Author: Helena

Settler extremists on Facebook

Here’s a good report on the settler extremists’ extensive presence on Facebook.
It includes things like this:

    The Givot Olam outpost, east of Nablus, also opened a Facebook group. They posted a picture from a wedding where two young men are seen dancing with M-16 rifles. Right-wing activists Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben Gvir of Hebron also have Facebook profiles, where they share their opinions on current events.
    Bentzi Gopstein, who is a member of the Kiryat Arba Regional Council, operates the Facebook group “The Jewish idea – Rabbi Kahane’s philosophy.”
    “We disseminate the ideology of Rabbi [Meir] Kahane,” he explains. “I started it about six to eight weeks ago, and we have about 600 members. We put up a ‘Daily Kahane’ – a statement by the rabbi every day on the situation…

How much of this publishing activity is legal under Israeli law, I wonder?

Israeli general warns about settler violence

The IOF officer in charge of the West Bank region, Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrahi, recently told a group of the officers under his command that extremist settler activity could “set the West Bank ablaze”, according to this recent, un-bylined news report in Haaretz.
Mizrahi reportedly warned that, whereas the IOF feels it can maintain decent working cooperation with representatives of the big, “official” settler body, Yesha, settlers in some of the unauthorized settlement outposts

    “don’t believe in us at all as a state. They want something else, and when someone doesn’t know the limits anymore you don’t know where it will end up.”
    Mizrahi said the army and the Palestinian security forces, trained in Jordan by Keith Dayton, an American general, have been cooperating, but that Israeli soldiers still need to know how to fight them if the need should arise.
    “This is a trained, equipped, American-educated force,” Mizrahi said.

The report included this assessment from Mizrahi about the probability of a broad, violent Palestinian uprising in the West Bank:

    “I don’t think something will happen anytime soon, unless there’s a very serious incident on the Temple Mount or in the Cave of the Patriarchs,” he said [using the Jewish names for the principal Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem and Hebron]. However, he said he was “very anxious” about an escalation being set off by settler violence.
    “Most of the settlement movement is fine, very normal, but a mosque set on fire and another mosque set on fire adds up,” Mizrahi said.
    Defense officials are concerned over a series of mosque burnings in the past six months, including a fire that destroyed books and prayer rugs in a mosque near Nablus that firefighters said earlier this month was caused by arson.

The brigade-wide training exercise at which Mizrahi spoke was for the Kfir Brigade. The report said that it

    focused on urban warfare – including the capture of a simulated Arab city – and pitted Israeli troops against Palestinian security forces.
    Senior officers present at the exercise, the most extensive session the infantry brigade has undergone since it was founded just over four years ago, said Monday there were no indications that Israel would have to fight the security forces.
    However, the army said it needs to be prepared for all eventualities.
    … In the training exercise, three battalions went from house to house, where they faced Israel Defense Forces soldiers posing as members of the regular Palestinian security forces, Palestinian civilians or reporters.
    Until now, soldiers serving in the brigade have been serving only in the West Bank, but Armored Corps commander Brig. Gen. Agai Yehezkel said the exercises would enable the brigade to fight on the Gaza and Lebanon fronts as well as in the West Bank, if necessary.

The Haaretz report made a point of noting, however, that it is not just the settlers who engage in illegal (and presumably, also, potentially destabilizing) violence against West Bank Palestinians: Kfir Brigade units engage in it, as well–

    It should be noted that the main perpetrators of crimes against Palestinians belong to the Kfir Brigade, according to statistics on Military Police investigations, which the Israel Defense Forces provided to the human rights organization Yesh Din.
    The Military Police is investigating a variety of crimes in the territories, from the killing of Palestinians and the illegal use of firearms to abuse and plunder.

