position in the world.”
It’s not that we can’t imagine life in Gaza. It’s that we are determined not to try to imagine. If we did, we might not stop there. Next we might try to imagine what it would be like if our country were in the condition in which we left Gaza. And sooner or later we might try to imagine what we would do if we were living over here like they’re living over there. Or not even what we would do, just what we would think – about the people, about the country, that did that to us and that wouldn’t even allow us to begin to recover after the war was over.
The Palestinian Authority may be seeking renewed talks with Israel even in the absence of an Israeli freeze on settlements.
According to a current prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague… the significance of the Goldstone report… lies in its conclusion that Israel’s leaders “planned and predetermined the grave violations [of international law] and human rights abuses” long before the attack on Gaza.
One of the disturbing features of the persistent use of torture by many countries in conflict situations around the world is the role some doctors play in condoning it…. [Dr Ruchama Marton, head of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel] was thinking about what some regard as the very unsatisfactory situation in Israel.
These days, it’s tough to find a used car with a bumper sticker that reads “Peace is better than a Greater Israel.” Nowadays, everyone seems to favor the latest formula: two states for two peoples.
Netanyahu has in essentially confirmed that he knew in advance that a limited settlement freeze wouldn’t bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. He could have bet that Abbas wouldn’t accept less than what the road map gave the Palestinians more than six years ago: a total freeze that includes natural growth and the immediate dismantling of all outposts established since March 2001.
Catherine Ashton… leveled scathing criticism at the “Israeli occupation,” in her first speech as the European Union’s first high representative for foreign affairs and security policy. The British stateswoman, who has also served as the Commissioner for Trade in the European Commission, said that in the EU’s view, “East Jerusalem is occupied territory, together with the West Bank.”
Former prime minister Ehud Olmert proposed giving the Palestinians land from communities bordering the Gaza Strip and from the Judean Desert nature reserve in exchange for settlement blocs in the West Bank.
The Women’s Coalition for Peace sent a letter on Wednesday to Israel’s former Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, calling on her to cooperate with international investigations into her role in the assault on Gaza last winter, after a British court issued an warrant for her arrest on Monday.
The Foreign Ministry on Tuesday summoned the British envoy to Israel to rebuke him over the arrest warrant issued for Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni for alleged war crimes in Gaza. … [Naor Gilon, deputy director at the Foreign Ministry in charge of Western Europe] called on Phillips to urge his government to change the law that allows for arrest warrants to be issued against senior Israeli officials over alleged war crimes perpetrated in Gaza during the winter conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Syria warned Israel on Thursday it risked closing the door to renewed peace talks, a day after the Israeli parliament agreed to consider a bill that would make it far more difficult to return the occupied Golan… “Israel is defying the whole world with its rejection of peace and it is proving that its government’s stated wish to make peace is nothing but a political manoeuvre.”
“The Palestinians want to continue to build their state from below and at the same time to work with the United States and the European Union to force Israel into an arrangement from above.”
IOA Editor: This would be funny, it it weren’t so profoundly sad and grotesquely warped: The gang of war criminals running this nuclear empire that controls the daily lives of an entire occupied people, whom they bomb, starve, repress and violate at will, complain about being coerced by their subjects.
Berlanty Azzam , 22, has been in the West Bank since 2005 and has only two months of studies left in order to complete her Bachelor’s degree in business administration. In late October, however, the Israeli authorities expelled her back to Gaza claiming that that she was illegally staying in the West Bank.
Make no mistake, not a single conflict of contemporary times has been resolved, no durable peace achieved, unless and until the voices of the victims of those conflicts were heard, their losses acknowledged and redress found to injustices they experience.
The point of contention hinges on a completely different issue: the peace process. Abbas insists that the talks on the permanent status agreement be based on the parameters of the 2003 Road Map, which received affirmation in a UN Security Council Resolution. The map is reminiscent, among other things, of the Arab peace initiative which focused on normalization in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967.
Jonathan Cook gave a talk to a visiting delegation from Belgium in Bethlehem on 5 December 2009. Much of the talk, presented in five parts, is included here. It covers a wide range of topics, including Israel’s development of the homeland security industry, its economic dependence on US aid, its use of Gaza as a laboratory for experimentation in warfare, its need to promote a global clash of civilisations, and the increasing promotion of Jewish religious fundamentalism.
