By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Sep 14 2010 (IPS)

Security first or borders first: security says Israel, borders retort the Palestinians. Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are finally again getting under way. Israel though remains adamant that the only chance the talks have to make headway is for its security concerns to be satisfactorily addressed.

A report by an international think-tank propitiously timed for this week’s down-to-brass-tacks encounter between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators suggests the security dimension has already largely been successfully taken care of.

In parallel, the report cautions, however, that success in creating a secure West Bank may be at the expense of creating a viable democratic Palestine.

Entitled ‘Squaring the Circle: Palestinian Security Reform Under Occupation’, the report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) notes that in the past few years, “the Palestinian Authority (PA) has largely restored order and a sense of personal safety in the West Bank, something unthinkable during the second Intifada.”

Security reform, the ICG report notes, was high on President Mahmoud Abbas’s agenda from the moment he assumed office in January 2005. Then, after the Hamas 2007 takeover of Gaza, the PA, Israel and the international community all saw “great urgency in bolstering the Palestinian security forces.”

The PA, the report notes, was intent on ensuring it alone was entitled to use force so as to pre-empt any potential Hamas challenge to its rule in the West Bank.

Israel, for its part, was intent on dismantling militant groups while the international community seized the opportunity to shore up its Palestinian allies and strike a blow against their Islamist foes.

The reforms in PA security proved successful. No more would militias from Hamas or Fatah threaten to hold the West Bank in their grip. The report notes: “Most West Bankers — including many sympathetic to Hamas — liked what they saw, satisfied at a restoration of normal life that, only a few years earlier, had seemed out of reach.”

So far, so good.

But a leading researcher in the ICG team, in a conversation with IPS, warns of a potentially negative fallout from the relative success of the reformed PA security apparatus: “They have managed to put an end to chaos, but this has been accompanied by widespread extrajudicial practices, human rights violations and oppression of the opposition,” says Ofer Zalzberg.

“Such practices undermine the very legitimacy of the PA and popular support for the state-building project.”

The 42-page report was compiled from extensive interviews with Palestinian and Israeli security officials, politicians from both nations and from the international community, as well as internationally renowned experts.

The report concedes that the security achievements cannot conceal more contentious dynamics, notably the deepening of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation on the security level, an internationally backed requirement of the PA since its inception in 1994.

“Palestinians are ill at ease at the sight of their security forces teaming up with their occupiers. The answer, offered most articulately by Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad, is that by working in tandem with Israel to bring back security, Palestinians can gain the international community’s and Israel’s confidence, neutralise a key Israeli argument against statehood and thus pave the way for independence. The argument, logical as it is, would be far more compelling were the peace process at hand more promising,” says the report.

Underlining this problematic cooperation, this weekend the PA announced suspects had been detained in the case of two attacks on Jewish settlers in the West Bank in which four were killed.

In a sweep against militants identified with Hamas, some 300 people have been detained by the PA since the attacks that took place on the eve of the Washington peace kick-off ceremony a fortnight ago.

Should the arrests continue, Hamas has threatened to counter-attack PA security forces: “You know that the hand that reached the heart of the occupier is capable of reaching you, too,” a statement from Gaza said.

This highlights a second contentious dynamic in the report — that of troubled intra-Palestinian relations, and the unwillingness of the PA to move to include Hamas in the political process. That, the report asserts, is a key component for Palestinians to accept the security measures as an integral part of the ultimate purpose of the PA — the building of an independent state.

The trouble is, the report points out, “the crackdown against the Islamists’ military branch broadened into a far more controversial crackdown against Hamas’s social and political manifestations.”

A crackdown also sometimes directed against dissenters from within civil society.

Says Zalzberg: “The lack of inclusiveness in the PA approach might alienate a significant segment of the West Bank population, deepen the intra-Palestinian divide and thus put the whole Palestinian project into jeopardy.”

Still the report notes, “This is not to say that security cooperation is about to end or that Palestinians are on the verge of resorting to armed struggle. Far from it. West Bankers are worn out, exhausted of conflict and happy to recover a sense of normalcy.”

The report highlights the Catch-22 situation encasing Palestinians: “Without a credible Israeli-Palestinian peace process, or their own genuine reconciliation process, Palestinians will be stuck in their long and tenuous attempt to square the circle — to build a state while still under occupation, to deepen cooperation with the occupier in the security realm even as they seek to confront it elsewhere and, to reach an understanding with their historic foe even as they prove unable to reach an understanding among themselves.”

How then to try to square that circle?

The report recommends that Israel allow Palestinian security to expand the areas in the West Bank in which it operates while itself keeping out of those areas; that the PA enhance its respect for human rights, respect freedom of association on the basis of political affiliation and allow Hamas to operate as a political party.

The PA should also work to strengthen the democratic traditions in the West Bank, and refrain from closing down civil society organisations.

The U.S. and the EU should continue their support for the security sector reform, while insisting on respect for human rights, and ensure that the justice sector is accorded equal priority as the security forces, the report insists.

There is, however, another circle to be squared. The report seems to evade it.

Without PA-Hamas reconciliation, a two-state solution may indeed remain elusive. But, as President Barack Obama seems to have realised, to include Hamas in the Palestinian political process at this stage when it continues to advocate an uncompromising approach towards Israel — no recognition, no talks, continuing “the resistance” — would mean that the peace talks would not be getting under way at all.

Excerpt:

By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Sep 2 2010 (IPS)

As President Obama on Wednesday initiates the ninth U.S. attempt in the last 30 years to bring about a final Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement, expectations are low and pessimism is high.

It’s precisely why the talks may just succeed. That, however, may be over- optimistic.

Even if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is genuine in his declaration that “Israel comes to the negotiating table out of a desire to proceed with the Palestinians to an agreement that would end the conflict and ensure peace, security and good neighbourly relations,” he has a mountain to climb to convince Israelis that the talks are worthwhile.

On the eve of his departure for Washington Netanyahu had to neutralise a virulent anti-Palestinian tirade by the spiritual head of one of his main coalition partners.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, effectively the leader of the Orthodox party Shas, declared in his weekly sermon on Saturday evening that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas should be “smitten by a plague”.

Rabbi Yosef, 89, notorious for making comments which many Israelis consider outrageous, said, “Abu Mazen [Abbas] and all these evil people should vanish from the earth. God should strike him and his Palestinians, evil haters of Israel, with a plague.”

Some of his congregants responded, “Amen!”

The future of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank added to the pre-talks pressure on Netanyahu when, during the weekend, 53 prominent Israeli actors, directors and playwrights signed a petition calling for an anti- occupation boycott on performances in a new cultural centre in the major settlement town of Ariel.

Drawing a comparison between what he called “the international de- legitimisation assault on Israel,” and the proposed theatre boycott, Netanyahu said, “The last thing we need during this assault is an attempt to wage boycotts from within.”

Netanyahu’s sternest test in proving that he is serious about advancing towards peace is whether he insists on Israel’s “right” to resume settlement building once a ten-month construction freeze ends on Sep. 26.

With his right-wing coalition demanding that he not extend the settlement freeze, Netanyahu told the cabinet, “We made no such proposal to the U.S. We said that the future of our communities (in the occupied West Bank) will be discussed as one of the elements of a final status agreement. We promised the Americans nothing more.”

Until now, Netanyahu has managed to tame his hard-line coalition’s wish to plough on with settlement building. He maintained that he had succeeded in convincing the U.S. Administration — in turn, forcing the Palestinian Authority’s acquiescence — that the peace bid should start without preconditions.

Although the chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told IPS that “continuation of the settlement freeze” was “not a precondition”, but rather “a condition for the success of the peace talks,” the Palestinian president has time and again warned that if Israel resumes settlement building in a month’s time, that would bring the talks to an abrupt end.

So, whence even a glimmer of hope?

Three elements are different since the failure of previous peace bids.

The most important positive change is a firmer U.S. stance towards the need to end the Israeli occupation.

For all contentions in some quarters that Obama has buckled under Israel pressure (on the settlement issue), the president appears far more resolute than any of his predecessors.

The fact that he has designated upfront that the peace talks should conclude within a maximum of one year should embolden the Palestinians to give him a chance to prove that he means business.

All the more so when the international community — as reflected in the attitude adopted by the Quartet (the U.S., the E.U., Russia and the U.N.) — supports the Palestinian position that the pre-1967 armistice lines should constitute the basis of the border between Israel and the future Palestinian state.

The second changed factor is the attitude of the Palestinians themselves.

During previous peace attempts, Israel was the party within the troubled relationship calling all the shots — even to the extent of adopting unilateralist positions.

Now, however, with the political and economic backing of the international community, it is the Palestinians who are grasping the initiative by gradually creating the foundations of their state — with or without Israeli consent.

The third and perhaps most important change is the active involvement of the Arab world in peacemaking efforts.

King Abdullah of Jordan and Egypt’s President Mubarak both accepted Obama’s invitation to join the opening of the talks. And, Erekat has stressed publicly that he expects both Jordan and Egypt to play an active role when the core issues of the conflict — borders, security, Jerusalem and refugees — are addressed. At Camp David in 2000 the Arab states stood aloof from the U.S. peace drive.

In a rare interview on Israel public television on Saturday night, the King stressed the centrality of the Arab League’s commitment to a full-scale regional peace if the Palestinians and Israelis are able to resolve their differences.

“I don’t think we should put a one-year target date,” Abdullah said in the interview. “Why wait for one year? The longer we wait, the more we give people a chance to create violence.”

Israeli leaders continually say that the success of the one-year peace drive depends on Israel’s security concerns being fully addressed.

Abdullah met that demand head-on: “Is it going to be fortress Israel, or are we going to have the courage to break down those walls and bring peoples together and eventually bring full security to the Israeli people?” he asked. “If Israelis and Palestinians are able to solve their problems together, then all of those elements that are trying to work for the destruction of Israel will have no longer a justification.

“What will happen in Washington is not just about Israelis and Palestinians. It’s about Israel’s future with the Arabs, and Israel’s future with the Muslim world,” the Jordanian monarch concluded.

Excerpt:

Israel’s easing of its land blockade of Gaza is unlikely to lessen international pressure for a change in its policies towards the Palestinians. Nor can Israel be expected to give up its battle to undermine Hamas’ control of the Gaza Strip.

On Thursday, a fortnight after the Israeli navy’s deadly raid on a humanitarian aid flotilla bound for the Hamas-ruled territory that provoked an international outcry, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet voted to ‘liberalise’ the procedures under which Israel has allowed goods into Gaza for the past four years.

The tight Israeli restrictions have been in place since Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian elections and were intensified after Hamas’ violent takeover of Gaza the following year.

