Roadmap and PeacemakingIsrael and Palestine
What starts the numerous peacemaking efforts? What brings them to a halt? Are they doomed to fail because the problem is intractable? Or are some peacemaking plans simply unrealistic? With one-sided conditions and expectations?
The View From Israel - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
The View From Israel - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan26 MAR 2010 07:47 PM
Yediot Ahronoth:
“Netanyahu too needs to do some thinking. Ever since he came to power via real democratic elections, and ever since he formed an impossible government, the State of Israel's global status has been deteriorating to the point of genuine danger. We're approaching, with immense speed, the realisation of the well-known song, The whole world is against us."
Maariv:
“It’s politics time now. Even if the magic formulas are found that will make it possible to square the circle and keep bumbling on, Binyamin Netanyahu knows that he is on a collision course. He will be able to avoid it once or twice, but in the end, it will come. The light that is looming ahead is the headlight of an oncoming train.”
Israel Won't Change Unless the Status Quo Has a Downside | CommonDreams.org
Israel Won't Change Unless the Status Quo Has a Downside | CommonDreams.org
Uncomfortable at the spectacle of the Obama administration in an open confrontation with the Israeli government, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman -- who represents the interests of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party on Capitol Hill as faithfully as he does those of the health insurance industry -- called for a halt. "Let's cut the family fighting, the family feud," he said. "It's unnecessary; it's destructive of our shared national interest. It's time to lower voices, to get over the family feud between the U.S. and Israel. It just doesn't serve anybody's interests but our enemies."
The idea that the U.S. and Israel are "family" with identical national interests is a convenient fiction that Lieberman and his fellow Israel partisans have worked relentlessly to promote -- and enforce -- in Washington over the past two decades. If the bonds are indeed familial, however, last week's showdown between Washington and the Netanyahu government may be counted as one of those feuds in which truths are uttered in the heat of the moment that call into question the fundamental terms of the relationship. Such truths are never easily swept under the rug once the dispute is settled. The immediate rupture, that is, precludes a simple return to the status quo ante; instead, a renegotiation of the terms of the relationship somehow ends up on the agenda.
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There is, as former Secretary of State James Baker has noted, no shortage of chutzpahin this Israeli government. "United States taxpayers are giving Israel roughly $3 billion each year, which amounts to something like $1,000 for every Israeli citizen, at a time when our own economy is in bad shape and a lot of Americans would appreciate that kind of helping hand from their own government," Baker said in a recent interview. "Given that fact, it is not unreasonable to ask the Israeli leadership to respect U.S. policy on settlements."
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Back in 2006, the realist foreign policy thinkers John Mearshimer and Stephen Walt provoked a firestorm of ridicule and ad hominem abuse for suggesting in their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, that the goals pursued by the two sides were, in fact, far from identical and often at odds -- and that partisans motivated by Israel's interests lobbied aggressively to skew U.S. foreign policy in their favor. Israel partisans also heaped derision on the suggestion by the Iraq Study Group commissioned by President George W. Bush that the U.S. would not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East without first settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Response to the reiteration, last week, of the idea that Israel's behavior might be jeopardizing U.S. interests has been strikingly muted by comparison. That's because itcame from General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command (Centcom), which oversees America's two wars of the moment. He is the most celebrated U.S. military officer of his generation, and a favorite of those most ferocious of Israel partisans, the neocons.
Petraeus told Senators on Wednesday: "The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in [Centcom's] AOR [Area of Responsibility]." He added, "The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas." He also stressed that "progress toward resolving the political disputes in the Levant, particularly the Arab-Israeli conflict, is a major concern for Centcom."
