Gaza Digest 97, 7/2/09

News Clips: Israel will not impose a complete halt on settlement construction on occupied Palestinian land as demanded by the United States, a senior official said Thursday; The twenty-one international human rights activists who were aboard the Free Gaza Movement boat and were detained by Israel on Tuesday will be deported; the Israeli government has approved the construction of 50 new homes in a West Bank settlement and announced plans to expropriate more Palestinian land; The Israeli High Court of Justice on Wednesday ordered the Israel Defense Forces to press stronger charges than “improper conduct” against a commanding officer over the shooting of a bound and blindfolded Palestinian detainee in the West Bank; Thousands of people this week signed a petition in support of the Israeli president of the World Medical Association, following a campaign to impeach him from the world ethical body for alleged complicity in torturing Palestinians.

1. From the Associated Press, Amnesty International released a report yesterday on human rights abuses during the Gaza offensive, accusing both Israel and Hamas of war crimes.

“Israel, Hamas Both Guilty of War Crimes--Amnesty,” Associated Press via Times Online, 7/2/09


Excerpt: Israeli and Palestinian troops both committed war crimes in the recent war in Gaza, Amnesty International has claimed in the first in-depth human rights report on the war.

Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed by high precision artillery, while others were shot at close range, the report said. It also described rocket fire attacks by Gaza's militant Hamas rulers against Israeli towns as war crimes.

The organisation called on Israel publicly to pledge not to use artillery, white phosphorus and other imprecise weapons in densely populated areas, and urged Hamas to stop its rocket attacks on Israeli civilians.

Amnesty, which first accused Israel of war crimes shortly after the fighting ended on January 18, said "disturbing questions" remain about why high-precision weapons like tank shells and air-delivered bombs and missiles "killed so many children and other civilians."

The group also deplored Israel's use of less precise artillery shells and highly incendiary white phosphorous in densely populated areas. It accused Israeli forces of using Palestinians as "human shields" and frequently blocking civilians from receiving medical care and humanitarian aid.

The pattern of Israeli attacks and the high number of civilian casualties "showed elements of reckless conduct, disregard for civilian lives and property and a consistent failure to distinguish between military targets and civilians and civilian objects," Amnesty charged.

2. A report from The Electronic Intifada describes an increase in the use and misuse of the narcotic painkiller Tramadol in Gaza.

“Drug Addiction on the Rise in Besieged Gaza,” Erin Cunningham, The Electronic Intifada, 7/1/09



Excerpt: Looking to escape years of war, searing poverty and an unrelenting economic blockade, medical officials in the Gaza Strip say residents have developed a serious addiction to the narcotic painkiller Tramadol.

The embattled enclave's borders have been hermetically sealed by both Israel and Egypt for two years, and an Israeli military assault last winter killed some 1,500 Gazans.

Gaza has the world's highest unemployment rate -- at 45 percent, according to the United Nations -- and 75 percent of its inhabitants feel unsafe or insecure, a recent UN survey found.

Rumors of Tramadol's mood-enhancing properties, and its easy availability over the counter have consequently turned thousands of desperate Gazans to the comfort of the tiny pills over the past two years.

Used medically to treat moderate to severe pain, Tramadol is a synthetic opioid related to morphine -- and more distantly to the highly addictive heroin.

While altering a user's perception of pain, its side effects include mild euphoria, sexual stamina and general feelings of relaxation. It also alleviates symptoms of anxiety and depression.

"People in Gaza are in a constant state of panic," says Dr. Abdel Aziz Mousa Thabet, clinical psychiatrist and senior researcher at the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP). "Their trauma is ongoing -- with war and the siege -- they need to feel like they have control of their lives."

But the opiate-like painkiller, also marketed globally under the brand name Tramal, brings both physical and mental dependence, according to health officials, and can be extremely dangerous if used recreationally in high doses or without medical supervision.

Neither the Hamas-run government nor local health non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have official figures of just how many Gaza residents take the drug, but say its use is perilously widespread.

3. From Common Dreams, the letter The Yes Men sent to the Jerusalem International Film Festival withdrawing their film.

“For Once, the Yes Men Say No,” Andy Bichelbaum & Mike Bonnano, Common Dreams, 7/1/09


Excerpt: We regret to say that we have taken the hard decision to withdraw our film, "The Yes Men Fix the World," from the Jerusalem Film Festival in solidarity with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.

This decision does not come easily, as we realize that the festival opposes the policies of the State of Israel, and we have no wish to punish progressives who deplore the state-sponsored violence committed in their name.

This decision does not come easily, as we feel a strong affinity with many people in Israel, sharing with them our Jewish roots, as well as the trauma of the Holocaust, in which both our grandfathers died. Andy lived in Jerusalem for a year long ago, can still get by in Hebrew, and counts several friends there. And Mike has always wanted to connect with the roots of his culture.

But despite all our feelings, we cannot abandon our mission as activists. In the 1980s, there was a call from the people of South Africa to artists and others to boycott that regime, and it helped end apartheid there. Today, there is a clear call for a boycott from Palestinian civil society. Obeying it is our only hope, as filmmakers and activists, of helping put pressure on the Israeli government to comply with international law.

It is painful to do this. But it is even more painful to hear Israeli policies described as "fascist" - not just from the ill-informed and the clueless, not just from the usual anti-semitic morons, but from well-informed Jewish activists within Israel. They know what they're talking about, and it's painful to think that they could be right.

As we're sure you know and deplore, the Israeli government has recently authorized the construction of new units in an illegal West Bank outpost - one that is illegal even according to Israeli law. On Monday, nine Palestinians were injured as Israeli authorities demolished their East Jerusalem home. Tuesday, the Israeli navy stopped a ship from delivering medicine, toys, and other humanitarian relief to Gaza, and detained over twenty foreign peace activists, including a Nobel Peace laureate. Meanwhile, a UN commission was in Gaza investigating much worse abuses committed early this year.

Whatever words are applied to such actions, our film mustn't help lend an aura of normalcy to a state that makes these decisions. For us, that's the bottom line.


4. Interesting interview with Naomi Klein from Haaretz in which she talks more about the BDS Movement, her participation in it, and, later in the article, about the Durban II Conference on racism.

“Naomi Klein: Oppose the State, Not the People,” Yotam Feldman, Haaretz, 7/1/09


Excerpt: Klein, who supports an economic and cultural boycott of Israel as pressure to end the occupation in the territories, thought long and hard about publishing her book in Hebrew, as well as visiting Israel. She finally decided to issue the book with Andalus Publishing, which specializes in Arabic literature, and to contribute her royalties to the press. Klein and Andalus publisher Yael Lerer carefully planned Klein's itinerary in Israel to avoid the impression that she supports institutions connected to the State of Israel and the Israeli economy.

"It certainly would have been a lot easier not to have come to Israel, and I wouldn't have come had the Palestinian Boycott National Committee asked me not to," said Klein in an interview before her arrival, at her Toronto home. "But I went to them with a proposal for the way I wanted to visit Israel and they were very open to it. It is important to me not to boycott Israelis but rather to boycott the normalization of Israel and the conflict."

So why did you decide to come nevertheless?

"First of all, I deal in communications. It's my profession and my passion and I naturally rebel against any kind of cutting off of channels of dialogue. I think that one of the most powerful tools of those who oppose the boycott is the argument that it is a boycott of Israelis. It's true that some academics won't agree to accept an article by an Israeli for publication in a journal. There aren't many of them, and they make stupid decisions. This is not what the boycott committee has called for. The decision isn't to boycott Israel but rather to oppose official relationships with Israeli institutions."

Gaza Digest 96, 6/30/09

News Clips: Hamas official says captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was lost track of during major bombings of Gaza, and they are not sure he is alive; Activists with the Free Gaza Movement, among them former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, sailing to Gaza with humanitarian aid said they had been intercepted by an Israeli gunboat on Tuesday and their navigating instruments jammed, but the Israeli military said it was just monitoring the aid ship while it was in international waters; Palestinian officials involved in Hamas-Fateh reconciliation talks hosted and mediated by Egypt reported that a progress was reached on the political prisoners file and other important files, and that finalizing the points of agreement would be conducted Tuesday; Twenty-nine civilians, including eight children, were killed in several missile strikes by Israeli drones in Gaza in December and January, according to a report released on Tuesday by Human Rights Watch.

1. Beautiful and inspiring letter from Israeli human rights activist Ezra Nawi from the Nation. If you haven’t already, please sign the Jewish Voice for Peace letter for Ezra and make a donation to his cause.

“Israel’s Man of Conscience,” Ezra Nawi, The Nation, 6/29/09

My name is Ezra Nawi. I am a Jewish citizen of Israel.

Excerpt: I will be sentenced on the first of July after being found guilty of assaulting two police officers in 2007 while struggling against the demolition of a Palestinian house in Um El Hir, located in the southern part of the West Bank.

Of course the policemen who accused me of assaulting them are lying. Indeed, lying has become common within the Israeli police force, military and among the Jewish settlers.

After close to 140,000 letters were sent to Israeli officials in support of my activities in the occupied West Bank, the Ministry of Justice responded that I "provoke local residents."

This response reflects the culture of deceit that has taken over all official discourse relating to the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

After all, was I the one who poisoned and destroyed Palestinian water wells?

Was I the one who beat young Palestinian children?

Did I hit the elderly?

Did I poison the Palestinian residents' sheep?

Did I demolish homes and destroy tractors?

Did I block roads and restrict movement?

Was I the one who prevented people from connecting their homes to running water and electricity?

Did I forbid Palestinians from building homes?

Over the past eight years, I have seen with my own two eyes hundreds of abuses such as these and exposed them to the public--therefore I am considered a provocateur. I can only say that I am proud to be a provoker.

2. Art Young on ZNET starts with a description of AIPAC’s response to the BDS (Boycott Divestment and Sanctions) Movement, and then proceeds with an excellent overview of the movement and its various components around the world.

“Pro-Israel Lobby Alarmed by Growth of Boycott, Divestment Movement,” Art Young, ZNET, 6/29/09


Excerpt: The movement to call Israel to account for its crimes against the Palestinian people is growing, it is "invading the mainstream discourse, becoming part of the constant and unrelenting drumbeat against Israel." It could eventually threaten the existence of the Jewish state by undermining the support it receives from its strongest backer, the U. S. government.
That was the message of alarm delivered by the Executive Director of the American Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Howard Kohr, to the AIPAC Policy Conference on May 3.

**

AIPAC's call to arms is a grudging recognition of these initial successes of the movement and, above all, of its potential. It is evident that supporters of the Jewish-only Israeli state - be they official lobbyists, powerful government figures, or others - intend to redouble their efforts to smear the BDS movement as anti-Semitic and to suppress public debate of Israel's crimes. Supporters of the rights of Palestinians are responding by uniting with others to defend the right to free speech on these issues and by reaching out to win new support for the boycott-Israel campaign.

3. Gazans are living in despair and poverty, according to a Red Cross Report released on Monday and reported in Haaretz.

“Red Cross: Israel trapping 1.5m Gazans in despair,” Haaretz Service, 6/29/09

Excerpt: The Red Cross released a damning report Monday on the effects of the Israel-led blockade on the Gaza Strip, describing the 2-year-old measure as having trapped the coastal territory's 1.5 million residents "in despair."

The international humanitarian organization lamented the fact that the blockade, imposed after Hamas seized control of Gaza two years ago, was impeding reconstruction efforts after Israel's offensive in the Strip at the beginning of the year.

"Gaza neighborhoods particularly hard hit by the Israeli strikes will continue to look like the epicenter of a massive earthquake unless vast quantities of cement, steel and other building materials are allowed into the territory for reconstruction," the report said.

According to the Red Cross, Gaza's poverty is directly linked to the blockade that is "strangling" the local economy.


4. From the annals of daily humiliation and arbitrary meanness, a report from Amira Hass in Haaretz on a privately run checkpoint not allowing Palestinian day workers to bring their lunches with them to work.

“Privately run checkpoint stops Palestinians with 'too much food',” Amira Hass, Haaretz, 6/29/09

A West Bank checkpoint managed by a private security company is not allowing Palestinians to pass through with large water bottles and some food items, Haaretz has learned.

MachsomWatch discovered the policy, which Palestinian workers confirmed to Haaretz.

The Defense Ministry stated in response that non-commercial quantities of food were not being limited. It made no reference to the issue of water.
   
The checkpoint, Sha'ar Efraim, is south of Tul Karm, and is managed for the Defense Ministry by the private security company Modi'in Ezrahi. The company stops Palestinian workers from passing through the checkpoint with the following items: Large bottles of frozen water, large bottles of soft drinks, home-cooked food, coffee, tea and the spice zaatar. The security company also dictates the quantity of items allowed: Five pitas, one container of hummus and canned tuna, one small bottle or can of beverage, one or two slices of cheese, a few spoonfuls of sugar, and 5 to 10 olives. Workers are also not allowed to carry cooking utensils and work tools.

MachsomWatch told Haaretz that Sunday, a 32-year-old construction worker from Tul Karm, who is employed in Hadera, was not allowed to carry his lunch bag through the checkpoint. The bag contained six pitas, 2 cans of cream cheese, one kilogram of sugar in a plastic bag, and a salad, also in a plastic bag.

The typical Palestinian laborer in Israel has a 12-hour workday, including travel time and checkpoint delays. Many leave home as early as 2 A.M. in order to wait in line at the checkpoint; tardiness to work often results in immediate dismissal. Workers return home around 5 P.M. The wait at the checkpoint can take one to two hours in each direction, if not longer.

The food quantities allowed by Modi'in Ezrahi do not meet the daily dietary needs of the workers, and they prefer not to buy food at the considerably more expensive Israeli stores.

Gaza Digest 95, 6/29/09

News Clips: Six months after Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip, 1.5 million Palestinians remain trapped in rising poverty, unable to rebuild their lives, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday; Defense Minister Ehud Barak was set to head to the United States Monday in a bid to end a quarrel with U.S. President Barack Obama's administration over Israel's refusal to completely halt West Bank settlement construction; In a gesture acknowledging international pressure from the Global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement for him to cancel his concert in Israel, music legend Leonard Cohen will perform in the West Bank city of Ramallah two days after his September 24 performance in Israel; The Hamas official in charge of negotiations over abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit said Sunday that there was no truth in the recent flurry of reports over a breakthrough in the talks; The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel has accused the Israeli security forces of deliberately shackling Palestinian prisoners in a painful and dangerous manner, amounting to a form of torture.

1. This article from the Guardian describes the U.N. hearings that were held on Saturday and Sunday and, in an unusual move, were broadcast live. You can also see a brief report on the hearings—with some footage—from Al Jazeera.

U.N. Public Hearing in Gaza Broadcasts Accounts of War Victims,” Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, 6/28/09

Excerpt: The UN has held an unprecedented public hearing in Gaza to broadcast live witness accounts from Palestinians who described seeing their relatives killed and injured during Israel's January war.

One after another, they detailed Israeli rocket strikes and artillery shelling near a mosque, a UN school and on several homes across Gaza during the three-week war. The two-day hearing is part of an inquiry by the UN human rights council into the war led by the respected South African judge, Richard Goldstone.

Israel has refused entry for the inquiry team, accusing the UN council of an anti-Israel bias even though Goldstone himself is Jewish. But another round of hearings will be held in Geneva next week, for which some Israeli witnesses are expected to be flown in. They may include residents of Sderot, near Gaza, which has suffered repeated Palestinian rocket attacks.

"The purpose of the public hearings in Gaza and Geneva is to show the faces and broadcast the voices of victims – all of the victims," Goldstone said last week. He had sat on South Africa's constitutional court after the fall of apartheid and was a chief prosecutor on the UN criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Yesterday's public hearing was the first in a UN fact-finding mission, though there is little chance it will lead to prosecutions. Up to 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed during the war.

2. From the Washington Post, a piece describing how Americans are supporting the illegal settlements in the West Bank, with suggestions for possible remedies.

“Want to Stop Israeli Settlements? Start With Americans,” Ronit Avni, The Washington Post, 6/26/09

Excerpt: Evangelical Christians in the United States also support the settlements, raising millions of dollars for them, according to a recent National Public Radio report. The Colorado-based Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, for example, encourages churches and ministries to connect with "the pioneers of Biblical Israel" through the "adopt-a-settlement program." Sondra Oster Baras, director of the organization's Israeli office, estimates that more than half of the West Bank settlements receive direct or indirect support from Christians, according to the NPR report.

A handful of wealthy businessmen, including American casino magnate Irving Moskowitz, are widely reported to have donated to groups such as the Brooklyn-based not-for-profit Hebron Fund, which raises money to support residents in the West Bank city of Hebron. According to the donation page on its Web site, the organization aims to "keep Hebron Jewish for the Jewish people." Friends of Itamar, also based in Brooklyn, engages in domestic, tax-deductible fundraising for the West Bank settlement of Itamar. All this comes at the expense of the U.S. government, which loses tax revenue by allowing these groups to operate as not-for-profit entities.

Not all support for the settlements comes through charitable organizations. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that in 2007, the settler organization Amana held "housing fairs" in New York and New Jersey to encourage American Jews to buy property in the West Bank. According to the Jewish Voice and Opinion, a self-described "politically conservative Jewish publication" in New Jersey, approximately 250 people attended and as many as 10 properties were slated for purchase.

Last year the Palestinian village of Bil'in filed suit in Canada against two Quebec-based companies that built and sold residential units in a West Bank settlement. The case is still pending, but it demonstrates that people are beginning to pay attention to non-Israeli influences on settlement growth.

If the courts can't find a way to dissuade settlement expansion, perhaps the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control should intervene. The U.S. government has already designated Kahane's movement a foreign terrorist organization for reasons unrelated to settlement financing, but in doing so, it has prohibited U.S. citizens from providing financial support to this group.

3. As the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement picks up steam, Common Dreams posted an Agence France Presse article about Naomi Klein’s call for a boycott of Israel while she was attending the weekly protest against the wall in Bi’lin.

“Author Naomi Klein Calls for Boycott of Israel,” Agence France Press via Common Dreams, 6/26/09

Excerpt: Bestselling author Naomi Klein on Friday took her call for a boycott of Israel to the occupied West Bank village of Bilin, where she witnessed Israeli forces clashing with protesters.

"It's a boycott of Israeli institutions, it's a boycott of the Israeli economy," the Canadian writer told journalists as she joined a weekly demonstration against Israel's controversial separation wall.

"Boycott is a tactic . . . we're trying to create a dynamic which was the dynamic that ultimately ended apartheid in South Africa," said Klein, the author of "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism."

"It's an extraordinarily important part of Israel's identity to be able to have the illusion of Western normalcy," the Canadian writer and activist said.

"When that is threatened, when the rock concerts don't come, when the symphonies don't come, when a film you really want to see doesn't play at the Jerusalem film festival . . . then it starts to threaten the very idea of what the Israeli state is."

She briefly joined about 200 villagers and foreign activists protesting the barrier which Israel says it needs to prevent attacks, but which Palestinians say aims at grabbing their land and undermining the viability of their promised state.

She then watched from a safe distance as the protesters reached the fence, where Israeli forces fired teargas and some youths responded by throwing stones at the army.

"This apartheid, this is absolutely a system of segregation," Klein said adding that Israeli troops would never crack down as violently against Jewish protesters.

She pointed out that her visit coincided with court hearings in Quebec in a case where the villagers of Bilin are suing two Canadian companies, accusing them of illegally building and selling homes to Israelis on land that belongs to the village.
The plaintiffs claim that by building in the Jewish settlement of Modiin Illit, near Bilin, Green Park International and Green Mount International are in violation of international laws that prohibit an occupying power from transferring some of its population to the lands it occupies.

4. Aside from its annoying title, this is a good article from The New York Times about Israeli human rights activist Ezra Nawi. You can learn more about Ezra and how to support his cause by going here.

“Unlikely Ally for Residents of West Bank,” Ethan Bronner, The New York Times, 6/28/09

Excerpt: Ezra Nawi was in his element. Behind the wheel of his well-worn jeep one recent Saturday morning, working two cellphones in Arabic as he bounded through the terraced hills and hardscrabble villages near Hebron, he was greeted warmly by Palestinians near and far.

Watching him call for an ambulance for a resident and check on the progress of a Palestinian school being built without an Israeli permit, you might have thought him a clan chief. Then noticing the two Israeli Army jeeps trailing him, you might have pegged him as an Israeli occupation official handling Palestinian matters.

But Mr. Nawi is neither. It is perhaps best to think of him as the Robin Hood of the South Hebron hills, an Israeli Jew helping poor locals who love him, and thwarting settlers and soldiers who view him with contempt. Those army jeeps were not watching over him. They were stalking him.

Since the Israeli left lost so much popular appeal after the violent Palestinian uprising of 2000 and the Hamas electoral victory three years ago, its activists tend to be a rarefied bunch — professors of Latin or Sanskrit, and translators of medieval poetry. Mr. Nawi, however, is a plumber. And unlike the intellectuals of European origin with whom he spends most Saturdays, he is from an Iraqi Jewish family.

“My mother gave birth to me in Jerusalem when she was 14,” said Mr. Nawi, who is 57 and one of five siblings. “So my grandmother raised me. And she spoke to me in Arabic.”

His family has trouble understanding his priorities. His mother says she thinks he is wasting his time. And many Israelis, when told of his work, wonder why he is not helping his own. Mr. Nawi has an answer.

“I don’t consider my work political,” he said between phone calls as he drove. “I don’t have a solution to this dispute. I just know that what is going on here is wrong. This is not about ideology. It is about decency.”

5. Finally, this article from Haaretz about an IDF soldier who refused to serve with his brigade unless allegations of its unnecessary violence against Palestinians in the West Bank were investigated.
 
“Second IDF soldier refuses to serve over violence towards Palestinians,” Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz, 6/28/09

Excerpt: A second IDF soldier has refused to continue following orders unless his complaints of violence toward Palestinians are investigated, Haaretz has learned. As with another infantry man from the same brigade - who was sentenced to 30 days in military prison last week after refusing to participate in his unit's operations in the territories - the second soldier, who can only be identified as A., came to his decision following a raid by the brigade's Haruv battalion in the village of Kifl Hares in the West Bank on March 26.

A. told his friends that soldiers from the platoon acted with unusual violence toward the residents of the village. "We were sent to look for firearms, but didn't find any weapons," the soldier said. "So we confiscated kitchen knives. But what I was most shocked about was the looting. One soldier took 20 shekels. Soldiers went into homes and looked for stuff to steal."

A. also told of an assault on a mentally handicapped civilian. "He was just shouting at soldiers but then one soldier decided to attack him, so they beat the hell out of him - riffle butt to the head".

A. informed his commanders he will no longer participate in battalion activities, after which he was not court-martialed, but was transferred to guard and kitchen duty. A. then left for home - to be arrested and so to attract greater attention to his claims. He was sentenced to 17 days of detention for absenteeism by battalion commander Lt. Col. Ilan Dikstein, and upon completing the sentence was reassigned to maintenance works in a rear base of the brigade.

The battalion is already being investigated by the Military Police following earlier reports in the media about its conduct.

Gaza Digest 93, 6/12/09

News Clips: Nearly six of every 10 Israelis think Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should resist U.S. demands to completely freeze construction in Jewish West Bank settlements, according to a new poll released Friday; Former US President Jimmy Carter said on Thursday that there can be no Palestinian-Israeli peace unless Hamas is directly involved; Palestinian security forces arrested 36 Hamas supporters, many of them professors and students, the Islamic militant group said Thursday, signaling a widening crackdown by Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas; Israel's Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not believe in a two-state solution; The Israeli mayor of Jerusalem who campaigned on the promise to “create more housing for Jews in East Jerusalem” issued home demolitions against another 160 Palestinians;

1. An article from The Electronic Intifada about the paucity of medical supplies and qualified surgeons in Gaza.


Excerpt: After listing the urgently needed equipment and medical supplies Dr. Tatter explains that "We have enough for maybe five operations." He adds that in the past it took a month to get even basic supplies and solutions.

However, in spite of the difficult circumstances, what is really lacking are the actual cardiac surgeons necessary for heart procedures. "We have the hospital and the equipment need for the procedures. We do have a shortage of some instruments and solutions used in the surgery but we could do a small number of operations today if we had the doctors."

"We would like to send doctors outside for specialist training, but because of the closed borders it's impossible," says Dr. Tatter. The problem, he says, is that it is not easy to simply train others. "It requires specialists to do the training."

Roughly 10 years ago, surgeons were coming to Gaza from different countries, staying on to provide training and/or operations. Today, the Israeli siege, supported by Egypt has made it near impossible for visiting doctors to enter Gaza, no matter how badly they are needed.

From 4 May to 22 May, a group of visiting medical specialists attempted to enter Gaza via the Egyptian-controlled Rafah crossing. Three medical professionals, two from London's Hammersmith Hospital, waited nearly one month for permission to enter Gaza, to establish a cardiac surgery unit at Shifa Hospital and to provide some of the vitally-needed training to doctors and medical students.


2. A COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories) official explains to Haaretz writers Feldman & Blau the at best Orwellian reasoning behind the restrictions on imports into Gaza and the Israeli government’s insistence that there is no food crisis in Gaza.

The policy is not fixed, but continually subject to change, explains a COGAT official. Thus, about two months ago, the COGAT officials allowed pumpkins and carrots into Gaza, reversing a ban that had been in place for many months. The entry of "delicacies" such as cherries, kiwi, green almonds, pomegranates and chocolate is expressly prohibited. As is halvah, too, most of the time. Sources involved in COGAT's work say that those at the highest levels, including acting coordinator Amos Gilad, monitor the food brought into Gaza on a daily basis and personally approve the entry of any kind of fruit, vegetable or processed food product requested by the Palestinians. At one of the unit's meetings, Colonel Oded Iterman, a COGAT officer, explained the policy as follows: "We don't want Gilad Shalit's captors to be munching Bamba [a popular Israeli snack food] right over his head."

The "Red Lines" document explains: "In order to make basic living in Gaza possible, the deputy defense minister approved the entry into the Gaza Strip of 106 trucks with humanitarian products, 77 of which are basic food products. The entry of wheat and animal feed was also permitted via the aggregates conveyor belt outside the Karni terminal."

After four pages filled with detailed charts of the number of grams and calories of every type of food to be permitted for consumption by Gaza residents (broken down by gender and age), comes this recommendation: "It is necessary to deal with the international community and the Palestinian Health Ministry to provide nutritional supplements (only some of the flour in Gaza is enriched) and to provide education about proper nutrition." Printed in large letters at the end of the document is this admonition: "The stability of the humanitarian effort is critical for the prevention of the development of malnutrition."

These quantities allow a very slim margin for error or mishaps. Moreover, COGAT's analysis is statistically accurate only on condition that there is an equal division of the minimum supplies that are allowed in. "This analysis does not take distribution in the field into consideration," says the "Red Lines" document. A COGAT official says that he assumes that food distribution within Gaza is not equal. If some are receiving more, others are necessarily receiving less than the required minimum. So it is hard to reconcile this information with the claims of the defense minister and COGAT officers that there is no real food shortage in Gaza.


3. GISHA released a brief report with statistics about the effects of the Gaza blockade. Below is just the first list.


Excerpt:
June 2007- June 2009 Crossings Closed; Supplies Restricted
Þ     Percentage of goods permitted to enter Gaza, relative to demand: 25% (approximately 2,500 truckloads/month instead of 10,400/month prior to June 2007).
Þ     Supplies of industrial diesel permitted to enter Gaza, relative to need: 63% (2.2 million liters/week rather than the 3.5 million liters/week needed to generate electricity).
Þ     Average length of power outages in Gaza: five hours per day.
Þ     Current number of people without access to running water in Gaza: 28,000.

4. And finally, a scathing piece from Gideon Levy in Haaretz about the current state of political discourse in Israel.


Excerpt: So let's take a look at what's happening in our country after U.S. President Barack Obama's speech. A historic speech like his was supposed to make waves in Israel, stimulate discussion and spark debate. And here is what has happened: Our own Barak, Defense Minister Ehud, who used to be considered at least as brilliant as Obama, told Etgar Keret in an interview with Haaretz yesterday: "Where does the [Palestinian nation] live? In a cage? A jail? A swimming pool?" And Barak's own answer to this question: "It lives in its country."

After the prime minister's top diplomatic adviser determined that two states is a childish solution, along comes another statesman and determines that we're all children. Stupid children, it must be said, to whom you can sell any bit of nonsense, including all the nonsense in that interview.

The Palestinians, who cannot travel from one village to another without permission from Israel, who have no basic human rights and who have been trampled underfoot, humiliated and imprisoned without any sign of sovereignty, are already living as a free people in their country. If the defense minister really thinks so, then there is grave cause for concern: Mr. Security is deranged and has lost touch with reality. If he doesn't think so, then he's messing with us. Which is worse?

In yesterday's Haaretz there is also an interview by Klil Zisapel with President Shimon Peres. Out of respect for his name and status we will not quote here all the nonsense he had to say about concealing the Nakba - the Palestinians' catastrophe of 1948. We shall only mention that he replied to the question with the sentence: "Nanotechnology existed in the days of Moses." Apparently Obama's speech did make waves. Now Peres, too, is a nano-statesman. Another small businessman, Interior Minister Eli Yishai, is working to change the law so he will be able to revoke Israeli Arabs' citizenship. A representative of the oppressed classes, he also says that millions of shekels should be allocated to settlements in the territories which, he says, have been suffering "discrimination" for many years. Neither Yeruham nor Rahat, neither Bnei Brak nor Sakhnin - Efrat, of all places.


The Ministerial Committee on Legislation has proposed a law: three years in prison for commemorating the Nakba. Communities in the Segev Bloc in the Galilee are demanding a loyalty oath to Zionism as a condition for living there. And what's next on the slippery slope?

