Category: Palestine 2009

New reports on press and other freedoms

I meant to mention this AFP report in my last post, but I’m tired so the brain is working a little groggily at this point.
It says this:

    Press freedom declined around the world last year, deteriorating for the first time in every region, according to a study released by Freedom House.
    The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), meanwhile, unveiled its list of “10 worst countries to be a blogger,” naming Myanmar, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Tunisia, China, Turkmenistan and Egypt to its “dishonor roll.”
    Out of the 195 countries and territories covered in the Freedom House study, 70, or 36 percent, were rated “free,” 61 (31 percent), were rated “partly free” and 64 (33 percent) were rated “not free.”
    Freedom House, which is funded by the US government and private groups and has been conducting an annual study of press freedom since 1980, said that 72 countries were rated free the previous year.

The Freedom House report is particularly interesting on Israel and the OPTs:

    It said Israel, Italy and Hong Kong slipped from free to partly free status in 2008.
    Among the worst-rated states were Belarus, China, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Laos, Libya, Myanmar, North Korea, the Palestinian territories, Rwanda and Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe.

So much for the hopes of all those Palestinians who had hoped, back in the day, that Oslo would lead to the “liberation” of at least a part of Palestine.

Obama opens timid discussion with Congress on Hamas

The Obama administration has launched a tiny first discussion with Congress over the issue of dealing with Hamas. Administration officials did this, according to this piece in Monday’s LA Times by Paul Richter,by seeking a change in existing legislation that forbids the US from giving aid to any PA government that contains Hamas members.
Richter writes:

    U.S. officials insist that the new proposal doesn’t amount to recognizing or aiding Hamas. Under law, any U.S. aid would require that the Palestinian government meet three long-standing criteria: recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and agreeing to follow past Israeli-Palestinian agreements.
    Hamas as an organization doesn’t meet those criteria. However, if the rival Palestinian factions manage to reach a power-sharing deal, the Obama administration wants to be able to provide aid as long as the Hamas-backed members of the government — if not Hamas itself — meet the three criteria.

This tracks, by the way, with other information I have received, that the administration is still sticking exactly to the “three conditions” defined by the US and its allies/satraps in the so-called “Quartet”, immediately after Hamas won the PA elections in 2006.
Richter quotes Nathan Brown, a prof at George Washington University, as describing the administration’s request as “gutsy.” I don’t think it’s gutsy. Gutsy would be to come out and say the US respects the results of the 2006 election and intends to explore all possible ways of working with the duly elected Palestinian government– just as it works with the duly elected government in Israel that contains some extremely rightwing figures and is headed by people who are much more opposed to a two-state solution than is Hamas.
I do think the administration’s move is a tiny and realistic move in the right direction.
Realistic, because without making some move like this the US could pretty rapidly find it has dealt itself out of having any real influence at all in the Palestinian political sphere.
As it is, the portion of US aid that goes into the PA’s budget is already, I think, much smaller than the EU’s aid. (And I see that Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi has been in Ramallastan and Israel recently.)
Plus, as I have noted elsewhere, the net effect of all of the US-mobilized aid that’s been poured into Ramallastan in recent years has been to further feed the culture of clientilism and corruption that has become rampant in the Fateh-controlled (Ramallah) wing of the PA, and thus to hasten the internal disintegration of Fateh and its secular allies.
With all that US-mobilized money that has been poured into Ramallah since 2006, Hamas’s popularity in the West Bank has only been rising, and now easily tops that of Fateh!
(Bottom line: It’s not the aid itself that wins influence. Aid when allied to correct policies would have a much better chance of doing so.)
…Anyway, inside Washington, the administration’s move sparked exactly the kind of knee-jerk response you could expect from some heavily AIPAC-influenced members of congress.
Richter reports,

    Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) said the proposal sounded “completely unworkable,” even if the individual Hamas-backed officials agreed to abide by U.S. conditions.
    “You couldn’t have the leadership of a terrorist organization pick the ministers in the government, with the power to appoint and withdraw them, and answering to them,” he said.

