The IDF will allow Gaza fishermen to go beyond three-mile zone previously imposed on them and up to six miles into the Mediterranean Sea, it announced on Tuesday. Under the Oslo Accords, Gaza’s maritime boundaries stretch 20 nautical miles from shore. However, as a part of its blockade policy, Israel does not allow fishermen to travel beyond a narrow strip of three to six miles – an area which changes at the discretion of the government and defense minister.

The Gaza strip is one of the most densely populated areas in the world (see map below) and fishing constitutes an important source of food and employment for many.

The IDF Spokesperson’s announcement on Tuesday basically confirmed that the army collectively punishes Gazan fishermen for rockets launched from the Strip.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon, approved the expansion of the Gaza Strip’s designated fishing zone from three to six nautical miles. The designated fishing zone was limited due to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip toward southern Israel on March 21, 2013.

Recent attempts to launch rockets from the Strip have been carried out by tiny radical organizations that even Hamas has trouble to controlling. So why are Gaza’s fishermen being punished for it?

Related
WATCH: Gaza children prohibited from visiting imprisoned fathers
IDF: ‘Forbidden zone’ in Gaza three times larger than previously stated
‘Wars on Gaza have become part of Israel’s system of governance’: An interview with filmmaker Yotam Feldman

Gaza map and IDF imposed “forbidden zones” (by Gisha)

Palestinian kids from Gaza above the age of eight are still prohibited from visiting their parents – the same goes for grandchildren and siblings. There are over 500 prisoners – among them 14 minors – from Gaza held in Israel. Over 400 of them are “security inmates” and approximately 100 prisoners are “criminal inmates.”

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has launched a campaign calling to allow full families visits to all Palestinian prisoners. Here is a short video with testimonies of children who have been prevented from meeting their fathers for several years now.

Related
Why does the IDF hold Gazan fishermen responsible for rocket launching?
IDF: ‘Forbidden zone’ in Gaza three times larger than previously stated
‘Wars on Gaza have become part of Israel’s system of governance’: An interview with filmmaker Yotam Feldman

Yair Lapid. The Israeli public feels that the status quo represent the preferable alternative on the Palestinian issue (photo: Yotam Ronen / Activestills.org)

Yair Lapid, the surprising star of the last elections and Israel’s current finance minister, gave an interview to the The New York Times in which he left only “a little daylight” between himself to Prime Minister Netanyahu on the Palestinian issue, as the Times’s Jodi Rudoren put it.

That was clearly an understatement. Except for paying lip service to the need to create a Palestinian state – now a precondition for every policy speech by a mainstream Israeli leader, intended to prevent accusations of Apartheid – Lapid didn’t even try to hide his rejectionism. He told Rudoren that a final status agreement with Mahmoud Abbas is probably impossible; he said that Israel “should not change its policy on Israeli settlements in the West Bank,” and he objected to territorial compromises on Jerusalem, as he has done in the past.

When it came to talking about what should be done, rather than what shouldn’t, Lapid had the following idea:

Mr. Lapid acknowledged that tens of thousands of Jews would someday be uprooted from what he described as “remote settlements” in the West Bank, something he called “heartbreaking.” But he said that problem should be set aside for now, advocating the immediate creation of an interim Palestinian state in parts of the West Bank where no Jews live, with final borders drawn in perhaps three, four or five years.

Lapid failed to offer a catchy name for his plan. I suggest the “Oslo Accords.”

______________

A favorite pastime among observers of Israeli politics and ‘The Conflict’ is searching for a new leader of the peace camp – someone who will finally end this foolishness with the settlements and lead the army out of the West Bank. Some thought that he or she would come from the Left, carrying with them the democratic traditions and pragmatic determination of the founding fathers. Others say it should be a centrist, or even better, a hawk-turned-dove, a general, an expansionist or a former-settler who, after decades of war, chose to live with the enemy rather than continue fighting him.

