Israel-Palestine Historical Discussion

[Ian]

I love history

Why bother delving into history?

FANIA OZ-SALZBERGER August 12, 2014, 3:14 pm 74
  
It is extremely difficult, these days, to be a politically moderate Israeli. As I publish and post my views on the Gaza war in newspapers and social networks, the amount of hate messages I receive, from both right and left, pro-Israelis and pro-Palestinians, is astounding.

For more than ten years I have been writing and speaking on European-Israeli dialogue, often in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I am by now experienced in distinguishing between criticism of Israeli policies (which I often accept), sympathy for innocent victims of the conflict (which I strongly share), and stark, ignorant, generalizing “Anti-Israelismus” which easily lapses into full-fledged anti-Semitism.

The current war in Gaza has let all the demons out of their bottles once again. Peace-loving Israelis – and there are many of us – are caught between scylla and charybdis. Let me show you how this is acting out online, in my Twitter and Facebook accounts, and in comments to my articles.

As hostilities broke out I wrote that I grieve for all innocent Gazan victims of this conflict, especially the children, without any excuses, “buts”, or symmetries. Many people took my point at face value. Others, Arabs and Europeans, told me that my tears are crocodile tears and that Jews are performing genocide against Palestinians.

Jews. Not Israelis. The millions of Jews living outside Israel are as “uninvolved” as Gazan civilians, but they are currently accused, threatened and physically attacked for being Jews, hence guilty by association. An American or a Syrian can walk safely in the streets of Paris, Rome, and Berlin despite the killing of many civilians by the US army in Iraq or by Assad’s troops in Syria. A Jew wearing a kippa can no longer do that. If this is not anti-Semitism, what is?

Genocide. Not a bad, dirty war. Not a standoff between a regular army defending its civil population and a terrorist militia shooting from amidst a massive, poor and unprotected urban hub.

Make no mistake: the Israeli army certainly used excessive force and killed hundreds of innocents while trying to target militants and missiles, but Hamas made sure that its militants and missiles are placed right in the midst of its civilians. Those hapless civilians have no bomb shelters (the Gaza aid money went elsewhere, and construction materials were used to build attack tunnels), and they are often forced by Hamas to stay put when pre-warned by the Israeli army to move out.

These are the facts. Dirty war indeed. Even just wars – and I strongly believe that Israel had a casus belli for responding to the barrage of Hamas rockets launched on Israel in the last month – can become dirty wars. Jus ad bellum does not ensure jus in bello. But Genocide – no.

This couplet, “Jews” and “Genocide,” is becoming ever more popular these days in the hate-speech of certain Arabs and certain Europeans, who are eager to undo the Holocaust memory (mistaken by many of them for an invented Israeli alibi for aggression), and turn the Jews into mass killers. I would like to think that no German accepts this excuse for dimming and eradicating the real Holocaust, but I know that some Germans do.

Did anyone in Gaza, I wonder, ever get away with opposing assaults on innocent Israelis? Go unpunished for expressing sorrow for the dozens of Israeli children slaughtered by Palestinian suicide bombers in the last ten years? No need to wonder: the answer is no. Any Gazan opposing the Hamas war against Israelis, or merely questioning the wisdom of this war in view of the unfolding Gaza calamity, is punished as a traitor. Hamas silences its own people by execution.

Being moderate, as Aristotle already noted, does not mean being in the exact middle. Reality is never symmetrical.

For one thing, Hamas is far worse, as a government, than any Israeli government has ever been. The militants of Hamas and Islamic jihad in Gaza are far more brutal, on the ground, than the Israeli army. They surround their fighters with children, store their arsenal in schools and hospitals, including UNRWA institutions, and threaten or kick out any journalists who dare report it. They deliberately aim their rockets at Israeli kindergartens and clinics. If they had Israel’s air force and artillery power, the ensuing massacre of Israelis would dwarf anything we see in Gaza today. When I write these truths, some commentators brand it as Israeli propaganda. But I’d make a lousy propagandist. As a critical member of civil society, I never accept the official reports of my government and army wholesale, but truths are truths whatever their source.

Since Hamas is, fortunately, too weak, civilian suffering is asymmetrical too. Gaza is a disaster area. Israel is partially responsible. Saying this, with the crucial addition that Hamas is far more blameworthy, will remain true regardless of denials on either side. If Hamas and Hezbollah had the firepower and knowhow that Israel today has, I would not be writing these words. I’d be dead. Some “pro-Palestinians” would not mind that, for sure.

Let me be crystal-clear: I am pro-Gaza, wishing it peace, freedom and prosperity. I am anti-Hamas, wishing it to go to hell.

Both Israel and Hamas have failed miserably, so far, in two of their declared missions: Hamas failed in its attempt to kill Israeli children, while Israel failed in its attempt not to kill Gazan children. This, too, is part of the asymmetry of our present situation.

But what about the imprisonment of Gazans in their sad, crowded, battered strip of land? Years ago, I published an article in a German newspaper using the metaphor of the neighbor who sits on his balcony, his baby on his lap, shooting into your children’s bedroom. Would you shoot back at him? Yes, you would. My father, Amos Oz, has recently borrowed my metaphor (our family allows such borrowings) to describe the current round of violence.

My own article was intercepted, misquoted and attacked by Israel-bashers. How can I relate to the Gazans as “neighbors” when they are in fact Israel’s prisoners? Typically, the hate-responses ignored the rest of my article, which clearly said that this “neighborhood” situation is far from equal. Misreadings and misquotations are an integral part of anti-Israeliness and anti-Semitism these days. Historical facts are conveniently forgotten. Nuances are not part of the game.

Let me insist: History and nuances are crucial. Gaza’s 1,800,000 residents include many refugees of the 1948 war and their descendants. That war was started by Arabs, who rejected the UN resolution to divide the land into a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. Israel won. Palestinians fled, and some were driven out. For many years, Egypt ruled Gaza and did not allow its refugees to leave or to rebuild their lives. Since 1967 Israel and Egypt share the responsibility for this bad situation. But Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, only to see Hamas taking power and putting southern Israel under a barrage of rockets. Why not negotiate peace? Because Hamas wants Israel demolished and all Jews killed; its Charter says so explicitly. Also, to be fair, because Israeli governments and the Israeli public have grown more hawkish, abandoning hope to reach an agreement even with the relatively moderate Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.

But why bother delving into history? Today’s anti-Semites who masquerade as “anti-Israel” are not interested in history. They want the Holocaust to disappear, and the Jews to be guilty and remain guilty. This is a “new anti-Semitism” indeed, for it targets Israel as its big, bad, mega-Jew. But it is also a timeless, ageless anti-Semitism, because it is meta-historical, powered by psychology rather than facts.

Religion, I’m afraid, often plays an irrational role in this story. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has never been about Judaism and Islam, but about territory and sovereignty. Today, fanatic Islamists have highjacked the Palestinian cause, while extremist orthodox Jews insist on settling every part of the biblical Israel at the expense of compromise. Some radical Christians are entering the fray too, unhelpfully theologizing their unconditional support for one side or the other.

Which is why moderate atheists like myself needs all the support we can get from moderate Muslims, Christians, and observant Jews. The dividing line in the current battle is not between the three religions, nor is it between the religious and the irreligious. It runs – this time it’s my turn to borrow a phrase from my father – between all fanatics and all moderates.

So why bother to raise a moderate voice, look closely at the tragedy of both sides (including the incomparable tragedy in Gaza’s ruined streets), and invoke historical facts, relevant truths, complexities and nuances?

Because I do not believe that most Europeans, or even most Arabs, are willing to be fed by lies and watered by hatred. Because as a scholar of the Enlightenment and a political liberal I believe that rational dialog, twinned with human compassion, is bound to win. Because as a humanist Israeli Jew, and a Zionist believer in the two-state solution, I expect that hope will win.

But only if we help hope win.

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Make no mistake: the Israeli army certainly used excessive force and killed hundreds of innocents while trying to target militants and missiles, but Hamas made sure that its militants and missiles are placed right in the midst of its civilians.

All this concern for “the children” and regret over “collateral damage” and “human shields”.

Talk about double standards and selective memory!

1. International Law

Under international law, foreseeable and inevitable consequences of an act count as intention. When you fire into a residential area, that’s no different than intentionally targeting civilians.

Principle of Distinction, Customary International Humanitarian Law

The parties to the conflict must at all times distinguish between civilians and combatants. Attacks may only be directed against combatants. Attacks must not be directed against civilians.

Yoram Dinstein, former President and Dean of Law, Tel Aviv University

…From the standpoint of LOIAC [Law of International Armed Conflict], there is no genuine difference between a premeditated attack against civilians (or civilian objects) and a reckless disregard of the principle of distinction: they are equally forbidden.

Even if, for argument’s sake, we assume that Israel’s attacks on civilians are unintentional and accordingly that the worst it can be accused of is “reckless disregard of the principle of distinction,” it is still the rankest hypocrisy to require of Hamas that it cease violent attacks yet not put a comparable requirement on Israel to cease what is “equally forbidden.”

“We need to fire into civilian areas because Hamas is using Palestinians as human shields” is a legally indefensible argument under international law.

Another example of “reckless disregard of the principle of distinction” would be Operation cast Lead (’08-09), when the IDF made extensive use of white phosphorous against homes, schools, medical facilities, UN buildings…

White phosphorous fired at a UN school


A Palestinian mother

Everything caught fire. My husband and four of my children burned alive in front of my eyes; my baby girl, Shahed, my only girl, melted in my arms.

2.Targeting Children

Almost 900 children were killed during the Second Intifada (’00-05). This is more than the sum total of Israeli adults + children killed during the same period (around 700).

It seems that, for want of intention, the IDF is really good at killing children.

But are they doing it unintentionally?

Of the first 37 Palestinian children killed in the first month of the Second Intifada, 20 died from direct head shots.

Golda Meir, 4th Prime Minister of Israel

We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children, but we can never forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.

3. Use of Human Shields

This boy was tied to an IDF vehicle to stop other children throwing stones


Another human shield


Another human shield


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Gaza’s 1,800,000 residents include many refugees of the 1948 war and their descendants. That war was started by Arabs, who rejected the UN resolution to divide the land into a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. Israel won. Palestinians fled, and some were driven out. For many years, Egypt ruled Gaza and did not allow its refugees to leave or to rebuild their lives. Since 1967 Israel and Egypt share the responsibility for this bad situation. But Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, only to see Hamas taking power and putting southern Israel under a barrage of rockets.Why not negotiate peace? Because Hamas wants Israel demolished and all Jews killed; its Charter says so explicitly.

1. Zionist ‘Transfer’ vs. the Hamas Charter

Violent territorial displacement and dispossession is a core tenet of Zionism, and the killing of Arabs is understood to be an ‘unfortunate’ but necessary part of that process.

Every time the Hamas Charter is brought up, this fact about Zionism is conveniently glossed over.

Benny Morris, Zionist historian, professor of Judaism in the Middle East Studies department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Transfer was inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism - because it sought to transform a land which was ‘Arab’ into a ‘Jewish’ state, and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of Arab population; and because this aim automatically produced resistance among the Arabs which, in turn, persuaded the Yishuv’s leaders that a hostile Arab majority or large minority could not remain in place if a Jewish state was to arise or safely endure"

David Ben-Gurion, 1st Prime Minister of Israel

[We foresee enormous difficulties] in uprooting by foreign force some 100,000 Arabs from the villages in Galilee which they have inhabited for hundreds of years… We must be prepared to carry out the transfer… We must expel Arabs and take their place, and if we have to use force… then we have force at our disposal… Our strength will exceed theirs and we will be better organized and equipped, because behind us still stands… the whole younger generation of Jews from Europe and America.

Moshe Shertok, 2nd Prime Minister of Israel

The Arab reaction [to the partition idea] would be negative, because they would lose everything and gain almost nothing… they would lose the richest part of Palestine… the orange plantations, the commercial and industrial centers… most of the coastal areas… and [they] would be driven out into the desert.
…
Where would they go? What would they receive in return? This would be such an uprooting, such a shock the likes of which had never occurred before, and could drown the whole thing in rivers of blood.

2. Why not negotiate peace?

Yes, “they don’t even WANT peace”… that old Netanyahu argument.

a) Borders

Well in November last year, Israel announced that there will not be a state based on the 1967 borders and that the "temporary" Separation Wall will become the new border. This is in direct violation of international law.



UN General Assembly resolution 2625 (XXV)

The territory of a State shall not be the object of acquisition by another State resulting from the threat or use of force. No territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal.

President George HW Bush's address on Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. 1990

The acquisition of territory by force is unacceptable.

Israel conquered the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Gaza, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem) during the June 1967 war. These aren’t “disputed territories”, Israel have no legal rights to these territories.

b) Settlements

In January this year, Israel announced plans for an additional 1,400 settler homes. Again, in direct violation of the Geneva Convention and the World Court’s Advisory Opinion.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention

Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.
…
The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

International Court of Justice, Advisory Opinion ‘04

The information provided to the Court shows that, since 1977, Israel has conducted a policy and developed practices involving the establishment of settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
...
The Security Council has taken the view that such policy and practices “have no legal validity” and constitute a “flagrant violation” of the Convention. The Court concludes that the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (including East Jerusalem) have been established in breach of international law.

These are basic principles of international law, i.e. not applicable to some but not others. There’s really nothing contentious here.

c) Security

Ze’ev Maoz
former Head of the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv Unviersity,
former Academic Director of the MA program, IDF National Defense College,
former Chairman of the Department of Political Science, University of Haifa

Israel’s war experience is a story of folly, recklessness, and self-made traps. None of the wars — with a possible exception of the 1948 War of Independence — was what Israel refers to as Milhemet Ein Brerah (‘war of necessity’). They were all wars of choice or folly.
…
Israel’s decision-makers were as reluctant and risk averse when it came to making peace as they were daring and trigger happy when it came to making war. … [T]he official Israeli decision-makers typically did not initiate peace overtures; most of the peace initiatives in the Arab-Israeli conflict came either from the Arab world, from the international community, or from grass-roots and informal channels. … [W]hen Israel was willing to take risks for peace, these usually paid off. The Arabs generally showed a remarkable tendency for compliance with their treaty obligations. In quite a few cases, it was Israel—rather than the Arabs—that violated formal and informal agreements.

Richard Falk, professor Emeritus of International Law, Princeton University

The siege of Gaza is clearly a form of collective punishment that is prohibited by Article 33 of the 4th Geneva Convention that unconditionally prohibits any recourse to collective punishment. A blockade that has been maintained since the middle of 2007 is directed at the entire civilian population of Gaza.
…
The only alternative to using these rockets for defenseless people like those living in Gaza is... to be completely passive. They have no military capability to resist Israel on the ground or in the air or from the sea. So it’s a very one-sided war; and one-sided wars are, in my view, by their very nature, unlawful and constitute crimes against humanity.
…
My impression is that Gaza is a place where there’s no real opportunity to escape from impending attacks. There may have been some lives saved as a result of these warnings. My impression is they’re not given consistently and comprehensively; and furthermore, that in the wider context of Gaza there’s no opportunity for people to become refugees or to even move from points of danger to points of relative safety.
...
There are about 800 Palestinians with dual passports—and they have been allowed to cross the border into Israel.
...
But in general, the 1,700,000 Gazans, they are denied the option of becoming refugees or even of becoming internally displaced persons. And therefore they cannot escape from the fire zone that Israel has created.

Who needs security from whom?

...

And is there any solid evidence that Hamas “started this war”?

According to IDF’s own stats, rockets into south Israel were trending down in the years preceding Operation Protective Edge


And where is the evidence that Hamas kidnapped and killed those three Israeli teenagers?

Hamas denied responsibility (since when do terrorist DENY responsibility? Doesn’t that nullify the whole POINT of terrorism i.e. using violence against non-combatants to further political aims?).

The US State Department denied possession of solid evidence.

Even Israeli police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld admitted that the kidnappings did not occur on the orders of, or with the knowledge of Hamas leadership.

Hossam Kawasmeh, key suspect for having organized the murders, stated during interrogation that “the orders came from him personally”. He later “confessed” under heavy torture that Hamas members in Gaza recruited and financed the killers.

Wtf.

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"Pro-Hamas"

Hamas is obviously not a paragon of morality.

Any organization that intentionally targets civilians for political aims, is terrorist by definition. 

Any organization that wants to impose an archaic legal code from the desert - anti-homosexuality, anti-women's rights, public punishment and executions - belongs on the trash heap of history.

Israel's Right to Exist

Israel clearly has a right to exist. 

The religious argument (Eretz Israel) is superstitious, nationalistic rubbish, the archaeological record is flimsy.

But many states were founded on ridiculous ideas. That doesn't mean the facts speak for themselves, Israelis should be evicted etc.

"Anti-Semitism"

"Jew", "Israeli", and "Zionist" are not interchangeable. This is apparently confusing to some… no idea why.

-There are Jews against Zionism (e.g. Orthodox Jews against the Israeli state).
-There are Israelis against Zionism.
-There are Jews against Jews (e.g. racism towards Indian, Russian, and Ethiopian Jews).

ONLY when you hate Jews for being Jews, irrespective of their actions... does it become anti-Semitism.

You can criticize the Chinese Communist Party without being anti-Chinese, so I think it's quite possible to criticize Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist actions without being a bigot or a racist.

[yeniseri]

This is an exercise and no animals were harmed by me making this statement.
My points are as follows:
1. Israel rightfully won the land when Syria, Jordan, Egypt and the Arabs armies tried to destroy Israel i.e. the spoils of War
2. That being said, one cannot go back to the land one ancestors may have owned 2000 years ago and now pretend it is yours. Can the Qaukers of today, go back and claim the little land they owed in Europe?
3. Askenazim (?) roots have been in Germany for 2-4 centuries and perhaps more. Their homeland is/was Europe until the Troubles.
4. Prior to 1948, each had their respective land area.

If I left any objective facts out, please let me know

[Interloper]

Jews settled in Europe not out of choice, but because they were kicked from land to land and settled wherever they could find a modicum of tolerance. Like the Roma and Sinti, they became a stateless people, and as such were constantly persecuted. The underlying theme of existence became the hope of returning to Samaria and Judea, someday. That's what kept the Sephardim and Ashkenazis going.

A Jewish remnant has existed in the region of Samaria/Judea unbroken from after the final Roman conquest to now, and has always maintained a presence in the region. Though numerically fewer than other Semitic people (the Arabs), they have a historic foothold there. Large swatches of land possessed by Arabs, were also legitimately purchased by Jews prior to the Partition, from warlords and tribal leaders who snickered because they were selling malarial swampland of no value to them. Then the Jews drained the swamps and created thriving farms.

The way I see it, if the American Indians, instead of being pushed onto reservations, had instead dispersed to other countries, then 2,000 years later were given a piece of their original land back, by whatever sovereign country that was in control of it (as the Brits were, in Palestine), that would be kind of like the situation with Israel today, IMO. They have an ancestral, ethnic heritage there, have always had a presence there, were given a piece of the original land back, and they want to keep it.

[Dajenarit]

How can you argue with neo-colonialist, imperialists and their apologists and sympathizers? They're never gonna think what they're doing is wrong or not find a plausible sounding justification for why its ok to bomb people who they've essentially put in an open air cage. The injustice of stealing peoples land will just fly over their collective heads.

Real talk, you don't ask the permission of thieves to take back the shit they stole from you. Negotiations are a nicety in a powerless situation. We're talking about 2000 year old mythologized history? The Palestinians never left Palestine. Like, what are people even talking about? The sheer amount of asshattery and equivocated mouth noise that is created to justify plain old school barbarism makes you not even want to bother discussing it.

The Palestinians don't have the financial and moral support of a superpower for the record..

[yeniseri]

Jews settled in Europe not out of choice, but because they were kicked from land to land and settled wherever they could find a modicum of tolerance. Like the Roma and Sinti, they became a stateless people, and as such were constantly persecuted. The underlying theme of existence became the hope of returning to Samaria and Judea, someday. That's what kept the Sephardim and Ashkenazis going.

A Jewish remnant has existed in the region of Samaria/Judea unbroken from after the final Roman conquest to now, and has always maintained a presence in the region. Though numerically fewer than other Semitic people (the Arabs), they have a historic foothold there. Large swatches of land possessed by Arabs, were also legitimately purchased by Jews prior to the Partition, from warlords and tribal leaders who snickered because they were selling malarial swampland of no value to them. Then the Jews drained the swamps and created thriving farms.

The way I see it, if the American Indians, instead of being pushed onto reservations, had instead dispersed to other countries, then 2,000 years later were given a piece of their original land back, by whatever sovereign country that was in control of it (as the Brits were, in Palestine), that would be kind of like the situation with Israel today, IMO. They have an ancestral, ethnic heritage there, have always had a presence there, were given a piece of the original land back, and they want to keep it.

When TE Lawrence and Gen Allenby entered Gaza around 1916?17?!*? there were no Askenazim! Land legimaitely purchased by individuals is legal.
As stated I will try to stick to objective reality. I have said that when the Arab armies attacked and lost, that land area became Israel. Agreed!

[Michael]

I have said that when the Arab armies attacked and lost, that land area became Israel. Agreed!

Just a historical footnote of tertiary relevance.

Israel had full US intel and surveillance support that was critical to their advanced warning and success in 1967, as well as the coincidence of the Israeli attempted sinking of the US Navy signals intelligence (spy) ship, the USS Liberty during the war. 35 US Navy sailors were killed, 175 injured, but even after hours of strafing and torpedo attacks, the ship somehow managed to stay afloat.

Less than a year later, the US gave Israel so-called "depleted" uranium munitions to play with in the Sinai and they have been doing some great live-fire testing on their neighbors for us ever since.

These are a couple of data points regarding the US support for Israel that can be interpreted as a bit irrational or unusual, which seems to be the theme with creating and supporting a political entity in one of the most volatile regions in the world with the equivalent of an "Ulster", but one that could potentially lead to a wider Middle East war if the entire Security Council does not essentially enforce, and pay for monetarily, a resolution to the conflict.

Now what country is it that prevents the Security Council from doing something like that? Hmmm....could it be the one who overlooked an act of war in 1967 regarding the USS Liberty mentioned above? Does this indicate a totally irrational motive? And are the results of this motive what we see unfolding now?

[Interloper]

Yet another assault on a Jew with no connection to Israel.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/french-jew ... over-gaza/

These are increasing throughout Europe, and it does not bode well. But whereas before 1948 Jews had nowhere to find refuge from anti-Semitic acts of hatred, and impending genocide, now they have Israel. Seeing the handwriting on the wall that dark times are coming again, many Jews are leaving France and other regions for Israel now. That, in and of itself, is the chief reason why Israel's survival is critical to the Jewish people.

[Michael]

Yet another assault on a Jew with no connection to Israel.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/french-jew ... over-gaza/

These are increasing throughout Europe, and it does not bode well. But whereas before 1948 Jews had nowhere to find refuge from anti-Semitic acts of hatred, and impending genocide, now they have Israel. Seeing the handwriting on the wall that dark times are coming again, many Jews are leaving France and other regions for Israel now. That, in and of itself, is the chief reason why Israel's survival is critical to the Jewish people.

Is this part of the history? Or more of current events?

[Dajenarit]

So you're saying every ethnic minority or group that feels oppressed and racially, socially discriminated against, violently in cases, should get their own superpower financed ready built sovereign nation? Hmm... Im sure they're a couple billion people that would sign up for that. People already living on that land for several centuries? Not a problem..since said superpower will finance your war machine every year until your shiny new country is properly ethnically cleansed..

On a side note I thought Arabs were Semitic people also? So Israelis dropping bombs on civilian Arabs and Palestinians makes them pretty much the most anti-Semitic people on the planet right now..

Or is the phrase self hating Semite?

Israel does have a claim on the land along with every other Semitic people. Its just not theirs to rule exclusively. Too bad for them that the millions of other Semites on the land got assimilated into a different culture and converted to a different religion. Thats a problem when you want to create a Jewish supremacist state which Zionists, again wrongly believe, bombs and bullets are gonna solve like every other colonizer in history.

So we're still dealing with the consequences and injustices of stupid, racist decisions made to correct the original injustices in the aftermath of WW2. Which has of course been non stop war ever since. All the parties of course knew the consequences of forcefully taking Palestine going in except the Palestinians, but they get blamed for basically everything that is done to them. The whole argument is just unreal. The Palestinians come to the table time and time again to take the scraps of their own land that Israel and the West give them permission to have. Israel makes all kinds of conditions to make it impossible to accept the terms and then they openly clear as day steal more land and evict more people. To this day they build more illegal settlements while doing everything in their power to make life miserable to every man, woman and child they displace.


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http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/15/ ... not-hamas/

It's Any Possibility of Palestinian Statehood

Israel’s Real Target is Not Hamas

by DAN GLAZEBROOK

All colonial settler states are based on the violent dispossession of the native peoples – and as a result, their fundamental and overriding aim has always been to keep those native peoples as weak as possible. Israel’s aim for the Palestinians is no different.

Palestinian statehood is clearly an obstacle to this goal; a Palestinian state would strengthen the Palestinians. Genuine sovereignty would end Israel’s current presumed right to steal their land, control their borders, place them under siege, and bomb them at will. That is why Netanyahu’s Likud party platform “flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.”; that is why Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated for even suggesting some limited self-governance for the Palestinians; and that is why every proposal for Palestinian statehood, however limited and conditional, has been wilfully sabotaged by successive Israeli governments of all hues.

Within three years of the 1993 Oslo declaration, for example, which promised self-governance for Palestinian areas, foreign minister Ariel Sharon was urging “everyone” to “grab as many hilltops as they can” in order to minimise the size and viability of the area to be administered by Palestinian Authority. The 1999 election of a Labour Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, made no difference, ushering in “a sustained commitment by Israel’s government to avoid full compliance with the Oslo agreement”, according to Jimmy Carter, most notably in the form of the greatest increase in illegal Israeli settlements that had yet taken place. The popular story that Barak had made a ‘generous offer’ on Palestinian statehood at negotiations in Taba in 2001, turned out to be a complete myth.

In the 2000s, the stakes were raised by the discovery of 1.4trillion cubic metres of natural gas in Gaza’s territorial waters, leading Israel to immediately strengthen its maritime blockade of Gaza to prevent Palestinian access to the reserves. But Palestinian sovereignty over this gas would obviously enormously strengthen the economic position of any future Palestinian state – and thus made the Israelis more determined than ever to prevent such a state from coming into being.

The Saudi peace plan, then, in 2002, turned out to be something of a problem for Israel. Accepted by 22 members of the Arab League, and offering complete normalisation of Israeli-Arab relations in exchange for a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders (just 22% of historic Palestine), it was welcomed by the US, and followed up with a statement by George W. Bush in support of a Palestinian state – the first such statement by any US president. This does not imply that the US is in any way committed to genuine Palestinian sovereignty. What the US seeks is rather a thoroughly compromised entity, devoid of all significant attributes of statehood (border control, airspace control, etc) and dependent on Israel, but which it would call a state – and thus would provide the Arab states with a pretext for overt collaboration with Israel . As Jeff Halper has explained, for the US, as for the Saudis, the idea behind the Saudi peace was actually to strengthen Israel, by facilitating Arab support for Israeli-US action against Iran, and thus establishing solid Israeli hegemony across the entire Middle East. In other words, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states wanted a (feeble) Palestinian state to come into existence, in order to justify the collaboration with Zionism being demanded of them by their US masters. But Israel does not particularly want or perceive the need for Arab support. Indeed, the image of the plucky little victim, besieged by ‘hostile enemies’ on all sides, is a fundamental plank of the Israeli national psyche, necessary to ensure the continued identification of the population with the militaristic state and its expansionist policies. And more importantly, in the zero-sum game of settler-vs-native politics, any Palestinian state, however toothless, represents an intolerable retreat for the Zionists.

This problem – of a growing consensus in support of a Palestinian state – was compounded for Israel in 2003, when the so-called “Quartet” (US, the UN, Russia and the EU) produced their ‘roadmap’ for peace, based, like the Saudi plan, on the principle of a Palestinian state being a fundamental prerequisite for lasting peace. Whilst the Israelis publicly accepted the ‘roadmap’, behind the scenes they listed 14 ‘caveats’ and preconditions which rendered it meaningless and unworkable – divide-and-ruin-book-covereffectively refusing to make any concessions whatsoever until the Palestinians were completely disarmed and their major organisations dissolved, whilst other caveats stripped any ‘state’ that might somehow emerge of all major attributes of statehood and sovereignty, just in case.

Since then, there have been various attempts by the US at restarting ‘negotiations’ on this roadmap, despite Israel’s obvious hostility to its declared aim of Palestinian statehood. In the latest round, beginning in July 2013, the Palestinians – who had already conceded the 78% of historic Palestine conquered before 1967 – even agreed to drop their demand that talks should be based on the 1967 borders. Yet none of this made any difference to Israel, who worked hard to scupper the negotiations as best they could. As historian Avi Shlaim put it, “During the nine months of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks orchestrated by secretary of state John Kerry, Netanyahu did not put forward a single constructive proposal and all the while kept expanding Israeli settlements on the West Bank. Kerry and his adviser, General John Allen, drew up a security plan that they thought would enable Israel to withdraw from most of the West Bank. Israel’s serial refusnik dismissed it contemptuously as not worth the paper it was written on.” After nine months of this futile enterprise in self-humiliation, John Kerry threw in the towel in desperation, saying the two sides would have to work it out between themselves.

Israel’s excuse for its reluctance to take negotiations seriously has always rested on two planks: a) Palestinian ‘terrorism’ and b) Palestinian ‘disunity’. Both of these, Israel claims, means it has no ‘partner for peace’; no one to negotiate with – either because they are terrorists, or because there is no single entity representing the Palestinian population who they can talk to. In 2006, following the election of Hamas, the US and EU effectively supported this line, and joined forces with Israel in refusing to recognise Hamas as the governing body of the Palestinian Authority. Likewise, when a unity government was formed with Fatah the following year (combining the two parties who together represented 86% of the popular vote), it was not recognised as legitimate by Israel’s international backers who instead supported a government led by Salam Fayyad, whose party had gained just 2% in the previous year’s election.

However, reaction to the recent unity government announced in April this year was very different. A government of ‘technocrats’ – comprising not a single Hamas member – was endorsed by both Fatah and Hamas in an attempt to end the isolation and strangulation of the Gaza strip. As noted in the Independent at the time, this “new government would “adhere to the conditions of the Middle East Quartet [the EU, UN Russia and US], recognise Israel, ratify all signed agreements and renounce violence” according to a “senior Palestinian official” quoted on the Times of Israel site. As such, it was welcomed by both the US and the EU. Israel no longer had ‘Palestinian disunity’ as an excuse for refusing to engage in peace talks. Nor did they have ‘terrorism’ as an excuse, as Hamas had steadfastly stood by the terms of the 2012 ceasefire, not only ceasing their own rocket fire, but also successfully preventing rocket attacks by other Palestinian groups in Gaza. And all this despite continuous violations of the ceasefire by Israel beginning before the ink was even dry – from a refusal to lift the blockade (as required by the ceasefire terms), to continued attacks on Palestinians, killing 4 and maiming nearly 100 within the first three months of the ‘ceasefire’ alone. Even after Israeli attacks were stepped up over the past year, with four Palestinian children shot dead by Israeli forces between December 2013 and May 2014, including a 15 year old shot in the back from 100m, Hamas held their fire.

Netanyahu’s narrative of negotiations being impossible due to Palestinian terrorism and disunity was being increasingly undermined by reality – and crucially, his US-EU backers were not buying it. The Israeli government responded to the unity government by “what can only be described as economic warfare. It prevented the 43,000 civil servants in Gaza from moving from the Hamas payroll to that of the Ramallah government and it tightened siege round Gaza’s borders thereby nullifying the two main benefits of the merger” (Avi Shlaim). Still Hamas held their fire.

What Netanyahu really needed was a provocation against Hamas to which they would be forced to respond. Such as response would again allow him to paint them as the bloodthirsty terrorists with whom one can never negotiate, would provide the opportunity for another wave of devastation in Gaza, and would exacerbate tensions within the unity government between Fatah and Hamas.

Nine days after the swearing in of the unity government, on June 11th, the IDF made a raid on Gaza in which they killed a 10 year old boy on a bicycle. But still Hamas held their fire.

The following day, however, the apparent kidnapping of three Israeli settlers in the West Bank provided the opportunity for a provocation on an altogether larger scale. Having blamed the kidnapping on Hamas (without ever producing a scrap of evidence), Netanyahu used it as an excuse for an attack on the entire Hamas leadership in the West Bank, while his economy minister Naftali Bennett announced that “We’re turning the membership card for Hamas into a ticket to hell”. Operation Brother’s Keeper did precisely that, with 335 Hamas leaders arrested (including over 50 who had only just been released under a prisoner exchange scheme), and well over 1000 house raids (which left them looking “like an earthquake had taken place” according to one Palestinian activist). Noam Chomsky notes: “The 18-day rampage….did succeed in undermining the feared unity government, and sharply increasing Israeli repression. According to Israeli military sources, Israeli soldiers arrested 419 Palestinians, including 335 affiliated with Hamas, and killed six Palestinians, also searching thousands of locations and confiscating $350,000. Israel also conducted dozens of attacks in Gaza, killing 5 Hamas members on July 7. Hamas finally reacted with its first rockets in 19 months, Israeli officials reported, providing Israel with the pretext for Operation Protective Edge on July 8.” Thus having killed eleven Palestinians in under a month, Israel then used retaliatory rocket attacks which killed no one as an excuse to launch the biggest slaughter of Palestinians in decades.

Operation Protective Edge went on to kill or maim over 12,000 Palestinians over the course of the month that followed. But for Israel, it allowed it to push forward its key aim – prevention the formation of a functioning Palestinian state – on a number of fronts. Firstly, it helped to rekindle tensions between Fatah and Hamas that the unity government had threatened to heal. Fatah’s existing co-operation agreements with Israeli security obliged them to cooperate with the crackdown on Hamas in West Bank that was supposedly a ‘hunt for kidnappers’, which obviously led to suspicion and mistrust between the two parties. Furthermore, as Fadi Elhusseini has pointed out, ““Protective Edge” gave the new Palestinian unity government that irked Israel a heavy blow. Any plans of this new government to implement the reconciliation deal and prepare for national elections have gone by the wayside as priorities have changed in the face of Israeli aggression. Also, Israel bet — as it has always done — on contradictory positions among Palestinians on how to deal with its aggression, increasing the chances for setback in Palestinian reconciliation.” A breakdown in the unity government, of course, would once again provide Israel with the pretext for avoiding negotiations with the Palestinians on the grounds that they are not united.

Secondly, even as it enraged global public opinion, Israel’s blitzkrieg succeeded in getting Western governments back in line behind its ‘Hamas terrorists can never be trusted’ propaganda line: Elhusseini wrote that “Tellingly, whereas most of the actors in the international community started to accept the Palestinian position and reprimand the adamant stands of Israel, which became a quasi-loner state, the rockets fired from Gaza brought them back to the Israeli fold, announcing that Israel has the right to defend itself, regardless of its excessive use of force and the horrifying death toll among the Palestinians.” Indeed, having in April faced a US government supporting the unity government, once the massacre of Gazans (and corresponding rocket fire) was under way, the US Senate instead voted unanimously in support of Israeli aggression against Gaza while condemning “the unprovoked rocket fire at Israel” by Hamas and calling on “Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to dissolve the unity governing arrangement with Hamas and condemn the attacks on Israel.”

Third, the onslaught was an opportunity to destroy as much as possible of the infrastructure that would provide the basis for a Palestinian state. Of course, as the Israelis openly stated, this includes the military defence infrastructure, primitive as it is, but also all the economic infrastructure necessary for a functioning society. Thus, Israeli shelling destroyed Gaza’s only power plant, cutting off electricity for 80% of Gaza’s 1.6 million inhabitants, as well as dozens of wells, reservoirs and water pipelines, according to a recent report by Oxfam. A summary by Middle East Monitor notes that Oxfam “estimate that 15,000 tons of solid waste is rotting on the streets, wastewater pumping stations are on the verge of running out of fuel and many neighbourhoods have been without power for days, due to Israel’s bombing of the only power plant in Gaza. Oxfam said it was working in an environment that has a completely destroyed water infrastructure that prevents people in Gaza from cooking, flushing toilets, or washing hands, emphasising that the huge risk to public health. “Gaza’s infrastructure will take months or years to fully recover,” the head of Oxfam in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel reported.” The head of UNICEF’s field office in Gaza, Pernille Ironside, added that “There is a very limited amount of water available and it is used for drinking which means that there is no enough water for sanitary purposes. We see children who come from shelters infected with scabies, lice and all kinds of infectious diseases. The worst thing is that most people outside the shelters did not receive water for several weeks now. It is horrible that they have not been able to receive any clean drinking water that is not contaminated by sewage which can lead to diarrhoea and increases child mortality, especially among those under five years old”.

In addition to attacks on water and electricity infrastructure, the private economy has also come under attack. The biggest factory in Gaza, a biscuit factory that had just won the contract to supply the UN in Gaza, was completely obliterated by Israeli shellfire, and even conservative British daily the Telegraph notes that “anecdotal evidence of the systematic destruction of Gaza’s civilian economy and infrastructure is compelling”. The report continues: “Outside central Gaza City, a string of businesses with no obvious links to militant activities lie in ruins after being demolished by missiles or shells. They include a plastics factory, a sponge-making plant and even the headquarters of the territory’s main fruit distribution near the northern town of Beit Hanoun, much of which has been levelled in the Israeli land invasion.donate now

A few miles north of the Alawada plant, the headquarters of the El Majd Industrial and Trading Corporation – producing cardboard boxes, cartons and plastic bags – was reduced to a heap of concrete and twisted metal.

It had taken two direct hits from missiles fired by an Israeli war plane in the early hours of Monday morning, according to Hassan Jihad, 25, the factory caretaker, who survived fortuitously because he had moved to the company’s administrative headquarters outside the main factory for the duration of the conflict.

He too had little doubt about the reason behind the strike. “The Israelis are trying to destroy the economy and paralyse Gaza,” he said. “This is the only factory in the Gaza Strip producing cardboard containers. We don’t have any rockets in the place.”

Roward International, Gaza’s biggest dairy importer and distribution company, met a similar fate on Thursday afternoon. Its plant in the al-Karama neighbourhood was totally flattened by a missile after an Israeli army operator phoned in a warning in time for its 60 workers to be evacuated.

Majdi Abu Hamra, 35, accounts manager in the family-run business, said the firm bought milk from producers in the West Bank, before importing it into Gaza via Israel.

The territory’s main power plant – also on Salaheddin Road, not far from the Alawada factory – went up in flames last Tuesday after being struck by Israeli shells. Israel denied targeting the plant but experts say it is now out of commission for the next year, leaving Gaza virtually without any electricity other than that supplied by generators. The resulting shortage has already affected the water supply, with power now insufficient to pump water to homes located above ground level.

In addition, a public health crisis may be looming after two sewage pumping stations – one in the crowded Zeitoun area, the other near Gaza’s coastal road – were damaged in strikes on neighbouring targets, prompting UN officials to warn that raw sewage could flow onto the streets in the coming days.

Trond Husby, head of the UN’s development programme in Gaza, was non-committal when asked if he believed Israeli forces were deliberately targeting private businesses in Gaza.

But about the effects of the damage, he was unequivocal. “This is a humanitarian disaster,” he said. “I was in Somalia for two years, Sierra Leone for five, and also South Sudan and Uganda, and this beats them all for the level of destruction.””

Finally, as many commentators have noted, even if Israel were successful in its stated aim of destroying or weakening Hamas, this would only result in even more militant groups emerging, perhaps even Al Qaeda type groups such as ISIS, gaining support from a traumatised population by promising revenge attacks and uncompromising armed jihad. Whilst many have argued that this would somehow be against Israel’s interests, the reverse is likely to be true. Groups such as ISIS have played a key role in facilitating US and British policies in the Middle East in recent years, by weakening independent regional powers (or potential regional powers) such as Libya, Syria and now Iraq. They would likely have the same effect on Palestine, and would certainly set back the prospects for the emergence of a Palestinian state: they would never countenance, for example, unity with Fatah, and would rather serve to provide a permanent pretext for savage Israeli attacks which Western Europe and North America would be obliged to support. Moreover, if Gaza became an ungoverned and ungovernable disaster zone – which is what Israel is in the process of creating – there would of course be no question of its gaining sovereignty over its territory, and even less over its waters and gas reserves. Israel would remain free to bomb at will, just as the US and Britain remain free to bomb at will in the failed states they have created in Somalia, Libya, Yemen and Iraq.

The desire to destroy any potential for Palestinian statehood, then, explains why Israel have launched their latest round of bloodletting. But to understand how it has become emboldened enough to launch their most destructive attack in decades requires an understanding of the regional context.

The Palestinian struggle for independence rises and falls with the overall Arab struggle for independence. Whilst many commentators have focused on the fall of President Morsi in Egypt to explain Hamas’ weakness and relative isolation, in fact the Western-sponsored wars against Libya, Syria and Hezbollah are of greater significance. These wars have respectively destroyed, weakened and preoccupied three of the major independent and anti-Zionist forces in the region, and thus strengthened Israel’s ability to act with impunity. As George Friedman explains, “Currently, Israel is as secure as it is ever likely to be….Israel’s economy towers over its neighbours….Jordan is locked into a close relation with Israel, Egypt has its peace treaty and Hezbollah is bogged down in Syria. Apart from Gaza, which is a relatively minor threat, Israel’s position is difficult to improve.” Clearly, the transformation of Libya into a failed state at the hands of Western-sponsored sectarian militias, and the attempt to do the same to Syria, serves the long term Israeli goal of dividing and weakening all its regional foes (real or potential). Recognising this obvious point, an incendiary 1982 journal piece by Israeli academic Oded Yinon (notable not so much for its originality as for its blunt honesty) explicitly called for the region’s balkanisation: “Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. … This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area [sic – he means Israel] in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today”. He goes on to describe the coming break-up of Iraq with remarkable prescience: “Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel….Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north.” Thus, the Western-backed offensive in Syria, and its current spillover into Iraq, directly serves Israeli goals by weakening all potential counterweights to Israeli dominion in the region – and thus directly facilitates Israel’s current slaughter.

In this respect, the overthrow of Egyptian President Morsi by the Egyptian army actually strengthened the Arab position, ending the divisive policies which were causing huge religious rifts internally, and ending the prospect of Egypt gratuitously tearing itself apart through direct military involvement in the Syrian civil war. Indeed, Morsi’s policies had been well on the way to realising Yinon’s dream of a balkanised Egypt. In 1982, he wrote that “Egypt, in its present domestic political picture, is already a corpse, all the more so if we take into account the growing Moslem-Christian rift. Breaking Egypt down territorially into distinct geographical regions is the political aim of Israel in the Nineteen Eighties on its Western front.”By thoroughly alienating the country’s Christian communities, Morsi was paving the way for precisely such a scenario to unfold. Regardless of Hamas’ relationship with Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood organisation, the army’s move against Morsi, by ending Egypt’s trajectory towards state breakdown and failure, strengthened Egypt’s ability to act as a counterweight to Israeli domination in the region – a necessary precondition for any advance on the Palestinian front. As Ali Jarbawi put it after the Egyptian Presidential elections of April this year, “Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s election as the new Egyptian president has given Palestinians a sliver of hope that their cause will return to the forefront of Arab affairs — or that, at least, there will be a slight adjustment in the balance of power with Israel. This has nothing to do with any value judgments about the Egyptian revolution. It is a purely pragmatic stance, based on the fact that Mr. Sisi’s election will influence Palestinian affairs” positively, particularly by restoring the stability necessary for Egypt to act as a counterweight to Israeli power, but also by realigning Egypt more towards Russia and thus towards a less dependent relation with the US. Indeed, the desire on the part of Israel to destroy as much as possible of Gaza before Egypt fully regains its strength and independence may well have added urgency to their latest attack.

In sum, despite its current ability to rip thousands of Palestinians to shreds on the flimsiest of pretexts, all is not well for Israel. Even their short term goals have not been met in this latest attack. Despite everything, the unity government has not broken, and Fatah and Hamas are currently presenting a united front in the ceasefire negotiations. Likewise, Hamas has not been defeated, even militarily (let alone politically) by this attack, and has been able to continue its military resistance right up until the beginning of the various ceasefires that have taken place. If Kissinger is right that in asymmetrical warfare, “The conventional army loses if it does not win [whilst] the guerrilla wins if he does not lose”, then this is not a war that Israel has won. For all its delaying tactics, the Israelis cannot postpone forever Palestinian citizenship in some form or other – and if the Israelis make the creation of a separate Palestinian state impossible, they should not be surprised if demands shift instead to citizenship in a single state comprising the entirety of historic Palestine.

Dan Glazebrook is a political journalist and author of Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis

An earlier version of this article originally appeared on Middle East Eye.

[muttaqi]

+1

So you're saying every ethnic minority or group that feels oppressed and racially, socially discriminated against, violently in cases, should get their own superpower financed ready built sovereign nation? Hmm... Im sure they're a couple billion people that would sign up for that. People already living on that land for several centuries? Not a problem..since said superpower will finance your war machine every year until your shiny new country is properly ethnically cleansed..

On a side note I thought Arabs were Semitic people also? So Israelis dropping bombs on civilian Arabs and Palestinians makes them pretty much the most anti-Semitic people on the planet right now..

Or is the phrase self hating Semite?

Israel does have a claim on the land along with every other Semitic people. Its just not theirs to rule exclusively. Too bad for them that the millions of other Semites on the land got assimilated into a different culture and converted to a different religion. Thats a problem when you want to create a Jewish supremacist state which Zionists, again wrongly believe, bombs and bullets are gonna solve like every other colonizer in history.

So we're still dealing with the consequences and injustices of stupid, racist decisions made to correct the original injustices in the aftermath of WW2. Which has of course been non stop war ever since. All the parties of course knew the consequences of forcefully taking Palestine going in except the Palestinians, but they get blamed for basically everything that is done to them. The whole argument is just unreal. The Palestinians come to the table time and time again to take the scraps of their own land that Israel and the West give them permission to have. Israel makes all kinds of conditions to make it impossible to accept the terms and then they openly clear as day steal more land and evict more people. To this day they build more illegal settlements while doing everything in their power to make life miserable to every man, woman and child they displace.


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http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/15/ ... not-hamas/

It's Any Possibility of Palestinian Statehood

Israel’s Real Target is Not Hamas

by DAN GLAZEBROOK

All colonial settler states are based on the violent dispossession of the native peoples – and as a result, their fundamental and overriding aim has always been to keep those native peoples as weak as possible. Israel’s aim for the Palestinians is no different.

Palestinian statehood is clearly an obstacle to this goal; a Palestinian state would strengthen the Palestinians. Genuine sovereignty would end Israel’s current presumed right to steal their land, control their borders, place them under siege, and bomb them at will. That is why Netanyahu’s Likud party platform “flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.”; that is why Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated for even suggesting some limited self-governance for the Palestinians; and that is why every proposal for Palestinian statehood, however limited and conditional, has been wilfully sabotaged by successive Israeli governments of all hues.

Within three years of the 1993 Oslo declaration, for example, which promised self-governance for Palestinian areas, foreign minister Ariel Sharon was urging “everyone” to “grab as many hilltops as they can” in order to minimise the size and viability of the area to be administered by Palestinian Authority. The 1999 election of a Labour Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, made no difference, ushering in “a sustained commitment by Israel’s government to avoid full compliance with the Oslo agreement”, according to Jimmy Carter, most notably in the form of the greatest increase in illegal Israeli settlements that had yet taken place. The popular story that Barak had made a ‘generous offer’ on Palestinian statehood at negotiations in Taba in 2001, turned out to be a complete myth.

In the 2000s, the stakes were raised by the discovery of 1.4trillion cubic metres of natural gas in Gaza’s territorial waters, leading Israel to immediately strengthen its maritime blockade of Gaza to prevent Palestinian access to the reserves. But Palestinian sovereignty over this gas would obviously enormously strengthen the economic position of any future Palestinian state – and thus made the Israelis more determined than ever to prevent such a state from coming into being.

The Saudi peace plan, then, in 2002, turned out to be something of a problem for Israel. Accepted by 22 members of the Arab League, and offering complete normalisation of Israeli-Arab relations in exchange for a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders (just 22% of historic Palestine), it was welcomed by the US, and followed up with a statement by George W. Bush in support of a Palestinian state – the first such statement by any US president. This does not imply that the US is in any way committed to genuine Palestinian sovereignty. What the US seeks is rather a thoroughly compromised entity, devoid of all significant attributes of statehood (border control, airspace control, etc) and dependent on Israel, but which it would call a state – and thus would provide the Arab states with a pretext for overt collaboration with Israel . As Jeff Halper has explained, for the US, as for the Saudis, the idea behind the Saudi peace was actually to strengthen Israel, by facilitating Arab support for Israeli-US action against Iran, and thus establishing solid Israeli hegemony across the entire Middle East. In other words, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states wanted a (feeble) Palestinian state to come into existence, in order to justify the collaboration with Zionism being demanded of them by their US masters. But Israel does not particularly want or perceive the need for Arab support. Indeed, the image of the plucky little victim, besieged by ‘hostile enemies’ on all sides, is a fundamental plank of the Israeli national psyche, necessary to ensure the continued identification of the population with the militaristic state and its expansionist policies. And more importantly, in the zero-sum game of settler-vs-native politics, any Palestinian state, however toothless, represents an intolerable retreat for the Zionists.

This problem – of a growing consensus in support of a Palestinian state – was compounded for Israel in 2003, when the so-called “Quartet” (US, the UN, Russia and the EU) produced their ‘roadmap’ for peace, based, like the Saudi plan, on the principle of a Palestinian state being a fundamental prerequisite for lasting peace. Whilst the Israelis publicly accepted the ‘roadmap’, behind the scenes they listed 14 ‘caveats’ and preconditions which rendered it meaningless and unworkable – divide-and-ruin-book-covereffectively refusing to make any concessions whatsoever until the Palestinians were completely disarmed and their major organisations dissolved, whilst other caveats stripped any ‘state’ that might somehow emerge of all major attributes of statehood and sovereignty, just in case.

Since then, there have been various attempts by the US at restarting ‘negotiations’ on this roadmap, despite Israel’s obvious hostility to its declared aim of Palestinian statehood. In the latest round, beginning in July 2013, the Palestinians – who had already conceded the 78% of historic Palestine conquered before 1967 – even agreed to drop their demand that talks should be based on the 1967 borders. Yet none of this made any difference to Israel, who worked hard to scupper the negotiations as best they could. As historian Avi Shlaim put it, “During the nine months of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks orchestrated by secretary of state John Kerry, Netanyahu did not put forward a single constructive proposal and all the while kept expanding Israeli settlements on the West Bank. Kerry and his adviser, General John Allen, drew up a security plan that they thought would enable Israel to withdraw from most of the West Bank. Israel’s serial refusnik dismissed it contemptuously as not worth the paper it was written on.” After nine months of this futile enterprise in self-humiliation, John Kerry threw in the towel in desperation, saying the two sides would have to work it out between themselves.

Israel’s excuse for its reluctance to take negotiations seriously has always rested on two planks: a) Palestinian ‘terrorism’ and b) Palestinian ‘disunity’. Both of these, Israel claims, means it has no ‘partner for peace’; no one to negotiate with – either because they are terrorists, or because there is no single entity representing the Palestinian population who they can talk to. In 2006, following the election of Hamas, the US and EU effectively supported this line, and joined forces with Israel in refusing to recognise Hamas as the governing body of the Palestinian Authority. Likewise, when a unity government was formed with Fatah the following year (combining the two parties who together represented 86% of the popular vote), it was not recognised as legitimate by Israel’s international backers who instead supported a government led by Salam Fayyad, whose party had gained just 2% in the previous year’s election.

However, reaction to the recent unity government announced in April this year was very different. A government of ‘technocrats’ – comprising not a single Hamas member – was endorsed by both Fatah and Hamas in an attempt to end the isolation and strangulation of the Gaza strip. As noted in the Independent at the time, this “new government would “adhere to the conditions of the Middle East Quartet [the EU, UN Russia and US], recognise Israel, ratify all signed agreements and renounce violence” according to a “senior Palestinian official” quoted on the Times of Israel site. As such, it was welcomed by both the US and the EU. Israel no longer had ‘Palestinian disunity’ as an excuse for refusing to engage in peace talks. Nor did they have ‘terrorism’ as an excuse, as Hamas had steadfastly stood by the terms of the 2012 ceasefire, not only ceasing their own rocket fire, but also successfully preventing rocket attacks by other Palestinian groups in Gaza. And all this despite continuous violations of the ceasefire by Israel beginning before the ink was even dry – from a refusal to lift the blockade (as required by the ceasefire terms), to continued attacks on Palestinians, killing 4 and maiming nearly 100 within the first three months of the ‘ceasefire’ alone. Even after Israeli attacks were stepped up over the past year, with four Palestinian children shot dead by Israeli forces between December 2013 and May 2014, including a 15 year old shot in the back from 100m, Hamas held their fire.

Netanyahu’s narrative of negotiations being impossible due to Palestinian terrorism and disunity was being increasingly undermined by reality – and crucially, his US-EU backers were not buying it. The Israeli government responded to the unity government by “what can only be described as economic warfare. It prevented the 43,000 civil servants in Gaza from moving from the Hamas payroll to that of the Ramallah government and it tightened siege round Gaza’s borders thereby nullifying the two main benefits of the merger” (Avi Shlaim). Still Hamas held their fire.

What Netanyahu really needed was a provocation against Hamas to which they would be forced to respond. Such as response would again allow him to paint them as the bloodthirsty terrorists with whom one can never negotiate, would provide the opportunity for another wave of devastation in Gaza, and would exacerbate tensions within the unity government between Fatah and Hamas.

Nine days after the swearing in of the unity government, on June 11th, the IDF made a raid on Gaza in which they killed a 10 year old boy on a bicycle. But still Hamas held their fire.

The following day, however, the apparent kidnapping of three Israeli settlers in the West Bank provided the opportunity for a provocation on an altogether larger scale. Having blamed the kidnapping on Hamas (without ever producing a scrap of evidence), Netanyahu used it as an excuse for an attack on the entire Hamas leadership in the West Bank, while his economy minister Naftali Bennett announced that “We’re turning the membership card for Hamas into a ticket to hell”. Operation Brother’s Keeper did precisely that, with 335 Hamas leaders arrested (including over 50 who had only just been released under a prisoner exchange scheme), and well over 1000 house raids (which left them looking “like an earthquake had taken place” according to one Palestinian activist). Noam Chomsky notes: “The 18-day rampage….did succeed in undermining the feared unity government, and sharply increasing Israeli repression. According to Israeli military sources, Israeli soldiers arrested 419 Palestinians, including 335 affiliated with Hamas, and killed six Palestinians, also searching thousands of locations and confiscating $350,000. Israel also conducted dozens of attacks in Gaza, killing 5 Hamas members on July 7. Hamas finally reacted with its first rockets in 19 months, Israeli officials reported, providing Israel with the pretext for Operation Protective Edge on July 8.” Thus having killed eleven Palestinians in under a month, Israel then used retaliatory rocket attacks which killed no one as an excuse to launch the biggest slaughter of Palestinians in decades.

Operation Protective Edge went on to kill or maim over 12,000 Palestinians over the course of the month that followed. But for Israel, it allowed it to push forward its key aim – prevention the formation of a functioning Palestinian state – on a number of fronts. Firstly, it helped to rekindle tensions between Fatah and Hamas that the unity government had threatened to heal. Fatah’s existing co-operation agreements with Israeli security obliged them to cooperate with the crackdown on Hamas in West Bank that was supposedly a ‘hunt for kidnappers’, which obviously led to suspicion and mistrust between the two parties. Furthermore, as Fadi Elhusseini has pointed out, ““Protective Edge” gave the new Palestinian unity government that irked Israel a heavy blow. Any plans of this new government to implement the reconciliation deal and prepare for national elections have gone by the wayside as priorities have changed in the face of Israeli aggression. Also, Israel bet — as it has always done — on contradictory positions among Palestinians on how to deal with its aggression, increasing the chances for setback in Palestinian reconciliation.” A breakdown in the unity government, of course, would once again provide Israel with the pretext for avoiding negotiations with the Palestinians on the grounds that they are not united.

Secondly, even as it enraged global public opinion, Israel’s blitzkrieg succeeded in getting Western governments back in line behind its ‘Hamas terrorists can never be trusted’ propaganda line: Elhusseini wrote that “Tellingly, whereas most of the actors in the international community started to accept the Palestinian position and reprimand the adamant stands of Israel, which became a quasi-loner state, the rockets fired from Gaza brought them back to the Israeli fold, announcing that Israel has the right to defend itself, regardless of its excessive use of force and the horrifying death toll among the Palestinians.” Indeed, having in April faced a US government supporting the unity government, once the massacre of Gazans (and corresponding rocket fire) was under way, the US Senate instead voted unanimously in support of Israeli aggression against Gaza while condemning “the unprovoked rocket fire at Israel” by Hamas and calling on “Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to dissolve the unity governing arrangement with Hamas and condemn the attacks on Israel.”

Third, the onslaught was an opportunity to destroy as much as possible of the infrastructure that would provide the basis for a Palestinian state. Of course, as the Israelis openly stated, this includes the military defence infrastructure, primitive as it is, but also all the economic infrastructure necessary for a functioning society. Thus, Israeli shelling destroyed Gaza’s only power plant, cutting off electricity for 80% of Gaza’s 1.6 million inhabitants, as well as dozens of wells, reservoirs and water pipelines, according to a recent report by Oxfam. A summary by Middle East Monitor notes that Oxfam “estimate that 15,000 tons of solid waste is rotting on the streets, wastewater pumping stations are on the verge of running out of fuel and many neighbourhoods have been without power for days, due to Israel’s bombing of the only power plant in Gaza. Oxfam said it was working in an environment that has a completely destroyed water infrastructure that prevents people in Gaza from cooking, flushing toilets, or washing hands, emphasising that the huge risk to public health. “Gaza’s infrastructure will take months or years to fully recover,” the head of Oxfam in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel reported.” The head of UNICEF’s field office in Gaza, Pernille Ironside, added that “There is a very limited amount of water available and it is used for drinking which means that there is no enough water for sanitary purposes. We see children who come from shelters infected with scabies, lice and all kinds of infectious diseases. The worst thing is that most people outside the shelters did not receive water for several weeks now. It is horrible that they have not been able to receive any clean drinking water that is not contaminated by sewage which can lead to diarrhoea and increases child mortality, especially among those under five years old”.

In addition to attacks on water and electricity infrastructure, the private economy has also come under attack. The biggest factory in Gaza, a biscuit factory that had just won the contract to supply the UN in Gaza, was completely obliterated by Israeli shellfire, and even conservative British daily the Telegraph notes that “anecdotal evidence of the systematic destruction of Gaza’s civilian economy and infrastructure is compelling”. The report continues: “Outside central Gaza City, a string of businesses with no obvious links to militant activities lie in ruins after being demolished by missiles or shells. They include a plastics factory, a sponge-making plant and even the headquarters of the territory’s main fruit distribution near the northern town of Beit Hanoun, much of which has been levelled in the Israeli land invasion.donate now

A few miles north of the Alawada plant, the headquarters of the El Majd Industrial and Trading Corporation – producing cardboard boxes, cartons and plastic bags – was reduced to a heap of concrete and twisted metal.

It had taken two direct hits from missiles fired by an Israeli war plane in the early hours of Monday morning, according to Hassan Jihad, 25, the factory caretaker, who survived fortuitously because he had moved to the company’s administrative headquarters outside the main factory for the duration of the conflict.

He too had little doubt about the reason behind the strike. “The Israelis are trying to destroy the economy and paralyse Gaza,” he said. “This is the only factory in the Gaza Strip producing cardboard containers. We don’t have any rockets in the place.”

Roward International, Gaza’s biggest dairy importer and distribution company, met a similar fate on Thursday afternoon. Its plant in the al-Karama neighbourhood was totally flattened by a missile after an Israeli army operator phoned in a warning in time for its 60 workers to be evacuated.

Majdi Abu Hamra, 35, accounts manager in the family-run business, said the firm bought milk from producers in the West Bank, before importing it into Gaza via Israel.

The territory’s main power plant – also on Salaheddin Road, not far from the Alawada factory – went up in flames last Tuesday after being struck by Israeli shells. Israel denied targeting the plant but experts say it is now out of commission for the next year, leaving Gaza virtually without any electricity other than that supplied by generators. The resulting shortage has already affected the water supply, with power now insufficient to pump water to homes located above ground level.

In addition, a public health crisis may be looming after two sewage pumping stations – one in the crowded Zeitoun area, the other near Gaza’s coastal road – were damaged in strikes on neighbouring targets, prompting UN officials to warn that raw sewage could flow onto the streets in the coming days.

Trond Husby, head of the UN’s development programme in Gaza, was non-committal when asked if he believed Israeli forces were deliberately targeting private businesses in Gaza.

But about the effects of the damage, he was unequivocal. “This is a humanitarian disaster,” he said. “I was in Somalia for two years, Sierra Leone for five, and also South Sudan and Uganda, and this beats them all for the level of destruction.””

Finally, as many commentators have noted, even if Israel were successful in its stated aim of destroying or weakening Hamas, this would only result in even more militant groups emerging, perhaps even Al Qaeda type groups such as ISIS, gaining support from a traumatised population by promising revenge attacks and uncompromising armed jihad. Whilst many have argued that this would somehow be against Israel’s interests, the reverse is likely to be true. Groups such as ISIS have played a key role in facilitating US and British policies in the Middle East in recent years, by weakening independent regional powers (or potential regional powers) such as Libya, Syria and now Iraq. They would likely have the same effect on Palestine, and would certainly set back the prospects for the emergence of a Palestinian state: they would never countenance, for example, unity with Fatah, and would rather serve to provide a permanent pretext for savage Israeli attacks which Western Europe and North America would be obliged to support. Moreover, if Gaza became an ungoverned and ungovernable disaster zone – which is what Israel is in the process of creating – there would of course be no question of its gaining sovereignty over its territory, and even less over its waters and gas reserves. Israel would remain free to bomb at will, just as the US and Britain remain free to bomb at will in the failed states they have created in Somalia, Libya, Yemen and Iraq.