What’s notable to me, though, is the absence of any knee-jerk condemnation, up to this point, coming from anyone with any real clout in congress. (Schiff is the congressman from one of the LA Times’ home constituencies, and was quoted for that reason rather than because he has any huge clout in congress.)
Officials in Israel were described in this Haaretz piece as “surprised” by the Obama administration’s move– and also, of course, opposed to it.
The pro-Hamas PIC website somewhat over-interpreted the move.
Regarding the possibility of progress in the long-drawn-out intra-Palestinian reconciliation process, the PIC website has this fairly detailed report, published under the title “Hamas: The fourth dialog round made slight progress and will resume next month.”
It included this:

    [Hamas official] Dr. Ismail Radwan said that the current round of reconciliation talks in Cairo ended with a joint meeting between delegations of Hamas and Fatah in the presence of Egyptian intelligence director Omar Suleiman and it was agreed upon to resume the talks on May 16.
    Dr. Radwan underlined that the two parties agreed on the importance of the one package solution either with respect to the referential authority, security, the government or elections.
    The Hamas official also pointed out that the two parties agreed on the necessity of the PLC’s work, and the respect of the majority within the council and the mechanism of proxies it approved.
    In the same context, Palestinian informed sources told the PIC on Tuesday that during a closed meeting attended by Suleiman, the delegations of Hamas and Fatah agreed on the formation of an interim referential national authority to oversee the rebuilding of the PLO composed of factions, independents and the executive committee.
    … In a joint statement issued Tuesday during their meeting, the alliance of Palestinian forces, which are composed of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al-Sa’ika, the popular front-general command, the popular struggle, the Palestinian liberation front, Fatah-Intifada and the communist party, rejected all calls for the recognition of the Israeli occupation and the international quartet’s terms, or the commitment to the agreements signed with Israel.

Anyway, let’s see what happens between now and May 16.

Videos from the recent Georgetown University CCAS conference

… are now up on the website, here.
This is a fabulous resource. I shall certainly be coming back to it again and again. Many of the presentations were extremely important and well done: I learned so much from attending the two days of the conference.
The schedule for the conference is at the top of that web-page. Then scroll down to see the videos, which are not in the same order.
(My performance looks okay. One small mis-speaking– a reference to 40 Hamas people being incarcerated in the West bank, as opposed to 60 Hamas parliamentarians— and some possibly overdone, BBC-style hand gestures…. But it’s the way I communicate in large-group settings, so what can I do?)
Anyway, big congratulations to the CCAS staff for having gotten this up on the website so speedily. Just one small caveat: those presenters who relied heavily on Power Points get a bit short-changed since the videos don’t, I think, cue to those.

Ahmadinejad: “Whatever decision they (Palestininians) take is fine with us”

ABC’s This Week program today featured an extended interview, conducted apparently last Wednesday, with Iran’s President Ahmadinejad. (A/N) Here’s the full transcript, and (H/T to Nader) here’s a new link to the full video.
As usual, it seems the western media is missing the significance of what he said. The discussion on ABC’s “This Week” after the interview is even worse; They essentially ignored what Ahmadinejad said. ABC had a scoop on their hands, they sat on it for several days, and flat missed it!
But contrary to VOA and AFP headlines, I don’t think it’s at all clear that A/N has added “preconditions” for US-Iran talks. At one point in the interview, yes, he indicates that any talks should have a clear agenda, and that should be worked out ahead of time. But he isn’t about to do so in public for ABC. Is that so shocking? (And it’s light years different from the old Bush/Rice position that Iran had to stop enrichment first, then we could talk about it.)
In any case, at another spot in the interview, Ahmadinejad insists: “We are always ready to talk… with no preconditions.” (so no headline there)
Second, yes, A/N does comment on the holocaust, its ramifications for the Middle East, and its study. Readers can read the passage for themselves. While grating, I don’t see any holocaust “denial” here, per se.
Most newsworthy, and of surprise to those who subscribe to the Ahmadinejad as “Hitler” motif, the Iranian President had this to say about a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine.