No specific product list was mentioned on Thursday, but the cabinet approved the passage of materials for civilian projects under international supervision, indicating Israel would allow the United Nations to take into Gaza previously-banned building material.

These materials are necessary for the reconstruction of Gaza following the devastating Israeli war on Hamas 18 months ago which resulted in many among Gaza’s 1.5 million people losing their homes or being displaced.

The security cabinet noted that “existing security procedures to prevent the inflow of weapons and war materiel” would continue.

The Israeli decision was worked out with the special Quartet envoy to the Middle East, Tony Blair.

Although the cabinet announcement evaded the international demand for a lifting of Israel’s sea blockade, Blair hailed the Israeli decision as “a very important step”: “It will allow us to keep weapons and material out of Gaza. The policy vis-à-vis Gaza should be to isolate the extremists, but to help the people of Gaza,” the former British prime minister said.

In advance of the decision, Israeli officials stressed that both Blair and the U.S. had acquiesced to Israel’s demand that the sea blockade remain in force, at least until adequate alternative watertight arrangements can ensure that no weapons reach Hamas via the sea.

Despite the decision, under pressure, to ease the land siege, Israel’s sea policy is soon to be tested again.

Several upcoming peace flotillas from a number of nations, including Iran, Turkey and Lebanon will once more challenge Israel’s right to impose such a blockade. Activists say they mean to demonstrate that, like the land siege, the sea blockade too is “unsustainable”.

Embattled on another front, the legal aspect of the botched interception of the Turkish-led aid flotilla by the Israeli navy, the Netanyahu government is meanwhile busy trying to stymie the steady international pressure for a full-scale investigation.

On Monday, the government approved the appointment of a three-man public probe into what went wrong on the high seas.

The committee, headed by a retired Israeli supreme court judge, includes two well-known international “observers”, Nobel Peace laureate David Trimble of Northern Ireland and Ken Watkin, Canada’s former judge advocate general, both friendly to Israel.

The committee’s mandate, also worked out in concert with Washington, falls far short of the demand by U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon for a full-fledged international inquiry commission.

Even within Israel, the committee is criticised as “most insufficient”.

However, much of the domestic criticism focuses less on the need to address Israel’s policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians and more on the glaring failure to justify those policies to the world.

Upon taking the decision on Monday, one minister observed, “Maybe this will ease the international pressure on us.”

“Don’t count on it,” reportedly responded Netanyahu, in a rare acknowledgement that he takes the international pressure on Israel seriously.

In another rare public departure from Israel’s strident defence of its sea operation, President Shimon Peres acknowledged that “Israel’s problem is not explaining itself properly, but justifying its policies.”

Criticising the fact the Netanyahu-appointed committee is unlikely to examine the government’s decision-making process, renowned political scientist Shlomo Avineri, writing in ‘Haaretz’, calls it, “A disgraceful evading of responsibility”.

“Much more difficult challenges face us; Israelis have the right to know how their leaders made their decisions, whether their judgment can be relied upon,” Avineri wrote in Haaretz. “It is not the decision-makers’ fate and future that hang in the balance but the fate and future of the State of Israel.”

And during the security cabinet deliberations, in another rare warning, Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak told Netanyahu that Israel will find it difficult to extricate itself from its deepening international isolation, without a “daring and assertive diplomatic initiative”.

The flotilla controversy underlines first and foremost the need to re-build ties with the U.S., Barak argued: “There’s no way to rehabilitate those ties without a bold programme that addresses the core issues of a final settlement with the Palestinians. We have to realise it’s time to make major decisions and to take genuine political steps. Otherwise, Israel’s isolation will only intensify.”

Barak is due to travel to Washington soon to meet with officials of the Obama Administration. The big question is, does he have the backing of Netanyahu and the rest of the right-wing cabinet for the kind of bold initiative he is calling for.

Normally, in this non-descript sleepy Arab town in Galilee, TV sets are tuned to Al-Jazeera or Al-Arabiyya, the round-the-clock Arabic networks.

Thursday afternoon, all eyes were on Israeli Channels One, Two and Ten. As part of their blanket coverage of the flotilla fiasco, all three Hebrew channels were live in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.

Pandemonium reigned. The plenum was like a boat engulfed by stormy seas.

Jewish and Arab lawmakers traded accusations, threats, and nearly came to blows. The focus of the row was Arab legislator Hanin Zuabi. She was mercilessly heckled by right-wing members for having taken part in the ‘End the Gaza Siege’ flotilla.

“Go to Gaza, you traitor,” said one. “You’ve no right to be called an MK (Member of Knesset) because you spilled the blood of other Israelis,” yelled another. One inflammatory statement followed another, and not just from right-wing nationalist Jews.

Knesset guards surrounded the Arab-Israeli MK for fear someone would try to cause her bodily harm.

The shouting grew more intense when Arab lawmakers took to the podium themselves. “A gang of pirates,” was Muhammad Barakeh’s description of the Israeli government. “You’re crazy. You swim against the world, and harm your nation, driving it down the drain.”

After no fewer than 10 legislators had been thrown out of the plenum, Mansour, one of the TV viewers here, murmured, “Maybe all 120 MKs should be expelled and the Knesset dissolved. Anyway, this country is heading towards fascism.”

Usually the Arab-Israeli minority finds itself on the sidelines of intense national debates. As reflected in the mayhem of the Knesset “debate”, they are now part of the ruckus – perhaps only to push them further to the sidelines.

The regular charges of disloyalty against the Arab-Israeli community by right-wing, ultra-nationalist Jews threaten to spread to the silent majority of Jewish Israelis.

“We’re all Hanin Zuabis,” said Wafa, a women’s rights activist. “Only she had the courage to act to help the children of Gaza.”

It was a pretty uniform feeling among the TV watchers, here at Abu Ali hummus (popular dish made with chick-peas) restaurant-turned-Knesset public gallery – very distinct for the pervasive feeling among Jewish Israelis who are, by and large, falling in line behind their government’s insistence on Israel’s right to keep the Gaza siege in force as “self-defence”.

In contrast to the criticism among their Jewish compatriots, which is only confined to the modus operandi of the botched operation, the trenchant criticism among Arabs is directed at the government’s primary decision to intercept the Free Gaza flotilla by force.

“It was a blunder to try to stop the ship anyway, but once they opted for force, it was a disaster waiting to happen,” says Ahmad, a school teacher. “They’re supposed always to be so smart, this army. They could’ve thrown a cordon around the ships, and just waited for an agreement that Israel inspect the aid ships to make sure there were no guns on board.”

Across town at city hall, Mayor Mazen Ghnaim took up the theme: “Until Israeli governments come to the realisation that it’s a changed world, that you can’t get what you want by pure use of force, I’m pessimistic. Still, I believe this is not how the majority of Israeli Jews feel. The problem is we have no leadership in this country.

“The situation that has developed since this confrontation at sea has been crying out for a major bold diplomatic initiative. Now is the time for someone to say out loud what’s inevitable: Implement the two-state solution along the 1967 lines. Overnight, the conflict will evaporate.

“We should be saying ‘woe betide anyone who chooses violently to challenge the support of the entire international community for those borders. I’d be ready myself to fight anyone, even my Palestinian brothers, were they to disrupt such a peace deal.

“But where’s the leader big enough?”

It is early days yet, and the focus is still on how to take the heat out of the global outcry against Israel with an acceptable solution on how to determine what exactly happened aboard the ‘Mavi Marmara’.

And, how to handle the burning question: What will be the fate of the million-and-a-half Palestinians in Gaza if Israel is allowed to go on with the siege?

“‘Minak l’Allah’ – from you to God,” says Ghazal Abu Raya, the Mayor’s top aide.

Not so much to God, but to Barack Obama, they are saying here.

“A grand plan maybe?” says restaurateur Ibrahim, distributing another round of bitter coffee to the TV watchers at Abu Ali’s. “Now that we’ve hit rock bottom, has Obama got the courage to deliver?”

“I’m encouraged,” says Mahmoud. “Let’s switch to Al-Jazeera. I’ve been listening on radio to what’s happening at the Arab League. The Americans simply won’t let the Egyptians, the Saudis and the Jordanians let Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] walk away from the talks they’ve taken so long getting Bibi [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] back to the table.”

“I reckon we can afford another three months to see whether Obama is serious enough or not,” concludes Mahmoud.

Meanwhile, the concern is on the fate of the Arab and left-wing Jewish Israelis who were in the flotilla with Zuabi. At first, there was a threat that the authorities would throw the book at them with harsh sentences. On Thursday, following the expulsion of all the foreign activists, talk turned to their release.

The attorney-general has informed the government that charges against the Israelis would not stand up in the High Court which has been petitioned not to discriminate between Israeli dissenters and the foreign nationals who took part in the “Free Gaza” mission.

In Israel and Palestine memory is a split matter, depending on which side of the map you come from. Especially this May, as Israeli and Palestinian leaders restart negotiating a border acceptable to their peoples.

In the past 20 years, both peoples have largely accepted the principle of a two-state solution. Last year, even the right-wing Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu formally accepted it.

Meanwhile, in absence of an agreed border, every May, on their own and in different ways, Israelis and Palestinians are left marking the anniversary of the de facto creation of Israel at the expense of Palestine.

In November 1947, the United Nations voted the partition of Mandatory Palestine into two states, one for the Jews and the other for the Palestinians. On May 15, 1948, the State of Israel was declared.

In the wake of the 1948 war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians either fled or were driven out of what would eventually become the state of Israel, and became refugees. Every May, Palestinians mourn their Nakba or “Great Catastrophe”, the birth of the refugee question. They still have no state of their own.

Most years, Israelis celebrate the creation of their state by the Hebrew calendar. The date does not always coincide with May 15.

Palestinians continue to mark their tragedy by the Latin calendar every May 15.

As usual, this year, Palestinian remembrance rallies took place in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel in the wake of another Arab-Israeli war, the 1967 war.

Nationalist Arab Israelis also staged solidarity rallies in different parts of Israel. As usual, Israeli right-wing politicians threatened to take action against some of the speakers.

Jamal Zahalqa, a legislator from the Balad party, raised the hackles of even mainstream Jewish Israelis when he told one rally, “The Israel-Palestine conflict will never be resolved until the refugees are allowed to return to their homes in Jaffa, Ramleh, Lydda and the Galilee.”

The right of return of all Palestinian refugees and their descendants to their original homes in what became Israel is a long-held Palestinian demand. Almost all Israeli Jews object vehemently. For them, the return of refugees would destroy the Jewish character of their state, and also the two-state solution.

At another rally in Galilee, Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the Islamist Movement, declared, “The day is not far off when the refugees will return to their homes in Galilee and the Negev, Haifa, and Akka. There is no substitute for the right of return. We will not repeat the mistake of 1948 and accept financial compensation instead of the right to our land.”

