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Dauntless Dissent
May 3, 2009
Stealing Pakistan's Nukes
Moon of Alabama - April 30, 2009
The recent "Pakistan is a failed state" meme, heavily promoted by the Obama administration and its friends, had some of the intended results.
Pakistan's army is bombing and shelling some places in Lower Dir and Buner where the huge and fearsome TALIBOTHRA made an attempt to replace the hapless local government. The army will waste a lot of ammunition, many civilians and a few Pashtun fighters who never posed a real threat to Pakistan's Punjabi majority and the central government. After some fighting and reporting of big enemies-killed numbers to the U.S. the central government will agree to another deal with the locals there.
But the "failed state" meme certainly had an additional effect, likely unintended, to increase the believability of anti-U.S. conspiracy theories.
Yesterday the upper house of Pakistan's parliament discussed the current political situation:PML-N Senator Raja Zafar-ul-Haq while taking part in the debate said that an anti-Pakistan environment was being created in the world with an impression that the nuclear assets were not in safe hands and that the country is an irresponsible state to pave way for depriving Pakistan from its nuclear assets. "A situation is being created so as to find an excuse to take control of the nuclear assets of the country", the Senator said, adding that US had also said that Pakistan could be deprived of the nuclear programme if the situation worsened.
Zafar-ul-Haq is leader of the PML-N, the main-opposition party, not a backbencher. The fear of a U.S./Indian plot to get hands on Pakistan's (and Saudi Arabia's) nukes now seems to be a well established thought in Pakistan and certainly not without reason.
I am still unconvinced that it is the real intent behind the recent scare mongering. But who knows? The U.S. military certainly has plans for an 'emergency rescue' of Pakistan's nukes. But the chance of such an operation to be successful, even with some inside help, seems slim to me. Whether successful or not, the consequences would be huge, deadly and not restricted to Pakistan.
Let's hope that Obama does not fall for funny ideas over this issue.
Editor adds:
Haaretz:
April 23, 2009 - Israeli FM Avigdor Lieberman said Iran is not Israel's biggest strategic threat; rather, Afghanistan and Pakistan are. This comes after years of Lieberman warning about the growing Iranian threat. Now, he has dropped Tehran to number two, with Iraq coming third.Labels: Wars for Israel
May 2, 2009
Rogue settler bulldozes cultivated land under cover of dark
02 / 05 / 2009 Time: 15:02
Bethlehem - Ma'an - An Israeli settler destroyed at least 10 dunums of Palestinian land and damaged at least 140 more when he drove a bulldozer over agricultural land near the town of Al-Khader on Friday.
The settler, who appeared to be acting alone, left the illegal West Bank settlement of Efrata with a bulldozer in the early hours of Friday morning and dug a road down the center of a large swath of a land growing almond trees and grapevines, crushing hundreds of plants under the wheels of the vehicle.
The land, in the Abu Bkir area just outside the center of town, is privately owned by several Al-Khader families. Locals said the settler appears to be attempting to confiscate the land and impose "de facto" realities preventing Palestinians from using it.
The Al-Khader municipal council is preparing a suit against the man that will be filed in the Israeli courts in the coming days.
The town and a neighboring village just south of Bethlehem, were handed an order authorizing the confiscation of 2,500 dunums (1 dumum is 1,000 square meters) in February. According to Al-Khader Mayor Ramzi Salah, 90% of the village land is slated for confiscation, between the expanding settlements and outposts [and] the nearly complete Israeli separation wall.Labels: Ethnic Cleansing, Illegal Occupation
Female Israeli soldier beats Azzun Atama woman; village isolated behind separation wall on edge
02 / 05 / 2009 Time: 11:16
Qalqiliya – Ma'an – Forty-year-old Palestinian Sundus Mahmoud Ahamd sustained moderate injuries after being hit with the rifle butt of a female Israeli soldier as she tried to reach her home on the far side of the separation wall from Qalqiliya to the village of Azzun Atama on Friday.
Soldiers shut down the village shortly after the incident and barred media from crossing the military checkpoint erected on the main road.
