Monthly Archives: September 2010

Lieberman endorses ethnic cleansing at UN

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I’ve been traveling, so I’m slow to blog about these developments, but it’s important to note in this space Israeli Foreign Minister (and settler) Avigdor Lieberman’s endorsement at the UN of a “population exchange” to accompany the creation of a Palestinian state. Here are the key paragraphs from his speech to the General Assembly:

Thus, the guiding principle for a final status agreement must not be land-for-peace but rather, exchange of populated territory. Let me be very clear: I am not speaking about moving populations, but rather about moving borders to better reflect demographic realities.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not an extraordinary insight, and is far less controversial than some may seek to claim. In fact, precisely this notion – that a mismatch between borders and nationalities is a recipe for conflict – has long been accepted as a virtual truism in the academic community.

Leading scholars and highly respected research institutions have even coined the term “Right-Sizing the State” to capture the idea that states and nations must be in balance in order to ensure peace. This is not a controversial political policy. It is an empirical truth.

Netanyahu of course immediately distanced himself from Lieberman’s remarks, as if he were not the foreign minister in his government. This raises the question of why Lieberman, who is usually sequestered away from important diplomacy, was sent to speak at the UN in the first place. Tony Karon suggests that the play here was to “make Bibi’s hardline seem reasonable” by comparison.

The other remarkable thing about Lieberman’s position on this issue is that ideologically more in common with Tzipi Livni and those in the Israeli political “center” who want to maintain a jewish majority no matter the cost.

This further underscores the revelation in Noam Sheizaf’s reporting on Israeli right-wingers who support the one state solution: the important dividing line in Israeli politics may not be between “left” and “right” as defined in the Knesset, but between those who support equal rights for Palestinians and those who don’t, between those who favor partition and those willing to contemplate other scenarios.

Murder in Gaza

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When Hamas operatives gunned down four Israeli settlers deep in the West Bank earlier this month, the White House condemned the attack “in the strongest possible terms.”

When Israeli tanks killed a 91-year-old shepherd, his grandson, and another farm worker in northern Gaza on Sunday, will Obama or the State Department condemn this murder? (Will the Palestinian Authority?)

Here’s Gaza-based human rights activist Adie Mormech writing in Mondoweiss about the killings:

We met the family members at the hospital. The wife of Ibrahim was devastated, screaming in horror at the fate that had befallen her family.

“I was there half an hour before it happened”, said Mohammed Abu Oda, another relative. “I saw them by their sheep. I heard the shells from the Israeli tanks, the shells we learned soon afterwards had killed our relatives.”

They were killed instantly, and according to the doctor (who wished to remain anonymous) who examined once they had arrived at Beit Hanoun hospital. Ibrahim suffered severe shrapnel injuries to his face, chest and stomach and his grandson Hossam had the back of his head blown away. We verified this immediately as we saw the mutilated bodies in the morgue. Ismail, the friend of Hossam, had arrived at the hospital 30 minutes after the others but had been buried before we got there; most part of his head was shot away. The boys were close friends, studying in the 9th and 10th grade respectively, and had expected to return to school the following day after Eid.

But on that day they still were on holidays, so they helped Ibrahim, like they were used to do. Because despite of having faced their hardest times, after their house was destroyed and their land bulldozed, the bedouin family still had no other job other than farming. Although they were obliged to farm their land close to the border, it was still far enough away to be outside the Israeli imposed “buffer zone”

“Israel claims that there’s a three hundred meter buffer zone, but they were 700 meters far from the border”, said an Uncle of Ismail, Majdy Abu Oda. “The people there are farmers who’ve been living there for years. We, the people here, were never dangerous for the Israelis. They have photos of the people who live and work here, the area is full off observation cameras. So they knew them.”

If only: Gingrich calls Obama ‘anti-colonial’

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Dave Weigel points out the following remark:

Gingrich says that [Dinesh] D’Souza has made a “stunning insight” into Obama’s behavior — the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama.”

