JEWISH DOMINATION? OCCUPATION MORE LIKELY

By "Gilad Atzmon"

The recent attack on Free Gaza’s Greta Berlin and Colonel Ann Wright suggests that we have crossed a red line -- Jewish domination within the Palestinian solidarity movement belongs to the past. We are now, it seems, under Zionist occupation, and we are subject to all the symptoms of Israeli abuse and Zionist brutality.

The Expulsions,  the exclusions and the cleansings that are inherent within Zionism, Israeli and Jewish politics, are now alive and kicking within the Palestinian solidarity movement itself. On a daily basis we are notified about more and more people who ‘must be’ expelled from the ‘movement’: earlier this year we learned that the Palestinian poet and writer Nahida Izzat  had first been harassed and later expelled from her local Palestinian solidarity group by a Liverpool Jewish activists' gang. Next,  Dr Francis Clark Lowes, former Chairman of the UK PSC was expelled from the organisation, for allegedly being an ‘Anti Semite’ and a ‘holocaust denier’. Norman Finkelstein, probably the leading pro Palestinian Jewish scholar, has also been subjected to repeated smears and  attempts at character assassination for voicing some legitimate criticisms re BDS being a cult, and recently, the greatly admired Greta Berlin, co-founder of Free Gaza, has also been subjected to harassment and abuse in the last few weeks. Berlin was labeled 'an anti Semite' and 'a Holocaust Denier' -- and yet, up until the present time, there has not been a shred of  evidence provided by her detractors to support such accusations.  And now, the respected peace activist Colonel Ann Wright has also been 'purged', and expelled from the current attempt to break the siege on Gaza -- simply  for being associated with Mrs Berlin.  The pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim is also subject to a BDS  boycott. And six months ago I too, faced a call for a disavowal -- by people who were foolish enough to confess that they had not even read a single line of my work.

The message here is clear – some elements within the Palestinian solidarity movement have obviously adopted the most repellent and brutal Zionist symptoms, and we are now engaged, caught up in, and beset by a sinister series of expulsions, purges, crude witch hunts, exclusions, smears, character defamations and cleansings.

Palestinian Authority– The Palestinian authority was formed by Israel in order to ‘maintain order’ within the occupied territories. We are fully aware of the PA’s difficult and problematic role in Palestine -- but in recent years we have also become familiar with a new type of exilic Palestinian ‘authority’: I refer here to those few Palestinians who are in place to maintain the solidarity movement as 'a Kosher haven'. In the last six months, some exiled Palestinians have been involved in numerous  ‘targeted character assassinations’ of some of our most valued leading activists and scholars. In the last month we saw Solidarity activists openly joining forces and collaborating with the darkest Zionist forces against Greta Berlin, Ann Wright, Ken O’Keefe, Norman Finkelstein,  and myself amongst others.

Segregation – Like in occupied Palestine (or ‘apartheid’ Israel, if you prefer), the solidarity movement is now clearly a segregated society: we can  witness a clear division between the 'Jews only' groups (racially driven and tribally oriented), and the 'Palestinians only' groups (ethnically segregated).  And then there is the general solidarity activist network,  that still insists to promote those consistent humanist values and goals of inclusivity and universality that it it has always upheld.

Espionage –Recent Jewish ‘progressive’ campaigns against Berlin and Colonel Wright have proved that, like Hasbara agents and Mossad, some of the so-called ‘anti’ Zionist Jewish organisations within our movement have been spying and tracking our moves, our private life, and  even our social network activity. They also use Hasbara disinformation and spin tactics in order to ruin the names of those who ‘got too close to the bone’ i.e. criticising Jewish power.

I have been monitoring these Hasbara tactics for more than a while and I have seen these tactics being used by some marginal Sayanim individuals within the movement. But I was slightly disappointed to find out that slander, smear and abuse are now  increasingly openly used by leading solidarity outlets such as Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada.

The Verdict Is Clear

We are not a ‘solidarity’ movement anymore, for we have become foreign to the notion of solidarity as well as empathy. 

But this is not necessarily entirely bad news. Being subject to vile Zionist occupation, we had better urgently be in solidarity with ourselves -- for we are all Palestinians now. We are abused by Israel, by its Sayanim, and by their collaborators. 

I guess that we had better liberate ourselves first. And such an aspiration would certainly give the concept of Palestinian resistance a new meaning and dimension.

Fall Out In The Mediterranean

Military, strategic and diplomatic co-operation between Turkey and Israel was accorded high priority by both countries.

For almost 500 years, Istanbul was the capital city of a great empire. From here on the Bosphorus, the Ottomans ruled much of southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa.

For centuries, the Ottoman rulers were custodians on the places in Jerusalem sacred to Muslims, Christians and Jews. 

In 1922, the Ottoman sultanate was formally abolished and a year later Turkey became a secular republic with Kemal Ataturk as its president.

Turkish-Jewish ties strengthened when Turkey recognised the State of Israel in 1949 - the first mainly Muslim nation to do so. The relationship developed over the next half a century, with strong military and trade links.

Ofra Bengio, from Tel Aviv University, says: "The fact that Turkey was willing to have a relationship with Israel had to do with its relationship with the West and the fear of the Soviet Union. And Israel was part of the West."

But changes in the geopolitics of the region have led Turkey to rediscover its historical ties to the Arab world.

"The areas where we are going to produce gas has nothing to do with Turkey. And yes we look very much forward to being less dependent on imports and hopefully returning to exporters." - Brigadier-General Yossi Kupperwasser, Israeli ministry of strategic affairs

Relations between Turkey and Israel began to sour after the 2008–09 war on Gaza and the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid, in which nine Turks were killed.

Turkey's burgeoning economic interests in the Arab world and its support for the Palestinians is causing a clash between the two allies.

"Turkey's relationship with Israel is indexed to the Palestinian question. And then we have 1,400 people killed by the Israeli forces in attacks on Gaza, so many of them civilians," explains Hugh Pope, from the International Crisis Group. "He [Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan] could't take it anymore. This [to sour ties] was not a Turkish decision."

In addition to that, the discovery and drilling of natural gas reserves off the coast of Cyprus is exacerbating tensions between these two key US allies as they manoeuvre for control of the gas and natural resources in the eastern Mediterranean.

So could this falling out increase tensions in the region? Or can the relationship that has been historically important for both Turks and Jews be restored?

Israel Obstructs The Peace, and Is Paid Handsomely For It

Jonathan Cook writes,

Israel has barely put a foot right with the international community since its attack on Gaza more than three years ago provoked global revulsion.