This news report has an odd structure. As noted above, it has no byline, at least in English. The part reporting Mizrahi’s remarks seems to have been written by someone present when he made them (though it could also have been ‘reported’ from a recorded version provided by a participant in the event other than the Haaretz writer.)
It was also significant that the writer made a point of putting the Kfir Brigade’s own record of unjustified violence onto the record there, as well.
But I think the most significant aspects of the report were to learn that the IDF is indeed training for how to confront the Dayton forces (or any other well-trained Arab force that is operating in a predominantly urban environment)… and to hear from this high-ranking Israeli general that he judges that the extremist settlers “don’t believe in us at all as a state.”
If this assessment of the extremist settlers is one that’s predominant in the high ranks of Israel’s security services, wouldn’t you expect to see them imploring the government to do something concrete– arrests, detentions, disarming– to shut down the capabilities of these potentially extremely destabilizing networks within the West Bank?
Well, perhaps you shouldn’t expect to “see” them arguing for this. But if the government were truly concerned about preserving the stability of the West Bank, you would expect to see it taking actions to suppress the capabilities of the extremists… We really haven’t seen that happening yet.

New report about carcinogens and fetotoxic materials in Gaza war wounded

The New Weapons Committee recently released a report of detailed biopsy studies conducted on people in Gaza injured by Israeli weapons during the Israeli assaults of summer 2006 and winter 2009. (Hat-tip Ray J.)
The NWC’s May 11 press release warns that the biopsy results indicate Israel’s use of new and potentially very worrying kinds of weapons during those assaults:

    Toxic and carcinogenic metals, able to produce genetic mutations, have been found in the tissues of people wounded in Gaza during Israeli military operations of 2006 and 2009. The research has been carried out on wounds provoked by weapons that did not leave fragments in the bodies of the victims, a peculiarity that was pointed out repeatedly by doctors in Gaza. This shows that experimental weapons, whose effects are still to be assessed, were used.
    The researchers compared the quantity of 32 elements present in the tissues through ICP/MS (a type of highly sensitive mass spectrometry) . The job, carried out by laboratories of Sapienza University of Rome (Italy), Chalmer University (Sweden) and Beirut University (Lebanon)[I think that’s a referece to the American University of Beirut ~HC], was coordinated by the New Weapons Research Group (Nwrg), an independent committee of scientists and experts based in Italy, who is studying the use of unconventional weapons and their mid-term effects on the population of after-war areas. The relevant presence of toxic and carcinogenic metals found in the wound tissues points to direct risks for survivors, but also to the possibility of environmental contamination.

Scroll further down that web-page for links to the the Word doc version of the study itself and PDF versions of the supporting materials.
Articles 22 and 23 of the 1899 Hague Conventions state the following:

    Article 22
    The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited.
    Article 23
    Besides the prohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially prohibited:–
    To employ poison or poisoned arms;
    To kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army;
    To kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down arms, or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion;
    To declare that no quarter will be given;
    To employ arms, projectiles, or material of a nature to cause superfluous injury;
    To make improper use of a flag of truce, the national flag, or military ensigns and the enemy’s uniform, as well as the distinctive badges of the Geneva Convention;
    To destroy or seize the enemy’s property, unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war.

The Iran/sanctions issue: Chinese netizens weigh in

In the lengthy updates to his Iran/sanctions post of yesterday, China Hand has some great excerpts from the comments board at China’s Global Times website:

    Judging from the comments, Chinese netizens–at least the subset that gets to comment on articles in Global Times–are, for the most part, not happy [with China having given such full and quick support to the U.S.’s sanctions proposal at the U.N.]
    Sample:
    It’s no use. There are too many people in the party with a tilt toward the United States.
    没有办法，党内倾美决策人太多。
    So you want to lead the life of a whore and have a ceremonial arch erected to commemorate your chastity! Don’t think the Chinese people don’t see and understand what’s going on!
    既要做婊子又要立牌坊！别以为民众看不懂！
    Any country that befriends China will end up the loser.
    任何国家跟中国交朋友都会吃亏的。
    We’ve lost a friend and gained an enemy.
    我们有少个朋友了，多个敌人
    When you drop stones on somebody who’s fallen in a well, you’re worse than a pig or a dog.
    落井下石猪狗不如
    Once Iran is sanctioned, America will start to classify China as a currency-manipulating country. When the bird is shot, the fine bow is put away; when the rabbit is caught, the hunting dog goes into the cooking pot. Wake up, comrades!
    等制裁完伊朗，美国就开始把中国列为“汇率操纵国”了，飞鸟尽良弓藏、狡兔死走狗烹啊！该醒醒了，同志们！

