An unprecedented letter by former European leaders and peace process veterans recognizes Western support for the occupation and calls for immediate steps that will bring an end to it. 13 European states support labeling products from Israeli settlements.

A group of senior former European officials, including former prime ministers, foreign ministers and diplomats, is urging the European Union to abandon the Oslo process and come up with new urgent measures that will put an end to the occupation, Ali Gharib reports for Open Zion. In a letter addressed to the Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy for the European Union, Catherine Ashton, the former officials write:

Perhaps the letter’s greatest novelty is a recognition that the West is contributing to the occupation. ”It is time to give a stark warning that the Occupation is actually being entrenched by the present Western policy,” wrote the former officials.

Among the signatories to the letter are Guiliano Amato, Former Prime Minister of Italy Lionel Jospin, Former Prime Minister of France Miguel Moratinos, Former Foreign Minister of Spain and Javier Solana, as well as the Former High Representative and Former NATO Secretary-General. Solana was also the EU’s representative in the Quartet who was supposed to lead the peace process.

The signatories of the letter express disappointment from the (lack of) leadership on the part of the U.S., and are now calling for “a realistic but active policy,” which will include a recognition of the state of affairs in the West Bank as occupation; an action against the erosion of the ’67 borders by Israel, and perhaps most important – a re-evaluation of the financial arrangements with regards to the Palestinian Authority (in other words, the 19 signatories want the EU to stop bankrolling the occupation).

The letter has no formal bearing, but that fact that it includes some of the senior EU officials who dealt with the Middle East peace process attaches an extra value to it. This is also a clear vote of no-confidence for the American leadership, perhaps due...

Read More

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry estimates that the two-state solution will be “over” in a year and a half. Kerry spoke at the House Foreign Affair Committee hearing on U.S. interests abroad. While many analysts have been discussing the closing of a window of opportunity for the two-state solution for several years, setting such a short time frame by the secretary of state is unprecedented.

Hannah Allam of the McClatchy Newspapers tweeted:

Later, Kerry added his own interpretation of the reasons for the current impasse:

UPDATE: Here are Kerry’s exact words.

And later:

Kerry has already been criticized for his comments, and an Israeli source told the British Telegraph that “when it comes to the heart of the matter he [Kerry] has no bright ideas.”

Former Israeli finance minister reveals how the former American president tried to influence Knesset legislation and committee hearings on behalf of U.S. energy corporations.

Former Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz revealed that former U.S. President Bill Clinton tried to have the Sheshinski Committee for natural gas revenues dismantled. According to Steinitz, Clinton, along with several members of congress whose names weren’t revealed, tried to stop the Israeli government’s attempt to increase the tax burden on American corporations.

Yair Lapid replaced Mr. Steinitz at the Finance Ministry when the new Netanyahu government was formed.

Several years ago, the unexpected discovery of huge natural gas fields off Israeli shores led to a heated public debate – which continues to this day – regarding the relatively low tax burden on local energy companies and their international partners. The Sheshinski Committee, formed by the finance minister in 2010, was instructed to examine the contracts between the state and the energy companies and come up with a new tax policy. Its work was accompanied by an intense lobbying effort on behalf of the gas companies.

At the time, sources in the Infrastructure Ministry claimed that former U.S. President Bill Clinton was hired by Noble Energy to raise the issue with the Israeli government.

In an interview with Maariv earlier this month, Steinitz shed light on the former U.S. president’s role on behalf of the international energy corporation:

The pressure went on, Steinitz says, until late 2010, when the Obama administration decided to stop its involvement in the issue, paving the way for the legislation of a new tax law in 2011. Prime Minister Netanyahu, however, introduced some changes to the Sheshinski Committee’s recommendations in favor of the gas companies.

Last month the Israeli army pointed to the cancellation of the Gaza marathon as proof of the lack of freedom under Hamas rule. Now the IDF is denying the same runners travel permits to run in the Bethlehem Marathon

The first official Palestinian marathon is set to take place this Sunday, April 21, in Bethlehem. There will be races for 10 km, a half Marathon and full Marathon (42.2 km), all within area A. The start and finish lines are at the Church of Nativity.