The right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu has serially defied and insulted foreign leaders, including US President Barack Obama; given the settlers virtual free rein; blocked peace talks with the Palestinians; intimidated and marginalised human rights groups, UN agencies and even the Israeli courts; and fuelled a popular wave of Jewish ethnic and religious chauvinism against the country's Palestinian minority, foreign workers and asylum seekers.

No wonder, then, that in poll after poll Israel ranks as one of the countries with the most negative influence on international affairs.

And yet, the lower Israel sinks in public estimation, the more generous western leaders are in handing out aid and special favours to their wayward ally. The past few days have been particularly shameless.

It was revealed last week that the European Union had approved a massive upgrade in Israel's special trading status, strengthening economic ties in dozens of different fields. The decision was a reversal of a freeze imposed in the wake of the Gaza attack of winter 2008.

Amnesty International pointed out that the EU was violating its own commitments in the European Neighbourhood Policy, which requires that, as a preferred trading partner, Israel respect international human rights, democratic values and its humanitarian obligations.

Equally troubling, the EU is apparently preparing to upend what had looked like an emerging consensus in favour of banning settlement products - the only meaningful punishment the EU has threatened to inflict on Israel.

With some irony, Europe's turnabout was revealed the same day that Israel announced it was planning to destroy eight villages in the West Bank, expelling their 1,500 Palestinian inhabitants, to make way for a military firing zone. Four more villages are also under threat.

The villagers' expulsion was further confirmation that Israel is conducting a "forced transfer" of Palestinians, as recent EU reports have warned, from the nearly two-thirds of the West Bank under its control.

Europe's only real leverage over Israel is economic: business between the two already accounts for about 60 per cent of Israeli trade, worth nearly 30 billion euros (Dh136 billion). But rather than penalising Israel for repeatedly stomping over the flimsiest prospects for a two-state solution, the EU is handsomely rewarding it.

It is not alone. The United States is also showering economic benefits and military goodies on Israel, in addition to the billions of dollars in aid it hands over every year.

In the past few days alone, President Obama signed a new law greatly expanding military cooperation with Israel and donated a further $70 million to develop its Iron Dome missile defence system; the Pentagon arm-twisted Lockheed Martin into collaborating with Israeli firms in revamping the new F-35 fighter jet; and Congress approved a four-year extension of US loan guarantees to make it cheaper for Israel to borrow money on the international markets.

All this munificence is coming from the two dominant parties to the Quartet - the international group comprising the US, the EU, the United Nations and Russia. The Quartet's role is to champion the very two-state solution Israel is striving so strenuously to destroy.

In a further irony, the World Bank issued last week its latest report on the state of the Palestinian economy, concluding that its situation was so dire the Palestinian government-in-waiting, the Palestinian Authority, could not be considered ready for independent statehood. The report noted that the Palestinians were heavily reliant on foreign donors and that local private businesses, agriculture and manufacturing were all in decline.

With feigned obtuseness, the World Bank recommended that the PA increase exports to foreign markets, glossing over the biggest impediment to such trade: the severe restrictions imposed by Israel on the movement of people and goods into and out of Palestinian territory.

As the Quartet has grown ever more silent in the face of Israeli transgressions, US politicians have stepped in with cynical manoeuvres to shore up Israel's intransigence and destroy any hopes of a peaceful solution.

Last week, for example, US lawmakers were reported to have put their names to a congressional resolution recognising the recent report of Israel's controversial Levy Committee. The report concluded that Israel was not occupying the West Bank and that consequently the settlements there are legal.

The topsy-turvy character of international diplomacy was acknowledged this month by a recently retired British ambassador to the Middle East. Tom Philips, who served in Israel and Saudi Arabia, writes in the latest edition of Prospect magazine that Europe and the US need to use "big carrots and big sticks" if there is to be any hope of reviving the peace process.

But Mr Philips believes the US is "genetically indisposed" to forcing change on Israel. He proposes instead choking off donor money to the PA so as "to put the full weight of the occupation on Israel, a burden I do not think they would be able to endure".

In another of the rich ironies of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it now seems even some diplomats are concluding that the Palestinians will be best served by destroying the fledgling government that was supposed to be the harbinger of their independence.

The real obstacles to peace - Israel, its occupation and western complicity - might then be laid bare for all to see.

Via: "The National"

Talking Zionism

Uri Avnery writes,

...the term Zionism has been elevated to the status of a state ideology, if not state religion.

...my position is that Zionism was a historical movement with its glorious achievements as well as its darker side. One can admire or condemn it, but either way Zionism has come to its logical end with the creation of the State of Israel. Zionism was the scaffolding that made the building of the state possible, but once the house is built, the scaffolding becomes a hindrance and must be removed.

TODAY, ZIONISM is firmly in the hands of the extreme Right, a mixture of nationalists, religious fanatics and the settlers, supported by very rich Jews in Israel and outside.

They govern the news, both directly (they own all the TV networks and the newspapers) and metaphorically. Every day, the news contains many items figuring “Zionism”.

For Zionism’s sake, Bedouin in Israel-proper are forcibly displaced from the large stretches of land they have occupied for centuries. For Zionism’s sake, a settler’s college deep in the occupied territories is accorded the status of “university” (by the military governor!), giving new impetus to the international academic boycott on Israel. Hundreds of new buildings in the settlements are being built on private Palestinian land in the name of Zionism. In Ramallah, the capital of the Palestinian authority, Israeli troops hunt for Africans without an Israeli immigration permit. Indeed, our Interior Minister, whose only passion seems to be hunting African job-seekers, uses the word Zionism in almost every sentence.

In the name of Zionism, our fanatically right-wing Minister of Education is sending Israeli school children on indoctrination trips to “holy places” in the occupied territory, so as to instill in their consciousness from early on that all the country belongs to them. To strengthen their Zionist convictions they are also sent to Auschwitz.

The settlers claim – not without some justification – that they are the only real Zionists, the rightful heirs of 130 years of Zionist settlement and expansion. This gives them the right to receive huge piles of state funds for their activities, while new taxes are being levied on even the poorest of the poor in Israel, such as another one-percent raise of VAT.

The Jewish Agency, an offshoot of the World Zionist Organization, is devoting almost all its resources to the settlements.

There is no faction in the Knesset (except the two small Arab factions and the predominantly Arab communist faction) that does not loudly proclaim its total devotion to Zionism. Indeed, the Zionist Left claims to be truer Zionists than the Right.