Salah attacked the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem as “a cancer of peace”.

Retorted Avigdor Liberman, Israel’s foreign minister and head of the ultra-nationalist Israel Beteinu (‘Israel Our Home’) party, “It is not Jews living in the West Bank that is a threat to the two-state solution, but such views held by Arab citizens of Israel.”

Liberman, himself a settler, was elected on the ticket, ‘No Loyalty, No Citizenship’. Other politicians in his party continue to advocate the “transfer” of Arab Israeli towns and villages close to the border line to the future Palestinian state should a two-state solution be “imposed” on Israel.

“The place of people who advance such ideas like Raed Salah is behind bars,” a minister from the Labour party, Benjamin Ben Eliezer, said bluntly.

“But the majority of Arab Israeli citizens are loyal to the state and we are not exonerated from adopting policies that redress the discrimination against Arab citizens,” Ben Eliezer added. ‘’If we want to drive them away from extreme positions, we should do everything in our power to give them the opportunity to be fully integrated in Israel.”

As usual, the Israeli Left joined those rallies, trying to blend both Israeli celebration of independence and the Nakba into a single narrative which recognises that Israelis must understand that Palestinian pain is a condition for true reconciliation.

For the first time this year, over a thousand Israeli leftists marked that day on their own, in the centre of their capital city, in a piazza of west Jerusalem which has a loaded name, Zion Square, a name which exalts the national ideology of the state of Israel..

The Israeli blue-and white flag was displayed. There was no show of Palestinian colours.

This reflected a new trend emerging among left-wing Jewish Israelis that the day ought to be marked not just by wistfully hoping for that elusive day when both national interests will be at peace with one other, but by insisting that such peace is an intrinsic Israeli interest.

“We too are true Israeli patriots,” said Yoav, one of the demonstrators, “Our purpose of being here is not just to show our solidarity with the Palestinian right to a state, but how important this is for Israel’s own future well-being.”

“Getting rid of the settlements in the West Bank is not only a Palestinian interest, it’s an Israeli interest too,” Yariv Oppenheimer, formerly of the Peace Now movement and one of the organisers of the rally, told IPS.

“The ultra-nationalist dream of controlling the whole of the land has to be expunged so that Israel can focus on what it was established to be, a democratic home for the Jewish people,” Oppenheimer said.

Unlike other pro-Palestinian Israeli demonstrations which took place in Galilee and in occupied East Jerusalem, there was no interference by the police in the Zion Square rally and right-wing politicians were mute.

Noam Chomsky, a fierce espouser of left-wing causes, is widely admired in countries which parade themselves as “democracies”. Apparently, the admiration does not extend to Israel.

The 81-year-old world famous linguist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was denied access to the occupied West Bank when he tried to cross in from Jordan to deliver a lecture at the Palestinian Birzeit University.

Chomsky, who is Jewish and has spent time living in Israel in the 1950s, is not just an outspoken critic of the occupation. He has criticised Israel’s very foundation as a Jewish state.

Yet, he does not deny Israel’s right to exist and has supported the two-state solution.

A bizarre situation developed at the Allenby Bridge crossing point. The terminal is under Israeli military control.

Chomsky said inspectors had stamped “denied entry” onto his passport. When asked ‘why’, they said an explanation would be sent in writing to the U.S. embassy.

The Israeli officials were “very polite”, Chomsky added from Amman, but did not let him in because “the government does not like the kinds of things I say, and apparently also because I was due to lecture at a Palestinian university, and not at an Israeli university too.”

The Chomsky incident is a further indication of erosion of Israel’s democracy that is happening almost unbeknownst to most Israeli Jews, and definitely unacknowledged by them.

This is reflected in a recent Tel Aviv University survey of attitudes towards free speech and civil liberties. Virtually all the people polled, 98 percent, said freedom of expression was “important”, but the picture changed when the questions got into the details. The poll found that 57.6 percent of respondents agreed that human rights organisations that expose “immoral conduct” by Israel should not be allowed to operate freely. Eighty-two percent said they even back stiff penalties for people who leak illegally obtained information that exposes such conduct by the Israeli military. According to the poll most favour punishing other Israelis who support boycotts of Israel, and support punishing journalists who report news which reflects badly on the actions of the military. Overall, more than half agreed with the statement “there is too much freedom of expression in Israel”. “Israelis have a distorted perception of democracy,” Daniel Bar-Tal, the pollster, a professor at the university’s School of Education, told IPS. “We recognise the importance of democratic values, but when they need to be applied, it turns out most people are anti-democratic.” In reaction to what some warn is “creeping fascism”, most Israelis feel they face creeping international de-legitimisation. “While we say Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, in Europe they are beginning to think of us otherwise,” bemoaned a Ben-Gurion University professor, David Newman. Incidents such as what is being called the Chomsky “mishap” usually create few waves in a country where democratic senses have been dulled by the creeping corrosion of Occupation on their society. This time there were impassioned reactions.

“This is a decision of principle between the democratic ideal – and we all want freedom of speech and movement – and the need to protect our existence,” insisted Otniel Schneller of the centrist Kadima party. Speaking on Israel Radio, he said, “What would he say at Birzeit? That Israel kills Arabs, that Israel is an apartheid state?”

In another three months, Schneller maintained, an Israeli mother would be standing over her son’s grave, “the victim of incitement in the name of free speech.”

In contrast, Boaz Okun, the legal commentator of ‘Yedioth Ahronoth’, the country’s most popular newspaper, wrote: This foolish act is only one in a series of follies. Taken together, they may mark the end of Israel as a law-abiding and freedom-loving state. At least, a large question mark looms over that notion.”

In an editorial entitled “Declaring War on the Intellect”, the liberal ‘Haaretz’ wrote, “Israel has lost its last remnants of tolerance for anyone who does not join its shrinking chorus of supporters.

“One does not have to be an ardent Chomsky supporter to agree with his view that Israel is behaving like South Africa in the 1960s, when it understood that it was an outcast but thought it could solve the problem through better public relations.”

That is the nub. The reactions to the Chomsky affair have been less the expression of an earnest soul-search about whether Israel is in the throes of intolerance or the impact of the country’s sagging international “image”.

“Israel is proving more and more that the erosion of democracy does not always come from the barrel of a gun, but from petty border officials applying the strict bureaucratic rules dictating the tenets of a long-term occupation regime,” Prof. Steven Aschheim, a Hebrew University historian, told IPS.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, insisted that “the idea that Israel prevents people critical of its policies from entering Israel is “ludicrous – it’s not happening.”

Chomsky appeared unready to take the chance of another “entry denied”. Instead, he decided to relay the lecture by video conference from Amman.

By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Apr 18 2010 (IPS)

Ziad Abuzayyad was Palestinian cabinet minister responsible for Jerusalem affairs and a member of the Palestinian Legislature. During previous rounds of peace talks with Israel he was a leading member of the Palestinian negotiating team

Ziad Abuzayyad Credit: Jerrold Kessel/IPS

Currently, Abuzayyad is co-editor of the ‘Palestine-Israel Journal’ which seeks to create a platform for exploring tangible ways to advance a peaceful two-state solution between Israel and Palestine.

He spoke to IPS’ Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler about how the ongoing crisis in relations between the U.S. and Israel, especially over the question of Israel’s determination to go on building freely more settler homes in occupied East Jerusalem, might affect peace hopes.

Q: Are you pleased with the way President Barak Obama is pressuring Israel – he seems to be literally making Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu squirm… A: I don’t want to enjoy anyone’s embarrassment or see anyone suffer; I want to enjoy seeing peace come about between Israelis and Palestinians, each with their own state. Also, it’s not a matter of pressure, but the results of such pressure on the Netanyahu government. The point is not what you say, but what you do.

Q: And, is the U.S. doing more than just saying? A: People in this area are looking for deeds, not words. So far, there is a tough tone in the way the Obama administration is talking to Israel now and about Israeli policies, but it’s not enough. It could amount to just lip service, unless it is translated into real pressure for real action on the ground. What counts is what eventually shows on the ground. As long as there is no change in Netanyahu’s behaviour, and no tangible policy change by him, all this will not be helpful.

Q: Are you saying that the way President Obama has shifted, and the way he is talking to Netanyahu now, amounts merely to lip-service? A: Listen to what I am saying; I’m not saying that this is lip-service. But, unless words are translated into action, it could indeed become just that. The point is that if Israel is truly made to feel that the U.S. administration is genuinely serious about insisting on a settlement freeze, especially in East Jerusalem, the Israelis will implement it. There is not an Israeli leader who would dare to get into such a confrontation with the U.S. They would do anything to prevent such a confrontation.

Q: Even Netanyahu… A: Even Netanyahu.

Q: Were you surprised at this blow-up between Obama and Netanyahu? A: I can’t say ‘surprised’ – it’s not yet a blow-up. It’ll be a blow-up only if the U.S. really pressures Israel, and Netanyahu chooses to resist.

Q: Is the issue of the continued building in East Jerusalem settlements a litmus test of how far Obama is prepared to go? A: Let me put this way – there is a joint consensus of Israelis and Palestinians that it is in their common interest to end the conflict with two states for the two peoples. If the Obama administration makes the Israeli leadership understand that this is for Israel’s sake that will be great. If not, it will be against us Palestinians for the time being but against Israel in the long run. And in the meantime, the suffering on both sides will go on.

Q: But do you see this crisis between the U.S. and Israel as a turning point? A: Potentially, it is a turning point. We have to wait to see what practical steps the U.S. intends taking. It’s either-or.

Q: Either-or… A: Either the U.S. will do its share to make the two-state solution possible or the U.S. will have to exert more pressure – there’s simply no alternative.

Q: What should the Palestinians be doing all the while? A: The most important thing is that there is no resorting to violence again, that we should not try to militarise our conflict with Israel. What we need to do is two-fold: On one hand, expand passive resistance against the occupation and against Israeli behaviour in the occupied Palestinian lands; on the other, go on building the institutions of our future state, to show our capability to create a state in a peaceful manner.

Q: Did the Arab Summit in Libya meet Palestinian expectations? A: We have no great expectations of the Arab League. The Arab summit is not a crucial event in this process; irrespective of whether or not they endorse the American drive to get the proximity talks between us and the Israelis underway, those talks should go on. But in parallel, we have to redouble our effort on the two tracks I have noted where we are ourselves in control – more passive resistance, and continued building of the infrastructure of our state.

Q: Where does this leave President Mahmoud Abbas? A: He is very much in control but he is also aware of the mood of the people. Like everyone, he is fed up with constant Israeli manoeuvring and scheming. But he will do anything he can to make sure that there is no violence. I hope he gets the necessary support for that option. I’ll remind you that the outbreak of the Intifada uprising was spontaneous. Now, however, the general mood is to embark on peaceful resistance as we follow just how determined the U.S. is prepared finally to get serious with the Israeli government.