Ze'ev Braude, a Jewish settler in the West Bank who shot Palestinians in view of the cameras, will not be put on trial; the prosecution's justifications are convoluted. National Union MK David Rotem and Yisrael Beiteinu MK Uri Ariel, members of nationalist-racist parties, both of them residents of settlements the United States and the world call illegitimate, are the Knesset's representatives on the committee for selecting judges.


An attempted attack by Palestinians on horseback, or maybe muleback, is depicted in the media as a prevented mega-terror attack, a consequence of the smuggling of sophisticated and advanced Iranian weaponry through the tunnels, which we are being told about in horror day and night.


Gaza Digest 93, 6/11/09

News Clips: Palestinian fighters fired shots at Israeli forces at the northern Gaza border on Thursday morning and Israeli troops responded to the incident with the shooting of mortar shells; Clashes erupted Wednesday as massive forces of Israeli soldiers and border police descended on the Al-Bustan neighborhood in Jerusalelm to serve nearly a hundred demolition notices to home owners of the Old City suburb of Silwan village; US President Barack Obama’s envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday, a day after he told Israeli officials that Washington will not back away from demands for a settlement freeze; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will attend the United Nations General Assembly opening session in New York this coming September because Netanyahu decided that Israel would be better served if he appeared to present Jerusalem's diplomatic positions instead of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who is thought of in international circles as an extremist.


1. This report about a speech by Ehud Barak earlier this week comes from the Maan News Agency. Barak outlined three possible scenarios for Israel’s future: 1. two states for two peoples; 2. a bi-national state that is not Jewish (unthinkable for him); or 3. an apartheid regime. Only one and three are truly possibly in his mind, and he proposes that Netanyahu accept the first choice.

Excerpt: Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the notion of an independent Palestinian state on Wednesday.

"The current government was formed with the commitment to respect the deals reached by preceding governments," Barak told public radio, according to AFP.

The remarks come ahead of a much-hyped speech in which Netanyahu says he will lay down his policy on peace negotiations. The speech will be delivered on Sunday.

According to Barak, Israel’s prior commitments include "the roadmap which clearly states that the conflict must be resolved on the principle of two states for two peoples," said the head of the center-left Labor party, the most moderate member of Netanyahu's otherwise right-wing government, as quoted by AFP.

"If such a solution fails,” said the former prime minister, “there will be only one political entity from the Jordan Valley to the Mediterranean - the state of Israel.

"Under such a scenario,” he continued, “if the Palestinians have the right to vote, it will no longer be a Jewish state, but a bi-national state. And if they don't have the right to vote, it will be an apartheid regime."


2. A seven-minute video from the Guardian about the difficulty many desperately ill Gazans face in obtaining permission to enter Israel for treatment. As one man said of his son, “He was given a choice between collaborating and dying, and he chose to die.”


Excerpt: With the lack of medical services in Gaza, critically ill patients must travel into Israel for treatment. Many are asked to collaborate with Israeli intelligence services before they receive aid. It has been alleged that if they refuse to become informers they are refused medical treatment.


3. This is an interesting analysis by Jason Horowitz that has an alternative title on the New York Observer’s web site (“Obama and The New York Zionists”).


Excerpt: Barack Obama is changing what it means to be a pro-Israel politician in America.

That much is obvious from the unusually thoughtful, nuanced and varied reactions by officials in New York—the world capital of Israel-boosterism—to his criticisms of the Netanyahu government’s settlement policies.

“I think Obama feels that this type of shock therapy will have an effect on Netanyahu and also cause some American Jews to rally to his side,” said Representative Pete King, a staunchly pro-Israel Republican who said he is willing, for now, to go along with the president on the settlement issue. “If he continues to take this hard a line, I think you will see a split.”

A more vigorous debate among American friends of Israel is precisely what Mr. Obama had in mind at least as far back as February 2008, when he told Jewish voters in Cleveland, “There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, then you’re anti-Israel, and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel.”

He added, “One of the things that struck me when I went to Israel was how much more open the debate was around these issues in Israel than they are sometimes here in the United States.”

Since becoming president, he has resolutely set about making here more like there.

Last month, he and Secretary of State Clinton, who was unwavering in her support of Israeli government policy as a senator from New York, caused Israeli officials and supporters to shudder when she said Mr. Obama “wants to see a stop to settlements—not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions.”


Gaza Digest 91, 6/10/09

News Clips: A United Nations investigation into human-rights abuses during Israel's recent military operation in the Gaza Strip is unlikely to result in any convictions as no court holds clear jurisdiction for prosecution and because the effort has been hampered by Israeli refusals to cooperate and the presence of Hamas security during witness interviews, Judge Richard Goldstone said on Tuesday; Egypt and Saudi Arabia have been pressuring U.S. President Barack Obama to set a two-year deadline for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, and threatening to rescind the Arab peace initiative, Egyptian sources said Tuesday; Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon said during an event at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (founded by former AIPAC  researcher Mary Indyk) that the realization of the US' plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within two years may lead to the establishment of "Hamastan in the West Bank.”


1. A new study from the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa makes the claims that Israel is practicing apartheid and colonialism. You can read an account of the report and download the PDF of the study via The Electronic Intifada.


Excerpt: The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) has released a report confirming that Israel is practicing both colonialism and apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

The HSRC commissioned an international team of scholars and practitioners of international public law from South Africa, the United Kingdom, Israel and the West Bank to conduct this study. The resulting 300-page report, titled "Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel's practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law," represents 15 months of research and constitutes an exhaustive review of Israel's practices in the OPT according to definitions of colonialism and apartheid provided by international law. The project was suggested originally by the January 2007 report by eminent South African jurist John Dugard, in his capacity as Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Human Rights Council, when he indicated that Israeli practices had assumed characteristics of colonialism and apartheid.

Regarding colonialism, the team found that Israel's policy and practices violate the prohibition on colonialism which the international community developed in the 1960s in response to the great decolonization struggles in Africa and Asia. Israel's policy is demonstrably to fragment the West Bank and annex part of it permanently to Israel, which is the hallmark of colonialism. Israel has appropriated land and water in the OPT, merged the Palestinian economy with Israel's economy, and imposed a system of domination over Palestinians to ensure their subjugation to these measures. Through these measures, Israel has denied the indigenous population the right to self-determination and indicated clear intention to assume sovereignty over portions of its land and natural resources. Permanent annexation of territory in this fashion is the hallmark of colonialism.

Regarding apartheid, the team found that Israel's laws and policies in the OPT fit the definition of apartheid in the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Israeli law conveys privileges to Jewish settlers and disadvantages Palestinians in the same territory on the basis of their respective identities, which function in this case as racialized identities in the sense provided by international law. Israel's practices are corollary to five of the six "inhuman acts" listed by the Convention. A policy of apartheid is especially indicated by Israel's demarcation of geographic "reserves" in the West Bank, to which Palestinian residence is confined and which Palestinians cannot leave without a permit. The system is very similar to the policy of "Grand Apartheid" in Apartheid South Africa, in which black South Africans were confined to black Homelands delineated by the South African government, while white South Africans enjoyed freedom of movement and full civil rights in the rest of the country.


2. As the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign picks up steam, this article from The Guardian discusses legal claims against supermarkets selling products with misleading labeling.

Excerpt: Retailers including UK supermarkets may be at risk of prosecution for misleading consumers by selling goods from the Palestinian Territories under the label "West Bank", lawyers have warned.

Fruit, wine and cosmetics originating from illegal Israeli settlements are among the goods that lawyers representing Palestinian interests argue are regularly being wrongly labelled, so that buyers might conclude they are actually produced by Palestinians. In a separate issue, they say illegal settlements are also wrongly benefiting from preferential trade agreements with Israel, which are meant only for goods from inside its pre-1967 borders.

"The use of the expression 'West Bank' may in many cases fail to give the consumer the full picture," said barrister Kieron Beal from Matrix Chambers. He added that in other cases, "where goods have come from the occupied Palestinian Territories they should not be labelled as having their place of origin as Israel".

The warnings come as government proposals for implementing new EU rules on product labelling, which make it illegal to deceive consumers, are expected within a month. Departments including the Office of Fair Trading, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have been grappling with the issue. Under UK law it is already illegal to present food products in a way which is "likely to mislead", while European rules include strict measures requiring accurate "country of origin" information to be given.

Concerns about consumers being misled have been compounded by claims that Israeli exporters have benefited from preferential trading terms that allow goods from inside Israel's pre-1967 borders exemption from import duties.


3. Brand Israel is a marketing effort that was launched about a year ago to “re-brand” Israel and improve its image around the world. Unfortunately, the assault on Gaza was a huge setback for an already uphill campaign. In an article from the early days of the project in Moment Mag (http://www.momentmag.com/Exclusive/2008/2008-05/200805-Branding.html), we learn that “Focus groups have shown that positive Israel branding will be an uphill battle in Europe, where ‘there's a lot more resistance and lack of goodwill and an overall dislike. It will be a challenge to change the image there without changing policy,’ [Boaz] Mourad [a pro-bono marketing advisor to the Israeli Defense Ministry] says.” This article from Haaretz reports that the head of the Brand Israel Project blames the Arabs for Israel’s bad press.

Arab public relations efforts in Europe and the United States have cast Israelis in an inaccurate light, a top Israeli public relations official said on Tuesday.

"The Arabs, our adversaries, have succeeded in doing to us what 'Borat' did for Kazakhstan", Ido Aharoni told the Knesset Defense and Security Committee on Tuesday, referring to the 2006 Sacha Baron Cohen film in which Cohen portrayed a Kazakh filmmaker touring the United States.

Aharoni, head of the Brand Israel project, said Arab public relations measures "have created an image [for Israelis] whose connection to reality is very weak."

Aharoni's comments mirrored those made by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who said "we [Israel] cannot advance successful diplomacy if we don't change the way we are viewed."

Lieberman added that Israel's public image is the most serious diplomatic problem facing the country.


Gaza Digest 91, 6/9/09

News Clips: Under pressure from pro-Palestine campaigners, the French company Veolia is poised to withdraw from the controversial Jerusalem Light Rail project that links the city center to illegal West Bank settlements; Seventy-three Palestinian children left the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing on Monday morning en route to Poland where they will receive trauma counseling for the affects of the recent Israeli war; United States President Barack Obama wants "immediate" talks between the Palestinians and Israel to forge a comprehensive Middle East peace agreement, U.S. envoy George Mitchell said on Monday; Interior Minister Eli Yishai has begun to make good on a pledge to exploit all the resources of his ministry, "its branches and its influences over local government" to expand settlements in the territories; Under mounting American pressure to define his intentions regarding peace efforts, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said Sunday that he would make a major policy speech next week mapping out the government’s “principles for achieving peace and security’; El Al passengers have received maps of Israel marking out a "separation wall" along the West Bank, but the Foreign Ministry has asked the airline to change the classification to "security fence.”

1. Report from Haaretz on an upcoming meeting by Israeli defense officials to discuss Gaza Blockade, with this beautiful mention of the action at the border by CODEPINK & The Coalition of Women for Peace: “At the Erez crossing, an American-Israeli feminist delegation and left-wing activists dressed like clowns held a rally Sunday to protest the ban on toys entering Gaza.”


Excerpt: Israeli security officials are expected to meet this week to discuss easing the blockade of the Gaza Strip, following U.S. President Barack Obama's recent criticism of the "continuing humanitarian crisis" there.

So far, Israel has made do with weak promises to reconsider its policy, but Obama's Cairo speech Thursday - in which he said the blockade devastates Palestinian families and does not serve Israel's security interests - may push Jerusalem to take action.

The Defense Ministry department responsible for coordinating government activities in the territories began assessing the closure two weeks ago to determine whether to advocate any changes.

The top Israel Defense Forces officers involved in the assessment are due to explain their positions to Defense Minister Ehud Barak this week. The matter is slated to be discussed by the cabinet at a later stage.

Although Israel has reduced the amount and type of goods entering Gaza, Palestinians are still receiving medicine and medical equipment, gas and food. However, Israel still bans "dual-use" goods - those it classifies as potentially enabling terror activities - such as construction materials.



2. Report from Reuters about the dismal prospects of Tony Blair’s sewage treatment project in Gaza because of the blockade. (Would just like to point out that Hamas had won a free and fair election that preceded "the violent take-over.”)


Excerpt: Middle East envoy Tony Blair's signature project in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip could collapse because of Israeli restrictions on bringing in equipment, an internal World Bank memo obtained by Reuters said.

The $75 million (110 million pound) north Gaza sewage treatment project was the centrepiece of an economic package spearheaded by the former prime minister to try to boost Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

In a June 4 memo to donors, the World Bank said Israel has prevented delivery of critical equipment to the project since March.

The equipment included pipes, cement and spare parts.

Attempts to hire building contractors failed last year.

"No bid was submitted as the bidders did not want to run into the security risk in Gaza," the World Bank said. "The failure of attracting bidders in the second round will be devastative to the project."

International donors and Gaza residents view the sewage project as urgent. In 2007, a flood of raw sewage from a plant in north Gaza killed several people.

But like other Western-backed infrastructure projects in the territory, Blair's have suffered lengthy delays because of an Israeli-led blockade which was tightened after Hamas's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

3. And an article from the IMEMC about the Israeli Army’s destruction of water infrastructure in a village near Hebron.


Excerpt: The Israeli army has been trying to take out water and electric systems of the small village Baqua, north of the Southern West Bank city of Hebron on Monday morning. Around 5 people sustained injuries as they tried to stop the Israeli army from demolishing their water wells. Jeff Halper, from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) was arrested for trying to obstruct the military.

The Israeli army arrived at the village around six in the morning, bringing three cranes, four bulldozers and numerous back-up and support vehicles.

A local witness from the Christian Peacemaker Team told IMEMC that the army had been targeting four different sites in the area. It is known that at least six water wells were demolished by the Israeli army. Two wells are expected to have been destroyed, as the Israeli machinery has been seen at the location of the wells.

Irrigation pipes have been confiscated by the military and at least one electric tower has been taken down.

Villagers that tried to stop the destruction of their property sustained injuries as they were beaten by soldiers.


Gaza Digest 90, 6/8/09

News Clips: Four Palestinian fighters were killed along the Gaza border by Israeli soldiers on Monday; Israeli security officials are expected to meet this week to discuss easing the blockade of the Gaza Strip, following U.S. President Barack Obama's recent criticism of the "continuing humanitarian crisis" there; Senior U.S. officials, including President Barack Obama's Mideast envoy George Mitchell, say they might propose immediate talks on setting Israel's border along the West Bank; Israel will be forced to acknowledge the necessity of a future Palestinian state because there are no signs that the Obama administration will yield on this issue, an Israeli diplomatic source told Israel Radio on Saturday; United States President Barack Obama on Friday postponed moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by an additional six months, Israel Radio reported; U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dismissed on Friday reports that Israel and the Bush administration had an understanding under which Israel could keep expanding settlements on the West Bank; Israeli forces killed a demonstrator named Yousef Akil Srour, aged 36, with live ammunition in the West Bank village of Ni’lin during the weekly non-violent protest against the Wall; Meanwhile, five demonstrators were injured in confrontations with security forces in the anti-wall rally in Bil'in; South African Judge Richard Goldstone, the head of a United Nations team investigating possible war crimes by Israel and Hamas during the Gaza war, said Thursday he had been shocked by the scale of the destruction in the Palestinian areas; The team also announced Thursday that it will hold public hearings with the war's victims later this month in Gaza and Geneva.


1. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza has collected evidence of Israeli War Crimes during Operation Cast Lead and plans to file lawsuits in Spain, as reported by Haaretz.


Palestinian lawyers have prepared 936 lawsuits against Israel over alleged war crimes committed during its three-week offensive against Hamas in Gaza, the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel reported Saturday.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza has recorded the cases, the magazine said, which include alleged incidents of children shot at close range, women burned by white phosphorus shells and entire families buried under their houses.

According to Der Spiegel, the center hopes to try the cases in Spain's National Court in Madrid, where a lawsuit was filed in January against senior Israeli officials over the 2002 killing of Hamas leader Salah Shehadeh.

"Winning a case, just one, would be enough," Iyad al-Alami, the head of the center, was quoted as saying. "Then I would retire immediately, because I would have achieved everything."


2. As the analyses of Obama’s speech last week in Cairo keep pouring forth, thought it was worth sharing this one from Noam Chomsky via Alternet.


Excerpt: Overlooked in the debate over settlements is that even if Israel were to accept Phase I of the Road Map, that would leave in place the entire settlement project that has already been developed, with decisive U.S. support, to ensure that Israel will take over the valuable land within the illegal "separation wall" (including the primary water supplies of the region), as well as the Jordan Valley, thus imprisoning what is left, which is being broken up into cantons by settlement/infrastructure salients extending far to the east.

Unmentioned as well is that Israel is taking over Greater Jerusalem, the site of its major current development programs, displacing many Arabs, so that what remains to Palestinians will be separated from the center of their cultural, economic and sociopolitical life.

Also unmentioned is that all of this is in violation of international law, as conceded by the government of Israel after the 1967 conquest, and reaffirmed by Security Council resolutions and the International Court of Justice. Also unmentioned are Israel's successful operations since 1991 to separate the West Bank from Gaza, since turned into a prison where survival is barely possible, further undermining the hopes for a viable Palestinian state.


3. From The American Prospect comes this article about West Bank settlement expansion.

Excerpt: Settlement homes aren't quite the giveaways they were a few years ago. But they are still cheap, subsidized housing that continues to draw Israelis to move to the West Bank. In 2007, the last year for which there are official figures, the settlement population (not including annexed East Jerusalem) grew by 14,500 people. Of that growth, 37 percent was due to veteran Israelis or new immigrants moving to occupied territory. The "natural growth" argument is intended to cover up the continued, state-backed effort to encourage this migration.

The same official figures show over twice the rate of natural increase in the settlements than in Israel as a whole. Yes, the settler population is younger, meaning more women of childbearing age, and yes, much of it is Orthodox and puts a high value on large families. But people express their values more when the material conditions allow them to. Inexpensive housing makes it easier for younger couples to start having children and for families to be larger. That's especially true of the kind of housing available in many settlements: small, inexpensive homes that couples can buy when they don't have a lot of money, expecting to expand them later. The construction style is meant to "entice" people to come to settlements, as a realtor told me. Inside Israel such homes aren't available, she said. Put differently, even natural growth is unnaturally high in settlements. A construction freeze threatens that pattern.

Netanyahu and his partners don't want any of this to stop. They want settlements to keep growing, in order to block an Israeli withdrawal and a two-state solution. Obama wants a freeze as the first step toward a solution. The natural-growth argument is worse than a distraction; it's a scam. Let the buyer beware.


4. As the crippling blockade on building materials (and books, crayons, pumpkins, musical instruments, toys, paper, light bulbs…) for Gaza continues, IRIN reports on a school for handicapped children that is being built with clay.


Excerpt: Local Palestinian NGO Mercy Association for Children began building a school for handicapped children in Gaza City on 24 May to test a recently developed method using clay blocks, salt and rubble - with the source material coming mainly from the hundreds of buildings demolished during the Israeli offensive (27 December 2008 - 18 January 2009).

Fourteen construction workers on the 5,000 square metre building site in the Shujayah neighbourhood of the city haul buckets of clay for moulding into large blocks from which the structure, with its domed ceiling, will be made.

“If the school, upon completion, proves structurally sound we will move forward with other construction projects in Gaza,” said lead engineer Maher Batroukh of the Mercy Association for Children. “The school is the first building of its kind in Gaza.”

The three-storey school, occupying about 1,025 square metres, will contain no steel, cement or concrete, said Batroukh.

The US$190,000 project is being funded by the Kuwaiti charity Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development, and will take at least six months to complete, according to Mercy Association for Children project manager Muna Abu Shareh.


5. And finally, a report from The Guardian about fraudulent tunnel investment schemes that are robbing some in Gaza of their savings.

Excerpt: At first the tunnels emerged as smuggling routes; then they became the vital lifeline for a Gaza under economic siege by Israel. But many people who invested in the tunnels now see them quite differently - as a source of ruination.

The tunnel schemes were advertised as opportunities for doubling and trebling money by unscrupulous figures linked to powerful businessmen in Gaza and, allegedly, to senior officials in Hamas, but have instead led to huge losses for ordinary residents of the Strip.

According to Hamas's economics minister, Ziad al-Zaza, whose office is investigating the issue, some $100m has been taken fraudulently from would-be entrepreneurs. Others suggest the figure could be closer to $500m.

There have been many brutal phases in Gazan history, culminating in the Israeli invasion at the turn of the year, which laid waste much of the Strip's fragile infrastructure. But the hitherto untold story of the great Gazan tunnel scam is notable for being self-inflicted and, therefore, particularly depressing for a beleaguered population.

As Omar Shaban, an analyst from a local thinktank, says: "The harm done to Gaza goes well beyond the savings lost in the investment schemes. The tunnels distort Gaza's social structure. They destroy the values that a state requires to function. In fact, they present no values that people can believe in."




Gaza Digest 89, 6/5/09

News Clips: A team charged with leading the UN's fact-finding mission over alleged Israeli war crimes departed Gaza on Friday, according to a border spokesperson; On Thursday, the Palestinian Government Workers Union, the Health Workers Union and the Teachers Union issued a press release welcoming the Cairo speech of the US president, Barack Obama, especially his statements on the two-state solution, rejecting settlements, and calling for ending the Palestinian suffering; Israeli settlers established a new illegal West Bank outpost on Thursday, dedicating it partly to US President Barack Obama; Major projects and investments spearheaded by Middle East envoy Tony Blair and Western powers to promote economic growth in the Palestinian territories have had little effect, the World Bank said on Thursday because Israeli restrictions on the Palestinians are holding up many of the projects; At around 9 am on Thursday, six Palestinian fishermen were abducted by the Israeli Navy whilst fishing in Palestinian territorial waters.

1. Reports about Israeli, Palestinian, American and Arab responses to Obama’s speech in Cairo yesterday are all over the papers, the Internet and the airwaves. The general review is “mixed positive,” as they say in Variety. This piece by Ali Abunimah from the Electronic Intifada is more negative than most, but since the idea of a “one-state solution” is not given any airtime in the mainstream press, I thought it was an important one to highlight.


Excerpt: Some people are prepared to give Obama a pass for all this because he is at last talking tough on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. In Cairo, he said: "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop."

These carefully chosen words focus only on continued construction, not on the existence of the settlements themselves; they are entirely compatible with the peace process industry consensus that existing settlements will remain where they are for ever. This raises the question of where Obama thinks he is going. He summarized Palestinians' "legitimate aspirations" as being the establishment of a "state." This has become a convenient slogan to that is supposed to replace for Palestinians their pursuit of rights and justice that the proposed state actually denies. Obama is already on record opposing Palestinian refugees' right to return home, and has never supported the right of Palestinian citizens of Israel to live free from racist and religious incitement, persecution and practices fanned by Israel's highest office holders and written into its laws.

He may have more determination than his predecessor but he remains committed to an unworkable two-state "vision" aimed not at restoring Palestinian rights, but preserving Israel as an enclave of Israeli Jewish privilege. It is a dead end.

There was one sentence in his speech I cheered for and which he should heed: "Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail."

2. Oxfam issued a report on Wednesday about the situation in Gaza with recommendations for action. This coverage of the report comes from the Alternative Information Center.


Excerpt: In June 2009 the blockade on the Gaza Strip enters its third year. The intense closure policy, coupled with the government of Israel’s recent military operation ‘Cast Lead’, has had a devastating impact on the lives and livelihoods of one and a half million Gazans, pushing them further into poverty and aid dependency.

Parties to the conflict and the international community have, to varying degrees, prioritised their own political objectives over people’s rights and needs, leaving Gazans sitting on the ruins of their homes. By attempting to isolate Hamas, the government of Israel and key international donor governments and institutions have in fact isolated the people of Gaza, thereby reducing chances of securing a peaceful, just and durable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The current situation cannot be allowed to persist. Israeli, Palestinian and world leaders must abide by their respective legal obligations to take concrete actions to end the collective punishment of Gazan civilians by securing the full and immediate opening of all the Gaza crossings.

3. Interesting analysis from Jonathan Cook on the Electronic Intifada of the varying media reports on the numbers of settlers in the West Bank.


Excerpt: There are about half a million Jews living illegally on land occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. Give or take the odd few thousand (Israel is slow to update its figures), there are nearly 300,000 settlers in the West Bank and a further 200,000 in East Jerusalem.

Sounds simple. So what is to be made of this fairly typical line from a report issued by AFP last week: "More than 280,000 settlers currently live in settlements dotted throughout the Palestinian territory that Israel captured during the 1967 Six Day War"?

Or this from AP: "The US considers the settlements -- home to nearly 300,000 Israelis -- obstacles to peace because they are built on captured territory the Palestinians claim for a future state"?

Where are the missing 200,000 settlers?

The answer is that they are to be found in East Jerusalem, which increasingly means for agency reporters that they are not considered settlers at all.

In many reports, East Jerusalem's settler population is left out of the equation. But even when the news agencies do note the number of settlers there, they are invariably referenced separately from those in the West Bank or described simply as "Jews."

Worse, this misleading approach has had a trickle-down effect. Major newspapers' own staff make the same basic errors.

Thus, The New York Times blithely reported last week that the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, had made a "brusque call on Wednesday for a complete freeze of construction in settlements on the West Bank."

In reality, she had said that the US president wanted "to see a stop to settlements -- not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions." The implication was that the White House wants a freeze on all settlements, including in East Jerusalem.

This is not linguistic nitpicking.

Israel's attempt to differentiate between the status of the West Bank and that of East Jerusalem, even though these adjacent territories are equally Palestinian and were both captured by Israel in 1967, lies at the heart of the conflict and its resolution.

Israel's official position, accepted by its politicians of the left and right, is that in 1967 Israel "unified" Jerusalem by annexing its eastern, Palestinian half, and made the city the "eternal capital of the Jewish state."


Gaza Digest 88, 6/4/09

News Clips: In an effort to facilitate unfettered movement of Palestinians in the West Bank, the Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday removed two roadblocks in the Ramallah area, and the army said it would man an additional West Bank checkpoint around the clock so as to permit Palestinian passage 24 hours a day; An update on the aforementioned announcement—on Wednesday United Nations officials found that Israel did not dismantle two West Bank military checkpoints as promised; The Israel Defense Forces has declared the area around the West Bank city of Nablus a closed military zone, in order to prevent left-wing activists, including and especially the women from Machsom Watch, from entering the area; Right-wing Israeli Jewish activists outside the American Consulate in Jerusalem protested Obama administration statements regarding Jewish settlements; Also Wednesday, left-wing groups, including Meretz, Hadash, Gush Shalom and others, announced that they were holding a peace rally Saturday night in Tel Aviv; in a move sure to infuriate the Obama Adminstration, Israel's Interior Ministry on Tuesday approved a plan to build a new hotel in eastern Jerusalem that would entail demolishing a Palestinian open-air market and kindergarten; in his speech in Cairo Thursday morning, U.S. President Barack Obama reaffirmed Washington's strong backing for a Palestinian state, highlighting his administration's commitment to follow through on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


1. Our very own Medea Benjamin, who was in Gaza until Tuesday and is now in Cairo and will soon head to Israel to try to enter Gaza again, wrote this stirring piece that was on The Electronic Intifada and then picked up by a number of other online news digests and blogs. Medea left Gaza carrying with her a letter to Obama from Hamas. (Can already envision the nasty e-mails coming into our staff e-mail accounts in response to that bit of news.)


Excerpt: Obama won great support from the American people during the presidential campaign when he said that America must talk to its adversaries, without preconditions. But his administration now puts ridiculous conditions on talking to Hamas: It must recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept previous international agreements. Israel, on the other hand, does not have to recognize Palestine, renounce violence or abide by past agreements. Putting preconditions on just one side of the conflict makes it impossible to move a peace process forward.

While Obama prepares for his trip to the Middle East, more than 150 people -- mostly Americans -- are trying to enter war-torn Gaza through both the Egyptian and Israeli borders. Organized under the umbrella of the peace group CODEPINK, this is the largest group of Americans to travel to Gaza since the siege began.

The delegations, invited by the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), are bringing medicines, toys, school supplies and playground building materials. An estimated 1,346 Gazan children were left without one or more of their parents as a result of the Israeli assault and the majority were left traumatized and depressed.

That's why the peace group CODEPINK has launched an international petition calling on Obama to visit Gaza and see for himself the devastation and deprivation that continues to plague the region's 1.5 million people almost six months after the invasion. Just this week, Obama tacked a new stop to his upcoming Middle Eastern visit: Saudi Arabia. If he can make room for a private dinner with the King, then surely he can find the time to go to Gaza. Isn't it more important for Obama to visit a region where 1,400 people have recently been killed and thousands of homes, schools and mosques destroyed? Isn't it more important for him to see how the Israelis are using the yearly $3 billion in military aid from US taxpayers?

Obama should take the opportunity, during this visit to Egypt next week, to visit Gaza. He should express his condolences for the loss of so many innocent lives, call for a lifting of the inhumane siege that continues to imprison an entire population, and support an investigation of how US military funds to Israel are being spent.


2. Great interview with Amira Hass from Democracy Now.


 Excerpt: The actions of the Israeli army during its twenty-two-day assault on the Gaza Strip earlier this year are back in the spotlight with the arrival of a United Nations delegation in Gaza this Monday. The fifteen-member team will be investigating possible war crimes and other violations of international law during Israel’s military assault. It’s headed by South African judge Richard Goldstone, who was the former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Israel opposes the investigation and denied the delegation visas, forcing them to enter Gaza through the Egyptian-controlled Rafah crossing.