WHERE IS all this leading? Ah, there is the rub.

The current staunchly Zionist policy of the State of Israel contains an inherent paradox. It leads to self-destruction.

The policy of our government is based on maintaining the status quo. All of historical Eretz Israel/Palestine under Israeli rule, the West Bank in a state of occupation, its Palestinian inhabitants without national or civil rights.

If, at some point in the future, a right-wing government decides to annex the West Bank and the Gaza Strip “officially” (as Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights were annexed long ago – unrecognized by the rest of the world – it will not make any real difference. Most Palestinians are already confined to enclaves resembling the South African Bantustans of bygone days.

In this Greater Israel, Palestinian Arabs will constitute a minority of at least 40%, growing rapidly to 50% and more, making it less and less convincing to call it a “Jewish State”. The “Jewish and Democratic State” will be a thing of the past.

Of course, practically nobody in Israel would dream of according the Arab inhabitants of Greater Israel citizenship and democratic rights. If, perhaps by divine intervention, this were to come about, it would no longer be a “Jewish State”. It would be an “Arab Palestinian state”.

The only way out would be ethnic cleansing on a huge scale. Some of this is already happening discretely in remote areas. For some time now, in the most remote area of the West Bank, on the edge of the desert south of Hebron, the occupation authorities have been trying to remove the entire Arab population. This week, the Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, declared the area a “military firing zone” that must be immediately evacuated. People who remain there risk being shot. Agriculturists may return and work on their land, but only on Shabbat and Jewish holidays, when the army is on leave. Zionism in action.

Currently, some five million Palestinians and six million Jews live between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. The ethnic cleansing of the country is highly improbable, to say the least. Far more likely is the reality of an apartheid state, in which Jews will soon be a minority. That is not a reality envisioned by the Zionist founding fathers.

The only alternative is peace – Palestine and Israel, side by side. But that is called “post-Zionism”, God forbid.

Our leaders escape this reality by a simple device: they don’t think about it. They don’t talk about it. They prefer to “talk Zionism” – a string of empty phrases.

But sometime in the future the contradictions of Zionism will have to be faced.

Via: "CounterPunch"

5 Reasons Israel Is Losing The PR Battle

Right-wing Israeli officials are concerned about attempts to "delegitimize" Israel, and fund former officials and intellectuals to attempt to combat this perceived trend. But it seems obvious that Israel is gradually sinking in the perception of the outside world, and there are concrete reasons for this change. Most of them derive from the train wreck that is Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Israeli blockade on the civilians of the Gaza Strip. Others derive from the hawkishness of the Likud government and its Kadima predecessor.

They have nothing to do with anti-Israel sentiments or hatred of Jews. No one is condemning the municipality of Haifa or the administration of Tel Aviv. The criticisms are criticisms of aggressive expansionism and a trigger-happy government. The criticisms are getting louder and more mainstream, with potentially deleterious effects on Israel’s economy as time goes on.

1. Giving the finger to any ‘peace process'

Israeli land theft in the Palestinian West Bank has reached epic proportions under PM Binyamin Netanyahu, with settlement populations surging 18%. The right-wing in Israel is so isolated from the real world that they have begun claiming that the Palestinian territories are not even occupied. They claim that the Palestinian rejection of Israel’s right to exist forces them to occupy Palestine (in fact, the PLO recognized Israel as part of the Oslo accords, after which the Israelis screwed the Palestinians over royally).

They distort history and say the most ridiculous things, such as that the League of Nations Mandate awarded to Britain in the 1920s allows them now to steal Palestinian land and water without recompensing them. The brazenness and zombie-like relentlessness of this march onto other people’s land has provoked an increasingly influential international boycott movement, targeting the "settler-industrial complex" that preys on the hapless Palestinians under Israel’s control. That is why the Church of England recently endorsed a World Council of Churches-inspired program that brings people to the Occupied Territories to see for themselves what Occupation is doing to the stateless and rights-less Palestinians. The resolution was a major defeat for the Likud, right-wing branches of Zionism. 

Likewise, the US Presbyterian Church very nearly adopted a resolution to disinvest from companies perceived as enabling the Israeli land grab in the West Bank. As it was, they urged positive investment to help the Palestinian victims of Israeli injustice. These votes are straws in the wind. As Israel moves formally to incorporate the West Bank into itself, it must offer citizenship to the Palestinians on the land it covets, or else it would perpetuate the new apartheid.

2. Hypocrisy

Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu keeps threatening to launch a war on Iran and urging my country to sacrifice its young men, to stop Iran from continuing to enrich uranium. (Iran says the enrichment is for peaceful energy purposes and there is no good evidence to the contrary.)

Israel itself not only enriched uranium, it made 400 nuclear bombs. There are allegations by an Israeli and American journalist that Israel’s Mossad spy agency has murdered a series of Iranian scientists. (If Iran were alleged to have done something similar at Dimona in Israel, all hell would have broken loose.)

And, it now turns out that Binyamin Netanyahu was involved in a spy ring that smuggled nuclear triggers out of the United States to Israel. Israel is alleged routinely to threaten to use its nuclear weapons if it doesn’t get its way, deploying a sort of nuclear blackmail. It is very hard to see why Iran’s population should be reduced to a fourth-world standard of living by international sanctions for doing much, much less than Israel has done, or why Netanyahu should be able to smuggle US high-tech out of this country with impunity.

3. Disregard for the rule of law

The Israeli practice of kidnapping Palestinians at will and holding them indefinitely without trial is abhorrent to all civilized persons. (They call it administrative detention in Tel Aviv.) If a Palestinian is suspected of having actually committed a crime, then it should be possible to present evidence for it and to try the person.

Israel took the Palestinian soccer player Mahmoud Sarsak into custody three years ago, and only just released him under severe international pressure. The Israelis say he is an Islamic Jihad terrorist, but clearly have no good evidence for this charge or they would have tried him. Instead, they just put him away, apparently forever. He went on a hunger strike that endangered his life, and provoked widespread protests from the soccer playing lobby. But Sarsak’s plight also elicited a condemnation from the Austrian senate (Bundesrat). Israeli complaints that criticizing "administrative detention" is "anti-Semitic" and that after all Syria is doing something much worse are absolutely painful to hear. It is playground ethics: "he hit me first," "you just don’t like me," "why punish me when other kids have done really bad things?"