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Vice President Biden, too, was quoted in the Israeli press as having berated Netanyahu -- behind closed doors -- over his plans for settlement expansion, warning that it would put at risk the lives of American personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
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"Israel has no real intention of quitting the territories or allowing the Palestinian people to exercise their rights," wrote Israeli political commentator Gideon Levy in Haaretz last week. "Israel does not truly intend to pursue peace, because life here seems to be good even without it. The continuation of the occupation doesn't just endanger Israel's future, it also poses the greatest risk to world peace, serving as a pretext for Israel's most dangerous enemies. No change will come to pass in the complacent, belligerent and condescending Israel of today."
The Obama administration can't be under any illusions on this score. And they are being forced to confront it by another kind of pressure. The bills are coming due for Bush's War-on-Terror adventurism. Those responsible for maintaining the U.S. imperium in the Muslim world are now raising warning flags that the price to be paid for continuing to indulge Israel in evading its obligation to offer a fair settlement to the Palestinians could be high -- and, worse than that, unnecessary. ...
Israel: Settlement Construction Will Continue In East Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Says
Israel: Settlement Construction Will Continue In East Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Says
JERUSALEM — Israel will not restrict construction in east Jerusalem, Israel's prime minister said Sunday hours before he left for Washington, despite a clear U.S. demand that building there must stop and a crisis in relations between the two longtime allies.
Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting with President Barack Obama Tuesday will be the first high-level meeting since the crisis erupted 10 days ago, when Israel embarrassed visiting Vice President Joe Biden by announcing a plan for construction in a Jewish neighborhood in east Jerusalem, which is claimed by the Palestinians.
"As far as we are concerned, building in Jerusalem is like building in Tel Aviv" and there would be no restrictions, Netanyahu told his Cabinet.
This tough stance on Jerusalem has run into stiff opposition in Washington, but there were signs that Israel was working to ease the crisis. Cabinet ministers said that while there would be no formal freeze, construction in Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem would be restricted, like Netanyahu's partial 10-month West Bank construction freeze.
At stake are the first peace contacts between Israel and the Palestinian government in more than a year.
The Palestinians agreed to mediated talks, but the Jerusalem construction flap has given them second thoughts. Israel said it prefers direct negotiations but would go along with the indirect format. ...
Netanyahu affirms settlement project that U.S. considers 'affront' | McClatchy
Netanyahu affirms settlement project that U.S. considers 'affront' | McClatchyBy Sheera Frenkel | McClatchy Newspapers
RAMAT SHLOMO, Israel — From the window of her home in East Jerusalem, Chana-Rivka Leviv can see the valley where the Israeli government says it will soon begin to build 1,600 new apartment units — one of which is destined for her family.
"We all just need to build. The rest of the world can scream and threaten as much as they want. Jerusalem is our home and we will continue to build here for our children's children," said Leviv, an ultra-orthodox Jew who's expecting her seventh child this summer.
Bunk beds fill the three bedrooms of her terraced apartment in this hilly settlement. To one side, the neighborhood abuts the Shuafat Refugee Camp, home to 35,000 Palestinians who complain of severe overcrowding and lack of basic facilities and planning.
Ramat Shlomo has become the most contentious building project in Jerusalem, and it's at the center of what Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren calls the "most severe crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations" in decades.
Israel's announcement of the project as Vice President Joe Biden began an official visit last week embarrassed the Obama administration, and the fallout could block U.S.-led efforts to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Backed by the Arab League, Palestinians have demanded that Israel halt settlement projects such as Ramat Shlomo before talks begin.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure from his largely conservative coalition to press on with the project, told his Likud Party Monday that settlement building would continue on land that Israel won from its Arab neighbors in the 1967 Six-Day War.
"Construction will continue in Jerusalem as this has been the case over the past 42 years," Netanyahu said. Israel Interior Minister Eli Yishai — whose ministry decided to announce the plan during Biden's visit — echoed Netanyahu, stating that "there is no construction freeze in Jerusalem, nor will there be one."
"We're sorry the Americans found the timing offending, but there is no freeze in Jerusalem," he said.
