Jazi Abu Kaf talks about the crime of persecution in regards to Israel’s actions towards the Bedouins in the Naqab (Negev) desert during the 3rd International Session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in Cape Town, November 2011.
Today Al Mezan releases ‘Children in the Gaza Strip’s Access to Medical Care’ a factsheet published under the Save the Children UK funded project ‘Child Rights at the Centre: Enhancing National Capacities to Monitor, Document, and Report on Child Rights Issues in the oPt.’ The factsheet documents Israel’s policies towards the Gaza Strip which result in children being denied the right to access proper medical care.
The ongoing siege on Gaza which stops essential medical equipment and drugs from entering and causes sporadic fuel and electricity cuts combined with the closure system which prevents medical professionals from travelling abroad to access advanced training outside Gaza. These policies have resulted in a medical system in Gaza which cannot provide care and procedures for many patients. Children requiring care that is unavailable have to go outside Gaza, usually to hospitals in Israel, Jerusalem or the West Bank (as well as to Egypt and Jordan). In order to access these hospitals children require a permit from the Israeli authorities. The process for acquiring a permit is long and complex and often results in denials. Since January 2008, 4 children have died because their application was denied or took too long to be approved.
Israel also denies children’s access to medical care when it prevents ambulances from accessing the Buffer Zone. Ambulances require prior coordination with the Israeli military authorities before they can access the sick or injured in the Buffer Zone. 173 children have died because ambulances have been denied access to reach them (throughout the Gaza Strip, not just in the Buffer Zone).
The policies outlined in this factsheet result in serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law which Israel, as the Occupying Power in the Gaza Strip, has an obligation to uphold.
“Children in the Gaza Strip are deprived from receiving quality medical treatment and access to procedures that can save their lives. The right to access medical treatment and to enjoy the highest attainable physical and psychological health is one of the Israeli systematic violations of children’s rights in the Gaza Strip,” Samir Zaqout, Al Mezan’s fieldwork coordinator, states. “This has particularly been the case in the last five years since Israel tightened its siege on the Gaza Strip.”
In addition to the polices outlined in this factsheet which directly affect access to medical care Samir Zaqout says that “the Israeli siege has caused a deterioration in the health of children due to increasing poverty levels and diseases among children such as anemia. Israeli military attacks have also injured thousands of children, hundreds of them sustaining permanent physical disabilities.”
the UN General Assembly has adopted a new Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) establishing a complaints procedure for violations of children’s rights.
The new treaty will enable children, or their representatives, claiming that their rights have been violated to bring a complaint to an international committee of children’s rights experts if they have not been able to get remedies for these violations in their countries. A coalition of over 80 international and national NGOs, coordinated by the NGO Group for the CRC, which has been actively campaigning for the treaty since 2006, welcomed the news.
‘Israeli children are educated to see the Palestinians as a problem that must be solved and as a threat that must be eliminated. They can go through life, as I did growing up in Jerusalem, without ever meeting a Palestinian child. They know nothing of the life or culture of Palestinians who quite often live only several hundred meters from them.’
Israel’s theft from the people of Nabi Saleh of their water and land created the weekly protests against the Occupier. This is the moving speech of Nariman Tamimi, read at the Human Rights March rally in Tel Aviv, December 9, 2011 by Nisreen Alyan, an attorney at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), which emphasises that
“In the shadow of the Occupation, there is no dignity and there is no freedom of expression.”
“Even the most basic right to demonstrate and protest against the action of the Occupation is grossly abused.”
A short time after the speech was read in Tel Aviv, at the weekly demonstration in Nabi Saleh, Mustafa Tamimi was critically injured from an IOF teargas projectile manufactured in the US and fired at him face from point blank range. He died in the hospital the following day, on International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2011.
‘The soldiers laughed. They smiled. They took pictures of us, zooming in on each of our faces, and they smirked. ‘They laughed at us as we screamed at them to let us through to where he was, unconscious in a taxi near the watchtower. They threatened us if we didn’t go back. We waved the flag with his blood on it in front of them. One of them had the audacity to bat it away. We shouted, “His blood is on your hands!” They replied, “So?”’
Another eye witness, Ibrahim Bornat, artist and activist from Bil’in was standing next to Mustafa at the time of the murder and describes the inordinate, cruel delays created by the Occupation forces.
I ran back to get people, because we were far away, but there was no ambulance around, so the people around gathered him and put him in a servee [a communal taxi] and tried to leave. The soldiers stopped the servee and tried to arrest Mustafa, but when they saw that he was on the brink of death, they began to act as if they were humanitarian, to revive his heart. But what is ‘humanitarian’, to shoot someone to kill, and then to try to help him? These were the same soldiers from the jeep that shot him. They shot him, then say they want to help him. What they really did is prevent him from leaving.
The body lay on the ground for half an hour. They wanted Mustafa’s ID, and they also wanted the ID of his mother, of another family member, and of Bassem Tamimi’s wife, because these people wanted to go out with him too… They were doing some kind of medical treatment while he was lying on the ground, but this was no hospital, and what he needed was to be taken to a hospital. He should have been flown out in that moment. There is nothing you can do for him on the street there.
RT @ibnezra: The Israeli army has failed to confirm that its soldiers violated ‘open-fire regulations” resulting in the death of Mustafa Tamimi.
RT @shunradan: The jeep frm which #mustafatamimi was shot carries a “how am I driving?”sticker http://twitpic.com/7qupdd Call 02-5694211 & tell them!
RT @Abou_Charlie: #MustafaTamimi’s father was denied a permit to exit West Bank to be with his son as he fought for his life. How ethical!
RT @iRevolt: IOF spokesperson displays picture of slingshot as the reason 4 blowing off half of #MustafaTamimi’s head is.gd/JycvNU
RT @gazaheart: Hate has no limits. I was shocked to read comments re IDF murder of #mustafatamimi beneath article is.gd/EXLXZ0
Mustafa was the 20th person which Israel’s sadistic Occupation forces have killed with tear gas canisters, and the first martyr of Nabi Saleh. The criminal IOF have excused themselves by stating that the incident was ‘exceptional’. (exceptionally cruel?)
Figures in the army’s Central Command said the soldier claimed he “didn’t see” Tamimi. But even if that is true, the IDF’s rules of engagement prohibit the firing of tear gas grenades from a rifle pointed directly at demonstrators or from a distance of less than 40 meters away. They also stipulate that the shooter must use the rifle sight and verify that no one is in the line of fire. Central Command and the Military Police are conducting separate investigations into the incident.
Plan Dalet has never ended, Israel’s genocide of Palestinians has never ended, Israel’s expansionism, its deceitful posture of ‘defence’ and ‘security’ which it uses to obscure and justify its foul land grabs and murder has never ended.
At Mustafa’s funeral, the IOF again resorted to violence, with 3 people injured and 8 arrested. Once again, the IOF fired tear gas projectiles directly at the crowd, spraying the village with skunk water which will pollute it for days. This collective punishment on people who are being robbed of their birthright and denied civil rights is a crime against humanity.
RT @LinahAlsaafin: The pig soldiers wanted to arrest us all. They beat us. We formed a human pile on the ground, limbs bodies twisted. They continued to hit us
RT @LinahAlsaafin: I held up a picture of #MustafaTamimi in front of a soldier’s face. He grabbed it and balled it in his fist. It’s in my bag now, torn.
On Saturday, Israeli soldiers fired artillery shells targeting a chicken and sheep farm in Beit Hanoun, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip — dozens of livestock died in the attack; excessive damage was reported.
The Maan News Agency reported that the shelling targeted the farm of local resident Ramadan Abu Ghazala, located east of Beit Hanoun. The shelling led to no human casualties.
A Palestinian child was severely wounded and her father was injured in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a house in Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza city at dawn Sunday.
At present, Gaza may serve as a scapegoat for Israel’s impotence toward incidents in the Sinai. Israel is also threatening to punish the Gazan people in another despicable way – by cutting off their water supply.
‘It is not important what this bill teaches us about Danon as a person – that he did not study history, for example, or that he did but he knows very well that in fascist regimes the State is above all else; or that as an experienced demagogue he knows just how close a connection there is between the level of discrimination against a certain ethnic group and the claims about crime among its members. ‘
Recalling that Bob Geldof praised the JNF land thieves. Bob Geldof breached the boycott [on May 31, 2011, 'when he accepted a dis-honorary fake degree from Ben Gurion University] praised the JNF when he spoke to patrons at a Jewish National Fund event telling them that the JNF ‘got’ the idea of sustainability & the importance of water over 100 years ago.
Davutoglu told reporters on Friday that Israel should apologize, pay compensation to families of the Turkish citizens killed during the boarding of the aid ship and end the embargo on Gaza. Otherwise, the minister stated, relations between Turkey and Israel will not be normalized.
Additionally Davutoglu extended Turkey’s criticism of the apartheid land-thieving entity:
“Israel should decide to be a part of either the problem or the solution,” Davutoglu told reporters. The minister also spoke out against other aspects of Israeli policy, criticizing Israel to for continuing its settlement policy. The minister concluded by emphasizing that Turkey would react positively if Israel pursued a less hawkish foreign policy.
From @leventbasturk: If it doesn’t remain firm on this issue, the new course of Turkish Frgn Pol in ME will be under great suspicion. #
In the US press, Davutoglu’s comments were under-reported, omitting the need for Israel to end its embargo on Gaza.
In 2005 Palestinian civil society, almost unanimously, called for international artists to refuse to perform in Israel as part of the BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) campaign which is a non-violent method of holding Israel accountable to standards of equality and human rights that nations such as ours are accustomed to. If you perform in Israel it will be a rejection of that appeal made not just by the Palestinian BDS movement, but by the Global BDS movement.
When you booked your concert in Israel, you probably did not think about the siege of Gaza or the Israeli carpet bombing of the Strip with white phosphorous and other brutal weapons resulting in the death of over 1,400 Palestinians, over 300 of them children, as well as the maiming of thousands.
As a typical piece of Israeli propaganda, people are led into meeting the needs of Israelis and concentrating on the Israeli sufferings, while ignoring the much greater sufferings imposed by Israel, which forces millions of Palestinians into living as refugees and in destitution. The boycott is about turning away from the policy of appeasement of the oppressor and of standing in solidarity with the oppressed.
"Torment" by Najah
The campaign asking you to cancel your concert has no intention to hurt or embarrass you, however, there was great pain and dismay among many of your fans when they heard you chose to entertain the state that inflicted the slaughter of so many children in Gaza. Oumou Sangaré, many of your songs denounce violence against women. The pain Israel inflicts on Palestinian women and children is well represented in children’s artwork and in the piece of artwork entitled “Torment” by Najah. See http://boycott-israel-harp-contest.posterous.com/palestinian-art-depicts-womans-childrens-suff
All artists objecting to the Israeli regime’s actions have justified their booked performances in Israel as acts of support for the Israeli “peaceniks.” Recently, another performing musician, Natacha Atlas, wrote:
“I had an idea that performing in Israel would have been a unique opportunity to encourage and support my fans’ opposition to the current government’s actions and policies. I would have personally asked my Israeli fans face-to-face to fight this apartheid with peace in their hearts…”
Natacha Atlas then confirmed that she decided to cancel, explaining:
“after much deliberation I now see that it would be more effective a statement to not go to Israel until this systemised apartheid is abolished once and for all. Therefore I publicly retract my well-intentioned decision to go and perform in Israel…”
Some of the artists who initially breached the boycott and performed in Israel, believing they would be supporting justice by appeasing so called Israeli “peaceniks,” now wholeheartedly support the cultural boycott.
“Where governments refuse to act people must, with whatever peaceful means are at their disposal. For me this means declaring an intention to stand in solidarity, not only with the people of Palestine but also with the many thousands of Israelis who disagree with their government’s policies, by joining the campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel. This is [however] a plea to my colleagues in the music industry, and also to artists in other disciplines, to join this cultural boycott. Artists were right to refuse to play in South Africa’s Sun City resort until apartheid fell and white people and black people enjoyed equal rights. And we are right to refuse to play in Israel.”
South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has this view:
“International Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions against the Apartheid regime, combined with the mass struggle inside South Africa, led to our victory … Just as we said during apartheid that it was inappropriate for international artists to perform in South Africa in a society founded on discriminatory laws and racial exclusivity, so it would be wrong … to perform in Israel”.
Oumou Sangaré, your association promotes freedom, justice, and the rights of children and women around the world. For this reason, we feel you are a musician of integrity, and we hope you will also support the oppressed Palestinians. We know you may have felt the pain of Gaza when Israel pounded it with thousands of tons of explosives. You would know that children in Gaza are not just children. As in the heartbreaking short film: “One Family in Gaza”, the children do play in the rubble of their house, but their little souls cannot escape the trauma of being shot at and seeing their home bombed and their brother repeatedly shot, even after his death. Jen Marlowe, made this film showing the children play, she doesn’t show the bombing, but lets their loving parents speak of their anguish:
The Israeli state has a multi-million dollar hasbara [the Hebrew equivalent to propaganda] and thousands of recruits to propagate the hasbara, especially targeting social networks. The Israeli promoters who bring the artists were even invited to the Israeli Knesset to discuss the anti-boycott campaign and the Israeli regime agreed on financial support to those who bring artists from abroad. Israeli ministers have stated the significance of culture in whitewashing the Israel I crimes [though they used different wording but we are happy to send you the quotes].
You don’t need us to tell you how mainstream media in France has been in denial of the Israeli crimes against the Palestinians, starting from the Nakba in 1948, through the current apartheid and racism.
Occasionally we get a big boost to our campaign, when artists choose to make a statement in the media, such as Massive Attack on http://www.newstatesman.com/music/2010/09/israel-interview-boycott-naja
Similarly, when Elvis Costello posted his message on his own website the international and Israeli media published it widely.
Against the massive well oiled Israeli hasbara, all we have is the public sphere, such as blogging and social networks like Facebook. This is how we inform artists like yourself about the boycott. This is how we spread the word of the BDS to all people concerned with human rights.
In honor of Palestinian woman’s rights, freedom, justice and the rights of innocent children like the dear ones in Jen Marlowe’s film, please refrain from performing in Israel.
We are a group, of 780 members, representing many nations around the globe, who believe that it is essential for musicians & other artists to heed the call of the PACBI, and join in the boycott of Israel. This is essential in order to work towards justice for the Palestinian people under occupation, and also in refugee camps and in the diaspora throughout the world.
which voices are we still not hearing? What are their stories? What unites – and divides – the sometimes mutually antagonistic voices across their society as a whole? Who are these people, the Palestinians?
An appeal from the Greek Association for Solidarity with the Palestinian People – INTIFADA) to Greek singer Haris Alexiou, planning to perform in Caesarea, Israeli Apartheid, on 20 and 22 of October 2011.
Mrs. Haris Alexiou, we Palestinians do apologize, but they are not letting us come to your concert
Dear Mrs. Haris Alexiou
(or, if that’s OK with you) our Haroula
We, all Palestinians, rejoiced at the news that, despite the call from a certain self-proclaimed Palestinian civil society and some Israeli activists for boycotting the Israeli apartheid till it stops committing crimes and complies with the international law, you will not follow the example of other artists (such as Roger Waters, Natacha Atlas, Elvis Costello and others) and you will come to sing in historical Palestine – excuse us, Israel.
We know that you, as well as other Greek artists (Yiannis Kotsiras, Demis Roussos, George Dalaras, Glykeria, and others), don’t mix politics with art and you are coming to sing for peace and for all the peoples of that region, which have common cultural roots, anyway.
Unfortunately our joy for your coming was somewhat mitigated by the fact that we will not be able to attend your concert, as we would like so much to.
More than 1.5 million residents of the Gaza Strip, mostly children, in our majority refugees since the “Nakba” (that means the catastrophe, the ethnic cleansing of 1948), we are under blockade inside the Strip and we are not only not allowed to get out and attend your concert but not even, apart from a few exceptions, go to hospitals or study.
Another 2.5 million approx. of us, including once again many 1948 refugees, we are being blocked (even among us) in the West Bank and we are no more allowed to visit the area where you are going to have the concert, not only to watch it, but not even to go for a day’s work, as we were doing in the past. But even if they would allow us, we would have to pass so many checkpoints as well as the Wall, that it would be uncertain if could make it on time for your concert.
More than 5 million others we are dispersed around the whole world, refugees since 1948 (“this cologne lasts for years” [1]…) and we are not allowed to visit our villages destroyed then (among them Qisarya where you usually perform), our houses, our relatives – but, most of all, we are not allowed to come to your concert. We were thinking of giving it a try, by organizing peaceful demonstrations to return to the area where you are going to sing, but the last time we tried something like this, in May and in June, some ones – obviously not among your fans – welcomed us with live ammunition and we had dozens of people killed.
We were thinking of catching at least a plane and coming just for your concert. But the last time some foreigners tried to do it, last June, they found themselves crammed in the detention centers of Ben Gurion airport. Even by boat would we come, but when some of us, having gained foreign nationality, tried, along with many foreign friends, in 2010, something similar, i.e. to come to Gaza by boats, some Israelis – for sure not among your fans – attacked us, killed 8 Turkish fellow travelers and one American of Turkish origin, injured dozens and, after beating us and tazered us, they crammed us by hundreds in prisons and finally they deported us. Fortunately in 2011, when we tried to do the same crazy thing, the Prime Minister of your country, Greece, Mr. Papandreou (obviously remembering the fraternal friendship of his late father with the late Yasser Arafat) protected us like a father and, with the help of fully armed coast guard policemen, prevented us from suffering the same or worst.
About 5,500 of us, including hundreds of children, are imprisoned in Israeli jails, even in jails-concentration camps in the desert. As you can understand, it is uncertain if we will be given, not of course the permission to leave the jail for 5 days, as it happens in your country, but even a permission to leave the jail for half a day, in order to be able to come to your concert. But, in any case, we will give it a try and we are determined to even have a hunger strike in order to assert a permission for a few hours and be able to watch your concert.
Thousands of us, we found ourselves disabled in our homes (or still in hospitals) after being injured not only by vicious beatings from settlers and soldiers – for sure not some of your fans – but also by not-so-“rubber” bullets, live ammunition, shells, bombs, missiles, white phosphorous etc. We were really dreaming of coming to your concert, but the doctors do not allow us to do so for the moment.
Finally, more than 6,500 of us, about 1/5 of them children, about ¼ of those children under the age of 12, we have been killed during the last 11 years by Israeli fire and as you can understand it’s a little bit difficult for us to attend. Despite that, be sure that we will listen to you “from the edge of sky”. [2]
So, we are sorry that we, all your Palestinian fans, will not be able to come to your concert in the heart of historical Palestine – excuse us, Israel – but we are sure that “your love will find us wherever we are”. [3]
“By the prayers” [4] of:
The “free besieged” [5] people of the Gaza Strip under blockade
The “built in wall” people of the occupied West Bank
The displaced people of occupied East Jerusalem
The exiled – refugees of the Palestinian diaspora
The Palestinian prisoners
The Palestinian injured and disabled people
The Palestinian martyrs
All your Palestinian fans
Freely adapted by the:
Greek Association for Solidarity with the Palestinian People – INTIFADA
P.S. We know how much you, Mrs. Alexiou, are also hit by the economic crisis that your country, and many more, suffer by. And how much you need the profits from this concert. The fact that we will not be able to attend your concert, does not mean that we don’t want to support you in this difficult moment of yours. Please send us the details of your bank account and we will send you the price of the ticket. We don’t want anything in exchange. We just want you to contribute so that, in a future concert in historical Palestine – excuse us, Israel – we will be able, at least some of us, to attend. We thank you in advance.
[1] “This cologne lasts for years”: an old song by Haris Alexiou
[2] Referring to the song “To the edge of your sky”, by Haris Alexiou.
[3] Referring to the song “Love will find you wherever you are”, by Haris Alexiou.
[4] Another song by Haris Alexiou
[5] “The Free Besieged”: one of the most important works of the Greek national poet Dionysios Solomos, about the siege of Messolonghi by the forces of the Ottoman Empire, during the Greek revolution for independence.
On the 20th September, Australian ABC TV’s Foreign Correspondent broadcast a programme titled “Follow the Money”, mainly focussing on the impact of BDS on Daniel Birnbaum, the Israeli US immigrant business owner of Soda Stream, an Israeli factory illegally located in one of the neoliberal industrial zones in the Occupied West Bank. The show offered a token ‘balance’ with a Palestinian US immigrant family who supported boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israeli apartheid and occupation. The mother, Cairo Arafat, emphasised her support for two states, whilst her daughter Semma, was less enthusiastic, opining that “Two states will not work. Two states would just be a phase into Palestine being wiped off the map, into creating a one state that is an Israeli state”. The programme lacked considerable depth and sensitivity on the BDS issue within Palestine and Israel, and made some glaring factual errors – such as failing to note that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is illegal under international law, that instead of “Thirteen per cent of it [the apartheid wall] … being constructed inside the West Bank”, the apartheid barrier is built mainly in the West Bank and only partly along the 1949 Armistice line, or “Green Line” between Israel and Palestinian West Bank, with 12% of the entire West Bank area illegally annexed across into the Israel side of the barrier. Further, despite the new anti-boycott law passed by Israel’s far right extremist Knesset, which has been condemned by Amnesty International as “an attack on freedom of expression”, there are a growing number of Israelis who are in solidarity with the call of Palestinian people for BDS.
Foreign Correspondent programmes are re-broadcast regularly “by more than 20 international networks, including CNN International, Al Jazeera, NHK Japan and TV NZ”. Al Jazeera English re-broadcasted “Follow the Money” retitled as “About a boycott” on its “People & Power” show on October 6, 2011. So who inserted the ubiquitous fake Max Brenner this time – for this is not the first occasion that Max Brenner has been anthropomorphised.
The “Max Brenner Shop Owner” title pops up in the screenshot opposite at about 10.07 minutes into Al Jazeera English’s slightly truncated re-broadcast version. This individual is named in the Foreign Correspondent transcript as “GRAHAM WEINBERG (IN CROWD)”. Now we know which balding lookalike Max Brenner is this month. The Max Brenner site states “ALL AUSTRALIAN MAX BRENNER CHOCOLATE BARS ARE COMPANY OWNED & WE DO NOT CURRENTLY FRANCHISE”.
Foreign Correspondent Eric Campbell captures some correct information from a protester at a recent rally against the Israeli occupation-supporting Max Brenner business in Newtown.
CAMPBELL: “And what’s Max Brenner doing?”
PROTESTOR: “Max Brenner is financially and morally supporting the Israeli defence forces, particularly two brigades – the Golani and the Givati”.
Like Max Brenner, Sodastream is bound to the illegal, brutal Israeli military occupation, and is a legitimate boycott target.
“Al Jazeera is a vital component to the USG’s strategy in communicating with the Arab world.” — Joseph E. LeBaron, U.S. Ambassador to Qatar, November 6, 2008
“Al Jazeera Board Chairman Hamed bin Thamer Al Thani has proven open to creative uses of Al Jazeera’s airwaves by the USG beyond straightforward interviews.” — Joseph E. LeBaron, U.S. Ambassador to Qatar, February 10, 2009
Might the omnipresent bald man be such an example of ‘creative uses’ of Al Jazeera’s airwaves by the US or was the inserted caption a plausibly deniable slipup?
You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.
Palestine / Israel Links
The hand of a thief: Taking a page from Nixon (“If the president does it, that means it’s not illegal!”) Netanyahu instructed Justice Minister Ya’acov Ne’eman, a religious ultra-nationalist, to come up with a legal way for Israel to keep even the radical hilltop settlement outposts built on land that Israel itself recognizes as being owned by Palestinians.
‘The IDF recently completed the preparation of different plans of action against Hamas and the rest of the terror organizations in the Strip – from surgical strike to a wide-scale operation. ‘
Nutanyahoo has much to gain by creating a conflagration – to disrupt the UNGA vote for a Palestinian state, the Palmer report which is due for release at the end of this month, discussion of the Goldstone and HRC flotilla report in the UN in September, along with the J14 protests in Israel which threaten zionist privilege by merging Jewish and Palestinian housing and social welfare issues. Ironically, war will reduce the funds available for social welfare, and after its cessation, housing costs are likely to skyrocket.
Shafir criticized calls by ministers including Ayoub Kara (Likud ) to end the protest due to the terror attacks. “The fact that the government is calling on us to halt the protest because of the terror attacks is an attempt to use our pain as citizens hurting for their friends and families to make us bow on the social front, and that’s sad for several reasons,” she said.
Leaks from unnamed aides to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu claim he has shifted positions on another critical peace process issue – borders – but so far there’s no official confirmation. It appears to be a tactical move to derail the Palestinian strategy for a UN statehood resolution next month, and it could work if the Israeli leader can convince Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that he is serious.
…
Netanyahu is demanding a quid pro quo, aides are telling Israeli media. He will acknowledge the 1967 Green Line as the reference point for negotiations of future borders if the Palestinians will agree to ultimately recognize Israel as a Jewish state
‘And Netanyahu has failed to publicly, clearly chart out the main lines of a territorial compromise (necessarily along the lines of the Clinton parameters of December 2000) that could serve as a basis for a two-state solution acceptable to Washington and Europe. Instead, Netanyahu has talked vaguely about his willingness to engage in “painful” concessions for peace, a formula that may sell well on the hill but has had little traction anywhere else.’
In the absence of confirmation from Nutanyahoo himself, these claims that he is prepared to negotiate seriously, also aired on Israel TV according to AP, should be considered as hasbara. The apparent concessions are in contradiction to Nutanyahoo’s stated position in May, along with his Bar Ilan speech and the Likud charter.
“The cabinet committee has decided to withdraw the Egyptian ambassador in Israel until the result of investigations by the Israeli authorities is provided and an apology from the Israeli leadership over the hasty and regrettable statements about Egypt is given,” the cabinet statement said.
STATEMENT REMOVED
The statement was later removed from the website, prompting speculation that Cairo may have retracted its decision. An Egyptian government spokesman said the cabinet stood by statements made by its information minister, but declined to make any reference to the recall of the ambassador, which was also reported by state media.
…
Emad Gad, senior researcher at Cairo’s Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said neither Egypt nor Israel was keen to escalate the issue further. “Withdrawing the Egyptian ambassador is a good step but Egypt still has to insist on a formal apology from Israel,” he said
Israel continues to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity unchallenged by the international national community. This is one of the important reasons why BDS, which circumvents government, is so effective and essential.
, nor does it seek to increase tensions with Israel. Therefore, a direct attack on Hamas will be perceived as disproportionate and unjustified. Egypt will not be able to stand aside; this time it will surely call back its ambassador from Tel Aviv and freeze the peace.
The international community will not show restraint; it will present Israel as a war-monger. And when hundreds of rockets from Gaza hit Sderot, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Be’er Sheva, Rehovot, Rishon Letzion and Tel Aviv, the Iron Dome will be deemed ineffectual. Netanyahu will face dilemmas that tore Ehud Olmert apart.
“Given the conflicting reports, where is the SCAF’s official statement on the recent developments in Sinai?” ElBaradei asked on his Twitter account, adding that the SCAF needed to inform the public about its strategy to handle the delicate security situation in the peninsula.’
Also, the General Security Service (Shabak) wasted no time in making it very clear, very loudly that they had given the army very detailed and specific information of the impending attack. But remembering Clinton trying to take out Bin Laden back in ‘98 and getting blamed unfairly for wagging the dog? I should shut up about the obvious thoughts pursuant to the above intelligence.