The Israelis would benefit from a reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and of the US Bill of Rights on issues such as a fair and speedy trial for everyone arrested, and from an acquaintance with the basic international law of Occupations, which rules out most of their practices toward the Palestinians. Note that when the Bush administration attempted to make Guantanamo a legal black hole, the US Supreme Court struck it down.

4. Punitive policies toward non-combatants

The Israeli blockade on the civilian population of Gaza is evil, creepy and illegal in international law. That is why the international community is pushing back. For instance, UNESCO is establishing a science chair at a university in Gaza. Israel is the occupying authority in Gaza, and is therefore bound by the Geneva Convention of 1949 on the treatment of its subjects. Some 40% of Palestinian families there are refugees from what is now Israel, expelled by militant members of the Yishuv in 1948, and many of them still live in camps. The blockade has reduced some 56% of them to food insecurity.

Israel surrounds the Strip, and destroyed its airport and seaport, preventing it from exporting most of what it makes and produces, and limiting imports. The little territory of 1.6 million Palestinians suffers severe health as well as mental health damage from these Israeli policies. No Israeli official can explain what future the residents of Gaza might have that is not a kind of Israel-imposed hell. (And no, they aren’t generic "Arabs" who will melt into the great sea of other "Arabs" as the more racist Israelis might hope.)

Israeli relations with Turkey, long excellent, have been deeply harmed by the blockade and Israel’s attack on a civilian Turkish aid ship that tried to get supplies to the non-combatant population there. Israel refuses to apologize for killing nine aid workers, including an American citizen.

5. Violations of international law

Israel’s occupation forces it into a whole range of illegal and reprehensible behaviors. This is nothing to do with Jews or Israel, it is to do with occupations. The Israelis have been arresting minors, sentencing them to harsh terms and fines, and treating them much differently than they would Jewish minors guilty of the same offenses. The British Foreign Office has just condemned these practices.

Israeli policies are no more off limits to criticism than are Argentinian or Indonesian ones, despite what the country’s remarkably thin-skinned and intolerant partisans often allege. And, when the chorus of criticism is coming from Anglicans, Presbyterians, the UK Foreign Office, the Austrian Senate, and UNESCO, that is a pretty wide set of world institutions not easily pigeon-holed as mere bigots. Maybe it is time for the Israeli government to reconsider the self-destructive course it is on, which likely will lead to the end of the state some decades hence, as Israeli President Shimon Peres is frantically warning.

Via: "AlterNet"

The Cleaving Of Palestine

By Paul R. Pillar
June 13, 2012
Courtesy Of "The National Interest"

Those wanting to keep discussion about the Palestinian territories off the front pages have mostly been successful during the two years since a lethal encounter at sea between Israeli forces and a Turkish-based flotilla attempting to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Just enough international outrage followed that incident to lead Israel to relax somewhat its strangulation of the strip. This was especially true regarding the import of items into Gaza, which previously had been severely restricted—in the name of “security,” although the blockade included a host of consumer items with no conceivable security implications. Despite that relaxation, as reporting by Donald Macintyre describes, Israel is still stifling the Gazan economy. This is particularly the case with exports, which are at less than two percent the level of more than five years ago. The Israelis are permitting only extremely limited exports, mostly of produce, to a few European and Middle Eastern markets. They have cut off would-be Gazan exporters from what had been by far their biggest markets, in Israel and the West Bank. This completely reverses what had once been an Israeli policy of encouraging economic integrating across Israel and the occupied territories.

To the extent that the strangulation of the Gaza Strip has been a form of collective punishment intended to undermine the rule there of Hamas, it has manifestly failed. Hamas is as firmly entrenched there as at any time since it won a free all-Palestinian election in 2006. Moreover, some of the very restrictions that Israel continues to impose have probably strengthened rather than weakened Hamas. Many goods and materials that Israel bans as imports into Gaza simply come in through tunnels from Egypt, enriching tunnel operators with ties to Hamas. The severe restrictions Israel places on foreign travel by Gazans also probably do Hamas a favor by limiting the sorts of foreign ideas and contacts that might ultimately weaken support for the group.

The Israeli postures toward the remaining parts of the blockade and toward Hamas itself are clearly not all about security. Israeli military officers admit privately that as far as rocket firings into Israel are concerned, Hamas has in recent times primarily been a force curtailing the firings (by smaller militant groups). As for the severe restrictions on exports, Macintyre relates the story of one of the lucky few Gazan producers who with much difficulty has gotten permission to sell some of his goods (in his case tomatoes) outside the strip. He trucks the tomatoes in question through Israel and the West Bank and across the Allenby Bridge into Jordan, from which they are shipped to Saudi Arabia. To do this he has to meet all of the stringent security checks and requirements imposed by the Israeli military. Obviously there would be no more of a hazard to Israeli citizens if the tomatoes were eaten by consumers in Israel or the West Bank than if they are consumed in Saudi Arabia. Something else is going on here.

For Israeli leaders seeking to put off indefinitely a Palestinian state and the associated yielding of land in the West Bank, having Hamas to fulminate about serves a useful purpose. The terrorist card can always be played as a rationale for political and diplomatic inflexibility. By issuing threats against the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority whenever it makes any move toward reconciliation with Hamas, Israel helps to sustain a fissure in Palestinian leadership that in turn is a basis for justifying still more inflexibility on grounds that Israel doesn't have a Palestinian interlocutor who can speak for all Palestinians. So from the standpoint of such Israeli leaders, policies toward the Gaza Strip that may actually help Hamas are not necessarily a bad thing.

The chief consequence of the remaining export restrictions is to add to the political division an ever-deepening economic and social division between Palestinians. Preventing the selling of Gazan goods in the West Bank is part of a huge wedge that Israel is driving between the two parts of the Palestinian territories. The longer that businesses struggling to survive are separated from their traditional markets, the less likely that old patterns of commerce will ever be reestablished. With Gazan professionals prevented even from attending meetings in the West Bank, Gazan students barred from attending universities there and travel of any sort between the two Palestinian territories extremely restricted, Palestinian nationhood is being sliced apart.

All of this is at odds, of course, with a future that would involve the establishment of a Palestinian nation-state. The cleaving of Palestine, like the construction and expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied territory, is another way of establishing facts on the ground that make a viable Palestinian state less feasible and the negotiated establishment of one more difficult.