3. An answer to the piece I posted yesterday from Politico about complaints in Congress about Obama’s stance on the settlements, this article from Haaretz says that American Jews are not so happy about Netanyahu’s stubbornness about the issue.

For the first time in America's decades of jousting with Israel over West Bank settlements, an American president seems to have succeeded in isolating the settlements issue and disconnecting it from other elements of support for Israel.

It is a disentanglement now seen most clearly in Congress, which in the past served as Israel's stronghold against administration pressure on the issue. But when Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu came to Capitol Hill for a May 18 meeting after being pressed by President Obama to freeze the expansion of West Bank settlements, he was "stunned," Netanyahu aides said, to hear what seemed like a well-coordinated attack against his stand on settlements. The criticism came from congressional leaders, key lawmakers dealing with foreign relations and even from a group of Jewish members.

They included Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee; California Democrat Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, and California Rep. Henry Waxman, a senior Democrat.

The Jewish lawmakers among them believed "it was their responsibility to make him [Netanyahu] very, very aware of the concerns of the administration and Congress," said a congressional aide briefed on the meeting. The aide, who declined to be identified, stressed that despite the argument on settlement issues, members of Congress remained fully supportive of Israel on all other issues, including the need to deal with Iran and the concern over Hamas and Hezbollah's activity.

In their meetings, according to the congressional aide, lawmakers rejected Netanyahu's call for Palestinian reciprocity on terrorism as a precondition and kept pressing him on the need to stop building in settlements.

Another staffer on Capitol Hill however, stressed that the heated atmosphere should not be interpreted as a sign of a breakdown in relations. "Jewish members," the staffer said, "express their views very freely" when meeting with Israeli leaders, and did so with Netanyhau's predecessors as well.

The Israeli prime minister also found little support for his position on settlements from the organized Jewish community. Jewish communal groups have largely remained silent and did not spring to Netanyahu’s defense.

"Even the most conservative institutions of Jewish American life don't want to go to war over settlement policy," said David Twersky, who was until recently the senior adviser on international affairs at the American Jewish Congress. "They might say the administration is making too much of a big deal of it, but they will not argue that Jews have the right to settle all parts of Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel]."



4. This profile from the New York Times of an eighteen-year-old Palestinian named Shehade Shelaldeh who runs a stringed instrument repair shop in Ramallah also describes a music program, Al Kamandjati (The Violinist) that offers training to Palestinian children in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and Southern Lebanon. You can read more about Al Kamandjati here

Excerpt: In a place all too familiar with the sounds of gunfire, military vehicles and explosions, he said, “Al Kamandjati taught us to hear music.”

The center, and Mr. Shelaldeh’s acquisition of a trade born in the workshops of 17th-century Italy, are part of a recently kindled interest in classical music, both Western and Oriental, in the occupied territories. Parents, students and teachers here say it comes from the realization that culture is an effective assertion of national identity, particularly at a moment when the prospects for a Palestinian state seem to be receding. It is also a way to give idle young people something to focus on.

**

Toward the end of his eight years at the conservatory, Mr. Aburedwan decided to establish a music school in his hometown. He rounded up donations of money and instruments, invited colleagues to the area for workshops and pushed for the renovation of a building in Ramallah’s old town. Al Kamandjati opened in January 2006. Operating on a shoestring budget of about $400,000 a year, it now has about 400 students studying both Western and Oriental instruments.

“I want these children to achieve something,” Mr. Aburedwan said. “That’s my dream, that they have a way of expression, a way of living. I want these kids to participate in the building of a Palestinian cultural future.”



Gaza Digest 87, 6/3/09

News Clips: Hamas officials met with the UN fact-finding team, headed by South African Justice Richard Goldstone, on Monday night at the end of the first day of the team’s field visit to Gaza; Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak began a round of meetings with top U.S. officials, including an unscheduled meeting with President Obama, on Monday in a bid to head off an increasingly sharp dispute between the United States and Israel over the expansion of Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory; On the eve of a visit to the Middle East and Europe, President Obama on Tuesday played down a dispute with Israel over his demand for a suspension of further Jewish settlement in the West Bank but reiterated his call for a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians that Israel’s hawkish leaders have not accepted; United States President Barack Obama is dispatching his envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, to Israel early next week in order to hear official responses to U.S. demands for a halt to West Bank settlement building; United States President Barack Obama intends to give Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu four to six weeks to provide an "updated position" regarding construction in West Bank settlements and the two-state principle; Some 70% of Israeli-Arab villages in northern Israel have no access to safe rooms or bomb shelters, and 25% do not have emergency sirens, according to a report released Tuesday by the Israeli-Arab rights group "Mubadarah".


1. Okay friends, this article from Politico about members of Congress pushing back on Obama’s tough love for Israel is your clarion call to action! After you read this post, please get on the phone to your member of Congress (if you don’t have the number handy, call the Congressional Switchboard at 202-224-3121 or 800-839-5276 and ask to be connected to your rep’s office) to say that you support President Obama’s call for a settlement freeze in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. If you are a supporter of a two-state solution or if you just want to keep the pressure on for a settlement freeze, you can go one step further and sign Brit Tzedek v’Shalom’s (Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace) pledge “We’ve Got Your Back, Mr. President”



Excerpt: “There’s a line between articulating U.S. policy and seeming to be pressuring a democracy on what are their domestic policies, and the president is tiptoeing right up to that line,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who said he’d heard complaints from constituents during the congressional recess. “I would have liked to hear the president talk more about the Palestinian obligation to cut down on terrorism.”

 “I don’t think anybody wants to dictate to an ally what they have to do in their own national security interests,” said Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), who said he thinks there’s “room for compromise.”

“I have to hear specifically from the administration exactly how they define their terms and is there room for defining the terms,” he said, referring to the terms “settlement” and “natural growth.”

And Republicans have been more sharply critical of the pressure on Israel.

“It’s misguided. Behind that pressure is the assumption that somehow resolving the so-called settlements will somehow lead to the ultimate goal” of disarming Iran, said Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House minority whip. “A backward assumption is being made that if we deal with the Israel-Palestine question, somehow all the problems in the Middle East will be solved,” he said.

So far, anyway, Obama isn’t backing down. He told National Public Radio Monday that he believes the U.S. must be “honest” with Israel about how the situation in the region needs to improve. He also renewed his call for a freeze on all Israeli settlements, and said the Palestinians must do more to improve security.

"I don't think we have to change strong support for Israel," Obama said. "We do have to retain a constant belief in the possibilities of negotiations that will lead to peace. And that's going to require, from my view, a two-state solution."

"Part of being a good friend is being honest," Obama said. "And I think there have been times where we are not as honest as we should be about the fact that the current direction, the current trajectory, in the region is profoundly negative, not only for Israeli interests but also U.S. interests. And that's part of a new dialogue that I'd like to see encouraged in the region."

The pro-Israel lobby AIPAC last week got the signatures of 329 members of Congress, including key figures in both parties, on a letter calling on the administration to work “closely and privately” with Israel — in contrast to the current public pressure.

2. A slideshow with photos by Rina Castelnuovo about Israeli Jewish settlers in the West Bank from the New York Times. This should motivate you to make those calls if the article above didn’t. You can also see the related New York Times article entitled “Israel and U.S. Can’t Close Split on Settlements” by Isabel Kershner.


Excerpt: Extremist settlers rioted on Monday in various parts of the northern West Bank. They were protesting the Israeli government's recent actions against some tiny outposts, including their possible evacuation. The settlers live among 2.5 million Palestinians in about 120 settlements, which much of the world considers a violation of international law, as well as in dozens of outposts erected without official Israeli authorization. Several Palestinians were wounded during the riots. Six Israeli settlers and a rightist member of Parliament were arrested and later released. If Israel built all the housing units already approved in the nation's overall master plan for settlements, it would almost double the number of settler homes in the West Bank, according to unpublished official data provided to The New York Times.


3. A blog post from The Nation by Roan Carey, who is with the CODEPINK delegations in Gaza.

Excerpt: How would you feel if you found out that an American school, paid for with your tax dollars, was bombed and completely destroyed by a US ally? This happened in Gaza just a few months ago, during Israel's now-infamous Operation Cast Lead.

I've been touring Gaza for the past three days as part of a Code Pink delegation, and the concrete rubble and twisted rebar of the American International School in Gaza is just one of the many horrifying images we've seen on this trip. The school, which taught American progressive values to Palestinian kids in grades K-12, was bombed by US-supplied Israeli F-16s in early January. The Israelis claimed, without supplying evidence, that Hamas fighters had fired rockets from the school. Now several hundred kids have not only lost the school they dearly loved; they have been given a very different lesson in American values, one no doubt unintended by the school's founders and teachers.

The people of Gaza suffered immensely from the Israeli assault, which not only killed some 1,400 and injured 5,000 but destroyed or heavily damaged mosques, schools, hospitals, universities, and industrial and other business establishments, in addition to thousands of private homes. Dr. Marwan Sultan, who practices at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, told me his hospital was so damaged they had to send all patients to al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City--which was itself damaged. The bombing of one school in Beit Lahiya killed about forty kids and injured a hundred, Sultan told me. He saw scenes of death and mutilation that still give him nightmares. Thousands are living in tent cities all over the Strip, and the entire population of Gaza is being strangled to this day by a blockade that is choking off any possibility of reconstruction or recovery.

Make no mistake about it: the blockade, directly enforced by Israel and Egypt but conspired in by their superpower patron in Washington, is a continuing act of war against an entire civilian population of 1.5 million, a form of collective punishment and a crime against humanity. John Ging, director of operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which officially invited Code Pink to come to Gaza, told our delegation that billions in aid had been promised in the wake of Israel's massacre, but so far nothing had arrived. Our delegation, he said, is the first concrete action of solidarity with an oppressed, long-suffering population. Four months after a devastating conflict, he added, the siege continues. "The first thing we need to see is the opening up of crossing points and an end to collective punishment because of the political failures and security problems created by a few." It's a matter of life and death, he said, "and we're running out of time…. The people of Gaza are asking for help, justice and the rule of law."


4.  From Jason Ditz of Antiwar.com comes this brief report about the new “buffer zone” along the borders of Gaza that keep farmers from their land.

Last week, the Israeli government dropped exploding boxes full of leaflets across the Gaza Strip, informing the Gazans that if they came within 300 meters of the border they would be shot. The leaflets damaged several buildings and injured a child, but the real harm is yet to come.

According to the United Nations, the 300-meter buffer has cut the Gazans off from 30 percent of the strip’s arable land. “The war increased the amount of land destroyed, particularly in the border areas, and the farmers can’t replant anything because it’s too dangerous,” according to one UN official. “The Israeli soldiers, they shoot at everything - dogs, sheep. They are very tense.”

The Israeli invasion of the strip earlier this year caused thousands of civilian casualties and damaged a significant portion of the strip’s buildings. Israel has barred reconstruction materials from the strip, and has severely limited the sorts of food allowed in. At one point they barred all pasta from entering Gaza.

Since the war, Israel has shot several Palestinian farmers for tending fields near the border fence. The region’s Hamas government says that the strip is capable of producing enough watermelons and onions to nearly satisfy domestic food demand, though it is unclear if these projections accounted for losing such a significant portion of farmland.




Gaza Digest 86, 6/2/09

News Clips: More than three-quarters of the House of Representatives signed an AIPAC-backed letter spearheaded by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to President Obama on Middle East peace; Britain's University and College Union voted overwhelmingly to support a boycott of Israeli universities and academics at its annual meeting last week, but the vote was declared invalid after union attorneys said the resolution could trigger legal action; The New York Times reported that the Obama administration is considering a series of symbolic measures to force Israel to halt all construction in West Bank settlements, including possibly dropping the U.S.' near uniform support of Israel in the United Nations and withholding its usual veto on resolutions critical of Israel; Hours after this report from the New York Times came a statement from Robert Wood of the State Department saying that the U.S. will maintain its support of Israel in the United Nations; in an interview with NPR President Obama suggested that the United States' special relationship with Israel requires some “tough love”; Washington is furious over the Israeli Interior Ministry's anticipated approval of a plan to build a new hotel in East Jerusalem, just 100 meters from the Old City's walls and requiring the demolition of a wholesale market and a kindergarten.

1. According to this report from Reuters via Haaretz, PM Netanyahu is considering easing the blockade on Gaza to allow some building materials in for Western-funded projects.

Excerpt: "Instead of having a list of what can go in, is it possible to have a list of what can't go in?" one official quoted Netanyahu as asking.

In addition to banning certain items, Israel now limits which types of authorized goods can go in on a day-to-day basis. Israeli and Western officials said it was unclear when any changes would be made and how long they might last.

Israeli and Western officials briefed on the deliberations say Netanyahu was reassessing whether the blockade was weakening Hamas as intended.

"We have to find the right balance between improving the lot of the innocent civilian population and, at the same time, not doing anything to strengthen Hamas," an Israeli official quoted the prime minister as telling his cabinet on Sunday.

U.S., European and international envoys have sought to convince Netanyahu that Israeli restrictions were bolstering Hamas, instead of weakening it, by forcing Gaza's 1.5 million residents to rely on smuggling tunnels, which the Islamists control, for many basic goods.

2. Under International Human Rights Law an occupying power is responsible for the maintenance of infrastructure, health, education, quality of life, shelter and public works of the territory it occupies. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories, international donors are basically underwriting many aspects of the Israeli Occupation. So, for example, the U.S. pays for and provides the military hardware and weaponry used to destroy the infrastructure in Gaza, and then donates money to the Palestinians to repair the damage these very weapons have wrought. This article from Reuters describes a cash flow crisis for the Palestinian Authority as it awaits the money promised by international donors. The economic and physical stranglehold Israel has on the West Bank and Gaza has reduced the Palestinians to depending upon the charity of the world.


Excerpt: The Western-backed government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has so far received only a fraction of the $1.5 billion in donor assistance needed to meet its budget in 2009, the IMF said on Monday.

The budgetary aid received by Palestinians over the past five months totals $328 million, less than 55 percent of the amount needed to pay monthly expenditures, a senior International Monetary Fund (IMF) official told reporters.

To offset the shortfall in donor funds, Abbas's Palestinian Authority has been forced to borrow from private banks, but the authority is close to reaching its borrowing limit, said Oussama Kanaan, IMF representative in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Kanaan did not give a figure.

But Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, in a statement following Monday's cabinet meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said that his government had taken out $350 million worth of bank loans to meet its obligations.

He said the Palestinian Authority faced a "suffocating financial crisis," but that he would still be able to pay public workers by June 7 thanks to the bank lending.

Kanaan said the Palestinian Authority could face a "serious liquidity crisis" unless donors increased their budget support to at least $120 million per month.


3. Israeli Jewish settlers are using the courts to try to evict Palestinians from East Jerusalem according to this report from Reuters via the Washington Post.

Israeli settlers are waging court battles to evict dozens of Palestinians from homes in an East Jerusalem neighborhood, a move threatening to widen Israel's rift with U.S. President Barack Obama over settlements.

They are trying to reclaim plots of land in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood which they say were owned by Jews before Israel's creation in 1948. They have already won property rights to six Arab homes, whose residents were subsequently evicted.

Palestinians and an Israeli rights group say settlers are trying to evict a further 27 Arab families from 28 buildings.

"Stop ethnic cleansing," reads a sign erected outside the home of Maher Hanun, a 51-year-old father of three, who faces a July 19 deadline to evacuate the structure in Sheikh Jarrah, near the walled Old City of Jerusalem.

Such acts could cloud Israel's relations with its main ally, the United States.

Obama, who is to address the Muslim world in a speech in Egypt Thursday, renewed a call for a halt to settlement activity during talks last week with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Settlers have moved into six Arab buildings in Sheikh Jarrah, home to consulates and trendy restaurants. Armed men guard the buildings where settlers have hoisted Israeli flags to assert Jewish dominance.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed not to accept limits on building of Jewish enclaves within Jerusalem, including the Arab east. He has also rebuffed U.S. calls for a full settlement freeze in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Abbas has said Arab East Jerusalem will be the capital of a future Palestinian state he wants to establish alongside Israel in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East War and considers the whole city as its "united and eternal" capital, a claim that has not won international recognition.




Gaza Digest 85, 6/1/09

News Clips: The Israeli ministerial legislative committee rejected on Sunday a bill stating that those who wish to retain Israeli citizenship would have to declare their loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state; Three policemen from a force loyal to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and Fatah leader, were killed Saturday when they tried to arrest militants from the Islamist movement Hamas in the city of Qalqilya, and two Hamas fighters were killed, along with the owner of the house in which they were sheltering; Senior members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet reiterated Sunday that the government has rejected a U.S. demand to halt all activity in West Bank settlements, despite strongly-worded demands from the Obama administration to do so; Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the cabinet on Sunday that he felt that there was no crisis in the Gaza Strip, and said during a security briefing, “There is no hunger or crisis in Gaza”; Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, in his trip to Moscow this week, will try to balance out Israel's overriding reliance on American diplomatic, financial and military support by strengthening its ties to Russia; Dr Richard Goldstone and his UN fact finding mission investigating violations of international law have entered Gaza thru Rafah; Israeli settlers angered by the dismantlement of their “outpost” assaulted Palestinian workers, injuring six of them, at the Qedumim crossroads between the cities of Nablus and Qalqiliya, in the northern West Bank early on Monday morning.

1. From the Washington Post comes this amazing compendium of statements by U.S. presidents about illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories followed by the number of Israeli Jewish settlers at the time the statements were made. This is why the U.S. has to do more than talk—there have to be actions to accompany the words. How about conditioning U.S. military aid to Israel on the immediate halt to settlement expansion, home demolitions in the East Jerusalem, and the blockade of Gaza?

Excerpt:
"Our position on the settlements is very clear. We do not think they are legal, and they are obviously an impediment to peace."
-- President Jimmy Carter, April 12, 1980
Total settlement population: 61,500
"The immediate adoption of a settlements freeze by Israel, more than any other action, could create the confidence needed for wider participation in these talks. Further settlement activity is in no way necessary for the security of Israel."
-- President Ronald Reagan, Sept. 1, 1982
Total settlement population (1983): 106,595
"My position is that the foreign policy of the United States says we do not believe there should be new settlements in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem. And I will conduct that policy as if it's firm, which it is."
-- President George H.W. Bush, March 3, 1999
Total settlement population: 227,500


2. This piece from Znet by Ramzy Barzoud (author and editor of Palestine Chronicle) compares Netanyahu’s visit to D.C. during the Clinton Administration to his visit last week, arguing that American rhetoric has stayed the same but the situation for Palestinians has degenerated. He also points out that the Obama’s best intentions can and probably will be undermined by cowardly Congress members afraid to have AIPAC turn on them. This makes our phone calls to Congress all the more important—and makes it equally important for us to support groups like J Street, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Brit Tzedek v'Shalom (Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace) as counterbalances to AIPAC baleful influence.


Following his meeting with Obama, Netanyahu made a visit to the US Congress, where he conferred with the "great friends of Israel". On his visit to Capitol Hill, he met House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader John Boehner. The Israeli leader also met members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Jewish legislators. He was given the same exceptional treatment enjoying by other Israeli leaders. Committee chairman Senator John Kerry was "encouraged by a number of things" Netanyahu had said. Following meeting with Congressional leaders, Netanyahu observed, as if breaking some unexpected news: there is "an American consensus" regarding "the special relationship we have between Israel and the United States". 



The game is on. Netanyahu will once again try to overwhelm the President of the United States by rallying the Congress behind him in preparation for any possible confrontation with Obama's administration. Obama, on the other hand, will attempt, however bashfully, to assert a new direction in US foreign policy - through tempting Israel by embracing harsher Iran policies and pressuring the Arabs to normalize with the Jewish state in exchange for Israel's mere promise of moving the peace process forward. 



In 1996, Netanyahu spoke of the immediate danger facing Israel, in reference to Iraq. Now Iraq - which had no weapons of mass destruction, after all - is no longer an "existential threat" to the state of Israel.



And now the Israeli leader has set his sights on Iran. "The challenge is the potential arming of Iran with nuclear weapons capabilities. That is a great danger to all of us. We have to do this in tandem. I was very encouraged to learn that this is the American policy. We're going to try to do it together, because if we do it together we'll get a lot further, a lot faster."



It might not take thirteen more years before Netanyahu's wishes come true, before getting a lot further, a lot faster, i.e. unleashing a war against Iran. But mark my words, Netanyahu, as well as those before him, as well as those after him, have no intentions of making peace with the Palestinians. He is simply waving a carrot before Obama to get what Israel wants, an attack on Iran. It's as simple as that. 



If Obama hesitates in confronting the new Israeli agenda, and if the Congress continues to treat Israel's security obsessions as top American priorities, there is no telling what the Middle East will look like the next time Netanyahu arrives in Washington to meet the new American president.


3. This piece from Ali Abunimah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, from The Nation argues that Netanyahu’s demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as “a Jewish state” is a non-starter for peace negotiations. Abunimah, is the author of the book “One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.”

Netanyahu did add one obstacle, however, when he came to Washington. In accord with his anticipated strategy of delay, he insisted that Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist as a "Jewish state" as a condition of any peace agreement. Obama seemingly endorsed this demand when he said, "It is in US national security interests to assure that Israel's security as an independent Jewish state is maintained."

Israel has pressed this demand with increasing fervor because Palestinians are on the verge of becoming the majority population in the territory it controls. Israel wants to ensure that any two-state solution--something that looks increasingly doubtful even to proponents--retains a Jewish majority. This explains the state's longstanding opposition, in defiance of international humanitarian law, to the return of Palestinian refugees who were expelled or fled from homes in what is now Israel.

But can Israel's demand be justified? A useful lens to examine its claim is the fundamental legal principle that there is no right without a remedy. If Israel has a "right to exist as a Jewish state," then what can it legitimately do if Palestinians living under its control "violate" this right by having "too many" non-Jewish babies? Can Israel expel non-Jews, fine them, strip them of citizenship or limit the number of children they can have? It is impossible to think of a "remedy" that does not do outrageous violence to universal human rights principles.

What if we apply Israel's claim to the United States? Because of the rapid growth of the Latino population in the past decade, Texas and California no longer have white majorities. Could either state declare that it has "a right to exist as a white-majority state" and take steps to limit the rights of non-whites? Could the United States declare itself officially a Christian nation and force Jews, Muslims or Hindus to pledge allegiance to a flag that bears a cross? While such measures may appeal to a tiny number of extremists, they would be unthinkable to anyone upholding twenty-first-century constitutional principles.

But Israeli leaders propose precisely such odious measures.

Already, Israel bans its citizens who marry non-citizen Palestinians from living in the country--a measure human rights activists have compared with the anti-miscegenation laws that once existed in Virginia and other states. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has long advocated that the nearly 1.5 million Palestinians who are citizens of Israel be "transferred" from the country in order to maintain its Jewish majority.

Recently, Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party has sponsored or supported several bills aimed at further curtailing the rights of non-Jews. One requires all citizens, including Palestinian Muslims and Christians, to swear allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state. Another proposes to punish anyone who commemorates the Nakba (the name Palestinians give to their forced dispossession in the months before and after the state of Israel was established) with up to three years in prison. Ironically, Lieberman is an immigrant who moved to Israel from Moldova three decades ago, while the people he seeks to expel and silence have lived on the land since long before May 1948.

And as Obama continues to remind us of America's "shared values" with Israel, another proposed bill passed its first reading in the Knesset this week. According to the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, the law would prescribe "one year in prison for anyone speaking against Israel's right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state"--making it a thought crime to advocate that Israel should be a democratic, nonracial state of all its citizens.

It would be sad indeed if the first African-American president of the United States were to defend in Israel exactly the kind of institutionalized bigotry the civil rights movement defeated in this country, a victory that made his election possible.



Gaza Digest 84, 5/29/09

News Clips: Increasingly fractious relations between the US and Israel hit a low unseen in nearly two decades today after the Jewish state rejected President Obama's demand for an end to settlement construction in the West Bank and Washington threatened to "press the point"; IN its annual report, Amnesty International has accused Israel of repeatedly violating the rules of armed conflict during its recent offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip; On Thursday Israeli commandos assassinated Abed al-Majid Dudin, 45, a senior Hamas militant in the West Bank who was wanted in connection with suicide attacks launched against Israel; Israeli police shut down a Palestinian theater in East Jerusalem on Thursday, forcing foreign writers taking part in an international literature festival to move elsewhere for the second time in a week; Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, met with the U.S President, Barack Obama, at the White House on Thursday, and told him that the Road Map Peace Plan and the Arab peace Initiative should be implemented by Israel without any changes.

1.  Phillip Weiss, who is in Gaza with the CODEPINK New York delegation, posted this wonderful piece on his MONDOWEISS Blog.

“Gaza is Alive,” Phillip Weiss, Mondoweiss, 5/28/09

Excerpt: I remember during the Gaza slaughter that some tried to stop commentators from comparing Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto. Now I am here and I find the analogy helpful. In the Warsaw ghetto, and in slavery in the south, or in Jim Crow 100 years later--in any of these historical episodes of persecution that had a racist component--it wasn't as if the victimized people laid down and died. No, the blacks of the south created a rich culture on whatever terms were afforded to them. And the books my mother gave me of the Warsaw ghetto conveyed the treasure of Jewish life and culture that persisted even under the most humiliating circumstances. So in Gaza, with Israeli jeeps creeping up one border and gunboats cruising along the other, and bomb craters everywhere, and no one allowed to pursue their dreams, Palestinians are still leading engaged, serious, and even at-time joyous lives. Last night I watched the European Cup finals with about 100 of them in a crowded restaurant. The cruelty of the fact that a global festival that calls on talent from across the world is in no real way open to the people in the place was lost for an hour or two amid the shouts for Messi and Barcelona.


2. This piece from Ethan Bronner in the New York Times describes the other side of life in Gaza—the “levels of deprivation short of catastrophe.”

Excerpt: For many Israelis, Gaza is a symbol of all that is wrong with Palestinian sovereignty, which they view increasingly as an opportunity for anti-Israel forces, notably Iran, to get within rocket range. Unless a way can be found to tie Gaza back to the West Bank politically and geographically while mitigating Israeli fears, a Palestinian state seems further away than ever.

That leaves Gaza suspended in a state of misery that defies easy categorization. It is, of course, crowded and poor but it is better off than nearly all of Africa as well as parts of Asia. There is no acute malnutrition, and infant mortality rates compare with those in Egypt and Jordan, according to Mahmoud Daher of the World Health Organization here.

This is because although Israel and Egypt have shut the borders for the past three years in an effort to squeeze Hamas, Israel rations aid daily, allowing in about 100 trucks of food and medicine. Military officers in Tel Aviv count the calories to avoid a disaster. And the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees runs schools and medical clinics that are clean and efficient.

But there are many levels of deprivation short of catastrophe, and Gaza inhabits most of them. It has almost nothing of a functioning economy apart from basic commerce and farming. Education has declined terribly; medical care is declining.

There are tens of thousands of educated and ambitious people here, teachers, engineers, translators, business managers, who have nothing to do but grow frustrated. They cannot practice their professions and they cannot leave. They collect welfare and smoke in cafes. A United Nations survey shows a spike in domestic violence.

Many people say they have started to take a small capsule known as Tramal, the commercial name for an opiate-like painkiller that increases sexual desire and a sense of control. Hamas has recently warned of imprisonment for those who traffic in and take the drug.

Yet the pills arrive, along with clothing, furniture and cigarettes, through the hundreds of tunnels punched into the desert at the southern border town of Rafah by rough-edged entrepreneurs who pay the Hamas authorities a tax on the goods.

Similar tunnels also serve as conduits for arms. Israel periodically bombs those in hopes of weakening Hamas, which says it will never recognize Israel and will reserve the right to use violence against it until it leaves all the land it won in the 1967 war. After that, there would be a 10-year truce while the next steps are contemplated, although the Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel in any borders.


3. In a report from The Guardian, Rory McCarthy cites a World Bank study about use and control of scarce water resources in the West Bank. I’ll bet you can already guess who is getting the best deal in this situation.

Excerpt: A deepening drought in the Middle East is aggravating a dispute over water resources after the World Bank found that Israel is taking four times as much water as the Palestinians from a vital shared aquifer.

The region faces a fifth consecutive year of drought this summer, but the World Bank report found huge disparities in water use between Israelis and Palestinians, although both share the mountain aquifer that runs the length of the occupied West Bank. Palestinians have access to only a fifth of the water supply, while Israel, which controls the area, takes the rest, the bank said.

Israelis use 240 cubic metres of water a person each year, against 75 cubic metres for West Bank Palestinians and 125 for Gazans, the bank said. Increasingly, West Bank Palestinians must rely on water bought from the Israeli national water company, Mekorot.

In some areas of the West Bank, Palestinians are surviving on as little as 10 to 15 litres a person each day, which is at or below humanitarian disaster response levels recommended to avoid epidemics. In Gaza, where Palestinians rely on an aquifer that has become increasingly saline and polluted, the situation is worse. Only 5%-10% of the available water is clean enough to drink.

The World Bank report, published last month, provoked sharp criticism from Israel, which disputed the figures and the scale of the problem on the Palestinian side. But others have welcomed the study and its findings.

Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli head of Friends of the Earth Middle East, said there was a clear failure to meet basic water needs for both Israelis and Palestinians, and that Israelis were taking "the lion's share".


4. Forty lonely protesters marched in Tel Aviv to decry the latest assault on free speech and democracy in Israel. Al-Jazeera reports on two new laws that are making their way through the legislative process in the Knesset—one that would make calling for the end of Israel as “a Jewish state” a crime, and one that would criminalize the commemoration of the Nakba (the Catastrophe), which is what Palestinians call the process of dispossession and ethnic cleansing that resulted from the founding of the state of Israel.