Lapid appeared to be somewhat of a hybrid – not exactly a lefty, certainly not a general, but popular enough with the Israeli mainstream. To top it off, he’s pragmatic and handsome. A new leader for a new age. In order to believe that he will end the occupation, one needs to engage in willful suspension of disbelief, to not listen to anything Lapid actually says and avoid reading his platform. But in a difficult moment, this is a small price to pay for the cause.

That illusion didn’t last very long though. After forbidding his party members from taking an educational tour of East Jerusalem, forming a political pact with the settlers, keeping intact tax breaks and other benefits for Jews who move to the West Bank, avoiding meeting any Palestinians and rejecting the notion of a final status agreement and even a settlement freeze – one needs to go very far out on a limb in order to still hold out hope that Lapid, or this government for that matter, will advance the cause of peace.

_______________

I don’t buy the new storyline about Lapid’s fall from grace. It’s no less absurd than “Lapid the peacemaker” or “Lapid the guardian of democracy.” Lapid is an excellent communicator with a good sense of the Israeli consensus and he has the rare ability to set and manipulate the national agenda. He is surrounded by powerful and experienced people and he is learning from his mistakes. Recent polls confirm that Lapid’s supporters are not leaving him just yet; Israeli politics are very forgiving, and Lapid has just begun his journey.

Still, even if Lapid’s descent is as fast as his astonishing rise was, I don’t think that we should hold our hopes for his successor. Contrary to popular belief, the problem at the heart of the occupation is not Israeli politicians or Israeli leaders: it’s the Israeli people. The public simply doesn’t want to deal with the Palestinian issue in any meaningful way. It doesn’t really matter what the Palestinians, Americans or Europeans do to appease Israel. There is an almost instinctive, little-spoken understanding that both alternatives – both one-state and two-state solution – are inferior to the status quo. Talks regarding the “unsustainability” of current trends seem very abstract. So far, the occupation seems to be the most sustainable thing this country has known.

Politicians understand this, and those who don’t lose elections (see: Livni). Lapid certainly understands. There is at least one demonstration every weekend outside his home over his new tax code and austerity measures. I don’t think he is about to see a single protester beneath his window over the NY Times interview, nor would his numbers drop.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and EU High Representative Cathrine Ashton can spend countless more hours in Jerusalem and burn many more miles between capitals; the problem they are facing is not Lapid or Netanyahu – not even Lieberman – but Israeli voters. Even if talks resume, they are bound to be meaningless (that’s why the Palestinians refuse them). Israelis will consider ending the occupation only when the current trend becomes less attractive. Until then, their leaders will offer negotiations for the sake of negotiations or repackage the status quo as “an interim solution.” It’s simply what their constituents want.

Related:
Will Europe take a leading role on Israel/Palestine?
Direct negotiations: Recipe for prolonging the occupation

EU High Representative Catherine Ashton (European Union / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

A top European think tank is urging the European Union to take concrete measures to keep open a window for the two-state solution. The report, published two weeks ago, urges European countries to exempt settlements goods from Israeli-European trade agreements, to refrain from contacts with the West Bank’s new university in Ariel and even impose visa requirements on settlers.

The report (PDF), published by the Middle East-North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations and written by Senior Policy Fellow Nick Witney, claims that European support for the Palestinian Authority has created “a culture of dependence,” while removing the occupation’s financial burden from Israel. Due to Israeli restrictions and past agreements which prevented real economic developments, “state building efforts have reached a dead end,” the paper states.

Similar suggestions were raised in April by former European leaders and negotiators in a letter to EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton. Both the letter and the ECFR paper recognize the diplomatic vacuum created by the U.S.’s inability to confront Israeli governments over the occupation, and urge EU action.

The ECFR paper has a couple of interesting observations. First, it recognizes that the political elites in Europe, and not the public, are at the heart of the problem. While the European public is more and more sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians under occupation, EU foreign policy is “on autopilot,” sticking to the Oslo paradigm and framework, even when it’s clear that it serves to maintain the status quo (one could claim that this is the opposite of the American problem, where popular support for Israeli policy remains high even as the elites are beginning to question it). The paper cites economic interests – Israel being an important trade partner of many states – and successful lobbying efforts by Jerusalem as possible explanations for the lack of coherent and unified action by the EU.