The current Israeli treatment of the Gaza Strip is more consistent with a future that is a modified version of the status quo, the modification having to do with events in Egypt. Despite additional Israeli fulminations about Islamist ascendancy in post-Mubarak Egypt, a dominant role for the Muslim Brotherhood—which will be all the more apparent if Mohamed Morsi wins the Egyptian presidential election—presents further possibilities for any Israeli vision involving an indefinitely fractured Palestinian nation. A Gaza Strip controlled by Hamas—which began as a Palestinian offshoot of the Brotherhood—will naturally gravitate toward a Brotherhood-dominated Egypt as long as it is denied other directions in which to gravitate. And that means even more separation from Palestinian brethren in the West Bank.

For Israeli leaders who do not want to give up land for a Palestinian state, this alternative of a riven Palestine may appear to be a way to square the often-noted demographic circle in which faster-reproducing Palestinian Arabs are on the verge of outnumbering Israeli Jews. That demographic prognosis pertains to all of mandatory Palestine between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. But the Gaza Strip is a a 139-square-mile patch of misery that Israelis have been less interested in than the rest, apart from the few Israeli settlers whom Ariel Sharon was able to remove when he evacuated the strip several years ago. Most Israelis probably would be happy for Gaza to be Egypt's problem, as it was before 1967. Strip away the strip from mandatory Palestine, and you also strip away 1.7 million Arabs, allowing Jewish Israelis to retain their majority in the rest for a much longer time. This does not imply that a fully binational state is in the future of the Jews and Arabs concerned. But for some Israeli leaders it may make indefinite perpetuation of the current apartheid arrangement appear more feasible.

Image: cromacon

Israel Should Listen To Former Shin Bet Chief Diskin

Haaretz Editorial
Published 02:05 30.04.12
Latest update 02:05 30.04.12
Courtesy Of "Haaretz Newspaper"

What Diskin says is extremely important. In the six years that ended last May, Diskin headed the Shin Bet, the agency responsible for dealing with the Palestinians both politically and security-wise. So there is great significance in his words: 

"Forget about the stories they're selling you that Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] doesn't want to talk. They're not talking to the Palestinians because this government has no interest in talking to the Palestinians."

Diskin's comments peel off the government's mask - that it's constantly striving for peace but coming up against opposition from the other side. Diskin's remark about the Arabs of Israel - "Israel has become more and more racist in the past 15 years" - is also worrisome when uttered by the former Shin Bet chief.

His warnings on these two issues, which we heard when he was in office as well, are a call for an immediate change in the Netanyahu-Barak government's policies. This is especially the case because Barak last year forecast a heap of trouble with the Palestinians ("a tsunami" ). Even though this hasn't proved true, a crisis will occur in good time.

Even though Diskin wasn't much more than an observer during the Iran discussions, his impression of the decision-making process carries great weight. Politicians sell their voters images, a superficial appearance of how they function at the helm. 

Then Diskin comes, as Dagan and Ashkenazi did before him, and tells us how it really looks from the inside. If his impression is accurate - and the burden of refuting it is on the targets of his criticism - we mustn't put the fate of the nation in the hands of such leaders, in both war and peace.

Usually it's the Shin Bet that eavesdrops on others. This time, the people should give a listen.

Submitted By "Sayf Maslul"

By "Press TV"
Courtesy Of "YouTube"

‘Tears Of Gaza’

‘Tears of Gaza’ by Vibeke Lokkeberg is a documentary film that should be watched by every American, to see how Israel spends our taxes. Every European should watch it, to see the true face of Israel. It should be viewed by every Arab, to renew our resolve not to allow a racist nation to wipe Palestine and her children from the map and from history.

By Susan Abulhawa

‘Tears of Gaza’ by Vibeke Lokkeberg is a documentary film that should be watched by every American, to see how Israel spends our taxes. Every European should watch it, to see the true face of Israel. It should be viewed by every Arab, to renew our resolve not to allow a racist nation to wipe Palestine and her children from the map and from history.

I had read the stories from Gaza after Israel’s so called “operation cast lead”. I had read the reports. I thought I had cried enough then not to cry again. But this film went to my heart, stirred everything up, made the tears fall and fall and here I am now, with a hollow, spooned out hole in my gut because bombs were dropped on sleeping children, helicopters rained the death and disfigurement of white phosphorous on terrified civilians huddling at a UN school for shelter… and no one is doing anything about it.Tears of Gaza lays bare the lies, the cover ups and Richard Goldstone’s moral flip flopping. It takes you into the heart of Gaza’s tormented landscape to show the truth behind craven and mendacious headlines with words that describe Israel’s slaughter as an “incursion” or “self defense”. This film shows us these truths through the luminous spirits of children. It is not to be missed!


I first heard of “Tears of Gaza”, or “Gaza Traer” as the original Norwegian title is called, when Bernard Henri-Levi launched an attack against Lokkeberg and me in major newspapers throughout Europe. She and I were in touch after that and I was finally just able to get hold of the film to watch it. It is a monumentally important work. It is beautiful and painful and honest and devastating.

Vibeke Lokkeberg gives us the names, faces, and stories of three ordinary Gaza children with extraordinary spirits. We first fall in love with Yehya, a 12-year-old boy who wants to become a doctor so he can heal people who are shot by Israelis. We see him on a small motorboat, lost in the magic of childhood as he is taught to steer the boat. His beautiful eyes and brilliant smile during these moments make his tears all the harder to bear when he talks about his beloved father. The losses that follow in his life are incomprehensible and overwhelming merely to hear about.

Until you meet Amira, 14 years old, and walk through her world.
Amira is beautiful. It’s the kind of beauty that holds an ineffable pain not often seen in the young. Her life, too, is marred by death and destruction and disfigurement of her body by ammunition. She tells us that she wants to become a lawyer so she can take the Israelis to court for the crimes they’ve committed. Then, recalling her father and brothers, she admits wishing she had just “gone with them”.

Like Amira, Rasmia is far beyond her 11 years. Arabic speakers might detect things about her that non-Arabic speakers will not. This is largely because of the translation; and this is my only criticism of the film. When Rasmia goes into what seems like a waking trance, her mother tells us in Arabic that she is “imagining”. The translation says “memorizing”, which doesn’t make sense and it distracts from an important subtlety. Her mother explains that she sometimes just “imagines” things from the attacks. I suspect that most psychologists witnessing those scenes and hearing her mother’s explanation would agree that she was experiencing flashbacks and exhibiting clear signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Another example where the wrong translation obscures important nuances is when Yehya is telling us about losing his father. He is, in fact, speaking in the third person: “when someone loses their father, it’s like they’ve lost the whole world” etc. But his words are translated as if in the first person: “when my father died, it’s like I lost the whole world.” The distinction might not seem important, until you realize that he cannot get the words out without breaking down when he speaks in the first person. It’s a faint distinction, but one that makes your heart break even more.
And we should all allow our hearts be broken over Gaza. It’s the least we can do. To hear these three children and ask others to hear them is the very least we can do. Vibeke Lokkeberg has given us a monumentally important record of what happened in December 2009 to January 2010; so no one can ever say “I didn’t know”.