US Envoy Puts Mideast Trip On Hold As Feud With Israel Deepens
US Envoy Puts Mideast Trip On Hold As Feud With Israel DeepensJERUSALEM — A U.S. envoy's postponement of his Mideast trip appeared Tuesday to deepen one of the worst U.S.-Israeli feuds in memory – even as Israel's foreign minister signaled his government had no intention of curtailing the contentious construction at the heart of the row.
Hundreds of Palestinians hurled rocks at police and set tires and garbage bins ablaze across the holy city's volatile eastern sector, where the construction is planned. Plumes of black smoke billowed and the air reeked of tear gas in the heaviest clashes in the city in months.
Youths in one east Jerusalem neighborhood hoisted a giant Palestinian flag and shouted, "We'll die in Palestine, Palestine will live."
Thousands of police, including anti-riot units armed with assault rifles, stun grenades and batons, were deployed across east Jerusalem to stifle the unrest. No serious injuries were reported.
The diplomatic crisis erupted last week after Israel announced during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden that it would build 1,600 apartments for Jews in disputed east Jerusalem, the sector of the holy city that the Palestinians claim for a future capital.
The announcement enraged Palestinians, who have threatened to bow out of U.S.-brokered peace talks that were supposed to begin in the coming days. The Obama administration, fuming over what it called the "insulting" Israeli conduct, has demanded that Israel call off the project.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel Radio that demands to halt Israeli construction there "are unreasonable" and predicted the row with the U.S. would blow over, saying neither side had an interest in escalation.
But Washington notified Israel early Tuesday that envoy George Mitchell had put off his trip indefinitely. Mitchell had planned on coming to wrap up preparations for relaunching Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. But now it's not clear when the indirect talks, to be mediated by Mitchell, will begin.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has apologized for the timing of the project's approval, but he has not said it would be canceled. On Monday, he defended four decades of Jewish construction in east Jerusalem and said it "in no way" hurts Palestinians. ...
The Israel-Palestine peace process: More than just a charade? | The Economist
The Israel-Palestine peace process: More than just a charade? | The EconomistThe Israeli-Palestinian peace process resumes, after a fashion | Mar 10th 2010
IT WAS a wretched beginning to what had been hailed as the hopeful resumption of peace talks, albeit indirect ones, between the Israelis and Palestinians under the aegis of an American mediator. Barely had America’s vice-president, Joe Biden, begun a visit to Israel to herald a new era of compromise and goodwill than it was announced, as if deliberately to poison the mood, that 1,600 new houses would be built for Jewish settlers in a big Jewish suburb in the Israeli-annexed eastern part of Jerusalem that Palestinians see as their fledgling state’s future capital. Palestinian politicians were united in fury. Arabs and other peacemaking outsiders viewed the action as the illest of omens. Mr Biden sharply “condemned” the action as “precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.”
A sheepish-looking Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, let his aides claim implausibly that he had been unaware of the building decision. The next day his minister of interior dismissed it as a “routine, technical” step, while conceding that the timing was unfortunate, and apologised. Unsurprisingly, the incident increased scepticism towards the promised new round of talks.
Mr Netanyahu’s own intentions are still fuzzy. His professed embrace of the notion that two states, Israel and Palestine, should exist side by side, is still hedged with conditions that, in many eyes, suggest it was a tactical ploy rather than a serious bid for a durable deal. Though embarrassed by the interior ministry’s aired intention to build Jewish houses in East Jerusalem, he did nothing to countermand it or to scold the minister. Nor has he reined in Jerusalem’s blustery mayor, Nir Barkat, who has also been encouraging Jewish settlement in previously all-Palestinian areas. ...
Axelrod: Israeli settlement plan ‘an insult’ | Raw Story
Axelrod: Israeli settlement plan ‘an insult’ | Raw StoryThe Obama administration isn't backing down on criticisms of an Israeli plan to build 1600 new homes in East Jerusalem. Israel announced the plan just as Vice President Joe Biden was visiting the country.
