God bless Amira Hass. As ever she is on the cutting edge – exposing lies in the official narrative that we’ve heard so often that they’ve become a part of general wisdom.
The apartheid wall, the checkpoints, the permit restrictions – all seem to be designed to protect ordinary Israelis from suicide bombers and other forms of Palestinian aggression. Hass puts the lie to the entire package!
Father Dave
Amira Hass
source: www.haaretz.com…
Israeli crackdown on Palestinian mobility began well before suicide bombings
Most Israelis labor under the misconception that restrictions on Palestinian movement were a result of suicide bombings, but they started long before that.
“I didn’t know you were such an empiricist,” a friend told me impatiently, a veteran peace activist with a doctorate, when I insisted at some meeting on specifying the prohibitions on the movement of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
That was in 1995, and he thought I didn’t see the big picture, the positive direction, the vision, the beat of the wings of history, and instead was merely insisting on going into detail, into temporary malfunctions. He wasn’t alone in thinking that. One of my editors at the time told me I lacked perspective because I lived in Gaza, and so my reports looked the way they did. In short, wearisome.
The signs were there right from the start − signs that the so much talked-about Peace Process was a process of subjugation; signs that Israel intended to impose on the other side an agreement whose terms were far from the Palestinian minimum, and far from what many countries in the world envisioned as a two-state solution.
But it was hard for these signs to infiltrate public awareness (as well as the Israeli and international media) through the powerful interest in seeing the outward manifestations of something that you believe exists: in Gazans bathing in the sea; in the head of the Israeli Shin Bet security service meeting with the head of the Palestinian security service; in Shimon Peres visiting Gaza; in joint security patrols; and in our soldiers no longer patrolling in the heart of the Palestinian towns.
From the supposedly narrow perspective of the Strip, though, the reality of incarceration was, looked and felt like the complete opposite of a peace process.
The chronology is important here − I’ve repeated it countless times and will repeat it countless more times − because local readers like to think that the blanket prohibitions on Palestinian mobility were a response to the suicide attacks from 1994 on. That is not the case.
It began in January 1991, on the eve of the Gulf War. The Israel Defense Forces GOC Central and Southern Commands then revoked an earlier order, from the 1970s, of a “general exit permit to Israel” − in other words, one that allowed the Palestinian residents of the occupied territory to enter Israel, and move freely within its borders and between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Initially, the revocation was interpreted as something temporary, a preventive measure during the unclear period of wartime. But after a lengthy curfew, the residents of the Strip woke up to a new reality. If up until 1991 Israel had respected (for reasons of its own) the right to freedom of movement for all Palestinians, but withheld it from a few people, after 1991 the situation was reversed: Israel denied all Palestinians (those in the West Bank as well) the right to freedom of movement, aside from a few groups and numbers that it determined.
Since then, this is the rule in effect, aside from shifts in the various categories and specific numbers of those permitted to leave. The expectation that signing the transfer of powers from the Civil Administration to the Palestinian Authority in May 1994 would restore freedom of movement was soon dashed. That was the first clear sign.
Incarceration within the Gaza Strip bagged several birds during this process of subjugation:
Just how important and deliberate that fourth step was may be gleaned from two other signs. Under the Oslo Accords, the PA has the power to change a person’s home address on his or her identity card, and only has to report the change to the Civil Administration (as the representative of Israeli’s Interior Ministry), which enters the new details in the database of its Population Registry. But in 1996, it emerged that Israel was refusing to register address changes from Gaza to the West Bank.
In 1997, another military order was issued: Gazans now needed a permit even when entering the West Bank via the Allenby Bridge. That closed a loophole which students and others had exploited until then: They would depart Gaza through Egypt, fly to Jordan, and then continue westward, through the Allenby Bridge crossing.
‘No reason to leave’
As early as 1995 I asked a woman in the Israeli security establishment why, if “confidence-building measures” between the Palestinians and Israel had been declared, there would be no easing up with respect to mobility permits and the convoluted bureaucracy that developed around them. Why not, for example, grant women and children exit permits that were valid for a year − if not to Israel, then at least to the West Bank? This woman, though not a decision maker, was placed in the right junction to answer my question: “Because they have no reason to leave,” she told me, honestly.
Clerks and junior officers in the system hear and grasp what is planned in the corridors of power, but are less careful than their superiors about what they say, and do not bother to hide certain intentions. In 1997, when I was already in the West Bank, I started to become acquainted with the traditional Palestinian farming communities in the Jordan Valley, whose tent encampments and shacks had been systematically destroyed by the Civil Administration’s inspectors and soldiers.