For Sundus to travel into town from her Azzun Atama home she must wait at a gate, or access point, in the Israeli separation wall. From her hospital bed Sundus recounted her attempt to travel into Qalqiliya from her isolated home on the far side of the separation wall.
"A woman with short blonde hair was guarding the gate," she said, "It's the same gate I pass through every day to go into town and return through to get home." As Sundus waited the woman cursed at her, "It wasn't the first time a female soldier was cruel to me," she said, "I think they are trying to make our lives miserable so we will move off the land."
As Sundus passed through the gate the woman cursed at her and Sundus cursed back. She was answered with several blunt force strikes with the woman's rifle butt and eventually fainted. Other Palestinians waiting at the access point arranged for an ambulance to come and bring her to the Darwish Nazzal Hospital in Qalqiliya.
"We are exposed to this brutality every day," said A'tef Salameh, a member of one of the ten families and only 70 people living in Azzun Atama village.
"When we are beaten, harassed or abused," Salameh said, "We have no one we can contact, no one to file a complaint with." The village is surrounded by settlements on the east and west, the separation wall to the north and a road barrier to the south. The four main roads running near the village are restricted and Palestinians are prohibited from using them. A guard tower and gate regulate access to all other West Bank towns.
Though the village is officially Area B, under Israeli military and Palestinian Authority civilian control, there are no services available in the village. "We have no nurses or clinics," said Salameh, because Israeli authorities allow no one without a special permit indicating they live in Azzun Atama to enter the area. "We don't know what to do in case of an emergency," he added.Labels: Ethnic Cleansing, Subjugation, Supremacism
Two Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrike on southern Gaza
Ma'an News
Gaza – May 2, 2009 – Two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike carried out against smuggling tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah on Saturday.
"The bodies of the two who were killed were received in the local Abu Yousef An-Najjar Hospital," said Mu'aweiyah Hasaneen, the head of Emergency and Ambulance Services within the Gaza Strip Health Ministry.
The two Palestinians were identified as Jehad Abu Jarad and Hamdan Al-Astal, both in their 20s. A third Palestinian is possibly still missing, Hasaneen added.
Following three months of near-silence on the borders, Israel's air force carried out three airstrikes aimed at underground tunnels on the Al-Barazil area of southern Gaza on Saturday, during which five Palestinians were lightly injured, and were also transferred to Abu Yousef An-Najjar Hospital for treatment. Targets included a group of fighters, a farmer, and smuggling tunnels.
Israeli forces entered the Gaza Strip at 7am on Saturday morning in response to projectile fire from the northern Strip, and clashed with forces from the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, the An-Nasser Salah Ad-Din Brigades.
The group said in a statement that fighters fired three mortar shells across the Israeli fence near Jabaliya; Israeli media reports confirmed two projectiles landed in the western Negev Saturday morning. They reported no injuries.
According to the Brigades, Israeli forces then entered the Strip and clashed with the fighters, who forced the soldiers to retreat.
Palestinian security sources confirmed the reports, saying Israeli forces stationed east of Jabaliya opened fire towards Palestinian areas. They reported no injuries.
Spokespeople for the Israeli forces said they were unaware of any military activity in the northern Strip.
Israeli fire injures farmer
The second incident saw Israeli fire injure a Palestinian farmer in the southern Gaza Strip village of Khuza'a, east of Khan Younis.
The 35-year-old Nafith Abu T'eima sustained light injuries following several gunshot volleys from a passing Israeli militarized jeep, and was hit in the neck with shrapnel. He was tending his lands at the time of the incident and evacuated to a hospital.
Warplanes target smuggling tunnels
Israeli warplanes launched two raids on tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border on Saturday, injuring three Palestinians.