Continue reading “Ahmadinejad: “Whatever decision they (Palestininians) take is fine with us””

Threats to East Jerusalem Palestinians, Youtubed

Clayton Swisher has two super short pieces on Al-Jazeera English about the threats to the Palestinian communities in the East Jerusalem neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan. In the first of those, he finds a US diplomat who’s been sent to “fact-find” with one of the threatened Sheikh Jarrah families.
Yes, “fact-finding” is fine. But really, how much more of it needs to be done? The numerous expropriations, home demolitions, and other gross rights abuses the Palestinians of occupied East Jerusalem have faced throughout 42 years of occupation have all been excellently documented.
The US government position still in fact tracks with the international law position that holds that East Jerusalem is indeed occupied territory. (Though for the past 16-plus years, US government officials have always tried to squirm their way out of admitting as much in public.
The fact that this portion of the city is occupied territory means that the implantation of Israeli settlers into colonies/settlements in and around it has been quite illegal under international law, as have all other steps taken to change the status of the this portion of the occupied West Bank. (Yes, of course including its annexation/Anschluss to Israel.)
The 270,000 Palestinians of East Jerusalem and the built environment they hold so dear (and sacred) are under acute threat these days. EJ Palestinians pay high Israeli-style taxes but receive nothing like he kinds of municipal or other kinds of government services that the city’s Jewish-Israeli population receives. They are prohibited from holding any kinds of public political gatherings. Though they live in a city Israelis claim has been “unified”, they are subject to all the sanctions available to the military occupation authorities in the rest of the West Bank, including endlessly renewable terms of detention without trial. (As applied, also, to the legislators they elected back in January 2006.)
In addition, thousands of EJ Palestinians have hanging over their heads either the threat of confiscation of the special blue ID cards (“pass books”) that allow them to continue living in the city of their birth, or the threat of demolition of their family home. Hundreds of demolition orders– maybe more than a thousand?– are outstanding. The East Jerusalemites never know where the municipal demolition crews will be sent to next month, or next week, in their endless forays around the city.
Many East Jerusalemites feel quite abandoned by the Lords of Ramallah, judging that the situation of their city took a marked turn for the worse after Oslo.
So let’s hope Sen. Mitchell and the rest of the “international community” finally do something this time to buttress and restore the protections that international law accords to the East Jerusalemites, as to the Gazans and all other populations under military occupation.
We need only recall that the special protections that the Fourth Geneva Convention accords to residents of territories under military occupation were adopted by the world’s nations in 1949 in the specific light of the gross violations that the vulnerable populations (including of course Jewish and Roma populations) of Eastern Europe had been subjected to during the foreign military occupation they had then so recently suffered.

Mitchell revs up mission

It’s been almost three months since, at that January 22 event at the State Department, Sec. Clinton announced the appointment of former Senate Majority leader George Mitchell as “special envoy for Middle East peace”– and Pres. Obama, who was also present, immediately put flesh on that announcement by saying,

    Lasting peace requires more than a long cease-fire, and that’s why I will sustain an active commitment to seek two states living side by side in peace and security.
    Senator Mitchell will carry forward this commitment, as well as the effort to help Israel reach a broader peace with the Arab world that recognizes its rightful place in the community of nations.
    I should add that the Arab peace initiative contains constructive elements that could help advance these efforts…

At the time, I commented that the way Mitchell’s appointment was effected indicated that he would be reporting to both the president and the secretary of state. Yesterday I was able to have a good discussion with a couple of (regrettably anonymous) sources in the administration who were able to confirm conclusively that this was the case. “It is very important that there is no daylight between any of the three of them,” one of these people said.
Mitchell has, of course, been on the road again this week, with a heavy schedule of meetings in (thus far) Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Israel, Palestine, and Egypt.
This is his third visit to the region since his appointment; and he has been more outspoken this time than hitherto in articulating the US’s vision of “two states living side by side in peace and security” both publicly and also, reportedly, in private meetings with leaders in both Israel and Palestine.
Israel new (or recycled) PM Netanyahu and his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, are notably sticking to their position of refusing to engage at this time in any discussions about sovereignty issues– that is, about the possibility of a independent Palestinian state.
Haaretz reports today,

    In meetings with Israeli leaders on Thursday, Mitchell stressed Obama’s commitment to the goal of a two-state solution to end the decades-old conflict.
    “That is our objective. That is what we will pursue vigorously in the coming months,” Mitchell said.

