31 mayo 2011/TeleSUR http://www.telesurtv.net
El Ejército de Israel amenazó esta martes con tomar el control de los barcos de la segunda Flotilla de la Libertad si se desobedece la orden de parada. El jefe militar, Benny Gantz, dijo que el objetivo de esta misión no es la de llevar ayuda a la Franja de Gaza, si no de "encender el odio y la provocación" contra Israel.
A un año del sangriento ataque contra la primera avanzada que intentó llevar suministros a los palestinos en Gaza, Gantz aseguró que "el Ejército israelí ha aprendido las lecciones del (Mavi) Marmara", sin embargo dejó claro que sus soldados "actuarán para impedir todo intento de romper el bloqueo".
La marina israelí ha venido realizando en las últimas semanas ejercicios conjuntos con la Fuerza Aérea para prepararse ante una intervención, dijo un alto oficial israelí a la prensa según reportó el diario Jerusalen Post.
El impreso agregó que también participan efectivos antimotines para neutralizar cualquier resistencia y que, según el oficial, se preve hacerse "sin violencia".
El 31 de mayo de 2010 el Mavi Marmara lideraba una flotilla de barcos que intentaban llevar ayuda a Gaza. En una operación comando el Ejército israelí tomó por asalto el buque, asesinó a nueve activistas turcos y dejó a más de 50 activistas heridos.
La Organización de Naciones Unidas (ONU) y varios países, entre ellos Rusia, condenaron las acciones de Israel. El Gobierno israelí alegó que sus soldados abrieron fuego solo después de que les “atacaran” los activistas turcos.
Manifestaciones en Turquía
A un año del ataque, las manifestaciones en conmemoración a la fecha se han visto en varias parte del mundo. En Turquía se vieron las concentraciones más multitudinarias. A gritos "Alá es grande" e "Israel, asesino" la multitud pidió el fin al bloqueo de Gaza impuesto por Israel desde 2006.
"Espera, Palestina, el Mavi Marmara llega", "De Estambul a Gaza, resistencia", se leían pancartas en turco, inglés y hebreo, mientras una amplia bandera representaba los retratos de los nueve mártires turcos.
Los manifestantes estuvieron acompañados de activistas de la primera flotilla, así como algunos de los mil 500 aspirantes que viajarán en el próximo convoy humanitario el próximo mes de julio.
Tunca y Kess Mittendorf, una pareja sexagenaria que este año formará parte de la Flotilla de la Libertad II expresó al diario El País de España que "llevamos 24 años luchando por la causa palestina, desde la segunda Intifada. ¿Crees qué tenemos miedo a las balas de los israelíes?".
Los organizadores de la segunda flotilla de ayuda humanitaria internacional reiteraron este lunes en Estambul su determinación de romper antes de finales de junio el bloqueo israelí, pese a la reapertura de la frontera entre Egipto y la Franja de Gaza.
"Saludamos de todo corazón la decisión del Gobierno egipcio de hacer funcionar de manera regular la terminal de Rafah entre Egipto y la Franja de Gaza, pero el bloqueo ilegal de Israel sigue efectivo", declaró en una conferencia de prensa Vangelis Pisias, coordinador de la Flotilla de la Libertad II.
"Israel impide todavía a los palestinos utilizar su mar y controla y restringe duramente los bienes que ingresan y salen de Gaza. Por eso, debemos seguir desafiando el bloqueo", añadió el activista griego.
Todavía se desconoce la fecha para la partida de la segunda flotilla, sin embargo fuentes de la organización señalan el día 25 de junio como la fecha en la que la nave capitana turca partirá de Estambul rumbo a Chipre.
Mavi Mármara se reunirá con los 15 barcos que forman el convoy. Zarparán desde España, Francia, Italia, Grecia y Turquía para encontrarse en aguas chipriotas, desde donde seguirán rumbo al puerto de Gaza, bloqueado por las autoridades israelíes. A bordo viajarán ciudadanos de un centenar de países, según los organizadores, que han puesto mucho cuidado en resaltar el carácter "internacional, no gubernamental y pacífico" de la flotilla.
Asimismo, mil 500 activistas de un centenar de países transportarán productos humanitarios, materiales de construcción, entre ellos 600 a 700 toneladas de cemento, material escolar, equipos médicos, medicamentos y juguetes.
El Gobierno de Israel aplica desde el año 2006 un bloqueo férreo contra el pueblo palestino, que mantiene cerrados los pasos fronterizos necesarios para recibir ayuda humanitaria, alimentos y combustible para la única planta de electricidad de la Franja de Gaza.
terça-feira, 31 de maio de 2011
Hamas urges Palestinians not to jeopardize Egypt’s opening of Rafah crossing
Ismail Haniyeh says Gazans must respect Egypt's security so Rafah crossing will remain open and enable Palestinians to travel after a four-year blockade.
31 May 2011, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh urged Gazans on Tuesday to refrain from breaching Egypt's security in order to maintain the Rafah border crossing open, French news agency AFP reported.
"Don't do anything that could compromise the reopening of the terminal," AFP quoted Hanieyh as saying. "We assure our Egyptian brothers: 'Your security is ours and your stability is ours.'"
On Saturday, Egypt permanently opened the Gaza Strip's main gateway to the outside world after four years of an Egyptian blockade of Gaza that has prevented the vast majority of Gaza's 1.5 million people from being able to travel abroad.
The move marked a significant achievement for the area's ruling Hamas group, and Haniyeh welcomed the decision and warned Palestinians "to refrain from any breach of Egypt's security."
Haniyeh made his remarks at the Gaza City inauguration of a monument in honor of the nine Turkish activists killed last year during an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
Israel and Egypt imposed the blockade after Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007. The closure, which also included tight Israeli restrictions at its cargo crossings with Gaza and a naval blockade, was meant to weaken Hamas, an Islamic militant group that opposes peace with Israel.
But since the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February, Egypt's new leadership has vowed to ease the blockade and improve relations with the Palestinians.
The Rafah border terminal has functioned at limited capacity for months.
Travel has been restricted to certain classes of people, such as students, businessmen or medical patients. And the crossing was often subject to closures.
Travel through Israel's passenger crossing with Gaza is extremely rare.
Under the new system, most restrictions are being lifted, and a much larger number of Palestinians are expected to be able to cross each day, easing a backlog that can force people to wait for months.
More on this topic
U.S. 'confident' Egypt can provide good security at Rafah border
Fatah official hails 'brave' Egyptian decision to open Rafah crossing
Egypt permanently opens Rafah crossing with Gaza
31 May 2011, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh urged Gazans on Tuesday to refrain from breaching Egypt's security in order to maintain the Rafah border crossing open, French news agency AFP reported.
"Don't do anything that could compromise the reopening of the terminal," AFP quoted Hanieyh as saying. "We assure our Egyptian brothers: 'Your security is ours and your stability is ours.'"
On Saturday, Egypt permanently opened the Gaza Strip's main gateway to the outside world after four years of an Egyptian blockade of Gaza that has prevented the vast majority of Gaza's 1.5 million people from being able to travel abroad.
The move marked a significant achievement for the area's ruling Hamas group, and Haniyeh welcomed the decision and warned Palestinians "to refrain from any breach of Egypt's security."
Haniyeh made his remarks at the Gaza City inauguration of a monument in honor of the nine Turkish activists killed last year during an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
Israel and Egypt imposed the blockade after Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007. The closure, which also included tight Israeli restrictions at its cargo crossings with Gaza and a naval blockade, was meant to weaken Hamas, an Islamic militant group that opposes peace with Israel.
But since the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February, Egypt's new leadership has vowed to ease the blockade and improve relations with the Palestinians.
The Rafah border terminal has functioned at limited capacity for months.
Travel has been restricted to certain classes of people, such as students, businessmen or medical patients. And the crossing was often subject to closures.
Travel through Israel's passenger crossing with Gaza is extremely rare.
Under the new system, most restrictions are being lifted, and a much larger number of Palestinians are expected to be able to cross each day, easing a backlog that can force people to wait for months.
U.S. 'confident' Egypt can provide good security at Rafah border
Fatah official hails 'brave' Egyptian decision to open Rafah crossing
Egypt permanently opens Rafah crossing with Gaza
Rapport juridique: Arrestation de 760 enfants palestiniens à Jérusalem depuis le début de 2010
31 May 2011, Centre Palestinien d’Information http://www.palestine-info.cc
Un rapport élaboré par l'Association pour les droits civils dans la ville occupée de Jérusalem (al-Qods), a rapporté que la ville a connu depuis le début de l'année 2010 passée, une escalade remarquable dans le nombre de confrontations et de frictions entre ses habitants palestiniens et les forces de police sionite, en particulier dans les zones de Selwan et d'al- Issawiya à l'Est de la ville.
Selon le rapport, que ses données ont été publiées, aujourd'hui, le mardi matin 31 / 5, les autorités occupantes ont enquêté, depuis le début de l'année dernière, avec environ d'un mille et deux cents enfants maqdissins, où environ sept cent soixante d'entre eux ont été arrêtés, la détentionn de leur tiers a été prolongée, et soumis à des actes d'accusation officielle à leur encontre, ce qui expliquent certains observateurs comme une tentative de la part des autorités occupantes de terroriser les enfants palestiniens .
Le rapport a souligné que l'ampleur des affrontements entre les Maqdissins et les forces de police au cours des derniers mois, accompagnée par l'utilisation excessive de la force par la police, ce qui a entraîné la mort d'un enfant maqdissin de la ville d'al-Issawiya à l'inhalation de gaz toxique lancé par les forces sionistes dans les quartiers résidentiels, pour torturer les manifestations et les contestataires palestiniens, incendiant un certain nombre de maisons et les biens des citoyens à l'Est de la ville sainte.
En outre, les données du rapport ont indiqué aux campagnes initiées par la police israélienne pour assurer l'application des lois sioniste (violations et pratiques criminelles) à Jérusalem par la force, grâce à l'utilisation d'une politique de punition collective, de la pression et les actes de violence contre les citoyens palestiniens, tout en ignorant les plaintes des habitants maqdissins contre la police et leurs pratiques.
Un rapport élaboré par l'Association pour les droits civils dans la ville occupée de Jérusalem (al-Qods), a rapporté que la ville a connu depuis le début de l'année 2010 passée, une escalade remarquable dans le nombre de confrontations et de frictions entre ses habitants palestiniens et les forces de police sionite, en particulier dans les zones de Selwan et d'al- Issawiya à l'Est de la ville.
Selon le rapport, que ses données ont été publiées, aujourd'hui, le mardi matin 31 / 5, les autorités occupantes ont enquêté, depuis le début de l'année dernière, avec environ d'un mille et deux cents enfants maqdissins, où environ sept cent soixante d'entre eux ont été arrêtés, la détentionn de leur tiers a été prolongée, et soumis à des actes d'accusation officielle à leur encontre, ce qui expliquent certains observateurs comme une tentative de la part des autorités occupantes de terroriser les enfants palestiniens .
Le rapport a souligné que l'ampleur des affrontements entre les Maqdissins et les forces de police au cours des derniers mois, accompagnée par l'utilisation excessive de la force par la police, ce qui a entraîné la mort d'un enfant maqdissin de la ville d'al-Issawiya à l'inhalation de gaz toxique lancé par les forces sionistes dans les quartiers résidentiels, pour torturer les manifestations et les contestataires palestiniens, incendiant un certain nombre de maisons et les biens des citoyens à l'Est de la ville sainte.
En outre, les données du rapport ont indiqué aux campagnes initiées par la police israélienne pour assurer l'application des lois sioniste (violations et pratiques criminelles) à Jérusalem par la force, grâce à l'utilisation d'une politique de punition collective, de la pression et les actes de violence contre les citoyens palestiniens, tout en ignorant les plaintes des habitants maqdissins contre la police et leurs pratiques.
THE TIKKUN ISRAEL/PALESTINE PEACE PLAN (LAST REFINED, MAY 22, 2011)
22 May 2011/Tikkun תקון http://www.tikkun.org (USA)
by Michael Lerner*
Here is what a peace plan must involve for it to have any chance of swaying hearts and minds on all sides:
1. The peace treaty will recognize the State of Israel and the State of Palestine and defines Palestine’s borders to include almost all of pre-1967 West Bank and Gaza, with small exchanges of land mutually agreed upon and roughly equivalent in value and historic and/or military significance to each side. The peace plan will also entail a corresponding treaty between Israel and all Arab states—including recognition of Israel and promising full diplomatic and economic cooperation among these parties—and accepting all the terms of this agreement as specified herein And it should include a twenty-to-thirty-year plan for moving toward a Middle Eastern common market and the eventual establishment of a political union along the lines of the European Union. This might also include eventually building a federation between Israel and Palestine, or Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.
2. Jerusalem will be the capital of both Israel and Palestine and will be governed for all civic issues by an elected council in West Jerusalem and a separate elected council in East Jerusalem. The Old City will become an international city whose sovereignty will be implemented by an international council that guarantees equal access to all holy sites—a council whose taxes will be shared equally by the city councils of East and West Jerusalem.
3. Immediate and unconditional freedom will be accorded all prisoners in Israel and Palestine whose arrests have been connected in some way with the Occupation and/or resistance to the Occupation.
4. An international force will be established to separate and protect each side from the extremists of the other side who will inevitably seek to disrupt the peace agreement. And a joint peace police—composed of an equal number of Palestinians and Israelis, at both personnel and command levels—will be created to work with the international force to combat violence and to implement point number six below.
5. Reparations will be offered by the international community for Palestinian refugees and their descendents at a sufficient level within a ten-year period to bring Palestinians to an economic well-being equivalent to that enjoyed by those with a median Israeli-level income. The same level of reparations will also be made available to all Jews who fled Arab lands between 1948 and 1977. An international fund should be set up immediately to hold in escrow the monies needed to ensure that these reparations are in place once the peace plan is agreed upon.
6. A truth and reconciliation process will be created, modeled on the South African version but shaped to the specificity of these two cultures. Plus: an international peace committee will be appointed by representatives of the three major religious communities of the area to develop and implement teaching of a) nonviolence and nonviolent communication, b) empathy and forgiveness, and c) a sympathetic point of view of the history of the “other side.” The adoption of this curriculum should be mandatory in every grade from sixth grade through high school. The committee should moreover be empowered to ensure the elimination of all teaching of hatred against the other side or teaching against the implementation of this treaty in any public, private, or religious educational institutions, media, or public meetings, along lines pioneered by the U.S. in Japan and Germany after the Second World War.
7. Palestine will agree to allow all Jews living in the West Bank to remain there as law-abiding citizens of the new Palestinian state, so long as they give up their Israeli citizenship and abide by decisions of the Palestinian courts. A fund should be created to a) help West Bank settlers move back to Israel if they wish to remain Israeli citizens and b) help Palestinians move from the lands of their dispersion to Palestine if they wish to be citizens of the new Palestinian state. In exchange for Palestine agreeing to allow Israelis to stay in the West Bank as citizens of the Palestinian state, Israel will agree to let 20,000 Palestinian refugees return each year for the next thirty years to the pre-1967 borders of Israel and provide them with housing. (This number—20,000—is small enough to not change the demographic balance, yet large enough to show that Israel cares about Palestinian refugees and recognizes that they have been wronged.) Each state must acknowledge the right of the other to give preferential treatment in immigration to members of its leading ethnic group (Jews in Israel, Palestinians in Palestine).
8. Full and equal rights will be afforded to all minority communities living within each of the two states. All forms of religious coercion or religious control over the state or over personal lives or personal “status” issues like birth, marriage, divorce, and death will be eliminated. Each state, however, will have the right to give priority in immigration and immigration housing (but not in any subsequent benefits) to its own leading ethnic community (Jews in Israel, Arabs in Palestine).
9. The leaders of all relevant parties will agree to talk in a language of peace and openhearted reconciliation, and to publicly reject the notion that the other side cannot be trusted.
Though inequalities of power may create circumstances in which a less generous agreement is eventually reached, unless it contains the elements specified here, and unless it is based on a new spirit of open-heartedness and generosity, it cannot work for any length of time. All the rest is just jockeying for temporary advantage and political popularity, not for an actual end to the Israel/Palestine conflict.
*Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God: Taking Our Country Back from the Religious Right is editor of Tikkun Magazine, chair of the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives, and author of the forthcoming book Embacing Israel/Palestine, which will be out in December.
by Michael Lerner*
Here is what a peace plan must involve for it to have any chance of swaying hearts and minds on all sides:
1. The peace treaty will recognize the State of Israel and the State of Palestine and defines Palestine’s borders to include almost all of pre-1967 West Bank and Gaza, with small exchanges of land mutually agreed upon and roughly equivalent in value and historic and/or military significance to each side. The peace plan will also entail a corresponding treaty between Israel and all Arab states—including recognition of Israel and promising full diplomatic and economic cooperation among these parties—and accepting all the terms of this agreement as specified herein And it should include a twenty-to-thirty-year plan for moving toward a Middle Eastern common market and the eventual establishment of a political union along the lines of the European Union. This might also include eventually building a federation between Israel and Palestine, or Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.
2. Jerusalem will be the capital of both Israel and Palestine and will be governed for all civic issues by an elected council in West Jerusalem and a separate elected council in East Jerusalem. The Old City will become an international city whose sovereignty will be implemented by an international council that guarantees equal access to all holy sites—a council whose taxes will be shared equally by the city councils of East and West Jerusalem.
3. Immediate and unconditional freedom will be accorded all prisoners in Israel and Palestine whose arrests have been connected in some way with the Occupation and/or resistance to the Occupation.
4. An international force will be established to separate and protect each side from the extremists of the other side who will inevitably seek to disrupt the peace agreement. And a joint peace police—composed of an equal number of Palestinians and Israelis, at both personnel and command levels—will be created to work with the international force to combat violence and to implement point number six below.