Twenty-five runners – 24 men and a woman – from Gaza were planning to take part in the Marathon, but currently they are not being issued travel permits by Israel. Among them is Nader Masri, who represented Palestine in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The Gaza runners were planning to take run the Gaza UNRWA Marathon last month, but a ban by Hamas on the participation of women in the race led UNRWA to cancel the event. Therefore, the Bethlehem Marathon presents a rare opportunity for the runners to take part in such a race.

According to the Israeli NGO Gisha, which deals with Palestinian freedom of movement, the Gaza runners were denied travel permits as a group, without even conducting individual security background checks, which is standard in such cases. In other words, it was not security concerns that prevented the runners from traveling, but a decision that the marathon is not part of the cases in which Israel allows Gazans to travel outside the Strip.

Gisha is calling on people to fax requests to the IDF’s commander for civilian administration, asking him to allow the runners to participate in the race. The fax number is 03-6976306 (more details, in Hebrew, here).

It should be noted that Israel recognized the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as a single unit under the Oslo Accord, and it is obliged to allow Gazans to take part in activities organized by the Palestinian Authority, such as the marathon (after appropriate security screenings). Ironically, when the Gaza Marathon was cancelled, the IDF blog reported on it at length, (rightly) highlighting the lack of many personal freedoms under Hamas rule. Now it’s the IDF that is denying those freedoms to the same runners.

Finally, a personal note: In recent years I completed seven full marathons, and I know how challenging the training and mental preparations are,...

Read More

One hundred Jewish leaders from Russia sent a public letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urging him to ignore the call from Jewish-American leaders and public figure to make territorial concessions for peace.

“…we believe that the decisions of the Head of the Government of Israel on critical issues should be taken for the sake of people of Israel only… Decisions on national security issues must not be made under external pressure, regardless of its origins: world public opinion, U.S. leaders or even influential American Jews.”

In response to both letters, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin (Likud-Beitenu) told the Maariv daily paper that “pressure from overseas shouldn’t guide the prime minister in leading the diplomatic process… I am glad that the leaders of the Russian Jewish community get what is sometimes forgotten by some American Jews.”

Israel has no full time foreign minister, since this role is being kept by Netanyahu for Avigdor Lieberman’s possible return to the government after his corruption trial ends.

An Israeli decision to continue the occupation is illegitimate, even if it was reached through a democratic process. Democracy has no meaning when the population at hand is not allowed to take part in it.

This is a slightly modified translation of my weekly op-ed in the Israeli daily Maariv.

“Occupation denial” is the latest trend in the Israeli (and American) conversation regarding the conflict. Conservative scholars are presenting a revisionist reading of the Fourth Geneva Convention, claiming that it never applied to the West Bank and Gaza, while politicians are claiming that the term “occupation” is biased.

Yet all those verbal and legal gymnastics won’t change reality: the term occupation does not relate to land alone, but also to the people living on it (and the ones who used to live on it). The undeniable truth is that under Israeli sovereignty, there are currently two distinct populations: one which enjoys all legal rights and privileges, and one which is held under a military dictatorship for 45 years (even if the in the last two decades some elements of the military control are being executed through a Ramallah-based proxy, and with European and American funding).

Those who think that the political problem at our doorstep will simply disappear if they call the Palestinians “Arabs” and the occupied West Bank “Eretz Yisrael” (“Land of Israel”), are deluding themselves. I also believe that Hebron and Bethlehem are part of our historic land just as Tel Aviv and Netanya are, but there are currently millions of people with no rights living there, and this fact is way more important. There are Israelis who get that – even on the right – but the majority of the public and the political system prefers to live in fantasy land.

Peace activist Gershon Baskin reminded us yesterday that no Knesset nor any Israeli government has ever formally adopted the two-state solution. There were several prime ministers who made some real steps in this direction – while others did all they could to avoid...

Read More

Roughly 200 demonstrators gathered last night (Saturday) in front of new Finance Minister Yair Lapid’s north Tel Aviv home in protest of planned cuts to social services and benefits. The protesters demanded that the finance minister cover budget deficits by taxing the highest-earning Israelis, rather than cutting benefits to the poor and unemployed, as Lapid hinted he would do.  The protest was organized by public housing activists and the “Ma’abarah“‘ and “Not Nice” groups.

Lapid came under fire last week after he posted a Facebook status promising to help “the average Israeli,”‘ but gave as an example an imaginary woman from Hadera whose household earnings are almost double the Israeli average. In his new budget, Lapid plans major cuts in government spending. On this issue, he enjoys the support of Prime Minister Netanyahu and settlers’ leader Naftali Bennett, both of whom share his neo-conservative economic ideology.