Excerpt:

By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
MAALEH ADUMIM, Occupied West Bank, Jan 28 2010 (IPS)

When Benjamin Netanyahu dug a spade here and in another West Bank settlement this week, some thought the Israeli Prime Minister was actually digging a hole into current United States-sponsored peace efforts.

Certainly, Netanyahu was not indulging in an innocent tree-planting ceremony in advance of the upcoming Jewish “New Year of the Trees”.

He was attempting to stamp an indelible mark on the renewed U.S. peace drive, to make crystal clear Israel’s position that any negotiations leading to a division of the land as part of the two-state solution must start here, in the settlement blocks, and not, as is the Palestinian and U.S. position – from the 1967 borders.

The settlements were all created in the land taken over by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israel war and occupied since then. Close to the old border, the settlement blocks include most of the 300,000 Israeli settlers.

‘‘Listen all ye mediators and would-be peace partners, and be aware,” was the Netanyahu message. “We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here. This place will be an inseparable part of Israel for eternity.”

Netanyahu had deliberately gone to the ceremony in the occupied West Bank straight from meeting U.S. President Barack Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East, Senator George Mitchell. Netanyahu said he had heard from Mitchell “some interesting ideas” on ways to restart the talks with the Palestinians.

Last week, the Israeli leader had described the Palestinians as having “climbed a high tree” in their insistence on making their participation to new talks conditional on Israel implementing a total freeze on settlement activity. “They like it up there,” he added caustically.

The Palestinians are being forced to play catch-up with a change in American tactics.

Obama has admitted that the first year of peace-making has been anything but a success: “We overestimated our ability to persuade them … If we had anticipated some of these problems, we might not have raised expectations as high,” he confided to Time magazine over the weekend.

The president’s acknowledgement of failure was also a tacit admission of a volte-face in the American approach – that they are now bypassing their own initial absolute demand on a full settlement freeze, and insist instead to getting the parties to first negotiate the borders of the Palestinian state-to-be.

The original approach of Obama’s peace team built on the Annapolis process of a full peace kicked-off by the Bush administration, on the principle that “nothing’s agreed until everything’s agreed”.

Now, the approach seems to be: ‘‘Implement now what can be agreed, even if everything isn’t agreed upon”.

The new American rationale is that if there is an agreement on the contours of Palestine (for now, in the West Bank only), then the issue of settlement building within those borders automatically falls away.

From his meeting with Netanyahu, for his part, in a bid to extricate the parties from the one-year negotiating stalemate, Mitchell went on to Jordan for a second meeting with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. After the talks in Amman, Nabil Abu Rudaineh, spokesman for Abbas, said, “It’s premature to talk about a real breakthrough.”

Indications are, however, that the Palestinians may be gradually coming around to recognise that if they continue to resist U.S. entreaties to resume talks, and stick firmly to the principle of an absolute settlement freeze – though that was enunciated firmly by Obama himself – they may no longer be advancing their own cause.

Reports after the meeting in the Jordanian capital suggest that Mitchell is making headway in his effort to inject a new reality into the rarified air which the Palestinians have been breathing.

Abbas reportedly told the U.S. envoy that, if the Americans would commit to being full partners at a reconstructed peace table, the Palestinians might consider joining after all – despite Netanyahu’s position of the settlement issue.

Netanyahu successfully held off the initial Obama gambit on the settlements.

Now, in face of the modified U.S. approach, the prime minister is seeking to rally his defences around the blocks of settlements. He obdurately insists they are part and parcel of Israel.

The Netanyahu counter-gambit appears to be based on an offering to exchange pieces with the Palestinians: Israel offers, ‘‘take your state within provisional borders in line with Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad’s intention to unilaterally declare such a state within the coming year; in return, accept that other Palestinian claims (on East Jerusalem and the question of the Palestinian refugees) be set aside for the foreseeable future”.

Netanyahu hopes the Palestinians can eventually be browbeaten into accepting his ‘better something than nothing’ approach.

How will the Americans handle this Netanyahu counter-challenge to their ‘just-get-back-to-the-table-and-talk’ tactic?

Before embarking on his latest shuttle endeavour, Mitchell had not been afraid to define the ultimate goal of the new American engagement.

“Full implementation” of the Arab League peace initiative he said candidly in a PBS television interview. That re-stated 2002 initiative calls for total Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines, the establishment of a Palestinian state, and “a just and agreed upon solution” to the Palestinian refugee problem in return for an end to the conflict and full normalisation of relations between Israel and the Arab world.

Netanyahu’s strategy – trees, houses and all – is, however, for an interim agreement, not for an end to the conflict.

More pointedly, he wants the U.S.-sponsored border negotiations to start not from the old Israel-West Bank border (and only then to relate to the settlement blocks as a special issue), but for the talks to start from the settlement blocks themselves, which, he contests, are, in any event, an integral part of Israel.

The big question is whether Obama will acquiesce in this Netanyahu attempt to secure a temporary ‘draw’ in the negotiations – a draw that would allow him effectively to go on incorporating the settlement blocks into Israel.

Or, will the U.S. President – in contrast to the previous dispute over the settlements – choose to face Netanyahu down? And make a more vigorous assault on the Israeli leader’s position?

Excerpt:

By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Dec 30 2009 (IPS)

In the absence of any progress towards peace between Israelis and Palestinians, leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) are adopting a reasonable approach as a way of building up international pressure on Israel to get it back to the negotiating table.

Ghassan Khatib Credit: Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler /IPS

Ghassan Khatib, an influential, former PA cabinet minister and co-editor of the ‘bitterlemons’ family of Internet publications, told Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler in an interview that the PA seeks international support in getting Israel to observe the freeze on new settlements as agreed upon in the Road Map.

IPS: Is the two-state solution still alive or has it been killed off? Ghassan Khatib: No, it’s still alive, but it is being killed by Israeli settlement expansion. As it stands, it’s still a possibility. But if it doesn’t happen soon, and should settlement expansion go on, it might become practically impossible to implement it.

IPS: In that case, isn’t it worth trying to hoist Prime Minister Netanyahu on his own settlement freeze petard? GK: There are two problems: First, he did not say ‘freeze’; secondly, he qualified his settlement policy enormously, making it tantamount to no-freeze at all. He made an exception of Jerusalem which, by the Israeli definition, is the equivalent of 22 percent of the West Bank. Also, he excepted buildings where permits have already been issued and also public facilities. It adds up to no change.

We’ve tried this approach before – it was precisely what President Bush insisted upon on the eve of the Annapolis peace conference two years ago. He told us that we should not demand a halt to settlements as a pre-condition, but deal with the settlement issue during negotiations. If the settlements were to stop, well and good he said; if not, you Palestinians will be in a much stronger position to demand a stop settlement building in the future. It didn’t work. The outcome was simply more expansion and it softened international pressure to halt the settlements.

IPS: But were you to re-start talks, wouldn’t that add to the pressure on Israel? GK: We have two objectives – first, to ask the international community to help us to get constructive bilateral talks going, while taking into account the lessons of the past. The negotiations must have clear terms of reference. By that, we’re not imposing any pre-conditions. Second, those negotiations should be based on the Road Map which was agreed to by all parties. The Road Map has certain obligations for all parties, including a settlement freeze, and I don’t see why Israel should not be doing its part.

IPS: Are you disappointed with the approach of U.S. President Barack Obama? GK: We’re still confident, still optimistic that Obama will make a difference. Although it’s taking more time than we expected. Still, his approach is completely different to that of his predecessor. That’s most welcome.

IPS: With lack of progress, is it inconceivable that the United States might just back away from the whole process? Is that a serious concern to Palestinians? GK: I’m not worried – they can’t do that. There is a very strong interaction between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the situation in the whole region. Stability in the Middle East is vital to everyone. It’s a fundamental U.S. interest. Obama is keen to try to help.

IPS: In the absence of progress, though, perhaps the option for the Palestinians is narrowing to a unilateralist strategy? GK: Not at all – let me take the opportunity to clarify our position: No Palestinian body has ever taken any decision regarding a unilateral strategy. Our policy is based on moving in two directions – first, to encourage the international community to increase its involvement, and that is, by nature, multi-lateral. Second, we are busy building the institutions of our state. There is of course an element of unilateralism in that, but it’s a positive unilateralism. It’s our job – we’re not contradicting anyone else when we say we’re working towards bringing our state to fruition. We have to become ready for our state. By choice, our peace strategy is bi-lateral and multi-lateral, not a unilateral approach.

IPS: Isn’t there a major impediment in this state-building task? After all, Palestine is divided between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza… GK: The internal Palestinian situation is of course a negative aspect in achieving our aspirations. I should point out, however, that Israel’s insistence in carrying out its withdrawal from Gaza unilaterally, without negotiations and not as an outcome of the peace process, contributed to strengthening Hamas and weakening the PA. By the same token, Israel’s prevention of movement between the West Bank and Gaza has continued to have a major detrimental effect.

IPS: One has a sense that the Palestinians are trapped in political limbo? Isn’t that dangerous? GK: It’s true that the limbo situation cannot go on for long. Time is not in our favour, but Prime Minister [Salaam] Fayyad is serious when he urges the international community to get more involved in helping us build the structures of our future state. Certainly, the current status quo, the de facto functional division of control between Israel and the PA over the same territory is not at all healthy. Nor is it sustainable. Either we move towards two states, towards a Palestinian state, or the situation will deteriorate in ways that cannot be foreseen.

IPS: In your view, is Netanyahu committed to peace? GK: Netanyahu is not a partner for peace. His priority is his domestic constituency, particularly the right wing. He tries to please the right wing rather than please the needs of peace. It’s neither good for peace, nor for Israel. There’s ever increasing criticism in the international community of Israel.

IPS: Is President Abbas serious about stepping down? GK: We have no reason not to believe that he’s serious about not running again. It’s a political message underlying just how urgent things are.

IPS: That makes the coming six months critical… GK: I hope the situation won’t get out of hand and that things will begin moving forward. That Egypt will make progress in its reconciliation effort between the PA and Hamas once the long-anticipated prisoner exchange [between Israel and Hamas] goes through, and that, within six months, the international community will be able to extricate us from the present stagnation. They need to be more efficient in advancing bilateral talks, in stopping Israel’s settlement expansion in accordance with the Road Map and in continuing to help us create the infrastructure for our state.

IPS: Do the Palestinian people have the patience… GK: I believe they have, but not forever. Time is a very important factor.

Excerpt:

By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Dec 27 2009 (IPS)

Resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict along the two-state parameters seems less likely with Israel torn between accepting a Palestinian state and the settler ideology which calls for Israel’s exclusive rule over the whole of Jerusalem and the West Bank.

