The two-week long conflict has claimed the lives of more than 620 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including over 230 women and children, and over 3,700 wounded, while the Israeli death toll is 27 soldiers and two civilians. Credit: Syeda Amina Trust Charity/cc by 2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 23 2014 (IPS)

The overwhelming Israeli firepower unleashed on the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the ongoing battle in Gaza is perhaps reminiscent of the Algerian war of independence (1954-1962) when France, the colonial power, used its vastly superior military strength to strike back at the insurgents with brutal ferocity.

While France was accused of using its air force to napalm civilians in the countryside, the Algerians were accused of using handmade bombs hidden in women’s handbags and left surreptitiously in cafes, restaurants and public places frequented by the French."Unless you have been on the street facing Israeli troops in Gaza, or sleeping on the floor under an Israeli aerial assault, as I have several times while delivering aid in 1989, 2000, and 2009, it's impossible to imagine the total disproportion of power in this conflict." -- Dr. James E. Jennings

In one of the memorable scenes in the 1967 cinematic classic “The Battle of Algiers,” a handcuffed leader of the National Liberation Front (NLF), Ben M’Hidi, is brought before a group of highly-partisan French journalists for interrogation.

One of the journalists asks M’Hidi: “Don’t you think it is a bit cowardly to use women’s handbags and baskets to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people?”

The Algerian insurgent shoots back with equal bluntness: “And doesn’t it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on unarmed villages, so that there are a thousand times more innocent victims?”

Then he delivers the devastating punchline: “Of course, if we had your fighter planes, it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our handbags and baskets.”

In the current conflict in Gaza, a role reversal would see Hamas armed with fighter planes, air-to-surface missiles and battle tanks, while the Israelis would be hitting back only with homemade rockets.

But in reality what is taking place in Gaza is a totally outmatched and outranked Hamas fighting a country with one of the world’s most formidable and sophisticated military machines, whose state-of-the-art equipment is provided gratis – under so-called “Foreign Military Financing (FMF)” – by the United States.

According to the latest figures, the two-week long conflict has claimed the lives of more than 620 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including over 230 women and children, and over 3,700 wounded, while the Israeli death toll is 27 soldiers and two civilians.

Speaking of the military imbalance, Dr. James E. Jennings, president of Conscience International and executive director of U.S. Academics for Peace, told IPS, “Unless you have been on the street facing Israeli troops in Gaza, or sleeping on the floor under an Israeli aerial assault, as I have several times while delivering aid in 1989, 2000, and 2009, it’s impossible to imagine the total disproportion of power in this conflict.

“I saw boys who were merely running away shot in the back by Israeli soldiers with Uzi [submachine guns] and arrayed in body armour, and in 2009 and 2012 at Rafah witnessed Israel’s technological superiority in coordinating sophisticated computers, drones, and F-15s with devastating effect,” he said.

The repeated missile strikes ostensibly targeted youths scrambling through tunnels like rats to bring food and medicine to the trapped population, but often hit helpless civilians fleeing the bombing as well, said Jennings.

He also pointed out that in terms of the imbalance in the number of casualties in this so-called “war”, statistics speak for themselves. However, numbers on a page do not do justice to the up-close reality.

“In my work I have visited wounded women and children in hospitals in Rafah and Gaza City and helped carry out the bodies of the dead for burial,” Jennings said.

When military capabilities are that asymmetrical, he said, shooting fish in a barrel is the best analogy.

As for the largely homemade Qassam rockets launched by Hamas, their ineffectiveness is apparent in the statistical results: over 2,000 launched, with only two unlucky civilians killed on the Israeli side.

“That is far less than the eight Americans killed accidentally last year by celebratory rockets on the 4th of July,” Jennings noted.

The billions of dollars in sophisticated U.S. weapons purchased by Israel are under non-repayable FMF grants, according to defence analysts.

Israel is currently the recipient of a 10-year, 30-billion-dollar U.S. military aid package, 2009 through 2018.

And according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), Israel is also the largest single recipient of FMF, and by 2015, these grants will account for about 55 percent of all U.S. disbursements worldwide, and represent about 23-25 percent of the annual Israeli military budget.

Nicole Auger, a military analyst who covers the Middle East and Africa at Forecast International, a leader in defence market intelligence and industry forecasting, told IPS Israel imports practically all its weapons from the U.S. – and this largely consists of sophisticated equipment it does not produce domestically, or equipment it finds more expedient to buy with U.S. assistance funding.

She said despite a proposed shift in emphasis from air and naval power to ground strength, Israel continues to place priority on maintaining air superiority over all its regional neighbours.

The emphasis on air supremacy and strike capability has resulted in an additional order for F-15I fighters to serve as the lead fighter until the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is brought into service with the Israeli Air Force (IAF), she said.

Along with its 25 long-range strike F-15Is (Ra’ams), the IAF also has 102 multirole combat F-16Is (Soufas) purchased under the Peace Marble V programme in 1999 (50 platforms) and 2001 (option for a further 52 planes), Auger said.

The F-15I and F-16I jets, some of which are being used for aerial bombings of Gaza, are customised versions of the American fighters tailored to specific Israeli needs.

Israel’s military arsenal also includes scores of attack helicopters.

Auger said the Sikorsky CH-53 heavy-lift helicopter fleet was just upgraded with the IAI Elta Systems EL/M-2160 flight guard protection system, which detects incoming missiles with radar and then activates diversionary countermeasures.

Israel has also completed a major upgrade to its fleet of Bell AH-1E/F/G/S Cobra attack helicopters and its Boeing AH-64A Apache helicopters has been converted to AH-64D Longbow standards.

The middle layer of defence is provided by the upgraded Patriot PAC 2 anti-missile system (PAC 3) and the air force is also armed with Paveway laser-guided bombs, BLU-109 penetration bombs, Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) kits, and GBU-28 bunker busters.

In terms of vehicles, she said, Israel manufactures the majority of its own.

Jennings told IPS two facts are largely missing in the standard media portrayal of the Israel-Gaza “war:” the right of self-defence, so stoutly defended by Israelis and their allies in Washington, is never mentioned about the period in 1948 when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes and pushed off their land to be enclosed in the world’s largest prison camp that is Gaza.

Secondly, the world has stood by silently while Israel, with complicity by the U.S. and Egypt, has literally choked the life out of the 1.7 million people in Gaza by a viciously effective cordon sanitaire, an almost total embargo on goods and services, greatly impacting the availability of food and medicine.

“These are war crimes, stark and ongoing violations of international humanitarian law perpetuated over the last seven years while the world has continued to turn away,” Jennings said.

“The indelible stain of that shameful neglect will not be erased for centuries, yet many people in the West continue to wonder at all the outrage in the Middle East,” he added.

Israel is the only country to have rejected the alliance between former rivals Hamas and Fatah. Credit: Zack Baddorf/ZUMA Press/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 4 2014 (IPS)

The United States’ decision to “work with” the new Palestinian government has virtually isolated Israel: the only country so far to have publicly rejected the political alliance between Fatah and Hamas.

“Not a single nation has heeded Israel’s futile call to boycott the new unity government,” said Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer for the State of Palestine to the United Nations.

The new government, joining rivals Fatah, which controlled the West Bank, and Hamas, which ruled Gaza, was enjoying support from countries around the world, except Israel, he said

“This is a significant development and in line with the national interests of the Palestinian people,” Mansour added.

"[I]t is in Israel's interest to have the two parts of Palestine in a kind of political congestion suffocating for lack of a pathway to liberation and peace." -- Vijay Prashad, Edward Said chair at the American University in Beirut (AUB)
Israel, one of the closest allies of the U.S., has already launched a scathing attack on the administration of President Barack Obama, describing U.S. recognition as “American naivete”.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the United Nations stands ready to lend its “full support” to the newly formed government in its effort to reunite the West Bank and Gaza, in line with the intra-Palestinian unity agreement of Apr. 23, under one legitimate Palestinian authority.

This, he pointed out, includes addressing the serious political, security, humanitarian and economic challenges in Gaza, and holding long overdue elections.

Asked if this means “U.N. recognition” of the new unity government, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters: “The issue of recognition of governments is one that is up to member states.

Dr. James E. Jennings, president of Conscience International and executive director of US Academics for Peace, told IPS, “The new Palestinian government has already conceded to Israel what the Zionist state has long demanded: that Palestinian leaders recognise Israel, thus essentially conceding Israel’s right to exist.”