The paper also recognizes the failure of positive incentives vis-à-vis Jerusalem:

There is simply no appetite among European governments for anything that might look like sanctioning or punishing Israel. Yet finding positive incentives – carrots, as opposed to sticks – is difficult also. Israelis already enjoy the main things they want from Europe: commercial access to the world’s largest market, visa-free travel and a unique position in the EU’s research and innovation programs.

The ECFR doesn’t have a unified position and the new paper only represents the opinion of its authors, and not that of the entire think-tank. However, put together with the February report by EU diplomats regarding settlements, the decision by 13 member-states to proceed with labeling settlements products and the April letter (discussed above), one can point to a clear trend toward greater involvement in the diplomatic process.

Haaretz’s Barak Ravid reported Sunday morning that the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council was set to vote on directives for the labeling of settlements products this week (the principle decision on the matter already passed last year). However, following pressure from the U.S. – which, according to Ravid, was prompted by an Israeli request – the vote was postponed until June, after Secretary of State John Kerry plans to report on his efforts to renew direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

It seems that Israel’s effort to prevent labeling settlements products is likely to fail: the labeling directives for member states will eventually pass and might even be implemented. I doubt, however, if the impact of such a step will be more than symbolic in nature. The settlements’ share in Israel’s total exports is not that large, and much of their sales take place in the local market. Given the strong representation settlers enjoy in the current Israeli coalition, I believe they would be able to get at least some government compensation if European trade measures lead to financial losses.

The heart of the matter is that as a whole, the Israeli public views the status quo as the preferred alternative in its relations with the Palestinians – a notion that has only been strengthened by regional changes and the international community’s inability to mobilize on the issue. For years, critics of the occupation have been warning Israel of international isolation due to the country’s occupation and colonization of the West Bank, while the exact opposite has been taking place – Western support for Israel is at an all-time high. Under such circumstances, further statements or symbolic gestures are almost useless, if not outright harmful.

The settlements are an Israeli national policy and not just an initiative of the settlers themselves, so targeting them on their own will be a difficult, probably even impossible task (there are more people employed by the state in the OPT per capita than anywhere else in Israel; as such they are immune to outside pressure). Other recommendations in the ECFR report – like those concerning travel visas for settlers or allowing Palestinian legal action against the occupation – seem to have a greater potential for bringing results, but at the same time they are not likely to be adopted anytime soon.

Altogether, I think that one of the most important developments in the past few month has been the European recognition of the need to give up the Oslo framework. Yet the European Union’s complex consensus mechanisms prevent fast, radical measures, even when they are clearly viewed as necessary. If EU member states want to see change take place on the ground, they will have to adopt a more responsible and pro-active policy on Israel/Palestine, instead of just following the EU’s lead.

Related:
EU diplomats recommend sanctions against Israeli settlements
Former senior EU officials: ‘Oslo process has nothing more to offer’

A Palestinian photographer stands during a minute of silence commemorating the Nakba at a ceremony held by Palestinian and Israeli students at the entrance to Tel Aviv University. Right-wing activists protesting the ceremony and policemen are seen in the background. May 13, 2013 (photo: Yotam Ronen / Activestills)

Yedioth Hakibbutz is the weekly magazine of the United Kibbutz Movement. It is delivered every week to hundreds of Kibbutzim as part of the weekend edition of Yedioth Ahronoth, the best selling paper in Israel. Even at a time of diminishing political influence – there is not a single representative of the United Kibbutz Movement in the current Knesset – the Kibbutzim remain both a symbol and a stronghold of conservative Zionism, and the mainstream tone of Yedioth suits them well.