David Landau Credit: Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler /IPS

David Landau, formerly editor-in-chief of Israel’s prestigious daily, ‘Haaretz’, and regarded as one of Israel’s top journalists, spoke with IPS’s Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler about a Middle East precariously poised between war and peace, with U.S.President Barack Obama holding the key to the region’s predicament.

Landau is the author of several books including “Piety and Power” on the political ascendancy of Orthodox religious Jews and a political biography of Israeli President Shimon Peres. He is currently working on the definitive biography of the former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to be published next year by Alfred E.Knopf.

IPS: Isn’t a two-state solution in fact less relevant now that Israel is fast splitting into two nations? David Landau: I accept that definition of two Israels, but what’s more relevant is the two Israels which are both in [Prime Minister] Bibi Netanyahu’s head. Actually there’s a bifurcation between Bibi’s head and heart. In his head he fully understands Israel’s fundamental interests, but in his heart he is with the hard-line Right. That now means the religious right, no longer – as had been the case two decades ago or when Netanyahu was last in power at the end of the 90s – is there any distinction between the religious ideology which drives the settler movement and what used to be the secular nationalist camp. That largely non-religious nationalist camp has been overwhelmed by the settler ideology.

IPS: So, you mean it’s Netanyahu’s heart that’s dictating… DL: In fact, that settler ideology has been running the country for the past two decades – apart from what were, sadly, only a few brief interludes. A statement which then US undersecretary of state George Ball made some 20 years ago that “the US needs to save Israel from itself” is now more applicable than ever. You could say it’s in the hands of the US president to save half of Bibi from the other half of Bibi or, to use your words, one Israel from the other.

IPS: Is that where Barack Obama is going? DL: We certainly hoped at the time of his Cairo University speech in June that it would be so. Now, with his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, I hope anew. The moment of truth will come with his policy towards Iran. It would be the Grand Bargain – the protection of Israel from Iran alongside the protection of Israel from Israel itself, that is, Israel entering into an agreement with the Palestinians by withdrawing from the West Bank.

If you fuse the two Bibis, head and heart, you get the quintessential Bibi, the man dedicated to heading off what all Israelis regard as an existential threat, that from a nuclear Iran. If you confront Netanyahu with a policy that saves Israel both from that existential threat, and from itself by ending its rule over the Palestinians – that’s the Grand Bargain, he will have no option but to take it. The Israeli public will not let him refuse it.

IPS: But isn’t that same Israeli public drifting into accepting the supremacy of the settler ideology? DL: I don’t accept that premise. It doesn’t take into account the fact that mainstream Israel has moved far to the Left compared to where it was 15 years ago; the dream of endless occupation and digging in into the West Bank is now the province of the rightist margins alone, no longer the platform even of the main rightist groups within Israel.

IPS: But surely Netanyahu is allowing what you call the margins to call the shots… DL: I accept that. Netanyahu is enabling that to happen. But if the US president were to translate his words into action, he would meet a broad swathe of Israeli public opinion. Settlement construction lies on a very thin layer of public opinion. After [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon, and even before him, the debate between left and right is no longer where it used to be, i.e., not any more how long can you retain the West Bank, but how much of it you can retain.

IPS: Going back to your “Grand Bargain”, does Obama realise the powerful weapon he can wield in impelling Israel to leave the West Bank by, as you say, guaranteeing Israel’s protection against a Iranian nuclear threat? DL: For the past decade by constantly warning against that threat, Bibi has himself armed Obama with that weapon, and I don’t say that cynically. One would hope that Obama realizes the strength he wields with that potential deal. Instead, he launched that counter-productive, doomed-to-fail settlement freeze. In the longer term this initial ill-conceived foray into Middle East peace-making will come to be seen as a sort of excrescence of frustration and impatience towards Bibi Netanyahu which Obama inherited from the Clintons. This was all the more vivid because Mrs. Clinton became Secretary of State. It was visceral and impolitic, a settling of old scores, if you like. The President over-played his hand: Don’t make politics if you’re visceral.

IPS: You’re immersed in your biography of Sharon. In the context of current events, can you give us an inkling of the primary theme? DL: The relevance is that Sharon proved that everything we’ve been talking about is manageable – if you’re a leader with determination, and if you’re sufficiently sagacious to see the proper balance of interests of you state. The bugbear of the settler threat, their hold over the geist of Israel, their arrogation of Zionism and patriotism can be challenged and defeated. Sharon demonstrated that in 2005 with his enforced evacuation of the settlers from Gaza. Although the settlers had been warning the country that Sharon was leading them to ruin, immediately after the withdrawal the whole country went off on a summer holiday. In contrast, with Netanyahu’s blessing, they are currently trying to make people forget what they had forgotten, trying to remind them that it will be another “national trauma” if settlements are removed from the West Bank.

IPS: What happens now? DL: The Americans, the world, should say we’re pressing on and making peace with Bibi, or without him. By trying to understand his so-called dilemmas they are playing into his hands. After all, we’ve had ten years of international diplomacy predicated on the Clinton parameters of December 2000 [which set out the borders between Israel and Palestine roughly along the pre-67 lines with agreed territorial swaps]. This informed the policy of Bush, the Quartet, and it is still informing US policy today.

IPS: What you’re saying is that Obama should draw the borders of Israel based on those Clinton parameters… DL: Precisely. Still, we shouldn’t ignore another aspect in the failed peace-making until now – the ineptness of Palestinian diplomacy and leadership. We thought that the failure of peace-making lay in the tragic inability of Yasser Arafat to take the historical decision about accepting Israel’s right to exist. Sadly, it may not be just Arafat – it may be an endemic PLO failure, that they are just not prepared to come to terms on any terms – terms beyond which Israel cannot go.

Such terms were offered by [former prime minister Ehud] Olmert before he was forced out of office. Understandably, the Palestinians were wary of Olmert being a lame duck and thus being unable to deliver. But, they should surely have responded. They made a terrible blunder by ignoring the Olmert terms.

IPS: Is there any future for peace-making? DL: The settlement freeze idea was a blip. But Obama still has his chance. He could enshrine the Clinton parameters as the basis of a US Mid-East policy that would include incredible concessions by Israel on settlements in return for US protection for Israel. That’s what I mean when I talk about the Grand Bargain.

Excerpt:

By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Nov 16 2009 (IPS)

The Palestinian Authority has embarked on a new strategic drive to get renewed international recognition for the borders of the future Palestinian state. Last Thursday it gained backing for this approach from the Arab League.

Saeb Erekat Credit:

Going into a meeting with European representatives in Ramallah on the West Bank to explain the Palestinian strategy, and hours before embarking with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on a three-nation tour of Latin America, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, Saeb Erekat, spoke exclusively Monday morning to IPS’s Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler.

IPS: There has been much talk in recent days of a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state. What’s the purpose of that move and what lies behind it? Saeb Erekat: Actually, we’re not planning to declare our state unilaterally, as has been mistakenly reported. What we intend to do is to take to the United Nations Security Council a request that the international community re- endorse the two-state solution based on the pre-Jun. 5, 1967 borders. The key are those borders. Israel is, as usual, twisting our words to suggest that we are about to declare a state unilaterally. We are not planning to do that.

IPS: Still, your initiative is unilateral… SE: All we are trying to do is to salvage the two-state solution along the ’67 borders. It is Israel which is practising unilateral steps all the time – through their occupation, through their demolishing of homes, through their settlement expansion policy, through their roadblocks and checkpoints. They’re lying when they try to accuse us of damaging unilateral steps.

IPS: The way (Israeli) Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu was talking Sunday night seemed to be a threat that if you pursue this direction rather than return back to peace talks right away, Israel might respond by another unilateral act of its own – annex settlement blocs, big chunks of the West Bank. SE: Actually, it’s the Israeli leadership which doesn’t want to resume negotiations with us where they were stopped in December 2008 (with Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza followed by the February Israeli elections which put Netanyahu at the helm). The Israeli government is simply trying to find a way to put the blame on us. It’s a broken record. It won’t convince President Obama, I’m sure. The world knows what’s going on.

IPS: Have you already convinced the international community of the merit of this strategy? SE: The Arab world is on board – we got the endorsement of the Arab League last Thursday. I’m about to unveil the idea to the European representatives, and tomorrow President Abbas and I are headed for three nations in Latin America – Brazil, Argentina and Chile. I believe they’ll all see it’s a good strategy, the only one that can save the two- state solution.

IPS: And Washington? Haven’t you had some disappointments with the Americans of late, what with their backing down on their demand for Israel to freeze all its settlement activities? SE: We haven’t spoken to them yet about the initiative, but we intend to do so soon, and we hope to get a positive response from the President. We want to continue with the U.S. What can we do? We have no option.

IPS: Wouldn’t it be preferable if Washington, not the UN, would endorse your borders? SE: The border plan is what the UN Security Council will devise. It’s imperative to preserve the two-state solution.

IPS: Are you worried that Washington might see this as premature or untimely, and thus veto a resolution at the Security Council? SE: They shouldn’t do that. It would be bad for U.S. interests, damage America’s position in the region. We’re just trying to keep alive the two-state solution which Israel undermines daily with its occupation policies.

IPS: Shouldn’t you wait to see if Washington can’t revive peace talks between you and Netanyahu? SE: We’ve tried our best. We’ve had 18 years of negotiations. Israel remains the sole authority, the occupying power of our towns and refugee camps, and goes on with its settlements. It’s really the time. No one is against Israel’s right to exist. We’ve recognised Israel on 78 percent of our land. We’ve accepted that our state will be on 22 percent of the land.

IPS: Isn’t it becoming too late for two states? More and more Palestinians seem to be prepared for a one-state solution of Israelis and Palestinians living together. SE: Even without an Israeli partner we remain, and we will remain, committed to two states. Israelis and Palestinians cannot live together without two states. There is no option but the two-state solution.

Excerpt:

By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Oct 27 2009 (IPS)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself embattled on several fronts as he tries – hitherto unsuccessfully – to ward off the enormous international pressure on Israel unleashed by the Goldstone report for its conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza earlier this year.

Israel’s failure to bury the report has even led Netanyahu into a direct confrontation with his closest political ally, defence minister Ehud Barak.

In a weekend interview with the Washington Post, Netanyahu showed that he doesn’t actually have a clear idea on how to extricate Israel from the quandary.

He told the Post that he doesn’t reject upfront the possibility of the creation of an independent domestic commission of inquiry into the Goldstone allegations that Israel committed ‘war crimes’ during its 22-day January offensive.

“We’re looking into that, not because of the Goldstone report, but because of our own internal needs,” Netanyahu said. “The best way to defuse the issue is to speak the truth, because Israel was defending itself with just means against an unjust attack.”