Lest we forget, lest our tears dry or outrage subside, and lest our hearts heal before Palestine is free, I hope this film will be shown throughout the world, across university campuses, communities, organizations and living rooms. Take this not just as a review, but a call to action.

- Susan Abulhawa is the author of Mornings in Jenin (Bloomsbury 2010) and the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine.

What Would Ataturk Do?

Turkish Foreign Policy

By Leon T. Hadar
Posted: 9/16/11 09:02 PM ET
Courtesy Of "The Huffington Post"

Even before the crisis in the relationship between Israel and Turkey over the raid on the Gaza "Peace Flotilla" had erupted last December, right-wing Israelis and American neoconservatives were promoting a new Grand Narrative: Turkey was joining forces with Iran and Syria in an anti-American and anti-Israeli Islamofascist Axis of Evil, seeking to destroy the Jewish State as part of a long-term strategy of re-establishing the Ottoman Empire and a Global Caliphate. Turkey was becoming the New Iran.

Indeed, according to a report in Haaretz, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet last January that Turkey was "consistently gravitating eastward to Syria and Iran rather than westward over the last two years" and that "the trend certainly has to worry Israel."

Moreover, Netanyahu provided his "full backing" for the diplomatic campaign that his foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman was conducting against the Turkish Prime Minister Reccep Tayip Erdogan -- Lieberman compared Erdogan to Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez -- which included the summoning of the Turkish ambassador to Israel for a meeting in which he was seated in a low sofa, and facing him, in higher chairs, were Israeli officials delivering a reprimand.

And following the Israeli raid on the flotilla, Israeli politicians, pundits and commentators reflecting the Likud-necon narrative were suggesting that under the leadership of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) Turkey was setting aside the secular and pro-Western orientation of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, and was being transformed into a radical Islamist state that was pursuing a Neo-Ottomanist strategy aimed establishing close ties with the Arab World and de-legitimizing the Jewish State.

The policy implication of such an account was that the U.S. and Israel had no choice but to regard Turkey -- like Iran -- as an assertive strategic and ideological power that was posing a direct threat to Western interests and the survival of Israel.

So it was a bit surprising that the recent decision by Ankara to downgrade its diplomatic relations with Israel has not triggered the same kind of Turkey-bashing by the usual suspects in Jerusalem and Washington. While rejecting Turkish demand that Israel apologize for the killing of nine people aboard the Mavi Marmara, Netanyahu insisted that Israel "regrets the loss of human life" and expressed his hope "that the way will be found to overcome the differences with Turkey." Israel "never wanted its relations with Turkey to deteriorate, nor does it want them to deteriorate right now," Netanyahu stressed.

"Turkey is not Israel's enemy and Israel is not Turkey's enemy," former Prime Minister Olmert said in a speech last week. "Turkey has previously functioned as a bridge to important and sensitive contacts of the highest importance to our interests, and it can continue to be so in the future," he said, reflecting a more realistic, if not accommodative approach towards Turkey that is shared by many Israelis.

Even a right-winger like Netanyahu recognizes that in the aftermath of the collapse of the friendly regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt -- and against the backdrop of the regional political instability being ignited by the Arab Spring -- Israeli leaders do not have the luxury of turning Turkey into a full-fledged enemy.

Moreover, it was difficult to accuse Turkey of allying itself with Iran and Syria in the same week that Ankara was giving the diplomatic cold shoulder to both Tehran and Damascus. It announced that it would install a radar system designed by the United States as part of a NATO shield against a possible missile attack by Iran on Europe and it joined the United States and the European Union (EU) in condemning the Syrian government's violent repression of demonstrators.

Indeed, the earlier notion that the Netanyahu-Lieberman duo were advancing -- and that was echoed by their allies in Washington -- that Erdogan and the AKP were pursuing a foreign policy based on an Islamist agenda reflected a common fallacy, that ideological principles -- as opposed to considerations of national interest -- are the main driving force behind the foreign policy of Turkey, or, for that matter, of other governments ruled by political movements committed to secular or religious doctrines.

Historians who have studied Soviet foreign policy have noted that many of the major decisions on war and peace that were made by Soviet leaders -- such as signing the pact with Nazi Germany and later joining the West in fighting Hitler -- were based less on abstract communist doctrines and more on traditional core geo-strategic of imperial Russia. In a way, Peter the Great would have probably approved of many of the critical foreign policy choices made by Stalin.

There are of course cases in which ideology does end up being elevated above the pursuit of national interests, For example, the self-destructive policies that were followed by Nazi Germany. Hence, German's Chancellor Bismarck would have not approved of the most important decisions made by Adolph Hitler before and during World War II.

From this perspective, it is very likely that Ataturk would have approved much of the foreign policy agenda being pursued by Erdogan. Or to put it in more concrete terms, most of the decisions made by Erdogan -- remaining in NATO while improving strategic ties with Turkey's neighbors; continuing to campaign for EU membership while strengthening Turkey's economic position in the Middle East; the "trust-but-verify" approach towards Iran's nuclear military policies; conditioning the maintenance of the partnership with Israel on its treatment of the Palestinians -- fit very much with the kind of Realpolitik foreign policy embraced by Ataturk and his secular political successors.

Indeed, there was nothing very "Islamist" in the decision made by Turkey not to support the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its refusal to allow U.S. forces to cross Turkish territory on their way to Iraq, regarded as a turning point in the relationship between Washington and Ankara. The ousting of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and the Americans attempts to "remake" the Middle East were seen as running contrary to Turkish national interests by religious and secular Turks alike, concerned -- and rightly so -- that U.S. policy would destabilize the Middle East.

And the collapse of the U.S. hegemonic project in the Middle East and the rise of Iran as the new regional power, and French and German opposition to Turkish membership in the EU have created incentives for Turkey to fill the strategic vacuum by strengthening its political and economic ties with Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and other Arab governments as well as with Iran. This Turkish strategy would have been embraced even under the leadership of the staunchest secular leadership.