The desire to destroy any potential for Palestinian statehood, then, explains why Israel have launched their latest round of bloodletting. But to understand how it has become emboldened enough to launch their most destructive attack in decades requires an understanding of the regional context.

The Palestinian struggle for independence rises and falls with the overall Arab struggle for independence. Whilst many commentators have focused on the fall of President Morsi in Egypt to explain Hamas’ weakness and relative isolation, in fact the Western-sponsored wars against Libya, Syria and Hezbollah are of greater significance. These wars have respectively destroyed, weakened and preoccupied three of the major independent and anti-Zionist forces in the region, and thus strengthened Israel’s ability to act with impunity. As George Friedman explains, “Currently, Israel is as secure as it is ever likely to be….Israel’s economy towers over its neighbours….Jordan is locked into a close relation with Israel, Egypt has its peace treaty and Hezbollah is bogged down in Syria. Apart from Gaza, which is a relatively minor threat, Israel’s position is difficult to improve.” Clearly, the transformation of Libya into a failed state at the hands of Western-sponsored sectarian militias, and the attempt to do the same to Syria, serves the long term Israeli goal of dividing and weakening all its regional foes (real or potential). Recognising this obvious point, an incendiary 1982 journal piece by Israeli academic Oded Yinon (notable not so much for its originality as for its blunt honesty) explicitly called for the region’s balkanisation: “Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. … This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area [sic – he means Israel] in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today”. He goes on to describe the coming break-up of Iraq with remarkable prescience: “Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel….Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north.” Thus, the Western-backed offensive in Syria, and its current spillover into Iraq, directly serves Israeli goals by weakening all potential counterweights to Israeli dominion in the region – and thus directly facilitates Israel’s current slaughter.

In this respect, the overthrow of Egyptian President Morsi by the Egyptian army actually strengthened the Arab position, ending the divisive policies which were causing huge religious rifts internally, and ending the prospect of Egypt gratuitously tearing itself apart through direct military involvement in the Syrian civil war. Indeed, Morsi’s policies had been well on the way to realising Yinon’s dream of a balkanised Egypt. In 1982, he wrote that “Egypt, in its present domestic political picture, is already a corpse, all the more so if we take into account the growing Moslem-Christian rift. Breaking Egypt down territorially into distinct geographical regions is the political aim of Israel in the Nineteen Eighties on its Western front.”By thoroughly alienating the country’s Christian communities, Morsi was paving the way for precisely such a scenario to unfold. Regardless of Hamas’ relationship with Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood organisation, the army’s move against Morsi, by ending Egypt’s trajectory towards state breakdown and failure, strengthened Egypt’s ability to act as a counterweight to Israeli domination in the region – a necessary precondition for any advance on the Palestinian front. As Ali Jarbawi put it after the Egyptian Presidential elections of April this year, “Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s election as the new Egyptian president has given Palestinians a sliver of hope that their cause will return to the forefront of Arab affairs — or that, at least, there will be a slight adjustment in the balance of power with Israel. This has nothing to do with any value judgments about the Egyptian revolution. It is a purely pragmatic stance, based on the fact that Mr. Sisi’s election will influence Palestinian affairs” positively, particularly by restoring the stability necessary for Egypt to act as a counterweight to Israeli power, but also by realigning Egypt more towards Russia and thus towards a less dependent relation with the US. Indeed, the desire on the part of Israel to destroy as much as possible of Gaza before Egypt fully regains its strength and independence may well have added urgency to their latest attack.

In sum, despite its current ability to rip thousands of Palestinians to shreds on the flimsiest of pretexts, all is not well for Israel. Even their short term goals have not been met in this latest attack. Despite everything, the unity government has not broken, and Fatah and Hamas are currently presenting a united front in the ceasefire negotiations. Likewise, Hamas has not been defeated, even militarily (let alone politically) by this attack, and has been able to continue its military resistance right up until the beginning of the various ceasefires that have taken place. If Kissinger is right that in asymmetrical warfare, “The conventional army loses if it does not win [whilst] the guerrilla wins if he does not lose”, then this is not a war that Israel has won. For all its delaying tactics, the Israelis cannot postpone forever Palestinian citizenship in some form or other – and if the Israelis make the creation of a separate Palestinian state impossible, they should not be surprised if demands shift instead to citizenship in a single state comprising the entirety of historic Palestine.

Dan Glazebrook is a political journalist and author of Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis

An earlier version of this article originally appeared on Middle East Eye.

[yeniseri]

So you're saying every ethnic minority or group that feels oppressed and racially, socially discriminated against, violently in cases, should get their own superpower financed ready built sovereign nation? Hmm... Im sure they're a couple billion people that would sign up for that. People already living on that land for several centuries? Not a problem..since said superpower will finance your war machine every year until your shiny new country is properly ethnically cleansed..

This is not feasible or viable but certain guilt goes a long way!

On a side note I thought Arabs were Semitic people also? So Israelis dropping bombs on civilian Arabs and Palestinians makes them pretty much the most anti-Semitic people on the planet right now..
Or is the phrase self hating Semite?

There is no relationship here. That is like saying all people born in USA are pretty much the same people because of that legacy, I think not. Just because all Europeans belong in Europe, that doe snot mean Germans have a right to French property because they share a 'European legacy! Prior to 1948, the origin of the non Palestinan immigrants was Europe.

Israel does have a claim on the land along with every other Semitic people. Its just not theirs to rule exclusively. Too bad for them that the millions of other Semites on the land got assimilated into a different culture and converted to a different religion. Thats a problem when you want to create a Jewish supremacist state which Zionists, again wrongly believe, bombs and bullets are gonna solve like every other colonizer in history.

That really is not the issue. The immigrants from Europe (I am trying to use neutral language here!) relied on the good graces of the British Mandate to gain access since the British took over from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire.

So we're still dealing with the consequences and injustices of stupid, racist decisions made to correct the original injustices in the aftermath of WW2. Which has of course been non stop war ever since. All the parties of course knew the consequences of forcefully taking Palestine going in except the Palestinians, but they get blamed for basically everything that is done to them. The whole argument is just unreal. The Palestinians come to the table time and time again to take the scraps of their own land that Israel and the West give them permission to have. Israel makes all kinds of conditions to make it impossible to accept the terms and then they openly clear as day steal more land and evict more people. To this day they build more illegal settlements while doing everything in their power to make life miserable to every man, woman and child they displace.

Operation Protective Edge is valid to the extent that US supplies arms to Israel while the Gaza Palestinians appear to have secured some sympathy from the greater conscience of the 'civilized' world.
If I were Palestinian, I would do the following to secure a nation /state based on the following:
1. Educate the citizenry of Gaza for the future. That means education for all and not the few.
2. Accept Israel. The reason is that they rightfully defeated the Arab armies to secure and hold, based on War.
3. Knowing the birthrate is higher in Gaza, by numbers, seek to legally be part of change (positive) for the greater community.
4. Be part of the international community. It is interesting that no Arab country wants to accept Palestinians as part of the concept of 'al-arabiyah' (Arab Unity)
5. It does not help that the Gran Mufti of Jerusalem and Muslim Brotherhood Rightist, and others promote Nazi ideology as part of their goals
6. The same money used to get military material and bomb Israel can be used to better the long term goals of education? Using women and childern, hospitals, etc as covers for military operations against Israel, will derail much of the above if there is a persistance in the future. Just offering positve comments instead of bashing one side and the other!

[Dajenarit]

If we can't even agree on basic right or wrong and what that involves it becomes pretty hard to have a basis to discuss anything that comes after that.

If you believe might makes right then there goes the discussion... or for instance that any European had any kind of mandate in matters involving Middle Eastern land, now or in the past..... among other fundamental questions...

What could I possibly say to convince someone otherwise?

[Interloper]

The Bolt Report
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=91 ... =2&theater

[yeniseri]

If we can't even agree on basic right or wrong and what that involves it becomes pretty hard to have a basis to discuss anything that comes after that.

If you believe might makes right then there goes the discussion... or for instance that any European had any kind of mandate in matters involving Middle Eastern land, now or in the past..... among other fundamental questions...

What could I possibly say to convince someone otherwise?

But you are ignoring the basic facts that it has been and is ongoing, the European Power That Be still decide mandates in the Middle East. Most policies are decided, despite evidence to the contrary, on that military power, is a dominant factor in world politics. Kurdistan was an area encompassing what we know today as Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey but when the Western Power drew boundaries they purposely left out Kurdistan! Same with Syria and partition into Lebanon. One may say Upper Syria or Gret=eater Syria is what we know today as Syria and the Lower Syria now Lebanon!

[Dajenarit]

Since people keep crying about Hamas suppressing information among other nonsense. A story about what passes for Israeli journalism in regard to Gaza and Hamas by actual journalists.

95% support for the siege? Lol Those are straight banana republic "1984" numbers. American public relations (propagandists..) are green with envy.

Israeli government officials openly calling for the trial for treason and potential execution of journalists? If I was an every-day schmuck i'd follow the party line too..

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/a ... k-its-name