5. Reparations will be offered by the international community for Palestinian refugees and their descendents at a sufficient level within a ten-year period to bring Palestinians to an economic well-being equivalent to that enjoyed by those with a median Israeli-level income. The same level of reparations will also be made available to all Jews who fled Arab lands between 1948 and 1977. An international fund should be set up immediately to hold in escrow the monies needed to ensure that these reparations are in place once the peace plan is agreed upon.
6. A truth and reconciliation process will be created, modeled on the South African version but shaped to the specificity of these two cultures. Plus: an international peace committee will be appointed by representatives of the three major religious communities of the area to develop and implement teaching of a) nonviolence and nonviolent communication, b) empathy and forgiveness, and c) a sympathetic point of view of the history of the “other side.” The adoption of this curriculum should be mandatory in every grade from sixth grade through high school. The committee should moreover be empowered to ensure the elimination of all teaching of hatred against the other side or teaching against the implementation of this treaty in any public, private, or religious educational institutions, media, or public meetings, along lines pioneered by the U.S. in Japan and Germany after the Second World War.
7. Palestine will agree to allow all Jews living in the West Bank to remain there as law-abiding citizens of the new Palestinian state, so long as they give up their Israeli citizenship and abide by decisions of the Palestinian courts. A fund should be created to a) help West Bank settlers move back to Israel if they wish to remain Israeli citizens and b) help Palestinians move from the lands of their dispersion to Palestine if they wish to be citizens of the new Palestinian state. In exchange for Palestine agreeing to allow Israelis to stay in the West Bank as citizens of the Palestinian state, Israel will agree to let 20,000 Palestinian refugees return each year for the next thirty years to the pre-1967 borders of Israel and provide them with housing. (This number—20,000—is small enough to not change the demographic balance, yet large enough to show that Israel cares about Palestinian refugees and recognizes that they have been wronged.) Each state must acknowledge the right of the other to give preferential treatment in immigration to members of its leading ethnic group (Jews in Israel, Palestinians in Palestine).
8. Full and equal rights will be afforded to all minority communities living within each of the two states. All forms of religious coercion or religious control over the state or over personal lives or personal “status” issues like birth, marriage, divorce, and death will be eliminated. Each state, however, will have the right to give priority in immigration and immigration housing (but not in any subsequent benefits) to its own leading ethnic community (Jews in Israel, Arabs in Palestine).
9. The leaders of all relevant parties will agree to talk in a language of peace and openhearted reconciliation, and to publicly reject the notion that the other side cannot be trusted.
Though inequalities of power may create circumstances in which a less generous agreement is eventually reached, unless it contains the elements specified here, and unless it is based on a new spirit of open-heartedness and generosity, it cannot work for any length of time. All the rest is just jockeying for temporary advantage and political popularity, not for an actual end to the Israel/Palestine conflict.
*Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God: Taking Our Country Back from the Religious Right is editor of Tikkun Magazine, chair of the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives, and author of the forthcoming book Embacing Israel/Palestine, which will be out in December.
L’ETAU ARABE SE RESSERRE
31 mai 2011, Association France Palestine Solidarité http://www.france-palestine.org
Renée-Anne Gutter
L’Egypte a rouvert sa frontière avec Gaza. Et la Ligue arabe va entreprendre les démarches pour la reconnaissance d’un Etat palestinien.
L’étau arabe se resserre autour d’Israël. Comme promis par ses nouveaux dirigeants, l’Egypte a officiellement rouvert sa frontière avec Gaza. Ce qui, à l’inquiétude d’Israël, scelle la détermination de l’Egypte à légitimer le Hamas (qui contrôle Gaza) et à promouvoir la réconciliation du Hamas avec le Fatah, de façon à ramener les islamistes dans le giron de l’Autorité palestinienne de Mahmoud Abbas.
Car c’est avec l’accord du raïs Abbas que s’est rouvert samedi le poste frontalier de Rafah. L’Autorité palestinienne en avait été chassée à la suite du putsch du Hamas à Gaza en 2007. La mission d’encadrement douanier de l’Union européenne (EUBAM) avait alors quitté Rafah, et l’Egypte avait fermé la frontière de son côté, ne la rouvrant plus que de façon épisodique. EUBAM est restée en "stand by" depuis lors, prête à reprendre du service dès que sollicitée. Mais le Hamas l’a précisé dimanche : il ne veut plus d’observateurs étrangers à Rafah, son propre contrôle et celui de l’Egypte suffisent.
L’Egypte maintient d’ailleurs des limitations. Le terminal de Rafah est désormais ouvert quotidiennement, sauf jours féries, sans aucune restriction pour les femmes, enfants et hommes de plus de 40 ans. Mais les hommes de 18 à 40 ans doivent se munir au préalable d’un visa égyptien, délivré à Ramallah ou Gaza, si c’est pour sortir de Gaza, ou à l’étranger si c’est pour entrer à Gaza. Et même sous le nouveau régime, Le Caire garde une liste noire de Palestiniens indésirables. L’entrée et la sortie de marchandises sont interdites elles aussi. N’empêche, pour les Gazaouis, c’est une sérieuse bouffée d’air.
Et pour de nombreux commentateurs ici, Israël pourrait en tirer profit. Selon les experts, la réouverture du terminal de Rafah n’augmente pas énormément la menace sécuritaire. De toute façon, en dépit du siège israélien, armes et activistes s’infiltrent à Gaza via le réseau de tunnels qui la relie au Sinaï égyptien. Même le mur que l’Egypte du président Moubarak avait tenté de construire sous Rafah est resté inefficace. Par contre, la réouverture du terminal - qui fissure sensiblement le siège israélien - pourrait permettre à Israël de se désengager davantage de Gaza et de reporter une partie des responsabilités locales sur l’Egypte. Mais dans l’immédiat, le gouvernement Netanyahou reste braqué sur le gain politique et terroriste que l’Egypte, selon lui, octroie au Hamas.
Autre contrariété pour Israël : la Ligue arabe a annoncé samedi qu’elle allait non seulement soutenir le recours des Palestiniens à l’Onu en septembre pour la reconnaissance d’un Etat souverain, mais compte elle-même entreprendre "les démarches légales" à cet effet. Selon son Comité de suivi, qui s’est réuni au Qatar en présence de Mahmoud Abbas, la Ligue va œuvrer à la fois auprès de l’Assemblée générale et du Conseil de sécurité. Car le président de l’Assemblée, le Suisse Joseph Deiss, a souligné que l’Etat palestinien ne pourrait être reconnu sans l’appui du Conseil de sécurité. Et là, la requête palestinienne risque de buter sur le veto américain.
Mais les Palestiniens brandissent déjà la parade. Selon leur négociateur en chef, Saèb Erekat, en cas de veto américain, ils recourront à la résolution 377. Intitulée "Union pour le maintien de la paix", cette résolution prise par l’Assemblée générale en 1950 rogne les ailes du Conseil de sécurité. Elle stipule que "dans tout cas où paraît exister une menace contre la paix [ ] et où, du fait que l’unanimité n’a pu se réaliser parmi ses membres permanents, le Conseil de sécurité manque à s’acquitter de sa responsabilité principale dans le maintien de la paix et de la sécurité internationales", l’Assemblée générale peut se saisir de la question. Et à en croire des responsables de l’OLP, certains pays européens qui seraient réticents à reconnaître l’Etat palestinien, soutiendraient néanmoins la mise en œuvre de la résolution 377. Alors que le gouvernement Netanyahou compte précisément sur la fermeté de l’Europe pour torpiller le projet unilatéral des Palestiniens [1].
[1] L’Espagne vient de déclarer qu’elle reconnaîtra l’Etat de Palestine avant septembre. Voir, en anglais, PNN :
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?opt...
publié par la Libre Belgique
http://www.lalibre.be/actu/internat...
Renée-Anne Gutter
L’Egypte a rouvert sa frontière avec Gaza. Et la Ligue arabe va entreprendre les démarches pour la reconnaissance d’un Etat palestinien.
L’étau arabe se resserre autour d’Israël. Comme promis par ses nouveaux dirigeants, l’Egypte a officiellement rouvert sa frontière avec Gaza. Ce qui, à l’inquiétude d’Israël, scelle la détermination de l’Egypte à légitimer le Hamas (qui contrôle Gaza) et à promouvoir la réconciliation du Hamas avec le Fatah, de façon à ramener les islamistes dans le giron de l’Autorité palestinienne de Mahmoud Abbas.
Car c’est avec l’accord du raïs Abbas que s’est rouvert samedi le poste frontalier de Rafah. L’Autorité palestinienne en avait été chassée à la suite du putsch du Hamas à Gaza en 2007. La mission d’encadrement douanier de l’Union européenne (EUBAM) avait alors quitté Rafah, et l’Egypte avait fermé la frontière de son côté, ne la rouvrant plus que de façon épisodique. EUBAM est restée en "stand by" depuis lors, prête à reprendre du service dès que sollicitée. Mais le Hamas l’a précisé dimanche : il ne veut plus d’observateurs étrangers à Rafah, son propre contrôle et celui de l’Egypte suffisent.
L’Egypte maintient d’ailleurs des limitations. Le terminal de Rafah est désormais ouvert quotidiennement, sauf jours féries, sans aucune restriction pour les femmes, enfants et hommes de plus de 40 ans. Mais les hommes de 18 à 40 ans doivent se munir au préalable d’un visa égyptien, délivré à Ramallah ou Gaza, si c’est pour sortir de Gaza, ou à l’étranger si c’est pour entrer à Gaza. Et même sous le nouveau régime, Le Caire garde une liste noire de Palestiniens indésirables. L’entrée et la sortie de marchandises sont interdites elles aussi. N’empêche, pour les Gazaouis, c’est une sérieuse bouffée d’air.
Et pour de nombreux commentateurs ici, Israël pourrait en tirer profit. Selon les experts, la réouverture du terminal de Rafah n’augmente pas énormément la menace sécuritaire. De toute façon, en dépit du siège israélien, armes et activistes s’infiltrent à Gaza via le réseau de tunnels qui la relie au Sinaï égyptien. Même le mur que l’Egypte du président Moubarak avait tenté de construire sous Rafah est resté inefficace. Par contre, la réouverture du terminal - qui fissure sensiblement le siège israélien - pourrait permettre à Israël de se désengager davantage de Gaza et de reporter une partie des responsabilités locales sur l’Egypte. Mais dans l’immédiat, le gouvernement Netanyahou reste braqué sur le gain politique et terroriste que l’Egypte, selon lui, octroie au Hamas.
Autre contrariété pour Israël : la Ligue arabe a annoncé samedi qu’elle allait non seulement soutenir le recours des Palestiniens à l’Onu en septembre pour la reconnaissance d’un Etat souverain, mais compte elle-même entreprendre "les démarches légales" à cet effet. Selon son Comité de suivi, qui s’est réuni au Qatar en présence de Mahmoud Abbas, la Ligue va œuvrer à la fois auprès de l’Assemblée générale et du Conseil de sécurité. Car le président de l’Assemblée, le Suisse Joseph Deiss, a souligné que l’Etat palestinien ne pourrait être reconnu sans l’appui du Conseil de sécurité. Et là, la requête palestinienne risque de buter sur le veto américain.
Mais les Palestiniens brandissent déjà la parade. Selon leur négociateur en chef, Saèb Erekat, en cas de veto américain, ils recourront à la résolution 377. Intitulée "Union pour le maintien de la paix", cette résolution prise par l’Assemblée générale en 1950 rogne les ailes du Conseil de sécurité. Elle stipule que "dans tout cas où paraît exister une menace contre la paix [ ] et où, du fait que l’unanimité n’a pu se réaliser parmi ses membres permanents, le Conseil de sécurité manque à s’acquitter de sa responsabilité principale dans le maintien de la paix et de la sécurité internationales", l’Assemblée générale peut se saisir de la question. Et à en croire des responsables de l’OLP, certains pays européens qui seraient réticents à reconnaître l’Etat palestinien, soutiendraient néanmoins la mise en œuvre de la résolution 377. Alors que le gouvernement Netanyahou compte précisément sur la fermeté de l’Europe pour torpiller le projet unilatéral des Palestiniens [1].
[1] L’Espagne vient de déclarer qu’elle reconnaîtra l’Etat de Palestine avant septembre. Voir, en anglais, PNN :
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?opt...
publié par la Libre Belgique
http://www.lalibre.be/actu/internat...
THE ISRAELI RIGHT'S REFUSAL TO ACCEPT OTHER VERSIONS OF ZIONISM
31 May 2011, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)
Israel’s right is not confident enough to accept the truth of the country's history, and instead propagates stories that no historian on earth would support.
By Carlo Strenger
There is an old saying that when an orator hits a weak point, he generally tries to shout. Noise is always an attempt to cover up the weakness of one's position. Israel’s right-wing has lately been stepping up its attempts to cover up the fact that it has no vision for Israel's future - that all it has in store for its citizens is further isolation and misery.
One way of doing so is Ronen Shuval’s recent op-ed arguing that the Nakba is basically nothing but Arab propaganda. Shuval simply distorts the history of the 1948 war by claiming, for example, that most Arabs living in Palestine in 1948 had moved here to profit from the Yishuv’s economic activity; he continues the myth that Arab leaders had called for Palestinians to move away to allow for an Arab military victory.
Shlomo Avineri severely criticized Shuval’s faulty claims. Avineri, one of Israel’s leading historians of Zionism and political scientists, points out that Zionism doesn’t need propaganda efforts to distort the facts. The same has been argued by Tel Aviv University Law Professor Meni Mauthner: Zionism can accommodate the truth about history, and can integrate the story of the Nakba.
Shuval, the chair of an organization called Im Tirtzu, has made a name for himself by trying to shut down liberal voices in Israel’s higher education. Lately the organization’s target has been to try to convince donors to stop funding Israeli universities if they continue to employ left-leaning professors.
As Rivka Carmi, president of Ben-Gurion University, has pointed out, the various right-wing organizations who claim to "monitor" Israeli academics, reiterate the argument that there are professors who support boycotting Israeli universities, turning this into a huge issue, even though less than ten out of five thousand professors have voiced such opinions. Shuval’s tactics show that right-wing ideology is incapable of living with critical discussion, and even worse, it needs to distort the truth about history and the present.
Israel’s right is not confident enough to accept the truth, and instead propagates stories that no historian on earth would support. It also can't bear the idea of citizens taking part in critical discussion, as can be seen in another recent event: professors Yedidia Stern and Susie Navot were recently informed by the ministry of education that their membership in the professional committee on citizenship studies at Israel’s schools was being terminated. The official reason was that their tenure of two years had expired.
Yedidia Stern told Haaretz that he doesn’t believe this is the reason, and that tenure in these professional committees generally lasts much longer. He said that the ministry of education had pressured him and his colleagues to change the content of the "citizenship studies" program. The goal: to dedicate half of this program to teaching history of Israel and Zionism.
The innocent observer of this event might think that Yedidia Stern is an Israel-hater or a proponent of what the right calls ‘Post Zionism’ (I never quite understand what they mean by that). The fact is that Stern is an observant Jew whose work has focused on the question of how Israel can be both a Jewish and a democratic state. So the question is why his presence is so threatening.
Stern, a law professor at Bar-Ilan University and vice-president of the Israel Democracy Institute points out that replacing half the curriculum undermines the standing and importance of citizenship studies. Their goal, after all, is to educate future citizens able to handle the complexities of democracy. After all, democracy is based on the assumption that there are diverging viewpoints and interests, and democratic institutions are supposed to enable dialogue, discussion and competition between these perspectives and interests.
But the new program to be instituted at Israeli high schools is supposed to do the exact opposite: it is to make sure that only one viewpoint and only one narrative on Israel and the Middle East are taught. The goal is, obviously, to strengthen a line of conformists who buy what they are told rather than citizens who have acquired the tools for critical thought that allow them to truly make up their minds.
This change was pushed by Zvi Tsameret, chair of the pedagogical committee of the education ministry, who was instated by education minister Gideon Sa'ar. Haaretz reported that the head of the education ministry, Shimshon Shoshani, said that Tsameret’s views do not necessarily correspond to his own or to those held by the ministers.
Sa'ar continuously presents himself as a believer of liberal democracy, despite his right-wing views. If this is indeed the case, Mr. Sa'ar has an opportunity to show his true colors as there are no two ways to view it: replacing half of the "citizenship studies" program with Zionist history is a step well in tune with the Nakba law and other attempts by the Knesset to shut down viewpoints other than the right-wing version of Zionism.
If Sa'ar will accept the change instituted by Tsameret, this will be another indication that the current government is incapable of seeing Israel as a true democracy. It will show that they really think of Israel as an ethnocracy that has no pluralism and as a country that attempts to stifle dissent rather than encouraging critical debate. In doing so, they try to impose a totalitarian point of view – and they will quickly get into trouble by even trying to teach the history of Zionism.
I wonder how they will explain to students that Zionist luminaries like Herzl believed that religion should play no role in the Jews’ homeland, and that Ahad Ha’am warned of the dangers of misusing political power. I guess they will have to tell the students that Herzl and Ahad Ha’am were in fact the first post-Zionists.
Israel’s right is not confident enough to accept the truth of the country's history, and instead propagates stories that no historian on earth would support.
By Carlo Strenger
There is an old saying that when an orator hits a weak point, he generally tries to shout. Noise is always an attempt to cover up the weakness of one's position. Israel’s right-wing has lately been stepping up its attempts to cover up the fact that it has no vision for Israel's future - that all it has in store for its citizens is further isolation and misery.