Both Barak and the military chief of staff, Lt.-Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi, vehemently oppose any commission – international or domestic – a position essentially endorsed by the Israeli cabinet last week as they parried a decision on what precisely to do.

The Israeli leader’s interview did nothing to allay the concerns of his defence establishment that he may be backsliding from his previous position that there is no necessity whatsoever for any Israeli inquiry.

Following adoption of the report ten days ago, the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva gave Israel three months to investigate its war on its own.

Unlike in the past, Israel is no longer guaranteed of a U.S. flack-jacket in the form of a Security Council veto to ward off any condemnation of Israel and the possibility of sanctions down the line.

This led the former head of the International Department of the Israeli State Prosecutor’s office, Irit Kahan, to write of just how imperative a domestic investigation is: “It will be easier for our friends in the Security Council to veto any proposal to transfer the matter to the International Criminal Court in The Hague,” she argues.

But, faced with the defence establishment’s uncompromising position that no officers or soldiers should be put in the line of fire of “any inquiry commission”, Netanyahu did another turnabout on Sunday evening.

At a top-level meeting he again rejected an independent inquiry, announcing instead the setting-up of special panel “to counter” the Goldstone report by offering “recommendations for action on the legal, diplomatic and political front.”

The panel, headed by a close ally of Netanyahu, justice minister Yaakov Ne’eman, is also charged with looking into the army’s own internal investigations into alleged wrongdoings by troops during the war.

That’s hardly expected to relieve the international pressure.

U.S. President Barack Obama had declared that he trusts the Israeli legal system to conduct a proper investigation. With his twists and turns, Netanyahu is increasing doubts about Israel’s political system.

The Prime Minister may face another difficult encounter with the U.S. President when they meet again, as they are scheduled to do in Washington in a fortnight.

So far Netanyahu has even failed to advance his argument that there is a more urgent imperative than the “flawed” Goldstone recommendations – the need to alter the laws governing international warfare. Netanyahu insists that the existing laws of warfare are no longer applicable to “the contemporary reality of having to combat terrorist entities in asymmetric wars.”

That he has fallen short of convincing his international interlocutors that this should be the basis for assessing the rights and wrongs of what happened in Gaza was made plain by the EU diplomacy and defence chief Javier Solana.

In an interview with the Tel Aviv daily Ha’aretz last Friday, Solana walked the thin line between those who advocate using the Goldstone report to put Israel in the dock, and those who are wary of what damage this might do both to international efforts to contain terrorism and in advancing Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

“In yesterday’s world, there were wars of armies against armies, and there were laws and conventions that dealt with the conduct of such wars,” Solana acknowledged. “It is necessary to invest thought in the changing situation in which it is difficult to implement the classic rules of war.

“But,” Solana stressed, “until new rules are in place, we must obey the old ones.”

While Israel has not directly grappled with the moral challenges posed by the Goldstone report, both politicians and commentators have been forced to address the political implications for Israel’s international standing and legitimacy.

And, it is inevitably forcing them to address the other burning Israeli issue on the international agenda, the settlements on Palestinian land.

A leading commentator, Ari Shavit, writes of the five decades of Israeli settlement policy in the occupied West Bank – “the chronicles of stupidity,” he calls it – the decades since Israel took control of the West Bank in 1967: “Netanyahu and Barak have no time. They must act quickly. The option of the first decade (status quo) is not an option. The option of the second decade (settlements) was never an option. The option of the third decade (peace) is an illusion. The option of the fourth decade (unilateralism) is a recipe for disaster.

“Thus it is vital,” Shavit says, “to produce quickly a sober option for the fifth decade – a limited withdrawal in part of the West Bank in exchange for international recognition of an Israeli line of defence and an Israeli right to defend itself from within that line.”

But, like the overwhelming majority of Israelis – even those who understand the immorality of the settlements enterprise – Shavit stops way short of grappling with the quintessential ‘stupidity’, argues another commentator, Zvi Barel.

Under the title, ‘The Birth of Goldstone’, Barel makes specifically the point that the moral charges laid at Israel’s door are part and parcel of criticism of the Occupation itself: “Goldstone uses the term ‘continuum’ to establish that the Gaza war cannot be understood on its own without assessing it as part of a chain of events, which also includes the complete closure of the Gaza Strip for three years, the policy of razing homes, the arrests, the interrogations and torture, not only in the Gaza Strip but also in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In short, the war was not an isolated ‘incident’ – it is a link in a chain as old as the Occupation itself.”

Several commentators in Israel have said that Goldstone is unfairly singling out Israel.

Barel counters that unlike in other ‘anti-terror wars’, those who wage those wars enjoy international legitimacy because their occupation of foreign lands (as in Iraq or Afghanistan) is a tactical means rather than strategic policy – something Israel refuses to apply to its own occupation of Palestinian lands, even in talks with its greatest friend, the U.S.

“The Israeli Occupation gives off signs of being eternal,” Barel concludes, “and this leads to disgust that is powerful enough to affect even our friends.”

Excerpt:

By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Apr 13 2009 (IPS)

A new spate of demolitions of Palestinian homes by the Israeli authorities near Jerusalem’s walled Old City, plus resuscitated plans for a new major Jewish settlement building project on the outskirts of occupied East Jerusalem, threaten to spark fresh tension between Israelis and Palestinians.

Daniel Seidemann Credit:

IPS speaks to Daniel Seidemann, founder of Ir Amim, an Israeli watchdog group on settlement expansion and other Israeli policies in occupied East Jerusalem. Many international agencies rely on the information and analysis provided by Seidemann as a base for shaping their policy positions on Jerusalem.

Direct from an extensive visit to the U.S. where he met with leading policymakers in the new Obama Administration and prominent Washington- based diplomats, he talks about what is needed to prevent Israeli policies in the city from derailing international peace efforts.

IPS: How far could Israel’s current activities in East Jerusalem impede efforts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Daniel Seidemann: A debate is still hovering within the Obama Administration – whether to fully engage the conflict, or go just for low-maintenance management of the conflict. There are very compelling arguments telling the President, ‘don’t go there – the U.S. can’t afford another failure in the Middle East, put it on the back burner’.

But, the U.S. simply does not have that as an option.

Firstly, the possibility of a two-state solution is literally hanging on by its finger-nails. It’s still possible for the two states to be formed with sustainable borders that are both viable and secure, but we’re very, very close to losing that: left unattended, Jewish settlement expansion within the eastern part of the city will reach a critical mass that will create a Balkanised stalemate, geographically and demographically, that would make the two- state solution impossible.

After eight years of the Bush Administration’s ‘scorched earth’ policy there’s definitely a need for a period of reconstruction or convalescence. But the more time the U.S. feels it needs for constructing a conflict-resolution programme, the more forceful they will need to be in the period of conflict management. Ignore Jerusalem and the two-state solution will be lost within one or two years, three at the utmost.

Secondly, serious trends have been unleashed in Israel policies both at the national and municipal level – the turning over of the public domain, in terms of demography, history, culture, archaeology, the religious sites, to Jewish extremist religious and nationalist settler organisations with the active support and consent of the Israeli government. These have far-reaching implications not only for the status of Jerusalem but also for the nature of the entire conflict.

We have a nasty conflict, but it’s still political, and therefore the crisis is still manageable by mere mortals. Untended, it will move into a different realm – into Jihadism, into holy war, into Armageddon – in sum, making it a religious conflict. In that case, we can all simply pack up and go home, which is fine for everyone else except for Israelis and Palestinians for whom this is home.

What’s more, if ignored, Jerusalem will seek the Obama Administration out, hunt it down and undermine not only peace-making efforts between Palestinians and Israelis, but also undercut all efforts to create an interface between the West and Islam and to achieve what the U.S. wants in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. By not acting in Jerusalem, instead of administering preventive medicine, the Administration will find itself in the trauma room; for that, an exorbitant price will have to be paid with a high mortality rate.

Q. Don’t you think the Administration has diagnosed the potentially lethal symptoms?

DS: It’s important to note how (U.S. Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton, during her recent visit to the region, felt compelled to challenge pronounced Jerusalem municipal policies of house demolitions in the area of the Holy Basin – though she’s originally had no intention of getting into a confrontation on her inaugural visit. That suggests the Americans are getting it. They ignore the symptoms at their peril.

Early into the Palestinian Intifadah uprising, a senior U.S. diplomat, who’s still engaged in constructing Washington’s Mid-East policies, was urged by the Bush Administration to ‘put the conflict into parking gear’. He told the White House that the conflict has either ‘drive or reverse, no neutral gear’. Ignored, Jewish settlement expansion and radical tendencies will continue apace, even if the Israeli government decides not to accelerate them.

The test of the pudding will be in the eating – the debate within the Administration as to just how far to be engaged will be put to a test on a daily basis.

It’s widely reported that by the end of the month President Obama will lay out his Middle East strategy and delineate clear rules of U.S. engagement. All indications are that the President is resolved to engage both the new Israeli prime minister and the new Jerusalem mayor, Nir Barkat. On paper, their positions certainly appear to put them at loggerheads with the Administration.

IPS: Where do you see the main flashpoints? DS: As a whole, Israeli settlement activity in and around East Jerusalem – the applicability of a settlement freeze is clearly on the U.S. agenda. The area known as “E1” is the most emblematic – that’s the area where Israel wants to build a major new settlement that would effectively link the outskirts of East Jerusalem with the big settlement town of Ma’ale Adumim, thus severing Palestinians within the city from neighbouring Palestinian villages in the West Bank, and also cut off from one another Palestinian towns like Ramallah and Bethlehem, to Jerusalem’s north and south. The Bush Administration managed to pressure the previous Israeli government to put E1 on hold, but only at the expense of settlement activity elsewhere in the city.

Then, there are Israel’s plans for what’s called the Holy Basin, including the walled Old City and the whole area adjacent to it where most of the holy sites of all three monotheistic religions are located. It has, in effect, become a domain of the settlers. There is definitely government collusion with the ultra-nationalist religious settlers who have been given total control of the delicate ecosystem there. The immediate concern is for 88 Palestinian homes in the Silwan neighbourhood against which demolition orders have been issued.

IPS: Does this reflect the way the new Israeli mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat, (elected last November) who ordered the demolitions, means to go? DS: The demolition of Palestinian homes, ostensibly because they were put up without building permits, is not so much a case of Israeli malice against Palestinians – it’s that Israel is busy establishing an ersatz Biblical domain in this area, and the Palestinians who live there are getting underfoot. What happens to them is just regarded as collateral damage. With the religious extremists, the mayor is planning to turn the Holy Basin into a Biblical Disneyland whereas, in fact, he’s turning Jerusalem into Never-Never Land.