Further, he said, Fatah’s leadership of the coalition, with its built-in security agreement with Israel, means the new Palestinian government also agrees to operate behind the apartheid wall as a demilitarised entity dismembered by scattered Jewish settlements under the protection of Israel and its intrusive security services.

“Even if the new government survives, the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza will continue to be dominated by realities imposed by Israel backed by its indulgent uncle, the United States,” said Jennings.

While Mahmoud Abbas will continue to remain President of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, the new 17-member cabinet will be headed by Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, described as a linguist and a former university president.

Clarifying the political nuances of the agreement, the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) said the new government is “composed of a consensus cabinet consisting of individuals agreed upon by all of the major Palestinian political parties.”

The cabinet does not include members of the two largest Palestinian parties, Fatah or Hamas.

Instead, it is made up of independent technocrats whose job is to prepare the groundwork for elections for the Palestinian Authority.

Although Hamas supports the government, none of the members of the new cabinet is affiliated with Hamas, IMEU said in a statement released Tuesday.

Hamas remains designated a “terrorist group” by Israel, the United States and some of the Western European nations.

“Fascinating development,” Vijay Prashad, Edward Said chair at the American University in Beirut (AUB), told IPS. “But it is taking place for all the wrong reasons.”

Hamas is weakened by the strangulation of the Gaza economy by a combination of the (normal) Israeli garrote and the Egyptian closure of the tunnels and checkpoints, he added.

“With little easy access to regional and international markets, Gaza faces financial desperation – and this on top of the normal de-development and financial pressures.”

Prashad said Hamas had no good choices available to it because Gulf money is not a long-term solution or (in this time of a shakeup) a short-term option.

The international agencies (the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) all ask for reforms that are not an option for a small region that is essentially a permanent sanctions economy, he said.

“Hamas had to surrender to the neo-liberal policy slate that has become the main policy agenda for the Abbas-led government in the West Bank,” said Prashad, co-editor of ‘Dispatches from the Arab Spring’.

Asked if it was really a government of national consensus, he said: “No. More like a government of desperation”.

Hamas had to back off on its demand for its person to run both religious affairs and prisoner affairs. This shows you that it is not based on consensus, he noted.

“Israel is going to do all it can to undermine even this consensus situation. It will do everything possible to break the unity, including sabotaging the elections slated to take place in six months,” Prashad predicted.

“And it is in Israel’s interest to have the two parts of Palestine in a kind of political congestion suffocating for lack of a pathway to liberation and peace,” he added.

Jennings told IPS it was clear from the beginning of the rift between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Hamas that it would hopelessly divide Palestinian political ambitions and serve only the interests of Israel.

In fact, it has been a disaster for the Palestinian people.

“The question, now that a lacuna of seven years has separated the two factions and vast changes have taken place in the Middle East, is whether the April reconciliation agreement can possibly hold, and whether it is already too late to repair the damage.”

An even more daunting – and very doubtful – issue is whether the Obama Administration’s willingness to do business with the new unity government can withstand being crushed between the upper- and-lower-millstone coalition of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his numerous sycophants in the U.S. Congress, he noted.

The irony of that situation is analogous to the time when the ancient Israelites were reduced to having their weapons blocked and their tools sharpened by their arch-enemies, the Philistines.

There is no agreement with Israel on political rights leading to statehood, no human rights guarantees for Palestinians, no control of its own borders, and no realistic chance for the massive economic programmes that are needed to empower Palestinian growth and development.

The caretaker technocrat government installed by President Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah with the concurrence of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza is a step in the right direction, Jennings noted.

However, it has very little time to perform before scheduled elections take place six months from now. Over the past few years humanitarian needs in the Palestinian territories have grown exponentially.

Caught between Israel’s destructive policies and remaining elements of Hamas rejectionists in Gaza, it is very doubtful that the new leadership will be able to withstand Israeli attempts to torpedo it and inspire the full support of the international community that is sorely and urgently needed, Jennings declared.

(END)

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 18 2014 (IPS)

After two long weeks of raging controversy over Washington’s refusal to grant a U.S. visa to the Iranian envoy to the United Nations, the U.N.’s office of legal affairs is being accused of moving at the pace of a paralytic snail – only to seek more time while remaining non-committal on the dispute.

But U.N. Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric challenged the timeline, pointing out that the United Nations would see events quite differently."The most basic logic of diplomacy is that it is not only your friends that you must talk with, you must also talk with those with whom you disagree." -- Dr. James E. Jennings

“The suggestion of allowing this matter to linger for two weeks is hardly accurate,” he told IPS Friday.