Excerpt: The Israeli parliament has passed a preliminary reading of a bill that would mandate the imprisonment of anyone who calls for the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, according to the Jerusalem Post newspaper.

The bill was passed on Wednesday by the Knesset with the support of 47 members, or MKs. Thirty-four MKs opposed and one abstained, the daily said. Sponsored by Zevulun Orlev, an Israel Beiteinu MK, the bill stipulates one-year imprisonment of any person who makes "such public statement".

The bill is part of two draft laws proposed by the Israel Beiteinu. The first is the Loyalty Oath Law that obliges all Palestinian Israelis to pledge allegiance to the Jewish identity of the state. The second is the Nakba Law, which bans commemoration of the 1948 dispossession of the Palestinians as a result of the creation of Israel.

Israel Beitenu, led by Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister, grew to be Israel's third largest political party in the February election, reflecting a shift to the right by the Israeli public.

Aljazeera's senior political analyst Lamis Andoni said the two bills would jeopardise the rights of Palestinian Israelis.

"The two bills, if finally ratified, would punish Palestinian Israelis, and delegitimise their existence inside Israel," she said. "It is considered a prelude to the expulsion of the Palestinian Arabs as advocated by many Israeli leaders."

The Meretz Party, several Knesset members of the Labour Party and even three Likud members have opposed the principle of both bills. The bill has to pass three votes and a committee review before taking effect as legislation.



Gaza Digest 83, 5/28/09

News Clips: US President Barack Obama has made it clear to Israel he wants no "natural growth exceptions" to his call for a freeze in West Bank settlements, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday; After months of non-violent resistance to the imposition of an orange jumpsuit reminiscent of those worn in the Guantanamo Detention Facility, Palestinian political prisoners in sections one and four of the Israeli Jelboa Prison have been told they will be allowed to wear the brown uniform of former days; The Israeli army demolished two illegal settlement outposts installed by extremist far-right wing Jewish settlers, members of a Yeshiva School from Kiryat Arba’ illegal settlement, in the southern West Bank city of Hebron; Tristan Anderson, who was critically wounded by a high-velocity tear gas canister fired at his head by Israeli forces in March, has been moved from the intensive care unit of the Tel Hashomer hospital in Tel Aviv into a Rehabilitation Center at the hospital; An Israeli soldier who stole a credit card from a Palestinian home during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza returned the money with interest.

1. The one place where Gazans have a sense of openness—even though Palestinian fishing boats are restricted in how far from shore they can go and fisherman are often subject to harassment and arrest—is the sea. This article by Peter Beaumont in The Guardian describes a day at the beach near Gaza City. (Paul Park, a New York photographer who is in Gaza now with one of the CODEPINK delegations, posted a note to his Facebook profile expressing amazement at the boys he saw surfing on the beach at Gaza City.)

The Gaza Strip, so recently pounded by artillery and bombs and tanks, is circumscribed by visible and invisible lines of menace, forbidden boundaries that for most Palestinians amputate the possibility of what lies beyond, policed by automatic weapons, observation balloons and armoured vehicles.

In reality, as an airdrop of leaflets warned residents earlier this week after a bombing attempt on the border, the real, solid frontier is irrelevant, bordered as it is by a 300-metre-deep "death zone" that Palestinians have been told they may not approach.

On its coastal littoral, Gaza's limitations are marked by a different fence where the bars are Israeli gunboats with their huge wakes, scurrying beyond the Palestinian fishing boats and preventing them from going outside a zone imposed by the warships.

For the most part, however, the horizons are stiflingly closed and shrunken. They comprise the few metres that can be observed from a window or a balcony, from a door across a busy street. Vistas marked for most by concrete walls and concrete roofs and neighbours' windows.

On a dirty stretch of beach by Gaza City's harbour, Jasser Abu Libda, 44, sits under a beach umbrella with his family. Children are changing out of their wet clothes in a makeshift tent made out of white canvas.

Around his family are segments of polystyrene, tan globes of pungent horse dung, bags and plastic bottles. "It is the only place where you can come for cheap entertainment and breathe good air," says Jasser. "Gaza is so crowded."


2. This report from IRIN details the difficulties of the banking system in Gaza under the crippling Israeli blockade.


Excerpt: "The banking system in Gaza is on the verge of collapse because there is not enough physical cash," the EC's Berger said. "Our projects cannot receive the necessary cash."

Israel agreed to allow NIS 50 million to enter per month, but Gaza requires a minimum of NIS 100 million per month, said Berger.

"Cash enters [Gaza] usually once per month via the Erez crossing for PA employees from Ramallah," Israeli Defense Ministry spokesperson Shlomo Dror told IRIN. "We let money enter for international organizations and UN agencies if we know exactly where it is going; otherwise we can't be sure that cash entering Gaza does not go into the hands of Hamas."

When Hamas took over in Gaza, Israeli banks decided not to have a relationship with Gaza banks, because Hamas is considered a "terrorist organization," said Dror.

"If Hamas acts like a terror organization, we [Israel] will not assist or coordinate with their government," said Dror.

The Hamas government has assumed financial responsibility for the public school system, civil defense, public hospitals and 54 primary healthcare clinics in Gaza.

"We are also facing this liquidity issue. The UN Development Programme [UNDP] is implementing a payment system for non-refugees whose homes were damaged or destroyed during Israel's last military operation," said UNDP program officer Husam Toubil in Gaza.

"We have dispersed $20 million in cash assistance and need to disperse $6.3 million more, but there is a delay because the banks do not have enough cash," he said.


3. A cogent argument from Amjad Barham, head of the council of the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, in The Guardian about the call for a boycott of Israeli Universities.

Excerpt: It is the duty of civil society to shoulder the moral responsibility of isolating Israel in the international arena through various forms of boycott and sanctions to compel it to obey international law and respect Palestinian rights.

It is well documented that Israeli academic institutions are deeply complicit in Israel's colonial and racist policies against the Palestinian people. Not only do Israeli universities and research institutions co-operate closely with the security-military establishment through research and other academic activities, they have never dissociated themselves from the occupation regime, despite the more than four decades of the systematic stifling of Palestinian education.

Israeli universities have never condemned the entrenched and institutionalised system of discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel within the Israeli polity, society and even the academy.

Israel and its supporters have argued that the Palestinian call for institutional boycott infringes the universal principle of academic freedom. Palestinians find this argument biased and hypocritical – not to mention based on false premises.

The privileging of academic freedom above more basic human rights conflicts with the very idea of universal human rights, as it assigns far more importance to the academic freedom of a sector of Israeli society than to the fundamental rights of all Palestinians to live in freedom and dignity. Is upholding the academic freedom – in our view, the privileges – of Israeli academics a loftier aim than defending the freedom of an entire people living under a brutal and illegal occupation?



Gaza Digest 82, 5/26/09

News Clips: The Israeli Air Force (IAF) dropped leaflets throughout Gaza, warning Palestinians not to approach the fence between Gaza and Israel at a distance of less than 300 meters (984 feet), while saying “the Israeli army will operate against all those who approach the fence, due to the threat that they pose to the civilians of the State of Israel”; Israel is planning to offer dismantling 26 illegal settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank in exchange for American approval that Israel keeps all of its settlements and expands the existing settlement blocs though all settlements are illegal under the international law; El Al Israel Airlines revenues dropped 26% in the three months to March as the economic crisis and fighting in the Gaza Strip hit passenger numbers, though costs fell along with fuel prices; Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas reiterated on Monday his refusal to resume peace negotiations with Israel until West Bank settlement activity is stopped.

1. Really interesting, if demoralizing, article by Lisa Goldman in the Columbia Journalism Review, about Israeli press coverage during Operation Cast Lead and after. Israeli journalists (and Israeli citizens in general) have been barred from entering Gaza since the 2006 elections that brought Hamas into power, which is part of what allowed for a 90% approval rating for Operation Cast Lead among Jewish Israelis. The press bowed to criticism of the coverage of the “Second Lebanon War” and more or less muzzled its criticism of Cast Lead—although the reporters interviewed by Goldman didn’t seem to need much self-censorship. They appear to have agreed with the government’s line on Gaza.


Excerpt: Alon Ben-David was one of the few Israeli reporters to ask critical questions about the army’s leadership and performance during the Second Lebanon War. But he did not dispute the IDF’s ban on media coverage of the Gaza war. “There was just way too much access during the Lebanon war,” he said. “The army was too exposed, in real time. And I think we journalists also had a reaction to the over-exposure that we caused. I don’t think the army is obligated to allow reporters into a battlefield situation.” Like every Israeli reporter I spoke with, Ben-David was focused completely on covering the war while it was going on; he had not had time to notice anything that was not directly connected to his job. So he was only vaguely aware that the ministry of defense had defied a Supreme Court order in refusing to allow the foreign media into Gaza; and, like his colleagues, he was not troubled by the issue because the ruling did not apply to the Israeli media, which was and is still forbidden by law from entering Gaza.
Many Israelis believe the IDF’s claim that it failed to secure a decisive victory in Lebanon because it refrained, for humanitarian reasons, from using sufficient force. Given that Hamas had already been “sold” as a genuine existential threat, there was a popular sense of satisfaction when the IDF used massive force in Gaza—as if people were finally ridding themselves of an excessively delicate sensibility that was unsuited to the brutal realities of the Middle East.
Ethan Bronner described a telling wartime conversation with an Israeli colleague and friend. “He said he really didn’t care about the foreign press being prevented from entering Gaza,” recounted Bronner. “So I said ‘but what if the army is doing bad stuff in Gaza?’” Raising his eyebrows to indicate astonishment, Bronner continued, “And my colleague just answered, ‘I trust them.’ But why would he trust them? The whole nature of our business is not to trust anyone!”

2. Three CODEPINK delegations to Gaza via Egypt—a student delegation, a 15-person New York group including journalist Phillip Weiss, and a Canadian delegation including—have entered via the Rafah Crossing. You can read about their trip on Phillip Weiss’s MONDOWEISS Blog, Pam Rasmussen’s blog, and via the PINK TANK. Another delegation will be arriving in Cairo at the end of the week, and another one will be hoping to enter Gaza via Israel will arrive next week.

Before permission was granted for passage through Rafah, this report appeared in the Toronto Star about the CODEPINK group waiting in Cairo.

Excerpt: Nine Canadian peace activists were again barred from entering the Gaza Strip from neighbouring Egypt yesterday, along with a shipment of medical supplies and children's toys they hope to deliver to the territory's long-suffering people.

It was the third day in a row the Canadians had been turned back by Egyptian border guards stationed at Rafah, on the border between Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and Gaza.

"It's a struggle each day," delegation leader Sandra Ruch said from the Egyptian town of El-Arish near the border. "We've already lost three days of our itinerary."

Allied with a U.S. peace group called CodePink, the Canadians are part of a larger international initiative aimed at drawing world attention to the plight of Gaza's 1.5 million people, most of whom depend on international relief to survive.

Israel controls two of Gaza's land borders as well as its access to the sea and has imposed a partial economic blockade for several years. The Israelis tightened the blockade considerably after the militant Islamist group Hamas took power nearly two years ago.

Egypt also shares a border with Gaza, with one crossing point. The Egyptians mostly keep that border closed, too. "If we don't get in, we're going to demonstrate in downtown Cairo," said Pam Rasmussen, CodePink's international coordinator. "We want the Israeli government and the Egyptian government to know we're not going to leave them alone."


3. The vehicles in the European “HOPE” Convoy were allowed to passage via Rafah on Monday night, but many of its members were barred from entering.


Excerpt: A European convoy carrying medical supplies finally entered the Gaza Strip on Monday evening through the Rafah border crossing after waiting for more than 24 hours.

Egypt agreed to allow just 22 members of the hundred-person Hope for Gaza convoy to enter the Gaza Strip, according to Rami Abdo, convoy’s UK-based coordinator.

“All forty medium size trucks entered the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing after agreement with the Egyptian authorities to allow only 22 solidarity activists out of one hundred to accompany the aid convoy,” said Abdo.

The rest of the anti-siege convoy members decided to return to Europe after Egypt pressured them to leave the Rafah border area adjacent to the Gaza Strip.




Gaza Digest 81, 5/25/09

News Clips: Public commemoration of Israel's independence as a day of mourning could become a crime subject to prison penalty, should a bill approved on Sunday by a ministerial panel be brought to the Knesset and cabinet for vote; Organizers of the “Hope” aid convoy decided to return to Europe after the Egyptian Authorities denied the convoy access to the Gaza Strip, and after pressuring the participants into leaving the Rafah border terminal between Gaza and Egypt; Despite strong objections from the Israeli Committee of University Heads, individual academics and the human rights organization Gisha, the Israeli High Court of Justice on Monday accepted the army's non-security related criteria for granting Palestinian post-graduate students permits to enter Israel to study at Israeli universities; French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday that establishing a state for the Palestinian people is a 'legitimate right'.


1. The Alternative Information Center reports that over the weekend Israeli Police shut down the Palestine Festival of Literature in East Jerusalem.  The 2nd Annual Festival is happening across the West Bank and in East Jerusalem—because Palestinian movement is severely restricted by Israeli authorities, the international writers are travelling to various venues to speak and read as a gesture of solidarity with the Palestinian people.


Excerpt: Israeli police officers forcefully closed the Palestine National Theater in East Jerusalem on Saturday, 23 May, where an event of the Second Annual Palestine Festival of Literature event was scheduled to be held. The festival included the participation of 17 internationally-known literary figures and an audience of local and international participants.

Among the guests at Saturday’s event were Pride & Prejudice (2005) movie screen-writer Deborah Moggach; Swedish writer Henning Mankell, accompanied by his wife Eva Bergman (daughter of world-wide notable film director Ingmar Bergman); Australian writer Carmen Callil (founder of Virago press); Claire Messud (long-listed for the 2006 Man Booker Prize for the novel The Emperor’s Children); Kenyan-Canadian writer M. G. Vassanji, author of The Assassin’s Song and holder of the Commonwealth First Book Prize; and Booker Prize short-listed authors Abdulrazak Gurnah and Ahdaf Soueif.

The police forced all the literary figures and participants to leave the theater.

This move came as a direct order from the Israeli Minister of Internal Security, Yitzhak Aharonovich, currently serving as a member of the Knesset for the right-wing nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party.  The decision to stop the event was justified as falling under the scope of the “Jerusalem: Capital of Arab Culture” activities— an initiative undertaken by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which annually awards this title to what are considered outstanding cities of Arab culture. Due to the current Israeli government’s vision of Jerusalem as a capital of one nation, Israel strictly prohibits any of these events from being conducted in the city.

However, this festival is not directly connected to the “Jerusalem: Capital of Arab Culture” celebrations and is actually a sequel to last year’s International Festival of Literature, which included the visits of international literary figures to different parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territories for literature auditions and poetry recitals. Among the patrons who have supported the starting of the festival last year were acclaimed South African writer Chinua Achebe, (the late) Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, Irish Nobel prize laureate, Seamus Heaney, and (the late) British playwright, actor and screen-writer Harold Pinter.

2. From the Palestine Monitor comes this unsigned personal essay about restrictions making it almost impossible for Palestinians to access Dead Sea beaches on weekends or holidays.

Excerpt: When the weather starts to warm up in the West Bank, everyone heads to the public pools or the Dead Sea. Although the Dead Sea is technically inside the West Bank, it is still occupied by the Israelis—so when Palestinians want to go to the only beaches available to them it can be more difficult that you would imagine.

Despite the fact that all the beaches on the southern half of the Dead Sea are in sovereign Israeli territory, Israel is still trying to claim the entire Western shore for their own use—by barring Palestinian access to their own areas.

They do this by setting up checkpoints ahead of the public beaches. On holidays or weekends it is nearly impossible for a Palestinian to pass through these checkpoints—“for security reasons.” However, the real reason is that the Israeli-run beaches and concession stands do not want Palestinians at their beaches.


3. Josh Ruebner, the National Advocacy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, penned an essay, published by the Detroit Free Press, in which he argues that it is time for the U.S. to stop providing massive military aid to Israel without conditions and stipulations to insure that U.S. made and subsidized weapons are not being to commit human rights violations and in contravention of U.S. and international law.


Excerpt: If, after reviewing the impact of Israel's misuse of US weapons, the President and Congress cannot find the political will to sanction Israel for its violations of the Arms Export Control Act and prohibit future arms transfers as is required by law, then there are still steps that the US government should take to ensure that any future transfers are not used to commit human rights abuses but instead to promote US policy goals. For example, previous US loan guarantees to Israel have stipulated that funds cannot be used to support Israeli activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Conditioning US military aid to Israel in the same way would prevent these weapons from being used to kill innocent Palestinian civilians.

As President Obama has stated, "We can't sustain a system that bleeds billions of taxpayer dollars, on programs that have outlived their usefulness or exist solely because of the power of politicians, lobbyists or interest groups. We simply can't afford it." In regard to US aid to Israel, this is true as much from a budgetary standpoint as it is from a moral one.




Gaza Digest 80, 5/22/09

News Clips: The Israeli army reported on Friday morning that its soldiers shot and killed two Palestinians near the Kerem Shalom (Karem Abu Salem) Crossing, in the Gaza Strip; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Thursday that all of Jerusalem would always remain under Israeli sovereignty, in comments likely to spark consternation among Palestinians who hope to make the city the capital of a future state; Israeli police broke up an unauthorized settler outpost in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, bulldozing makeshift cabins, in what was widely seen as a gesture towards U.S. President Obama; U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took a hard line against settlement construction in the territories Wednesday, including a call to freeze building for natural growth.

1. Voice of America reports that The U.N. Human Rights Council mission to Gaza, lead by Judge Richard Goldstone, is headed to the region to begin its work despite Israeli objections.

Excerpt: The U.N.'s Richard Goldstone says Israel has not responded to his request to enter the country and cross into Gaza for his investigation of Israel's offensive against Hamas rulers.

Speaking in Geneva Wednesday, he said his four-member team hopes to visit the southern Israeli town of Sderot, before crossing into Gaza. But, he says the team will enter Gaza through Egypt if necessary.

Israel objects to the mission because, in its view, it is based on a biased mandate.

The 47-nation U.N. Human Rights Council initially instructed the investigators to examine accusations of Israeli war crimes against Palestinians. It later broadened the mission's scope to look at the actions of both sides in the war.

Goldstone says he also has decided to hold public hearings in which witnesses will testify about the conflict. He says the hearings will be held in Geneva if it is not possible to locate them in the region.

It will be the first time a U.N. human rights investigation conducts such public hearings. The hearings will be modeled on inquiries Goldstone conducted in post-apartheid South Africa, where he served as a judge.

Goldstone, who is from South Africa, says his team must submit its report by August 4. The other investigators include British law professor Christine Chinkin, retired Irish army colonel Desmond Travers and Pakistani human rights advocate Hina Jilani.


2. A delegation of British MP’s that has issued a report (with recommendations for action) following on their recent trip to Gaza, as covered by an unsigned piece from the Alternative Information Center.

Excerpt: A delegation from the Britain-Palestine All Party Parliamentary Group (BPAPPG) visited Israel, Gaza and the West Bank in the immediate aftermath of “Operation Cast Lead”, to assess the deteriorating situation in the Occupied Territories. Their subsequent findings include a call for crossings into and out of Gaza to be opened and for a rigorous international inquiry into allegations of war crimes. The MPs also note international efforts to prevent the supply of arms into Gaza. The MPs call for this to be supplemented by a prohibition on the sale of arms and military equipment to Israel in response to its own record of attacks on Gaza and elsewhere.

Says Labor  Party MP Richard Burden, ‘The images of our visit remain clear in my mind – an entire village raised to the ground and its many residents now living in tents. Of 1.5 million people imprisoned in their own land and reliant on outside aid for essential food, medical supplies and even the cement they need to rebuild their shattered homes. There has to be accountability for what has happened.

‘The military attacks on Gaza may have now ceased but its people’s suffering continues with a crippling blockade that has been going on for over two years. Common humanity demands we do all we can to bring this to an end.

‘Over the years ordinary Israelis have also suffered from this ongoing conflict. We are convinced that the international community must step up its efforts to achieve the lasting and just peace that both Palestinians and Israelis deserve.’



3. In a piece from Haaretz with the subtitle “Settlers are a fig leaf for Israel’s land grab in West Bank,” Dana and Zonsein, who are activists with the grassroots movement Ta’ayush and maintain a blog about their peace work, report on the stealth process of settlement building, with an illegal outpost called Hilltop 26 as a case in point.

“Birth of a settlement,” Joseph Dana and Mairav Zonszein, Haaretz, 5/22/09

Excerpt: On May 8, after weeks of being repeatedly evacuated by the IDF upon arrival at the hilltop, Ta'ayush activists and Palestinians residents of the area constructed a protest structure there. Our logic was that if our presence there is illegal and requires our removal, the settlers' presence is also illegal and they, too, should be forced to leave. However, despite the IDF and police instructing all people in the area to evacuate within three minutes, no settlers were actually forced to leave. Our day of peaceful protest ended with our being physically assaulted by settlers, and with eight Israeli members of Ta'ayush detained for violating the "closed military zone" order. The settlers were not arrested, despite clear videotaped evidence of them assaulting the peace activists as well as attempting to burn our structure to the ground.

Since we broke no laws and posed no threat of violence, the only logical explanation is that the IDF was trying to prevent us from observing and documenting illegal settlement expansion.

The IDF and Israeli government have clearly made a decision to actively support the outpost of Hilltop 26. While it is still a small structure, the time-honored pattern of land grabs is clear: It starts with a clubhouse, then a mobile home and pretty soon the settlers will have built a house equipped with running water and gas. Hilltop 26 is only one example of the 100 or so outposts of this kind throughout the West Bank.

The settler movement is not as strong as it is portrayed in the Israeli and international media. Without the active and passive support of both the government and the armed forces, the settlers' efforts would be rendered useless. Without it being possible to freely document and expose these matters, Israel's government will continue to use the image of the settlers as a cover for its own overt policy of support for settlement creation and maintenance in the West Bank.




Gaza Digest 79, 5/20/09

News Clips: A Qassam rocket fired by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip exploded in the yard of a western Negev home on Tuesday; this past weekend more than 900 churches in the United States participated in a Christian Zionist organization's event entitled "Christians United for Israel Sunday" honoring Israel during which church members were encouraged to sign "Israel’s Pledge" stating that the Jewish people "have a right to live in their ancient land of Israel" and that Israel has the right to defend itself from terrorism; The United Nation's watchdog on torture has criticized Israel for refusing to allow inspections at a secret prison, dubbed by critics as "Israel's Guantanamo Bay", and demanded to know if more such clandestine detention camps are operating; late Tuesday Israeli warplanes bombed smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, with five reported wounded; United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that she had made clear to visiting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel must cease its settlement activity in the West Bank; PA President Abbas swore in a new interim caretaker government in the West Bank, eliciting objections from both his own party (Fatah) and Hamas.

1. While Netanyahu and Obama were meeting in the White House, the Zogby brothers were blocks away discussing a recent poll on American attitudes towards Israel. Robet Dreyfuss, writing in The Nation, paints an optimistic picture of what the numbers mean.


Obama, being the cautious soul that he is, isn't likely to force a showdown, at least not anytime soon. But his meeting with Netanyahu today showed clearly that he isn't backing down to Netanyahu's bluster and fear-mongering over Iran.

It also shows that the vaunted Israel lobby is in a pickle. American Jews voted overwhelmingly for Obama, with 76 percent of US Jews voting Democratic in 2008. "American Jews are mostly in the peace camp," says John Zogby. That means the opposition to Obama will come first and foremost from the ultra-right wing of the Israel lobby, such as the allies of Likud, the Zionist Organization of America, and hard-line neoconservatives, along with their allies on the Christian right and among the Republican Party's right, including most of its congressional wing.

But middle-of-the-road, moderate, and especially liberal Jews are likely to back Obama. That's a dynamic that can isolate AIPAC, the central player in the Israel lobby. If it plays its cards wrong, AIPAC might find itself cut off from its base among pro-Israeli American Jews. So far, AIPAC -- and Netanyahu -- are hoping that they can stall Obama's Middle East peace plan until something, anything, erupts to derail it. But I think Obama is determined to press ahead.



2. A press advisory from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights about last week’s U.N. Committee on Torture’s report on Israel.

Excerpts: On 14 May, 2009, the United Nations Committee Against Torture published its concluding observations on Israel’s fourth periodic report. While the State of Israel was preparing its submission, other elements of the Occupying Power’s administration were, inter alia, reinforcing the siege on the Gaza Strip, solidifying the annexation of occupied East Jerusalem, expanding illegal settlement activities in the West Bank, and preparing for Operation ‘Cast Lead’, the 23 day military offensive on the Gaza Strip…

The reality of life in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) highlights the duplicity of the Israeli authorities. While engaging in superficial efforts intended to appease the international community and convey compliance with international standards, the State of Israel continues to callously and systematically violate the fundamental principles of IHL and international human rights law…

PCHR note that the crimes documented in the Committee Against Torture’s report, and the countless other crimes committed by IOF, cannot be carried out without impunity. This impunity is granted on two levels: first, by the complicity of Israel’s judicial system, and second, by the silence and deference of the international community.


It is not enough that these crimes are documented in reports and forgotten, as happened recently following the Secretary General of the United Nations shameful reaction to the Board of Inquiry’s report into incidents in the Gaza Strip. If the rule of law is to be upheld, and innocent civilians protected, then the law must be enforced.


The International Community cannot continue to allow Israel to act as a State above the law. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the Committee Against Torture’s report is the fact that the majority of the recommendations issued in its 2001 report remain outstanding. In the intervening years, the only change has been the addition of further Israeli violations.

PCHR affirm that if the culture of impunity which permits the continued commission of these crimes is to be combated, effective action on the part of the international community is required. The EU-Israeli Association Agreement cannot be upgraded in the face of systematic human rights abuses. Independent investigations must be conducted so that those responsible for war crimes are held accountable.

It is Palestinian civilians who suffer the consequences of the international community’s inaction.

3. And what can be done about Israel’s acting as a state above the law? Michael Warshawski of the Alternative Information Center suggests Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions.


The state of Israel has put itself outside international law, outside the community of civilized countries, and as such must be treated as an outcast state. This has been the case for decades, but today no one can ignore it anymore. Boycotting normal relationships with Israel is a matter of international public health, as was the case toward South Africa before the fall of the apartheid regime. Boycott includes all fields: diplomatic, economic, financial, sports, culture, academic. The accumulated effect of a variety of BDS initiatives will be felt in Israel quicker than what many skeptical individuals are claiming, for Israel is extremely dependent on the world and its citizens sensitive to their public image abroad.

In the framework of the BDS campaign, a question has been raised: “what about organizations and individuals who clearly and openly oppose Israeli colonialism? Should there be exceptions in the boycott policy?” Concerning this issue, one can learn from the South African example: the African National Congress knew how to separate friends and friendly organizations from the rest, but without necessarily making it a stated policy, preferring a pragmatic, case-by-case, approach. One thing for sure: it would be wrong to come to the BDS campaign with the open demand “make a statement taking my organization out of the boycott list.” Let the campaign decide, through its own ways and rhythms, according to the needs of the campaign itself, its unity and internal coherence.

Though there is great importance to building an alliance and cooperation with the progressive Israelis who unconditionally endorse the BDS campaign and unambiguously reject normalization, it is up to the Palestinian (and Arab) national movement and the BDS campaign to decide if and when to publicly announce where the boycott policy will not apply. Having on many occasions been treated differently than other Israeli activists and organizations, I have learnt one important lesson: not everything has to be stated loud and clear, and sometimes constructive ambiguity can help make good politics.



Gaza Digest 78, 5/19/09

News Clips: Egypt told rival Palestinian factions meeting in Cairo that the country will reopen its border with the Gaza Strip if the two sides can reach a reconciliation agreement, participants in the discussions said Sunday; Rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah have agreed to form a joint security force in the Gaza Strip; Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Barack Obama for a discussion amid divisions over Middle East peacemaking and Iran's nuclear ambitions; Israel has begun constructing a new settlement called Maskiot in the northern West Bank for the first time in 26 years despite Western calls for Israel to halt its settlement activity; Netanyahu meets on Tuesday with House and Senate leaders and a group of Jewish lawmakers who are expected to question him on his “peace plans.”

1. Check out the three different reports on the meeting between Obama & Netanyahu in Washington yesterday: Al-Jazeera, New York Times & Haaretz. I’m tempted to offer sarcastic commentary, but I think the excerpts speak for themselves.


“Obama and Netanyahu differ in talks,” Al-Jazeera, 5/18/09


Excerpt: Israel's prime minister has refused to commit to an independent Palestinian state during talks with Barack Obama, the US president, at the White House. 

Binyamin Netanyahu told Obama that he wanted the Palestinians to govern themselves, but steered clear of explicitly endorsing the two-state solution set out in the so-called "road map".

He said that Israel was "ready" to resume negotiations with the Palestinians, which stalled during the 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip, but he attached conditions to any new process.

"If we resume negotiations then I think the Palestinians will have to recognise Israel as a Jewish state and also enable Israel to have the means to defend itself," he said.

"If those conditions are met, I think we can envision an arrangement where Palestinians and Israelis live side-by-side."


“Obama Meets with Israeli Prime Minister,” New York Times, Brian Knowlton, 5/18/09


Excerpt: The body language between the men, who had met before but not since taking office this year, seemed good. Mr. Netanyahu called Mr. Obama “a great leader of the world, a great friend of Israel.” And Mr. Obama said that the Israeli leader was “in a position to achieve the security objectives of Israel but also bring about historic peace, and I’m confident that he’s going to seize this moment.”