It thus seems clear that serious confrontation between the two government is getting closer.
In associated news this week, it’s been revealed that Jordan’s King Abdullah II will be the first Middle Eastern head of state to meet Obama in the White House. That’ll happen next Tuesday. And US government sources have said that Obama likely won’t be in DC when Netanyahu comes across in early May for the annual AIPAC conference so won’t be able to receive him then.
This is, of course, an abrupt shift from the extreme lovey-dovey-ness that existed between the US president and successive Israeli PMs right through from January 2003 till January 2009. (In Pres. Clinton’s case he almost hero-worshipped Rabin, in particular.)
Mitchell’s earlier two visits to the region as “peace envoy” were low-key missions, focused on “listening”. During them, he didn’t make any forceful public statement. He didn’t do anything “radical” like visiting Gaza or Syria, or talking to anyone who could even remotely be described as “close to” Hamas. I got pretty worried and impatient, thinking that after the good, activist start Obama and Mitchell got off to in January, the momentum seemed to have fizzled out of their effort.
It also took Mitchell what I thought was an inordinately long time to staff up his peacemaking effort. Friends of mine also started to raise questions as to whether Mitchell, in his mid 70s and recovering from prostate cancer, really still had the physical vigor required to push this peacemaking effort through to conclusion.
Well, now it seems the staffing pieces are starting to fall into place. Mitchell will have, it turns out, four people who will report directly to him. Their exact job titles seem not to be clear– whether they will be “deputies”, or “chief of staff”, or something else…. But the important thing is these four will be expected to coordinate closely with each other and each will report directly to Mitchell.
They are:

    Gen. Keith Dayton, the guy who’s been running the fairly controversial (in Palestinian circles) effort to train up a pro-Abbas Palestinian security force. He will apparently carry on doing what he is doing– and presumably will also be heavily involved in discussions on the security regime in the OPTs in the context of further Israeli withdrawals. But from now on, he’ll be part of the Mitchell operation, and reporting to Mitchell.
    David Hale, until now a deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, and formerly I think Ambassador to Jordan. Hale has been traveling with Mitchell this week. I think the expectation will be that he’ll be the person who’ll go to Jerusalem to set up the office the Mitchell operation will be opening there. (Let’s hope it is of considerably more use all round than the ridiculously expensive and under-performing office that Tony Blair has been maintaining in the American Colony Hotel for the past couple of years…. Also, does this mean curtains for Tony? I certainly hope so.)
    Fred Hof. Hof is a longtime Middle East expert, whose principal expertise is in the Syrian-Israeli-Lebanese nexus. But he was also chief of staff of the 2000-2001 Mitchell Commission, which reported on the causes of the outbreak of the Second Intifada, and drafted the commission’s April 2001 report. So Hof knows a lot about Palestinian affairs, too. He will be working primarily from Washington, backing up Mitchell’s efforts on both the Palestinian and Syrian tracks.
    Mara Rudman, who worked in the Clinton-era National Security Council and has until now been the executive secretary of the Obama NSC. She has also been traveling with Mitchell this week. Her responsibility on the team will apparently include managing its efforts to coordinate with all the other arms of the federal government. She’s also pretty well connected to various parts of the US Jewish community.