For additional Jonathan Cook interviews: www.jkcook.net/Interviews
Israeli security agents held a Palestinian patient for three weeks without charge, interrogated him repeatedly and offered access to hospital care if he agreed to become an informant, the Guardian has learned.
Sweden’s initiative calls for the division of Jerusalem and the recognition of East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. The 27 European foreign ministers are to discuss a draft of the proposal, which is expected to be published on Tuesday. The draft proposal also reportedly hints that the European Union would recognize a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said on Wednesday it was facing an “unprecedented” budget deficit that could force it to cut back on services to more than 4.7 million people.
The Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders on Wednesday awarded veteran Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass a “Press Freedom” prize, for “independent and outspoken reporting.”
The draft refers directly to the situation in East Jerusalem, calling on “all parties to refrain from provocative actions” and stating the EU Council “has never recognized the annexation of East Jerusalem. If there is to be a genuine peace, a way must be found to resolve the status of Jerusalem as capital of two states… On the issue of borders, the document states that the EU will not accept any changes made by Israel to the 1967 borders unless they have PA approval.
IOA Editor: Palestinian Authority forces should immediately pull their troops and armored vehicles out of West Jerusalem so as not to unnecessarily provoke its Jewish residents; they should also cease house demolitions which further victimize Jewish folk, inflicting homelessness and disease, especially now that the cold Jerusalem winter is only days away…
Despite the asymmetry between occupier and occupied, which is not properly reflected in this news story, the draft document, as reported, could form a good basis for future decisions by the EU – decisions that are long overdue.
Peacemaking takes strategic skill. But we see no sign that President Obama and Mr. Mitchell were thinking more than one move down the board. The president went public with his demand for a full freeze on settlements before securing Israel’s commitment. And he and his aides apparently had no plan for what they would do if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said no.
IOA Editor: Even Mr. Obama’s natural allies, the US “liberal media elite” are not impressed by his ME peace initiative. What should the rest of us think? “Hope?” “Change?” Blah, blah. Incidentally, the New York Times has no criticism of Israel. None.
“… [W]e know the incident I was involved in was not an unusual one, but one that happens a lot… The only difference is that in my case it was documented and that’s how the entire world saw and heard about it… The Israeli courts have proved and taught us that they are part of the occupation system. It’s like the judge, the defendant and the prosecutor are the same thing, as they are part of one system. How can the same system judge itself?”
A majority of Israelis seem to get by just fine with the occupation, while B’Tselem is met with suspicion and accused of treason. Despite this, over the years in which targeted assassinations, smart bombs, closures, checkpoints, detentions without due process, lack of running water, poverty and a separation fence five minutes from Kfar Sava have all become routine, B’Tselem has continued to undermine the passion for denial, and to defend the rights of Palestinians and thus also the image of Israeli society.
If not for B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, the State of Israel would look different today. The occupation might have been even crueler, or just as cruel, but we certainly would look different. In its 20 years of existence, this important human-rights organization may not have succeeded in changing reality, but at least it has made it possible for us to know what that reality was.
The United States is expected to ease its opposition to incorporating Israeli systems in the F-35 if Israel expedites its order for the stealth strike fighter… a version of the F-35 that would include command and control systems developed in Israel, as well as the ability to carry advanced missiles that are made in Israel.
On June 19, 1967, a week and a half after the end of fighting in the Six-Day War, ministers, including Menachem Begin, were willing to give up on the gains made on the Syrian front in exchange for peace.
“For now he is doing nothing, but he has invited us to revive the peace process. I hope that in the future he can play a more important role,” Abbas said in an interview.
“Our research showed that the checks conducted by El Al at foreign airports had all the hallmarks of Shin Bet interrogations,” said Mohammed Zeidan, the director of the Human Rights Association. “Usually the questions were less about the safety of the flight and more aimed at gathering information on the political activities or sympathies of the passengers.”
First we shape a new reality for ourselves; then we expect the entire world to adopt it, demand that our neighbors pay the cost, and complain that we have no partner for peace.
“To the best of my knowledge, there’s probably no other country in the world… which is subject to such an intrusive regime of aerial surveillance,” UN special envoy for Lebanon Michael Williams said this month.