Interesting. The CCP has a very sophisticated approach toward encouraging the participation of “netizens” in public discourse. Of course the approach contains some very firm red lines regarding taboo topics. But the CCP also seems to use the discussion boards in which netizens participate as a useful sounding-board for the opinion of educated, well-connected citizens. So it’ll be interesting to try to figure out the extent to which this fairly scathing set of netizen reactions to Beijing’s diplomacy has any discernible effect on policy going forward.

IDF planning re-entry, mass detention camps in Gaza?

Amir Buhbut reported in the Israeli daily Ma’ariv on Tuesday that,

    the IDF and Military Police forces are training for the possibility that the IDF would stage an offensive on the entire Gaza Strip, including Gaza City and other Palestinian cities, and would be compelled to govern them for an extended period.

The translation comes from INN.
Buhbut quoted an un-named military source as saying that an officer has already been chosen to be the military governor of Gaza under this scenario.
And this:

    The contingency plan also calls for setting up detention facilities that will be able to hold thousands of Palestinian detainees who are suspected of terrorist activity. “In order to hold them for a lengthy period of time, and under acceptable conditions, the preparations must be made in a clear and careful way,” the military source added.
    The Military Police intend to make use of an advanced biometric system that the IDF and Defense Ministry operated prior to Hamas’s rise to power in the Gaza Strip, in order to enable the entry of Palestinians to work in Israel, and to examine those who returned through the border terminals.
    “The biometric documentation process began a long time ago, but it will soon be renewed in order to ease matter for the Palestinian population that reaches Israel along with monitoring the population registry, and if we are called upon to classify the detainees or the population that is not involved in terror, we will do so successfully,” explained a military official who is involved in the training series, in preparation for the possibility of a deterioration in the Gaza Strip.

The mass detention operation, the “monitoring” of the population registry, and the “classifying” of the detainees or the population in general are all highly coercive steps, reminiscent of some of the most abusive moments in world colonial history like the “Pipeline” system that the British deployed against Kenyan nationalists (including Pres. Obama’s own grandfather) back in the 1950s.
Or, reminiscent of the steps the U.S. military took in Iraq in general, or in Fallujah or Tel Afar in particular.
Of course, Israel has its own long record of running mass detention operations. Today it holds some 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners, many of them for long periods and without charge or trial. Those thus detained include more than tree dozen members of the Palestinian parliament elected (in an election held with U.S. and Israeli approval) in January 2006.
The many different detention operations Israel ran in Lebanon during its 22-year occupation of the country, 1978-2000, were also notable. The prison it ran along with its proxy forces in Khiam was particularly notorious for the tortures enacted therein. In addition, in the aftermath of Israel’s large-scale 1982 aggression in Lebanon, it established three major detention camps, including the notorious Ansar I camp, in which it held thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese detainees.
(None of those detention/torture operations in Lebanon helped Israel to consolidate its rule in Lebanon. Instead, they further fueled the will of the Lebanese to resist the occupation, which coalesced in particular into the establishment of Hizbullah, which had not even existed prior to 1982. Now, 28 years later, Hizbullah holds a respected position in Lebanon’s parliament and government. Next week marks the tenth anniversary of the last Israeli ground forces slinking out of Lebanon in some disarray, back in May 2000.)
I do have a question, regarding this latest report from Buhbut, as to both why the military/sources “leaked” this information to him, and why the report was “allowed” to pass through Israel’s all-pervasive military censorship system.
Was it leaked, in fact, as a way of trying to scare Gaza’s population and the elected Hamas government in Gaza into making some concessions in, for example, the on-again-off-again negotiations over a prisoner release? If so, I doubt if it will have much effect.
But it does seem that some people in the Israeli military are still so frustrated and angry over the fact that the assault they waged against Gaza 18 months ago that they’re trying to figure out how to plan and launch another version of that assault that will actually succeed in dismantling Hamas’s structures in the Strip completely.
Ain’t gonna happen. (See Lebanon, above.)