Three months ago, there was an unusual story on the cover of Yedioth Hakibbutz. The front page read: “We expelled, blew up and killed.” Inside the magazine was a three-page interview with Kibbutz Degania member Yerachmiel Kahanovich, a former fighter in the Palmach (the Jewish underground that preceded the IDF), in which Kahanovic confessed to his part in the expulsion and murder of Palestinians during the war of 1948.

Several months earlier, Kahanovich was interviewed as part of a project by Zochrot (“remembering”), a non-profit that deals with the Nakba from an Israeli perspective (an English translation of his testimony can be found here), and his testimony drew the attention of Yedioth reporters. Zochrot exists mostly in the margins of the Israeli discourse. Getting such a follow-up in the Kibbutz magazine was unique but not unheard of: in October 2012 the same paper ran a story on a Nakba tour book published by Zochrot.

Kahanovich’s testimony touched on one of the most awful events of 1948 – the intentional murder of Palestinian civilians who sought refuge from the fighting inside the Dahamsh Mosque in Lod. He also confessed that he had been ordered to shoot each Palestinian who tried to escape the procession of refugees marching out of the region. At time he sounded regretful – but he also felt that, “we had no choice.”

Q: Did you let the [Palestinians] residents get away?

YK: At first, yes. The intention was to expel them, these were the orders of the bosses, Yigal Alon and Yitzhak Sadeh. Sometimes we had to shot one or two, and then the rest got the message and left on their own. You need to understand: if you didn’t destroy the Arab’s home, he will always want to come back. When there is no home, no village, there is nowhere to return.

Q: Do you remember the battle for Lod and Ramleh?

YK: I don’t like to remember this so much… we shot shells into a mosque where many people were hiding. There was no choice.

Q: We shot?

YK: I shot with the PIAT [anti-tank weapon]. It has an enormous shock wave.

Q: And what were the results?

YK: Not pretty. They were all scattered on the walls.

Q: How many?

YK: I don’t know. Many. I didn’t count. I opened the door, saw what I saw, and closed [it].

Q: What did you feel?

YK: What can you feel after a thing like that? But if we didn’t do it, we might have been fighting to this very day. Then I stood with the Browning [machine gun] over the creek through which the remaining residents escaped. Anyone who strayed off track, got a shot.

Q: From you as well?

YK: From me too. I felt really bad but I was a good marksman, and there were times when they only asked me to fire a single bullet. At the village next to Ramleh, two shots were enough. In 45 minutes the village was empty. They got the message.

The Lod-Ramleh region was one of places where a massive, intentional expulsion of the Palestinian population took place. Controversies surround the departure of Palestinians from other areas; whether they were forced to leave or whether they escaped on their own. It’s not that important. The Israeli decision not to allow refugees to return to their homes – sometimes as early as two weeks after they fled or were forced to leave – is what made them refugees. Later came the confiscation of the entirety of “unclaimed” Palestinian property, which leaves no doubt about what happened in 1948. Intentional or not, this was ethnic cleansing.

***

Cover of Yedioth Hakibbutz featuring a story with a former Palmach fighter who confessed to his part in killing Palestinians during the 1948 war

Another Kibbutz story: a few years ago, some “internal refugees” (Palestinians who were displaced during the war but ended up within Israeli borders; they weren’t allowed to go back to their homes, but they did become Israeli citizens) planned a weekend trip to the hill where their village once stood. The news somehow reached members of a nearby Kibbutz – one of the pillars of the Kibbutzim movement and a Meretz stronghold – who were immediately alarmed. The Kibbutz email list came to life, with members suggesting that they form a counter-delegation and capture the hill before the Palestinians arrive. Others demonstrated a more hospitable approach. I don’t know how the story ended. I heard it from one of the Kibbutz’s members, a guy my age who has since left the country.

The tiniest symbolic action or gesture relating to the Nakba can unleash disproportionate panic among Jews, since the Nakba is not just the ghost of the Zionist project – it’s a very real and political problem. Both Israelis and Palestinians understand this. An Israeli-Palestinian leader once told me that he would not support building Nakba museums. “You put monuments when the story is over,” he said. “We are not there.”