Eyewitnesses said the second raid came only ten minutes after the first and targeted a tunnel only meters away from the first. The injured from the most recent attack were all transferred to Abu Yousif An-Najjar Hospital for treatment.Labels: Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Subjugation
Book review: Resurrecting "America's Defense Line"
By Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
1 May 2009
The Israel lobby has come under more public scrutiny in the past three years than it has since US Senator William Fulbright's famous hearings into its activities in 1963.Questions over its role in fomenting the Iraq war have no doubt served as a catalyst; hubris and overreach have done the rest. First there was the espionage case involving two senior executives with the lobby group AIPAC caught passing purloined classified documents to Israeli handlers. Then there was the public lynching by the lobby's attack dogs of Chas Freeman, an outspoken critic of Israel who had been nominated by the Obama administration to head the National Intelligence Council. Now we learn that a National Security Agency wiretap had caught Congresswoman Jane Harman agreeing in a late 2005 conversation with a suspected Israeli agent to intervene with the Justice Department on behalf of the two AIPAC espionage suspects. In return, according to Jeff Stein's Congressional Quarterly expose, the agent pledged to lobby House minority leader Nancy Pelosi to appoint Harman chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
If there is something unique about this story it is the level of interest that it has generated. Neither spying, nor the influence peddling is new; but until professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt broke the silence on the lobby's influence, few were willing to discuss either. Things have moved on considerably since. Many fine books have come out in recent years that have shed light on the lobby's operations, specifically on its frequently decisive role in shaping US Middle East policy. No analyst however has been as tenacious as Grant F. Smith of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRMEP) who in a series of books has brought crucial new information to light through the use of the Freedom of Information Act. His latest, America's Defense Line: the Justice Department's Battle to Register the Israel Lobby as Agents of a Foreign Government, focuses on an important aspect of the lobby's origins that has implications for how it operates today.
Supporters of the Israel lobby have long maintained that the reason it does not have to register as an agent of a foreign government is that its funding and composition are indigenous to the US. Even critics such as Mearsheimer and Walt have declared its operations "as American as apple pie." However, as Smith reveals, the lobby was only able to turn into the powerhouse it is today because of the start-up funding it received from Israel and its ability -- through stonewalling, deception and subversion of the legal process -- to stave off the State Department and the Department of Justice's attempts to have it registered as a foreign agent. In fascinating detail supported by hundreds of declassified documents (reproduced in the Appendix) Smith reveals the various mechanisms it employed to avoid the purview of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The lobby's greatest success -- to propagate the myth that Israel and the US have identical interests and common enemies -- would not have been possible had the Department of Justice succeeded in securing its compliance with FARA. This law requires entities registered under it to mark all their informational material with the disclaimer that their author is the agent of a foreign government.
Central to Smith's investigation is the person of Isaiah L. Kenen, the Canadian-born founder of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), whose brief stint as a journalist segued into his long lobbying career. (It is from Kenen's 1980 history of the lobby, Israel's Defense Line: Her Friends and Foes in Washington, that Smith draws the title of his book. If for Kenen the lobby was Israel's defense line, for Smith the US judicial system is America's.) Kenen began as the director of information for the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs but after the creation of Israel he went on to work for the Israeli embassy's Office of Information as a press officer.
Already in the late 1940s, writes Smith, Kenen began probing the FARA unit for weaknesses, keenly aware that its restrictions would never allow him "to properly 'frame' issues in a sophisticated way that transformed and sold their presentation from Israeli needs to perceived American interests." He therefore left the Office of Information and joined the American Zionist Council (AZC) as Israel's domestic lobbyist. The AZC had recently delegated the activities previously carried out by the Jewish Agency at David Ben Gurion's suggestion in order to bolster the appearance of "indigenous American control." However, it faced a formidable challenger in the anti-Zionist American Council of Judaism (ACJ), which rejected "all those self-appointed spokesmen who presume to make their partisan claims in the name of all Americans of the Jewish faith." It was the ACJ that finally took the AZC's case to the Justice Department, eventually forcing it to register under FARA. This led Kenen to form the American Zionist Public Affairs Committee, soon to be subsumed by AIPAC, as a means of escaping FARA regulations. He also founded a biweekly publication, Near East Report, which introduced many of the themes familiar from the Israel lobby's recent propaganda. The publication was underwritten by the Jewish Agency, the executive arm of the World Zionist Organization headquartered in Jerusalem.