China’s confused role on Iran sanctions

China Hand has a great post today about the notably muddled-looking role that China’s been playing on the Iran sanctions issue.
CH notes that while it’s understandable (given the exigencies of U.S. politics, the big role of AIPAC, etc) why Hillary Clinton came down like a ton of bricks against the Turkey/Brazil deal, what is far less comprehensible is the apparently clear support that China gave to Hillary’s rushed announcement of the new round of sanctions that Washington has been pushing for.
CH notes that subsequent to the release of a first statement that announced the endorsement that China and the rest of the P5+1 group gave to the new sanctions arrangement– and that also justified China’s role in those P5+1 negotiations– Beijing did try to walk its position back a bit, including by giving more props to the efforts of Turkey and Brazil.
The justifications given in the earlier article do, however, give an interesting window into the thinking/argumentation of China’s rulers on this matter and perhaps many other issues in world affairs.
As CH translates them, they cover the following four points:

    Point 1:
    China acts on principle. It is opposed to nuclear proliferation and the possession of nuclear weapons by Iran.
    “At the same time” China affirmed the dual track strategy and “the discussion of the draft of the six nations [i.e., the P5+1] concerning sanctions should not affect the peace and stability or influence the recovery of the international economy.
    …
    Point 2:
    China’s important interests are maintained. China’s important interests are…in the matters of Iran’s energy, trade, and financial sectors. China believes that normal economics and trade should not be punished because of the Iran question nor should those countries that maintain normal, legal economic relations with Iran be punished…Through negotiations, this point was satisfied, doing a relatively good job of upholding China’s…important interests.
    Point 3:
    Maintaining China’s image as a responsible great power…China has repeatedly emphasized although the six nations are discussing sanctions in New York, diplomatic efforts should be completely unaffected. The door to diplomatic efforts has not been closed…China’s consistently positive and constructive attitude has gained the favorable comment of the concerned nations.
    …
    Point 4:
    China has energetically tended to good relations with the various parties…During the course of discussions we have maintained good communications with the various parties, including Iran. We have reported relevant circumstances to the concerned party Iran in a timely manner. We have encouraged and supported Iran’s expansion of cooperation with international society. The most recent conclusion of an agreement of Brazil and Turkey with Iran for the swap of nuclear fuel was also the result of China supporting diplomatic efforts and creating the space and time for diplomatic efforts. This also includes obtaining precious time for the Brazilian and Turkish leaders to go to iran to engage in diplomatic efforts and achieve a positive result. Therefore, the representatives of both Brazil and Turkey have in various venues and through different channels expressed thanks to China. At the same time, Iran has also indicated that this is also the result of the work done by China’s leadership on the Iran side, actively urging and promoting discussions.

I think maybe point 3’s mention of China’s “image as a responsible great power” is the key. It wants to maintain its role in the world economy, as well as its access to natural resources from Iran and elsewhere– all without rocking the boat too much in its relations with Washington?
Well, I guess I can see that that position might have some, very China-centered, logic to it…. over the short term, at least. But it would have been nice to have seen Beijing less ready to be stampeded by the manipulators in Hillary’s State Department (and their very good friends in AIPAC.) It would have been nice to see China a little more ready to embrace the cause of the mid-size nations whose weight in world affairs derives from their soft power rather than their possession of nuclear weapons.