The fallout from Amira Hass’ Haaretz article in which she stated that “throwing stones is the birthright and duty of anyone subject to foreign rule” continues. There are many responses in the Hebrew media and blogesphere, and some interesting debates, mostly on Facebook.

As some readers noted in the comments to my previous posts, there were several UN resolutions (not all of them having to do with Israel/Palestine) that affirmed this right, but there wasn’t much legal writing on the issue. However, John Locke, an English philosopher and one of the fathers of Liberal thinking, had very clear words to say (Second Treatise of Civil Government, Locke 1690, emphasis mine):

(h/t Dotan Leshem)

UPDATE: Check out the quote in the first comment also. 

Related:
Settlers accuse ‘Haaretz’ of calling for violence against them
The undeniable Palestinian right to resist occupation

Fallout from Amira Hass’s article on Palestinian stone-throwing shows that as far as Israelis are concerned, any and every form of resistance against the occupation is illegitimate.

The Yesha Council – the regional council for West Bank settlements, which operates also as the settlers’ political and lobbying arm – filed a complaint with the Jerusalem Police against the Haaretz daily newspaper and its reporter in the occupied territories, Amira Hass.

Hass this morning published a piece discussing the logic of stone-throwing and persecution in the occupied territories. Quotes:

This article, and especially the first sentence, can be read as a description of the reality in the occupied territories – or even the situation under any occupation – but it could also be seen as a call for action. Many on the Right chose the latter interpretation. My Israel, the online network established by the leaders of Jewish Home party, Naftali Bennet and Ayelet Shaked, called on its 100,000 Facebook followers to send Haaretz editor-in-chief Aluf Benn a photo of Adel Bitton, the Israeli child who was critically injured recently following a car accident last month, which was caused by stone-throwing.

Yesterday, a military court in Ofer prison convicted a Palestinian from Halhul with murder following the death of a settler from Kiryat Arba and his baby, also in a car accident which was caused by stone-throwing. Some people who commented on the military court’s verdict and Hass’ article noted that settlers’ stone-throwing almost always goes unpunished....

Read More

Controversial poster juxtaposes Holocaust survivors with IDF soldiers. The only thing is, the Nazis’ victims in the picture are probably not Jewish.

Ami Kaufman reported here on a tasteless Stand With Us poster, politicizing the memory of the Holocaust in order to support Israeli policy and the IDF. Here is the poster, and I urge you to read Ami, who makes all the important points. (UPDATE: Stand With Us took the picture off their Facebook wall)

I, however, want to bring attention to an interesting fact (pointed out by a commentator on the Stand With Us Facebook page): the survivors in the poster are probably not Jews. They have single, not double triangles on their shirts, which means that they could be political prisoners, or those deemed criminals by the Nazis (from homosexuals to the mentally ill). Check out the Wikipedia entry on Nazi concentration camp badges for more details.

The original picture was taken in Buchenwald, Germany – a camp known for the diverse group of prisoners who were sent to it – Jews, Gypsies, political prisoners, Soviet soldiers and many more. Actually, this very same picture is used in another article to illustrate the Nazi classification system.

Chances are, therefore, that those prisoners in the picture are not Jews, which transforms the Stand With Us poster into something completely different. The image takes a life of its own, and without taking anything away from the memory of the Jewish tragedy, it leaves us with a humanistic and universal lesson: not just that the Holocaust should never happen to us again, but rather that this should never happen to anyone.

Related
Why Nazi Germany references are banned on my blog
Holocaust day: Prove that you are alive (updated)
Hasbara: Why...

Read More

I went to the weekly demo against the Wall in the Palestinian village Bil’in yesterday, after several months that I haven’t visited the West Bank at all (I try not to travel beyond the Green Line when it’s not for work). A colleague visiting from the U.S. joined me, and we arrived at the village shortly after noon.