Nor was the general direction of the Turkish policy towards Israel a demonstration of a new "anti-Israeli" approach. Erdogan's diplomatic effort to serve as a mediator between Syria and Israel made a lot of strategic sense, especially at a time when Washington's power in the region was eroding in the aftermath of the Iraq War, and offered long-term benefits to all those involved in the process, including the Israelis.

At the same time, the 2008 Israeli military operation in Gaza, which led to the collapse of the Israeli-Syrian talks under Turkish auspices, ran contrary to the interests of Turkey which was trying to co-opt the Islamist movement of Hamas and persuade it to moderate its positions. The television images of Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza helped ignite anti-Israeli sentiments in what is after all a functioning democracy. In a way, the democratically elected governments in Ankara -- unlike the military governments that preceded them -- do have to respond to pressure from an electorate that sympathizes with the Palestinian cause. After all, the neoconservatives in Washington should be celebrating the victory of democracy in Turkey. Not!

In any case, the view that there is a direct relationship between the Islamist ideology of the current Turkish government and the deterioration in the relationship with the Jewish State derive from a myth about a "special relationship" between Ankara and Jerusalem. But Turkey has never regarded Israel as an ally -- but as just another important regional player with which it shares some mutual interests. The need to contain the pressure from Arab nationalists led by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and backed by the Soviet Union helped strengthen Israeli-Turkish cooperation during the Cold War. But even then, the relationship suffered a setback when Turkey downgraded its relationship with Israeli after forming the Baghdad Pact with Iraq in 1955 and pledged to come to the support of Jordan if attacked by Israel.

If anything, the recent diplomatic crisis between Ankara and Jerusalem resembles similar dips in the relationship between the two countries that had taken place when secular and/or military regimes ruled Turkey. Growing Arab-Israeli tensions and waves of rapprochement in the relationship between Turkey and the Arab states had major impact on Ankara's ties with the Jewish State under Ataturk's heirs.

In 1947 Turkey voted against the United Nations partition plan and the creation of Israel; but in 1949, after Egypt and Jordan signed armistice agreements with Israel, Turkey became the first Muslim state to recognize Israel. Diplomatic missions were opened in December 1950 at the legation level in Ankara and Tel Aviv, although from 1956, following the attack by Israel against Egypt, the legation in Tel Aviv was reduced to the lowest diplomatic level of charge d'affaires. That changed only in December 1991, six weeks after the start of the Arab-Israeli peace conference in Madrid, the Turks decided to upgrade the diplomatic representation of Israel -- and the PLO -- to the ambassadorial level.

Earlier on during the First Intifada, Turkey had signaled its support for the Palestinian cause by becoming the fourth country -- and the only government then maintaining diplomatic relationship with Israel --to recognize Palestine as an independent state. Turkey also joined most of the Arab and Muslim governments in denouncing Israel in response to its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories.

Hence, Turkey's long-term interests have always been based on the understanding that geographical proximity, economic interests and civilizational considerations require that it normalize the relationship with its neighbors. This explains why it is unlikely that any government in Ankara would now establish a full-fledged alliance with a Jewish state as long as Israel remained at war with the Arab world. Israelis may not like that. But Ataturk would have approved. 

 

Taking On Turkey: Israel's 'Dangerous' Game

Instead of acknowledging the country's rising significance and accommodating to the rules of the 'new Middle East' political game, Israel resorted to intimidation and insults.

By: Ramzy Baroud
September 20, 2011
Courtesy Of "Iviews"

The UN Palmer Report, which largely exonerated Israel for murdering nine unarmed Turkish civilians in international waters on May 31, 2010, seemed in some ways like the last straw. Prior to its publication, the camel's back had already mostly broken, and a collapse in Turkish-Israeli ties was looming.

Turkey's sin was seeking an apology for the killing of its citizens - on their way to deliver essential, life-saving supplies to malnourished and besieged Palestinians in Gaza - at the hand of Israeli army commandos.

If the civilians had been Israelis, and the commandos part of a Turkish force, all hell would have broken loose. Israel and the US would have declared Turkey a pariah state. Turkey, however, merely demanded an apology, and it was affronted further for doing so.

Of course, this is not the first time that Israel deliberately provoked and tested Turkish patience. Israel has attempted to infiltrate Turkey's own political spaces by supporting its regional opponents and arming various rebel groups with the aim of destabilizing Turkey.

Instead of acknowledging the country's rising significance and accommodating to the rules of the 'new Middle East' political game, Israel resorted to intimidation and insults. It repeatedly placed Turkey - a thriving democracy and a proud regional power of 80 million - in a very sensitive standing.

However, the anti-Turkish attitude in Israel was not an outcome of the Mavi Marmara incident last year. "The height of humiliation" is how an Israeli newspaper described a scene in which Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon summoned Turkish ambassador, Ahmet Oguz, last January to humiliate him before Israeli media. Oguz was reprimanded over a fictional Turkish TV show that was critical of Israel. To ensure that the point has been successfully made, Ayalon "urged journalists to make clear that the ambassador was seated on a low sofa, while the Israeli officials were in much higher chairs," according to the BBC (January 13, 2010). Ayalon noted that "there is only one flag here" - the Israeli flag - and "we are not smiling".

How did Turkey respond? A statement issued by the foreign ministry 'invited' their counterparts in "Israeli foreign ministry to respect the rules of diplomatic courtesy." Hardly outrageous. The gist of the Turkish message that followed the murder of the Turkish humanitarian activists a few months later was not much different. It basically asked for an apology.

Turkey was shunned for the seemingly unreasonable demand. An unnamed senior Israeli official explained the Israeli logic to Ynet news on September 2, following Turkey's decision to downgrade ties with Israel. "Turkey is an important country in the Middle East, but an apology is a very strategic precedent for Israel in this region," he said. That is true, Israel's diplomacy is predicated on unfair trade, violent storming of humanitarian boats, subservient activities, espionage and much more. Indeed, an apology for the murder of Turkish's civilians would be a precedent.

Even after the recent publishing of Palmer Report - a contradictory and obvious attempt at exonerating the Israeli army while implicating Turkish humanitarian activists - Turkey acted responsibly. But it also acted with the poise and dignity that is expected of a democratic country expressing the wishes of the vast majority of its people. It downgraded military, trade and other ties with Israel. Why should Turkey share military intelligence with a country that murders Turks, humiliates its diplomats and refuses to apologize?

