Arab News Blog

Following my previous post on Biden’s trip to Jerusalem, I’m glad to see self-professed “friends of Israel” who are still willing to see reality for what it is. Welcome to intellectual honesty, Andrew Sullivan:

I cannot read Netanyahu’s mind. But I can observe Israel’s actions. They intend to occupy and colonize the entire West Bank for ever.  They may allow some parceled enclaves for Palestinians, but they will maintain a big military presence on the Eastern border of West Bank, and they will sustain this with raw military power and force. I certainly cannot see any other rationale for their actions these past few years that makes any sense at all. Many Israeli politicians now use the term “apartheid” for this future. 

Now take the next step in that line of thinking, which is that the US must make a decision on whether it accepts this self-evident truth, choose a policy accordingly, and be prepared for consequences.

And Sullivan also gets it right here.

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“The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by a recent spate of press freedom violations in the West Bank, including detentions, censorship, harassment, and physical attacks by Israeli soldiers. We ask that you ensure that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) examine the cases outlined below and discipline any individuals who are found to have committed violations.Since the beginning of February, CPJ has documented seven cases and spoken directly to the journalists involved. A request for comment from the IDF on the cases was not immediately returned.” (thanks Lilia)

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“It’s much worse than before. If I want to go as a lawyer to Ramallah and I have a court session at say 10am, in ‘normal life’ I would leave Bethlehem at 9, and I’d be in Ramallah at 10. But now you have to leave at 7am and you never know. You could arrive at 10am or at 2pm. It depends on the checkpoints. We know that there are two permanent checkpoints, but usually there are what we call ‘flying’ checkpoints, and the young soldiers, kids really, decide if they want to let you go through. Sometimes they keep you for two or three hours. And they have all kinds of blacklists for Palestinians: those not allowed to leave the country; those not allowed to enter Israel or Jerusalem; those who have to be arrested wherever they might be; those who have to be kept for hours and then let go. The aim of all this is just to make you leave the country and there are special organisations in Israel to help people emigrate.” (thanks Ryan)

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If this story (via Laura Rozen from Yediot Aharanot) is true, Joe Biden was a lot more pointed with Netanyahu than his public response to Israel’s provocative act on his arrival:

People who heard what Biden said were stunned. “This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden castigated his interlocutors. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”

The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel’s actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.

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The CABLE/ here

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McClatchy’s/ here

“…… Netanyahu also appears to be betting that he’ll get little pushback from a U.S. president who’s avoided public confrontation with Israel and is concentrating on building Democratic support on domestic issues such as health care.

What an Israeli newspaper called “The Slap Heard ‘Round the World” brought sharp condemnation from Biden, who met Palestinians leaders in the West Bank on Wednesday.

However, the White House appeared eager to move on to just-announced indirect Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Israeli columnists predicted that Netanyahu would suffer little more than a diplomatic tap on the wrist.

Aaron David Miller, who worked on Middle East issues for six secretaries of state and is now a fellow at Washington’s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said Obama would do best to move on after Tuesday’s contretemps.

“The problem for Obama is that he has zero options on this one,” Miller said. “He can’t escalate” because East Jerusalem is non-negotiable to many Israelis. “He’s going to lose.” If Obama wants to pick a fight with Netanyahu, he should do it on a different issue, he said.

The greater problem is U.S. credibility, Miller said.

“Smaller powers are saying ‘no’ to bigger powers without cost and without consequences . . . . It is hurting his credibility.”…….

The settler movement is “deeply entrenched” in Israel’s decision-making, said Levy, now at the Washington-based New America Foundation. “It is far more foreboding for the Israeli leader to challenge the settler movement and their political supporters . . . than it is foreboding to take on the U.S. administration. He has not yet seen there are consequences.”….

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AP – The U.N. humanitarian chief says Israel’s blockade of Gaza is not helping its security or weakening Hamas’ hold on the territory.
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 Joe “I am a Zionist” Biden goes to Israel, gets himself and his country humiliated (again), and everybody gets excited that he uses the word “condemns” about illegal settlements that are part of an ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign. 