Davutoğlu replies to Hillary (and Barack)

Turkish FM Ahmet Davutoğlu today made clear his resentment about the tepid reaction most western governments had toward the deal his government and Brazil concluded with Iran yesterday on a swap of low-enriched nuclear materials, and Washington’s continued push to win a tough anti-Iran sanctions resolution from the Security Council.
Hurriyet Daily News reported today that:

    “The discussions on sanctions will spoil the atmosphere and the escalation of statements may provoke the Iranian public,” the Turkish foreign minister told a group of reporters after an official press conference in Istanbul.
    “Our mandate was limited to striking a deal on the swap,” Davutoğlu said. “If reaching an agreement on the swap was not important, why would we spend so much time and energy on the issue?”

HT to China Hand, who had an excellent round-up about the whole issue on his blog yesterday.
The Hurriyet account continued:

    “With the agreement yesterday, an important psychological threshold has been crossed toward establishing mutual trust,” Davutoğlu said. “This is the first indirect deal signed by Iran with the West in 30 years.
    Davutoğlu … objected to criticism over the amount of fuel that will be swapped. Critics of the deal argue that the 1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium that Iran agreed to have stored in Turkey was an amount set in October, when the idea of a swap first about. Since then, they say, Iran has continued to produce more low-enriched uranium.
    According to Davutoğlu, U.S. President Barack Obama recently sent a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan regarding the negotiations and the quantity mentioned in this letter was exactly 1,200 kilograms. The foreign minister said all relevant parties were kept informed at all stages of the negotiations with Iran and claimed that the early skeptical reactions stem from the fact that a successful deal was not expected.
    “I think there is no problem with the text of the deal. The problem is that they were not expecting that Iran would accept,” he said. “They had a reflex conditioned on the expectation that Iran will always say no. That’s why they were a little bit caught by surprise.”

The account also notes that Davutoğlu “said the deal could not have happened had it not been for Obama’s multilateral engagement policies.”
But I do think Obama should have been paying a bit more attention to what the Turks and Brazil’s President Lula Da Silva were doing in this whole affair.
Interesting that Obama “recently” sent a letter to Turkish PM Erdoğan regarding the negotiations– but that then, over the weekend as the negotiations proceeded to their end-game, according to spokesman Robert Gibbs he made no effort at all to reach out to the two fellow heads of government who were conducting them with Iran.
This was especially disturbing, since both Turkey and Brazil are fellow members of the Security Council, along with the U.S. It is highly unlikely that novice diplomatist Hillary Clinton will be able to get much of what she wants in the world body if she continues to fundamentally disrespect the diplomatic heavy lifting undertaken by Erdoğan and Lula.
By contrast with Sec. Clinton, Davutoğlu is a person with rich credentials as both a theorist and a practicioner of the art of diplomacy. The fact that even he brought himself to express a bit of (thinly veiled) frustration with the stance of Washington indicates to me that the frustration elsewhere in the Turkish government must be running even more strongly.