The Justice Department's drawn-out struggle to register the lobby under FARA is chronicled by Smith in remarkable detail. These efforts were given a boost first by the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration (deeply resented by Kenen), which would withdraw the AZC's tax-exempt status, and subsequently by John F. Kennedy, whose Justice Department would eventually lead the AZC to register under FARA. Throughout this period the AZC had to rely on funding from the Jewish Agency. The growing scrutiny only spurred the lobby to devise more sophisticated means of masking this funding through the use of various offshore shell corporations which laundered back tax-exempt aid first raised in the US. Once these mechanisms were revealed during the Fulbright hearings, however, the lobby finally switched to domestic funding. The dogged attempts by Department of Justice officials such as Irene Bowman and Nathan Lenvin eventually came to naught when the assassination of Kennedy led the new Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to go with the prevailing winds (decidedly pro-Israel under president Lyndon Johnson) and scrap the investigation.
Smith also details the strong anti-Zionist current that characterized American Jewry before it was eventually overwhelmed by the better resourced Zionist factions. The initial charge against the Israel lobby was led by the American Council of Judaism, which was headed by reform rabbis such as Elmer Berger, and Jewish universalists such as the philanthropist Lessing Rosenwald. When The Wall Street Journal reported that Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy was concerned about offending "Jewish opinion," he was deluged with letters from American Jews rejecting the notion as a myth. They saw themselves first and foremost as Americans and they wanted Kennedy to do all that he felt was necessary to protect US interests, including registering the lobby as a foreign agent. However, after the 1967 war, Jewish anti-Zionism would go into hibernation until its revival four decades later by the Iraq war and the role of the mostly Jewish neoconservatives in instigating it.
Despite a 90 page appendix including useful profiles of the various organizations, key declassified documents, samples of racist cartoons published by Near East Report, and a history of incidents related to FARA enforcement, the book could have benefited from adding a concise chronology of events. Better editing could have also eliminated some of its repetitiveness and reduced the confusion that results from the sometimes non-linear narrative style. Nevertheless, the writing remains engaging throughout and the analysis is invariably sharp.
In the wake of the Harman-AIPAC spy affair, calls have intensified for the leading Israel lobby institution to be registered as an agent of a foreign state. The lobby, as one of its stalwarts colorfully put it, is like a "nightflower" which wilts in the sunlight. Those seeking justice for the Palestinians and accountability for the disastrous course of foreign and domestic policy under the lobby's tutelage could do worse than to ensure constant sunlight. Given the nature of the scandal, the Department of Justice is susceptible to public pressure and thanks to Smith's indispensable work, we are privy to the means employed by the lobby to thwart similar investigations in the past. Armed with this information, it may finally be possible to uphold what Smith calls "America's defense line" -- the US laws that govern the operations of foreign agents.
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad is the co-founder of Pulsemedia.org. He can be reached at m.idrees@gmail.comLabels: Wars for Israel
Iraq's Wrecked Environment
Half Life of a Toxic War
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
and JOSHUA FRANK
The ecological effects of war, like its horrific toll on human life, are exponential. When the Bush administration (parts one and two) and its congressional allies sent troops to Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein's regime, they not only ordered these men and women to commit crimes against humanity, they also commanded them to perpetrate crimes against nature. Former Chief United Nations Weapons Inspector Hans Blix, prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, said the environmental consequences of the Iraq war could be more ominous than the issue of war and peace itself. Blix was right.
Months of bombing during the first Gulf War by the United States and Great Britain left a deadly and insidious legacy: tons of shell casings, bullets and bomb fragments laced with depleted uranium. In all, the United States hit Iraqi targets with more than 970 radioactive bombs and missiles.
Depleted uranium (DU) is a rather benign sounding name for uranium-238, the trace element left behind when fissionable material is extracted from uranium-235 for nuclear reactors and weapons. For decades, this waste was a nuisance; by the late 1980s there were nearly a billion tons of the radioactive material piled at plutonium processing plants across the country. Then Pentagon weapons designers discovered a use for the tailings: they could be molded into bullets and bombs. Uranium is denser than lead, making it perfect for armor penetrating weapons designed to destroy tanks, armored personnel carriers and bunkers. When tank-busting bombs explode, depleted uranium oxidizes into microscopic fragments that float through the air, carried on the desert winds for decades. Inhaled, the lethal bits of carcinogenic dust stick to the lungs, eventually wreaking havoc in the form of tumors, hemorrhages, ravaged immune systems, and leukemia.