Several of the people whose homes had been demolished told me: “I asked the inspector, ‘So where will we go now that you’ve destroyed our home?’ And he replied: ‘Go to Arafat, go to Area A [the small area which was then designed to be under Palestinian administrative-civilian control].’”
These soldiers also divulged the intentions of their superiors. To this day, 16 years later, that is the policy behind the destruction of the water cisterns and of tent encampments there. To this day, that is the state’s answer to the High Court of Justice in petitions by residents of the southern Hebron Hills against intentions to evict them from their communities: “They have somewhere to live in Area A.”
“Area A” and “Area B” (under Palestinian civil control and Israeli military control) are the code names for the Palestinian enclaves that formed in the past 20 years − the years of the “peace process.” The Israeli battle to create the detached and separate Gaza enclave succeeded better than expected when Hamas − aided by foolish decisions of the PA − created its own separate institutions of government.
The Israeli campaign strategy to create Palestinian enclaves in the West Bank has also been crowned a great success, and its name is Area C (which is under full Israeli administrative and security control). Areas A, B and C were established in the Oslo Accords as purely temporary categories, to mark the gradual nature by which the military forces would leave the Palestinians’ territory. Fourteen years later, Area C − the last area the military was supposed to vacate (in 1999) − still covers about 62 percent of the West Bank, and is the expansion space reserved for the outposts, settlements, industrial zones and multilane highways. Permanent and sacred and ours, like the Temple Mount.
- Separation and creation of distance between senior officials and ordinary folks by granting “generous” mobility permits to a select class of Palestinians: freedom of movement for senior PA officials who came from abroad and gave no thought to the reality that existed before, without a need for permits, and to several prisoners who had been released and positioned themselves high in the PA leadership;
- Satisfying the PA and then PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s sense of pseudo-control − closing the crossings and requesting permits necessitated coordination between the Civil Administration and its Palestinian twin (the Ministry of Civil Affairs);
- Giving the PA a chance to develop the commercial monopolies of its people and cronies − by sheer dint of the need to coordinate exits between the PA and Israel;
- Most important of all: Severing the society in Gaza from that of the West Bank. In other words, undermining the basic condition for a Palestinian state, in both parts of the territory conquered in 1967.
Just how important and deliberate that fourth step was may be gleaned from two other signs. Under the Oslo Accords, the PA has the power to change a person’s home address on his or her identity card, and only has to report the change to the Civil Administration (as the representative of Israeli’s Interior Ministry), which enters the new details in the database of its Population Registry. But in 1996, it emerged that Israel was refusing to register address changes from Gaza to the West Bank.
Filed under israel and palestine conflict by on Apr 2nd, 2013. Comment. 
This is an excellent essay by Joseph Levine – a professor of Philosophy and a Jew.
Levine raises a question generally considered to be off-limits to right-thinking people – ‘Does Israel have a right to exist?’ To even raise the question is generally considered to be Antisemitic, but Levine questions this.
His case is well argued, as you’d expect from a philosophy professor, but the important thing is not to agree with him but to recognise that the questions he raises are legitimate subjects for debate!
Father Dave
Prof. Joseph Levine, University of Massachusetts (image: University website www.umass.edu…)
source: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/09/on-questioning-the-jewish-state/
On Questioning the Jewish State
I was raised in a religious Jewish environment, and though we were not strongly Zionist, I always took it to be self-evident that “Israel has a right to exist.” Now anyone who has debated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will have encountered this phrase often. Defenders of Israeli policies routinely accuse Israel’s critics of denying her right to exist, while the critics (outside of a small group on the left, where I now find myself) bend over backward to insist that, despite their criticisms, of course they affirm it. The general mainstream consensus seems to be that to deny Israel’s right to exist is a clear indication of anti-Semitism (a charge Jews like myself are not immune to), and therefore not an option for people of conscience.
Over the years I came to question this consensus and to see that the general fealty to it has seriously constrained open debate on the issue, one of vital importance not just to the people directly involved — Israelis and Palestinians — but to the conduct of our own foreign policy and, more important, to the safety of the world at large. My view is that one really ought to question Israel’s right to exist and that doing so does not manifest anti-Semitism. The first step in questioning the principle, however, is to figure out what it means.
One problem with talking about this question calmly and rationally is that the phrase “right to exist” sounds awfully close to “right to life,” so denying Israel its right to exist sounds awfully close to permitting the extermination of its people. In light of the history of Jewish persecution, and the fact that Israel was created immediately after and largely as a consequence of the Holocaust, it isn’t surprising that the phrase “Israel’s right to exist” should have this emotional impact. But as even those who insist on the principle will admit, they aren’t claiming merely the impermissibility of exterminating Israelis. So what is this “right” that many uphold as so basic that to question it reflects anti-Semitism and yet is one that I claim ought to be questioned?
The key to the interpretation is found in the crucial four words that are often tacked on to the phrase “Israel’s right to exist” — namely, “… as a Jewish state.” As I understand it, the principle that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state has three parts: first, that Jews, as a collective, constitute a people in the sense that they possess a right to self-determination; second, that a people’s right to self-determination entails the right to erect a state of their own, a state that is their particular people’s state; and finally, that for the Jewish people the geographical area of the former Mandatory Palestine, their ancestral homeland, is the proper place for them to exercise this right to self-determination.
The claim then is that anyone who denies Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is guilty of anti-Semitism because they are refusing to grant Jews the same rights as other peoples possess. If indeed this were true, if Jews were being singled out in the way many allege, I would agree that it manifests anti-Jewish bias. But the charge that denying Jews a right to a Jewish state amounts to treating the Jewish people differently from other peoples cannot be sustained.
To begin, since the principle has three parts, it follows that it can be challenged in (at least) three different ways: either deny that Jews constitute “a people” in the relevant sense, deny that the right to self-determination really involves what advocates of the principle claim it does, or deny that Jews have the requisite claim on the geographical area in question.
In fact, I think there is a basis to challenge all three, but for present purposes I will focus on the question of whether a people’s right to self-determination entails their right to a state of their own, and set aside whether Jews count as a people and whether Jews have a claim on that particular land. I do so partly for reasons of space, but mainly because these questions have largely (though not completely) lost their importance.
The fact is that today millions of Jews live in Israel and, ancestral homeland or not, this is their home now. As for whether Jews constitute a people, this is a vexed question given the lack of consensus in general about what it takes for any particular group of people to count as “a people.” The notion of “a people” can be interpreted in different ways, with different consequences for the rights that they possess. My point is that even if we grant Jews their peoplehood and their right to live in that land, there is still no consequent right to a Jewish state.
However, I do think that it’s worth noting the historical irony in insisting that it is anti-Semitic to deny that Jews constitute a people. The 18th and 19th centuries were the period of Jewish “emancipation” in Western Europe, when the ghetto walls were torn down and Jews were granted the full rights of citizenship in the states within which they resided. The anti-Semitic forces in those days, those opposing emancipation, were associated not with denying Jewish peoplehood but with emphatically insisting on it! The idea was that since Jews constituted a nation of their own, they could not be loyal citizens of any European state. The liberals who strongly opposed anti-Semitism insisted that Jews could both practice their religion and uphold their cultural traditions while maintaining full citizenship in the various nation-states in which they resided.
But, as I said, let’s grant that Jews are a people. Well, if they are, and if with the status of a people comes the right to self-determination, why wouldn’t they have a right to live under a Jewish state in their homeland? The simple answer is because many non-Jews (rightfully) live there too. But this needs unpacking.
First, it’s important to note, as mentioned above, that the term “a people” can be used in different ways, and sometimes they get confused. In particular, there is a distinction to be made between a people in the ethnic sense and a people in the civic sense. Though there is no general consensus on this, a group counts as a people in the ethnic sense by virtue of common language, common culture, common history and attachment to a common territory. One can easily see why Jews, scattered across the globe, speaking many different languages and defined largely by religion, present a difficult case. But, as I said above, for my purposes it doesn’t really matter, and I will just assume the Jewish people qualify.
The other sense is the civic one, which applies to a people by virtue of their common citizenship in a nation-state or, alternatively, by virtue of their common residence within relatively defined geographic borders. So whereas there is both an ethnic and a civic sense to be made of the term “French people,” the term “Jewish people” has only an ethnic sense. This can easily be seen by noting that the Jewish people is not the same group as the Israeli people. About 20 percent of Israeli citizens are non-Jewish Palestinians, while the vast majority of the Jewish people are not citizens of Israel and do not live within any particular geographic area. “Israeli people,” on the other hand, has only a civic sense. (Of course often the term “Israelis” is used as if it applies only to Jewish Israelis, but this is part of the problem. More on this below.)
So, when we consider whether or not a people has a right to a state of their own, are we speaking of a people in the ethnic sense or the civic one? I contend that insofar as the principle that all peoples have the right to self-determination entails the right to a state of their own, it can apply to peoples only in the civic sense.
After all, what is it for a people to have a state “of their own”? Here’s a rough characterization: the formal institutions and legal framework of the state serves to express, encourage and favor that people’s identity. The distinctive position of that people would be manifested in a number of ways, from the largely symbolic to the more substantive: for example, it would be reflected in the name of the state, the nature of its flag and other symbols, its national holidays, its education system, its immigration rules, the extent to which membership in the people in question is a factor in official planning, how resources are distributed, etc. If the people being favored in this way are just the state’s citizens, it is not a problem. (Of course those who are supercosmopolitan, denying any legitimacy to the borders of nation-states, will disagree. But they aren’t a party to this debate.)
But if the people who “own” the state in question are an ethnic sub-group of the citizenry, even if the vast majority, it constitutes a serious problem indeed, and this is precisely the situation of Israel as the Jewish state. Far from being a natural expression of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, it is in fact a violation of the right to self-determination of its non-Jewish (mainly Palestinian) citizens. It is a violation of a people’s right to self-determination to exclude them — whether by virtue of their ethnic membership, or for any other reason — from full political participation in the state under whose sovereignty they fall. Of course Jews have a right to self-determination in this sense as well — this is what emancipation was all about. But so do non-Jewish peoples living in the same state.
Any state that “belongs” to one ethnic group within it violates the core democratic principle of equality, and the self-determination rights of the non-members of that group.
If the institutions of a state favor one ethnic group among its citizenry in this way, then only the members of that group will feel themselves fully a part of the life of the state. True equality, therefore, is only realizable in a state that is based on civic peoplehood. As formulated by both Jewish- and Palestinian-Israeli activists on this issue, a truly democratic state that fully respects the self-determination rights of everyone under its sovereignty must be a “state of all its citizens.”
This fundamental point exposes the fallacy behind the common analogy, drawn by defenders of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, between Israel’s right to be Jewish and France’s right to be French. The appropriate analogy would instead be between France’s right to be French (in the civic sense) and Israel’s right to be Israeli.
I conclude, then, that the very idea of a Jewish state is undemocratic, a violation of the self-determination rights of its non-Jewish citizens, and therefore morally problematic. But the harm doesn’t stop with the inherently undemocratic character of the state. For if an ethnic national state is established in a territory that contains a significant number of non-members of that ethnic group, it will inevitably face resistance from the land’s other inhabitants. This will force the ethnic nation controlling the state to resort to further undemocratic means to maintain their hegemony. Three strategies to deal with resistance are common: expulsion, occupation and institutional marginalization. Interestingly, all three strategies have been employed by the Zionist movement: expulsion in 1948 (and, to a lesser extent, in 1967), occupation of the territories conquered in 1967 and institution of a complex web of laws that prevent Israel’s Palestinian citizens from mounting an internal challenge to the Jewish character of the state. (The recent outrage in Israel over a proposed exclusion of ultra-Orthodox parties from the governing coalition, for example, failed to note that no Arab political party has ever been invited to join the government.) In other words, the wrong of ethnic hegemony within the state leads to the further wrong of repression against the Other within its midst.
There is an unavoidable conflict between being a Jewish state and a democratic state. I want to emphasize that there’s nothing anti-Semitic in pointing this out, and it’s time the question was discussed openly on its merits, without the charge of anti-Semitism hovering in the background.
Joseph Levine is a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he teaches and writes on philosophy of mind, metaphysics and political philosophy. He is the author of “Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness.”
Filed under Israel and Palestine, israel and palestine conflict by on Mar 17th, 2013. Comment.
The day of US-Israeli hegemony in the Middle East may well be drawing to a close. The United Nations decided not to wait for Uncle Sam to broker a deal before declaring Palestine a nation state, and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and its member states seem ready to take the initiative in seeing the Israel-Palestine impasse resolved.
The role of Egypt’s President Morsi has been crucial in recent months – visiting Gaza and now hosting the OIC meeting – and now Bangladesh has joined the chorus, demanding full statehood for Palestine.
Of course both Obama and Kerry are putting a renewed effort into restating their ‘peace process’ but have they left their run too late?
Father Dave
source: bdnews24.com…
‘Back a sovereign Palestine’
Foreign Minister Dipu Moni has called upon the Muslim world to support Palestine in ‘a result-oriented’ way to make it a sovereign state that Bangladesh backs ‘unequivocally’.
She made the call while speaking at a special session titled ‘Israeli Settlements on Occupied Palestinian Land’ on Sunday during the 12th Islamic Summit Conference of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Cairo.
According to a media release, Dipu Moni reiterated “unequivocal support of Bangladesh for a fully sovereign Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
“She called upon all OIC member states to extend support to Palestine in a more useful and constructive manner with a result-oriented approach,” it said.