In recent years, a trend of Nakba-denial has emerged in Jewish-Israeli political circles, a sort of conservative counter attack to the post-Zionism of the 1990s. Im Tirzu, a conservative group whose claim to fame was a campaign against the New Israel Fund, which included anti-semitic images, a couple of years ago published a propaganda booklet titled “Nakba-Bullshit” (it rhymes in Hebrew) which repeats many of the Israeli talking points on the refugee issue: from “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people” to “they fled of their own will” to “Jews from Arab countries also became refugees.” Activists from Im Tirzu urged students to avoid classes that mention the Nakba, distributed the booklet at university gates and staged counter-protests against memorial ceremonies on Nakba Day.

At the same time, the Israeli government initiated the Nakba law, authorizing the finance minister to withdraw funds from organizations commemorating the Nakba. One in every five Israelis is a Palestinian, and the law basically means that their public institutions are not allowed to deal with their own history. A petition against the law was rejected by the Supreme Court, demonstrating how threatened Israelis feel – that even the institution which is considered, and certainly considers itself the guardian of civil liberties, was ready to put such a limit on free speech. Since 2009 Palestinian schools have not been allowed to discuss or even use the term Nakba as part of their curriculum.

***

All these acts had a strange effect: while dealing with the ethnic cleansing of 1948 is still considered a “confrontational” and even “subversive” act, the term Nakba itself has become part of the mainstream discourse. The Arabic word “Nakba” (“disaster”) has been used to describe the Palestinian catastrophe as early as 1948, but I never heard the word until the nineties. Now I seem to hear it every other day.

Naturally, it’s not just in Israel. Google has a cute tool which allows you to see the number of times a term is used in the books in its databases. I searched the four common ways the word Nakba is spelled, “Nakba,” “Naqba,” “naqba” and “nakba” (the tool is case sensitive) and the same pattern emerged each time: a tiny surge in the mid-seventies and a skyrocketing rise at the end of the nineties.

Compare this, for example , to the word “Israel,” which is mentioned more frequently but its peak seems to have been in the eighties (the correlation of all those graphs with historical events is an interesting story in its own).

The Microsoft Word 2010 spellcheck software I use has yet to recognize the Nakba.

***

Last year, cops besieged activists who tried to distribute leaflets about the Nakba on Independence Day. This year’s events seem less tense. As I write this text, an outraged report on Israeli public radio opens the evening news broadcast with:

It happened today: at the entrance to Tel Aviv University some people marked the Nakba day and nobody did anything about it.

In fact, there was a small Im Tirzu vigil against the Nakba Day ceremony at Tel Aviv University, but except for some insults shouted into the air, the ceremony went on without interruption. Here is a video of the event:

The editor of Yedioth Hakibbutz told me that the interview with Yerachmiel Kahanovich went viral on Facebook but that at the same time, it hardly generated any hostile responses from kibbutz members. She sounded slightly disappointed.

A strange, bitter recognition of the Nakba seems to have settled in to the mainstream, incomplete yet undeniable. Israelis are beginning to acknowledge the past, although we are far from addressing its present consequences or its possible political implementation. However, one thing is clear: the war against history has failed. The Nakba will not be forgotten – not by Palestinians, nor by us.

Palestinian refugees in 1948 (photo: wikimedia, Israeli copyrights expired)

Related:
Why Jews need to talk about the Nakba: A personal journey
Pretending away the Nakba only perpetuates the conflict
PHOTOS: Palestinians commemorate Nakba Day with rallies and protests
Report: Forced displacement on both sides of the Green Line
Remembering the Nakba, understanding this is a shared land
The Palestinian Nakba: Are Israelis starting to get it?

Civilians who enter the area risk being shot by the army. In the past, the killing of Palestinians who wandered into the forbidden zone has led to retaliatory rocket launching from the Strip into Israeli territory.