My sources told me they expect Mitchell to run parallel efforts to secure an Israeli-Palestinian peace and to secure peace in the Israel-Syria-Lebanon nexus, but with the latter effort most likely somewhat subordinated to the former. There seems to be a fairly clear understanding that Netanyahu might try to push for a big peacemaking breakthrough on the Syrian track as a way of staving off US pressure to engage seriously on the Palestinian track– and that this needs to be resisted. But, as one of my sources said, “We are firmly convinced a person can walk and chew gum at the same time. Activity on the Syrian track should not preclude activity on the Palestinian track.” Indeed, this person indicated that the “comprehensive” (Palestinian track, plus Syrian track, plus Lebanese track) peacemaking approach, as advocated in the Arab peace initiative, has some non-trivial advantages including from the perspective of Israel’s citizens.
Though Mitchell will reportedly be working on both the principal tracks at once, he has no immediate plans to visit Damascus (or Beirut.) Someone remarked that this seemed unlikely before the holding of elections in Lebanon in early June.
Well, anyway, I am happy that Mitchell’s operation is finally getting up and running. I’ve been reading the slightly theoretical study of his previous peacemaking efforts in both Northern Ireland and Palestine/Israel that Shelley Deane has in the latest (March 2009) issue of something called the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding. Shelley was also looking at the more recent “Helsinki process” undertaken with reps of many political trends in Iraq, which tried explicitly to use the peace-mediation approach summed up in the “Mitchell principles.”
Mitchell’s 2000-2001 effort in Palestine resulted in a report and a set of recommendation that went absolutely nowhere. In part that was because of the limited mandate of the Mitchell Commission, which was not itself given the task of mediating a final peace agreement, but only of making recommendations as to how the existing peace “process” could be gotten back on track. In part it was because of the lack of commitment and support the Commission received from both Pres. Bush and also– to some extent– from secretary of state Colin Powell.
The Mitchell Commission report was commissioned, remember, by Clinton, in early October 2000, in response to a resolution from the UN Security Council calling for a “speedy and objective inquiry” into the causes of the escalation of violence in Palestine. Clinton “captured” that process from the UNSC; but since he, his veep, and his wife were all heavily focused on the imminent elections, he didn’t too much to activate the Commission with any great speed…. And then, after Bush because president, it was to Bush that the Commission submitted its final report… That, after all kinds of shenanigans involving disruptive Israeli leaks, the Israelis attempting end-runs around Mitchell by getting Scooter Libby to go bat for them, etc.
Anyway, Bush was deeply uninterested in doing anything on the Israel-Palestine front. Thus, the report sank like a stone into a very deep ocean.
This time, we have a different president. And we have a Sen. Mitchell– along with some of his staff members– who have long experience of the kinds of tricks balky Israeli governments can get up to.
I was just now having lunch with an English friend who’s also deeply interested in these issues. He asked whether I thought Obama and Mitchell were wise to the kinds of tricks Netanyahu might get up to. I said yes.
An attempt to activate the pro-Israeli lobby in this country in defense of the Netanyahu government’s positions is completely predictable.
(That is another reason why the Delahunt resolution,a House of Representatives resolution that congratulates Sen. Mitchell on his appointment as peace envoy and applauds the effort to establish a Palestinian state, is so important. This resolution now has 101 sponsors, including five or six republicans. If you go to this web-page, you can find out if your representative has signed on as a sponsor. If so, express your appreciation. If not, lobby her or him to urge her to do so.)

Gaza, three months on

On January 18, Israel and Hamas each separately announced its decision to halt the hostilities they had been engaged in since December 27. That un-negotiated, parallel ceasefire remains fragile and has been far from completely observed. Israel, in particular, has maintained its aggressive presence close by 1.5 million people, surveilling them very closely from ground, sea, and air (including from low-flying drones), and launching numerous attacks against Gazans from all those platforms.
The horror and carnage of full-blown war has not returned. But the tight siege that Israel has, quite ilegally, maintained around the Strip has been inflicting– and daily until now continues to inflict– severe harm on Gaza’s war- and siege-battered people.
Today in Jerusalem, 23 high-profile international NGOs issued a joint statement accusing much of the world of “standing by” as “Gazans sift through the rubble.”
Ma’an News reports,

    More than “lip service to the needs of the people of Gaza” is required, the statement said. It had particularly harsh words for the European Union, set to review its trade and economic relations with Israel in the coming weeks.
    “If the EU does not put the brakes on the process to strengthen ties with Israel, it will be sending a dangerous signal to the world that maintaining a destructive policy of closure is acceptable,” said Martha Myers, country director of CARE West Bank and Gaza.

