Haaretz was reporting this morning that Israel and the Palestinians have reached agreement on the principle of a prisoner exchange quoting a Gazan source as saying that Israel is now holding up discussions of the details of the deal, including how it would take place, which of several hundred Palestinian prisoners would be released, and when it would take place. At night, Channel 10 reported on the first attempted military putsch in the history of the country, a group of colonels, brigadiers and at least one reserve major general was named as taking part among others, demanding Dan Halutz resign as chief of staff of the IDF. Read more about Anything could happen
In a state established on a founding myth — that the native Palestinian population left of their own accord rather than that they were ethnically cleansed — and in one that seeks its legitimacy through a host of other lies, such as that the occupation of the West Bank is benign and that Gaza’s has ended, deception becomes a political way of life. And so it is in the “relative calm” that has followed Israel’s month-long pounding of Lebanon, a calm in which Israelis may no longer be dying but the Lebanese most assuredly are as explosions of US-made cluster bombs greet the south’s returning refugees and the anonymous residents of Gaza perish by the dozens each and every week under the relentless and indiscriminate strikes of the Israeli air force while the rest slowly starve in their open-air prison. Read more about Israel's deceptions as a way of life
Late last month, a fortnight into Israel’s war against Lebanon, the Hebrew media published a story that passed observers by. Scientists in Haifa, according to the report, have developed a “missile-trappingo” steel net that can shield buildings from rocket attacks. The Israeli government, it noted, would be able to use the net to protect vital infrastructure — oil refineries, hospitals, military installations, and public offices — while private citizens could buy a net to protect their own homes. Read more about After Lebanon, Israel is looking for more wars
There is almost nobody in the public arena right now who objects to the view that the last month of fighting against Hizbollah was interrupted and that sooner or later, whether next month or next year, another round will erupt. Nobody disputes that such another round is inevitable, and very few are suggesting any steps to take to prevent that war from breaking out by trying diplomacy with the Lebanese leadership or even engaging the Syrians. And of course, the main issue on the Israeli agenda is the demand for ‘investigations’ into why Israel ‘lost’ the war, with accompanying demands for soul-searching by politicians. Read more about Political and sexual abuse
Imagine, if you will, a modern apartheid state with first, second and eleventh class citizens, all required to carry identification specifying their ethnic origin. First class citizens are obliged to serve in the armed forces, kept on ready reserve status until in their forties, and accorded an impressive array of housing, medical, social security, educational and related benefits denied all others. Second class citizens are exempted from military service and from a number of the benefits accorded citizens of the first class. They are issued identity documents and license plates that allow them to be profiled by police at a distance. Read more about Israeli apartheid: The striking parallels to South Africa
The late Hafez Assad had “his Palestinians.” Ideologically divergent, they served politically to forestall any move by the PLO towards a negotiated settlement with Israel and personally to thwart the man Assad loathed like no other: Yasser Arafat. Surely few in my generation have even heard of the personalities comprising the Palestinian face of Assad’s crusade. Abu Musa, a celebrated Palestinian commander early in the Lebanon War, in 1983 led his breakaway Fateh faction into battle against what remained of Arafat’s PLO in the wake of Begin and Sharon’s slaughter a year prior. Thanks to Syrian patronage, his combat victory led him into total obscurity and into early retirement in Damascus. Read more about Abu Mazen: America's Tribute to Hafez Assad
Now, with the Israel-Hizbollah war a stalemate at best and the Israeli deterrence at a historic nadir, Olmert and Bush know that the Israeli public has lost its nerve and its stomach for a unilateral withdrawal from one inch of the West Bank. Twenty years elapsed between the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the first intifada. Eight years elapsed between the start of the Oslo process and the second intifada. The Gaza withdrawal has only exacerbated the Palestinians’ suffering, and without a diplomatic track to speak of, a third intifada is imminent, one that likely will not be constrained by the sham of Palestinian self-governance. Read more about Deepening the fault lines
As Lebanon and Gaza burn and the laws of war are violated with impunity, the terrible erosion of international law represents a critical challenge for the international community. Reflecting on the South African apartheid regime’s efforts to gain supremacy in South Africa and the Southern African region, Jeff Handmaker and Bangani Ngeleza argue it is imperative that we continually raise our voices against Israel’s brazen impunity until a real and lasting ceasefire is in place, war criminals are brought to justice and the Israeli regime is held accountable for decades of repression and regional destabilisation. In doing so, we will surely find a true humanity. Read more about In search of a true humanity
Several Arab officials intimated after the unanimous UN Security Council vote for resolution 1701, intended to stop Israel’s unjust war on Lebanon, that it was time to build on this rare Arab “diplomatic triumph” by reopening the file of the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the question of Palestine. This logic is faulty and imprudent, despite all its luring appearance. Not every old man with a white beard is wise, after all. Most Arabs, Palestinians included, have vied for years to snatch the Palestine question away from U.S.-Israeli clenching claws and return it to where it formally started: the United Nations. Read more about Time to Reopen the Palestine File at the UN? Not Yet!
It occurred to me as I watched the story unfolding on my TV, of a suspected plot by a group of at least 20 British Muslims to blow up planes between the UK and America, that the course of my life and that of the alleged “terrorists” may have run in parallel in more ways than one. Like a number of them, I am originally from High Wycombe, one of the non-descript commuter towns that ring London. As the TV showed aerial shots wheeling above the tiled roof of a semi-detached house there, I briefly thought I was looking at my mother’s home. But, doubtless, my and their lives have diverged in numerous ways. So, even though we may have been neighbours of a sort in High Wycombe, my life and theirs probably had few points of contact. Read more about How I found myself standing with the Islamic fascists