Still, from Israel's point of view, Turkey has crossed all the limits of acceptable behavior. "Turkish warships will escort any Turkish aid vessels to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip," said Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in an interview with Al Jazeera (as quoted in the Guardian, September 8). At the same time, Turkish diplomacy continued to offer a window of opportunity to detain further escalation. "Our embassy in Israel is open, and the Israeli embassy in Ankara is open. The relations would return to the old days if Israel apologizes and accepts to pay compensation," said Huseyin Celik, Deputy Chairman of the ruling Justice and Development party (according to the Guardian, September 8.) 

Since an apology is a 'precedent', Israel responded in the only way it knows how. An accusatory campaign was launched against Turkey with outlandish insinuations and direct threats.

"This is part of the Islamization spreading there, and we must recognize it," said the senior official to Ynet. The leading Israeli news source also published a column by one Ron Ben-Yishai, calling the Turkish Prime Minister a "short-tempered thug." In 'Turkey no great power,' Yishai accused the country of failing on most fronts. "Turkey under Erdogan's leadership is neither a reliable ally nor a credible rival," he charged.

These views are hardly marginal, and were matched by specific threats by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. "We'll exact a price from Erdogan that will prove to him that messing with Israel doesn't pay off," Lieberman reportedly said. More specifically, he "urge(d) all Israeli military veterans to refrain from traveling to Turkey and facilitate cooperation with the Armenians -- Turkey's historic rivals." He said he also plans to meet with the Turkish rebel group PKK to "cooperate with them and boost them in every possible area," according to UPI, September 9.

Per this logic, demanding an apology for murder equals a thuggish act, while stirring regional instability and admitting to supporting armed militias is an acceptable diplomatic maneuver.

Turkey had no other option but to escalate before an obstinate 'ally.' And considering the latter's existing isolation in the region - and the growing anti-Israeli sentiment in Egypt and elsewhere - it is likely that Israel, not Turkey, will lose out in this political tussle.

Even the US, Israel's 'unconditional' ally, seems to recognize the dangerous game being played by Israel and its rightwing government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Recently revealed comments made by then US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates indicate that Americans are simply fed up with supporting Israel's 'dangerous' policies, while 'receive(ing) nothing in return' (Bloomberg, September 5).

It is these very dangerous policies that guide Israel's brewing conflict with Turkey amid complete lack of political wisdom in Tel Aviv. But if extreme militancy was not enough to intimidate or weaken the resolve of a tiny and besieged place like Gaza, why should it work against a great and rising power like Turkey?

Rational thinking in Netanyahu's government might also be an acceptable precedent. 

*****

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), now available on Amazon.com.

Netanyahu's Grotesque Foreign Policy

Ari Shavit Of "Haaretz Newspaper" [Published 02:58 22.09.11], stated the following:

"we have never been as pitiful as we are today. The grotesque foreign policy of Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has turned Israel into a pathetic and helpless polity.

The reason for this is simple. In war, the best defense is offense. In diplomacy, the best offense is giving. Only if you give something do you get something, acquire allies and increase your strength.

But the Israel of Netanyahu-Lieberman is a tightfisted country that is incapable of giving. That is why it doesn't receive anything, doesn't acquire allies and is becoming dangerously weakened.

It is losing one asset after another and one position after another, and is becoming totally isolated.

Netanyahu and Lieberman...did not initiate anything and did not offer anything and did not concede anything...."

Netanyahu and Crew Running Israel Aground

By Doron Rosenblum
Published 04:15 16.09.11
Latest update 04:15 16.09.11
Courtesy Of "Haaretz Newspaper"

This week, we learned that the commander of an Israel Navy vessel was jailed for seven days for a navigational error that caused the boat to stray some 700 meters into a neighboring country's territorial waters. His punishment would presumably have been more severe had the vessel run aground - and not inadvertently, but on purpose.

But that is precisely what is happening in another sphere, about which Israel's judicial system is considerably more forgiving: the diplomatic sphere. There, at least for now, the commander and his crew of eight are exempt from punishment, even though they caused an entire country to run aground, consciously and deliberately.

Assiduously, stubbornly and systematically, if not with nihilistic arrogance, this entire crew navigated the country into a situation of forced paralysis, diplomatic isolation and international vulnerability that has already drawn attention, and even deep concern, from leaders and media outlets worldwide. What Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon did not do out of stupidity was done with defiant brutality by his master, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. And what Lieberman did not do was done by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who appointed him on purpose to serve as a loose cannon.

If any tiny fragments of hope were left and any life rafts were still floating on the water, Netanyahu made sure to personally sink them with his own words - by his personal clashes with the American president, by his hollow speeches, by his forecasts of disaster and terror that would "merely prove" there was no point in doing anything, and above all, by revealing his deep belief that "the conflict is unsolvable."

Groucho Marx boasted in one of his films that he worked his way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty. Netanyahu's achievement is much more impressive, since he began with countless political options and diplomatic leads, yet in a mere two years, has reached extreme diplomatic poverty: with no hope, no friends in the region, no partners for dialogue, no real allies, even bereft of military options (some will take comfort in that, at least ).

He and his crew of eight devoted this entire time to riding roughshod over every diplomatic finesse, to scattering threats, to provoking crises, to searching for anti-Semitism and to finding various bizarre excuses for continuing the annexationist status quo. Only when they were absolutely forced to did they pay lip service to "two states" and "willingness to negotiate" - but with a lack of conviction that was worse than an direct refusal. For in so doing, Netanyahu did not merely irreversibly lose sympathy; he lost a much more important card: trust.

For many years, the right and the settlers demonized the Oslo process, and indeed, any diplomatic process that entailed withdrawing from the territories. They called its initiators "the Oslo criminals" and even demanded that they be "brought to trial."

For the past three years, an extreme right-wing government has had the chance - and almost total political freedom - to implement the alternative policy of "peace and security" by which they swore. But as the months went by, it became clear that Netanyahu and his government had nothing positive to offer, only the drastic application of an anti-Oslo policy - that is to say, undermining and uprooting any trace of goodwill and hope that had ever sprouted in the United States-Israel-Palestine triangle.
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Only the relative and very transient quiet on the security front - whose time is also running out, as the government itself admits - has deferred the question of the responsibility borne by the anti-Oslo crew, who steered Israel into an unprecedentedly dangerous strait from which there is no exit. These leaders, unlike the leaders of the Oslo process, do not even have the defense of having acted in good faith.