The clarification was made following a request by the human rights organization Gisha. Gisha had noticed that the IDF Spokesperson’s messages stated a different distance than did the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, which claimed that Gazans are not allowed into an area stretching only 100 meters from the fence. Recently, the army notified Gisha that the forbidden zone is indeed three times larger than previously reported.

The army has refused to fully detail the methods it uses to warn farmers and other civilians from wandering into the forbidden zone it declared. A spokesperson for the army has told Gisha that such methods are part of “the opening fire procedures, and cannot be disclosed.”

There are over 1.5 million Palestinians living in 141 square miles in Gaza, including the buffer zone, which represents a population density of 11,267 people per square mile. Below you can see a map of the Gaza Strip (click on map for larger scale). The dark green strip represents 500 meters from the Gaza-Israel fence. For the full scale map in PDF format, click here.

Gaza map and IDF imposed “forbidden zones” (by Gisha)

Israel recently reduced the area off the Gaza coastline which it allows for fishing to 3 miles (it increased it to 6 miles as part of the cease fire agreement ending Operation Pillar of Defense late last year). Under the Oslo Accords, Israel committed to allowing Gazans to fish up to 20 miles from the coastline.

The British Guardian on Wednesday reported that Prof. Stephen Hawking has cancelled his appearance at the fifth Presidential Conference due to take place this June, in protest of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. The report was later confirmed by Cambridge University. A spokeperson for the Jerusalem-based conference called Hawking’s decision “outrageous and improper.”

One of Haaretz’s leading lefty columnists, Carlo Strenger, wrote an open letter to Hawking echoing these feelings. After expressing pride in his own opposition to the occupation, Strenger accuses Hawking of hypocrisy and applying a double standard; he claims that Israel’s human rights violations are “negligible” compared to those of other countries in the world, and notes that the Israeli academia is for the most part liberal and therefore can’t be blamed for the occupation.

I would like to respond to some of the points he makes, since they represent a larger problem with the Israeli left.

______________

While Hawking responded to the call for academic boycott, it should be noted that the Presidential Conference is not an academic event: it’s an annual celebration of the Israeli business, political and military elites, whose purpose is unclear at best, and which has little importance in Israeli life (it didn’t exist until five years ago). The pro-occupation Right has a heavy presence at the conference – or at least it felt that way last year, when I attended. I will get back to the notion of “the liberal academia” and the Presidential Conference later.

Personally, I think we should put  the “double standards” line of defense to rest, since it’s simply an excuse against any form of action. The genocide in Cambodia was taking place at the same time as the boycott effort against South Africa. According to Prof. Strenger’s logic, anti-Apartheid activists were guilty of double standards; they should have concentrated their efforts on many other, and “much worse” regimes.

The notion according to which the horrors in Syria or Darfur make ending the occupation a less worthy cause represents the worst kind of moral relativism, especially when it’s being voiced by members of the occupying society.

I’m also not sure what makes Israeli human rights violations “negligible” compared to those of other countries. I certainly do not think that killing hundreds of civilians in one month during Cast Lead was “negligible,” but the occupation goes way beyond the number of corpses it leaves behind – it has a lot to do with the pressure on the daily lives of all Palestinians, and with the fact that it’s gone on for so long, affecting people through their entire lives (I wrote on the need to see beyond death statistics here). Plus, there is something about the fact that it’s an Israeli who is determining that those human rights violations are “negligible,” which makes me uneasy – just as we don’t want to hear the Chinese using the same term when discussing Tibet.

I will not go into all of Strenger’s rationalizations for the occupation – his claims that the Palestinians answered Israel’s generous peace offers with the second Intifada; that as long as Hamas is in power there is nobody to talk to, that Israel is fighting for its survival against an existential threat, and so on. I don’t think that a fact-based historical analysis supports any of these ideas, but Strenger is entitled to his view. If you think the occupation is justified, or at least inevitable, you obviously see any action against it as illegitimate and uncalled for.

Yet the thing that made Prof. Strenger jump is not “any action” but rather something very specific – the academic boycott. Personally, I think that his text mostly portrays a self-perception of innocence. Israel, according to Strenger, doesn’t deserve to be boycotted and the “liberal academics” – like himself – specifically, don’t deserve it because they “oppose the occupation.”

At this point in time, I think it’s impossible to make such distinctions. The occupation – which will celebrate 46 years next month – is obviously an Israeli project, to which all elements of society contribute and from which almost all benefit. The high-tech industry’s connection to the military has been widely discussed, the profit Israeli companies make exploiting West Bank resources is documented and the captive market for Israeli goods in the West Bank and Gaza is known. Strenger’s own university cooperates with the army in various programs, and thus contributes its own share to the national project.

I would also say that at this point in time, paying lip service to the two state-solution while blaming the Palestinians for avoiding peace cannot be considered opposing to the occupation, unless you want to include Lieberman and Netanyahu in the peace camp. We should be asking ourselves questions about political action as opposed to discussing our views: where do we contribute to the occupation and what form of actions do we consider legitimate in the fight against it?

But all this is beside the point right now. While I myself have never advocated a full boycott, I think that the least Israeli leftists can do is to not stand in the way of non-violent Palestinian efforts to end the occupation. It’s not only the moral thing to do, but also a smarter strategy because as long as Israelis don’t feel that the status quo is taking some toll on their lives, they will continue to avoid the unpleasant political choices which are necessary for terminating the occupation. Since the Israeli left is often unable to admit its own share in the occupation – and therefore acknowledge the legitimacy of Palestinian resistance – again and again it acts against its own stated goals.

2012 was the most peaceful year the West Bank has known in a long time (for Israelis, that is), and yet at its very end, Israelis chose a coalition which all but ignores the occupation. The problem is not just the politicians; Israelis are simply absorbed by other issues. I hope that Stephen Hawking’s absence will serve as a reminder for the generals, politicians and diplomats who will attend the Presidential Conference next month of the things happening just a few miles to their east – as “negligible” as they may seem to some.

Related:

Related:
Techwashing: Hasbara group strikes back after Hawking boycott
A Zionist defense of Hawking
No end in sight: Occupation marks 45th anniversary
Ending the occupation: No way around direct pressure on Israel

Knesset Member Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz) on Monday announced his intention to run in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipal elections, due to take place on October 22. Horowitz, a second-term MK and former journalist for Channel 10 News, will be challenging former Labor member Ron Huldai, who has served as Tel Aviv’s mayor since 1998. If he wins, Horowitz (49) would be Tel Aviv’s first openly gay mayor, and the first in any Israeli city.

MK Nitzan Horowitz (photo: Moshe Shai / CC-BY 3.0)

In a press conference at the old city hall building on Monday, Horowitz mentioned rising real-estate prices – which sparked the social protest movement in 2011 – along with the city’s infamous transportation problems among his reasons for running. He also promised to introduce a new plan for the city’s southern neighbourhoods, which have almost doubled their population due to the waves of asylum seekers who were sent there by the government.

If elected, Horowitz said he will resign from the Knesset.

Mayor Huldai is still considered a favorite in the race. Internal polls give him around 50 percent of the vote, and only a third to Horowitz. However, the surprising achievement of Hadash’s Dov Khenin, who received over a third of the votes in 2008 despite coming from the margins of the political system, made Horowitz, who is considered more mainstream, believe that he can beat Huldai. Khenin decided not to run this year.

Estimates are that Horowitz could perform very well in the center of the city, where Khenin beat Huldai in 2008. The city’s residential neighborhoods in the north – home to the upper-middle class – are Huldai’s stronghold, but Horowitz could have some appeal there too (certainly more than Khenin did). Horowitz’s challenge will be in the south, where locals are frustrated by what they see as the city’s indifference to pressures the asylum seekers’ presence has put on the municipal infrastructure and the local population. I don’t think that Horowitz can win those votes, but if the south doesn’t break in Huldai’s favor, the elections could be closer than people think.