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asks. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

Gaza and Brooklyn on Eid Al-Fitr

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I recently moved to the Bedford-Stuyvestant neighborhood of Brooklyn. I live around the corner from a mosque, and down the street from another mosque that has been transformed into a church. I woke up this morning, the first morning of Eid Al-Fitr, to the repetitive ”Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!” It’s a specific call to prayer that goes out on this one morning of the year.

I thought back to the last time I heard that prayer, which was one year ago, in Gaza. That morning I awoke at 5am to go to cover a dawn prayer service in Yarmuk stadium. Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader and elected prime minister, spoke that morning to around 10,000 people who came to the stadium. [Here's my report from that morning]

Last year Haniyeh was praising Palestinians in Gaza for their sumud, their steadfastness, in surviving and remaining defiant nine months after Israel’s onslaught against Gaza. This year Palestinians were shaken by yet another Israeli airstrike on the eve of the holiday.

This was the scene, early on the morning of Sunday September 20, 2009, in Yarmuk stadium:

Real talk on the Israeli-Palestinian talks

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fm0TcjT95M&feature=player_embedded]

Al Jazeera English has once again demonstrated that it is an indispensable resource for reporting and analysis on international politics. I finally had the chance today to watch this episode of Empire with the network’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara, talking to Rob Malley of International Crisis Group, PLO official Nabil Shaath, and realist international relations professor and Israel lobby chronicler John Mearsheimer.

There are some smart remarks here from Malley. Shaath, who comes out sounding sad and compromised, demonstrates that of the PLO leadership, he is one of the figures who understands the bigger picture vis-a-vis the importance of popular struggle.

But then Mearsheimer comes out shooting bullets. Showing that he is a true realist, he says the current talks are a charade, that Israel won’t give up the West Bank, and that the most likely scenario is one state – Israel – with Bantustans for the Palestinians in Gaza and pieces of the West Bank.

Israeli spies operating in the US

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Israel’s Mossad spy agency is among the most aggressive “friendly” intelligence organizations in terms of their operations inside the United States, former US intelligence officials told the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein.

Stein reports on the Post’s Spy Talk blog:

The CIA took an internal poll not long ago about friendly foreign intelligence agencies.

The question, mostly directed to employees of the clandestine service branch, was: Which are the best allies among friendly spy services, in terms of liaison with the CIA, and which are the worst? In other words, who acts like, well, friends?

“Israel came in dead last,” a recently retired CIA official told me the other day.

Not only that, he added, throwing up his hands and rising from his chair, “the Israelis are number three, with China number one and Russia number two,” in terms of how aggressive they are in their operations on U.S. soil.

Stein also picks up on an article by former CIA officer Philip Giraldi in The American Conservative magazine, which reported that Israeli agents have been attempting to recruit Arab-American informants. In the process they have sometimes posed as US intelligence officials:

“There have been a number of cases reported to the FBI about Mossad officers who have approached leaders in Arab-American communities and have falsely represented themselves as ‘U.S. intelligence,’ ” Giraldi wrote recently in American Conservative magazine.

“Because few Muslims would assist an Israeli, this is done to increase the likelihood that the target will cooperate. It’s referred to as a ‘false flag’ operation.”

Giraldi’s piece continued, “Mossad officers sought to recruit Arab-Americans as sources willing to inform on their associates and neighbors. The approaches, which took place in New York and New Jersey, were reportedly handled clumsily, making the targets of the operation suspicious.”

“These Arab-Americans turned down the requests for cooperation,” Giraldi added,”and some of the contacts were eventually reported to the FBI, which has determined that at least two of the Mossad officers are, ironically, Israeli Arabs operating out of Israel’s mission to the United Nations in New York under cover as consular assistants.”

Two other interesting threads in Giraldi’s article: he notes: “Israel is believed to have the ability to monitor nearly all phone records originating in the United States, while numerous Israeli air-travel security companies are known to act as the local Mossad stations.”