More than 15 years later, the dire health consequences of our first radioactive bombing campaign in this region are coming into focus. Since 1990, the incidence rate of leukemia in Iraq has increased over 600 percent. Detection and treatment of cancers was made unnecessarily difficult by Iraq's forced isolation under a regime of sanctions, producing what was described by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan as "a humanitarian crisis."
The Pentagon has shuffled through a variety of rationales and excuses. First, the Defense Department shrugged off concerns about depleted uranium as wild conspiracy theories by peace activists, environmentalists and Iraqi propagandists. When the United States' NATO allies demanded disclosure of the chemical and metallic properties of U.S. munitions, the Pentagon refused. Depleted uranium has a half-life of more than 4 billion years, approximately the age of the Earth. Thus, thousands of acres in Kuwait and southern Iraq have been — in terms of humanity's existence — contaminated forever.
The bombing of Iraq's infrastructure has had further substantial public health implications. Bombed-out industrial plants and factories have polluted groundwater. The damage to sewage-treatment plants, with reports that raw sewage formed massive pools of muck in the streets of Baghdad immediately after Bush's "Shock and Awe" campaign, is also likely to result in poisoning rivers as well as humans; cases of typhoid among Iraqi citizens have risen tenfold since 1991, largely due to polluted drinking water. That number has almost certainly increased again since Saddam's ouster.
While Iraq was sanctioned during the 1990s, U.N. officials in Baghdad agreed that the root cause of child mortality and other health problems was no longer simply lack of food and medicine, but the lack of clean water (freely available in all parts of the country prior to the first Gulf War) and of electrical power, which had predictable consequences for hospitals and water-pumping systems. Of the 21.9 percent of contracts vetoed as of mid-1999 by the U.N.'s U.S.-dominated sanctions committee, a high proportion were integral to failing water and sewage system repair efforts.
The future indeed looks bleak for the ecosystems and biodiversity of Iraq, but the consequences of the U.S. military invasion will not be confined to the war-stricken country. On the second day of the 2003 invasion it was reported by the New York Times and the BBC that Iraqi forces had set fire to several of the country's large oil wells. Five days later in the Rumaila oilfields, six dozen wellheads were set ablaze. The dense black smoke rose high in the sky in southern Iraq, fanning a clear signal that a U.S. invasion had again ignited an environmental tragedy. Shortly after the initial invasion, the U.N. Environment Program's satellite data showed a significant amount of toxic smoke had been emitted from burning oil wells.
According to Friends of the Earth, the fallout from burning oil debris — laced with poisonous chemicals such as mercury, sulfur, and furans — has created a toxic sea surface affecting the health of birds and marine life. One greatly affected area is the Sea of Oman, which connects the Arabian Sea to the Persian Gulf. This waterway is one of the world's most productive marine habitats, which, the Global Environment Fund contends, "plays a significant role in sustaining the life cycle of marine turtle populations in the whole northwestern Indo-Pacific region." Of the world's seven marine turtles, five are found in the Sea of Oman and four of those five are listed as endangered while the other is classified as threatened.
The gulf's shores, according to BirdLife's Mike Evans, are "one of the top five sites in the world for wader birds and a key refueling area for hundreds of thousands of migrating water birds." The U.N. Environment Program claims 33 wetland areas in Iraq are of vital importance to the survival of various bird species. These wetlands, the U.N. claims, are particularly vulnerable to pollution from munitions fallout as well as from sabotaged oil wells.
Mike Evans also maintains that the current Iraq war could destroy what's left of the Mesopotamian marshes on the lower Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Construction of dams on the once roaring Tigris and Euphrates has dried up more than 90 percent of the marshes and has led to extinction of several animals; water buffalo, foxes, waterfowl, and boar have disappeared from the area. "What remains of the fragile marshes, and the 20,000 people who still live off them will lie right in the path of forces heading towards Baghdad from the south," wrote Fred Pearce in the New Scientist prior to Bush's invasion in 2003. The full effect this war has had on these wetlands and its inhabitants are still unknown.