IPS: Where is Barkat coming from? DS: He’s a technocrat, not an ideologue, and he has unmitigated confidence in his own ability to do what he believes he has to do. He has certainly grafted the settlement ideology into his operating system. Nothing he has done in the past has prepared him for the complexity of becoming the major of a volcano.

IPS: And what of the Palestinians who live in east Jerusalem, in essence, people in limbo? DS: It’s an incontrovertible fact that only 5-10 percent of the city budget goes to 35 percent of the population, the Palestinians. Some call it racism – I prefer to qualify it as discrimination. Politicians never allocate resources to people who don’t vote and, because they don’t recognise the Israeli occupation, only 2,200 out of 128,000 eligible Palestinians voters (1.7 percent) turned out for the November elections. Barkat pursues the empty slogan of ‘United Jerusalem’ but everything points to the fact that the Palestinians have no real share in the city – they are entirely disenfranchised.

IPS: What of Prime Minister (Binyamin) Netanyahu? DS: I’m not sure which direction he will go in practice, but it may very well be that if the Administration comes down on him, he’ll take the same approach he adopted when he was in power between 1996 and 1999 – namely, anything conciliatory towards the Palestinians was immediately compensated by a policy against the Palestinians in Jerusalem. One of the real dangers is that he might summon (foreign minister Avigdor) Liberman and tell him that he plans only to do the E1 housing project ‘when the circumstances are right’ but that he means to tell the President that he’s ready for a trade-off – to forestall implantation of E1, ‘provided you lay off me with respect to the Holy Basin’.

IPS: Surely the Americans wouldn’t be taken in by that? DS: There are some good signs. When the Secretary of State says that the demolishing of houses in Silwan is not a municipal issue but a policy issue, you have to be deaf not to hear that message. Washington seems to understand the situation in a way that clearly it did not ‘get it’ during the last eight years. The Obama Administration certainly has a very good Middle East team: they’re well informed and they’ve learnt from past mistakes, which is encouraging. Whether or not there will be a coherent policy is still, however, too early to say.

IPS: Surely this goes beyond Washington… DS: Absolutely, this Administration has already indicated plainly – whether in regard to the G20 or NATO (north Atlantic Treaty Organisation), or the deployment in Afghanistan – that it will be far more multilateral than the Bush Administration, not that that’s too difficult. There may well be a new division of labour with respect to the Arab world and to the Arab League peace initiative. There could also be new life breathed into the Quartet (the EU, the U.S., Russia and the UN) and a newly defined role for the Quartet’s special envoy, Tony Blair. All indications are that while the U.S. will take the lead on Israeli-Palestinian moves, they envisage a much broader role for the EU and for the Arab world as well.

IPS: So will Washington get it right this time, do you believe? DS: Solving Jerusalem is a bit like the global economic crisis. This Administration can do all the right things and still fail. But one thing’s for sure – they don’t have the time, and Jerusalem cannot be left on the sidelines. Jerusalem can be very wise and very forgiving to those who understand her complexities. But it’s one nasty bitch of a place to those oblivious to the complexities: it’s very unforgiving for those who treat its complexities in a cavalier manner.

East Jerusalem Fact File:

* The eastern part of the city, including the walled Old City and its holy places, was annexed by Israel and incorporated by Israel as part of its “unified capital” immediately after its conquest during the 1967 Middle East War.

* The annexation has never been recognised by the international community which does, however, support the Palestinian claim to East Jerusalem as the capital of the projected Palestinian state.

* There are 270,000 Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem who constitute 30 percent of the city’s overall population. They have the status of residents, ostensibly with full rights and including the right to vote in municipal elections. Unless they have opted specifically for Israeli citizenship (only some 2,000 have), they are not eligible to vote in Israeli parliamentary elections.

* Over the 42 years of occupation, Israel has appropriated some 35 percent of the land within East Jerusalem to build new housing projects for the Jewish population. During the same period only 600 apartments have been built with government support for Palestinians, and no new Palestinian neighbourhoods have been created.

* About 2,500 Israeli settlers have moved in recent years to live in the area of East Jerusalem called the Holy Basin.

Excerpt:

By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Jan 13 2009 (IPS)

The war on Gaza is widening. Not so much on the battleground inside Gaza as inside Israeli society. The Israeli army continues the battering of Hamas, but on another front Israelis are firing on their own democracy – and from within the very halls of democracy itself.

Three weeks into the war, and just four weeks before they are due to exercise their right to choose the direction in which they want their country to go, the Jewish majority is demonstrating bluntly it believes this is no time to brook any dissent.

In the Israeli parliament, the Central Election Committee voted Monday to ban two of the three main Arab political parties from running in the Feb. 10 general elections. In the last elections, the two parties won seven seats in the 120-seat Knesset. Arab Israelis make up about a fifth of Israel’s population.

The committee voted overwhelmingly to ban the United Arab List – the Ta’al and Balad parties, accusing them of supporting Hamas. “Go and join Haniyeh (Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader in Gaza) in his bunker – that’s where you belong,” a Jewish legislator yelled at Ahmed Tibi of the UAL.

Representatives from all the major political parties supported the measure initiated by two ultra-nationalist Jewish parties. They argued that the Arab parties “support terrorism” and “do not recognise Israel’s existence as a democratic Jewish state.”

“A democracy,” said Avigdor Liberman, head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, “sometimes needs to protect itself against an irredentist minority.” Tibi retorted angrily, “this vote exposes Israel as a state of all its racists.”

Ta’al and Balad said they would appeal the ruling to the High Court of Justice. The court, which has until Friday to rule on the decision – the deadline for submitting Knesset lists – is expected to overturn the decision for lack of concrete evidence.

But, the ‘no dissent’ atmosphere goes beyond any hostility towards Arab citizens who have generally opposed the war.

Israel is in a peculiar single-minded mood. Used to priding themselves on their broad array of views, apart from the Arab minority, Israelis now appear 98 percent lined up behind the war, and demanding 100 percent commitment to the war effort.

International opprobrium is shrugged off, but it is not merely a case of not caring what the world thinks: the zero-tolerance for any questioning about the extent and nature of the war is directed also inward. Israel is a nation seemingly hell-bent not just on deterring its enemies but on deterring all troubling debate, a self-willed therapy to abate the doubts that erupted during the War in Lebanon against Hizbullah two years ago.

This national conformity is also reflected in a distinct unwillingness to know what exactly is happening in the war: apart from snippets of TV footage out of Gaza everything else that Israelis see is from their own side. Reporters who dare to grapple with the consequences of their government’s policies and of the nature of the military operations are branded ‘unpatriotic’, ‘traitorous’ and ‘self-hating’.

Unmoved by the broadsides, Ha’aretz columnist Gideon Levy, inveterate moral opponent of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, fired back: “Who’s a traitor? Who will decide for us whether launching this war of folly is patriotism, that rejecting it is treason?”

Government and military spokesmen insist regularly that “our only objective is to hit Hamas” and “Israel has no interest in waging war against the people of Gaza.” But, when mainstream media stars confront them about what’s actually happening to Palestinian civilians in Gaza, arguing somewhat apologetically, “it’s our job to cover all sides”, they too are lambasted by an unforgiving audience for “identifying with the enemy” and “undermining national morale.”

Even left-wing politicians and would-be peace advocates offer remarkably few challenges on the political context of the war and the effect it will have on any future relations with the Palestinians and the Arab world. Attempts to link the war in Gaza and the continued occupation in the West Bank are almost non-existent.

Israel may be unmasking its true self, says left-wing politician and a former education minister, Yossi Sarid. Writing in Haaretz, he sees a possible salutary impact: “The war is resolving a painful conflict between our self-image and our actual behaviour. We have consciously decided to relinquish what we regarded as our own moral supremacy.”

Dr. Ruhama Marton, president of the Israeli Physicians for Human Rights believes that’s wishful thinking. “We maintain that self-image of absolute morality. Day after day we hear this is the most justified war, that our army is the most moral army in the world. But at root, Israel still sees itself as victim,” says Dr. Marton, “and as a victim you’re always absolutely right. When you’re absolutely right, there’s no room for challenges.”

More prosaically, most Jewish Israelis feel good about the war not only because they regard it as ‘just’, but because they see it as successful. They simply don’t want any spoilers – from outside or inside, from the Arab minority, or even from the Jewish majority.

Excerpt:

By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Jan 11 2009 (IPS)

Into the third week of its war on Gaza, Israeli leaders are convinced they’re still calling the shots. But, without a suitable diplomatic exit soon, the military “successes” could quickly begin to unravel, some sobering Israeli voices have cautioned.

Israel is disturbed that Thursday night’s UN Security Council call for an immediate ceasefire accords Hamas a degree of international legitimacy – even though Hamas is not explicitly mentioned in the resolution – and that “passage of the resolution,” wrote David Horovitz, chief editor of The Jerusalem Post in a front-page analysis, “will be seen in the frenzied climate of international debate as legitimating unbridled criticism (of Israel).”

But, Israeli confidence is reflected in the way it has shrugged off the resolution and in Israel’s readiness to bear the brunt of that international opprobrium for the desperate plight of the Gaza population. And, although Hamas rockets keep landing on southern Israel, Israeli insists it is not only tightening its military grip on Gaza but is inflicting crushing blows on the Hamas military wing.

“But now, Israel finds itself at a military and diplomatic crossroads – should they reap the dividends of the war thus far or risk taking it further and becoming embroiled in a final showdown with Hamas in the heart of Gaza’s populated areas,” says political commentator Leslie Susser. “The gung-ho advocates who want to destroy totally Hamas control of Gaza are feeding on their past dreams.”

The critical crossroads is starkly defined: either in the direction of speedily securing a diplomatic solution or, towards giving the Israeli army the green light to deepen the ground offensive which could last weeks, in the assessment of military sources.

Until now, conventional wisdom has been that the Israeli leadership was keen to avoid an extended operation in order to avoid a potentially embarrassing overlapping of the war with the installing of the new Obama administration in the U.S. But, says the former head of Israel’s National Security Council, Major-General Giora Eiland, “the army cannot go on like this forever. We need to reach a decision – either conclude a ceasefire in two to three days, or start a big military operation.” The third option – marking time with the same level of strikes against Hamas alongside on-off diplomatic efforts – is simply untenable, argue other defence experts.

In Israel’s policy-making circles, Egypt is perceived as the traffic cop at the crossroads. How it manages to steer the situation could solve Jerusalem’s dilemma of the days ahead. Cairo, in effect, is calling the shots.