Obama cool toward ‘mid-size states’ deal

Pres. Obama’s spokesperson Robert Gibbs was yesterday extremely cool toward the agreement that Turkish PM Rejep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazil’s Prez Luiz Ignacio Lula Da Silva reached with Iran concerning a swap of low-enriched uranium for medically suitable fuel rods.
By the way, I should have noted explicitly in the post I wrote on this yesterday that Turkey and Brazil are both currently members of the U.N. Security Council. Which obviously makes the active engagement of their leaders in this diplomacy much more important and immediately operational than it would have been otherwise.
Here in the U.S., some of the MSM commentary has been along the lines of, “Gosh, how worrying that this latest deal might lessen our chances of getting the U.N. to support tougher sanctions against Iran!”
Well, yes, they are right to the extent that it does that. But why on earth be worried about that prospect? … Unless, that is, your main aim is the sanctions themselves– often seen over the past 17 years, qua Martin Indyk, as an important way of weakening the regime prior to its overthrow– rather than resolving the questions and uncertainties around Iran’s avowedly civilian nuclear program?
(Of course, the kinds of sanctions imposed by the U.S.– and Israel– on their opponents– have usually has the reverse effect, of strengthening regimes those states don’t favor. But the primal urge to punish, punish, punish is so strong in these countries that simple rationality sometimes doesn’t even get a look-in.)
U.S. commentators who’ve been railing against the mid-size states deal also fail to take into account the fact that in today’s world, Brazil and Turkey are both democratic states that enjoy real power, in a number of different ways. Both are relative economic power-houses, whose current, well-regarded governments have done a lot to ensure that the economic growth of recent years has been paired with some good (and innovative) attention to social justice issues within their own societies. Both enjoy wide respect from their neighbors. Both have numerous economic, political, and military ties to ‘western’ nations.
In addition, Turkey– as I’ve noted here numerous times before– is a key member of NATO in that it is NATO’s only majority-Muslim member state at a time when NATO’s fate as an alliance really hangs on the success (or quite possible failure) of the lengthy expeditionary mission it has been undertaking in Afghanistan. Which, hullo, is a Muslim country many of whose people have a deep distrust of westerners, including Christians and perhaps especially the sporadic efforts of western Christian evangelizers.
Does Obama really want to maintain a stance of publicly belittling and disrespecting the diplomatic engagement and real diplomatic achievement of Turkey’s prime minister (and of Brazil’s president)? I can’t believe he does.
Reaction from other P-5 powers includes this from Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman:

    China welcomes and places importance on the agreement that Iran signed with Brazil and Turkey on fuel supply to its research reactor, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said here Tuesday.
    … Ma said at a routine press conference that China hopes this move will help advance the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiation.
    Ma said China has always adhered to the dual-track strategy on resolving the Iranian nuclear issue. China has always insisted that dialogue and negotiation are the best way to resolve the issue.

Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev gave the deal a seemingly more measured welcome. Moscow Times reported that he “cautiously welcomed a uranium swap deal between Iran and Turkey, but warned that it may fail to fully satisfy the international community.”
As for the European “powers”– Britain and France who, as nuclear-weapons-waving states, by an amazing coincidence get a veto on the security Council; and Germany, which by some sleight of hand got folded onto that strange, ad-hoc, Iran-focused body called the “P5+1”– right now they are all fairly busy with other things like, um, Europe’s own continuing financial crisis and the Brits’ attempts to establish a workable direction for the new coalition government in London.
And besides, I really don’t intend to puff Europe up by giving it any kind of equal billing with the other governments mentioned here. Three seats out of six in a global body, just for Europe? Didn’t anyone think at the time that that was just a tad nineteenth century?*
Well, back here in the good ol’ U.S. of A., I was interested to see this exchange in Robert Gibbs’s press conference yesterday:

    Q And did the President speak with leaders of Turkey or Brazil as this proposal was being put together?
    MR. GIBBS: No, again, I believe the State Department has been in contact with them. But the President has not talked directly with any leaders.

Boy, that looks like a very serious mis-step, right there.
I was also interested to see, in that press conference, the degree to which some of the questioners really did seem more concerned about the fate of the sanctions efforts per se rather than getting the nuclear issue with Iran actually resolved. There’s the MSM for you!
—
* Population figures for these states:
China………….. 1,330 million
U.S………………… 304 million
Brazil…………….. 196 million
Russia……………. 141 million
Germany………….. 82 million
Turkey……………. 72 million
Iran………………… 66 million
France…………….. 61 million
Britain…………….. 61 million

Livni shows a little real vision on the Iran issue?

I just read this account, from the BBC’s Tim Franks, of what looked like some kind of cross between a ‘war-game’ and a panel discussion about Iran’s nuclear program, held yesterday at Israel’s close-to-power ‘Inter-Disciplinary Center’ (IDC), in Herzliya.
Well-connected and high-level participants from both the U.S. Israeli took part in the event, though not, apparently, any currently serving officials in either government.
Franks wrote this about Tzipi Livni, the head of Israel’s main opposition party, Kadima:

    Ms Livni directed particular criticism at the current Israeli Prime Minister’s Benjamin Netanyahu repeated warnings about a second Holocaust.
    “The role of leadership is to give an answer to this kind of threat,” she said, rather than to stoke worry.
    “Israel in 2010 is not the Jews in Europe in 1939.”