The real cumulative impact of U.S. military action in Iraq, past and present, won't be known for years, perhaps decades, to come. Stopping this war now will not only save lives, it will also help to rescue what's left of Iraq's fragile environment.
This essay is adapted from Born Under a Bad Sky: Notes From the Dark Side of the Earth.
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book, Born Under a Bad Sky, is just out from AK Press / CounterPunch books. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net
SourceLabels: Militarism
One Voice: manufacturing consent for Israeli apartheid
By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 1 May 2009
How do Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation and siege see their world, especially after Israel's massacre of more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, in the occupied Gaza Strip three months ago?
Two recent surveys shed light on this question, although one -- published on 22 April by the pro-Israel organization One Voice -- appears intended to influence international opinion in a direction more amenable to Israel, rather than to record faithfully the views of Palestinians or Israelis ("OV Poll: Popular Mandate for Negotiated Two State Solution," accessed 30 April 2009). The other -- a more credible survey -- was published in March by the Oslo-based Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies and funded by the Norwegian government ("Surveying Palestinian opinions March 2009," accessed 30 April 2009).
The One Voice survey (of 500 Israelis and 600 Palestinians conducted from November to February) received considerable media attention. The group's press release unabashedly spun the results to claim popular legitimacy for the two-state solution and to discredit alternatives: "The results indicate that 74 [percent] of Palestinians and 78 [percent] of Israelis are willing to accept a two state solution (an option rated on a range from 'tolerable' to 'essential'), while 59 [percent] of Palestinians and 66 [percent] of Israelis find a single bi-national state 'unacceptable.'"
The press release failed to note that 53 percent of Palestinians polled were also willing to embrace or tolerate "one joint state" (as opposed to a federated "bi-national" state) in which "Israelis and Palestinians are equal citizens." Curiously, Israelis were not asked about this option. The high-level of potential support for a single democratic state (confirmed by Fafo as we shall see) is remarkable given the incessant drumbeat of peace process industry propaganda that there is no solution but the two-state solution. One Voice asserts that a "very conscious effort was made in this poll to cover as wide a range of potential solutions as possible." But except for the initial question about the type of state, all the other questions assume, and are primarily relevant to, a two-state solution.
Colin Irwin, of the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool, who authored the One Voice poll, has written that his techniques were used to help politicians shape political agreements in Northern Ireland and the Balkans. The method consists of using polls to "explore" opinions on each side of a divide and find areas where there is consensus and on which an agreement could be built. Such an approach might have some relevance among two equal communities, but the way he has applied it here merely legitimizes and obscures the radically unequal power relations between Israelis and Palestinians rather than providing a way to transcend them.
It is only through a stretched interpretation that One Voice manages to find a consensus around a "two-state solution" -- which looks suspiciously like long-standing Israeli proposals for a Palestinian bantustan. The treatment of refugees is a good example of this questionable approach. The poll finds that 87 percent of Palestinians under occupation consider the "right of return AND compensation" for refugees to be "essential" to a final agreement, but notes that this option was "rejected by 77 [percent] of Israelis as unacceptable." Therefore, the Palestinian preference is pushed off the table in favor of a proposal where Israel "recognizes the suffering of refugees," and all but a handful can return only to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Thus, Israeli bigotry against non-Jewish Palestinian refugees is accorded the status of a "preference" that must not only be respected, but trumps the Palestinians' universally recognized legal rights.
This special privilege is often granted to Israelis but not to others. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees assisted hundreds of thousands of refugees to return to their original homes, many in areas dominated by hostile majority communities. It did not matter if those majorities did not want to see refugees from another group return; rather it was the refugee's individual right -- a universal human right -- that trumped appeals to ethno-national purity.