UPDATE: One point I forgot to make is that Khenin’s relative success was due to a great grassroots operation he was able to form and lead. Horowitz will run a very different campaign, so I am not sure that we can assume that Khenin’s 33 percent represents his floor. 

It will also be interesting to see who receives the support of the Tel Aviv gay community’s leaders, who in the past have been Huldai’s political allies.

Ron Huldai has often been mentioned as a potential leader from the center-left on a national stage, but so far he has decided not to leave his post in Tel Aviv.

Last week, Larry Derfner made an argument against international intervention in Syria. This was before news broke of the recent attack (video above), and things are different now. Here are a few of my thoughts:

Israel has reportedly struck targets inside Syria twice in four days. This time, the targets were in the Damascus area and unlike the previous strike, the Syrian regime publicly blamed Israel for the latest attack. So intervention is Syria is no longer a theoretical option, but something that to a limited degree is already taking place (and not just as a response to occasional stray fire from Syrian territory, as Israel and Turkey have done in the past). We can expect such attacks to happen again.

The real question is whether the international community should move from a containment effort – i.e. ensuring that the war doesn’t spill into other countries or that WMDs and other advanced weapons systems are not moved – to offensive action against the regime. I think the answer is unclear, but recently I’ve been leaning towards ‘yes.’

Naturally, it’s not Israel that should lead or even take part in such an effort, for all the obvious reasons. Still, I think we should see greater Israeli involvement on the humanitarian side of the conflict. Unlike all the countries that border Syria, Israel has only accepted a handful of Syrian casualties, and no refugees. The problems that the entry of refugees pose to Lebanon and Jordan exceed the threat to Israel considerably, yet those countries allow hundreds of thousands of Syrians into their territory (Jordan doesn’t allow Palestinians, however). None of these countries are as rich and powerful as Israel. If Israel ever wants to be accepted in the Middle East, it should start acting like a Middle Eastern country and share the burden in times of suffering. It’s way more important than sending aid delegations to Haiti.

With regards to international military intervention, I do not think the main problem is the potential rise of radical groups when the regime eventually falls. With or without intervention, what happens next in Syria is anybody’s guess. It’s also not clear that holding back from intervening is the best way to secure the Syrian WMDs (unlike in Iraq, Syria’s weapons actually exist). Much could happen – the regime could sell them to third parties, scientists and officers might defect with them, and so on.

I am no expert, but from what I gather, handling chemical weapons on a large scale is a complicated business, so the most likely scenario remains that future use will be by the regime. Plus, if Israel continues to strike Syria on its own, the regime might be tempted to respond in some way or another (especially if it feels its back is against the wall) perhaps in a last-ditched effort to unite supporters in a holy war against Israel.

The best argument against intervention is the obvious ones: that foreign powers do little good when they enter such conflicts, and that the West should stop trying to shape the Middle East through military force. Along that line of thinking, another war would solidify the feeling by many that we are witnessing a new version of colonialism in the Gulf and parts of the Middle East, where most countries are governed either by autocratic pro-American regimes, or directly by a Western army.

But the Syrian case is unique. Because of the ethnic divisions in Syria, we are witnessing a regime that is conducting a war against its own citizens (I suggest reading this debate on Angry Arab – a site hostile to the opposition – for more). While atrocities are also being carried out by the opposition, the regime is committing them systematically. Things couldn’t get much worse, but the international debate has taken a sick twist: it’s no longer about whether the regime kills its citizens by the thousands, but how it does it. As long as Assad doesn’t gas his own people – and only shoots or bombs them – he seems to be safe.

It’s okay to be against humanitarian military interventions as a rule. However, if one believes — even theoretically — that there are situations in which the international community must intervene militarily, the Syrian case looks like it qualifies.

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Related:
The least terrible policy in Syria: Doing nothing
UNRWA: A quarter-million Palestinians displaced in Syrian civil war thus far

Video from Asira al-Qibliya:

Video from Urif:

Video from Asira al-Qibliya (An officer is speaking to a rioter – the smoke from the burning field can be seen in the background):