“Obama: U.S. backs Palestinian statehood, no Iran deadline,” Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz, 5/18/09


Excerpt (quotation from Netanyahu): "In regard to the settlements, we decided that this is something that needs to be implemented through commitments on both sides," Netanyahu added. "Israel has dismantled settlements and the Palestinians were supposed to dismantle terror infrastructure. In Gaza, we dismantled settlements and got huge terror infrastructure in return."

"The issue of [captive Israel Defense Forces soldier] Gilad Shalit was also raised, as did the situation in Gaza," Netanyahu continued. "We know that Hamas is continuing its efforts to arm itself and it is a real threat. We tried to find a balance between not harming the civilian population [in Gaza] and limiting Hamas' ability to smuggle weapons much more lethal than anything we've known in the past. I explained this to the president, that it isn't easy. We talked about it quite a bit."

2. From the Israel Policy Forum (IPF) Blog called The Mideast Pulse comes this brief analysis of the Netanyahu-Obama meeting by IPF’s Director of Policy Analysis.


You want to know what Prime Minister Netanyahu is up to?. Here it is, from the New York Times on June 27, 1992. The Likud prime minister then was Yitzhak Shamir who had just been defeated by Yitzhak Rabin.

"Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was quoted in a published interview today as saying he wanted to drag out peace talks with the Palestinians for a decade while vastly increasing the number of Jewish settlers in Israeli-occupied territories.

"Had he held on to his office instead of being defeated this week in Israel's national election, Mr. Shamir reportedly said, ' I would have conducted negotiations on autonomy for 10 years and in the meantime we would have reached half a million people" in the West Bank.' "

Shamir, of course, is one of Netanyahu's heroes and mentors. Sixteen years later, he has the same strategy Shamir did. He says he will negotiate but he will not commit himself to Palestinian statehood.

The only questions are (1) why would the Palestinians negotiate on that basis and (2) why would an American President press them to participate in such a charade.

The answers. They won't. And he won't.


3. This unsigned piece from the Palestine Monitor gives an overview of the aftereffects of the assault on Gaza, including crumbling infrastructure and mental health problems, and the effects of the ongoing blockade on food security, health and other aspects of daily life. Gaza continues to be a vast open-air prison where the entire population is being subjected to collective punishment.


Excerpt: Water is one major issue. Essential infrastructure which keeps the water sanitized and pumps it to each house has been damaged by Israeli shelling. It could be repaired, but spare parts are not allowed through the blockade; and those factories inside the Gaza Strip that produced spare parts have either run out of material or been damaged.

Essential parts necessary for repairing basic infrastructure do not count as humanitarian aid and therefore may not be allowed into Gaza. Without electricity, water cannot be pumped from the wells. And even the water that is available is contaminated because the Israeli military shelled the sewage treatment plant.

This has caused a massive sanitation crisis leading to the creation of ‘sewage lagoons’ that sometimes flood, and other times runs straight into the sea because there is nothing the Gazans can do to repair their sanitation infrastructure.

Food security is another major issue for the Gazan population. After the war, 80% of Gazans were dependent on food aid, as opposed to 63% in 2006. Because of the blockade and subsequent low food supply, the prices of basic food items are more expensive now than before the attacks.

Since December 2008, the price of pepper per kilo doubled, onions increased 33%, and chicken increased 43%. The decimation of agricultural land, cattle, and sheep farms during the war are some of the main factors that contributed to Gaza’s current food insecurity.

They cannot produce the same amount of food they could before the war, and even less is allowed in through the blockade. Even fishermen in Gaza cannot bring in as much fish as before because the fishing limit is now 3 miles from shore instead of 6 miles.

Food supplies account for 79% of imported commodities in Gaza, followed by hygiene and cleaning supplies. In March, several new items were allowed into the Gaza Strip that the Israelis had not allowed in since October 2008—tea, yeast, salt, potato chips, soap, and shampoo.




Gaza Digest 77, 5/17/09


News Clips: Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's party wants to make it illegal for Palestinian citizens of Israel to commemorate the anniversary of "the Catastrophe" or Nakba, when in 1948 some 700,000 Arabs lost their homes in the war that led to the establishment of the state of Israel; On Friday Pope Benedict XVI visited Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre as the lost stop of his Middle East tour; At his airport departure, the Pope told Peres and Netahyahu that the separation Wall was 'one of the saddest sights during my visit'; The fifth round of Palestinian unity talks started in Cairo Saturday in what many see as a final attempt to overcome the remaining obstacles preventing governmental unity between the West Bank and Gaza; the West Bank was locked down Friday, May 15 as Palestinians commemorated the 61st anniversary of the Nakba; U.S. Senator John Kerry on Friday said the window of opportunity for a two-state solution was closing.



1. Interesting and balanced analysis from Helene Cooper in the New York Times of Obama’s personal history and his first moves as President with regard to Israel and Palestine in advance of his upcoming separate meetings with Netanyahu, Abbas and Mubarak.


Excerpt: “This is a piece of the cloud that’s hovering over this meeting: is this man different?” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator at the State Department and the author of “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace.” “The fact that he’s African-American. The fact that his middle name is Hussein. The fact that the world for him is not black or white, that the Israeli-Palestinian situation is not black and white, there is gray, and in that gray lies the ability of this president to understand the needs and requirements of Palestinians. Is that on Benjamin Netanyahu’s mind? There’s no question that that’s there.”

Mr. Obama’s past suggests why, four months into his presidency, the answer to the question remains elusive. His first book, “Dreams From My Father,” delves deeply into matters of race and nationality and the need to belong somewhere, issues that permeate the Arab-Israeli conflict. But in the book Mr. Obama does not address specifically how he views Israel and the plight of the Palestinians.

As a state senator in Chicago, Mr. Obama cultivated friendships with Arab-Americans, including Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American scholar and a critic of Israel. Mr. Obama and Mr. Khalidi had many dinners together, friends said, in which they discussed Palestinian issues.

During the 1990s, Mr. Obama also attended tributes to Arab-Americans, where he often seemed “empathetic” to the cause of Palestinians, said Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian-American journalist in Chicago.

This contrasts with the more “tabula rasa” image of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that many of Mr. Obama’s predecessors brought to their presidencies — a blank slate that was then shaped by the strong alliance with Israel that is a fixture of politics in the United States, many Middle East experts say.



2. In this article from Haaretz, Amira Hass details the items forbidden entry to Gaza by Israeli authorities, including “fabrics, threads, needles, light bulbs, candles, matches, books, musical instruments, crayons, clothing, shoes, mattresses, sheets, blankets, cutlery, crockery, cups, glasses…”  Hard to imagine what kind of security concern crayons, books or musical instruments might pose.


Excerpt: Israel allows only food, medicine and detergent into the Gaza Strip. Thousands of items, including vital products for everyday activity, are forbidden.



Altogether only 30 to 40 select commercial items are now allowed into the Gaza Strip, compared to 4,000 that had been approved before the closure Israel imposed on Gaza following the abduction of Gilad Shalit, according to merchants and human rights activists.



The number of items changes according to what is determined by The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. COGAT has refused the PA representative's request for an updated list of the items permitted into Gaza in writing, and passes the information only via the telephone.



Gaza merchants are forbidden to import canned goods, plastic sheeting, toys and books, although the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and other aid organizations are permitted to bring them into the strip.



The few items merchants are allowed to trade in are divided into three categories: food, medicine and detergent. Everything else is forbidden - including building materials (which are necessary to rehabilitate Gaza's ruins and rebuild its infrastructure), electric appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines, spare machine and car parts, fabrics, threads, needles, light bulbs, candles, matches, books, musical instruments, crayons, clothing, shoes, mattresses, sheets, blankets, cutlery, crockery, cups, glasses and animals. Many of the banned products are imported through the tunnels and can be found in Gaza's markets.







3. The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights released a press advisory about its new report on children killed during the assault on Gaza. If you go to the site, you can read the advisory and then download the 70-page English-language pdf of the report. The report uses 13 families as case studies of what happened, has a section also on wounded children, and another on the psychological impact of the offensive. There is an appendix at that end lists the names, ages, genders, and date of death of all the children who were killed.



Excerpt: The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) is publishing War Crimes Against Children in response to the unprecedented number of children killed by Israeli forces in its latest operation; a total of 313 children under the age of eighteen. Containing numerous eye witness testimonies, the report brings to light Israel’s widespread targeting of unarmed civilians, including children, throughout the offensive.



‘Operation Cast Lead’ was the biggest Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip in nearly 42 years of occupation. 1,414 Palestinians were killed, and PCHR investigations have found the overwhelming majority, 83 per cent, were civilians. One of the cases in the report is that of 18 month old Farah al-Helu, who was killed on 4 January. The al-Helu family had been told to evacuate their house in Zaytoun, eastern Gaza, but while they were attempting to flee, Israeli soldiers opened fire on them. Farah was shot in the stomach and bled to death two hours later.



War Crimes Against Children exposes the abject failure of Israeli authorities to uphold international humanitarian law, which provides protection for children in armed conflict and the lack of adequate precautions taken to distinguish between civilians and military targets. The report also details indiscriminate shelling of homes and schools where internally displaced people were sheltering, the psychological impact of the offensive, and the alarming scale of physical injuries inflicted on young people.



“We are calling for an independent full-scale investigation into all documented attacks on civilians during the offensive,” said Raji Sourani, director of PCHR. “Israel must be held fully accountable for the crimes it has perpetrated against Gaza’s civilian population, including alleged war crimes against children. We cannot allow the lives of these children to just be statistics in the history books of the Middle East.”







4. Al-Jazeera aired a 3-minute video story of a two-year-old Gazan boy who was born with two holes in his heart, a situation that could have been rectified by surgery if he had been allowed to leave Gaza for the procedure. WARNING: This video is heart breaking.


Firas Mazloom was born in Gaza just as Israel started its siege on the impoverished Palestinian territory two years ago. Like others in Gaza, Israeli restrictions prevented him from getting the medical treatment he needed. Al Jazeera's Casey Kauffman reports on the race against time to save two-year-old Firas.





Gaza Digest 76, 5/14/09

News Clips: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed Pope Benedict XVI to his Bethlehem residence early on Wednesday evening, shortly after the pontiff left a local refugee camp; Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday branded the West Bank separation fence as a symbol of "stalemate" between Israel and the Palestinians, urging both sides to break a "spiral of violence"; U.S. President Barack Obama sent a message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding that Israel not surprise the U.S. with an Israeli military operation against Iran.


1. This piece about the failure of Ban Ki-Moon to release the full preliminary report or to order a further investigation into Israeli Crimes in Gaza is by Hasan Abu Nimah, former permanent representative of Jordan at the United Nations. It first appeared in The Jordan was republished on The Electronic Intifada with the author's permission.

“Covering up Israel's Gaza crimes with UN help,” Hasan Abu Nimah, The Electronic Intifada, 5/13/09

Excerpt: In the absence of any credible explanation for stopping even the 15 members of the Security Council from officially seeing the full report the presumption must be that Ban is engaging in a cover-up to protect Israel and therefore his own job. Equally puzzling is the acquiescence of the Security Council to this scandal. It is known that Ban's action has been prompted, or fully approved by three permanent members. Why did the 12 others keep quiet?

In Gaza, there are numerous, credible and mounting allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including testimonies published in the Israeli media from Israeli soldiers themselves. The ongoing blockade preventing the movement of basic supplies and people in and out of an occupied territory is a prima facie breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Unlike other alleged war crimes in other parts of the world, the evidence is all there requiring little effort to find, including numerous statements from Israeli leaders showing that they had the motivation and intent to harm civilians as an act of punishment or revenge.

Yet once again, when it comes to Israel, UN officials actively collude in protecting the perpetrators. How could an investigation of an aggression which involved severe war crimes, deliberate attacks on civilians, destruction of civilian infrastructure, usage of banned weapons, attacks on UN installations, siege and deprivation be quietly shelved upon the discretion of the secretary-general alone?

The answer may be simple, but alarmingly revealing; the office of the secretary-general carries with it so much prestige, privilege and material reward, it seems not many can resist the temptation of holding on to the job at any price even if that price is paid in innocent people's blood. The hunger for a second term requires so much obsequiousness and opportunism that the holder of this position becomes a burden rather than an asset, an obstacle to the UN functioning effectively.

It is not only Palestinians who are the victims of such outrageous and immoral actions, but the last vestiges of credibility of the UN itself. I hold -- as do most Palestinians -- enormous admiration and respect for the work of UNRWA and its personnel who remained under Israeli bombardment in Gaza risking their lives along with the communities they serve. These UN personnel also deserve better; they too are betrayed by the cowardice of those above them.


2. Also from The Electronic Intifada is a report on hunger in Gaza—otherwise known as “food insecurity.” The misery of this situation is compounded by the fact that is it so clearly and purposefully designed by the Israeli government as a means of collective punishment. Here is a brilliant quotation from a Guardian editorial a few months ago: “When, in 2006, Israel limited commercial shipments of food to Gaza, Dov Weisglass, a senior government adviser, explained the aim was to put ‘Palestinians on a diet, but not make them die of hunger.”


Excerpt: Umm Abdullah cannot remember the last time she was able to feed meat to her eight children. She does know that for the past week the single meal she cooked for them each day consisted only of lentils. And that on one day, she had received aid coupons from the United Nations, which she subsequently sold to buy tomatoes and eggplant at the local market.

Umm Abdullah is a 42-year-old dressmaker and hails from Jabaliya, a cramped refugee camp on the outskirts of Gaza City. Stories like hers are commonplace across the Gaza Strip, where years of sanctions, siege and now war have battered the territory's economy and put many essentials out of reach for the majority of the population.

"We live day to day, nothing more," says Umm Abdullah, who made less than three dollars in profit over the last three days. "If we can eat once a day, that is good enough for us."

While the prices of food and other goods have cooled off from the record highs they hit during Israel's three-week assault, the World Food Program (WFP) reports that a number of items, many of them basic, remain more expensive for Gaza's residents than they were before the attacks.

Sugar, rice, onion, cucumber, tomato, lemon, pepper, chicken, meat, fish and garlic were all more expensive for Gaza's residents in March 2009 than they were in December 2008, the WFP says.

The price of pepper per kilogram doubled, while the cost of onions jumped 33 percent. Fresh chicken is now 43 percent more expensive than before the attacks, a result of the destruction of a number of poultry farms across Gaza throughout the assault.

The decimation of wide swathes of agricultural land, as well as cattle and sheep farms, has added to Gaza's growing food insecurity.

But the war only intensified an already dire humanitarian situation, economists say, which has its roots in Israel's economic siege that hermetically sealed Gaza's borders in June 2007.

The shortage of all but "essential" goods and a flow of only a trickle of fuel have sent prices of food and other products skyrocketing over the past two years, making them unaffordable to many households in the Gaza Strip.

3. Barak Ravid reports in Haaretz on an internal struggle between the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry about allowing free access of food and humanitarian aid into Gaza. Ravid predicts that in a meeting with Obama next week, Netanyahu will promise to remove restrictions on food. Hard not to grind one’s teeth at his generosity.


Excerpt: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to promise during his meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House on Monday that Israel will remove all restrictions to the movement of foodstuffs into the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, four senior European Union officials sent a letter to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, calling on them to immediately and permanently open the crossings into the Gaza Strip for humanitarian aid.

Several days prior to the end of the Olmert administration, a decision was made to allow food to be delivered to the Gaza Strip without restrictions. The move came despite serious differences between the position of the Foreign and Defense ministries, and a series of embarrassing confrontations between Israel, on the one hand, and the U.S. and the European Union on the other. Even though a decision was made to allow the food to cross into Gaza, the defense establishment has not yet implemented it.

The issue of humanitarian aid transfers to the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip was one of the issues that the Netanyahu administration sought to resolve prior to the prime minister's visit to the United States. A discussion is scheduled to take place this week nd a final decision will be made.





Gaza Digest 75, 5/13/09

News Clips: The U.N. Security Council on Monday called for "urgent efforts" to create a separate Palestinian state and achieve an overall Mideast peace settlement; President Barack Obama will give a speech to the Muslim world from Egypt on June 4; The United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon said on Tuesday that the Israel Defense Forces has handed over data on cluster bombs fired during the 2006 war with the militant Hezbollah group; Pope Benedict XVI called on Wednesday for a sovereign Palestinian homeland after arriving in Bethlehem at the start of a one-day visit to the West Bank; he also expressed sympathy for the suffering in Gaza and said he prayed for an end to the blockade.

1. PBS’s Frontline ran an amazing and scary piece this past Sunday about radical Israeli settlers near Hebron, and “an organized Jewish underground” that has been assassinating Palestinians. “The Arabs will have to get the hell out…” The clip is only 8 minutes long—and worth a watch. Really chilling.


VIEW: Some riveting video from our investigation into Israel's small, but dangerous, extremist settlers movement whose long-term agenda is a war against the secular Israeli state itself.

Their vision: Restore the Kingdom of Israel, rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. At the heart of their strategy: More Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the expulsion of all Arabs from Jewish land. Settler population in the West Bank is roughly 285,000; overall settlement growth in '08 was 69 percent higher than in '07.


2. Amira Hass, who has been reporting for Haaretz for many years from both the West Bank and Gaza, was arrested on Tuesday as she entered Israel from Gaza. She had violated the law against “residing in an enemy state.”


Israel Police on Tuesday detained Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass upon her exit from the Gaza Strip, where she had been living and reporting over the last few months.

Hass was arrested and taken in for questioning immediately after crossing the border, for violating a law which forbids residence in an enemy state. She was released on bail after promising not to enter the Gaza Strip over the next 30 days.

Hass is the first Israeli journalist to enter the Gaza Strip in more than two years, since the Israel Defense Forces issued an entry ban following the abduction of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in a 2006 cross-border raid by Palestinian militants.

Last December, Hass was arrested by soldiers at the Erez Checkpoint as she tried to cross into Israel after having entered the Gaza Strip aboard a ship run by peace activists from Europe.

Upon discovering that she had no permit to be in Gaza, the soldiers transferred her to the Sderot police.

When questioned, Hass pointed out that no one had stopped her from entering the Strip, which she did for work purposes.

Hass was released then under restriction, and Nahmani said her case would be sent to court.

Israel Press Council chairwoman Dalia Dorner, a former Supreme Court justice, commented then that even journalists are subject to the law and the council cannot defend a reporter who breaks the law. Instead, she said, local journalists ought to petition the High Court of Justice against the army's order.



3. And here is Amira’s most recent piece from Haaretz—a scathing account of the benefits and profits of living in a continual state of war.


Excerpt: The security industry is an important export branch - weapons, ammunition and refinements that are tested daily in Gaza and the West Bank. The Oslo process - negotiations that were never meant to end - allowed Israel to shake off its status as occupying power (obligated to the welfare of the occupied people) and treat the Palestinian territories as independent entities. That is, to use weapons and ammunition at a magnitude Israel could not have otherwise used on the Palestinians after 1967. Protecting the settlements requires constant development of security, surveillance and deterrence equipment such as fences, roadblocks, electronic surveillance, cameras and robots. These are security's cutting edge in the developed world, and serve banks, companies and luxury neighborhoods next to shantytowns and ethnic enclaves where rebellions must be suppressed.

The collective Israeli creativity in security is fertilized by a state of constant friction between most Israelis and a population defined as hostile. A state of combat over a low flame, and sometimes over a high one, brings together a variety of Israeli temperaments: rambos, computer wizards, people with gifted hands, inventors. Under peace, their chances of meeting would be greatly reduced.



Gaza Digest 74, 5/12/09

News Clips: Pope Benedict XVI called for the establishment of an independent Palestinian homeland immediately after he arrived in Israel Monday, a stance that could put him at odds with his hosts on a trip aimed at easing strains between the Vatican and Jews; Prime Minister Netanyahu met with Egyptian President Mubarak in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheik Monday morning after greeting Pope Benedict XVI at Ben Gurion International Airport upon his arrival in Israel; Israel granted permits to 93 Palestinian Christians to leave Gaza to attend a papal mass in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, and turned down applications for more than 400 others, a church official in Gaza said on Monday; Sheikh Taiseer Tamimi, Chief Islamic Justice, started his speech in front of the Pope, Benedict XVI, by confirming that Jerusalem is the capital of the future Palestinian state, and by slamming the Israeli violations against the Palestinians and their holy places; when the Sheikh’s words were translated, the Pope left the conference.


1. The other day I posted several pieces about the East Jerusalem land grab, including a rather mealy-mouthed one by Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner from the New York Times. Phillip Weiss on his Mondoweiss blog goes after the Times for more or less laundering out of the story the right-wing settler movement that is at work with the government in the scheme to take over East Jerusalem.


Excerpt: Well, Sunday's New York Times has the same story, but in a much-milder form: Parks Fortify Israel's Claim to Jerusalem. The headline is, of course, grotesque. And the piece puts off the idea that settler groups have played a part in the planning till the 21st paragraph.

While it is true that the article (which is written by two reporters who are married to Israelis), contains sharp and prominent criticism of the plans, generally the piece devolves into on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-hand consideration of the two sides in the matter, as if an enlightened American publication should be giving such a platform to religious expansionist groups.


2. From The Electronic Intifada comes this report on the lasting psychological effects of the winter assault on Gaza.

Excerpt: Amidst all this, the psychological effects of the attack are less apparent, but the preliminary findings of an ongoing survey being conducted by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) suggest that few people, if any, are left unscarred.

In a sample of 374 children studied, more than 73 percent thought they were going to die during the violence. Almost 68 percent of them -- all aged between six and 16 -- fear that a similar attack will come again, and 41 percent expressed a strong desire for revenge.

Of the parents examined by mental health professionals as part of the same study, 59 percent of fathers and 75 percent of mothers were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Among the symptoms detected were that over 59 percent of these adults were anxious about death, that half of them feared heart attacks, and about 15 percent feared contracting cancer because of exposure to weapons such as white phosphorous.

Meanwhile, 82 percent of parents observed that their children have been behaving aggressively since the attack, and 52 percent reported that their children had emotional problems.

"Everybody lost something in this war," GCMHP spokesman Husam al-Nounou told IPS. "Some lost friends and relations, some lost parts of their bodies. Others lost property and money; others a feeling of security and protection. It was a very cruel feeling. I've never felt so near to death as during that period. There was no place to where we could escape."

3. This report from IRIN (Humanitarian News from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) describes the functioning (or mal-functioning) of the one border crossing used for passage of commercial and humanitarian goods from Israel into Gaza.


Excerpt: A small crossing without the facilities to allow large numbers of trucks to enter, Kerem Shalom lies inside Israel, 3km from the Gazan town of Rafah on the Egyptian border.

The only people authorised by Israel to physically access Kerem Shalom are employees of Shaiber Company, a private Gaza company with permission from Israel to access Kerem Shalom to retrieve imports. The company declined to comment.

The Gaza authorities cannot access Kerem Shalom. Israeli truck drivers dump pallets of goods in an open area and withdraw, and then Palestinian truck drivers from Gaza enter and retrieve the goods, according to senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad and Gaza traders.

Israeli authorities say they are using Kerem Shalom after closing the much larger and better equipped Karni crossing because of Palestinian attacks on Karni - which left several Israeli soldiers dead - several years ago.

*
“The lack of imports has halted over 90 percent of Gaza industries and created massive shortages of food and basic supplies,” said Hamas’s Hamad , who failed to mention the dozens of illegal tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, which however, provide only limited supplies due in part to a clampdown by the Egyptian authorities and damage by Israeli security forces .

“Medical supplies have priority [to enter Gaza], and secondly is food from international organisations. There is a government decision not to allow a humanitarian crisis to occur in Gaza,” said Israeli spokesman Dror, adding: “The Palestinians come to us with requests [for certain imports to be allowed in] and we determine if it’s necessary - like in the case of animal feed, we permitted it to enter, although it is not absolutely necessary.”

“The Israeli authorities allow 80-110 trucks per day to enter Gaza via Kerem Shalom,” according to Hamad, though prior to June 2007, when Hamas won elections in Gaza, about 475 trucks entered Gaza from Israel daily, according to OCHA.




Gaza Digest 73, 5/11/09

News Clips: A two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians could diminish the existential threat posed by Iran, U.S. National Security Advisor James Jones said in an interview aired on the network ABC on Sunday; Israeli police and intelligence forces early on Monday morning raided and shut down in advance a Palestinian Media Center as Pope Benedict on Monday began the most delicate part of his first trip to the Middle East, landing in Israel for a five-day tour that will take him to Jerusalem and the occupied Palestinian territories.



1. In an opinion piece from Haaretz, Gideon Levy outlines the Israeli government’s response to accusations of war crimes and human rights violations in Gaza—first the denial, then the moral outrage, blaming those who have made the accusations of Anti-Semitism.


Excerpt: But the truth cries out even from the collapsed and perforated rubble of what was once a home: The soldiers who were in Gaza know, as do their friends, that something terrible happened there - just as those who served in the West Bank know. Ask your sons; they know the truth - the truth is sitting in your own home. And ask the friends of your sons, and the sons of your friends - they know. Many of them are brainwashed, and for now are keeping mum. Israel is holding back the tide of reports and investigations, and putting its head in the sand of propaganda and victimization, but in the end the truth will emerge.

Even the excuse "everyone does it" will not do any good, as it does no good for a driver caught speeding. The Americans kill more? The French slaughtered more? That may do for the Foreign Ministry's automatic statements. We deserve more, we deserve the full truth - what exactly our soldiers did in our name, each of our names, on the streets of Gaza, imprisoned and bleeding for the 22 days of a useless war.


2. The Times of London published an interview with Jordan’s King Abdullah in which the king outlines the peace plan he discussed with President Obama. It is being touted as the “57-state solution.”


Excerpt: America is putting the final touches to a hugely ambitious peace plan for the Middle East, aimed at ending more than 60 years of conflict between Israel and the Arabs, according to Jordan’s King Abdullah, who is helping to bring the parties together.

The Obama Administration is pushing for a comprehensive peace agreement that would include settling Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and its territorial disputes with Syria and Lebanon, King Abdullah II told The Times. Failure to reach agreement at this critical juncture would draw the world into a new Middle East war next year. “If we delay our peace negotiations, then there is going to be another conflict between Arabs or Muslims and Israel in the next 12-18 months,” the King said.

Details of the plan are likely to be thrashed out in a series of diplomatic moves this month. Chief among them is President Obama’s meeting with Binyamin Netanyahu, the right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, in Washington a week today. The initiative could form the centrepiece for Mr Obama’s much-anticipated address to the Muslim world in Cairo on June 4. A peace conference could then take place involving all the parties as early as July or August. Such an ambitious project has not been attempted since 1991, when George Bush senior’s Administration assembled all the parties for a peace conference in Madrid.

“What we are talking about is not Israelis and Palestinians sitting at the table, but Israelis sitting with Palestinians, Israelis sitting with Syrians, Israelis sitting with Lebanese,” said the King, who hatched the plan with Mr Obama in Washington last month. He added that, if Mr Obama did not make good his promise for peace, then his credibility would evaporate overnight.

3. This piece on ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem by BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor Bill Fletcher, Jr. comes via Znet.


The current trick of the Israeli government is to move against Palestinian residents by claiming that the Palestinians are living in homes that show no proof of a legal building permit. What is perverse about this is that the Israelis are not talking about housing built in the last several years or even housing built since the June 1967 war. They are discussing housing that has been occupied by Palestinians in many cases for decades! In fact, according to the Washington Post [May 2, 2009] the dispute even involves searching through archives from the time of the Ottoman Empire (which ended when World War I ended in 1918) in order to prove ownership.

The Israeli government, of course, denies that they have any intent to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population. How could they, of course, given that they are supposed to be the model of democracy in the Middle East??!! The reality is that what the Israeli government has been conducting in East Jerusalem is part of the larger Israeli strategy in its Occupation of the Palestinian territories: drive the Palestinians from the best lands and replace them with Israeli settlers. Insofar as the world does nothing, the Israeli government behaves much as my dog did; it moves further and further in, increasing the intensity and scope of their destructive behavior.

It should surprise no one that the Israelis are attempting to remove the Palestinian population from Jerusalem. This has been consistent since the June 1967 war. The extent of the projected removal - 60,000 people - should, however, outrage any democratic minded person. Irrespective of one's stand on the history of the development of Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians, the fact of the matter is that the Israeli government continues to violate international law and precedent without having to fear any sort of international sanctions.

The proposed removal of 60,000 Palestinians increases the relevance and timeliness of discussions regarding the need to develop a movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions aimed at undermining the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. Since it seems obvious that most governments, including but not limited to the US government, are unwilling to take steps to insist upon justice for the Palestinians, then pressure needs to be brought about by squeezing corporations and governments that are complicit in the criminal activities of the Israeli government.





Gaza Digest 72, 5/10/09

News Clips: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a group of Russian-language reporters Thursday that Israel will never withdraw from the Golan Heights; International human rights experts examining alleged war crimes in the Gaza Strip said on Friday they planned to visit the region soon to investigate whether Israel and Hamas abided by international law during Operation Cast Lead;



1. Following are three posts about the Israeli government’s plans for East Jerusalem and the organized resistance to what Palestinians and Israeli peace activists perceive as an unprincipled land grab. The first is an open letter from the Pope written by the Coalition from Jerusalem, the second is an AP story, and the third is from the New York Times.

*

“Coalition for Jerusalem’s Letter to Pope Benedict XVI,” 5/8/09

Excerpt: Your visit to the Holy Land your Holiness comes, at a time when the indigenous people of this land, both Muslims and Christians are suffering under an extremely brutal military occupation. A great injustice has smothered this land over sixty years and the people, the victims, are still suffering its ramifications today. Israel's continuing military occupation of Palestinian territories since1967, has furthered this injustice by separating and isolating, discriminating against, killing, incarcerating, prohibiting the movement and access to the Holy places for prayer, blockading, starving and denying medical treatment of millions of Palestinians.
Over 3.5 million Palestinians are still living in refugee camps, waiting with patient desperation for the implementation of their human, ethical and moral right to return to their homes.