In a televised speech from Damascus Saturday night, Hamas leader-in-exile Khaled Meshaal said the Islamist group would not consider a truce until Israel ended its military offensive and lifted its crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip. But, Hamas delegations from both its Damascus-based politburo and Gaza, held talks in Egypt on Saturday, and on Sunday, Amos Gilad, head of the Israeli Defence Ministry’s political-security branch, was dispatched to Cairo for a second round of separate talks about concrete measures for getting an effective ceasefire in place.

It is through the tunnels under the Egyptian-Gaza border that Hamas has managed over the past few years to smuggle in its arsenal of long-range rockets and missiles. Israel wants Cairo to take full responsibility for stopping that traffic and for regulating their border in a way that there will be no possibility for Hamas to re-arm.

Before setting out, General Gilad was at pains to stress that “Israel is not pressuring Egypt;” he also praised Egypt’s logistical and security array as “eminently capable” of controlling the border. A key parallel question is whether Israel will acquiesce in what, for its part, Hamas is seeking from Egypt – open and unmonitored borders between Gaza and Sinai and between Gaza and Israel. Israel is prepared for the Palestinian Authority (PA), backed by international experts, to monitor the border. However, PA President Mahmoud Abbas indicated clearly that his Authority would only be ready to be part of such an arrangement once its fences with Hamas have been mended.

This is the equation with which all sides are grappling. Israeli analysts say of Egyptian intentions that it’s not so much a question of bullying Egypt into border arrangements so much as that Hamas has not yet been bullied enough. They base themselves on remarks by some anti-Hamas Palestinians officials who privately express the hope of an eventual routing of Hamas.

For Israelis, ‘bullying Hamas enough’ raises the spectre of their war in Lebanon – not the war against Hizbullah in 2006, but the war on the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1982 when Israel went all the way to Beirut and forced then PA leader Yasser Arafat’s forces out of Lebanon, and tried to install a friendly Christian regime in Beirut. Any incipient thoughts about trying to repeat that in Gaza reportedly led Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak to mutter that anyone harbouring the illusion of toppling Hamas is hiding the fact that that would mean the re-occupation of Gaza.

At the start of this campaign, as in 1982, Israel’s deliberate ambiguity of purpose seemed to stand it in good stead. Now, though, the search for practical ways of implementing the Security Council provisions for a ceasefire is upping the pressure on Israel to lift the veil over the precise strategy it is pursuing – whether to curb Hamas’s hostile capabilities or try to smash it completely.

Excerpt:

By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Jan 7 2009 (IPS)

“Unlike the Qana tragedy in 1996 which brought about an immediate end to the Israeli offensive in southern Lebanon, Tuesday night’s Israeli shelling of the Fakhura UNWRA school will not bring about an abrupt cessation of the Israeli military campaign,” says analyst Chemi Shalev in the Wednesday morning edition of Israel Today. “But it will definitely accelerate the diplomatic pressure for a ceasefire.”

The big question, he says, is “will Israel’s leaders now know what to do to secure our war objectives?”

The school attack underlies what John Ging, head of the United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA) in Gaza had been saying repeatedly for the previous three days since the start of the ground offensive: the Palestinian population in Gaza is locked in and simply has no effective escape from the hostilities. Hard-pressed by the deteriorating plight of Gaza’s civilians, Israel informed the UN it was implementing a three-hour unilateral halt to hostilities Wednesday afternoon as a “humanitarian interlude”.

It is the coming 48 hours, however, that will be critical in determining whether a long-term ceasefire can take hold. And, whether Israel is able to devise its own successful way out.

With the onslaught against Hamas at a crossroads, Israel’s security cabinet convened Wednesday morning. The choice, according to government officials, was between, on one hand, escalating the military campaign and deepening Israel’s territorial grip on the Gaza Strip to the extent of taking control of Hamas strongholds in the heart of Gaza City and other urban centres or, speeding up the diplomatic option. “Conceivably,” one official said, “both options could be embraced together.”

Just prior to the school attack, international diplomatic efforts had been gaining momentum, notably with the visits to the region of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and of the EU foreign ministers delegation, plus the belated involvement of U.S. officials who were trying to string together a diplomatic arrangement that would be satisfactory to both Israeli and U.S. strategic interests.

Israeli leaders spell out three specific conditions for ending their offensive: the absolute cessation of Hamas rocketing of Israeli towns and villages; watertight control – with or without an international component – of the Egyptian border with Gaza to obviate the possibility of Hamas re-arming once a ceasefire has gone into effect; and third, the exclusion of any Hamas presence either at that border, or at Israeli-Gaza crossing points (Gaza is supposed to get its fuel, food, medicine and other critical humanitarian needs via Israel though, prior to the war, Israel would periodically close its border with Gaza in retaliation for Hamas shelling).

Major-General Giora Eiland, the former head of strategic planning in the Israeli army, put the equation bluntly. Speaking on Israel Television Tuesday night, he said, “Egypt is the key to a deal. There need not even be an international component to the supervision of the Egypt-Gaza border – either in working out the arrangement or in on-site control,” Eiland added. “This is a matter purely between the Egyptians and us. We need to tell them – ‘you want the Israeli-Gaza crossing points kept open at all times so as to avoid hardship for the Palestinians civilians in Gaza. We will guarantee that, provided you ensure that no arms get through to Hamas via your borders.”

Before the killings at the UNWRA school, Israeli officials had been talking of the idea of a de facto diplomatic arrangement, “without the bride” – without Hamas, that is, as an equal party in any future arrangement.

Does the school attack alter this in any way? Certainly, Egypt has moved into a more strenuous role in pressing Hamas on the imperative that it agree to a ceasefire. Certainly, too, it has upped the international community’s insistence on the hostilities ending forthwith. Nor has it gone without note in Jerusalem that it certainly produced the first outspoken comment by U.S. president-elect Barack Obama who deplored the suffering of civilians on both sides.

Still, some Israeli military experts remain tempted to argue that for Israel to curtail its military offensive now would be tantamount to undoing all tactical and strategic gains achieved so far in undercutting Hamas’s strength, and risk having Hamas re-emerge emboldened despite the battering it has taken. Against this, other defence experts – including reportedly Defence Minister Ehud Barak himself – reiterate the argument that a 48-hour ceasefire for a humanitarian assessment of the situation could still serve Israel in ultimately securing its campaign goals.

Against these pros and cons, the key dilemma that continues to hover over the Israeli leadership as it updates its strategy – military and diplomatic – is whether deepening the ground campaign will further boost Israel’s deterrent capability vis-à-vis Hamas. Or, whether the school attack hasn’t already clipped the wings of that hard-won deterrence achieved during the earlier aerial phase of the war.

Israeli leaders know that what is for sure is that they cannot afford to squander the initial international legitimacy for their strike against Hamas – despite the horrors of the war – should they now make the wrong decision about how, and when, to end the fighting.

Excerpt:

By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Jan 4 2009 (IPS)

A confident Israel launched the second half of its war against Hamas in Gaza self-assured that it has already secured two central components of the war: the reaffirmation of its right to self-defence, and the legitimacy of its military action. The latter, Israel reckons, derives directly from the modesty, not necessarily of the scope of the operation (the most extensive against Palestinians in 40 years), but of its declared war goals.

With this growth in confidence, the fog of war over the Israeli decision-making process leading into the latest phase of the operation is fast dissipating: following the Hamas decision not to renew the six-month ceasefire, as early as Christmas Eve – three days before the launching of the air assault – the full Israeli cabinet had given the war the green light including, in principle, a major ground incursion.

Then, last Thursday, after Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s parrying trip to President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, the leadership triangle – Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Livni – discussed developments from midnight into the early hours of Friday, then convened a secret security cabinet meeting at the defence headquarters compound in Tel Aviv.

The meeting lasted until well after the onset of the Jewish Sabbath. Religious ministers, though willing to transgress the Sabbath, were persuaded by the prime minister to depart at 4 pm “to avoid arousing suspicion that something is imminent.” They left behind proxy votes, adding to the broad support for the ground operation. There were only two abstentions – from ministers who wanted to include a ‘third half’ of the war, overthrow of the Hamas regime.

Not only does the war continue to enjoy widespread public support, but Israeli officials are basking in a perception that their operation enjoys a fair degree of legitimacy in the region, and around the world: officials point to Egypt’s blaming of Hamas as “responsible” for the slide into hostilities, the failure of the Arab League to adopt a unified stand, the postponement of any UN Security Council resolution until at least midweek and the Czech declaration (as rotating president of the EU) acknowledging the “defensive” nature of the Israeli offensive. Above all, they stress the unflinching support of U.S. President George W. Bush, the silence of president-elect Barack Obama and the fact that no U.S. envoy has been dispatched to the area.

Overall, Israel may be upbeat, but Defence Minister Ehud Barak is at pains to stress that not all is rosy: “I don’t want to delude anyone. The ground operation will be neither easy, nor simple,” he warned at Sunday morning’s cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. A prime target is control of the launching pads from which Hamas units have been rocketing towns and villages up to 40 km inside Israel. The declared objective is to change the rules on the ground so as to eradicate the Hamas will to continue firing, not necessarily its capability to do so.

Israeli officials believe also that the decision to launch the ground operation puts Israel well on the way to accomplishing its broader mission, the restoration of long-term deterrence. Danny Rotschild, a major general in the reserves, interviewed on Israel Radio, said, “Deterrence is composed of two facets – not only a determination to act, but the willingness to take difficult decisions to act.” This, added Rotschild, is now clear to all in the region – Palestinians, Hizbullah, Syria and Iran.

Hamas may have its back to the wall but there is growing concern that the longer they manage to survive the Israeli assault – from the air and on the ground – and even to continue shooting into Israel, Hamas could gain in legitimacy. It already seems to be doing so. One Palestinian, interviewed on international television, said scornfully, “The Israelis say they are fighting Hamas and not the Palestinian people of Gaza. We all Hamas.”

Israeli commentator Zvi Barel writes in the liberal daily Haaretz of the possibility that Hamas will still be in a position to call some shots. “When the war ends, Gaza will no longer be ruled by a ‘terrorist organisation’, but by a government with status which will set terms for any regional move Israel aspires to carry out. Hamas stands to gain through war what it has failed to achieve through its sweeping victory in the Palestinians election.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is straddling a difficult line – between the need in adversity for national unity under his rule, and the lingering hope nurtured by some Palestinians that, for all its bravado, Hamas will end up having its wings clipped.

Full-fledged diplomatic efforts for a new reality in the aftermath of the war have yet to begin in earnest, at a time when a series of transitions of power are taking place – in the U.S., in Israel, and possibly within the Palestinian Authority where President Mahmoud Abbas may be forced to call new elections. At the peak of the fighting, one thing is already clear: The outcome of the war will also largely be about who on the Palestinian side will have their legitimacy enhanced or reduced once the guns fall silent – Hamas or President Abbas.

Excerpt: