The message delivered to Condoleezza Rice this week by Israeli officials is that the humanitarian and economic disaster befalling Gaza has a single, reversible cause: the capture by Palestinian fighters of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in late June from a perimeter artillery position that had been shelling Gaza. When Shalit is returned, negotiations can start, or so Rice was told by Israel’s defence minister, Amir Peretz. If Peretz and others are to be believed, the gunmen could have done themselves and the 1.4 million people of Gaza a favour and simply executed Shalit weeks ago. Read more about The struggle for Palestine's soul
For over a decade now, since the Oslo Agreement signed by the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1993, the Palestinians, along with much of the world, have been laboring under a couple of misapprehensions. One is that, with Oslo, Israel had at long last recognized their aspirations, even if only partially. The other is that their leaders, as embodied by the presidency and the government that arose, had the wherewithal to move them towards a full-fledged Palestinian state on the 1967 borders in the face of Israel’s grand plans and intentions in the region. It’s the classic syndrome of desperate people believing what they want to believe. Read more about Paralysis of the Palestinian 'Authority': What's to be done?
A mistake too often made by those examining Israel’s behaviour in the occupied territories — or when analysing its treatment of Arabs in general, or interpreting its view of Iran — is to assume that Israel is acting in good faith. Even its most trenchant critics can fall into this trap. Such a reluctance to attribute bad faith was demonstrated this week by Israel’s foremost human rights group, B’Tselem, when it published a report into the bombing by the Israeli air force of Gaza’s power plant in late June. Jonathan Cook comments. Read more about Bad faith and the destruction of Palestine
The Quartet (along with the international community generally) has failed to enable the Palestinian president to act credibly towards the goal of making “progress towards a two-state solution through dialogue and parallel implementation of obligations.”Anyone following the news from the occupied Palestinian territory would think that it is the Hamas-led government that is preventing the Palestinian president from achieving “credible” progress towards a two-state solution. In the present charged political divisions among Palestinians, even a large percentage of the economically deprived and hounded population is being persuaded to clutch at this straw. Read more about Seeing the forest for the trees
The trajectory of a long-running campaign that gave birth this month to the preposterous all-party British parliamentary report into anti-Semitism in the UK can be traced back to intensive lobbying by the Israeli government that began more than four years ago, in early 2002. At that time, as Ariel Sharon was shredding the tattered remains of the Oslo accords by reinvading West Bank towns handed over to the Palestinian Authority in his destructive rampage known as Operation Defensive Shield, he drafted the Israeli media into the fray. Local newspapers began endlessly highlighting concerns about the rise of a “new anti-Semitism”, a theme that was rapidly and enthusiastically taken up by the muscular Zionist lobby in the US. Read more about How Israel's 'new anti-Semitism' is encouraging nuclear Holocaust
Guess whose words these are: “Starting this war was a scandal…It was possible to solve the problem of the missiles in South Lebanon by diplomatic means…The offensive of the last two days of the war, in which 33 soldiers were killed after the cease-fire resolution had already been accepted, was a spin of the Prime Minister The Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense and the Chief-of-Staff must resign…” Right, it was Gush Shalom. But that’s not new. What is new is that yesterday, the former Chief-of-Staff, Moshe Ya’alon, repeated these statements, almost word for word. Read more about Israeli government fears peace initiatives
How is the current situation in Palestine/Israel similar to that of apartheid-era South Africa? How is it different? Is Zionism a form of racism? What can we learn from the South African experience to strengthen and empower the movement for justice and peace in Palestine/Israel? Leading South African Muslim theologian and anti-apartheid activist Farid Esack addressed these questions in a timely, engaging and moving lecture at Oak Park Public Library in Illinois on September 6, 2006, organized by the Committee for Justice and Peace in Israel and Palestine. Listen to the audio podcast of this important lecture brought to you by EI. Read more about "It's much worse": Anti-Apartheid Activist Farid Esack Speaks on Palestine and South Africa
Israel is close to implementing a long-term plan to transform the demographic structure of annexed East Jerusalem. Policies to revoke the residency permits of Palestinian Jerusalemites and to Judaise the city have been described as ethnic cleansing. After victory in the 1967 Six Day war, Israel annexed East Jerusalem - that part of the city that had been under Jordanian rule since the end of the British Mandate in 1948 - together with an additional 64 square kilometres which had been part of the West Bank. Jerusalem thus became Israel’s largest city and was declared to be its ‘united and eternal capital’. Read more about 'Quiet transfer' in East Jerusalem nears completion
Three weeks after the cease-fire, the political situation in Israel may be described as one of imminent collapse. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, and Army Chief of Staff Dan Halutz have fallen to the depths in public opinion. A full 63% of the people think Olmert ought to resign; 74% want Peretz’s head, 54% Halutz’s. Israelis live today with a sense of failure. They search for the source of the “lapse” (mekhdal) - a term much used to describe the disaster of October 1973 (the “Yom Kippur War”). A protest movement of reservists has arisen, divided between those who demand a State Commission of Inquiry and those who call for resignations. Read more about The First Post-Zionist War
A genocide is taking place in Gaza. This morning, 2 September, another three citizens of Gaza were killed and a whole family wounded in Beit Hanoun. This is the morning reap, before the end of day many more will be massacred. An average of eight Palestinian die daily in the Israeli attacks on the Strip. Most of them are children. Hundreds are maimed, wounded and paralyzed. The inhuman living conditions in the most dense area in the world, and one of the poorest human spaces in the northern hemisphere, disables the people who live it to reconcile with the imprisonment Israel had imposed on them ever since 1967. There were relative better periods where movement to the West Bank and into Israel for work was allowed, but these better times are gone. Read more about Genocide in Gaza