The Bangladesh Foreign Minister condemned the repression of Palestinians by Israeli authorities “through cold-blooded policy of settlements in the occupied land of Palestine that is a glaring affront to the values of human rights and human conscience.”
read the rest of this article here: bdnews24.com…
Filed under Israel and Palestine, israel and palestine conflict, map of israel and palestine by on Feb 10th, 2013. Comment.
A number of leading American liberal Zionists were jubilant at the Israeli election result. A press-release from J Street claimed that Israel had voted for a government that would “revive the peace process with the Palestinians and make vital moves to “save” Israel”.
Meanwhile, at the coal-face, nothing has changed. The video below documents a woman and her 18-month-old baby being arrested for the crime of trying to cultivate their own land in the West Bank.
Alex Kane writes in Mondoweiss that the liberal Zionists are delusional:
“their rhetoric about the outcome of the elections represents a fantasy with little bearing in the reality of what the Israeli government is and will continue to be: a settlement expanding, occupation supporting right-wing government that is committed to the suppression of Palestinian rights within the Green Line and in the West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli government, in other words, will remain committed to the status quo of apartheid.”
Father Dave
If you can’t view this video, click here
Indeed the occupation of the ‘Little Town of Bethelem’ is an indictment against the Western church. Why is it that most Western Christians treat the suffering of our sisters and brothers in Bethlehem with such callous indifference? Father Dave
source: www.huffingtonpost.com……
Christmas in Bethlehem: Image and Reality, 2012
by Philip Farah
Co-founder, Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace
If you have a miniature manger in your home today, or if you’ve heard a piece of music in the mall with “Bethlehem” in it, I — as a Palestinian Christian in whose life Bethlehem has played a big role — have a favor to ask you: Please go to your computer and do a search using these words: “Bethlehem Christmas wall.” Check out some of the articles and the images. If your curiosity is piqued, go a bit further and check out the images for “al Masara village,” or “al Walaja village,” two tiny villages near Bethlehem. I think this is an important exercise for anyone who has formed a mental image of the Little Town of Bethlehem during this holiday season.
Today, Bethlehem and the surrounding areas still have some of the holiest churches of Christianity, and they still vibrate with the prayers and celebrations of Palestinian Christians. But the Palestinians of Bethlehem, Christians and Muslims alike, are a people besieged. For Bethlehem today is surrounded by a host of physical barriers, including several miles of a concrete wall that is over 20 feet high, built by the Israeli occupation authorities.
This wall — deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004 — separates the Palestinians of the Bethlehem area from huge swaths of their land. Much of that land has been taken from them to build Jewish-only settlements that are also illegal under international law. These Jewish settlements surround the Palestinian communities of the Bethlehem area, hemming them into a limited geographic area, like a tiny Bantustan, isolating them from occupied East Jerusalem, the economic, cultural, and spiritual heart of Palestinian life. Just this week, the Israeli government announced that it had approved plans for new construction in the nascent settlement of Givat Hamatos, which lies between East Jerusalem and Bethlehem, a move swiftly condemned by European diplomats as a “game changer” that could end the possibility of creating a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
I was born and raised in East Jerusalem. For many years before I emigrated to the U.S., I accompanied my father, a devout Christian, on his annual walk from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Back in the late 1930s, he made a vow to make the five-mile journey by foot every New Year’s Eve. If I were to do the same thing today, I would be confronted by a wall that’s higher than, and as ugly as, the Berlin Wall, just a few minutes after departing. For the people of Bethlehem, the wall is far worse, because few of them are allowed beyond it to visit their holy sites in occupied East Jerusalem.
The images that you’ll see from my suggested web search are the reality of Bethlehem today. In your search, you might also see images of Palestinians involved in a non-violent struggle against the demeaning and pauperizing conditions of Israel’s 45-year-old military occupation and colonization of their land. The leaders of the non-violent Palestinian resistance against the wall in the villages of Masara and Walaja will often mention Gandhi and Martin Luther King in their discourse. These two leaders practiced very confrontational resistance, not the passive resistance that is associated with Jesus. But Gandhi and MLK never preached hatred against their oppressors, and today, the people of Bethlehem, Masara and Walaja welcome Israeli Jews who stand shoulder to shoulder with them in opposing the injustices of the occupation.
The reality of Bethlehem today has a great deal more to do with the message of the man that Christians refer to as the “Prince of Peace” than the Disney-like images of Bethlehem we see in our shopping malls. Jesus actually lived under an oppressive Roman occupation of his country. He identified the most with the poor and oppressed, and he preached equality between Jews — his own people, Samaritans and Gentiles. During this Christmas season, spare a thought and a prayer for Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians, who continue to struggle against injustice and oppression in the name of freedom, equality, and peace.
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