The One Voice survey does confirm that the minimal consensus needed to sustain a two-state solution, were it practicable, is absent. While 78 percent of Palestinian respondents considered a full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories to the June 1967 line "essential," 60 percent of Israelis consider that "unacceptable." Predictably, the proposed "compromise" is that Israel withdraws partially. Once again 60 percent of Israelis are allowed to outvote 78 percent of Palestinians in order to maintain Israeli control of land occupied, colonized and annexed in violation of international law.
Thus, One Voice's analysis treats universal rights and international law as having less weight than Israeli prejudices and legitimizes the "facts on the ground" established through criminal behavior in open violation of UN resolutions and the International Court of Justice. It subjects these rights to a popular referendum in which the abusers exercise a permanent veto over the claims of their victims.
One Voice bills itself as "an international mainstream grassroots movement" commanding the support of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Israelis. In fact, One Voice has support from no Palestinian grassroots organizations. It is a slick marketing outfit funded, according to its website, by "Israeli, Palestinian and other" sources. Much of its money comes from "major foundations" such as the Ford Foundation, IBM, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. One Voice also boasts of receiving money from "businessmen" including Yasser Abbas, the son of Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, who has been plagued by allegations of corruption.
Among One Voice board members are State Department Special Advisor Dennis Ross, former Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Efraim Sneh, and former Israeli military ruler of the occupied West Bank General Danny Rothschild, in addition to many American Zionists, some Hollywood celebrities and a few token Palestinians. In October 2007, One Voice canceled a planned "peace concert" in Jericho after the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) called on Palestinians to withhold their support. At the time, PACBI asserted that the concert was "being organized to promote a 'peace' agreement that is devoid of the minimal requirements of justice," and was nothing more than a "public relations charade."
One Voice's modus operandi is to recruit college students to sign a "Commitments Platform" pledging support for a two-state solution, but as PACBI pointed out, the statement is "without any commitment to international parameters -- assumes equal responsibility of 'both sides' for the 'conflict,' and suspiciously fails to call for Israel's full compliance with its obligations under international law through ending its illegal military occupation, its denial of Palestinian refugee rights (particularly the right of return), and its system of racial discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens." It is based on these signatures that One Voice claims to represent the "grassroots." Oddly, the platform has recently been removed from the official One Voice website.
There is a laudable intent to Irwin's polling approach. It attempts to identify ideas that could appeal to Israelis and Palestinians. Ultimately any new order must be able to gain consent. But the choice to exclude justice, law and rights from shaping an agreement is not a neutral one; it is in effect an affirmative choice to include, legitimize and endorse the permanence of injustice and inequality. But that is what One Voice's agenda has been all along.
Two-state solution loses support as Western strategy fails
The Fafo survey of more than 1,800 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and almost 1,500 in the West Bank offers some real insights into the state of Palestinian public opinion in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (international funders never sponsor surveys of all Palestinians, which would include those inside Israel as well as those in the Diaspora).
Fafo found that just 35 percent of Palestinians still support a two-state solution. One third preferred an Islamic state throughout Palestine, and 20 percent wanted "one state with equal rights for all," in Palestine/Israel.
Palestinians did not even agree with the common claim that the two-state solution is clearly the more "pragmatic" and "achievable" one. In the West Bank, 64 percent thought the two-state solution was "very" or "somewhat" realistic, as against 55 percent for a single democratic state. In Gaza, 80 percent considered a single democratic state to be "very" or "somewhat" realistic as against 71 percent for a two-state state solution. This is a moment when no vision carries a consensus among Palestinians, underscoring the urgent need for an inclusive debate about all possible democratic outcomes.
The American effort, started by the Bush Administration with European and Arab accomplices, and continued by US President Barack Obama, to impose an Israeli-friendly Palestinian leadership has failed. The Fafo survey indicates that Hamas emerged from Israel's attack on Gaza with enhanced support and legitimacy.
Palestinian Authority leaders in Ramallah and their Arab, Israeli and Western allies, did all they could to portray the Israeli attack on Gaza as the result of "recklessness" and provocation by Hamas and other resistance factions. This narrative has taken hold among a minority: 19 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip viewed Hamas as having "great" responsibility for the attack on Gaza (this rose to 40 percent among Fatah supporters). Overall, 51 percent agreed that Hamas had no responsibility at all for the attack (48 percent in the West Bank, 58 percent in Gaza). Just over half of those polled agreed with the statement "All Palestinian factions must stop firing rockets at Israel."