I agree with the criticism of the EU. But the US is just as culpable for the its failure to challenge Israel’s policies towards Gaza. Perhaps even more so, given the clout the US government has, which throughout the past 16 years it has always unfailingly used to protect Israel from any form of accountability or sanction, regardless of the illegality or gross brutality of the Israeli government’s actions against its neighbors.
The Ma’an report continues thus:

    “Gaza’s industry, including the agricultural sector, has almost completely collapsed and reconstruction has proved a near impossible task. Operation Cast Lead destroyed Gaza’s economy which was already severely weakened after months of blockade. It makes no sense to continue depriving ordinary people the opportunity to earn a living and support their families. The crossings must be opened now to allow the normal flow of commerce. If they are not, the people of Gaza simply will not recover,” added Myers.
    Reconstruction in Gaza is severely constrained. Materials such as cement and reinforced steel rods are still being denied entry by Israel, the statement said.
    Highlighting the ramifications of the decision the joint statement said, “This means that the 20,000 families – or at least 140,000 people – whose homes were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable as a result of the conflict are unable to rebuild their lives. Many are living in tents and in makeshift shelters constructed with salvaged bricks and plastic sheeting, with no end in sight.”
    Country Director for Oxfam Great Britain in Jerusalem John Prideaux-Brune said bluntly that “There has been zero progress in allowing construction materials in to help people rebuild their lives. This is unacceptable, full stop.”
    He called on world leaders to “take practical steps to fully open the crossings and exert as much pressure on Israel and all parties to ensure that families can finally see a light at the end of what has been a very long and dark tunnel. A drip-feed of food aid and medicines is simply not enough.”

I haven’t seen the full NGO statement yet. But the Ma’an report lists the signatories, who are indeed a high-profile and international group.
Among them is, not surprisingly, CARE West Bank and Gaza. I note that when Pres. Obama recently made his financial disclosure forms public, they included a record that last year, from his family’s income of over $2 million, he and Michelle made a $25,000 donation to CARE. So I’m assuming he supports the goals of that excellent, US-based relief and development organization.
(A few quick side-notes here: Late last night I finished writing my own short piece of analysis for IPS on the situation three months after the Gaza ceasefire. The NGOs’ report had not been released at that point, darn it! I was, however, able to include some material from the excellent interview I conducted in Jerusalem last month with John Prideaux-Brune. You’ll see the published piece later today… Ma’an News, which is probably the best OPTs news source, now has a really useful Twitter feed, that you might want to bookmark… Also, as you may have noticed: I’m now back, after a short break with my family in England. Big thanks to Don and Scott for posting extra in my absence.)

IPS analysis on re-emergence of one-state idea

… It came out yesterday here. Also archived here.
My own main position on one state vs. two states is one of agnosticism. Not least because I’m not a direct stakeholder. Direct stakeholders are around six million Jewish Israelis and more than 10 million ethnic Palestinians– 1.2 million in Israel, four million in the occupied territories, and more than five million in the ghurba (exile/diaspora.)
No democrat can sustain the position that the “vote” of a Jewish Israeli in this central matter ought to count more than that of a Palestinian.
The next political challenge for Palestinians, as I see it, is really to get the diaspora Palestinians (re-) organized and mobilized politically in pursuit of their rights. Starting with, fundamentally, their right to have a say on their nation’s future, after many years of success in the project to disenfranchise them completely. (As I’ve argued for some years now.)
Oslo was a deep stab in the back for them.

Laila el-Haddad’s Palestinian Passover story

The talented Gaza-born journo Laila el-Haddad has been trying to go home to visit her parents, taking her two adorable– and fwiw US-born– children with her. Yousuf must be about four now, and Noor about 15 months old.
However the Egyptian Interior Security service won’t let them transit through their country, which is the only way a Gaza Palestinian can even dream of getting to her or his homeland these days.
Laila and the kids have been stuck in a holding-room in Cairo airport for the past 28 hours. (HT: The Arabist.)
She blogs:

    No one knows where my file is or what is going to happen. I have an off again on again wifi signal, and trying my best to keep updates on twitter @gazamom.

Go and follow her tweets there.
So today is Passover. Tomorrow is the commemoration of 61 years since the Deir Yassin massacre. Tomorrow is also the commemoration of the start of the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
… And Laila is stuck with her kids in Cairo airport, facing deportation. Apparently they don’t where to deport her to since her US visa has run out.
Just let her go home!!!!