Some internationals and a few Israelis gathered in the streets, and when the prayer ended we started walking towards the wall, a march which has become much longer since the army moved the route of the barrier closer to the ultra-Orthodox settlement Modi’in Ilit – the largest city in the West Bank – and returned the village some of its land. Beyond the wall lies “Green Park,” one of the two eastern neighbourhoods of Modi’in Ilit, also on farm land that belonged to Bil’in before it was confiscated by Israel in order to solve the housing crisis for the ultra-Orthodox population of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Even if Israel were to agree to leave the West Bank, Green Park would not be evacuated. Even Palestinian negotiators agreed to have it annexed to Israel in exchange for equal territory elsewhere. Thus, the Palestinian people might one day be compensated for the land that was taken from Bil’in, but the people of the village – its owners – will not. This fact also highlights the paradox of the settlements: on one hand, Israel claims that settlements do not affect the final status agreement and can be evacuated at any time – a notion recently backed by U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to give up the demand for a settlement freeze – yet in every round of negotiations, the Israeli government presents new facts on the ground as fait accompli, and demands that the proposed solution be adjusted to accommodate them.

Nothings seems further away from the diplomatic game than a walk through the hills surrounding Bil’in under...

Read More

Veteran Israeli negotiator Shaul Arieli discusses the failure of the Oslo Accords, various Israeli prime ministers’ commitment (or lack thereof) to ending the occupation, and the only solution he believes both sides could live with, however unsatisfied they might be with it. 

Shaul Arieli is a man on a dual mission: educating Israelis about the conflict and diplomatic process with the Palestinians, and making the point that the two-state solution is both possible and necessary. His latest publication in Hebrew, A Border between Us and You (Yeditoth Ahronoth Books 2013), is a 500-page handbook to the history of the conflict, with an emphasis on the diplomatic and political process. It is written in very simple (and sometimes simplistic) language, with lots of maps, tables and even entries describing notable leaders on both sides. Arieli was thinking about Israeli teenagers when he wrote his book, but lately I find myself going back to it again and again to find a figure or to check historical details for one of my posts.

I asked Shaul Arieli for an interview in order to gain more first-hand knowledge and analysis of the history of the negotiations, including what’s really behind terms like “settlements blocs” and “land swaps.” Lately, the mere idea of talks has been put under scrutiny (much of it justified, in my opinion), so I wanted to know what went wrong in the past, and have we, as some claim, “passed the point of no return” with regards to the two-state solution (check out, for example, this piece by Ben Birnbaum in TNR).

Arieli, 54, is the seventh son of Jews who emigrated from Iran. He served in various roles in the IDF, the last one being the commander of Gaza’s Northern Division before and during the first Oslo Accord, a position he left in order to serve in the negotiating team that was formed in Prime Minister Rabin’s office. He took part in negotiations under Netanyahu (in his first term) and Barak. Ariel Sharon stopped the diplomatic process, and Arieli joined the Geneva Accord – an informal agreement between PLO leaders and Israeli negotiators, which has since taken the form of an advocacy organization.

Arieli is a member of The Council for Peace and Security, an Israeli think tank dedicated to advancing...

Read More

The United Nation agency for Palestinian refugees is reporting that three separate incidents in Syria claimed last week the lives of five children. One of the children died in Dera’a and four others in Damascus.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East UNRWA, Mohammad Al-Khateeb (aged 14) was killed on March 15 by a bullet as he was returning home on foot after buying bread from a bakery in his neighborhood in Dera’a. On March 19, Hisham Mahmoud (aged 10) and Farhat Mubarak (aged 11), were killed at the crossroad of Yazour and Safad Streets in Yarmouk, Damascus. They were returning home from classes at a community-run learning center when an explosive shell detonated nearby, killing them instantly. In a separate incident on the same day, two brothers, Ali Mijel (aged 14) and Abdullah Mijel (aged 15), were killed along with their aunt and cousin when an explosive shell hit their home on Hittin Street in Sbeineh Camp.

Prior to the Syrian Civil War, there were approximately one million Palestinian refugees living in the country. Last November, the PLO estimated that over 600 Palestinians died in the war, though this number has risen considerably since. At least 20,000 Palestinians have been able to flee the country to Lebanon, while the Jordanian government continues to send Palestinian refugees back, claiming that they are not affected by the conflict in the same way other Syrian civilians are. However, many believe that the as refugees, the Palestinians are actually more vulnerable than other groups.

Following the killing of 30 other Palestinians last month, Christopher Gunness, a spokesperson for UNRWA, told +972 that “refugees by their nature are already among the most vulnerable people in any society, and in a situation like in Syria clearly they are more vulnerable.”

Related:
30 Palestinians killed last week in Syria
‘Why don’t you write about Syria?’