Franks also wrote that Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said that, time and again, during ‘war-games’ or consultations of this type held jointly between Israeli and American participants,

    a marked difference of emphasis would emerge from the role-playing, with the Israelis favouring military action as a ‘first course of response’, and the US tending to look at alternatives.
    In that context, there was a particularly striking contribution from Dan Halutz, the previous chief of staff of the Israeli armed forces, and another participant in the day of war-gaming.
    He argued strongly not just for talk of military pre-emption, but diplomatic pre-emption.
    He said that the Iranians should be isolated from the rest of the Muslim world, which, he claimed, was “by and large more concerned than Israel is about a nuclear Iran.”
    The way to do that, he said, was clear: a comprehensive regional peace settlement. “The price is known, all the files are ready.”

Ah, Dan Halutz! The guy who was so certain back in July 2006 that he knew exactly how to “isolate” Hizbullah from the rest of the Lebanese population!
What an idiot. Why should anyone consider him an expert on anything to do with the politics of the Muslim countries of the region?
Still, it sounded like an interesting gathering.
And I find it interesting that some high-level Israelis are willing to talk so openly about the way they see the ‘linkage’ operating between the Iran situation and the need for Israel-Palestine peacemaking. This, though Israel’s willing armies of hasbaristas inside the U.S. body politic are still so absolutely adamant that no-one in the west should assert that there’s any linkage between the two issues at all…
My assessment is that current PM Netanyahu also believes that there is and should be linkage between the two– but that he sees it operating in a way that’s almost 180 degrees turned round from the view Halutz was expressing. I think Netanyahu’s real view is something like the following:

    1. He may well believe that Iran is aiming at, and may get to, the possession of a nuclear weapons capability within the next few years. But he isn’t really very scared by that prospect– despite what all his armies of hasbaristas are yelling in the west– because he knows full well that Israel’s own nuclear arsenal is completely well poised to destroy Iran and come to that the whole world if Israel chooses what we might call the “Samson option”. (The hasbaristas, of course, are not allowed to make any mention at all, however indirect, of Israel’s own NW capability.)
    2. Nonetheless, Netanyahu is very happy indeed to keep tensions high around the Iranian nuclear program, and to carry on inciting/pressuring the U.S. to escalate these tensions (including by delivering threats that if the U.S. doesn’t act ‘forcefully’, then Israel just might have to launch its own military strike against Iran)– primarily because keeping the attention of U.S. officials focused on ‘containing’ and threatening Iran prevents them from giving due attention to what’s happening on the ground in occupied Palestine. It’s all an elaborate distraction ploy!
    3. Therefore, meanwhile, as American officials are fussing around and devoting huge resources to ‘containing’ and combating Iran, Netanyahu’s government is very busy indeed continuing with its policy of colonizing the West Bank and shutting up all its rightful Palestinian owners inside the increasingly overcrowded open-air pens called “Oslo”. Every time Americans dare to challenge that policy, Netanyahu distracts their attention to Iran. And any Americans appeals to the idea that what Netanyahu’s doing in the OPTs might be making the fight against Iran harder is met with squeals of outrage from the hasbaristas to the effect that there really cannot be any “linkage” between these two issues.

Bottom line: Whereas Halutz judges there is cross-issue linkage, but within that picture assigns the need to counter Iran a higher priority than the need to preserve the entire, continuing settler-colonial project in the West Bank, Netanyahu judges there is linkage but assigns the need to preserve the settler-colonial project a higher priority than the need to do anything to actually counter Iran.
… Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see what happens now that the “initiative” on the Iran issue seems to be slipping out of the hands of Washington and into the new hands of Turkey’s Erdogan and Brazil’s Lula, backed up by the broad network of supporters that both those leaders have around the world.
Is Netanyahu perhaps already planning the launching of Israeli dirty tricks against both those governments?