In this context, the Palestinians welcome your Holiness to the Holy Land hopeful that your visit will bring with it the justice and peace the Palestinians have been longing for; they have endured and dearly sacrificed in order to achieve the just peace.

Your Holiness, You will pray in Jerusalem, the City Holy to the three monotheistic religions and a source of spirituality for millions more. As a result of Israel's systematic policies that aim to turn Jerusalem into a Jewish capital of the Jewish State, Jerusalem is today rendered an isolated city though it is the home of over three hundred thousand Palestinians. These numbers and the high growth rate among the Christian and Muslim population of the city endangers the demographics and tries to ensure the maintenance of a Jewish majority. This in turn means that crimes of a routine nature like home demolitions, land and property confiscation, evictions, revocation of residency rights, high taxations, etc. are daily practices committed by Israel against the Palestinians in Jerusalem. Jerusalem today, and under the eyes and full knowledge of the International Community is witnessing yet another wave of Israel's ethnic cleansing crimes that continue since 1948.



The Israeli government is seeking to establish dominance over East Jerusalem via new “green spaces” and “national heritage sites. Hagit Ofran of Peace Now, a leftist Israeli group that opposes Jewish settlement in Palestinian areas and supports a two-state solution, contends that the plan aimed to create “an ideological tourist park that will determine Jewish dominance in the area.”

*

“Group says Israel plan to cement hold on Jerusalem,” Matti Friedman, AP via Miami Herald, 5/10/09

An Israeli government plan to develop parks, hiking trails and tourist sites in east Jerusalem will permanently change the landscape of the contested city and cement Israel's hold there, an Israeli group charged in a report released Sunday ahead of the pope's visit to the city.

The government has undertaken an ambitious eight-year plan that will dramatically alter the "holy basin" - the sensitive area in and around the Old City that is home to sites holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims, according to the Israeli group, Ir Amim, which works for coexistence in Jerusalem.

The government has largely kept the plan secret, not soliciting input from the city's Christians and Muslims or opening it to objections from the public, the group charges.

"It's being done in a way that is opaque, with no public knowledge, without coordination with the churches or with the Muslim Waqf, in the precise opposite of transparent terms," Daniel Seidemann, the Israeli attorney who founded Ir Amim, said Sunday. The Waqf is the custodian of Islamic holy sites in the city.

The park plan could destabilize Jerusalem and is "an act of colossal irresponsibility," Seidemann said.

*

“Parks Fortify Israel’s Claim to Jerusalem,” Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner, New York Times, 5/10/09


Excerpt: Israel is quietly carrying out a $100 million, multiyear development plan in some of the most significant religious and national heritage sites just outside the walled Old City here as part of an effort to strengthen the status of Jerusalem as its capital.

The plan, parts of which have been outsourced to a private group that is simultaneously buying up Palestinian property for Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, has drawn almost no public or international scrutiny. However, certain elements related to it — the threatened destruction of unauthorized Palestinian housing in the redevelopment areas, for example — have brought widespread condemnation.

But as Pope Benedict XVI prepares to visit Christian sites here this week and as the Obama administration promotes a Palestinian state with parts of Jerusalem as its capital, Israeli activity in the area, known as the holy basin — land both inside and just outside the Old City — will be cause for growing concern and friction.

“Everything Israel does now will be highly contentious,” said Robert H. Serry, the United Nations special Middle East coordinator, on a recent tour of East Jerusalem. He warned the Israeli authorities “not to take actions that could pour oil on the fire.”

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says, however, that it will push ahead harder than ever in these efforts. Interior Minister Eli Yishai said last week of the activity in one core area: “I intend to act on this issue with full strength. This is the land of our sovereignty. Jewish settlement there is our right.”

As part of the plan, former garbage dumps and once derelict wastelands are being cleared and turned into lush gardens and parks, now already accessible to visitors who can walk along new footpaths and take in the majestic views, along with new signs and displays that point out significant points of Jewish history.

The parts of the city that are being developed were captured in the 1967 Middle East war, but their annexation by Israel was never recognized abroad. At the same time, there is a battle for historical legitimacy. As part of the effort, archaeologists are finding indisputable evidence of ancient Jewish life here. Yet Palestinian officials and institutions tend to dismiss the finds as part of an effort to build a Zionist history here.


2.  Because of the blockade, cement and other building materials are almost impossible to find in Gaza, but this article from The Electronic Intifada describes new homes that are being built with mud bricks (mud, straw, sand & water). Have to love the resourcefulness.


Excerpt: Building earthen structures like bread ovens and small animal pens is a technique many Palestinians are familiar with, but extending the method to houses isn't a notion that has taken hold in Gaza.

Jihad al-Shaar got the idea from his travels in Asia and the Middle East. "I traveled in Bangladesh, India, Yemen, Turkey ... they all use some similar technique of building houses from earth. All you need is clay, sand and some straw." These he mixed with water, and poured into brick moulds that were left in the sun to dry for three days. Good enough to build a fine house with.

While some Gaza residents speak of shame at the way life has "gone backwards" with the siege -- using cooking oil in cars, wood fires for cooking, and horse and donkey carts for transportation -- Shaar is proud of his clay home.

"In the winter it is warm, and in the summer it will be cool. There's no problem with leaking, and this type of house will last a lifetime," he says. "And it was cheap to build. A house this size made of cement would cost around $16,000 at least. This one, because it was made with simple, local materials cost just $3,000."

Prior to Israel's crippling siege on Gaza cement would have cost 20 shekels (about $5) a bag. Now, with cement among the many banned items, what does make it into Gaza through tunnels under the Egypt border costs ten times as much.

The $3,000 Shaar spent was mostly on support metal and on the flakes of straw used in the mud bricks as a strengthening agent. The metal bits, formerly just over 1,000 shekels a ton, are now quadrupled in price, which contribute to making an otherwise cheap building process still somewhat pricey.

Straw abounds, but due to the siege it is more often used as animal fodder, rendering it more precious and driving the price up. Clay and sand, found all over Gaza, must still be transported to the building site.

Compared to a cement home, the mud homes Shaar has designed and taught others to build are nonetheless the most practical and immediate solution.

Nidal Eid, 35, has seven children and has been renting a home in the Rafah region since his house was bulldozed by the Israeli army four years ago. Larger than Shaar's and still in its nascent form, Eid's home will take another two weeks to complete, he estimates, and will cost roughly $4,000.

"It's going to be fantastic," Eid said, adding mud mortar and new bricks to the waist-high wall he has already completed. "We make about 1,000 bricks every three days."




Gaza Digest 71, 5/8/09

News Clips: Senior officials in Jerusalem expressed concern recently over the sharp decline in the coordination between Israel and the United States on security and state affairs since President Barack Obama's entered the White House and especially since the formation of Israel's new government; Pope Benedict is set to arrive in Israel on Monday for a visit that is already fraught with controversy; Middle East envoy Tony Blair said resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would remove a toxic barrier between the West and Islamic nations and help deal with the nuclear threat from Iran; On Wednesday, legislators from Israeli Palestinian parties blasted as racist and dangerous a plan by the country’s right-wing interior minister to rescind the citizenships of four Palestinians suspected of involvement in anti-Israel activities.


1. In a long and detailed press release posted by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PHCR), a coalition of Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations (including Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Al Mezan, Gisha, and the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions), Israel’s legal obligations as an occupying power are outlined. The groups call on international donors who have pledged to assist with the rebuilding of Gaza to pressure the Israeli government to comply with its obligations.


Excerpt: As human rights organisations we are calling for international donors to demand specific, concrete assurances from the State of Israel. These assurances, and the political will necessary to ensure their compliance, must form an integral part of international assistance to the Palestinian people. As the responsible party, Israel must accept the consequences of its actions. As illustrated herein, the State of Israel is subject to explicit legal obligations: it bears the responsibility for reconstructing and maintaining the Gaza Strip. Bank rolling the occupation without demanding an end to its violations of international law, is equivalent to tacit complicity on the part of the international community

Reconstruction aid must be accompanied by strict conditions and assurances from the State of Israel. Otherwise, the taxpayers of the international community will continue to support an endless cycle of aid-destruction-aid-reconstruction. The Palestinian people will continue to suffer at the hands of a brutal and illegal occupation.

We further note that, Israel’s primary responsibility notwithstanding, international reconstruction materials must not be procured in Israel. The State of Israel must not profit from its illegal actions, and the destruction it has wrought.

International assistance is most appropriate at the political level. It has become increasingly evident that international aid alone cannot resolve the conflict. In order to facilitate long-term development and recovery, political will and political action are required. All potential avenues that accord with humanitarian and human rights law must be pursued in order to ensure the State of Israel's compliance with international law. We call on the taxpayers of the international community to pressurise their governments, to lobby on behalf of the Palestinian people, and to ensure that their money is no longer wasted by governments willing to fund a school but not willing to take action in response to that school’s destruction, or to ensure that the cement necessarily for its reconstruction is permitted to enter Gaza.

International aid is currently being used to finance the consequences of an illegal occupation, and the accompanying serious violations of IHL and international human rights law.


2. Gideon Levy editorializes in Haaretz that Shimon Peres’s new role as spokesperson for the Netanyahu government is beneath the President’s dignity.

Excerpt: Peres was elected president of the state, not the government. Netanyahu and Lieberman haven't yet taken the tiniest step toward peace, but Peres has already turned them into Peace Now activists. It's hard to tell if anyone in the world is buying this abominable, tainted merchandise that Peres is trying to sell, but meanwhile he is abusing his office. This is not what he was chosen for. He must not end his long career like this, as the pathetic government spokesman, the most inferior post he has served since being appointed Defense Ministry director-general two generations ago.

Cancel the new Information and Diaspora Ministry, let the new foreign minister go, and we may as well shut down the information departments at Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu - we have a new propaganda minister. We've had better and worse presidents, but we've never had a president who served as government propagandist. Now we do: Shimon Peres has appointed himself to the unworthy task. Since the new government formed - the most right-wing government in Israel's history - the (seemingly) left-wing (former) peace man has become its public relations agent.


3. The case of Israeli non-violent human rights activist Ezra Nawi was reported in the Guardian, including a video of the incident for which he was arrested. To send a letter of support for him to the Israeli Embassy you can go to the Alternative Information Center for details.


Excerpt: Without international intervention, Israeli human rights activist Ezra Nawi will most likely be sent to jail.

Nawi is not a typical rights activist. A member of Ta'ayush Arab-Jewish Partnership he is a Jewish Israeli of Iraqi descent who speaks fluent Arabic. He is a gay man in his fifties and a plumber by trade. Perhaps because he himself comes from the margins, he empathises with others who have been marginalised – often violently.

His "crime" was trying to stop a military bulldozer from destroying the homes of Palestinian Bedouins from Um El Hir in the South Hebron region. These Palestinians have been under Israeli occupation for almost 42 years; they still live without electricity, running water and other basic services and are continuously harassed by Jewish settlers and the military – two groups that have united to expropriate Palestinian land and that clearly have received the government's blessing to do so.



Gaza Digest 70, 5/7/09

News Clips: On Wednesday Israel's Air Force struck three Gaza smuggling tunnels after a Kassam rocket and at least six mortar shells struck southern Israel; The London-based al-Quds al-Arabi reported Wednesday that the moderate Arab nations are making amendments to the 2002 Saudi peace plan at the request of President Obama and that some of the changes involve the demand for the right of return for Palestinian refugees; President Shimon Peres said on Wednesday that Israel would never apologize for its military offensive on the Gaza Strip earlier this year, calling a damning United Nations report on its conduct there "unfair and one-sided”; The Israeli military occupation around Bethlehem is severely restricting its growth, undermining its economy and compromising its future, according to a UN report; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday instructed defense officials to transfer NIS 50 million to banks in the Gaza Strip in order to help pay Palestinian Authority salaries.


1. With all the dire reports coming out of Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, I was happy to run across this article posted on “This Week in Palestine” that came to them via the Palestinian Businesswomen’s Association (http://www.asala-pal.com/). It tells the story of several Palestinian women who, with the help of micro-loans and their own ingenuity, have set up profitable small businesses.

Excerpt: A variety of resources linked to loans are available for women who want to establish or expand their income-generating projects - specially tailored one-on-one counselling, business management training, consultancy field visits, and skill-enhancement courses carefully designed to empower and encourage economic independence.

Nuha, a Palestinian mother of ten, used to scrape together change from her household allowance to buy pieces of copper. Her spare time and nights were dedicated to diligently etching designs on the pieces of copper. She would then incorporate these pieces into office supplies, furniture, and other knick-knacks. In 2005, Nuha took her first loan. There was a demand for her work; and her meagre savings weren’t enough to buy the raw materials that she needed. Now, a little over four years later, Nuha is her family’s sole source of income. She works hard, but her children are all in school, and her eldest daughter has even completed university (Nuha herself only has an elementary school education). She has a small shop adjacent to her home and cooperates with suppliers. Nuha has also participated in local and regional exhibitions, where she has displayed her work.


2. And this photo essay on the way the Separation Wall is being used as a place for artistic and self-expression is an upbeat angle on a usually dismal fact of Palestinian life. It also has information on and a photo of the Longest Letter, the Dutch/Palestinian collaboration to spray paint on the wall an open letter by South African Muslim scholar Farid Esack.


Excerpt: With 700 kilometers length, the tall and long Apartheid Wall that isolates the West Bank and its residents from the rest of the world has become a free space to express opinions and convey messages.

They can run from the sublime,

“Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.”
Bobby Sands, Northern Ireland

to the ridiculous.

“Believe in the power of underwear”


3. From the Free Gaza Movement site comes this inspiring report of a European aid convoy headed by sea to Gaza.


Excerpt: The climax to the Seventh Palestinians in Europe conference was the launch of the long anticipated ‘Hope for Gaza convoy' The convoy moved to Genoa and is now in the Mediterranean carried by a shipping boat.

The convoy is destined for the Gaza Strip and carries provisions for the education and medical sectors, specifically for Palestinians with special needs - those who were handicapped by the major Israeli attacks of December and January.

Through a chorus of cheers and tears the convoy of a dozen well-equipped ambulances and some 30 trucks loaded with medical and humanitarian supplies set sail on a cargo ship from Genoa along with human rights volunteers, European parliamentarians, and journalists.




Gaza Digest 69, 5/6/09

News Clips: At the AIPAC Convention on Tuesday, Vice President Joe Biden said, “Israel has to work for a two state-solution -- you're not going to like my saying this -- but not build more settlements, dismantle existing outposts and allow Palestinians freedom of movement ... and access to economic opportunity”; Also at the AIPAC conference Senator John Kerry echoed Biden in calling for a settlement freeze and greater freedom of movement for Palestinians; Khaled Meshal said in an interview with the NY Times that Hamas had halted firing rockets into Israel and was seeking a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders; On Tuesday the Palestinian Authority ministry of prisoners and ex-prisoners' affairs in Gaza accused the Israeli occupation authorities of kidnapping 345 Palestinian citizens, including 40 minors during the month of April 2009.


1. The U.N. yesterday released part of a report on Israeli actions against U.N. properties in Gaza during the recent military assault. Below is an excerpt from the Associated Press account about the report and the Israeli Government’s response.


Excerpt: The U.N. chief on Tuesday accused Israel of lying about attacks on United Nations schools and other facilities during the Gaza military campaign—including one reported to have killed more than 40 people - and formally demanded compensation.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said a U.N. investigation found conclusively that Israeli weaponry—some containing white phosphorus—was "the indisputed cause" of attacks on several schools, a health clinic and the world body's Gaza headquarters.
Israel denies that it intentionally struck the compounds, and says it was forced to act against militants using the buildings and other civilian areas for cover. Israel said the material its government presented to the U.N. was largely ignored in the final report, which it called "biased."
Ban said he commissioned the investigation to look at "the nine most serious incidents."
The first of 11 recommendations calls for the U.N. to seek "formal acknowledgment by the government of Israel that its public statements alleging that Palestinians fired" from within the U.N.'s school in Jabalia on Jan. 6 and within the U.N.'s field office compound on Jan. 15 "were untrue and are regretted."
Another says the U.N. should "take appropriate action to seek accountability and pursue claims to secure reparation or reimbursement for all expenses incurred and payment made by the United Nations" because of deaths and injuries involving U.N. personnel and property.


2. Stephen R. Shalom, who teaches political science at William Paterson University in New Jersey, posted on ZNet an interesting analysis of the recent assault on Gaza in the light of the geopolitics and history of the region.


Excerpt: When Hamas won the elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council in January 2006, it was obvious why Israel would oppose them: They were much less likely to sell out Palestinian national interests -- out of both conviction and a lack of corruption. And Washington too wanted Palestinians to be led by those who had said "uncle," not advocates of "fanatical nationalism."



Why does the United States care about some localized Palestinian fanatics? For the past several years, the country that has most stood in the way of U.S. domination of the Middle East has been Iran. Going to war with Iran would be a disaster from any point of view, but that doesn't mean that policymakers don't want to intimidate and threaten Tehran.



That's why the United States has been engaged in all sorts of measures short, of direct military action, to try to destabilize Iran -- why even Barack Obama, an advocate of talking to all countries, says he keeps the military option on the table.



But as long as Iran has allies -- Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine -- any military strike on Iran would leave Israel vulnerable to retaliation, thus lessening the intimidation factor. And that's why Washington supported Israel's war against Hizbollah in 2006: making sure, as they did with Gaza, that no UN resolution would interfere with teaching Hizbollah a lesson.



It turned out that the attempt to teach Hizbollah a lesson was a failure, but not for want of trying on the part of Israel and the Bush administration. By defeating Iran's allies, Israel and the United States hope to make Iran more subject to intimidation.



In Gaza, the attempt to unseat Hamas began with economic sanctions. When these failed, Israel and the United States went to plan B: supporting a military coup against Hamas in Gaza. The U.S. role in this is now well documented.[11] 



But the coup failed, and led in fact to Hamas seizing full power in Gaza. Israel, with U.S. backing, then enacted a crippling blockade. That too failed to reduce support for Hamas. Now we have this latest barbarous Israeli attack on Gaza.


3. This piece by Erin Cunningham on the Electronic Intifada details the dire environmental situation in Gaza following almost two years of a blockade and the pulverizing air assault the Strip was subjected to in December and January.

Excerpt: During the assault, Israeli bombs hit the already fragile sewage and water treatment systems, causing drinking water and raw sewage to mix across some of the most populated areas of Gaza.

Tank shells hit the strip's largest wastewater plant in the Sheikh Aljeen area of Gaza City, sending sewage cascading directly into neighborhoods, farms and into the sea.

Forty percent of the rooftop water tanks in Khan Younis were damaged or destroyed, and four water wells were destroyed completely in Gaza City, Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya, according to the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) cluster group that works under OCHA.

"After the war, the major impact is being felt in the northern areas of Gaza, where most of the water networks were destroyed," says Najla Shawa, WASH's information manager in Gaza. "In Khan Younis as well, only 30 percent of the governorate is being served by a sewage network."

Ten million more liters of raw sewage is now being dumped into the Mediterranean Sea each day than was prior to the war, WASH says, posing a threat to coastal marine life and Gaza's fisheries.

Israeli missiles also targeted factories in urban-residential and rural areas, releasing potentially toxic chemicals into both the air and soil. The piles of rubble that continue to mark Gaza's landscape are said to contain large quantities of asbestos, a carcinogenic mineral fiber used commonly in construction.

"The demolition waste created by the latest hostilities potentially contain hazardous materials such as asbestos," a representative of the UNEP's Post-Conflict and Disaster Management branch told IPS on telephone from Geneva. "High levels of exposure to asbestos have been linked to lung cancer."

Over 20,000 buildings and 5,000 homes were destroyed, according to local authorities. Some 600,000 metric tons of rubble has yet to be cleared as a result of the siege, with much of the debris having been bulldozed into the soil by Israeli tanks.

Gaza's soil will also be affected in the long-term by Israel's use of white phosphorus shells throughout the war, says Sameera Rifai, representative of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

"The soil of the agricultural land is now polluted by the weapons the Israelis used, particularly white phosphorus," Rifai told IPS.




Gaza Digest 68, 5/5/09

News Clips: A new United Nations report to be released on Tuesday criticizes Israel for deliberately attacking U.N. installations during the Gaza campaign; Eyewitnesses reported that Israeli troops on Monday morning set fire to Palestinian-owned meadows of wheat and barley in Juhr Addik, in the southeastern Gaza Strip; According to a poll sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, 66% of Israeli Jews support military action aimed at destroying Iran's nuclear facilities; Physicians for Human Rights-Israel reported that Israel's Shin Beth internal security service has increased its interrogations of people seeking to leave Hamas-run Gaza for medical treatment, setting the providing of information as a pre-condition for permission to travel; Dozens of Israeli settlers chopped town Palestinians’ olive and fig trees in the village of Sinjil, north of the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday.


1. First up for today is a shout-out to my audacious CODEPINK friends and sisters in D.C. who interrupted Shimon Peres’s speech at the AIPAC conference yesterday with a FREE GAZA message. Other signs included, “Want Peace? End the Occupation,” and “No Money for War Crimes.” Media coverage of the action included a post on Phil Weiss’s Mondoweiss blog (including an amazing photo of Desiree standing on a table), a report on Al-Jazeera (with a great photo of Tighe’s banner), and two paragraphs in an article from the Jerusalem Post.


Excerpt: His speech was briefly disrupted by three protesters, including a young woman shouting, "What about the children you killed in Gaza?" and a man who yelled, "End the siege of Gaza!"

Security guards hustled them outside and tried to cover their mouths so that people waiting to enter the convention hall wouldn't hear them. Inside the packed room, the audience rose in an extended standing ovation to drown out their shouts.

2. Jerusalem’s Mayor announced a master plan for the city that would create more green spaces and give “more building permits” to Arab residents, but Palestinians decried what they claimed was an attempt to cement Israeli hold over East Jerusalem. Here is a report from Reuters, as well as an analysis from the Palestinian Authority’s Ma’an News Agency.

Excerpt: Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat outlined a plan on Monday to give many more building permits to Arab residents, but a Palestinian official dismissed it as an Israeli ruse to cement its hold on the city.

Barkat said in a statement he had devised what he called the city's first "master plan" in 50 years to allow the construction of some 23,550 housing units in eastern Jerusalem, a part of the city where mostly Arabs live, by 2030.

Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day Warand annexed it as part of its capital, in a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be capital of a future Palestinian state.

More than 30 percent of 740,000 people living in Jerusalem are Arab, and most of the remainder are Jews, many of whom live in the city's Western sector.

Barkat's Palestinian-appointed counterpart, Jerusalem Governor Adnan al-Husseini, who has no real powers in the Israeli-controlled municipality, rejected the plan as insufficient to meet minimal housing needs.

"This will not solve the problems for Palestinians in Jerusalem. It will cement Israel's grip on the city and will force more [Palestinian] people out," Husseini told Reuters.


*


Excerpt: Mayor for the Israeli-run Jerusalem municipality hopes to make “Jerusalem the greenest city in Israel,” largely at the expenses of Palestinian residents.

Jerusalem municipal Mayor Nir Barkat revealed his “master plan” for the city on Monday, which includes the ominous pledge for the “Development of eastern Jerusalem,” where most of the Palestinian population lives.

Also of concern to Palestinian residents is his intention to create five new metropolitan parks, particularly given the current demolition orders on nearly 100 Palestinian homes in the Silwan neighborhood of the city to make way for the construction of green space.

Equally distressing is the issue of Israeli “Conservation and preservation of historic buildings,” since this often means the judization of Islamic or ancient historic sites.

In his explanation of “Developing Eastern Jerusalem,” Barakat said “An additional 13,550 housing units will be made available for construction for the residents of eastern Jerusalem,” which means the expansion of illegal East Jerusalem Israeli settlements. These settlements will be constructed on the land Palestinians will establish their capital city on under the Road Map and Arab Peace Initiative.


3. Gideon Levy writes in Haaretz about the recent arrests of the New Profile activists and what this means about Israeli democracy.


Excerpt: Yitzhak Laor, our best protest poet, may soon face arrest. On Independence Day eve he published a poem in Haaretz's literary supplement with the lines: "Perhaps shame prevents me from getting up to embrace my son / And warning him of those who want to enlist him." Arresting Laor for having written such lines may sound like fiction, but something similar has already happened. Last week nine activists from New Profile, a feminist-pacifist organization formed in 1998 that aims to demilitarize Israeli society, were arrested on suspicion of incitement and assisting draft dodgers. The police raided their homes and confiscated their computers. The military advocate general requested the raid, the attorney general obliged and the police carried it out.

The public reacted to the raid with typical indifference; it came just as we were busy enjoying the cheesy Independence Day holiday, complete with songs of self-praise about Israel being the only democracy in the Middle East. But a democracy that raids the homes of political activists is no democracy. Democracies are tested by how they treat the fringes of society.

Locking up three and a half million Palestinians in the occupied territories and denying them basic human rights has already undermined Israel's pretentions of democracy, but now dangerous cracks are appearing in our Jews-only democracy. They aren't new - they first appeared in the early years of independence - and now they're back. Those who make light of the recent arrests may soon find themselves dealing with a new regime instead of New Profile.

New Profile is a legally registered association that believes it's possible to live in a state that "doesn't consist of soldiers." That's its right, perhaps even its duty. "We do not encourage, incite or preach in favor of draft dodging," Smadar Ben-Natan, the organization's lawyer, wrote in a letter to the deputy attorney general after the raid. "We offer a stage where ideological questions concerning objections to serving in the army [are raised], and offer information and support to anyone interested."




Gaza Digest 67, 5/3/09

News Clips: President Barack Obama will meet President Shimon Peres on Tuesday at the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Friday; Federal prosecutors moved Friday to dismiss espionage-related charges against two former AIPAC lobbyists accused of disclosing classified U.S. defense information; Starting this past Friday, Palestinian workers will now have to use 13 computerized crossings that record the identity and timing of the people crossing from the West Bank into Israel and will not be allowed to stay over night unless given special permission; The Israeli Air Force on Saturday bombarded three smuggling tunnels in the Gaza-Egypt border town of Rafah, killing two Palestinians, just hours after Palestinians in Gaza launched two Qassam rockets at the western Negev; Michael Oren, a New York-born and Princeton-educated historian and commentator on Middle East affairs has been chosen Israel's next ambassador to Washington; Israel's media freedom ranking (as determined by Freedom House in D.C.) has been downgraded from "free" to "partly free," the first time the Jewish State has lost its status as the only Middle Eastern nation with a "free" press, and The Palestinian Authority and Libya received the least favorable ratings among the many Middle Eastern nations, to receive the "not free" rank.


1. Voice of America reports that the members of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mission to Gaza will be meeting in Geneva this week to set the agenda and plan the itinerary for their upcoming trip.

Excerpt: UN investigators begin a weeklong meeting in Geneva Monday in preparation for a fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip and Israel. The experts are going to the region to look into allegations of war crimes and other human rights abuses during Israel's military offensive in Gaza at the end of last year.

The four-member team of experts is led by Richard Goldstone, a widely respected South African judge and former International War Crimes Prosecutor.  UN Spokesman Rolando Gomez says the team has received assurances from both Israel and Palestine that the mission can go ahead.

"The idea is for them to springboard from here off to the region. Again, I cannot specify when they intend to do, what day, in other words, they plan to leave. But, the idea is for them to meet here, at least through Friday. And, then-well the intention of the meeting next week is obviously to make an itinerary, make a plan, set up appointments and then, of course to get tickets, visas, etc. These are all the things that they will be doing next week."

2. Shulamit Aloni, who was born in Tel Aviv in 1928, is a former Knesset member and currently a peace and human rights activist. This opinion she penned in Haaretz is deeply despairing about the road that has been taken since 1970 that has made second-class citizens of Israelis who are not Jews and has made the theft of Palestinian land an everyday occurrence.


Excerpt: In 1970 it was decided that in Israel religion and nationality are one and the same (that is why we are not listed in the Population Registry as Israelis, but as Jews). In 1992 it was determined in the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty that Israel is a "Jewish state." There is no mention in this law of the promise that appears in the state's formative document, the Declaration of Independence, to the effect that "The State of Israel will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants, irrespective of religion, race or sex." The Knesset ratified the law nonetheless.

And so there is a "Jewish state" and no "equality of rights." Therefore some observers emphasize that the Jewish state is not "a state of all its citizens." Is there really a democracy that is not a state of all its citizens? After all, Jews living today in democratic countries enjoy the full rights of citizenship.

Democracy exists in the State of Israel today only in the formal sense: There are parties and elections and a good judicial system. But there is also an omnipotent army that ignores legal decisions that restrict the theft of land owned and held by people who have been living under occupation for the past 42 years. And since 1992, as we mentioned, we also have the definition "Jewish state," which means an ethnocracy - the rule of an ethnic religious community that strictly determines the ethnic origin of its citizens according to maternal lineage. And as far as other religions are concerned, disrespect for them is already a tradition, since we have learned: "Only you are considered human beings, whereas the gentiles are like donkeys."

From here it is clear that we and our moral army are exempt from concerns for the Palestinians living in Israel, and this is even more true of those living under occupation. On the other hand, it is perfectly all right to steal their land because these are "state lands" that belong to the State of Israel and its Jews.

That is the case even though we have not annexed the West Bank and have not granted citizenship to its inhabitants, who under Jordanian rule were Jordanian citizens. The State of Israel has penned them in, which makes it easy to confiscate their land for the benefit of its settlers.

And important and respected rabbis, who are educating an entire generation, have ruled that the whole country is ours and the Palestinians should share the fate of Amalek, the ancient tribe the Israelites were commanded to eradicate. At a time when a "just war" is taking place, racism is rife and robbery is called "return of property."