President Obama's chief political adviser condemned the move Sunday. "This was an affront, it was an insult," David Axelrod told NBC's Tom Brokaw.
"But most importantly, it undermined this very fragile effort to bring peace to that region," he said. "We just now have started proximity talks, shuttle diplomacy between the Palestinians and the Israelis. For this announcement to come at that time was very destructive."
Fox News' Bill Kristol responded to Axelrod by defending the Israelis. "No one doubts this is part of Israel. This little apartment building is going to be part of Israel. No different from Palestinians building apartment buildings in Ramallah. It's ludicrous that it became a big issue," said Kristol.
The story made international headlines Friday as the Middle East Quartet -- the European Union, the United States, Russia and the United Nations -- condemned "Israel's decision to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem." ...
OpEdNews - Article: The video that will put Geithner behind bars
OpEdNews - Article: The video that will put Geithner behind barsFor OpEdNews: Mike Whitney - Writer
You gotta see this! If this doesn't convince you that the Timothy Geithner knew about the securities shenanigans that were going on at Lehman, than I don't know what will.
Keep in mind, that Geithner ran Lehman through 3 "stress tests" prior to bankruptcy; all of which Lehman failed, and yet, nothing was done. Anton R. Valukas--the examiner who wrote the 2,200 page investigative-report which was released on Thursday-- has provided plenty of information detailing Lehman's "materially misleading" accounting and "actionable balance sheet manipulation."
In other words, they cooked the books.
Eves Smith at Naked Capitalism sums up what was going on like this:
"Quite a few observers... have been stunned and frustrated at the refusal to investigate what was almost certain accounting fraud at Lehman. ....The unraveling isn't merely implicating Fuld (Lehman CEO) and his recent succession of CFOs, or its accounting firm, Ernst & Young, as might be expected. It also emerges that the NY Fed, and thus Timothy Geithner, were at a minimum massively derelict in the performance of their duties, and may well be culpable in aiding and abetting Lehman in accounting fraud and Sarbox violations....
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We need to demand an immediate release of the e-mails, phone records, and meeting notes from the NY Fed and key Lehman principals regarding the NY Fed's review of Lehman's solvency. If, as things appear now, Lehman was allowed by the Fed's inaction to remain in business, when the Fed should have insisted on a wind-down ..... at a minimum, the NY Fed helped perpetuate a fraud on investors and counterparties.
This pattern further suggests the Fed, which by its charter is tasked to promote the safety and soundness of the banking system, instead, via its collusion with Lehman management, operated to protect particular actors to the detriment of the public at large.
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And this is from Zero Hedge:
"Lehman has become merely the latest example of all that is broken with today's crony capitalist system.... The evident conclusion is that the core driver of modern capitalist society is fraud at its very core, and nothing short of a massive revolutionary overhaul of the political system, which is the number one defender .. of very lucrative bribes and kickbacks originating from the same rotten Wall Street that (is) nothing but a sham filled with toxic assets" Zero Hedge
This story isn't going away. Someone has to go to jail. It's clear that Geithner acted as the "chief facilitator" of industrial scale securities flim-flam which led directly to the Great Crash of '08. He needs to be held accountable for his actions. ...
Goldblog Splutters - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Goldblog Splutters -
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan13 MAR 2010 11:41 AM
The maps above cause a conniption at Goldblog, prompts another claim to authoritah (a sure sign that someone has a weak argument) and ascribes to me all sorts of views I did not write in the post. (Despite Goldberg's claim, by the way, I did cite a reference - to Juan Cole's blog. Goldberg is free to take up the particulars with Cole if he so wishes - but I really wish he'd fact-check before making statements like that before he blogs.)