Settlements

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There is one piece of analysis that I should have added to my previous post about the Hebron shooting attack, which is this:

It’s impossible to think coherently about this incident without also taking into account the fact that the West Bank settlements are themselves represent an act of thievery, and an ongoing violation of international humanitarian law. They are universally rejected (except in Israel, where they are controversial). The settlements are also the cause of huge hardships among Palestinians, and geographically they are the reason the two state solution seems increasingly implausible. Ideological settler activists also harass and attack Palestinian civilians on a nearly daily basis. The settlers in and around Hebron are among the most extreme.

So, while I utterly reject and deplore the killing of noncombatants, I think if we are to have an intelligent and realistic conversation about the Middle East and the prospects for peace, we cannot leave out these central facts.

Hebron

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Some thoughts on last night’s deadly shooing attack in Hebron: The four Israeli settlers who were killed were civilians, noncombatants, and therefore their murder is to be condemned.

But I want to talk analytically about the attack:

  • Hamas’ armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades claimed responsibility. The Israeli military also blamed Hamas. I see no reason to doubt  at this point that members of Hamas were behind the attack.
  • But as Ali Abunimah pointed out on Democracy Now this morning, the attack was likely indicative of divisions within Hamas.
  • Some are asking why, if their aim was to disrupt the negotiations in Washington, did Hamas carry out a dramatic and divisive attack such as this? That question is misleading because of the massive structural and procedural problems with the current talks. The talks will either collapse, or result in an impasse, on their own. As Hamas official Osama Hamdan put it yesterday, speaking on Al-Jazeera: “There is no need to do something like this to sabotage these negotiations, because Netanyahu [already] has.”
  • The geography is important here. The attack took place in an area under full Israeli military control, not the control of the Palestinian Authority. I think this is notable because the Israeli-controlled areas around Hebron are some of the only places in the West Bank where Hamas as an organization has not already been obliterated or driven underground by the PA.
  • Inevitably, however, the PA has come under pressure to clamp down on Hamas, and has launched a massive campaign of arrests against the group. This often happens following armed attacks against Israelis in the West Bank. It did following the December 2009 shooting death of a settler near Nablus.
  • As Ehud Barak already vowed, Israel will retaliate, probably in Hebron or Nablus or Gaza. And when that happens, and Palestinians inevitably die, what will become of the peace negotiations? What happens if settlers take matters into their own hands, as indeed they have already begun to do?

Hamas’ aim here is to demonstrate that they are still the relevant combatant party in the Israel-Palestine conflict at this stage. The Palestinian Authority is not at war with Israel. Hamas is. And that is why they must be included in the negotiations process. I’ll quote again from my recent interview with Ambassador Charles Freeman:

The question is ‘do you want peace?’ If you want peace you have to talk with the people who can make peace. If you want peace you have to talk with the people who can make peace. Hamas at one point enjoyed and may still enjoy a majority among Palestinians, and is in effective control of Gaza. It therefore has the legitimacy to sign an agreement. It has the discipline to enforce an agreement as it has repeatedly demonstrated with truces with Israel over the years.

It may be disagreeable from many points of view, but there’s another factor that has to be taken into account. No agreement that does not have Hamas’ imprimatur can survive. Hamas has the capacity to wreck any agreement that excludes it. And therefore it must be in the agreement. If you’re interested in peace you must talk to Hamas.

There’s hardly anything unusual about that. If there is a problem, whether on the private level or between nations or between peoples the only way to solve it and reach an accommodation is by talking to people who disagree with you. So the entire premise that Hamas should come up with it’s hands up and sign on to various Israeli demands for recognition of right of existence, whatever that is, and so forth, is a ploy intended to prevent any serious negotiations.

The effort to split the Palestinians and destroy the possibility of any unified Palestinian national government or national movement has a similar purpose. It’s part of a long-term effort to avoid a serious negotiation, so that instead of trading land for peace, land can be obtained without dealing with the difficult issues that have to be dealt with to produce peace. So Hamas must be spoken to just as the PLO had to be spoken to produce Oslo and whatever progress that represented.

Further reading: Richard Silverstein has more angry analysis. Paul Woodward also has an interesting take.