One way of doing so is Ronen Shuval’s recent op-ed arguing that the Nakba is basically nothing but Arab propaganda. Shuval simply distorts the history of the 1948 war by claiming, for example, that most Arabs living in Palestine in 1948 had moved here to profit from the Yishuv’s economic activity; he continues the myth that Arab leaders had called for Palestinians to move away to allow for an Arab military victory.
Shlomo Avineri severely criticized Shuval’s faulty claims. Avineri, one of Israel’s leading historians of Zionism and political scientists, points out that Zionism doesn’t need propaganda efforts to distort the facts. The same has been argued by Tel Aviv University Law Professor Meni Mauthner: Zionism can accommodate the truth about history, and can integrate the story of the Nakba.
Shuval, the chair of an organization called Im Tirtzu, has made a name for himself by trying to shut down liberal voices in Israel’s higher education. Lately the organization’s target has been to try to convince donors to stop funding Israeli universities if they continue to employ left-leaning professors.
As Rivka Carmi, president of Ben-Gurion University, has pointed out, the various right-wing organizations who claim to "monitor" Israeli academics, reiterate the argument that there are professors who support boycotting Israeli universities, turning this into a huge issue, even though less than ten out of five thousand professors have voiced such opinions. Shuval’s tactics show that right-wing ideology is incapable of living with critical discussion, and even worse, it needs to distort the truth about history and the present.
Israel’s right is not confident enough to accept the truth, and instead propagates stories that no historian on earth would support. It also can't bear the idea of citizens taking part in critical discussion, as can be seen in another recent event: professors Yedidia Stern and Susie Navot were recently informed by the ministry of education that their membership in the professional committee on citizenship studies at Israel’s schools was being terminated. The official reason was that their tenure of two years had expired.
Yedidia Stern told Haaretz that he doesn’t believe this is the reason, and that tenure in these professional committees generally lasts much longer. He said that the ministry of education had pressured him and his colleagues to change the content of the "citizenship studies" program. The goal: to dedicate half of this program to teaching history of Israel and Zionism.
The innocent observer of this event might think that Yedidia Stern is an Israel-hater or a proponent of what the right calls ‘Post Zionism’ (I never quite understand what they mean by that). The fact is that Stern is an observant Jew whose work has focused on the question of how Israel can be both a Jewish and a democratic state. So the question is why his presence is so threatening.
Stern, a law professor at Bar-Ilan University and vice-president of the Israel Democracy Institute points out that replacing half the curriculum undermines the standing and importance of citizenship studies. Their goal, after all, is to educate future citizens able to handle the complexities of democracy. After all, democracy is based on the assumption that there are diverging viewpoints and interests, and democratic institutions are supposed to enable dialogue, discussion and competition between these perspectives and interests.
But the new program to be instituted at Israeli high schools is supposed to do the exact opposite: it is to make sure that only one viewpoint and only one narrative on Israel and the Middle East are taught. The goal is, obviously, to strengthen a line of conformists who buy what they are told rather than citizens who have acquired the tools for critical thought that allow them to truly make up their minds.
This change was pushed by Zvi Tsameret, chair of the pedagogical committee of the education ministry, who was instated by education minister Gideon Sa'ar. Haaretz reported that the head of the education ministry, Shimshon Shoshani, said that Tsameret’s views do not necessarily correspond to his own or to those held by the ministers.
Sa'ar continuously presents himself as a believer of liberal democracy, despite his right-wing views. If this is indeed the case, Mr. Sa'ar has an opportunity to show his true colors as there are no two ways to view it: replacing half of the "citizenship studies" program with Zionist history is a step well in tune with the Nakba law and other attempts by the Knesset to shut down viewpoints other than the right-wing version of Zionism.
If Sa'ar will accept the change instituted by Tsameret, this will be another indication that the current government is incapable of seeing Israel as a true democracy. It will show that they really think of Israel as an ethnocracy that has no pluralism and as a country that attempts to stifle dissent rather than encouraging critical debate. In doing so, they try to impose a totalitarian point of view – and they will quickly get into trouble by even trying to teach the history of Zionism.
I wonder how they will explain to students that Zionist luminaries like Herzl believed that religion should play no role in the Jews’ homeland, and that Ahad Ha’am warned of the dangers of misusing political power. I guess they will have to tell the students that Herzl and Ahad Ha’am were in fact the first post-Zionists.
segunda-feira, 30 de maio de 2011
NADIE QUIERE HABLAR DE BALAS ISRAELÍES
30 Mayo 2011/La Jornada http://www.jornada.unam.mx (Mexico)
Fuente: The Independent/Traducción: Jorge Anaya
Robert Fisk
Fui a ver a Munib Masri en su hospital de Beirut. Él es parte de la revolución árabe, aunque no lo ve así. Su rostro denotaba el dolor que sentía; le ponían suero, tenía fiebre y unas espantosas heridas causadas por una bala israelí de 5.6mm que le dio en el brazo. Sí, una bala israelí, porque Munib era uno de los miles de jóvenes palestinos y libaneses desarmados que se plantaron frente al fuego abierto por los israelíes hace dos semanas, en la frontera de la tierra que llaman "Palestina".
“Estaba furioso… acababa de ver cómo los israelíes golpeaban a un niño ...me dijo Munib.... Me acerqué a la valla fronteriza; los israelíes disparaban a mucha gente. Cuando me dieron, quedé paralizado. Se me doblaron las piernas. Luego me di cuenta de lo que había pasado. Mis amigos me sacaron de allí.”
Le pregunté si forma parte de la Primavera Árabe. No, me dijo, sólo protestaba por la pérdida de su tierra. "Me gustó lo que pasó en Egipto y Túnez. Me alegro de haber ido a la frontera libanesa, pero también lo lamento."
No es sorprendente. Más de 100 manifestantes inermes fueron heridos durante la marcha de palestinos y libaneses para conmemorar la expulsión y el éxodo de 750 mil palestinos de sus hogares, en 1948. Seis murieron, y entre los más jóvenes de los alcanzados por las balas había dos niñas pequeñas, una de seis años y la otra de ocho. Más objetivos de la "guerra al terror" de Tel Aviv, supongo, aunque la bala que mató a Munib, estudiante de geología en la Universidad Americana de Beirut, de 22 años, causó un daño terrible. Le penetró por un costado, le cortó el riñón, le dio en el hígado y luego le quebró la espina dorsal. El día que visité a Munib tuve la bala en la mano: tres pedazos refulgentes de metal color café, que se estrellaron dentro de su cuerpo. Tiene suerte de estar vivo.
Afortunado también de ser ciudadano estadunidense, para mucho que le sirvió. La embajada de su país envió una representante a visitar a sus padres en el hospital, según me contó Mouna, la madre del joven. “Estoy devastada, triste, indignada… y no quisiera que esto le pasara a ninguna madre israelí. Vino la diplomática estadunidense y le expliqué la situación de Munib. Le dije: ‘Quisiera que llevaran un mensaje a su gobierno: que presione a los israelíes para que cambien sus políticas. Si esto ocurriera a una madre israelí, el mundo se había puesto de cabeza’. Pero ella me contestó: ‘No vine a hablar de política. Estamos aquí para darles apoyo social, para desalojarlos si lo desean, para ayudarlos con los pagos’. Le dije que no necesito nada de eso: ‘necesito que expliquen la situación’.”
Cualquier diplomático estadunidense está en libertad de transmitir los puntos de vista de los ciudadanos a su gobierno, pero la respuesta de esa diplomática fue de sobra conocida. Aunque estadunidense, Munib había sido herido por una bala inconveniente. No fue una bala siria o egipcia, sino israelí, inapropiada para hablar de ella, y mucho más para persuadir a una diplomática estadunidense de hacer algo al respecto. Después de todo, cuando Benjamin Netanyahu recibe 55 ovaciones en el Congreso de Estados Unidos ...más que el promedio en el parlamento baazista de Damasco..., ¿por qué el gobierno de Munib debe preocuparse por él?
En realidad, ha ido muchas veces a "Palestina": su familia viene de Beit Jala y Belén, y conoce bien Cisjordania, aunque me expresó su preocupación de que pudieran arrestarlo la próxima vez que vuelva allá. Ser palestino no es fácil, en cualquier lado de la frontera en que uno se encuentre. Mouna Masri se indignó cuando su marido fue a tramitar la renovación de la residencia de la hermana de ella en Jerusalén oriental. "Los israelíes insistieron en que debía venir desde Londres, aunque se les informó que estaba recibiendo quimioterapia", relató.
"Yo estuve en Palestina apenas dos días antes de que hirieran a Munib, visitando a mi suegro en Nablus. Vi a toda la familia y estaba contenta, pero extrañaba mucho a Munib, así que regresé a Beirut. Él estaba muy emocionado por la marcha a la frontera. Había dos o tres autobuses para llevar a estudiantes y profesores de la universidad, y el domingo se levantó a las 6:55 de la mañana. A eso de las 4 de la tarde llamó la tía de Munib, Mai, y me preguntó si había alguna noticia; comencé a inquietarme. Luego recibí una llamada de mi marido para decirme que habían herido a Munib en la pierna."
Fue mucho peor. El joven perdió tanta sangre que los doctores del hospital Bent Jbeil temían que falleciera. Los pacificadores de Naciones Unidas en Líbano ...dolorosamente ausentes de la sección de Maroun al-Ras en la frontera durante la manifestación de cinco horas... lo trajeron en helicóptero a Beirut. Muchos de quienes viajaron a la frontera con él venían de campos de refugiados y ...a diferencia de Munib... jamás habían visitado la tierra de sus padres. De hecho, en muchos casos ni siquiera la habían visto.
La tía Mai describió cuántos de quienes fueron en la marcha o en autobús a la frontera sintieron una brisa que soplaba a lo largo de la frontera desde lo que hoy es Israel. "Todos la aspiraron fuerte, como si fuera una especie de libertad", narró.
Y eso es. Tal vez Munib no cree formar parte de la Primavera Árabe, pero sí pertenece al despertar árabe. Aunque él tiene un hogar en Cisjordania, decidió marchar con los desposeídos cuyos hogares están dentro de lo que es hoy Israel. “No tuvieron miedo ...afirmó su tío Munzer.... Esa gente quería dignidad. Y con la dignidad viene el triunfo.”
Eso es lo que gritaba el pueblo de Túnez. Y el de Egipto. Y los de Yemen, de Bahrein, de Siria. Sospecho que Obama, aunque se rebaje ante Netanyahu, también lo entiende. Era eso lo que, a su modo pusilánime, trataba de advertir a los israelíes. El despertar árabe abarca a los palestinos también.
Fuente: The Independent/Traducción: Jorge Anaya
Robert Fisk
Fui a ver a Munib Masri en su hospital de Beirut. Él es parte de la revolución árabe, aunque no lo ve así. Su rostro denotaba el dolor que sentía; le ponían suero, tenía fiebre y unas espantosas heridas causadas por una bala israelí de 5.6mm que le dio en el brazo. Sí, una bala israelí, porque Munib era uno de los miles de jóvenes palestinos y libaneses desarmados que se plantaron frente al fuego abierto por los israelíes hace dos semanas, en la frontera de la tierra que llaman "Palestina".
“Estaba furioso… acababa de ver cómo los israelíes golpeaban a un niño ...me dijo Munib.... Me acerqué a la valla fronteriza; los israelíes disparaban a mucha gente. Cuando me dieron, quedé paralizado. Se me doblaron las piernas. Luego me di cuenta de lo que había pasado. Mis amigos me sacaron de allí.”
Le pregunté si forma parte de la Primavera Árabe. No, me dijo, sólo protestaba por la pérdida de su tierra. "Me gustó lo que pasó en Egipto y Túnez. Me alegro de haber ido a la frontera libanesa, pero también lo lamento."
No es sorprendente. Más de 100 manifestantes inermes fueron heridos durante la marcha de palestinos y libaneses para conmemorar la expulsión y el éxodo de 750 mil palestinos de sus hogares, en 1948. Seis murieron, y entre los más jóvenes de los alcanzados por las balas había dos niñas pequeñas, una de seis años y la otra de ocho. Más objetivos de la "guerra al terror" de Tel Aviv, supongo, aunque la bala que mató a Munib, estudiante de geología en la Universidad Americana de Beirut, de 22 años, causó un daño terrible. Le penetró por un costado, le cortó el riñón, le dio en el hígado y luego le quebró la espina dorsal. El día que visité a Munib tuve la bala en la mano: tres pedazos refulgentes de metal color café, que se estrellaron dentro de su cuerpo. Tiene suerte de estar vivo.
Afortunado también de ser ciudadano estadunidense, para mucho que le sirvió. La embajada de su país envió una representante a visitar a sus padres en el hospital, según me contó Mouna, la madre del joven. “Estoy devastada, triste, indignada… y no quisiera que esto le pasara a ninguna madre israelí. Vino la diplomática estadunidense y le expliqué la situación de Munib. Le dije: ‘Quisiera que llevaran un mensaje a su gobierno: que presione a los israelíes para que cambien sus políticas. Si esto ocurriera a una madre israelí, el mundo se había puesto de cabeza’. Pero ella me contestó: ‘No vine a hablar de política. Estamos aquí para darles apoyo social, para desalojarlos si lo desean, para ayudarlos con los pagos’. Le dije que no necesito nada de eso: ‘necesito que expliquen la situación’.”
Cualquier diplomático estadunidense está en libertad de transmitir los puntos de vista de los ciudadanos a su gobierno, pero la respuesta de esa diplomática fue de sobra conocida. Aunque estadunidense, Munib había sido herido por una bala inconveniente. No fue una bala siria o egipcia, sino israelí, inapropiada para hablar de ella, y mucho más para persuadir a una diplomática estadunidense de hacer algo al respecto. Después de todo, cuando Benjamin Netanyahu recibe 55 ovaciones en el Congreso de Estados Unidos ...más que el promedio en el parlamento baazista de Damasco..., ¿por qué el gobierno de Munib debe preocuparse por él?
En realidad, ha ido muchas veces a "Palestina": su familia viene de Beit Jala y Belén, y conoce bien Cisjordania, aunque me expresó su preocupación de que pudieran arrestarlo la próxima vez que vuelva allá. Ser palestino no es fácil, en cualquier lado de la frontera en que uno se encuentre. Mouna Masri se indignó cuando su marido fue a tramitar la renovación de la residencia de la hermana de ella en Jerusalén oriental. "Los israelíes insistieron en que debía venir desde Londres, aunque se les informó que estaba recibiendo quimioterapia", relató.
"Yo estuve en Palestina apenas dos días antes de que hirieran a Munib, visitando a mi suegro en Nablus. Vi a toda la familia y estaba contenta, pero extrañaba mucho a Munib, así que regresé a Beirut. Él estaba muy emocionado por la marcha a la frontera. Había dos o tres autobuses para llevar a estudiantes y profesores de la universidad, y el domingo se levantó a las 6:55 de la mañana. A eso de las 4 de la tarde llamó la tía de Munib, Mai, y me preguntó si había alguna noticia; comencé a inquietarme. Luego recibí una llamada de mi marido para decirme que habían herido a Munib en la pierna."
Fue mucho peor. El joven perdió tanta sangre que los doctores del hospital Bent Jbeil temían que falleciera. Los pacificadores de Naciones Unidas en Líbano ...dolorosamente ausentes de la sección de Maroun al-Ras en la frontera durante la manifestación de cinco horas... lo trajeron en helicóptero a Beirut. Muchos de quienes viajaron a la frontera con él venían de campos de refugiados y ...a diferencia de Munib... jamás habían visitado la tierra de sus padres. De hecho, en muchos casos ni siquiera la habían visto.
La tía Mai describió cuántos de quienes fueron en la marcha o en autobús a la frontera sintieron una brisa que soplaba a lo largo de la frontera desde lo que hoy es Israel. "Todos la aspiraron fuerte, como si fuera una especie de libertad", narró.
Y eso es. Tal vez Munib no cree formar parte de la Primavera Árabe, pero sí pertenece al despertar árabe. Aunque él tiene un hogar en Cisjordania, decidió marchar con los desposeídos cuyos hogares están dentro de lo que es hoy Israel. “No tuvieron miedo ...afirmó su tío Munzer.... Esa gente quería dignidad. Y con la dignidad viene el triunfo.”
Eso es lo que gritaba el pueblo de Túnez. Y el de Egipto. Y los de Yemen, de Bahrein, de Siria. Sospecho que Obama, aunque se rebaje ante Netanyahu, también lo entiende. Era eso lo que, a su modo pusilánime, trataba de advertir a los israelíes. El despertar árabe abarca a los palestinos también.
BARBARITY WIELDED IN THE NAME OF ISRAEL'S ETERNAL CAPITAL
30 May 2011, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)
On Nakba Day this year, Israel should have followed the advice of a young Fatah activist, as it did in 1990; Jerusalem Day, on Wednesday, presents another opportunity for restraint, or violence.
By Amira Hass
When Ami Popper murdered seven Palestinian workers and injured 11 more on May 20, 1990, GOC Southern Command Matan Vilnai wanted to prevent an escalation. He summoned a young revolutionary, Fatah activist Sami Abu Samhadana, from the Rafah refugee camp and consulted with him on how to head off further bloodshed.
His attorney, Tamar Peleg, told me at the time that Abu Samhadana happened to be at home, between one administrative detention and the next and before the issue of a deportation order against the vanguard of the popular uprising. He told Peleg that he advised Vilnai to do the obvious: Keep your soldiers and their weapons in barracks, far from the mourners. Vilnai, it is said, took his advice.
Abu Samhadana receded into anonymity. Peleg, considerably past retirement age, is still representing administrative detainees. Vilnai donned civvies and remained in the army, while the murderer grew the beard of newly observant Jews, married, fathered children, killed his wife and one of their children in an accident, remarried and has had innumerable furloughs from prison.
Only the logical advice remains as it was. How many human lives and how much bitterness and wrath would have been spared in the past 44 years had the authorities followed it. Which leads to the question: If he does not deploy his armed men in the heart of a civilian neighborhood, how will the ruler feel like a ruler? How will the sovereign - if his forces do not patrol spitefully near a school during recess - depict himself as the Order that must not be disturbed?
That is what happened on May 15, Nakba Day, in Isawiyah, a village that isn't exactly a neighborhood and a neighborhood that was a village until all its available land for agriculture and construction faded away for the benefit of the sovereign and Order: a national park for Jews to the south, a terrifying superhighway to the east, a Border Police camp to the east as well, a military camp on a hilltop in the middle and spacious neighborhoods for Jews to the west. A foreigner would not realize that this strangled village, overlooked by our fortress of higher education, is part of our eternal capital - whose unification we will fake this week with an official, annual celebration. A foreigner would think this village is a set for a film on Stephen Biko.
The force deployed at the western entrance to the village is in fact understandable. This is the gate to the lush, broad and manicured streets of French Hill. The sovereign, creator of slums and the guardian that preserves them, knows that the simmering wrath must not be allowed to spill over and disturb the White Man's rest.
But this last Nakba Day, about half a kilometer from that western entrance, deep in the heart of the village, a large Border Police force marked out territory with a vehicle that sprayed blue water, with tear-gas grenades, faces masked in black, black uniforms, rifles and blows. In the alleys and on the narrow main street full of potholes the guys prepared. They wanted to thwart the advance of the forces of order with burning garbage containers and barricades of stones. They knew the filming balloon hovering over Al Aqsa and the East Jerusalem neighborhoods ignores - like the municipality headed by Mayor Nir Barkat - the unmaintained roads and the neglect, and transmits to the sovereign only their portraits. They knew that the Border Police and the special police forces come disguised as masked rebels.
And what would have happened had the sovereign's representatives, their weapons erect and ready for discharge, not appeared in the heart of the village? There would have been no one at whom to throw stones and the fire in the garbage containers would have died down undisturbed.
In the heart of that slum, on that Nakba Day, A.A., a boy of 15 and a half, went to buy cigarettes for his father (Haaretz, May 27 ). The police, who say he threw stones and that his face was masked, explain in the following way why the boy arrived at the hospital unconscious and remained there for 11 days: "During the course of the pursuit of the stonethrowers one paint bullet was fired and as a result the youngster was hit, fell to the ground and was injured. He was picked up by the forces and taken for medical treatment at the police clinic. The medic determined that he should be transferred to a hospital for continued medical treatment." Let us suppose it was not a focused blow from a rifle butt, as the boy claims. Let us suppose it really was a single paint bullet that found its way to his head. Here is what the one and only paint bullet fired by the Border Police and the police accomplished, as enumerated in the medical report: a scalp hematoma, a linear skull fracture, subcutaneous swelling and hematomas on his face and chest, multiple scratches on his back, multiple signs of blows on his limbs and a tear in his liver.
The police response to Haaretz evaded the medical findings and the following facts presented to them: The police dragged the unconscious boy on the road after he was beaten on his head. He was loaded onto a Jeep, was unloaded from it at a gas station and there, so that he would regain consciousness, he was sprayed with water and air from the tire pump. He was beaten repeatedly, he spit blood and he fainted again. He still had deep handcuff marks on his wrists 10 days after the cuffs were removed.
The police wrote that at their initiative they had "sent all the materials in this incident" to the Police Investigation Unit.
Investigation? Objective? You've made the inhabitants of the village laugh. A few people, who presumably were eyewitnesses to the paint ball and its deeds, have told me they weren't there. Their eyes lied and apologized for lying. Their fear says they know the sovereign is always not guilty. Their fear says they do not distinguish between the terrorizing sovereign and Israeli Jewish society. This is a society that is living in peace with the transformation of the village into a neighborhood choking on its masterminded poverty. It will also live in peace with the sovereign's agents who beat up Palestinians and covet their land.
30 May 2011, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)
On Nakba Day this year, Israel should have followed the advice of a young Fatah activist, as it did in 1990; Jerusalem Day, on Wednesday, presents another opportunity for restraint, or violence.
By Amira Hass
When Ami Popper murdered seven Palestinian workers and injured 11 more on May 20, 1990, GOC Southern Command Matan Vilnai wanted to prevent an escalation. He summoned a young revolutionary, Fatah activist Sami Abu Samhadana, from the Rafah refugee camp and consulted with him on how to head off further bloodshed.
His attorney, Tamar Peleg, told me at the time that Abu Samhadana happened to be at home, between one administrative detention and the next and before the issue of a deportation order against the vanguard of the popular uprising. He told Peleg that he advised Vilnai to do the obvious: Keep your soldiers and their weapons in barracks, far from the mourners. Vilnai, it is said, took his advice.
Abu Samhadana receded into anonymity. Peleg, considerably past retirement age, is still representing administrative detainees. Vilnai donned civvies and remained in the army, while the murderer grew the beard of newly observant Jews, married, fathered children, killed his wife and one of their children in an accident, remarried and has had innumerable furloughs from prison.
Only the logical advice remains as it was. How many human lives and how much bitterness and wrath would have been spared in the past 44 years had the authorities followed it. Which leads to the question: If he does not deploy his armed men in the heart of a civilian neighborhood, how will the ruler feel like a ruler? How will the sovereign - if his forces do not patrol spitefully near a school during recess - depict himself as the Order that must not be disturbed?
That is what happened on May 15, Nakba Day, in Isawiyah, a village that isn't exactly a neighborhood and a neighborhood that was a village until all its available land for agriculture and construction faded away for the benefit of the sovereign and Order: a national park for Jews to the south, a terrifying superhighway to the east, a Border Police camp to the east as well, a military camp on a hilltop in the middle and spacious neighborhoods for Jews to the west. A foreigner would not realize that this strangled village, overlooked by our fortress of higher education, is part of our eternal capital - whose unification we will fake this week with an official, annual celebration. A foreigner would think this village is a set for a film on Stephen Biko.
The force deployed at the western entrance to the village is in fact understandable. This is the gate to the lush, broad and manicured streets of French Hill. The sovereign, creator of slums and the guardian that preserves them, knows that the simmering wrath must not be allowed to spill over and disturb the White Man's rest.
But this last Nakba Day, about half a kilometer from that western entrance, deep in the heart of the village, a large Border Police force marked out territory with a vehicle that sprayed blue water, with tear-gas grenades, faces masked in black, black uniforms, rifles and blows. In the alleys and on the narrow main street full of potholes the guys prepared. They wanted to thwart the advance of the forces of order with burning garbage containers and barricades of stones. They knew the filming balloon hovering over Al Aqsa and the East Jerusalem neighborhoods ignores - like the municipality headed by Mayor Nir Barkat - the unmaintained roads and the neglect, and transmits to the sovereign only their portraits. They knew that the Border Police and the special police forces come disguised as masked rebels.
And what would have happened had the sovereign's representatives, their weapons erect and ready for discharge, not appeared in the heart of the village? There would have been no one at whom to throw stones and the fire in the garbage containers would have died down undisturbed.
In the heart of that slum, on that Nakba Day, A.A., a boy of 15 and a half, went to buy cigarettes for his father (Haaretz, May 27 ). The police, who say he threw stones and that his face was masked, explain in the following way why the boy arrived at the hospital unconscious and remained there for 11 days: "During the course of the pursuit of the stonethrowers one paint bullet was fired and as a result the youngster was hit, fell to the ground and was injured. He was picked up by the forces and taken for medical treatment at the police clinic. The medic determined that he should be transferred to a hospital for continued medical treatment." Let us suppose it was not a focused blow from a rifle butt, as the boy claims. Let us suppose it really was a single paint bullet that found its way to his head. Here is what the one and only paint bullet fired by the Border Police and the police accomplished, as enumerated in the medical report: a scalp hematoma, a linear skull fracture, subcutaneous swelling and hematomas on his face and chest, multiple scratches on his back, multiple signs of blows on his limbs and a tear in his liver.
The police response to Haaretz evaded the medical findings and the following facts presented to them: The police dragged the unconscious boy on the road after he was beaten on his head. He was loaded onto a Jeep, was unloaded from it at a gas station and there, so that he would regain consciousness, he was sprayed with water and air from the tire pump. He was beaten repeatedly, he spit blood and he fainted again. He still had deep handcuff marks on his wrists 10 days after the cuffs were removed.
The police wrote that at their initiative they had "sent all the materials in this incident" to the Police Investigation Unit.
Investigation? Objective? You've made the inhabitants of the village laugh. A few people, who presumably were eyewitnesses to the paint ball and its deeds, have told me they weren't there. Their eyes lied and apologized for lying. Their fear says they know the sovereign is always not guilty. Their fear says they do not distinguish between the terrorizing sovereign and Israeli Jewish society. This is a society that is living in peace with the transformation of the village into a neighborhood choking on its masterminded poverty. It will also live in peace with the sovereign's agents who beat up Palestinians and covet their land.
Egypt Re-Opens Gaza Border, Partially Dismantling Siege
28 May 2011, Tikun Olam-תקון עולם http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam (USA)
A cornerstone of U.S.-Israel policy over the past five years has just partially dissolved with Egypt’s reopening today of the Rafah border crossing. This will allow passenger traffic (but not goods) to cross every day with little hindrance (though men from 18-40 will have to undergo a special security screening). It leaves Israel to maintain its siege on its own border with Gaza. Israel currently maintains the only border crossing that allows goods to cross. But Egypt is considering removing even this restriction. When it does (as I presume it will if there are no major problems with the Rafah opening), then the Israeli siege will be dead. And yet another punitive U.S.-Israeli policy toward the Palestinians will have bitten the dust and shown itself to have served no useful purpose.
Ethan Bronner, as usual acting as the stenographer for the Israeli government and conveying the wishful thinking of its policy “experts,” claims the lifting of the Egyptian siege will actually help Israeli policy goals. It supposedly will place a greater burden on Egypt to police its borders and, by extension, Hamas. But the most laughable claim by the Israelis is that lifting the siege will actually release international pressure on Israel, since there presumably would no longer be any humanitarian crisis to make the world scream bloody murder. What this neglects though, is that Egypt will likely shortly allow everything to enter Gaza, not just people. And when that happens, Israel will look stupid if it maintains a blockade. It’s reminds me of the extraordinary lengths to which the French went to build the Maginot Line, which they believed made them impregnable to German attack. There was only one problem: when the Germans attacked, they went around it and conquered France in record time. Maintaining a siege on one border when the other is completely open looks not only mean-spirited and ineffectual, but downright dumb. Israel doesn’t like to be seen by the world as dumb. So I predict even the Israeli siege will be drastically modified in six months or less.
Returning to Hamas, as Tony Karon so aptly writes at his Time Magazine blog, there is only one way to deal with it: engage. If there is ever to be real peace between Israelis and Palestinians it will have to receive at least a tacit blessing from Hamas. Laying siege to Gaza was a useless, wasted policy. It secured nothing, proved nothing. We (that is, the U.S., I can’t speak for Israel) should try something else. Something more positive. If we don’t, we will have only ourselves to blame and the corpses of hundreds or thousands more dead laid at our doorstep until we look at things more pragmatically and less ideologically.
A cornerstone of U.S.-Israel policy over the past five years has just partially dissolved with Egypt’s reopening today of the Rafah border crossing. This will allow passenger traffic (but not goods) to cross every day with little hindrance (though men from 18-40 will have to undergo a special security screening). It leaves Israel to maintain its siege on its own border with Gaza. Israel currently maintains the only border crossing that allows goods to cross. But Egypt is considering removing even this restriction. When it does (as I presume it will if there are no major problems with the Rafah opening), then the Israeli siege will be dead. And yet another punitive U.S.-Israeli policy toward the Palestinians will have bitten the dust and shown itself to have served no useful purpose.
Ethan Bronner, as usual acting as the stenographer for the Israeli government and conveying the wishful thinking of its policy “experts,” claims the lifting of the Egyptian siege will actually help Israeli policy goals. It supposedly will place a greater burden on Egypt to police its borders and, by extension, Hamas. But the most laughable claim by the Israelis is that lifting the siege will actually release international pressure on Israel, since there presumably would no longer be any humanitarian crisis to make the world scream bloody murder. What this neglects though, is that Egypt will likely shortly allow everything to enter Gaza, not just people. And when that happens, Israel will look stupid if it maintains a blockade. It’s reminds me of the extraordinary lengths to which the French went to build the Maginot Line, which they believed made them impregnable to German attack. There was only one problem: when the Germans attacked, they went around it and conquered France in record time. Maintaining a siege on one border when the other is completely open looks not only mean-spirited and ineffectual, but downright dumb. Israel doesn’t like to be seen by the world as dumb. So I predict even the Israeli siege will be drastically modified in six months or less.
Returning to Hamas, as Tony Karon so aptly writes at his Time Magazine blog, there is only one way to deal with it: engage. If there is ever to be real peace between Israelis and Palestinians it will have to receive at least a tacit blessing from Hamas. Laying siege to Gaza was a useless, wasted policy. It secured nothing, proved nothing. We (that is, the U.S., I can’t speak for Israel) should try something else. Something more positive. If we don’t, we will have only ourselves to blame and the corpses of hundreds or thousands more dead laid at our doorstep until we look at things more pragmatically and less ideologically.
Cameron drops Israel ‘racist’ charity
27 May 2011, Independent Jewish Voices (Canada)
http://ijvcanada.org
Stop the JNF Campaign: Media Release
Prime Minister David Cameron has quietly terminated his status as an Honorary Patron of the controversial Jewish National Fund (JNF). His office confirmed he had “stepped down”. For many years leaders of all three main political parties became Honorary Patrons of the JNF by convention. According to Dick Pitt, a spokesperson for the Stop the JNF Campaign, “Cameron was the only leader of the three major parties remaining as a JNF Patron. This decline in political support for the JNF at the highest levels of the political tree may be a sign of the increasing awareness in official quarters that a robust defence of the activities of the JNF may not be sustainable.”
The news of Cameron’s move has reached Palestinians in refugee camps, people whose land is under the control of the JNF. Salah Ajarma in Bethlehem’s Aida Refugee Camp was “delighted to hear the news that the British Prime Minister has decided to withdraw his support for this sinister organisation involved in ethnic cleansing. My village, Ajjur, was taken by force from my family and given to the JNF who used money from JNF UK to plant the British Park on its ruins. For the Palestinians who were evicted from their villages and have been prevented from returning, Cameron’s withdrawal is another victory on the road to achieving justice and freedom for the Palestinians”.
The JNF chairman Samuel Hayek defends the work of the organisation saying, “for over 100 years we have had one mission: to settle and develop the Land of Israel” as pioneers of the “historic Zionist dream”. The registered charity claims their work, especially in the Negev region of Israel, deals with “the rising demographic challenges faced by Israel”. In recent months the JNF’s activities in the Negev have received extensive international media coverage, linking them to the demolition of Palestinian Bedouin villages and confiscation of the land of the village. Campaigners report that “even Israeli courts have criticised the JNF as an organisation that discriminates against non-Jews and there is mounting evidence of the JNF’s involvement in Israel’s programme to change the ethnic composition of areas inside 1948 Israel as well as in Jerusalem and the Occupied Territories. It is not acceptable that such an organisation is allowed to operate in the UK, much less to enjoy charity status”.
Michael Kalmanovitz, UK co-ordinator of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, said “Cameron’s patronage of the JNF lent parliamentary credibility to a criminal organisation backed by a highly-equipped occupying army and masquerading as a ‘humanitarian charity’. Now parliamentarians who are ‘Friends of Israel’ must consider how much longer they can defend Israeli apartheid and worse.”
Pressure has been mounting on Cameron and the JNF. An Early Day Motion in the Westminster Parliament highlighted the Prime Minister’s status as honorary patron and claimed that “there is just cause to consider revocation of the JNF’s charitable status in the UK”. UK and international JNF fund-raising events increasingly face protests due, campaigners argue, to “a shift in public opinion on Israel generally”. In 2007, the American JNF application for consultative status on a key UN committee was rejected because delegates were unable to distinguish between the activities of the US Branch and those of the JNF in Israel whose activities the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed concerns about.
The Stop the JNF Campaign has workshops planned in London on 4 June 2011 and protests against JNF fundraising activities will be organised throughout the coming year.
ENDS
Notes for editors:
1. The Stop the JNF Campaign is an international campaign aimed at ending the role of the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet LeIsrael) (JNF-KKL) in:
1. the on-going displacement of indigenous Palestinians from their land
2. the theft of their property
3. the funding of historic and present day colonies, and
4. the destruction of the natural environment.
The JNF continues to serve as a global fundraiser for Israeli ethnic cleansing, occupation and apartheid. Despite its role in a State institution of Israel (the Israel Land Authority) and in institutionalized racism and apartheid, the JNF and its affiliate organizations enjoy charitable status in over 50 countries.
For further information, contact gb@stopthejnf.org, 07931200361
Website: www.stopthejnf.org.uk
2. Email from Prime Minister’s Press Office, Thu, 26 May 2011
Following the formation of the Coalition Government last year, a review
was undertaken of all the organisations and charities the Prime Minister
was associated with. As a result of this review, the Prime Minister
stepped down from a number of charities – this included the JNF. A full
list of all the charities and organisations the Prime Minister and Mrs
Cameron are associated with is published on the Cabinet Office website.
Rachel Stanton
Prime Minister’s Press Office
10 Downing Street
SW1A 2AA
020 7930 4433
3. ‘Cameron Becomes New JNF Patron’, TotallyJewish.com, 2nd February 2006
http://www.totallyjewish.com/news/national/?content_id=2661
4. Extract from ‘The British Park’ by Uri Davis, JNF e-book volume 1, p21
“The JNF-UK, as in other countries in Europe and the Americas, is a registered charity. The planting of the British Park over the lands of destroyed Palestinian villages, including Ajjur and Zakariyya, can in no way be described as ‘charitable’. Rather it ought to be classified as an act and as a policy of complicity with war crimes. The British Park and the recreational facility developed in the shade of its forest trees serve to veil from critical public view war crimes perpetrated by the Israeli army in the course of, and in the wake of, the 1948 war. This policy of
complicity with war crimes has been maintained by subsequent Israeli Governments, underpinned by Acts of Parliament such as the Jewish National Fund Law of 1950 and the Covenant signed between the JNF and the state of Israel in 1961.”
http://www.stopthejnf.org/documents/JNFeBookVol1ed2x.pdf
5. Samuel Hayek in ‘Supporting Israel for Life’, JNF Charitable Trust, Annual Report & Accounts 2009
http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends10%5C0000225910_AC_20091231_E_C.PDF
6. The JNF in the Negev (Naqab)
‘Shattering Israel’s image of ‘democracy’’, The Guardian, 3 December 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/03/israel-negev
‘Cameron-backed charity accused of discriminating against non-Jews’, 10 June 2010
http://www.jnews.org.uk/news/cameron-backed-charity-accused-of-discriminating-against-non-jews
‘The Israelis keep bulldozing their village, but still the Bedouin will not give up their land’, The Guardian, 1 March 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/01/israelis-demolish-bedouin-village
‘Stop creating forests that are destroying Bedouin lives’, Amnesty International, 11 April 2011
http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/stop-destruction-bedouin-village-and-its-inhabitants%E2%80%99-livelihoods-5
7. The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
http://www.ijsn.net/home/
8. Early day motion 1677, JEWISH NATIONAL FUND, Session: 2010-11
“That this House welcomes the Stop the Jewish National Fund (JNF) Campaign launched on 30 March 2011 by the Palestinian Boycott National Committee, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign and others to inform the public about the JNF – Karen Kayemet L’Yisrael, its ongoing illegal expropriation of Palestinian land, concealing of destroyed Palestinian villages beneath parks and forests, and prevention of refugees from returning to their homes; notes that the JNF’s constitution is explicitly discriminatory by stating that land and property will never be rented, leased or sold to non-Jews; further notes that the UN rejected the JNF USA’s application for consultative status with the Economic and Social Council on the ground that it violates the principles of the UN Charter on Human Rights; regrets that the Prime Ministeris a JNF honorary patron; and believes that there is just cause to consider revocation of the JNF’s charitable status in the UK.”
http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2010-11/1677
9. UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) rejects JNF (US) application for consultative status (2007)
- Economic and Social Council, ECOSOC/6267 NGO/618, http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2007/ecosoc6267.doc.htm
- Badil resources centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights: http://www.badil.org/en/article74/item/429-the-jewish-national-fund-jnf
- CONSIDERATION OF REPORTS SUBMITTED BY STATES PARTIES UNDER ARTICLE 9 OF THE CONVENTION, Concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (para19),http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/041AB84D2F05080C85257302004A9963
10. Challenge the JNF: Stop the JNF Campaign Workshops, London, 4 June 2011
http://www.stopthejnf.org/greatbritain_takeaction_workshop4june2011.html
11. End fund-raising in Scotland for ethnic cleansing in Palestine, 21 June 2011
http://www.stopthejnf.org/greatbritain_takeaction_protest21june2011.html
http://ijvcanada.org
Stop the JNF Campaign: Media Release
Prime Minister David Cameron has quietly terminated his status as an Honorary Patron of the controversial Jewish National Fund (JNF). His office confirmed he had “stepped down”. For many years leaders of all three main political parties became Honorary Patrons of the JNF by convention. According to Dick Pitt, a spokesperson for the Stop the JNF Campaign, “Cameron was the only leader of the three major parties remaining as a JNF Patron. This decline in political support for the JNF at the highest levels of the political tree may be a sign of the increasing awareness in official quarters that a robust defence of the activities of the JNF may not be sustainable.”
The news of Cameron’s move has reached Palestinians in refugee camps, people whose land is under the control of the JNF. Salah Ajarma in Bethlehem’s Aida Refugee Camp was “delighted to hear the news that the British Prime Minister has decided to withdraw his support for this sinister organisation involved in ethnic cleansing. My village, Ajjur, was taken by force from my family and given to the JNF who used money from JNF UK to plant the British Park on its ruins. For the Palestinians who were evicted from their villages and have been prevented from returning, Cameron’s withdrawal is another victory on the road to achieving justice and freedom for the Palestinians”.
The JNF chairman Samuel Hayek defends the work of the organisation saying, “for over 100 years we have had one mission: to settle and develop the Land of Israel” as pioneers of the “historic Zionist dream”. The registered charity claims their work, especially in the Negev region of Israel, deals with “the rising demographic challenges faced by Israel”. In recent months the JNF’s activities in the Negev have received extensive international media coverage, linking them to the demolition of Palestinian Bedouin villages and confiscation of the land of the village. Campaigners report that “even Israeli courts have criticised the JNF as an organisation that discriminates against non-Jews and there is mounting evidence of the JNF’s involvement in Israel’s programme to change the ethnic composition of areas inside 1948 Israel as well as in Jerusalem and the Occupied Territories. It is not acceptable that such an organisation is allowed to operate in the UK, much less to enjoy charity status”.
Michael Kalmanovitz, UK co-ordinator of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, said “Cameron’s patronage of the JNF lent parliamentary credibility to a criminal organisation backed by a highly-equipped occupying army and masquerading as a ‘humanitarian charity’. Now parliamentarians who are ‘Friends of Israel’ must consider how much longer they can defend Israeli apartheid and worse.”
Pressure has been mounting on Cameron and the JNF. An Early Day Motion in the Westminster Parliament highlighted the Prime Minister’s status as honorary patron and claimed that “there is just cause to consider revocation of the JNF’s charitable status in the UK”. UK and international JNF fund-raising events increasingly face protests due, campaigners argue, to “a shift in public opinion on Israel generally”. In 2007, the American JNF application for consultative status on a key UN committee was rejected because delegates were unable to distinguish between the activities of the US Branch and those of the JNF in Israel whose activities the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed concerns about.
The Stop the JNF Campaign has workshops planned in London on 4 June 2011 and protests against JNF fundraising activities will be organised throughout the coming year.
ENDS
Notes for editors:
1. The Stop the JNF Campaign is an international campaign aimed at ending the role of the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet LeIsrael) (JNF-KKL) in:
1. the on-going displacement of indigenous Palestinians from their land
2. the theft of their property
3. the funding of historic and present day colonies, and
4. the destruction of the natural environment.
The JNF continues to serve as a global fundraiser for Israeli ethnic cleansing, occupation and apartheid. Despite its role in a State institution of Israel (the Israel Land Authority) and in institutionalized racism and apartheid, the JNF and its affiliate organizations enjoy charitable status in over 50 countries.
For further information, contact gb@stopthejnf.org
Website: www.stopthejnf.org.uk
2. Email from Prime Minister’s Press Office, Thu, 26 May 2011
Following the formation of the Coalition Government last year, a review
was undertaken of all the organisations and charities the Prime Minister
was associated with. As a result of this review, the Prime Minister
stepped down from a number of charities – this included the JNF. A full
list of all the charities and organisations the Prime Minister and Mrs
Cameron are associated with is published on the Cabinet Office website.
Rachel Stanton
Prime Minister’s Press Office
10 Downing Street
SW1A 2AA
020 7930 4433
3. ‘Cameron Becomes New JNF Patron’, TotallyJewish.com, 2nd February 2006
http://www.totallyjewish.com/news/national/?content_id=2661
4. Extract from ‘The British Park’ by Uri Davis, JNF e-book volume 1, p21
“The JNF-UK, as in other countries in Europe and the Americas, is a registered charity. The planting of the British Park over the lands of destroyed Palestinian villages, including Ajjur and Zakariyya, can in no way be described as ‘charitable’. Rather it ought to be classified as an act and as a policy of complicity with war crimes. The British Park and the recreational facility developed in the shade of its forest trees serve to veil from critical public view war crimes perpetrated by the Israeli army in the course of, and in the wake of, the 1948 war. This policy of
complicity with war crimes has been maintained by subsequent Israeli Governments, underpinned by Acts of Parliament such as the Jewish National Fund Law of 1950 and the Covenant signed between the JNF and the state of Israel in 1961.”
http://www.stopthejnf.org/documents/JNFeBookVol1ed2x.pdf
5. Samuel Hayek in ‘Supporting Israel for Life’, JNF Charitable Trust, Annual Report & Accounts 2009
http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends10%5C0000225910_AC_20091231_E_C.PDF
6. The JNF in the Negev (Naqab)
‘Shattering Israel’s image of ‘democracy’’, The Guardian, 3 December 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/03/israel-negev
‘Cameron-backed charity accused of discriminating against non-Jews’, 10 June 2010
http://www.jnews.org.uk/news/cameron-backed-charity-accused-of-discriminating-against-non-jews
‘The Israelis keep bulldozing their village, but still the Bedouin will not give up their land’, The Guardian, 1 March 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/01/israelis-demolish-bedouin-village
‘Stop creating forests that are destroying Bedouin lives’, Amnesty International, 11 April 2011
http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/stop-destruction-bedouin-village-and-its-inhabitants%E2%80%99-livelihoods-5
7. The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
http://www.ijsn.net/home/
8. Early day motion 1677, JEWISH NATIONAL FUND, Session: 2010-11
“That this House welcomes the Stop the Jewish National Fund (JNF) Campaign launched on 30 March 2011 by the Palestinian Boycott National Committee, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign and others to inform the public about the JNF – Karen Kayemet L’Yisrael, its ongoing illegal expropriation of Palestinian land, concealing of destroyed Palestinian villages beneath parks and forests, and prevention of refugees from returning to their homes; notes that the JNF’s constitution is explicitly discriminatory by stating that land and property will never be rented, leased or sold to non-Jews; further notes that the UN rejected the JNF USA’s application for consultative status with the Economic and Social Council on the ground that it violates the principles of the UN Charter on Human Rights; regrets that the Prime Ministeris a JNF honorary patron; and believes that there is just cause to consider revocation of the JNF’s charitable status in the UK.”
http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2010-11/1677
9. UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) rejects JNF (US) application for consultative status (2007)
- Economic and Social Council, ECOSOC/6267 NGO/618, http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2007/ecosoc6267.doc.htm
- Badil resources centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights: http://www.badil.org/en/article74/item/429-the-jewish-national-fund-jnf
- CONSIDERATION OF REPORTS SUBMITTED BY STATES PARTIES UNDER ARTICLE 9 OF THE CONVENTION, Concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (para19),http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/041AB84D2F05080C85257302004A9963
10. Challenge the JNF: Stop the JNF Campaign Workshops, London, 4 June 2011
http://www.stopthejnf.org/greatbritain_takeaction_workshop4june2011.html
11. End fund-raising in Scotland for ethnic cleansing in Palestine, 21 June 2011
http://www.stopthejnf.org/greatbritain_takeaction_protest21june2011.html
ISRAEL’S SIEGE FREED GAZA’S YOUTH
26 May 2011, The Electronic Intifada (USA)
Mohammed Rabah Suliman* (Gaza Strip)
Palestinians were in disbelief over the news of a reconciliation deal between the two largest Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, brokered by Egypt which, meanwhile, repeated that ending the siege is a priority. Palestinian youth living in the besieged Gaza Strip were quick to start envisioning a new life in a Gaza free from both from the political divisions and the siege.
In 2006, Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections, beating Fatah into second place. Fatah has long dominated the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and controlled the Palestinian Authority since it was created after the 1993 Oslo accords. Hamas is not a member of the PLO.
A year later, a short-lived Palestinian national unity government uniting the factions fell apart amid US-supported efforts to undermine it, and Hamas ousted Fatah from the Gaza Strip in a distressing fierce ground battle.
Ever since, the population of Gaza has been destined to live under severe hermetic siege imposed by Israel along with the former Egyptian government of ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
Plenty of reports were written addressing the humanitarian crisis that resulted from this siege, along with Israel’s aggressive policies toward Palestinian civilians. Solidarity convoys have cascaded into Gaza one after another in an attempt to alleviate the suffering inflicted upon the Palestinians as a result of the siege.
For the youth in Gaza, one thing, however, has been bizarrely disregarded, which is the positive side of Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip.
Despite its many severely negative results, Israel’s siege of Gaza has offered Palestinian youth a service none had offered before. It offered new paths for us in our struggle for freedom, deepened our patriotic sentiment and finally created an environment that fosters a collective sense of selflessness and cooperation. It has created a young generation that truly cares.
Back in 2006, when Israel’s policies to besiege Gaza were still new, the people of Gaza were still unable to estimate the magnitude of the debacle ahead of them. Shortly after, prices started to shoot up, crossing borders became difficult, ubiquitous power cuts mercilessly dominated every aspect of life.
It was unthinkable, even for the Palestinians in Gaza, that they would be able to carry on with their new life for a long time.
Perhaps that was Israel’s logic. They might have thought: “They won’t be able to tolerate the base life we will force them to live under, we will suffocate them from every direction, we will cause them so much pain to bear. Soon they will blow up from within.”
But we didn’t. And unexpectedly, almost four years since the siege has started, and despite pervasive misery, human suffering and collective punishment, life still goes on.
For us, the youth in Gaza, life under siege was profoundly different. Unable to cope with its oppressiveness, life at first was intolerably tormenting. Anger and frustration were the outcome of our dashed hopes each time we came to realize the fact that ending this siege was anything but foreseeable.
Helpless, we were left to the vast amount of darkness surrounding our minds and bodies. Every now and then, we could escape this suffering momentarily as we loosened ourselves of our oppressive surroundings. This meant spending some time by the Gaza seashore dotted with Israeli warships at night, or at some cafe nearby where the musical bubbling of our water pipes were inescapably mingled with the unnerving hums of a few frenzied power generators.
However, no matter how much we tried to separate ourselves from the political context surrounding us, we couldn’t. We were thrown back into it by the huge extent of misery imposed upon us.
Many of us thus were left with a political mindset which ultimately triggered us into fruit-bearing action.
Plenty of Gaza youth have had an interest in politics, following up on news, reading reports and analyses. Reading has become the last and sole resort when we had nothing else to do. Soon we were demanding more and more books to read.
Reading has struck a new light in the dark; it has blown new winds into the stillness, and added flavor to our humdrum lives. It was too beautiful to resist. Besides reading, many Gaza youth remarkably developed an interest in documenting Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians through writing, blogging, making films and networking. Israel was their interest. Everything that has to do with Israel was worth stopping for; it was a sign of sophisticated interest. On the ground, hyper-activism was largely manifest in the immense variety of activities carried out and administered by youth groups, social movements and networks.
One of the remarkable youth groups newly initiated inside Gaza is the Palestine Youth Advocacy Network “PYAN”— which is also a word in Arabic that could mean exposition, representation, rhetoric or radiance, all of which have to do with the nature of work the team undertakes.
The network defines itself as “a fresh movement towards democratic endeavors in Palestine and breaking misconceptions about the occupied territories through global dialogue and reporting from the ground.” It operates regularly, holding workshops in coordination with international and local institutions with the intention of “[playing] an innovative role in assisting the Palestinian youth get the knowledge and acquire the skills needed to be up to the challenge of advocating their cause and sacred rights in the face of the misinformation imposed by the western mainstream media.”
Samah Saleh, a cofounder of PYAN, told me what role the siege has played in setting up the advocacy network and the abundance of other youth groups:
“The siege has everything to do with the emergence of PYAN. Gaza has been under siege for about four years, quite the same years young Gazans my age [have] been busy attempting to understand the interaction of global, regional and internal politics on their lives. In Gaza, the siege was the elephant in the room and Gazans were on their own, living, defying the siege’s intrusion on their every life, no matter how simple. We formed PYAN to be the platform of Gaza’s youth that addresses their urgent need to bring their stories out of besieged Gaza to the world.”
It isn’t quite appealing to speak of the inhumane siege without focusing on Israel’s crimes against Palestinian civilians. But having already blasted away any cliched representation of ourselves as terrorists, we now refuse to be continuously framed as dying of hunger or retreating to a corner and sitting in the dark. Our ability to turn each suffering into a source of inspiration preserves our dignity and fuels our unstoppable determination.
*Mohammed Rabah Suliman, 21, is a Palestinian student and blogger from Gaza. He studies English Literature at the Islamic University and blogs at Gaza Diaries of Peace and War at http://msuliman.wordpress.com. He can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/imPalestine.
Mohammed Rabah Suliman* (Gaza Strip)
Palestinians were in disbelief over the news of a reconciliation deal between the two largest Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, brokered by Egypt which, meanwhile, repeated that ending the siege is a priority. Palestinian youth living in the besieged Gaza Strip were quick to start envisioning a new life in a Gaza free from both from the political divisions and the siege.
In 2006, Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections, beating Fatah into second place. Fatah has long dominated the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and controlled the Palestinian Authority since it was created after the 1993 Oslo accords. Hamas is not a member of the PLO.
A year later, a short-lived Palestinian national unity government uniting the factions fell apart amid US-supported efforts to undermine it, and Hamas ousted Fatah from the Gaza Strip in a distressing fierce ground battle.
Ever since, the population of Gaza has been destined to live under severe hermetic siege imposed by Israel along with the former Egyptian government of ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
Plenty of reports were written addressing the humanitarian crisis that resulted from this siege, along with Israel’s aggressive policies toward Palestinian civilians. Solidarity convoys have cascaded into Gaza one after another in an attempt to alleviate the suffering inflicted upon the Palestinians as a result of the siege.
For the youth in Gaza, one thing, however, has been bizarrely disregarded, which is the positive side of Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip.
Despite its many severely negative results, Israel’s siege of Gaza has offered Palestinian youth a service none had offered before. It offered new paths for us in our struggle for freedom, deepened our patriotic sentiment and finally created an environment that fosters a collective sense of selflessness and cooperation. It has created a young generation that truly cares.
Back in 2006, when Israel’s policies to besiege Gaza were still new, the people of Gaza were still unable to estimate the magnitude of the debacle ahead of them. Shortly after, prices started to shoot up, crossing borders became difficult, ubiquitous power cuts mercilessly dominated every aspect of life.
It was unthinkable, even for the Palestinians in Gaza, that they would be able to carry on with their new life for a long time.
Perhaps that was Israel’s logic. They might have thought: “They won’t be able to tolerate the base life we will force them to live under, we will suffocate them from every direction, we will cause them so much pain to bear. Soon they will blow up from within.”
But we didn’t. And unexpectedly, almost four years since the siege has started, and despite pervasive misery, human suffering and collective punishment, life still goes on.
For us, the youth in Gaza, life under siege was profoundly different. Unable to cope with its oppressiveness, life at first was intolerably tormenting. Anger and frustration were the outcome of our dashed hopes each time we came to realize the fact that ending this siege was anything but foreseeable.
Helpless, we were left to the vast amount of darkness surrounding our minds and bodies. Every now and then, we could escape this suffering momentarily as we loosened ourselves of our oppressive surroundings. This meant spending some time by the Gaza seashore dotted with Israeli warships at night, or at some cafe nearby where the musical bubbling of our water pipes were inescapably mingled with the unnerving hums of a few frenzied power generators.
However, no matter how much we tried to separate ourselves from the political context surrounding us, we couldn’t. We were thrown back into it by the huge extent of misery imposed upon us.
Many of us thus were left with a political mindset which ultimately triggered us into fruit-bearing action.
Plenty of Gaza youth have had an interest in politics, following up on news, reading reports and analyses. Reading has become the last and sole resort when we had nothing else to do. Soon we were demanding more and more books to read.
Reading has struck a new light in the dark; it has blown new winds into the stillness, and added flavor to our humdrum lives. It was too beautiful to resist. Besides reading, many Gaza youth remarkably developed an interest in documenting Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians through writing, blogging, making films and networking. Israel was their interest. Everything that has to do with Israel was worth stopping for; it was a sign of sophisticated interest. On the ground, hyper-activism was largely manifest in the immense variety of activities carried out and administered by youth groups, social movements and networks.
One of the remarkable youth groups newly initiated inside Gaza is the Palestine Youth Advocacy Network “PYAN”— which is also a word in Arabic that could mean exposition, representation, rhetoric or radiance, all of which have to do with the nature of work the team undertakes.
The network defines itself as “a fresh movement towards democratic endeavors in Palestine and breaking misconceptions about the occupied territories through global dialogue and reporting from the ground.” It operates regularly, holding workshops in coordination with international and local institutions with the intention of “[playing] an innovative role in assisting the Palestinian youth get the knowledge and acquire the skills needed to be up to the challenge of advocating their cause and sacred rights in the face of the misinformation imposed by the western mainstream media.”
Samah Saleh, a cofounder of PYAN, told me what role the siege has played in setting up the advocacy network and the abundance of other youth groups:
“The siege has everything to do with the emergence of PYAN. Gaza has been under siege for about four years, quite the same years young Gazans my age [have] been busy attempting to understand the interaction of global, regional and internal politics on their lives. In Gaza, the siege was the elephant in the room and Gazans were on their own, living, defying the siege’s intrusion on their every life, no matter how simple. We formed PYAN to be the platform of Gaza’s youth that addresses their urgent need to bring their stories out of besieged Gaza to the world.”
It isn’t quite appealing to speak of the inhumane siege without focusing on Israel’s crimes against Palestinian civilians. But having already blasted away any cliched representation of ourselves as terrorists, we now refuse to be continuously framed as dying of hunger or retreating to a corner and sitting in the dark. Our ability to turn each suffering into a source of inspiration preserves our dignity and fuels our unstoppable determination.
*Mohammed Rabah Suliman, 21, is a Palestinian student and blogger from Gaza. He studies English Literature at the Islamic University and blogs at Gaza Diaries of Peace and War at http://msuliman.wordpress.com. He can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/imPalestine.
quinta-feira, 26 de maio de 2011
South African Jew who hid Nelson Mandela dies in Tel Aviv at 82
26 may 2011, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)
Arthur Goldreich, a veteran anti-Apartheid activist, pretended to be an owner of a farm on the outskirts of Johannesburg that was the ANC's underground headquarters in the 1960s.
By The Associated Press
It was an elaborate charade: A white South African family in the comfortable brick house on the northern edge of Johannesburg, a black farm worker in the tiny servant's quarters out back.
The farm worker was Nelson Mandela, hiding out in the 1960s soon after he founded the armed wing of the African National Congress. Arthur Goldreich, key to the ruse as head of the white family, died Tuesday in Tel Aviv, Mandela's office said Wednesday. Goldreich was 82.
Goldreich and his family pretended to be the owners of a farm on the outskirts of Johannesburg that was the ANC's underground headquarters in the 1960s. They played into the stereotypes of apartheid, trying to behave as masters and servant before the neighbors, who have spoken of seeing Mandela, known on the farm as David Motsamayi, in blue workers' overalls selling produce on the street outside.
But in private, they were comrades. Mandela once spoke of numerous political discussions with Goldreich, and of recommending he be recruited into Umkhonto we Sizwe, known as MK, the ANC's armed wing. In his autobiography, Mandela describes the South African-born Goldreich as having fought in the 1940s with the military wing of the Jewish National Movement in Palestine.
Mandela described Goldreich as a "flamboyant person (who ) gave the farm a buoyant atmosphere.
Benjamin Pogrund, a former South African journalist who met Goldreich in Israel, told the Associated Press that "Goldreich was a romantic revolutionary."
"He had a great personality and was really fun to be with," Pogrund said. "He was a great narrator and did everything with tremendous flair."
Mandela wrote of close calls at the farm. One day Mandela's son, leafing through a magazine while playing with Golreich's son on a visit to the farm, came across a photo of Mandela before he went underground. Mandela's son told Goldreich's son the man pictured was his father, and identified him by his real name.
"I had the feeling that I had remained too long in one place," Mandela wrote.
Mandela was not at the farm when it was raided in 1963. He was already in prison in a separate case, but became a defendant in the so-called Rivonia treason trial that arose from the farm raid, leading to decades in prison.
Goldreich was among those arrested.
(Ian Deitch in Jerusalem contributed to this report.)
Arthur Goldreich, a veteran anti-Apartheid activist, pretended to be an owner of a farm on the outskirts of Johannesburg that was the ANC's underground headquarters in the 1960s.
By The Associated Press
It was an elaborate charade: A white South African family in the comfortable brick house on the northern edge of Johannesburg, a black farm worker in the tiny servant's quarters out back.
The farm worker was Nelson Mandela, hiding out in the 1960s soon after he founded the armed wing of the African National Congress. Arthur Goldreich, key to the ruse as head of the white family, died Tuesday in Tel Aviv, Mandela's office said Wednesday. Goldreich was 82.
Goldreich and his family pretended to be the owners of a farm on the outskirts of Johannesburg that was the ANC's underground headquarters in the 1960s. They played into the stereotypes of apartheid, trying to behave as masters and servant before the neighbors, who have spoken of seeing Mandela, known on the farm as David Motsamayi, in blue workers' overalls selling produce on the street outside.
But in private, they were comrades. Mandela once spoke of numerous political discussions with Goldreich, and of recommending he be recruited into Umkhonto we Sizwe, known as MK, the ANC's armed wing. In his autobiography, Mandela describes the South African-born Goldreich as having fought in the 1940s with the military wing of the Jewish National Movement in Palestine.
Mandela described Goldreich as a "flamboyant person (who ) gave the farm a buoyant atmosphere.
Benjamin Pogrund, a former South African journalist who met Goldreich in Israel, told the Associated Press that "Goldreich was a romantic revolutionary."
"He had a great personality and was really fun to be with," Pogrund said. "He was a great narrator and did everything with tremendous flair."
Mandela wrote of close calls at the farm. One day Mandela's son, leafing through a magazine while playing with Golreich's son on a visit to the farm, came across a photo of Mandela before he went underground. Mandela's son told Goldreich's son the man pictured was his father, and identified him by his real name.
"I had the feeling that I had remained too long in one place," Mandela wrote.
Mandela was not at the farm when it was raided in 1963. He was already in prison in a separate case, but became a defendant in the so-called Rivonia treason trial that arose from the farm raid, leading to decades in prison.
Goldreich was among those arrested.
(Ian Deitch in Jerusalem contributed to this report.)
Nouvelle flottille pour Gaza en juin ; Mankell à bord
26 mai 2011/ L’Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS) http://www.france-palestine.org
L’Express et Afp
L’auteur suédois de romans policiers Henning Mankell fera de nouveau partie de la flottille internationale qui doit tenter d’acheminer de l’aide humanitaire à Gaza fin juin.
Une flottille internationale de 15 navires prendra la mer dans la dernière semaine de juin pour acheminer de l’aide humanitaire à Gaza, un an après un raid israélien meurtrier sur une première flotille, a affirmé vendredi une ONG turque, coorganisatrice du projet. A bord des navires, affrétés par 22 ONG, prendront place quelque 1.500 militants en provenance de plus d’une centaine de pays [1].
Parmi eux, Henning Mankell le "père" du commissaire Wallander, qui avait déjà participé il y a un an à un premier convoi intercepté en mer par l’armée israélienne au cours d’un raid meurtrier, fera partie de la délégation suédoise à bord de la "flottille de la liberté 2", indique l’ONG dans un communiqué.
Huit Suédois figurent déjà parmi les militants pro-palestiniens d’une centaine de pays, qui doivent embarquer sur une quinzaine de navires, selon Ship to Gaza. Au total, Ship to Gaza Suède s’attend à ce qu’une vingtaine de Suédois embarquent sur la nouvelle flottille, explique l’ONG qui précise qu’elle a refusé de nombreuses candidatures.
Le précédent de 2010
Le 31 mai 2010, une première flottille composée de six navires ayant à bord 682 personnes avait été interceptée par l’armée israéliennes dans les eaux internationales. Neufs ressortissants turcs, dont une personne ayant aussi la nationalité américaine, avaient été tués au cours de l’opération à bord du navire amiral de la flottille, le Mavi Marmara, affrété par une ONG islamiste turque.
Le drame avait provoqué la réprobation internationale et de vives tensions entre la Turquie et Israël.
[1] un bateau suisse se joindra à la Flottille de la Liberté:
CONFERENCE DE PRESSE "UN BATEAU SUISSE POUR GAZA"
"Le bateau suisse partira aux alentours de la dernière semaine de juin et son retour est prévu à la fin du mois de juin. Il restera deux ou trois jours sur place", a indiqué mardi le président de l’ONG genevoise "Droit pour tous", à l’origine du projet. Le port de départ a été choisi, mais pas divulgué pour l’instant. Une participation allemande s’est par ailleurs greffée au navire suisse.
Quelque 220 ONG helvétiques soutiennent le projet, par des messages de soutien ou la récolte de fonds. Les conseillers nationaux Joseph Zisyadis (POP/VD), Carlo Sommaruga (PS/GE), Jean-Charles Rielle (PS/GE), ainsi que le chanteur Michel Bühler ont confirmé leur présence sur le bateau suisse en partance vers Gaza, a précisé M. Gharbi. Il comptera au total 40 à 45 personnes, dont 10 Allemands.
Le retard de financement face à l’afflux d’inscriptions, ainsi que des décalages dans la coordination européenne expliquent le report du départ. Il a aussi été repoussé pour permettre à de nouveaux arrivants d’intégrer l’expédition.
Le coût de l’aventure helvétique est devisé à quelque 300’000 euros (environ 370’000 francs), y compris le prix du bateau. La participation suisse est de deux tiers et l’allemande d’un tiers.
Le bateau va aussi et surtout embarquer environ 4’000 tonnes d’aide, principalement sous forme de matériel médical et de maisons préfabriquées.
http://www.urgencepalestine.ch 24.05.2011
http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/mo...
L’Express et Afp
L’auteur suédois de romans policiers Henning Mankell fera de nouveau partie de la flottille internationale qui doit tenter d’acheminer de l’aide humanitaire à Gaza fin juin.
Une flottille internationale de 15 navires prendra la mer dans la dernière semaine de juin pour acheminer de l’aide humanitaire à Gaza, un an après un raid israélien meurtrier sur une première flotille, a affirmé vendredi une ONG turque, coorganisatrice du projet. A bord des navires, affrétés par 22 ONG, prendront place quelque 1.500 militants en provenance de plus d’une centaine de pays [1].
Parmi eux, Henning Mankell le "père" du commissaire Wallander, qui avait déjà participé il y a un an à un premier convoi intercepté en mer par l’armée israélienne au cours d’un raid meurtrier, fera partie de la délégation suédoise à bord de la "flottille de la liberté 2", indique l’ONG dans un communiqué.
Huit Suédois figurent déjà parmi les militants pro-palestiniens d’une centaine de pays, qui doivent embarquer sur une quinzaine de navires, selon Ship to Gaza. Au total, Ship to Gaza Suède s’attend à ce qu’une vingtaine de Suédois embarquent sur la nouvelle flottille, explique l’ONG qui précise qu’elle a refusé de nombreuses candidatures.
Le précédent de 2010
Le 31 mai 2010, une première flottille composée de six navires ayant à bord 682 personnes avait été interceptée par l’armée israéliennes dans les eaux internationales. Neufs ressortissants turcs, dont une personne ayant aussi la nationalité américaine, avaient été tués au cours de l’opération à bord du navire amiral de la flottille, le Mavi Marmara, affrété par une ONG islamiste turque.
Le drame avait provoqué la réprobation internationale et de vives tensions entre la Turquie et Israël.
[1] un bateau suisse se joindra à la Flottille de la Liberté:
CONFERENCE DE PRESSE "UN BATEAU SUISSE POUR GAZA"
"Le bateau suisse partira aux alentours de la dernière semaine de juin et son retour est prévu à la fin du mois de juin. Il restera deux ou trois jours sur place", a indiqué mardi le président de l’ONG genevoise "Droit pour tous", à l’origine du projet. Le port de départ a été choisi, mais pas divulgué pour l’instant. Une participation allemande s’est par ailleurs greffée au navire suisse.
Quelque 220 ONG helvétiques soutiennent le projet, par des messages de soutien ou la récolte de fonds. Les conseillers nationaux Joseph Zisyadis (POP/VD), Carlo Sommaruga (PS/GE), Jean-Charles Rielle (PS/GE), ainsi que le chanteur Michel Bühler ont confirmé leur présence sur le bateau suisse en partance vers Gaza, a précisé M. Gharbi. Il comptera au total 40 à 45 personnes, dont 10 Allemands.
Le retard de financement face à l’afflux d’inscriptions, ainsi que des décalages dans la coordination européenne expliquent le report du départ. Il a aussi été repoussé pour permettre à de nouveaux arrivants d’intégrer l’expédition.
Le coût de l’aventure helvétique est devisé à quelque 300’000 euros (environ 370’000 francs), y compris le prix du bateau. La participation suisse est de deux tiers et l’allemande d’un tiers.
Le bateau va aussi et surtout embarquer environ 4’000 tonnes d’aide, principalement sous forme de matériel médical et de maisons préfabriquées.
http://www.urgencepalestine.ch 24.05.2011
http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/mo...
A Partir de Samedi prochain L'Egypte ouvrira le passage de Rafah de façon durable
26 mai 2011/Centre Palestinien d´Information http://www.palestine-info.cc/fr
Les autorités égyptiennes ont décidé d'ouvrir la frontière de Rafah avec la bande de Gaza sur une base durable, à partir du samedi 28/5, sauf les vendredis et les jours fériés, de neuf heures du matin jusqu'à cinq heures du soir.
La source officielle égyptienne a déclaré, dans un communiqué de presse écrite, publié le mercredi 25/5, que cette mesure s'inscrit dans le cadre des mesures prises par les autorités concernées pour faciliter la circulation du passage des citoyens palestiniens à travers les entrées égyptiennes.
La source a ajouté que les autorités égyptiennes ont pris plusieurs mesures pour faciliter la circulation des citoyens palestiniens les entrées égyptiennes, à partir de Samedi prochain, ajoutant qu'elles ont décidé de mettre en œuvre du mécanisme d'entrée, qui a été mis en œuvre avant 2007.
"Ce mécanisme prévoit une exemption de l'obligation d'obtenir un visa avant, pour chacune des femmes palestiniennes de tous âges, les hommes âgés moins de 18 ans et plus de 40 ans, et les enfants à venir avec leurs parents et qui sont exemptés avant de l'obligation d'obtenir un visa d'entrée ", a-t-elle insisté.
Le communiqué indique que cela permettrait, en outre, selon ce mécanisme, pour les familles palestiniennes à arriver à destination et à partir de la bande de Gaza avec la nécessité de leur obtention des passeports et de l'identité palestiniens, et de venir étudier à condition de les amener à cet effet, et à travers le passage de Rafah pour le traitement médical en vertu de la conversion médicale.
Il a ainsi expliqué: "les hommes âgés entre 18 et 40 ans doivent obtenir une coordination préalable des ambassades égyptiennes à l'étranger, précisant que ceux en provenance de la bande de Gaza et en Cisjordanie doivent obtenir la coordination de l'ambassade égyptienne à Ramallah.
"Pour les Palestiniens qui ne répondent pas aux conditions d'entrée visées à l'heure, le communiqué a souligné que l'ambassade palestinienne au Caire coordinera avec les autorités concernées en Egypte pour leur transport vers et depuis la bande de Gaza", a également indiqué le communiqué.
Et sur l'entrée des Palestiniens de la Libye à la suite des conditions actuelles, le responsable égyptien a déclaré: "Les autorités en Egypte appliquent des règles sur l'entrée de ceux-ci, qui nécessité de l'obtention du visa d'entrée pour tous les groupes d'âge"
Améliorations au niveau du passage
Dans un contexte lié, le gouvernement palestinien dirigé par Ismaïl Haniyeh a souligné que le côté égyptien viendra améliorer le travail du passage de Rafah dans le sud de la bande de Gaza, à partir de Samedi prochain.
Le Dr. Hassan Abou Hashish, directeur de l'administration des médias au bureau, a déclaré dans un communiqué, mercredi soir, que parmi les améliorations les plus notables sur la passage de Rafah, est l'augmentation de la période du travail, de 6 jours par semaine au lieu de 5 jours (le congé sera uniquement le vendredi), et le travail quotidien de 9 heures à 17 heures.
Il a ajouté que le passage à niveau accueillera les étudiants et les employeurs d'hébergement et des transferts, les femmes et les enfants de moins de dix-huit ans, sans coordination, en plus des hommes qui sont âgés de plus de quarante autres que celles énumérées.
En outre, il a précisé qu'une coordination se fera également pour les personnalités politiques à travers les ministères des Affaires étrangères palestinien et égyptien, et que le dossier des personnes classées sera discuté, pendant les trois prochains mois, et voyageront seulement de l'aéroport du Caire.
Les autorités égyptiennes ont décidé d'ouvrir la frontière de Rafah avec la bande de Gaza sur une base durable, à partir du samedi 28/5, sauf les vendredis et les jours fériés, de neuf heures du matin jusqu'à cinq heures du soir.
La source officielle égyptienne a déclaré, dans un communiqué de presse écrite, publié le mercredi 25/5, que cette mesure s'inscrit dans le cadre des mesures prises par les autorités concernées pour faciliter la circulation du passage des citoyens palestiniens à travers les entrées égyptiennes.
La source a ajouté que les autorités égyptiennes ont pris plusieurs mesures pour faciliter la circulation des citoyens palestiniens les entrées égyptiennes, à partir de Samedi prochain, ajoutant qu'elles ont décidé de mettre en œuvre du mécanisme d'entrée, qui a été mis en œuvre avant 2007.
"Ce mécanisme prévoit une exemption de l'obligation d'obtenir un visa avant, pour chacune des femmes palestiniennes de tous âges, les hommes âgés moins de 18 ans et plus de 40 ans, et les enfants à venir avec leurs parents et qui sont exemptés avant de l'obligation d'obtenir un visa d'entrée ", a-t-elle insisté.
Le communiqué indique que cela permettrait, en outre, selon ce mécanisme, pour les familles palestiniennes à arriver à destination et à partir de la bande de Gaza avec la nécessité de leur obtention des passeports et de l'identité palestiniens, et de venir étudier à condition de les amener à cet effet, et à travers le passage de Rafah pour le traitement médical en vertu de la conversion médicale.
Il a ainsi expliqué: "les hommes âgés entre 18 et 40 ans doivent obtenir une coordination préalable des ambassades égyptiennes à l'étranger, précisant que ceux en provenance de la bande de Gaza et en Cisjordanie doivent obtenir la coordination de l'ambassade égyptienne à Ramallah.
"Pour les Palestiniens qui ne répondent pas aux conditions d'entrée visées à l'heure, le communiqué a souligné que l'ambassade palestinienne au Caire coordinera avec les autorités concernées en Egypte pour leur transport vers et depuis la bande de Gaza", a également indiqué le communiqué.
Et sur l'entrée des Palestiniens de la Libye à la suite des conditions actuelles, le responsable égyptien a déclaré: "Les autorités en Egypte appliquent des règles sur l'entrée de ceux-ci, qui nécessité de l'obtention du visa d'entrée pour tous les groupes d'âge"
Améliorations au niveau du passage
Dans un contexte lié, le gouvernement palestinien dirigé par Ismaïl Haniyeh a souligné que le côté égyptien viendra améliorer le travail du passage de Rafah dans le sud de la bande de Gaza, à partir de Samedi prochain.
Le Dr. Hassan Abou Hashish, directeur de l'administration des médias au bureau, a déclaré dans un communiqué, mercredi soir, que parmi les améliorations les plus notables sur la passage de Rafah, est l'augmentation de la période du travail, de 6 jours par semaine au lieu de 5 jours (le congé sera uniquement le vendredi), et le travail quotidien de 9 heures à 17 heures.
Il a ajouté que le passage à niveau accueillera les étudiants et les employeurs d'hébergement et des transferts, les femmes et les enfants de moins de dix-huit ans, sans coordination, en plus des hommes qui sont âgés de plus de quarante autres que celles énumérées.
En outre, il a précisé qu'une coordination se fera également pour les personnalités politiques à travers les ministères des Affaires étrangères palestinien et égyptien, et que le dossier des personnes classées sera discuté, pendant les trois prochains mois, et voyageront seulement de l'aéroport du Caire.
Activists refuse to send Gaza aid via Israel
26 May 2011/Al Ahram (Egypt)
Activists criticise Egyptian reluctance to allow them transit to deliver aid to Gaza via a Malaysian ship; Malaysian FM says it is working with Egypt to unload the aid
Activists on a Malaysian aid ship that had been bound for Gaza refused to hand their cargo to Egypt on Thursday, saying they feared it would end up in Israel.
They had tried to land in Gaza last week but changed course when the Israeli navy fired warning shots.
Matthias Chang, who is heading the mission for the Perdana Global Peace Foundation, told AFP the group was not consulted when the Malaysian and Egyptian governments worked out a deal to end the impasse. Chang said Egypt had insisted the cargo be discharged and transported via Kaern Shalom, at the Israeli border in Gaza.
"We are not assured that this cargo would in fact be delivered to Gaza, as in the past... most of the humanitarian aid was laid to waste in Israel," he added.
Chang also questioned Cairo's refusal to allow the cargo, consisting of 7.5 kilometres (4.6 miles) of sewage pipes, to be transferred via the Rafah crossing -- Gaza's only crossing that bypasses Israel -- given that it would be open this weekend.
"This turn of events demonstrates the insincerity of the Egyptian government and their implicit endorsement of the illegal siege when they explicitly stated they would permanently open the Rafah crossing," Chang said.
Egyptian state media have said the Rafah border crossing would open on a daily basis starting Saturday.Perdana Foundation adviser Mukhriz Mahathir, a son of former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad, told AFP they were unhappy with Cairo's actions.
"We are disappointed that it has come to this as we were hopeful that with the new government there would be substantial change in regard to the way they treat Palestinians and Gaza but this is clearly not the case," he said.
"We urge the Egyptian government to allow the aid ship to dock and unload the pipes and ensure that they are delivered to Gaza via the Rafah crossing," Mukhriz added.
However, Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said Kuala Lumpur and Cairo were working to enable the MV Finch, which has been refused entry to El Arish for the last 10 days, to dock and unload its aid, according to a statement.
Anifah and his Egyptian counterpart urged "the parties concerned not to resort to any unnecessary action that could further aggravate the situation."
The 12 activists and crew onboard the MV Finch aborted their second attempt to land in Gaza on Monday after engine trouble, and are anchored in a waiting area off the Egyptian port of El Arish.
Perdana Foundation officials said the MV Finch left Greece on May 11, carrying the pipes to help restore the sewage system in Gaza.
But Israeli naval forces fired warning shots at the vessel on May 16, when it was in Israeli waters about 400 metres (yards) from Gaza, forcing it into Egyptian waters.
The Perdana Foundation is headed by Mahathir, an 85-year-old firebrand who was a strident critic of the West and Israel over the treatment of Palestinians during his two decades in power.
The organisation was also involved in the first "Freedom Flotilla," a May 2010 attempt to break the Israeli blockade on Gaza, which ended in disaster when naval commandos raided the aid ships, killing nine Turks on board one of the vessels.The incident sparked heavy criticism of Israel and led to a sharp deterioration in ties between Turkey and the Jewish state. (AFP)
Activists criticise Egyptian reluctance to allow them transit to deliver aid to Gaza via a Malaysian ship; Malaysian FM says it is working with Egypt to unload the aid
Activists on a Malaysian aid ship that had been bound for Gaza refused to hand their cargo to Egypt on Thursday, saying they feared it would end up in Israel.
They had tried to land in Gaza last week but changed course when the Israeli navy fired warning shots.
Matthias Chang, who is heading the mission for the Perdana Global Peace Foundation, told AFP the group was not consulted when the Malaysian and Egyptian governments worked out a deal to end the impasse. Chang said Egypt had insisted the cargo be discharged and transported via Kaern Shalom, at the Israeli border in Gaza.
"We are not assured that this cargo would in fact be delivered to Gaza, as in the past... most of the humanitarian aid was laid to waste in Israel," he added.
Chang also questioned Cairo's refusal to allow the cargo, consisting of 7.5 kilometres (4.6 miles) of sewage pipes, to be transferred via the Rafah crossing -- Gaza's only crossing that bypasses Israel -- given that it would be open this weekend.
"This turn of events demonstrates the insincerity of the Egyptian government and their implicit endorsement of the illegal siege when they explicitly stated they would permanently open the Rafah crossing," Chang said.
Egyptian state media have said the Rafah border crossing would open on a daily basis starting Saturday.Perdana Foundation adviser Mukhriz Mahathir, a son of former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad, told AFP they were unhappy with Cairo's actions.
"We are disappointed that it has come to this as we were hopeful that with the new government there would be substantial change in regard to the way they treat Palestinians and Gaza but this is clearly not the case," he said.
"We urge the Egyptian government to allow the aid ship to dock and unload the pipes and ensure that they are delivered to Gaza via the Rafah crossing," Mukhriz added.
However, Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said Kuala Lumpur and Cairo were working to enable the MV Finch, which has been refused entry to El Arish for the last 10 days, to dock and unload its aid, according to a statement.
Anifah and his Egyptian counterpart urged "the parties concerned not to resort to any unnecessary action that could further aggravate the situation."
The 12 activists and crew onboard the MV Finch aborted their second attempt to land in Gaza on Monday after engine trouble, and are anchored in a waiting area off the Egyptian port of El Arish.
Perdana Foundation officials said the MV Finch left Greece on May 11, carrying the pipes to help restore the sewage system in Gaza.
But Israeli naval forces fired warning shots at the vessel on May 16, when it was in Israeli waters about 400 metres (yards) from Gaza, forcing it into Egyptian waters.
The Perdana Foundation is headed by Mahathir, an 85-year-old firebrand who was a strident critic of the West and Israel over the treatment of Palestinians during his two decades in power.
The organisation was also involved in the first "Freedom Flotilla," a May 2010 attempt to break the Israeli blockade on Gaza, which ended in disaster when naval commandos raided the aid ships, killing nine Turks on board one of the vessels.The incident sparked heavy criticism of Israel and led to a sharp deterioration in ties between Turkey and the Jewish state. (AFP)
DESMOND TUTU, ISRAEL E EU
25 maio 2011/Carta Maior http://cartamaior.com.br (Brasil)
Para mim, é tão imoral empresas lucrarem com a ocupação israelense da Cisjordânia, Gaza e Jerusalém Leste quanto era no caso das empresas que lucravam com o apartheid sul-africano. Como o mundo e eu aprendemos há 25 anos, a pressão externa é muitas vezes necessária para provocar mudanças políticas e deter um governo opressor. A geração de hoje está preparada para desempenhar um papel histórico, ajudando a trazer a paz, a justiça e a igualdade para o Oriente Médio. O artigo é de Jordan Ash.
Jordan Ash - Common Dreams (EUA)
(Jordan Ash é representante do movimento Jewish Voice for Peace, em Minnesota,EUA)
Quando eu era criança, minha mãe incutiu-me um forte sentido de certo e errado. A moral que ela transmitiu estava firmemente enraizada na história do povo judeu. Minha mãe falou-me dos pogroms na Rússia, das duras condições de trabalho que os judeus tiveram que suportar e da discriminação que enfrentaram nos Estados Unidos. Ela também me falou de Samuel Gompers, que fundou a Federação Americana do Trabalho, e de Michael Schwerner e Andrew Goodman que deram suas vidas, ao lado de James Chaney, no movimento em defesa dos direitos civis.
As lições que aprendi foram claras. Devemos lutar pela Justiça. A discriminação e o preconceito são coisas erradas. Todas as pessoas são iguais e merecem ser tratadas com dignidade e respeito.
Nos feriados, comemorávamos momentos onde praticamos essas lições. Na Páscoa, nos lembrávamos que éramos escravos no Egito. A Chanukah é a história de como Judas Macabeu e um pequeno grupo de homens derrotaram o exército grego para que pudéssemos praticar a nossa religião. No Purim, nós vaiávamos quando ouvíamos o nome de Haman, que queria destruir os judeus e brindávamos a Ester que arriscou a vida para salvar seu povo.
E, é claro, ela me falou do Holocausto, das formas heroicas com os quais os judeus lutaram e dos modos horríveis pelos quais morreram. Esta foi a história que deu tanta importância à fundação de Israel. Era como se, após uma sucessão de tragédias, a história do nosso povo tivesse um final feliz.
Como fui ensinado, os árabes queriam negar-nos esse final feliz e jogar todos os judeus no mar, simplesmente porque eram judeus. Eu, como tantos outros judeus, não fui ensinado que a fundação de Israel exigiu a remoção forçada de 700 mil palestinos.
Quando cheguei à faculdade, em 1985, rapidamente me envolvi em uma tentativa de envolver a escola em um boicote contra empresas que faziam negócios com a África do Sul. Fui preso em um ato de desobediência civil, juntamente com outros dez estudantes, incluindo Amy Carter, filha do ex-presidente e ganhador do Prêmio Nobel da Paz, Jimmy Carter.
Por volta dessa época, vi um panfleto que falava sobre a aliança profana entre os Estados Unidos, África do Sul e Israel. Eu quis acreditar que se tratava de uma falsa acusação promovida por anti-semitas contra Israel, mas não era. Israel forneceu armas para o regime do apartheid.
Alguns anos mais tarde, quando Nelson Mandela foi libertado da prisão e visitou os Estados Unidos, alguns judeus ameaçaram protestar por causa de declarações de Mandela, comparando a luta dos palestinos com a dos negros sul-africanos.
O fato de essa verdade sobre Israel ser algo muito doloroso, eu ignorei-a. Mesmo eu que procurava viver com os valores transmitidos por minha meu, que trabalhava com os sindicatos e organizações da comunidade, ignorei o que as pessoas estavam dizendo sobre a opressão contra os palestinos. Eu coloquei Israel fora da minha mente e, por um longo tempo, também coloquei os judeus fora de minha mente.
Então, vinte anos depois, ouvi um grupo de jovens judeus se manifestarem contra o que Israel estava fazendo nos territórios ocupados e como eles – como judeus – se sentiram obrigados a fazer tudo o que podiam para impedir isso.
Eu fui para Israel então, para ver com meus próprios olhos. Eu vi que Israel estava construindo um muro de 425 milhas, separando comunidades e famílias umas das outras, agricultores de suas terras e impedindo os palestinos de chegarem ao trabalho ou à escola. Vi que o governo israelense estava demolindo casas palestinas, enquanto continuava permitindo a construção de novos assentamentos judaicos.
Ficou claro para mim que o principal interesse de Israel não era alcançar a paz, mas tomar as melhores terras para si, enquanto forçava os palestinos a uma vida de pobreza cheia de lembranças diárias de seu “status inferior”. A minha experiência confirmou o que Jimmy Carter tinha dito: que Israel criou um sistema de apartheid.
Pouco tempo depois de ter voltado, a Universidade de St. Thomas, em St.Paul, desconvidou o arcebispo Desmond Tutu para uma atividade, após o Conselho de Relações da Comunidade Judaica ter dito que Tutu teria feito comentários ofensivos à comunidade.
O que Tutu havia dito? “Eu fiquei profundamente angustiado na minha visita à Terra Santa, que me lembrou muito do que aconteceu com nós, negros, na África do Sul. Eu vi a humilhação dos palestinos nos postos de controle e de bloqueio nas estradas, sofrendo como nós, quando os jovens policiais brancos nos impediam de nos locomover”. Às vezes a verdade dói.
O site JCRC Minnesota apresenta uma citação do líder zulu sul-africano Chefe Buthelezi dizendo que “o regime israelense não é o apartheid”. Quem é o chefe Buthelezi? Ele foi um dos únicos negros sul-africanos a se opor ao boicote e a incentivar o investimento estrangeiro na África do Sul, alegando que era uma coisa boa para o povo negro. A comunidade empresarial internacional abraçou-o e ignorou o fato de que todos os líderes negros do movimento anti-apartheid eram a favor de sanções e do boicote.
Inspirado pelo sucesso do movimento de boicote e de desinvestimento contra o apartheid sul-africano, uma ampla fama de organizações da sociedade civil palestina fez um apelo em 2005 em favor da campanha Boicote, Desinvestimento e Sanções como parte de uma campanha não violenta para acabar com a ocupação israelense.
As pessoas que se opunham ao boicote à África do Sul 25 anos atrás argumentavam que a melhor maneira de mudar o apartheid era por meio do “engajamento construtivo” das corporações com o regime do apartheid. Elas estavam erradas.