Helena Cobban picks up on an anecdote from Pat Lang:

Fiasco in Jerusalem

Mideast talks hopes in tatters

Arab League chief says Mideast talks off 

Biden Israel Trip: Apology for Timing of Settlement News

Bibi’s snub to Biden may backfire | Simon Tisdall | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Israel welcomes Joe Biden with 1600 slaps in the face

Biden Appeals to Restart Peace Talks – NYTimes.com

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Obama’s Mideast policy lies in tatters this morning and US credibility as a broker of any future settlement was deeply wounded.

Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, announced Wednesday that he had been informed by Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas that the latter has pulled out of indirect talks with Israel. Late Wednesday, the Arab League itself reversed its earlier cautious endorsement of the proximity talks, recommending that that support be dropped.

Israeli colonization of Palestinian territory lies at the heart of the Mideast conflict. It isn’t a complicated issue in the law, since Israel’s actions are clearly illegal and unethical to boot. But might makes right and Israel is the most powerful country in the Middle East, so all the protests on legal and humanitarian grounds have amounted to nothing.

The talks were likely deliberately sabotaged by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who had his Interior Minister announce the construction of 1600 new households in Occupied East Jerusalem the day before they were scheduled to begin. In fact, Israel is actively planning 50,000 further housing units on occupied Palestinian territory. US Vice President Joe Biden had come to kick off the process with visits to Netanyahu and Abbas, but he has now been sent home empty-handed by Netanyahu’s sheer effrontery.

Netanyahu’s far rightwing coalition includes many members of the Knesset or Israeli parliament who are bound and determined to colonize every last inch of the Palestinian West Bank and to reduce the Palestinians to landless beggars. Were the prime minister to make too many concessions to the Obama administration, some of them might well pull out of his government, and it could easily fall. Netanyahu is convinced that the Clinton administration undermined him the last time he was prime minister, and he is determined not to allow that to happen again. So acted as though he was complying with US demands for a settlement freeze, but exempted part of Palestinian territory from the freeze. Then shortly before proximity talks were to begin he had his Interior Ministry announce further colonization, knowing that it would complicate or (better) nix the talks. Netanyahu knew that if he was pressed on the announcement, he could get himself off the hook by apologizing for his flat-footed minister’s poor timing. Biden did not buy this lame shadow play and neither will anyone else with any common sense.

Since 1949, the US has given Israel over $100 billion in direct aid, and the indirect forms of aid are orders of magnitude greater. That the vice president of the United States (and therefore the president himself) were ambushed by the prime minister in this arrogant and nearly sadistic manner raises the severest questions about why US taxpayer money should flow in such enormous amounts to a country that is actively and on a massive scale violating the Hague Agreement of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 on the treatment of populations by occupiers. And this at a time when the US budget deficit is ballooning and there is not enough government money to take care of the needs of US citizens. The argument that Israel is a security asset for the United States is undermined if the Israelis are provoking enmity toward the United States among 1.5 billion Muslims by their inexorable annexation of Palestinian land and daily oppression of the Palestinian people.

Biden took small bits of revenge on Netanyahu, such as going on Aljazeera English from the Occupied West Bank and denouncing the Netanyahu government’s plans to expand its colonies on Palestinian territory as “destabilizing.”

Obama is in real danger of seeing his allies lose respect for the United States once they see that Israel can treat him in this humiliating way with impunity. The security implications for the US are enormous. Many European allies feel strongly that Israel is an aggressor state in the region, and when Obama asks them for help in the fight against al-Qaeda, they may feel that Washington’s coddling of Israeli colonialism produced much of the radicalism that they are now asked to spend blood and treasure combating. Moreover, many leaders may be emboldened to treat Obama and Biden just as Netanyahu did, if the latter faces no consequences for his impudence.

End/ (Not Continued)

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Politico/ here

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