After a meeting Tuesday with Iran’s charge d’affaires Ambassador Gholamhossein Dehghani, U.N. Legal Counsel Miguel de Serpa Soares was holding back his ruling on the ground he was “still studying the issue and would very carefully consider precedents and past practice.”

“Still studying after two long weeks? That response was like a mountain labouring to produce a mouse,” said an Asian diplomat, conversant with the intricacies of U.N. politics and the nuances of English idiom and Aesop’s Fables.

Dr. James E. Jennings, president of Conscience International and executive director of U.S. Academics for Peace, told IPS, “Secretary General Ban Ki-moon now has the opportunity to stop dawdling and make a principled statement on the issue.”

But so far he has not.

Dujarric told IPS the U.N. legal counsel met with representatives of Iran on Tuesday immediately after they asked to see him.

He then followed up straightaway with a meeting with U.S. representatives on Wednesday.

As soon as the legal counsel was officially notified of developments, said Dujarric, he met with the representatives involved.

As events unfold, the United Nations stands accused of refusing to make a ruling – either supportive of the United States or Iran – by repeatedly dismissing the dispute as essentially a bilateral problem.

Dr. Jennings said it is a violation of the spirit of the U.N. Charter to use the pretense of national security or any other contrived smokescreen to prevent a country’s rightful representation in the world body.

As a sovereign nation, Iran has the right to name its own ambassadors, and does not need to ask permission of the U.S. or the U.N. to do so, said Dr. Jennings, who early this year, led a delegation of U.S. professors to Tehran for meetings with Iran’s foreign ministry and with the leader of Iran’s team of nuclear negotiators.

The U.S. decision last week to deny a visa to the Iranian envoy-in- waiting, Hamid Aboutalebi, has been challenged as a violation of the 1947 U.S.-U.N. Headquarters Agreement which was aimed at facilitating, not hindering, the work of the world body.

A former representative of a U.N.-based non-governmental organisation told IPS the United Nations in its dithering inaction is behaving like most governments behave when dealt a blow by the hegemon – “shut up and keep your head down”.

“We have to remember that when [former Secretary-General] Kofi Annan sent a private letter to former President George W Bush warning politely against a massive U.S. military attack on Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004, Washington countered with a fierce attack on Annan himself, forcing out most of his senior staff.

“Ban Ki-moon doubtless has this terrible precedent in mind as he reflects on his reaction to the latest U.S. breach of the Headquarters Agreement.”

Dujarric said a meeting of the U.N. Committee on Relations with the Host Country has also been quickly arranged and will take place next Tuesday.

Representatives of the Office of the Legal Counsel will be present as the issue is discussed. If the Committee requests a legal opinion, the Legal Counsel will prepare one.

“All this should convey that we take the Headquarters Agreement and its implementation very seriously,” Dujarric said.

“In the past days I have repeatedly said that this is a serious issue and that we hoped it would be settled bilaterally,” he added.

He also argued that comparisons to unrelated events in the past are neither helpful nor relevant.

Dr. Jennings told IPS the hubris of the U.S. Congress over approving a visa, combined with the timidity of President Barack Obama, has greatly escalated the danger of a flare-up over Iran’s nuclear programme.

“That short-sighted, knee-jerk posture has the potential to ignite a conflict that could dwarf the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he warned.

The U.N. is, diplomatically speaking, “a corpus separatum [with special legal and political status] designed to be independent of the United States,” noted Dr Jennings.

“Of course, the U.S. has the right to refuse visas to anyone deemed a security threat, but Ambassador Hamid Aboutalebi is not such a person. He has a sterling record and a long career as a diplomat.

“The most basic logic of diplomacy is that it is not only your friends that you must talk with, you must also talk with those with whom you disagree in order resolve problems,” he added.

“If there ever was a need for peace through far-sighted diplomacy, this is such a time,” Dr Jennings declared.

The U.S. has accused Aboutalebi of being involved in the 1979 forcible takeover of the U.S. embassy and its diplomatic personnel in Teheran.

But the Iranian says he was only a translator and negotiator between the hostages and the hostage takers – and that he was not even in Tehran when the embassy was physically taken over by a group called the Muslim Students.