Get down from the roof, you crazies

Haaretz
Yoel Marcus

When Netanyahu is trying to recruit a majority in his forum of eight senior ministers for an attack on nuclear installations in Iran, this is not just a scandal but also a macabre fantasy.

Even Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman - who once proposed bombing the Aswan Dam and is now proposing going to war in the Gaza Strip to wipe out Hamas once and for all - said this week on the current events radio show "It's All Talk" that we are talking too much about the Iranian issue. He even quoted a line from a famous Western: "If you want to shoot, shoot, don't talk." Lieberman, the most extreme of the extremists, who has not revealed whether he is in favor of an attack on Iran, is aware of the madness in our threats to attack it.

It's hard to believe that not too long ago the censors prohibited any publication connected to the nuclear issue. At best, they demanded the invocation of the phrase "according to foreign sources." As though whoever is plotting something against us in this area doesn't know about himself what we know about him. When the censors permit what was prohibited until not long ago, maybe it's no coincidence: It is aimed either at preparing the public that the worst and scariest thing of all is liable to happen, or at putting pressure on the United States to act against Iran, or at finding excuses for why we are dawdling in making concessions to the Palestinian Authority. With regard to Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are adopting Machiavelli's advice: Choose yourself an enemy and nourish your loathing of him.

The difference between the situation now and the situation in the First Lebanon War, which was supposed to have taken 48 hours and lasted for 18 years, is that Prime Minister Menachem Begin (whose understanding in matters of defense boiled down to a question to soldiers at the front: "Did you have machine guns?" ) relied blindly on Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan - the same two men who broke him after a long road of mental and physical suffering.

Now the Bibi and Barak duo is threatening to lead the next war if there is one, heaven forbid, contrary to the recommendations of the top military and security people. The impression is that Barak and Netanyahu are not managing to make the necessary concessions for a diplomatic agreement with the Palestinians and have decided to scare the nation and the world with the Iranian nuclear threat and the need to extirpate it.

The atomic arsenal that, according to foreign sources, Israel possesses has been called the Judgment Day weapon - that is to say it is intended for use in a situation of extreme danger to Israel's existence. The possibility of using it was once raised by Prime Minister Golda Meir at the start of the Yom Kippur War, when Defense Minister Moshe Dayan said we were on the verge of the destruction of the Third Temple. This possibility has never been put on the agenda realistically.

When Iraqi Scuds were falling here in the Gulf War and as revenge for the Israel Air Force's destruction of the Osirak nuclear reactor under Begin's orders, a panicky public was revealed, which fled daily in the tens of thousands from Tel Aviv. During the course of the war, media representatives met several times for conversations with Chief of Staff Dan Shomron. On one occasion, suddenly there was a warning siren. The chief of staff immediately went down to the security bunker and as we started to make our way out one of the commentators, who is now one of the most popular on television, whispered: "I fear that without an atom bomb this isn't going to end." It ended without an atom bomb and with one fatality in Tel Aviv. Saddam Hussein was also finished off much later by the Americans.

One-Eyed Men In The World Of The Blind – An Analysis by Dr. Lawrence Davidson

Intifada Palestine
Dr. Lawrence Davidson

There is an interesting phenomenon which we can call “the political retiree’s confession.” I don’t mean all those hyped memoirs, ghost written for all manner of high ranking ex-officials. Here I refer to statements by important political leaders and bureaucrats, either out of office or about to vacate their positions, publically describing what really needs to be done. For instance, what really needs to be done to obtain peace, or accurately pointing fingers at those obstructing peace. These statements can be shocking in their honesty, but curiously enough, are never made, much less acted upon, while the truth sayer is in a position of power. They come to us only with retirement or pending retirement.

For example, take former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Olmert was Prime Minister from 2006 (replacing Ariel Sharon who had suffered a debilitating stroke) till early 2009. A few months before leaving office Olmert told the newspaper Yediot Aharonot that, in the end, Israel would have to return “almost all” of the West Bank to the Palestinians, including East Jerusalem. There was no other way to achieve peace with the Arab world. Olmert went on, “the decision we are going to have to make is the decision we have been refusing for 40 years to look at open-eyed….The time has come to say these things. The time has come to put them on the table.” Of course “the time” oddly coincided with a period when the Prime Minister could not move this insight from theory into practice.

Now we have another example of this strange phenomenon. This time from the United States. According to Jeffrey Goldberg, the national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, “in a meeting of the National Security Council Principals Committee held shortly before his retirement this summer [2011]” gave his expert opinion that the Israeli government was ungrateful for United States assistance. That despite all the Obama administration had done for Jerusalem, “access to top-quality weapons, assistance developing missile defense systems, high-level intelligence sharing….the U.S. has received nothing in return.” On top of that, in Gates’s estimation Prime Minister Netanyahu is “endangering his country by refusing to grapple with Israel’s growing isolation…” No one at the high level meeting disagreed with this analysis.

Gates’s publically revealed anger is nice to hear about but, like Olmert’s epiphany, it means little in practice. Netanyahu has been rude, duplicitous and downright nasty to President Obama in what was actually a replay of the behavior of Menachem Begin toward Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s. Carter’s National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski learned to distrust the Israeli leadership and would later, after he was no longer in office, advocate an increasing hard line toward Jerusalem. Indeed, he once suggested military confrontation with Israel if that country’s leaders risked a regional war by attacking Iranian nuclear development sites (he suggested the U.S. Air Force shoot down the Israeli planes). This was a reasonable suggestion given the stakes but, of course, it was made when Brzezinski had no position of influence.

Rachel Corrie's family claim Israeli military withheld vital video evidence

Guardian
Harriet Sherwood

The family of Rachel Corrie, the US activist killed in Gaza while protesting against house demolitions in 2003, on Monday claimed the Israeli military authorities withheld video evidence during the Corries' civil lawsuit and misled US officials on crucial details.

Craig Corrie, Rachel's father, told a press conference in Jerusalem that the footage from a surveillance camera near the scene of his daughter's death submitted to the court was "incomplete". Additional video material obtained by the family showed Rachel's body in a different spot to the place identified by some military commanders, he said.

He also alleged that the Israeli military had misled US officials on the position of Rachel's body when she was killed.

Rachel, from Olympia, Washington state, was killed while attempting to protect the home of a Palestinian family in the Rafah area of Gaza from being demolished by Israeli troops in March 2003. Her family and other activists who witnessed the incident say she was crushed by an Israeli army bulldozer.

Following Rachel's death the then Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, promised US president George W Bush a "thorough, credible and transparent" investigation.

An internal Israeli military investigation, which was never published nor released to the US government nor the Corries, concluded that the two soldiers who operated the bulldozer had not seen Rachel and that no charges would be brought. The case was closed.

In March last year the Corrie family launched a civil case, accusing the military of either unlawfully or intentionally killing Rachel or of gross negligence. Hearings in the case ended on Sunday and a verdict is due to be delivered next April.

US collusion in the Gaza blockade is an affront to human rights

Guardian
Cindy Corrie

My daughter's death shows the cruelty of an America that won't protect its own and is complicit in harming Palestinian civilians

When Greek authorities prevented the US ship the Audacity of Hope leaving its port in Athens this week, they dealt a blow to a group of brave and principled Americans who were trying to carry thousands of letters from US citizens to those who wait on Gaza's shores.

I know many of the people who were on this boat, and my family's letter was part of their cargo. In 2003 my daughter Rachel Corrie made her journey to Gaza and was run down and killed by a US-made Israeli military Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer. She was trying to protect a Gazan family and their home, one of thousands illegally destroyed in Israeli military clearing operations.

Now my family is on a parallel journey with those activists as we return this week to Israeli court to confront Colonel Pinhas Zuaretz, the commanding officer of the Gaza Division's Southern Brigade in 2003. His testimony should shed light not only on actions of troops responsible for Rachel's killing but also on the Israeli military's broad failures as an occupying power to protect civilian life and property.
This week's flotilla was travelling to Gaza, as Rachel did, to stand with Palestinians against oppression and illegal occupation and for a just, enduring peace.

Some liken the action to those of "freedom riders" who 50 years ago journeyed bravely to the American south to oppose racist laws that kept blacks and whites from sitting together on buses. The flotilla participants are pursuing Israeli and US policy that provides access and egress for Gazans commensurate with what other peoples enjoy in their homelands. They demand freedoms for Gazans that we in the US celebrate for ourselves but are complicit in denying to Palestinians.

A senior administration official in 2010 told our family that the blockade of Gaza was a "failed policy". He emphasised that the attack on the first flotilla that claimed nine lives (including a US citizen) was tragic, but had created movement for lessening restrictions for Gaza.

Some members of Congress have declared the "imprisonment" of Gazans a greater threat to Israeli security than rockets from Gaza. Nevertheless, a year after the Israeli commando attack on the Mavi Marmara, the US has been unwilling or unable to influence Israel to make many of the changes still needed.

In 2003 Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon promised President Bush a "thorough, credible, and transparent" investigation into my daughter's killing. The US government's position continues to be that the promise has gone unfulfilled. In 2008 the Department of State wrote: "We have consistently requested that the government of Israel conduct a full and transparent investigation into Rachel's death. Our requests have gone unanswered or ignored."

Jimmy Carter: The Unchanged Path to Mideast Peace

My Catbird Seat
Jimmy Carter

Editor's Note: Carter may not have the solution, but does a good job of demonstrating how the move back to '67 borders is hardly a controversial new position by the United States.

U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 of Nov. 22, 1967, concluded the war of that year and has been widely acknowledged by all parties to be the basis for a peace agreement.


It was not a new U.S. policy concerning the borders of Israel, nor should it have been surprising to Israeli leaders, when President Obama stated:

“The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 of Nov. 22, 1967, concluded the war of that year and has been widely acknowledged by all parties to be the basis for a peace agreement.

Its key phrases are, “Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war,” and “Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.” These included the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, plus lands belonging to Lebanon, Egypt and Syria.

At Camp David in 1978, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat accepted the following words: “The agreed basis for a peaceful settlement of the conflict between Israel and its neighbors is United Nations Security Council resolution 242, in all its parts.”

Specifically concerning the West Bank and Gaza, the Israelis and Egyptians mutually agreed: “In order to provide full autonomy to the inhabitants under these arrangements the Israeli military government and its civilian administration will be withdrawn as soon as a self-governing authority has been freely elected by the inhabitants of these areas. …” As a result of the Oslo Accords of 1993, a self-governing authority was freely elected in January 1996, with Yasir Arafat as president and 88 Parliament members.

The International Quartet’s Roadmap for Peace in April 2003, supported by President George W. Bush, began with these words: “A settlement, negotiated between the parties, will result in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors. The settlement will resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and end the occupation that began in 1967. …”

In addition, all 23 Arab nations and all 56 Islamic nations have offered peace and normal relations with Israel, but called upon Israel to affirm: “Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967. …”

All these statements assume, of course, that Israel may live in peace within its internationally recognized borders — but not including territories it occupied during the 1967 war. Israel withdrew from Egypt’s Sinai as a result of the 1979 peace treaty, but still occupies and is colonizing with settlers the Golan Heights of Syria, East Jerusalem and the West Bank. (When I was negotiating during the 1970s, it was clear that neither Israel nor Egypt wanted to retain control of Gaza, from which Israel withdrew in August 2005, but continues to hold under siege.)

For more than three decades, Israel’s occupation of Arab land has been the key unresolved issue. Stated simply, Israel must give up the occupied land in exchange for peace. There has never been any question regarding the occupied territory in international law as expressed through United Nations resolutions, the official policies of the United States, nor those of the International Quartet (the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia).

A number of peace proposals have included the caveat found in President Obama’s recent speech: that the pre-1967 border can be modified as a result of mutually agreeable land swaps to permit Israeli settlers in areas close to Jerusalem to remain in what is now occupied Palestinian territory, with an equivalent amount of Israeli land to be transferred to the Palestinians.

One interesting proposal that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made to me in 2005 was that this exchanged land might comprise a corridor between Gaza and the West Bank (about 35 miles), on which a railroad and highway could be built. It would be provided security by Israelis but owned and operated by Palestinians. This is just one possibility.

Two recent developments add urgency to the peace process: moves to unite the major Palestinian factions so they can negotiate with a single voice, and the potential vote in the U.N. General Assembly in September to recognize Palestine as a state. It is likely that about 150 U.N. members are prepared to take this action.

The only viable peace alternative is good faith negotiations, with the key issue remaining the same: Israel’s willingness to withdraw from the occupied territories, with the exception of small land swaps as mutually agreed with the Palestinians.