3. Nadia Hijab on the Agence Global site describes the impact of the growing Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Movement.


Excerpt: The US protests are part of a growing global movement that has taken international law into its own hands because governments have not. And, especially since the attacks on Gaza, the boycotts have been biting. There are three reasons why.

First, boycotts enable ordinary citizens to take direct action. For instance, the New York group Adalah decided to target diamond merchant Lev Leviev, whose profits are plowed into colonizing the West Bank. During the Christmas season, they sing carols with the words creatively altered to urge shoppers to boycott his Madison Avenue store.

The British group Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine teamed up with Adalah NY and others to exert public pressure on the British government regarding Leviev. The British Embassy in Tel Aviv recently cancelled plans to rent premises from Leviev’s company Africa-Israel.

There are other results. Activists in Britain have targeted the supermarket chain Tesco to stop the sales of Israeli goods produced in settlements. In a video of one such action -- over 38,000 YouTube views to date -- Welsh activists load up a trolley with settlement products and push it out of the shop without paying.

All the while, they calmly explain to the camera just what they are doing and why. They talk away as they pour red paint over the produce, and as British Bobbies quietly lead them away to a police van.

The result of such consumer boycotts? A fifth of Israeli producers have reported a drop in demand since the assault on Gaza, particularly in Britain and Scandinavia.

The second reason boycotts are more effective is the visible role of Jewish human rights advocates, making it harder for Israel to argue that these actions are anti-Semitic.

For example, British architect Abe Hayeem, an Iraqi Jew, describes in a passionate column in The Guardian exactly how Leviev tramples on Palestinian rights, and warns Israeli architects involved in settlements that they will be held to account by their international peers.

In the United States, Jewish Voice for Peace has led an ongoing campaign to stop Caterpillar from selling bulldozers to Israel, which militarizes them and uses them in home demolitions and building the separation wall.

The third, key, reason for the growing success of this global movement is the determined leadership of Palestinian civil society. The spark was lit at the world conference against racism in Durban in 2001. In 2004, Palestinian civil society launched an academic and cultural boycott that is having an impact.


4. This article by Sarah Irving from The Electronic Intifada documents the difficult, exploitative and sometime abusive conditions that Palestinian women in the West Bank experience while working in Israeli settlements. 


Excerpt: The problem of huge residential settlements such as Ma'ale Adumim, Ariel and Har Homa, confiscating West Bank land, displacing local people and taking up water resources, is well documented. But not all are aware of settlements such as Barkan and Mishor Adumim which are industrial areas, housing factories manufacturing products as diverse as gas masks, bedding, toiletries or sweets, and providing services such as the large-scale laundries which clean the Israeli army's dirty clothes and bedding. Other economic settlements in the Jordan Valley take up Palestinian land and water to grow fruit and vegetables for export, mainly to Europe, through companies such as Agrexco.

Although clear statistics are rare, between 35,000 and 40,000 Palestinians probably work in such settlements, possibly rising above this during some agricultural seasons. Again seasonally, up to half of these are women. According to Daoud Hamoudi of the Stop The Wall campaign, economic conditions for Palestinian families in the Jordan Valley also mean that the rate of child labor there is increasing. Because the lack of schools in the valley makes education expensive, said Hamoudi, most children selected for school are boys, leaving girls to work in the fields.

Stop The Wall, however, claims one small victory, having succeeded in 2007 in obtaining permission for the first school to be built in the Jordan Valley in 40 years. It will mainly provide education for women and girls.

**

The women who work in Israeli settlements -- whether in agriculture or industry -- suffer terribly from the criticism their jobs attract. Despite the desperate situations of many, with sick husbands or parents and no other means of support, they face opprobrium from their own society for supporting the settlement system.

"I can't get a job in the village," said Dalal in Salfit. There is little paid work available in the area. Moreover, when she and the other women were sacked by Royalife and tried to set up their own sewing operation the Palestinian middleman who supply Royalife with local labor threatened to torch their factory.

"This subcontractor, he is from Hares village and he is well-known as a collaborator with Israeli security," said Kav LaOved's Salwa Alinat. "He is taking it very personally that these women are acting against his word, and he is a subcontractor for other factories where workers are also starting to demand their rights, so he is fighting very aggressively."

Despite the lack of other options and the family's dependence on their income, Umm Raed says that her daughters are both thinking of leaving their jobs. "Women who work in settlements don't get married easily," she reported. Women from Jericho, working at Mishor Adumim settlement, also married late -- in some cases too late to be able to have children. But, said Umm Raed, "We need every shekel."



Gaza Digest 66, 5/1/09

News Clips: The Palestinian Chamber of Commerce in Gaza reported on Wednesday that unemployment rates in the Gaza Strip reached 65%, and that poverty rates are now 80%, due to the ongoing Israeli-led siege and repeated assaults; The United Nations is demanding that Israel freeze all pending demolition orders against Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem; Palestinian sources in the southern West Bank city of Hebron reported on Thursday at night that a group of extremist Israeli settlers of Beit Ein settlement attacked a number of homes in Safa village, near the city; A Kassam rocket fired from Gaza landed near a kibbutz in southern Israel on Thursday evening, and no injuries or damage were reported; Police say they have arrested seven Arab Israelis who plotted bomb attacks and kidnappings of Jews in retaliation for Israel's recent military offensive in Gaza.



1. In response to recent remarks by Hillary Clinton about Gaza in which she downplayed the effects of the blockade, the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Divison penned an open letter. 



Excerpt: The civilians affected by Israel's blockade include Gaza's 750,000 children. The Israeli offensive destroyed seven schools in northern Gaza and damaged 157 others, according to OCHA; meaningful repairs cannot be made unless Israel permits building materials to enter Gaza. According to UNRWA, 14 percent of water samples in Gaza are contaminated, and the number of cases of children under three years old with acute diarrhea passed the "alert" level in March. More than 22,000 children in Gaza still have no access to piped water.



The needs of the war-wounded and the chronically ill are also of notable concern. As of April 21, the UN reported that 65 "essential drug items" were still out of stock at Gaza's Central Drug Store, including medicines for chronic diseases. In February, Human Rights Watch interviewed a double-amputee who suffered "phantom pain" from his missing legs; his cousin, a pharmacist, said he needed pain medication that was not available.



On average, 132 trucks with goods entered Gaza each day in March, one-quarter of them with humanitarian aid. This marks an improvement of 17 percent from February, but remains far below the 475 daily trucks that entered Gaza prior to Hamas's takeover in June 2007. According to recent news reports, hundreds of truckloads worth of aid are "rotting" on the Egyptian side of the border.



The humanitarian aid and reconstruction material entering Gaza is far from enough, and US pressure is needed to ensure that Israel meets its obligations under international law, and that Egypt assists humanitarian deliveries to a civilian population in need.



Madame Secretary, the civilians of Gaza are suffering as a consequence of Israel's crippling blockade.  Rather than minimizing their suffering, we hope you will use your influence to press Israel to end its blockade, and that your public comments will reflect this concern.




2. In response to the news that Leonard Cohen is scheduled to perform a Peace Concert in Israel in September 09, a group of Israeli peace activists have sent him an open letter asking him to cancel.


Excerpt: Israel is facing one of its most immoral historical moments. Its ruthless, criminal bashing of the Palestinians has been met with little international criticism or curbing. The silence of most of the world's governments continues to embolden successive Israeli governments to commit more violent acts. Israel has violated numerous international laws, but so far for Israeli Jews life in Israel goes on as if nothing happened. Indeed, your people, Cohen, have built "a new Dachau, And call it love, Security, Jewish culture," as you have so perceptively put it yourself in "Questions for Shomrim," but only a few voices have been raised against these injustices.



It is left for us, citizens of the world, to condemn Israeli atrocities and crimes against humanity. Dissociating ourselves from Israel's brutal policies is the only nonviolent way now to avoid becoming complicit in the killing, the wounding and the maiming, and the robbing of Palestinians. Faced with all this and more, Palestinians are calling on all people to support their struggle for their basic rights. Unfortunately, recognizing Palestinian rights will require a fundamental shift in Israeli society. We suspect that this change will be achieved only via external pressure. The least that one can do in such a situation is not act as if it is business as usual. We see our society becoming more and more calloused and racist and given your longstanding, vocal commitment to justice, we cannot envision you cooperating with continued Israeli defiance of justice and morality; we cannot envision you playing a part in the Israeli charade of self-righteousness. We appeal to you to add your voice to those brave people the world over who boycott Israel. We urge you to cancel your planned performance in Israel.





3. William Robinson, a (Jewish) sociology professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is being investigated for having sent out an e-mail to students in which he compared Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto. Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, met with university administrators to push for an investigation. In the meantime, Robinson is being supported by the Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB who are circulating a petition on his behalf. Signatories of the petition include Noam Chomsky.


Excerpt: The uproar centers around an e-mail message that Mr. Robinson sent on January 19 to students in his "Sociology of Globalization" class. In it, he accused Israel of war crimes for its military actions in Gaza, and forwarded juxtaposed photographs of what he called "Nazi atrocities against the Jews and Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians." He argued that "Gaza is Israel's Warsaw" and characterized Israel as a state "founded on the negation" of the Palestinian people.



On February 9, Cynthia Silverman, director of the Anti-Defamation League's Santa Barbara office, sent Mr. Robinson a letter saying her organization had received complaints about his e-mail message. Her letter—copied to the campus's chancellor, Henry T. Yang, and the university system's president, Mark G. Yudof—called the professor's comparison of Israelis and Nazis "offensive" and the views he presented in his e-mail message "intimidating to students."



**

The Anti-Defamation League's calls for Santa Barbara to investigate Mr. Robinson is not its only current effort to challenge campus relationships with critics of Israel. The group also is protesting decisions by Michigan State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to have Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a vocal critic of Israel, speak at their commencements this year.




Gaza Digest 65, 4/30/09

News Clips: Two Palestinians were killed when a tunnel collapsed under the Gaza-Egypt border near the city of Rafah early on Thursday morning; Seven Israeli Jewish activists with New Profile, a member group of the Coalition of Women for Peace, were arrested and released on Sunday, although their confiscated computers were retained by the police as evidence; Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas ended a fourth round of reconciliation talks without success, but agreed to meet for another round before a May 15 deadline for a unity accord; In a televised interview on Wednesday, Israeli President Shimon Peres said that bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities may not be the “best solution”; Because of the ongoing blockade, the government in Gaza is investigating whether the rubble of bombed buildings can be ground up and re-constituted into a cement substitute that can be used in reconstruction.


1. Simon Tisdall’s commentary from The Guardian on a projected coming conflict between Obama and Netanyahu outlines several possible outcomes.

Excerpt: While current differences are unlikely fundamentally to alter the US-Israel alliance, they bode ill for the Palestinian cause and for avoiding another Middle East war, this time involving Iran. American columnist Jim Hoagland predicts the Netanyahu encounter will be Obama's "toughest meeting yet" with a foreign leader and may determine war-or-peace choices.

The US opening to Iran has "stirred doubts in Israel's heterogeneous government about Obama's commitment to Israel's security, as Netanyahu defines it. These misgivings create a queasiness between the two allies that cannot be publicly discussed," Hoagland wrote in the Washington Post.

The "nightmare scenario" for Obama was that Israel, at odds with Washington and fearing an existential threat, would unilaterally attack Iranian nuclear facilities, as its leaders have previously threatened to do. Subsequent, severe Iranian and Muslim world retaliation against Israel would leave Obama with no choice but to rally unconditionally to Netanyahu's side. His "change diplomacy" would be in ruins, his hopes of a wider Middle East peace subverted and dashed.


2. This personal essay by Haider Eid, Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at Al-Aqsa University-Palestine, about an attempt to cross out of Gaza at Rafah gives a small taste of the misery involved for Gazans who try to leave for medical, educational or family reasons. 



Excerpt: The situation that the tens of thousands of Palestinian men, women and children faced at the Rafah border crossing this week was inhumane and unconscionable. Nothing can justify this. Most rushed to Rafah Crossing in as short a time as I did with similar stories of frenzied activity and hope. More than 3,500 of them are terminally ill patients in urgent need of medical treatment in Egyptian hospitals. Others hold residency permits in other countries and have been trapped in Gaza for at least a year. Some are academics and students, traveling abroad to attend conferences or further their studies.

So, instead of giving them a chance to do these very ordinary things: go to a hospital, study, go to a conference or work, go back to other homes and other loved ones, the failure to open the Rafah Crossing, instead, increased their misery. Many of them spent three sleepless nights hoping to be allowed to cross into Egypt. Like me, many fainted, or suffered from dehydration and sun stroke. The failure to open Rafah Crossing reminded them of their imprisonment and their lack of human rights; it reminded them that they move at the whim of others and it reminded them that the siege of the Gaza Strip has still not been broken.


3. The tide is slowly turning in U.S. media coverage of Palestine. TIME Magazine has a report about three small Palestinian sisters—Jinan (6), Dania (4) and Noor (2)—who, with the help of the Red Cross, make an arduous trek from their West Bank Village to the prison in Israel where there father is held. The oldest one asks, "Mommy, why does Daddy have to sleep on the Israeli side?" And her mother, Salam Nazal, who can not accompany them because she is on an Israeli security watch list for inscrutable reasons, replies: "Because that's where the best Palestinian men go to sleep, and your father is one of them."


Excerpt: Two hours later, the bus arrives at the high walls of Chattah-Gilboa prison. Nearly a thousand Palestinians have been waiting up to five hours, in shrinking shade, for the 45 minutes they will spend speaking with their relatives on a telephone from behind thick glass. The glass has small holes that allow the prisoners to touch fingertips with their visitors. Jinan and Dania climb the metal bars of the turnstile as if it were a piece of playground equipment. A buzzer blares and a light over the turnstile flashes from red to green. A guard calls out a few names, and the eager crowd pushes Jinan and her sisters aside.

Another hour will pass before the girls are let in. By then, Noor is hot and cranky, in tears, crying for her distant mother. Their pretty pink and green clothes are smeared with dirt. I had volunteered to escort them inside, but the prison wardens refuse. Instead, a veiled young woman with pale-gray eyes agrees to escort them into the visiting room.

That morning, their mother had shown the girls a photo of their jailed father so that the younger ones would recognize him. It shows a solemn, heavy-set man in a training suit of the Spanish soccer team Real Madrid. "He's been memorizing the Koran. That, and lifting weights," Salam told me. Jinan assumes her responsibility, and grabs the hands of her two sisters. They vanish inside the prison, scared but eager, leaving me to wonder whether Jinan will remember any of the many earnest and loving messages entrusted to her by Salam to pass on to their imprisoned husband and father.

With so many Palestinians still locked up in Israel, demands for prisoner releases remain at the center of most Israeli-Palestinian political negotiations. Those behind bars are a lost generation of Palestinians, and it's a safe bet that their children, like Jinan and her sisters, will inherit their parents' bitterness toward Israel.

4. This report about a panel discussion on settlement trends from the Alternative Information Center outlines the challenges posed by settlement expansion to any equitable solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but still offers a glimmer of hope that a two-state solution might be possible. The speakers were Daniel Seidemann, the founder and legal advisor of Ir Amim, a non-profit dedicated to an equitable, stable and sustainable Jerusalem, and Hagit Efron, Director of Settlement Watch for Peace Now, an organization that calls for Palestinian self-determination and a return to pre-1967 borders. 


Excerpt: According to the two speakers, the repercussions of the continued settlement expansion are potentially devastating to any kind of sustainable peace in the area. The E-1 settlement—the area between the Ma’ale Adumim settlement and Jerusalem—is one of the most obvious examples of expansion that would sabotage any kind of legitimate final status plan. The continued construction of E-1 would cut off East Jerusalem from the West Bank, and dissect the West Bank into two halves, leaving the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state almost impossible. In response to a comment that proposed connecting the two halves via highways, Seidemann’s response was total contempt, arguing that a state would not be able to survive via “umbilical cords.”




Gaza Digest 64, 4/28/09

News Clips: Israel imposed a strict lockdown—including thousands of additional soldiers and police, more roadblocks and border terminal closings—on East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the already blockaded Gaza for Israeli Memorial Day (Tuesday) and Independence Day (Wednesday, also recognized by Palestinians as Nakba Day); Peace Now reported that Israel has taken a step towards expanding the large Maale Adumim settlement in the West Bank, a move Palestinians warn will leave their future state unviable and further isolate its future capital, East Jerusalem; PA head Mahmoud Abbas said he would not recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and further said, “"It is not my job to give a description of the state. Name yourself the Hebrew Socialist Republic - it is none of my business"; The settlement council of Elon Moreh settlement, near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, decided that except for loading and unloading goods and stuffs, Palestinians and Arabs will not be allowed into the settlement.


1. Recently Roger Cohen has been taking a lot of flack for his recent nuanced commentaries on Israel and Palestine in the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times. This piece from the Times describes the change in Hillary Clinton’s position with regard to the conflict. 


Excerpt: The criticism of the center-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come from an unlikely source: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She’s transitioned with aplomb from the calculation of her interests that she made as a senator from New York to a cool assessment of U.S. interests. These do not always coincide with Israel’s.

I hear that Clinton was shocked by what she saw on her visit last month to the West Bank. This is not surprising. The transition from Israel’s first-world hustle-bustle to the donkeys, carts and idle people beyond the separation wall is brutal. If Clinton cares about one thing, it’s human suffering.

In fact, you don’t so much drive into the Palestinian territories these days as sink into them. Everything, except the Jewish settlers’ cars on fenced settlers-only highways, slows down. The buzz of business gives way to the clunking of hammers.

The whole desolate West Bank scene is punctuated with garrison-like settlements on hilltops. If you’re looking for a primer on colonialism, this is not a bad place to start.

Most Israelis never see this, unless they’re in the army. Clinton witnessed it. She was, I understand, troubled by the humiliation around her.

Now, she has warned Netanyahu to get off “the sidelines” with respect to Palestinian peace efforts. Remember that the Israeli prime minister and his right-wing Likud party have still not accepted even the theory of a two-state solution.

In House testimony last week, Clinton said: “For Israel to get the kind of strong support it is looking for vis-à-vis Iran, it can’t stay on the sidelines with respect to the Palestinians and the peace efforts. They go hand in hand.”


2. This inspiring report from The Guardian on the weekly non-violent protests in Bil’in—where Basem Abu Rahmeh was killed by a projectile tear-gas canister on April 17 and where Tristan Andersen was hit in the head with a canister last month—describes the strategy of non-violent resistance being used by Palestinian demonstrators and the increasingly violent response from the Israeli soldiers who police them. 

Excerpt: Some of those older men are influential. Ahmad al-Khatib, 32, was once a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a prominent militant group, and was jailed for a year for transporting weapons. Now he is committed to non-violence, even objecting to the stone throwers.

"I don't apologise for what I did, but I'm not going back to it," he said. "We are an occupied nation according to international law and we have the right to resist, though that doesn't mean I support suicide bombers. But I don't want to resist all my life."

He argues that a non-violent strategy brings fewer Palestinian casualties. "I have no problem dying to get back my land, but I'd say to hell with my land if it just brought back our martyr who died last week. The life of a human being is more important than the land itself."

Often the most sensitive issue for the villagers has not been whether to take up arms, but whether to accept in their midst so many foreigners, and in particular so many Israeli demonstrators. Ahmad al-Khatib said it was the "most disputed question" and that many feared the Israelis were spying on them until they saw they, too, were being injured and arrested.

One of the first Israelis to join the Bil'in protest in its earliest days was Jonathan Pollack, 27, an activist and member of Anarchists Against the Wall who lives in Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv. Although they warmly welcome him now, it was tense at first. "I'm still not one of their own and I don't pretend to be," he said.

Unlike most other joint peace initiatives, in this case the Israelis are in the minority and in the background. "I think it is very important that the struggle is Palestinian-led and that the colonial power relations are knowingly reversed," said Pollack.

3. And the non-violent protests in Bi’lin appear to be having an impact. In the Jerusalem Post, it was reported that the state has proposed a new route for the Wall that won’t take as much land away from the village as originally planned.

Excerpt: It took the death of a Palestinian at Bil'in last week and the threat of another contempt of court petition to the High Court of Justice, but the state has finally come up with a new proposal for the route of the West Bank security barrier that apparently complies with the original court decision of 19 months ago, attorney Michael Sfard said on Sunday.
Last week, the state submitted a new proposal to the High Court to change the original route of the fence in the area of Modi'in Illit, which was proposed by the Defense Ministry and rejected by the court on September 4, 2007.

Now, Sfard told The Jerusalem Post, the ministry has come up with a new route that gives Bil'in villagers back 700 of the 1,700 dunams, or 170 hectares, that were set to be located on the "Israeli side" of the barrier in the original proposal.

Israel has said the route of the barrier was determined by security considerations only. But in the case of Bil'in, as was true regarding several other sections, the route was originally determined to allow for the construction of a new neighborhood, called East Matityahu, in the urban haredi settlement of Modi'in Illit.

4. U.S. Reps. Brian Baird of Washington and Keith Ellison of Minnesota penned this excellent op-ed for the Seattle Times. On Phillip Weiss’s Mondoweiss, Weiss quotes Jeff Blankfort who points out that while Baird and Ellison have written a generally laudable piece in their description of the money the U.S. has given the Palestinian Authority, no mention is made of the billions of aid and weaponry the U.S. has supplied to Israel. 


We are convinced that the strategy in Gaza and ongoing policies in the West Bank are counterproductive to the cause of justice and lasting peace for all concerned.

In our judgment, pursuing extremists with overwhelming air power in one of the most densely populated areas in the world — with no means for civilians to escape — ensures the devastation that has occurred in Gaza. The extremist targets may have been hit, but so too were essential civilian services and any means of economic self-sufficiency. Palestinian families and businesses now lack the resources to rebuild their homes and businesses because they cannot get essential building materials such as glass or concrete. The consequence is that Hamas has not been visibly or demonstrably weakened but, ironically, moderate voices in the region have.

Beyond Gaza, a less dramatic but counterproductive strategy is taking place in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority leaders have recognized the right of Israel to exist, have been fighting the corruption of prior regimes, and have maintained law and order throughout the recent Gaza assaults.

Despite these efforts, the economy of the West Bank is crippled by more than 600 imposed checkpoints. Palestinians must endure long and humiliating searches on a daily basis. even essential medical professionals and critically ill patients are forced to take circuitous and costly detours.

Meanwhile, despite commitments to the contrary, Israeli settlements continue to expand throughout the West Bank.

Repeatedly we were asked by moderate Palestinians and others in the Islamic world: What is the reward for moderation and peace?

It is too often overlooked that the United States has given billions of dollars in aid, including hundreds of millions last year, to help the Palestinian people and move the peace process forward. President Obama has taken even more positive strides with his call to President Abbas, his delivery of $20.3 million in emergency aid this past January, and the appointment of special envoy George Mitchell. Furthermore, the president's fiscal year 2009 supplemental appropriations request contains $800 million in assistance for the Palestinian Authority and Gaza.

With the election of a new administration in Israel, the United States should exercise leadership to ensure immediate and lasting changes that move the region toward lasting peace. Because our own security and integrity are at stake, U.S. aid should be linked to these changes.





Gaza Digest 63, 4/27/09

News Clips: Jordanian King Abdullah II on Sunday urged President Barack Obama to take
a more forceful role in the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, warning of a new Middle East war unless significant progress is made over the next 18 months; An Israeli woman was arrested when she attempted to visit her Palestinian husband’s family in the West Bank city of Nablus on Sunday because under Israeli law, Israeli citizens are prohibited from entering Area A of the West Bank, which includes most of the Palestinian population centers; The Israeli army will impose a comprehensive closure on the West Bank and Gaza from midnight on Monday to midnight on Wednesday for Israel’s Independence Day; An Iranian vessel alleged to be carrying weapons bound for the Gaza Strip was torpedoed off the coast of Sudan last week, allegedly by Israeli or American forces operating in the area.


1. This piece by Amira Hass from bitterlemons.org, a weekly e-zine that presents Israeli and Palestinian viewpoints on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, describes the broad outlines of the process by which Israel has succeeded in physically and morally separating the Palestinians of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem to the detriment of all. 


The total separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank is one of the greatest achievements of Israeli politics, whose overarching objective is to prevent a solution based on international decisions and understandings and instead dictate an arrangement based on Israel's military superiority. In view of the violent rivalry between the two main movements competing for the upper hand in the Palestinian mock-government, it's easy to forget the effort Israel invested in separating families, economies, cultures and societies between the two parts of the Palestinian state "in the making". All that remained was for the Palestinians, aided by geography, to crown the split with their dual regime.

***

The devious unilateral Israeli disengagement of 2005 perpetuated a process that commenced in 1991: Gaza and the West Bank fall under different types of administration, with Israel cleverly presenting Gaza as an independent entity no longer under occupation. In the last Palestinian elections, Hamas proved more persuasive than Fateh when it attributed the Palestinian "victory" and the Israeli withdrawal to itself and its armed struggle and promised that "Jerusalem is next". There followed Hamas' takeover of the Gaza security forces in June 2007 and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' directive to tens of thousands of Palestinian Authority employees to boycott their places of work in the Strip.

In the recent Palestinian unity talks, the substantive questions have not been asked: Has the public in the West Bank and Gaza given up on the link between the two parts occupied in 1967 until the distant realization of the dream of one state? Will the Palestinian leaderships be taken to account by the people for the assistance they gave Israel in severing the two territories? Is the link to the Arab and Muslim worlds more vital for Hamas than the link with the West Bank? Are ceremonial international standing and the perks of senior officialdom more important to the PA and the PLO than the population of Gaza?

The answers must also come from the Israelis, and particularly those who claim to support peace. Prior to Hamas' election victory in 2006, the PA's center of rule was in Gaza. That didn't hinder Israel from perfecting the conditions of separation and severance that turned the Strip into the detention camp it is today while Israeli peaceniks in their multitudes sat on their hands. Even if a miracle happens in Cairo and the Palestinians unite, the government of Israel will not willingly forego its greatest achievement: severing Gaza from the West Bank. This achievement, which will only stoke the fires of a bloody conflict, is the disaster of both peoples.



2. From IRIN (humanitarian news and analysis, a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) comes this report of a new UN household survey from Gaza. 


Excerpt: The UN Inter-Agency Gender Task Force (IAGTF), a mechanism for integrating gender concerns into UN policies and programmes, on 23 April published the results of a household survey on the needs and perceptions of men and women in the aftermath of Israel’s recent 23-day military offensive in Gaza.

The survey was conducted through face-to-face interviews with 1,100 adult men and women across the Gaza Strip in the first week of March 2009. IAGTF is led by the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Psychological trauma was consistently rated as a main concern by respondents regardless of gender, region, or social group, and psychosocial services were deemed to be a critical need, like food and water, according to the survey.

“We have to help ourselves recover from the images and memories of the war,” said Iptihal, (she declined to giver her family name), aged 24, a public relations officer for a heritage organisation in Gaza City. “Counselling is not readily available; we only have one psychiatric hospital, and it is not socially acceptable to seek psychological treatment.”

Iptihal said she was most affected by her inability to help others near her who had suffered and died.


3. The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PHCR) released a report on Saturday about violence in the Occupied Territories during 2008. According the Saed Bannoura of the International Middle East Media Center, the PCHR claimed that 2008 was the bloodiest year for Palestinians since 1948. The report details violent incidents between Palestinian factions as well as by the Israeli Defense Forces (know in the Occupied Territories as the Israeli Occupation Forces). 


The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) based in Gaza, issued a report on Saturday revealing that the year 2008 was the bloodiest year for the Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948. It included violations and attacks inflicted during internal clashes, and during Israeli offensives against the Palestinians.

PCHR director, Dr. Raji Sourani, stated that the Palestinian government in Ramallah, and the government in Gaza, carried out sharp violation that harmed the people and violated rights instead of serving them.

Dr. Sourani added that the Palestinian factions are obliged to find a solution to end internal divisions before they cause a new catastrophe or a Nakba due to the ongoing violations, chaos and insecurity.

The PCHR said that the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli forces and the settlers in 2008 is 868, 820 (94.5%) of them were killed in the Gaza Strip, and 48 (5.5%) were killed in the West Bank.

The Center added that 414 of the slain Palestinian (47.6%) were civilians, and were killed in situations that did not pose any threat to the lives of Israeli troops.

Dr. Sourani further said that in 2008, Israeli soldiers kidnapped during repeated invasions 2433 Palestinians in the West Bank and 68 in the Gaza Strip. More than 9000 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel.

Israeli Soldiers and settlers carried repeated attacks against Palestinian lands and homes in the West Bank, while the army also expropriated more Palestinian lands for settlement construction and expansion and for the construction of the Annexation Wall.

The PCHR reported that in 2008, Israeli soldiers destroyed 216 homes in the Palestinian territories, including 107 in the West Bank and 109 in the Gaza Strip.

Referring to internal Palestinian violations and unrest, the PCHR stated that 143 Palestinians, including 25 children and 13 women, were killed by Palestinian gunmen, and 411 Palestinians were injured. Two more residents were killed in cases of weapons misuse.

26 Palestinians, including two children, were killed and 170, including 20 children and seven women, were injured by members of the Palestinian security forces in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The PCHR stated that excessive use of force by the security forces was the biggest violation to human rights last year.

Most of the violations took place during political arrests carried out by security forces in the Gaza and the West Bank. (Hamas-controlled security forces operate in Gaza, and Fatah-controlled security forces operate in the West Bank).