All the financial, diplomatic and armed support given by the West to Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader whose term as Palestinian Authority president expired in January, has done little to shore up his standing among Palestinians. Only 44 percent of respondents overall (41 percent in the West Bank) considered him the "legitimate" president of the Palestinians, while 56 percent did not.
Near universal dissatisfaction with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is reflected in the finding that 87 percent of respondents agreed that it was time for Fatah to change its leadership. Unsurprisingly, 93 percent of Hamas supporters wanted change, but so did 78 percent of Fatah supporters.
Palestinians expressed very low confidence in institutions (by far the most trusted were UNRWA -- the UN agency for Palestine refugees -- and the satellite channel Al-Jazeera). But a plurality in the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- 32 percent overall -- considered Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's Western-boycotted Hamas-led government in Gaza to be the legitimate Palestinian government. Only a quarter overall (31 percent in Gaza, 22 percent in the West Bank) thought the Ramallah-based "emergency" government headed by Abbas's appointed and US-backed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was the legitimate one.
Hamas leaders performed well during and after Israel's attack on Gaza. Haniyeh had an overall positive rating of 58 percent while Abbas's was only 41 percent. But among Palestinians who said they would vote in an election, 41 percent would support Fatah against 31 percent for Hamas. If that was out of step with the rest of the survey, there is a clear trend: support for Fatah was down sharply from a year earlier and Hamas doubled its support in the West Bank from 16 to 29 percent, according to Fafo.
There were some issues on which there was a strong consensus. Ninety-three percent of respondents wanted to see a "national unity government" formed, and the vast majority (85 percent) rejected maintaining the West Bank and Gaza Strip as "independent regions" if efforts to form one foundered.
Palestinians still overwhelmingly support a negotiated settlement, but the "peace process" and its sponsors have lost all credibility. Just one percent thought the US had a "great deal" of concern for the Palestinian cause, and 77 percent thought it had none at all. The "Quartet," the self-appointed ad hoc grouping of US, EU, UN and Russian representatives that monopolizes peace efforts earns the trust of just 13 percent of Palestinians.
Post-Gaza, Palestinians hold jaundiced views of all Western countries and the Arab states aligned with them. Iran and Turkey, which took strong public stands in solidarity with Palestinians, have seen support surge.
If the Fafo poll confirms that the Western-backed effort to destroy Hamas, impose quisling leaders, and blockade and punish Palestinians until they submit to Israel's demands has failed, a useful conclusion from the One Voice survey is that given a free choice, Israelis reject all solutions requiring them to give up their monopoly on power and to respect Palestinian rights and international law.
The right response to such findings is to support the growing international solidarity campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to force Israel to abandon its illegal, supremacist and colonial practices, and to build a vision of a democratic future for all the people in the country.
Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).Labels: Separatism, Supremacism
Israeli tanks, bulldozers roll into Gaza
Sat, 02 May 2009 12:50:15 GMT
Israeli ground forces have launched an incursion into the Gaza Strip after the military jets bombed 'tunnels' beneath the border between the beleaguered sliver and Egypt.
Israeli tanks and bulldozers crossed the border into northern town of Beit Lahiya as troops attacked Palestinian farmers in their fields in al-Faraheen area, east of Khan Yunis city on Saturday, Xinhua reported. Gunfire were also heard on the border line in northeast Gaza, near Jabaliya.
Earlier, Israeli warplanes bombed Gaza's southern border with Egypt on Saturday after resistance fighters fired rockets at Israel in response to Israeli bombings of Gaza on Friday, Reuters reported.
Palestinian fighters had fired three mortar shells into the Sha'ar Hanegev region. No injuries or damage were reported, The Jerusalem Post reported. The Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Israel's army employs bulldozers, backed by tanks, to demolish the residence of suspected activists in Palestinian territories. The tactic is part of Israel's "iron fist" policy against the Palestinians.
SourceLabels: Illegal Occupation, Militarism
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