I will respond merely to the criticism of the Dish. First, the map was not discussed except as an historical illustrative context for the way in which the Netanyahu government is intent on aggressively expanding Israeli settlement even further in Jerusalem and the West Bank. This matters because as that famous anti-Semite, Joe Biden, said yesterday
“This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”
Yes, there's a huge amount of historical context on the last sixty odd years, and, as I wrote inmy response to Goldberg's luke-warm defense of my not being a bigot:
Like America's founding, [Israel's] was not immaculate, and its survival has been a brutal struggle in which Israel has not been as innocent as some want to believe, but whose enemies' anti-Semitism and hatred is tangible and omnipresent and despicable.
But that was scarcely the point of the post, and we can go on for ever on the subject. But some specific charges:
The intent of this propaganda map is to suggest that an Arab country called "Palestine" existed in 1946 and was driven from existence by Jewish imperialists. Not only was there no such country as "Palestine" in 1946, there has never been a country called Palestine.
Of course not. But there was a place called Palestine (among other things) under mostly Ottoman or British rule for a very long time before Israel came into existence. Wikipedia tells usthat in 1850, for example, the population of the area comprised roughly 85% Muslims, 11% Christians and 4% Jews. In 1920, the League of Nations reported that
Four-fifths of the whole population are Moslems. A small proportion of these are Bedouin Arabs; the remainder, although they speak Arabic and are termed Arabs, are largely of mixed race. Some 77,000 of the population are Christians, in large majority belonging to the Orthodox Church, and speaking Arabic. The Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000.
By the end of the British mandate, and an influx of Jewish refugees and Zionists, the proportions were roughly 70 percent Muslims and 30 percent Jews. Jews were concentrated in urban areas along the coast but, as the first map shows, some were indeed in the West Bank, although as a tiny minority.
This isn't propaganda; it's fact.
The maps show what has happened since - in sixty years in terms of growing sovereignty and accelerating Israeli control. The Muslim population is expanding as the geographic extent of their political self-government keeps diminishing. While Jerusalem was once in the center of Palestinian territory - and the Israelis agreed to this, while the Arabs refused - it is now not only in Israel but all of it will soon be under sole Israeli control, as Netanyahu continues, despite pleas from his American benefactors and allies, merely to freeze them.
The point of the illustration was to provide some background to the now-unavoidable fact that Israel has every intention of expanding its sovereignty to the Jordan river for ever, to segregate Palestinians into walled enclaves within, and to station large numbers of Israeli troops on the Eastern border. I notice that Goldberg has time to splutter against this blog but, until yesterday, no time to refer to the Israeli government's contemptuous treatment of the US vice-president in his visit, a subject that has dominated the Israeli press but contradicts Goldberg's view that my notion that the new Israeli that I have worried about this past year is real and is dangerous - to itself, the region, the world and, above all, the United States.
Quartet slams expansion
Quartet slams expansionTHE Middle East diplomatic quartet - the nations mediating Israeli-Palestinian peace talks - has condemned Israel's plans to build further settler homes.
Unilateral actions would not be recognised by the international community, the group said.
The group - the European Union, the US, Russia and the United Nations - ''condemns Israel's decision to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem''.
''The quartet reaffirms that unilateral actions taken by either party cannot prejudge the outcome of negotiations and will not be recognised by the international community,'' it said.
The quartet repeated that Arab-Israeli peace and the creation of ''an independent, contiguous and viable state of Palestine is in the fundamental interests of the parties, of all states in the region, and of the international community''.
Israel seals off West Bank - CNN.com
Jerusalem (CNN) -- Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has ordered the army to seal off the West Bank for 48 hours and tightened security around the old city of Jerusalem, Israeli officials said Friday.
One Palestinian was injured in the old city after Israeli police restricted worshipers from entering the Al Aqsa mosque for Friday prayers.
The closing of the West Bank follows Israel's controversial announcement this week that it plans to build 1,600 new apartments on land in Jerusalem claimed by both Israel and the Palestinians.
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Last week, dozens were hurt during clashes around the mosque, and police used tear gas and rubber bullets against protesters. That violence was sparked by Palestinian opposition to Israel's decision to place two religious shrines in the West Bank on a list of Zionist heritage.