Gaza Digest 62, 4/26/09

News Clips: Hamas and Fatah representatives said they hoped for reconciliation in a new round of inter-Palestinian dialogue, which started on Sunday in Cairo; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's nominee for ambassador to the US has called for unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and dismantlement of settlements to help establish peace with the Palestinians (but his plan would likely include the expulsion of Palestinians living inside Israel proper); the Department of External Medical Treatment in Gaza, taken over by Hamas officials in March, has been handed back to the Palestinian Authority after a failed attempt to secure treatment for patients outside Gaza; On Saturday a 22-year-old Palestinian man was electrocuted by cables he had rigged for light and power in a Gaza smuggling tunnel, bringing the number of tunnel accident fatalities this year to 12; At least 25 people were injured by tear gas and rubber bullets fired by Israel Defense Forces soldiers during demonstrations against the Wall in the West Bank on Friday, and 13 soldiers were reported lightly wounded by stone-throwing; Jordan's King Abdullah said on Friday Israel must choose between integrating into the region or remaining isolated, and warned that delaying a two-state solution would be disastrous for Israelis and Palestinians.


1. Amira Hass writing for Haaretz investigates the bombing of the American International School in Gaza. The sad final sentence from the father of a school security guard who was killed: “As soon as we rebuild, the Israelis will come back and destroy everything."


Excerpt: The Israel Defense Forces knows very well why, on January 3, at somewhere between 3:30 and 3:45 A.M., an Israel Air Force pilot bombed and destroyed the American International School, in the northern Gaza Strip.

"The American college in the area of Beit Lahiya was being used as a rocket-launching site, as well as a munitions storage dump," the IDF Spokesman told Haaretz in a written statement. "Therefore, it was a legitimate terrorist target."

Beyond the fact that the "college" is a school for children in grades 1-12, it's already far too late to try and prove a negative. Suffice to say that Ribhi Salem, a mathematician by training who has been the administrative director of the school since it began operating in 1999, was flabbergasted when he heard the charges of the IDF. According to him, no rockets or Qassams were ever fired from the school grounds. The school's building takes up three of the 36 dunams comprising the campus. Sure, rockets were sometimes fired from the surrounding hothouses and fields; but never from the school's property. Hamas had promised Salem that none of its armed fighters would enter the school.

And as for serving as a munitions dump? "That's the most ridiculous thing I have heard," says Salem. If that were the case, he points out, wouldn't there have been secondary explosions? Wouldn't a fire have broken out?"

And one other thing, he says, using the logic he shared with Senator John Kerry. The night before the attack, Salem Abu Qleiq, one of the school's guards, asked whether his wife and three children could come live in the school compound. "I told him I'd think about it and let him know in the morning." Abu Qleiq was one of six guards who worked in shifts 24/7; the security personnel were required to report anything out of the ordinary and call the police if necessary. If anyone had forced the school to allow ammunition to be stored there, would the 24-year old security guard - now dead - have considered the place a safe haven for him and his family? "I thank God I did not give my permission right away," Salem shudders.

It will cost $7.12 million to rebuild the school, $5.5 million for the structures alone. Like the thousands of buildings destroyed by the IDF in the Gaza Strip, there is nothing special about the piles of rubble that remain. Similarly, there is no reason to clear away this or the other debris, as long as Israel does not permit construction materials to enter the Strip. But it reflects the stories, contradictions, casualties and potential that characterize the reality of life in Gaza. When the Gazans say that "Israel is wreaking havoc precisely on those who are not Hamas," the case of the American School is one of many examples - and an especially ironic one, at that.


2. This report from Yasmin Khan on The Electronic Intifada should serve as an inspiration to us here in the States. As the biggest supplier of military hardware to Israel, the U.S. government (with our taxes) is complicit in Israel’s flouting of international law. 



Excerpt: It came as no surprise to campaigners in the United Kingdom to hear the British Foreign Minister David Miliband reveal this week that components supplied by Britain were "almost certainly" used by Israel in its recent military assault on Gaza. Despite Israel's continued human rights abuses, the UK government has licensed millions of pounds' worth of military equipment to Israel over the last few years including components for tanks and combat aircraft, in direct conflict with its own arms policy.

The British government's announcement that it will be reviewing arms sales to Israel in light of the atrocities committed in Gaza earlier this year was, however, surprising. The move represents a real victory for the Stop Arming Israel coalition, which began its campaign for a two-way arms embargo against Israel during its invasion of Lebanon in July 2006 and serves as a potent example of public pressure forcing governments to review their policies towards Israel.


3. Great report from Berkeley native Norah Barrows-Friedman (who currently lives in the West Bank) about the development of permaculture in a West Bank village. Includes information on the water and land war being waged by Israel against the Palestinians, but the resilience and ingenuity of the Palestinian farmers—with help from outside experts—is heartening. 


Excerpt: Farmers at Bustan Qaraaqa say that over 70 different species of native plants are being propagated and rooted throughout this wadi (Arabic for desert valley). Tiny sprigs of ricinus and pale green thyme reach for the sky in their little pots made from the bottoms of plastic juice bottles. Sage and mint grow in soil-filled car tires, and almond and apricot saplings nurture wildflowers at the base of their skinny trunks. Permaculture is not a tidy, clean-cut way of farming. Instead, plants and trees are packed in all together, grouped by need for certain nutrients, sun or shade, The term "weeds" does not apply; permaculture insists that every plant has its place and can offer something beneficial to the landscape. In the nursery at Bustan Qaraaqa, long, thick blades of wild grass protect new sprouts from the blazing sun.

Across the Green Line, Israeli agri-business flourishes and Israelis enjoy unrestricted access to land and water resources. Water grids and sophisticated irrigation provide an abundance of crops and full swimming pools during the summer. Even illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank enjoy these privileges, while Palestinians in surrounding villages and refugee camps struggle with a fraction of the water supply.

According to a report published this week by the World Bank, the average Israeli receives access to four times as much water as the average Palestinian, resulting in what it calls a "near catastrophe" for the Palestinian Authority's current water system.

The green fields of vegetable and fruit crops in Israel are fed from water aquifers and the Jordan river as settlements across the West Bank are deliberately placed on top of the most fertile land and the biggest underground water tables. On the other hand, Palestinian farms, villages, towns and refugee camps (all of which are restricted from accessing the same water tables and the Jordan river) must then rely on rainwater-catching tubs on top of roofs and beside homes -- a meager source of water especially in the hot summer months.




Gaza Digest 61, 4/23/09

News Clips: 1. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday the United States would refuse to deal with or fund a Palestinian government that included Hamas unless it met three international conditions. "We will not deal with nor in any way fund a Palestinian government that includes Hamas unless and until Hamas has renounced violence, recognized Israel and agrees to follow the previous obligations of the Palestinian Authority," Clinton told the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee; 2. US officials say the leaders of Israel, Egypt and the Palestinians have been invited for talks in Washington in a new push for Middle East peace—but one at a time and not all together; 3. The first Hamas-licensed bank in the Gaza Strip has opened for business, a move that could help Palestinians in the territory bypass a financial blockade imposed by Israel and its Western allies; 4. Israel demolished a Palestinian home in East Jerusalem on Wednesday; 5. After a yeshiva teacher complained, The Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum fired docent Itamar Shapira for comparing the trauma of Jewish Holocaust survivors with the trauma experienced by the Palestinian people during the Nakba.



1. In response to a report issued by the IDF claiming that Palestinian civilian deaths during the offensive against Gaza were minimal and an “operational malfunction”, several leftist and human rights groups in Israel have demanded an independent investigation, according to the Middle East Media Center. In a statement unlikely to convince anyone outside of Israel beyond the members of AIPAC, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1080244.html) that the IDF report of its own ethical actions proved that Israel still had the “most moral army in the world.”  (An additional account of the call for an independent investigation via McClatchy can be found in the Miami Herald. http://www.miamiherald.com/news/world/story/1013174.html)

Israeli Groups Demand External Investigation of Gaza Offensive 


http://www.imemc.org/article/60077

Escerpt: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B’Tselem, The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Yesh Din, Physicians of Human Rights and the Public Committee Against Torture, issued a joint release saying that the army considered killing civilians as rare accidents, while data collected by human rights groups in Israel showed that many Palestinians were killed due to the army’s indiscriminate policy during the war.

The Human Rights groups demanded an external investigation and added that if the army claims that it did not violate the international law in Gaza, then why Israel is rejecting to cooperate with the UN investigation team led by Judge Richard Goldstone from South Africa.

Goldstone is demanding a probe into the Israeli violations and violations carried out by Hamas in Gaza.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) based in Gaza said that it is concern at the recent Israeli statements rejecting cooperation with the independent investigation committee mandated by the United Nation.

“The investigation is led by Justice Richard Goldstone, former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Both tribunals were established by the United Nations Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. The independent fact finding mission is mandated to investigate all violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law, related to the recent 23 day Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip”, the PCHR reported.

Israeli soldiers killed during over 1414 Palestinians during the offensive against Gaza. 1177 (83%) were noncombatants, the PCHR said.
1. The report below from IRIN highlights the terrible effect that Israel and Egypt’s blockade of Gaza is having on the long-terms health of its children.


2. IRIN issued a report on the worsening food security and health situations in Gaza following “Operation Cast Lead.” Reading these dire statistics has inspired me to set up a meeting with my congressman’s office—the U.S. government must exert pressure to end the unconscionable blockade. 


Excerpt: Rising poverty, unemployment and food insecurity in Gaza, compounded by the recent 23-day Israeli offensive, have increased the threat of child malnutrition, say UN agencies, health ministry officials and healthcare NGOs in Gaza.

UN World Health Organization (WHO) officials are concerned by the warning signs, including rising malnutrition indicators - like increased cases of stunting, wasting and underweight children - and continuing high rates of anaemia among children and pregnant women.

**

The amount of affordable fresh fruit and protein on the Gaza market has been significantly reduced due to the closures, according to OCHA. “The last shipment of livestock entered Gaza on 31 October 2008, and since the Hamas takeover in June 2007 livestock imports have been severely restricted,” said OCHA field officer Hamada al-Bayari in Gaza.

The director of all 56 primary healthcare centres run by the health ministry in Gaza, Fouad Issawi, said cases of stunting and anaemia increased in 2008 and 2009. Since 2007 the amount of anti-anaemia drugs - like ferrous carbonate (with vitamin C) and folic acid - required by primary health clinics had increased dramatically, he said.

“There was a rise in anaemia amongst children in our centres in 2008 and [this is] continuing,” said Adnan al-Wahaidi, director of Ard al-Insan Benevolent Association in Gaza, the main healthcare NGO supporting an estimated 16,000 undernourished children.

“Women with children who are underweight or wasting have been coming to the centres in greater numbers over the last few months; many of their husbands died during the recent conflict or are unemployed.”


3. Agency France Presse covers a press conference held in East Jerusalem by Nobel peace Laureate Mairead Maguire. The home demolitions continue in East Jerusalem, as the land appropriations continue in the West Bank, and the Palestinians are forced into ever shrinking enclaves.

Excerpt: Nobel peace laureate Mairead Maguire on Tuesday accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing" policies in annexed east Jerusalem, where the municipality plans to tear down almost 90 Arab homes.

"I believe the Israeli government is carrying out a policy of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians here in east Jerusalem," said Maguire, who won the 1976 Nobel prize for her efforts at reaching a peaceful solution to the violence in Northern Ireland.

"I believe the Israeli government policies are against international law, against human rights, against the dignity of the Palestinian people," she said at a news conference.

It was held in a protest tent erected by residents of east Jerusalem's Silwan neighbourhood where 88 Arab homes are under demolition orders.

The Israeli authorities say the houses were built or extended without the necessary construction permits. Palestinians say the planned demolitions aim at forcing them out of east Jerusalem.

If the demolition orders are carried out 1,500 people would be left homeless in one of the largest forced evictions since Israel occupied mostly Arab east Jerusalem in the 1967 war and later annexed it.



Gaza Digest 60, 4/22/09

News Clips: British lawyers attempting to build a war crimes case against Israel have been blocked from entering the Gaza Strip because the U.K. Foreign Office has refused to support their work; Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Wednesday his opposition to an Arab peace initiative stemmed from its demand for a "right of return" for Palestinian refugees to Israel proper; President Barack Obama said the United States wants to see concrete measures and goodwill gestures towards a peace process from Israel and the Palestinians; Federal prosecutors reportedly are considering dropping classified information leak charges against two former AIPAC staffers; Four Palestinians were injured following the explosion of an artillery shell dud left behind by the IDF in the neighborhood of Zeitoun in the eastern part of Gaza City; The government of the United Kingdom says they will review all of their weapons exports to Israel due to Israel’s excessive use of force during the war against the Gaza Strip.



1. The Guardian reports the results of a new poll done by the One Voice Movement that shows most Palestinians and Israeli Jews would accept a two-state solution. (I know One Voice from their work here in New York City—they were a part of the curriculum on Israel-Palestine in my daughter’s 7th grade current events study. They are a grassroots movement whose leadership is primarily drawn from Kadima on the Israeli Jewish side and Fatah on the Palestinian side.) 

Excerpt: A majority of both Palestinians and Israelis are willing to accept a two-state solution, according to a poll from the international grassroots movement One Voice.

Based on public opinion research methods used in Northern Ireland, 500 interviews were completed in Israel and 600 in the West Bank and Gaza immediately following the Gaza war and the Israeli elections.

Each side was asked which problems they thought were "very significant" and what the solutions might be.

The results indicate that 74% of Palestinians and 78% of Israelis are willing to accept a two-state solution on an option range from "tolerable" to "essential", while 59% of Palestinians and 66% of Israelis find a single bi-national state "unacceptable".

The poll comes as it emerged Barack Obama is to invite Israeli, ­Palestinian and Egyptian leaders to the White House within the next two months in a fresh push for Middle East peace. Obama, speaking at the White House yesterday, said there was a need to try to rise above the cynicism about prospects for peace.

The results of today's poll imply that mainstream Israeli and Palestinian populations have yet to acknowledge the significant priorities and fears on the other side.

The top item for Palestinians is the establishment of an independent sovereign state at 97%, followed by the rights of refugees at 95% and agreement on the future of Jerusalem at 94%.

For Israelis the top item is security at 77%, followed by an agreement on the future of Jerusalem at 68% and rights to natural resources at 62%.

An analysis of the poll by One Voice says: "It is absolutely essential that the issues at the top of these two lists get dealt with in any peace agreement or it is unlikely that that agreement will last. This means Palestinians need to be aware of and address the 'Security of Israel' problem that comes in 12th on the Palestinian list, and that Israelis need to be aware of and address the cluster of issues at the top of the Palestinian list."

2. Agence France Presse (via Haaretz) reported that lawyers in Norway would file criminal charges against Israeli government and military officials on Wednesday (a later update said the charges had been filed). Similar charges filed by Spanish lawyers were dropped after intense pressure and lobbying by the Israeli government. 

Former prime minister Ehud Olmert and opposition leader Tzipi Livni may face war crimes charges in Norway over their role in Israel's offensive against Hamas in Gaza, AFP reported Tuesday.

The news agency said six Norwegian lawyers announced plans Tuesday to accuse the pair, as well as Defense Minister Ehud Barak and seven senior Israel Defense Forces officers, of the crimes.

The lawyers, who planned to file their complaint with Norway's chief prosecutor on Wednesday, were quoted as saying they would also call for the arrest and extradition of the Israeli leaders.

Under the Norwegian penal code, courts may hear cases involving war crimes and other major violations of human rights.

The lawyers released a statement quoted by AFP accusing Israel of "massive terrorist attacks" in the Gaza Strip from December 27 last year to January 25, killing civilians, illegally using weapons against civilian targets and deliberately attacking hospitals and medical staff.



3. In this commentary from Haaretz, Gideon Levy starts by arguing that the Holocaust and the Occupation cannot be compared to each other—the Holocaust and the Nazis “could not and should not be compared to any other inhumane behaviors.” Then he proceeds to refer to images, behaviors and attitudes current today in Israel that “should ring some bells.”


Excerpt: The Israeli occupation is both brutal and cruel. Israel in 2009 is beginning to resemble 1930s Germany more and more. The dehumanization process Palestinians experience, encouraged by the media and executed by the IDF, brings to mind horrific images.

Anyone facing the barbed-wire fences surrounding Qalqilya, for example, cannot help but think of a concentration camp. A concentration camp - not an extermination camp. The person who smeared graffiti on the separation wall calling Abu Dis a ghetto, as it severed by an 8-meter high concrete wall, did so with good reason.

The racism exhibited toward Israeli Arab, wherever they may go, should also stir profound concern. Arab students are unable to rent apartments in Jewish cities and a Ramat Aviv grocery shop owner has said that quite a few of the upscale neighborhood's residents refuse to have Arab employees deliver their groceries. That too should ring some bells.

Arabs were fired from Israel Railways, essentially because of their ethnic affiliation, and others struggle to be accepted into government positions, for the same reason. So-called selections - yes, that's the name for it - prevents young Arabs from entering city night clubs. Security checkups in Ben-Gurion Airport, which separates people according to their ethnicity, and the checkups based on someone's accent, are sickening.

There are more than a few IDF orders and Knesset laws that if translated to German, would certainly cause alarm. The demand to require Arab citizens to pass a loyalty test would have sounded horrible in German. Also, the prevalent claims that Israel's problems could have been solved had we only barricaded the Palestinians behind fences or borders are just as horrifying.

The term "demographic threat" should sound familiar to the Holocaust generation, to subsequent generations, as should the discussion - shameful in its accepted legitimacy, - of how to deal with this apparent "threat." The citizenship law should have, as they say in English, "rang a few bells."



Gaza Digest 59, 4/21/09

News Clips: Israel allowed grain, commercial goods, and fuel into the besieged Gaza Strip on Monday; Egypt announced the Rafah crossing would stay open Monday and Tuesday; A speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the Durban II conference in Geneva in which he called Israel a racist state and accused it of perpetrating genocide against the Palestinians was vile and fed racial hatred but did not preclude U.S.-Iranian diplomatic contacts, the United States said on Monday; Human Rights Watch released a report on Monday documenting a pattern since late December 2008 of arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, maimings by shooting, and extrajudicial executions by alleged members of Hamas security forces.

1. While all eyes are on Durban II in Geneva, and the spectacle of Ahmadinejad’s speech, the walk-out and their reverberations, the situation in Gaza remains dismal. Here is a report about a press advisory from Oxfam and 22 other aid agencies decrying the continued blockade, which makes it impossible for Gazans to rebuild, both literally and metaphorically, their lives. 


Excerpt: A coalition of international aid agencies today warned that tens of thousands of Gazans are still homeless and without basic services such as piped drinking water three months after the 18 January ceasefire.

The agencies, including Oxfam International, CARE West Bank and Gaza, War Child Holland and Medical Aid for Palestinians-UK, also called on the international community—and the European Union in particular which in the coming weeks will consider strengthening ties with Israel—to do more than pay lip service to the needs of the people of Gaza whose lives were torn apart during the three-week military operation.

“If the EU does not put the brakes on the process to strengthen ties with Israel, it will be sending a dangerous signal to the world that maintaining a destructive policy of closure is acceptable,” said Martha Myers, Country Director of CARE West Bank and Gaza.

“Gaza’s industry, including the agricultural sector, has almost completely collapsed and reconstruction has proved a near impossible task.  Operation Cast Lead destroyed Gaza’s economy which was already severely weakened after months of blockade.  It makes no sense to continue depriving ordinary people the opportunity to earn a living and support their families.  The crossings must be opened now to allow the normal flow of commerce.  If they are not, the people of Gaza simply will not recover,”  added Myers.

Reconstruction in Gaza is severely constrained. Materials such as cement and reinforced steel rods are still being denied entry by Israel.  This means that the 20,000 families—or at least 140,000 people—whose homes were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable as a result of the conflict are unable to rebuild their lives.  Many are living in tents and in makeshift shelters constructed with salvaged bricks and plastic sheeting, with no end in sight.

Furthermore, some 35,000 people still do not have access to piped water or safe sewage disposal.  And, three months on, there are still damaged schools, universities, health clinics, hospitals and other parts of the civilian infrastructure that have not been repaired. Most food items and some medicines have been allowed in through the single crossing of Kerem Shalom, but entry remains erratic and many medicines remain out of stock in Gaza.

“There has been zero progress in allowing construction materials in to help people rebuild their lives.   This is unacceptable, full stop.  World leaders must take practical steps to fully open the crossings and exert as much pressure on Israel and all parties to ensure that families can finally see a light at the end of what has been a very long and dark tunnel.  A drip-feed of food aid and medicines is simply not enough,” said John Prideaux-Brune, country director for Oxfam GB in Jerusalem.

2. Another press advisory, this one from the International Campaign of Solidarity with the Palestinian Fishermen, about support for Gazan fisherman who are attacked and harassed by the Israeli Navy (in defiance of International Law) on a daily basis as they attempt to ply their trade and provide some protein to the people of Gaza. 

Excerpt: Ten civil and humanitarian institutions in cooperation with the Palestinian international campaign to break the siege said Monday that they embarked on preparing an international campaign of solidarity with the Palestinian fishermen to pressure all official parties around the world into stopping Israeli violations in Gaza waters.

In a news conference, the institutions called for taking actions at all levels to stop Israel from violating the rights of Palestinian fishermen in Gaza and for organizing campaigns all over the world to expose these infringements.

The institutions stressed the need for making laws regulating fishing operations and securing fish resources and the marine environment in Gaza.

They also pointed to the importance of updating fishing boats and ports in Gaza, calling for the establishment of specialized workshops to repair and maintain fishing equipment and finding a mechanism to support the fishermen financially.

In another context, the ministry of agriculture said Tuesday in a press release that the story of the fishing boat explosion near the Gaza coast is an Israeli fabrication to redouble and justify attacks on Palestinian fishermen.

The ministry added that Palestinian eyewitness reported that the boat was not booby-trapped, but it was targeted by an Israeli gunboat leading to its explosion.

It noted that the Israeli military navy stepped up recently its attacks on Gaza fishermen at sea, where they kidnapped many of them and threatened to target their fishing boats if they did not cooperate and work as agents for Israel.




Gaza Digest 58, 4/20/09

News Clips: Several hundred demonstrators rallied in Tel Aviv on Saturday to protest the IDF’s killing of a Palestinian activist in the West Bank town of Ni’lin Friday; Netanyahu, who was planning to visit the United States in order to participate in the AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) meeting, reportedly asked the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, to represent Israel instead; Bowing to U.S. pressure, Netanyahu announced this weekend that Palestinian recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” is no longer a pre-condition for peace talks; An Israeli Defense Force song-and-dance troupe is to perform in London at a show to commemorate the founding of Israel, provoking anger among groups that campaign for the rights of Palestinians.

1. Commentary from Gideon Levy of Haaretz about the terrible situation in Gaza three months after the Israeli assault. Now that the killing is over, the world appears to have forgotten the people of Gaza, who are living amidst rubble and still suffering under a crippling blockade. 


Excerpt: Gaza is besieged. There are no building materials. Israel and the world are setting conditions, the Palestinians are incapable of forming a unity government, as is needed, the money and concrete are nowhere to be seen and the Abu-Aun family continues to live in a tent. Even the $900 million promised by the United States is stuck in the cash register. It's doubtful whether it will ever be taken out. America's word.

It's exactly three months since the much-talked-about war, and Gaza is once again forgotten. Israel has never taken an interest in the welfare of its victims. Now the world has forgotten, too. Two weeks with hardly a Qassam rocket has taken Gaza completely off the agenda. If the Gazans don't hurry up and resume firing, nobody will take an interest in their welfare again. Although not new, this is an especially grievous and saddening message liable to spark the next cycle of violence. And then it will be certain they won't get aid because they will be shooting.

Somebody must assume responsibility for the fate of the Abu-Aun family and other victims like them. If they had been injured in an earthquake, the world probably would have helped them recover long ago. Even Israel would have quickly dispatched aid convoys from ZAKA, Magen David Adom, even the IDF. But the Abu-Aun family was not injured by a natural disaster, but by hands and flesh and blood, made in Israel, and not for the first time. The response: no compensation, no aid, no rehabilitation. Israel and the world are too preoccupied to rebuild Gaza. They have become speechless. Gaza, remember?

From the ruins of the Abu-Aun family sprouts a new desperation. It will be more bitter than its predecessor. A decent family of eight has been destroyed, physically and psychologically, and the world stands aloof. We should not expect Israel to compensate its victims or rebuild the ruins it caused, even though this would clearly be in its interest, not to mention its moral obligation, a topic not even talked about.

The world once again has to clean up Israel's mess. But Israel is setting more and more political conditions for providing emergency humanitarian aid, empty excuses to leave Gaza in ruins and not offer aid that Gaza deserves and desperately needs. Gaza has once again been left to its own devices, the Abu-Aun family has been left in its tent, and when the hostilities resume we will be told once again about the cruelty and brutality of ... the Palestinians.



2. Below are three pieces about the death of Basem Abu Rahme, an unarmed Palestinian activist who was hit in the chest with a tear gas canister at the weekly protest against the wall in the West Bank town of Bil'in on Friday. The first from Haaretz quotes army sources that claim the Palestinian protesters were “violent,” the second from Richard Silverstein’s blog Tikun Olam includes a YouTube clip that shows small children at the head of the protest march, and the last is a commentary from the Palestine Monitor about the youth of Palestine being buried in the “graveyards of their villages.”

“IDF: Protester's death likely due to unauthorized fire,” Anshel Pfeffer and Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondents and AP, 4/19/09


Israel Defense Forces sources said Saturday a tear gas canister that killed a Palestinian demonstrator Friday at a protest against the West Bank separation fence was likely fired in violation of orders. Bassem Abu Rahmeh, 31, was killed during a protest in the West Bank village of Bil'in, a flash point for confrontations between soldiers and anti-fence protesters.

**

The Bil'in shooting occurred during a protest during which around 100 demonstrators hurled stones at soldiers and tried to destroy the fence, army sources said. Abu Rahmeh sustained severe chest injuries and was transferred to a Ramallah hospital, where he died of his injuries.

IDF officials who investigated the incident found the Armored Corps soldier who fired the canister apparently aimed directly at Abu Rahmeh from a distance of a mere few dozen meters. The IDF said Saturday that troops opened fire to disperse a violent, three-hour protest that was taking place in a closed military zone.


“IDF Soldier Killed Palestinian with ‘Unauthorized’ Fire,” Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam, 4/18/09


Exerpt: So what was this soldier’s real sin? He was caught on camera doing what all of his comrades do in the same situations. Every demonstrator knows that the IDF uses the tear gas canisters as a weapon rather than for crowd dispersal. Every demonstrator knows that the IDF fires the canisters directly at them. This is not a single incident involving a single misdeed. This is a systemic issue involving the IDF deliberately stepping over the line and seeing how much it can get away with before someone with half a conscience pushes back.

What particularly distresses me about virtually all the media reports on this incident is that they dutifully report the IDF lie that the tear gas was shot in the midst of a violent rock-throwing demonstration. But no reports refer to the YouTube video footage which clearly testifies to the IDF lie. Some reports like this one don’t even acknowledge the witnesses claim that there was no provocation for the attack and no stone throwing to which the IDF was responding. So in effect the world media is giving the IDF half a bye on this when they have no excuse for doing so. Why are the only ones calling this what it really is bloggers? What are reporters afraid of?

This is murder. Just so I can give a hand to my more timid brethren in the fourth estate…it’s spelled M-U-R-D-E-R.  Call it what it is. Note that in the longer YouTube video which I feature here thanks to reader Orgo, there isn’t a hint of violence or stone-throwing from the demonstrators. Further, AFTER the IDF has fired the fatal shot, a soldier says to one the demonstrators in a threatening tone: “You want more gas?” This is heinous, wanton disregard for human life.


“’Our peaceful towns should no longer be the graveyard of our youth,’” press advisory from the Palestinian National Initiative, Palestine Monitor, 4/17/09 



Excerpt: MP Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, The Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative expressed shock “For four years, the residents of Bi’lin have been peacefully resisting the building of the Apartheid Wall, every single Friday.”

“This represents the Palestinian commitment to non-violence principles and their steadfastness. Palestinian and International youths are peacefully struggling, but our towns where such demonstrations take place can no longer be the graveyards of our youths,” Barghouthi said.

“By constantly defying non-violence and responding with an overwhelming use of force, the Israeli army is aiming to provoke Palestinian violence and launch the aggression circle,” he added firmly.

In similar incidents this year, the Israeli army killed 4 Palestinian children and teenagers in the nearby village of Ni’lim, as well as critically injuring an American peace activist. “Most of the time, our people are hit with prohibited live-bullets or rubber-coated bullets being shot at a too close range, or lately by high velocity gas canister such as today. This is beyond every international rules,” said Dr. Barghouthi.

MP Barghouthi called on the International community to consider today’s incident as an ‘ultimate wake up call’. “It is urgent to pressure the Israeli right-wing government to stop the daily aggression on our people and youths.”




Gaza Digest 57, 4/19/09

News Clips: The London Times online edition reported on Saturday that the Israel Defense Force was making preparations to be able to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by Israel's government; Two Israeli police officers were injured on Saturday when a Palestinian driver deliberately ran them down at a checkpoint near a Jewish settlement outside Jerusalem; An unarmed Palestinian protestor named Basem Ibrahim Abu Rahma was killed Friday when he was shot at close range by a high velocity tear gas canister at the weekly demonstration against the Wall in Bil’in; Egypt opened its border with the Gaza Strip on Saturday for two days to allow passage to a number of humanitarian cases; Congressional Quarterly is reporting that President Obama is requesting that Congress amend a law that would end the flow of US aid to the Palestinian Authority if a Fatah-Hamas power sharing arrangement is established; The topic of Israel-Palestine has been deliberately eliminated from the official program of Durban II conference on racism, structured by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN OHCHR), and all side events on Israel-Palestine have been cancelled; the U.S. and Australia will not attend Durban II because of concerns about anti-Israel