Para mim, é tão imoral empresas lucrarem com a ocupação israelense da Cisjordânia, Gaza e Jerusalém Leste quanto era no caso das empresas que lucravam com o apartheid sul-africano. Como o mundo e eu aprendemos há 25 anos, a pressão externa é muitas vezes necessária para provocar mudanças políticas e deter um governo opressor. A geração de hoje está preparada para desempenhar um papel histórico, ajudando a trazer a paz, a justiça e a igualdade para o Oriente Médio.
Tradução: Katarina Peixoto
Para mim, é tão imoral empresas lucrarem com a ocupação israelense da Cisjordânia, Gaza e Jerusalém Leste quanto era no caso das empresas que lucravam com o apartheid sul-africano. Como o mundo e eu aprendemos há 25 anos, a pressão externa é muitas vezes necessária para provocar mudanças políticas e deter um governo opressor. A geração de hoje está preparada para desempenhar um papel histórico, ajudando a trazer a paz, a justiça e a igualdade para o Oriente Médio. O artigo é de Jordan Ash.
Jordan Ash - Common Dreams (EUA)
(Jordan Ash é representante do movimento Jewish Voice for Peace, em Minnesota,EUA)
Quando eu era criança, minha mãe incutiu-me um forte sentido de certo e errado. A moral que ela transmitiu estava firmemente enraizada na história do povo judeu. Minha mãe falou-me dos pogroms na Rússia, das duras condições de trabalho que os judeus tiveram que suportar e da discriminação que enfrentaram nos Estados Unidos. Ela também me falou de Samuel Gompers, que fundou a Federação Americana do Trabalho, e de Michael Schwerner e Andrew Goodman que deram suas vidas, ao lado de James Chaney, no movimento em defesa dos direitos civis.
As lições que aprendi foram claras. Devemos lutar pela Justiça. A discriminação e o preconceito são coisas erradas. Todas as pessoas são iguais e merecem ser tratadas com dignidade e respeito.
Nos feriados, comemorávamos momentos onde praticamos essas lições. Na Páscoa, nos lembrávamos que éramos escravos no Egito. A Chanukah é a história de como Judas Macabeu e um pequeno grupo de homens derrotaram o exército grego para que pudéssemos praticar a nossa religião. No Purim, nós vaiávamos quando ouvíamos o nome de Haman, que queria destruir os judeus e brindávamos a Ester que arriscou a vida para salvar seu povo.
E, é claro, ela me falou do Holocausto, das formas heroicas com os quais os judeus lutaram e dos modos horríveis pelos quais morreram. Esta foi a história que deu tanta importância à fundação de Israel. Era como se, após uma sucessão de tragédias, a história do nosso povo tivesse um final feliz.
Como fui ensinado, os árabes queriam negar-nos esse final feliz e jogar todos os judeus no mar, simplesmente porque eram judeus. Eu, como tantos outros judeus, não fui ensinado que a fundação de Israel exigiu a remoção forçada de 700 mil palestinos.
Quando cheguei à faculdade, em 1985, rapidamente me envolvi em uma tentativa de envolver a escola em um boicote contra empresas que faziam negócios com a África do Sul. Fui preso em um ato de desobediência civil, juntamente com outros dez estudantes, incluindo Amy Carter, filha do ex-presidente e ganhador do Prêmio Nobel da Paz, Jimmy Carter.
Por volta dessa época, vi um panfleto que falava sobre a aliança profana entre os Estados Unidos, África do Sul e Israel. Eu quis acreditar que se tratava de uma falsa acusação promovida por anti-semitas contra Israel, mas não era. Israel forneceu armas para o regime do apartheid.
Alguns anos mais tarde, quando Nelson Mandela foi libertado da prisão e visitou os Estados Unidos, alguns judeus ameaçaram protestar por causa de declarações de Mandela, comparando a luta dos palestinos com a dos negros sul-africanos.
O fato de essa verdade sobre Israel ser algo muito doloroso, eu ignorei-a. Mesmo eu que procurava viver com os valores transmitidos por minha meu, que trabalhava com os sindicatos e organizações da comunidade, ignorei o que as pessoas estavam dizendo sobre a opressão contra os palestinos. Eu coloquei Israel fora da minha mente e, por um longo tempo, também coloquei os judeus fora de minha mente.
Então, vinte anos depois, ouvi um grupo de jovens judeus se manifestarem contra o que Israel estava fazendo nos territórios ocupados e como eles – como judeus – se sentiram obrigados a fazer tudo o que podiam para impedir isso.
Eu fui para Israel então, para ver com meus próprios olhos. Eu vi que Israel estava construindo um muro de 425 milhas, separando comunidades e famílias umas das outras, agricultores de suas terras e impedindo os palestinos de chegarem ao trabalho ou à escola. Vi que o governo israelense estava demolindo casas palestinas, enquanto continuava permitindo a construção de novos assentamentos judaicos.
Ficou claro para mim que o principal interesse de Israel não era alcançar a paz, mas tomar as melhores terras para si, enquanto forçava os palestinos a uma vida de pobreza cheia de lembranças diárias de seu “status inferior”. A minha experiência confirmou o que Jimmy Carter tinha dito: que Israel criou um sistema de apartheid.
Pouco tempo depois de ter voltado, a Universidade de St. Thomas, em St.Paul, desconvidou o arcebispo Desmond Tutu para uma atividade, após o Conselho de Relações da Comunidade Judaica ter dito que Tutu teria feito comentários ofensivos à comunidade.
O que Tutu havia dito? “Eu fiquei profundamente angustiado na minha visita à Terra Santa, que me lembrou muito do que aconteceu com nós, negros, na África do Sul. Eu vi a humilhação dos palestinos nos postos de controle e de bloqueio nas estradas, sofrendo como nós, quando os jovens policiais brancos nos impediam de nos locomover”. Às vezes a verdade dói.
O site JCRC Minnesota apresenta uma citação do líder zulu sul-africano Chefe Buthelezi dizendo que “o regime israelense não é o apartheid”. Quem é o chefe Buthelezi? Ele foi um dos únicos negros sul-africanos a se opor ao boicote e a incentivar o investimento estrangeiro na África do Sul, alegando que era uma coisa boa para o povo negro. A comunidade empresarial internacional abraçou-o e ignorou o fato de que todos os líderes negros do movimento anti-apartheid eram a favor de sanções e do boicote.
Inspirado pelo sucesso do movimento de boicote e de desinvestimento contra o apartheid sul-africano, uma ampla fama de organizações da sociedade civil palestina fez um apelo em 2005 em favor da campanha Boicote, Desinvestimento e Sanções como parte de uma campanha não violenta para acabar com a ocupação israelense.
As pessoas que se opunham ao boicote à África do Sul 25 anos atrás argumentavam que a melhor maneira de mudar o apartheid era por meio do “engajamento construtivo” das corporações com o regime do apartheid. Elas estavam erradas.
Para mim, é tão imoral empresas lucrarem com a ocupação israelense da Cisjordânia, Gaza e Jerusalém Leste quanto era no caso das empresas que lucravam com o apartheid sul-africano. Como o mundo e eu aprendemos há 25 anos, a pressão externa é muitas vezes necessária para provocar mudanças políticas e deter um governo opressor. A geração de hoje está preparada para desempenhar um papel histórico, ajudando a trazer a paz, a justiça e a igualdade para o Oriente Médio.
Tradução: Katarina Peixoto
quarta-feira, 25 de maio de 2011
NETANYAHU WASTED HIS CHANCE TO PRESENT A VISION FOR PEACE
Netanyahu is leading Israel and the Palestinians into a new round of violence, along with Israel's isolation and deep disagreement with the American administration.
25 may 2011, Haaretz הארץ Editorial (Israel)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had an outstanding opportunity yesterday to present a vision of a just and sustainable peace for Israel and the Palestinians. Millions watched his speech at the U.S. Congress with bated breath.
They anticipated a momentous address that would break the stalemate in the diplomatic discourse over a final peace agreement and lead to the end of the bloody conflict between the two peoples. Many hoped the new winds blowing in recent months in the Middle East would also sweep the prime minister along a new path.
In recent days, Netanyahu's associates have even given indications that the prime minister would present "new ideas and formulations." Instead, we were witness to the same old messages.
Netanyahu wasted the generous credit he got from his American hosts to cast accusations at the Palestinians and impose endless obstacles in connection with the core issues. Instead of accepting the principle that the border between Israel and the Palestinian state would be based on the 1967 lines, Netanyahu declared that the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers in Judea and Samaria.
He couched his readiness to make far-reaching concessions within endless conditions that have no relation to reality.
He demanded that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas forgo reconciliation with Hamas in advance. Netanyahu contended that six Israeli prime ministers tried to come to a final peace agreement with the Palestinians, but failed, purportedly because of the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people.
He ignored all the positions by two of his predecessors, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, on a fair division of Jerusalem, an agreed upon solution to the refugee problem and particularly on agreement on exchanges of territory that would leave a decisive majority of West Bank territory in the hands of the Palestinians.
The prime minister will return home from the United States without major developments to show for himself. He is leading Israel and the Palestinians into a new round of violence, along with Israel's isolation and deep disagreement with the American administration. The time has come for the large numbers of those in Israel who seek peace to be heard. Israel deserves a different leader.
25 may 2011, Haaretz הארץ Editorial (Israel)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had an outstanding opportunity yesterday to present a vision of a just and sustainable peace for Israel and the Palestinians. Millions watched his speech at the U.S. Congress with bated breath.
They anticipated a momentous address that would break the stalemate in the diplomatic discourse over a final peace agreement and lead to the end of the bloody conflict between the two peoples. Many hoped the new winds blowing in recent months in the Middle East would also sweep the prime minister along a new path.
In recent days, Netanyahu's associates have even given indications that the prime minister would present "new ideas and formulations." Instead, we were witness to the same old messages.
Netanyahu wasted the generous credit he got from his American hosts to cast accusations at the Palestinians and impose endless obstacles in connection with the core issues. Instead of accepting the principle that the border between Israel and the Palestinian state would be based on the 1967 lines, Netanyahu declared that the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers in Judea and Samaria.
He couched his readiness to make far-reaching concessions within endless conditions that have no relation to reality.
He demanded that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas forgo reconciliation with Hamas in advance. Netanyahu contended that six Israeli prime ministers tried to come to a final peace agreement with the Palestinians, but failed, purportedly because of the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people.
He ignored all the positions by two of his predecessors, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, on a fair division of Jerusalem, an agreed upon solution to the refugee problem and particularly on agreement on exchanges of territory that would leave a decisive majority of West Bank territory in the hands of the Palestinians.
The prime minister will return home from the United States without major developments to show for himself. He is leading Israel and the Palestinians into a new round of violence, along with Israel's isolation and deep disagreement with the American administration. The time has come for the large numbers of those in Israel who seek peace to be heard. Israel deserves a different leader.
OBAMA E NETANYAHU NÃO ESTÃO TÃO DISTANTES
24 maio 2011, Envolverde (Brasil)
por Pierre Klochendler
Jerusalém, Israel – A frase “As fronteiras de Israel e da Palestina deveriam ser estabelecidas sobre as linhas de 1967 com intercâmbios aceitos por ambos Estados” foi uma das mais comentadas do último discurso do presidente norte-americano Barack Obama sobre Oriente Médio e Norte da África. O primeiro-ministro Benjamin Netanyahu entrou imediatamente em cena, mesmo antes de sua chegada a Washington para sua bastante antecipada reunião com Obama, e descartou plenamente a proposta como algo “indefensável”.
Foram inúmeras as notícias na imprensa israelense sobre uma nova crise de confiança entre os dois líderes e sobre uma “furiosa” troca de telefonemas entre Netanyahu e a secretária de Estado norte-americana, Hillary Clinton, às vésperas da cúpula. A linguagem corporal de Netanyahu e Obama ao aparecerem publicamente na Casa Branca não mostrava indícios de cordialidade.
O ministro israelense da Defesa, Ehud Barak, tentou acalmar os temores quando afirmou, no dia 20, que a cúpula foi “muito menos dramática do que parecia”, e assegurou que as diferenças entre os dois líderes não eram tão grandes. “Creio que os norte-americanos conhecem as nuances de nossas posições”, acrescentou.
Entretanto, nem as declarações de Obama nem as do porta-voz do governo de Israel nos Estados Unidos, indicando que se tratava de “diferenças entre amigos”, tranquilizaram a opinião pública israelense. Com esses amigos, quem precisa de inimigos, disseram muitos comentaristas. Mas, afinal, quais seriam essas “nuances de posição” que provocaram a ira do primeiro-ministro israelense? Como afirmou um desconcertado funcionário do Departamento de Estado, o discurso de Obama foi “bom para Israel e certamente bom para a visão que Netanyahu tem de Israel”.
Diretamente, Obama rechaçou os esforços em marcha para que a Assembleia Geral da Organização das Nações Unidas reconheça a Palestina como Estado independente em sua sessão de setembro. Além disso, exigiu dos palestinos que expliquem o acordo de reconciliação alcançado semanas atrás entre o partido secular Fatah e o Hamás (Movimento de Resistência Islâmica), e cobrou uma “resposta crível” para as “dúvidas legítimas” que surgem diante da negativa de a organização muçulmana reconhecer o Estado de Israel.
Obama também adotou a doutrina de segurança de Netanyahu para uma Palestina “não militarizada” e a ideia de uma “uma retirada progressiva” dos territórios ocupados. Como se não bastasse, o que o presidente não disse foi bom para o líder israelense. Não exigiu um novo congelamento na construção de colônias judias na Cisjordânia, apesar de Israel acabar de aprovar oficialmente a construção de 1.500 novas unidades habitacionais em Jerusalém oriental.
Também, nem mesmo mencionou a Iniciativa de Paz Árabe de 2002, defendida especialmente pela esquerda israelense, que propõe a retirada de Israel de todos os territórios ocupados, o reconhecimento do Estado palestino independente com Jerusalém oriental como capital, e uma “justa solução” para a situação dos refugiados palestinos. Então, o que indignou tanto Netanyahu?, perguntam alguns israelenses, assustados pela possibilidade de um crescente afastamento de Washington.
O primeiro-ministro parece que quis criar uma disputa artificial, rechaçando totalmente o princípio de “intercâmbio de terras” e o conceito de “Estado judeu”, manejados por Obama. O presidente havia alertado que se o governo de Netanyahu continuasse expandindo suas colônias teria pela frente “milhões de árabes” e custaria a Israel continuar sendo um verdadeiro “Estado judeu, a menos que houvesse um acordo de paz”.
Mas, em última instância, fixar as fronteiras sobre as existentes antes da Guerra dos Seis Dias, de 1967, com um “intercâmbio de terras”, permitiria a Israel em um futuro acordo reter grandes áreas de assentamentos que ocupou nas Cisjordânia nas últimas quatro décadas. E se Israel é reconhecido “Estado judeu e pátria do povo judeu” significa que todos os palestinos em seu território teriam de se mudar para zonas palestinas, uma demanda-chave israelense. “Não creio que Obama dissesse ser necessário regressar às fronteiras de 1967, mas sim que devemos iniciar a discussão com base nesses limites”, disse Barak.
Na realidade, o verdadeiro problema de Netanyahu está na sincronização dos elementos de um eventual acordo de paz. Obama sugeriu que as futuras negociações deveriam lidar inicialmente com os temas de segurança e a dimensão territorial do conflito. Outros assuntos, como “o futuro de Jerusalém e o destino dos refugiados palestinos”, seriam tratados em uma etapa posterior. Os israelenses temem que esta ordem crie nos fatos um acordo interino que nunca resolva os pontos. Enrolado com a bandeira nacional e com a direita apoiando, Netanyahu tenta desarticular este enfoque de Obama, procurando demonstrar sua pouca efetividade.
Afirma-se que um bom ataque é a melhor defesa, e Netanyahu implementou este célebre ditado. Sua quase ofensiva conduta na Casa Branca teve o objetivo de neutralizar a ampla visão norte-americana do direito de autodeterminação dos povos no Oriente Médio, com a esperança de reduzir a aspiração palestina à sua independência. (Envolverde/IPS)
por Pierre Klochendler
Jerusalém, Israel – A frase “As fronteiras de Israel e da Palestina deveriam ser estabelecidas sobre as linhas de 1967 com intercâmbios aceitos por ambos Estados” foi uma das mais comentadas do último discurso do presidente norte-americano Barack Obama sobre Oriente Médio e Norte da África. O primeiro-ministro Benjamin Netanyahu entrou imediatamente em cena, mesmo antes de sua chegada a Washington para sua bastante antecipada reunião com Obama, e descartou plenamente a proposta como algo “indefensável”.
Foram inúmeras as notícias na imprensa israelense sobre uma nova crise de confiança entre os dois líderes e sobre uma “furiosa” troca de telefonemas entre Netanyahu e a secretária de Estado norte-americana, Hillary Clinton, às vésperas da cúpula. A linguagem corporal de Netanyahu e Obama ao aparecerem publicamente na Casa Branca não mostrava indícios de cordialidade.
O ministro israelense da Defesa, Ehud Barak, tentou acalmar os temores quando afirmou, no dia 20, que a cúpula foi “muito menos dramática do que parecia”, e assegurou que as diferenças entre os dois líderes não eram tão grandes. “Creio que os norte-americanos conhecem as nuances de nossas posições”, acrescentou.
Entretanto, nem as declarações de Obama nem as do porta-voz do governo de Israel nos Estados Unidos, indicando que se tratava de “diferenças entre amigos”, tranquilizaram a opinião pública israelense. Com esses amigos, quem precisa de inimigos, disseram muitos comentaristas. Mas, afinal, quais seriam essas “nuances de posição” que provocaram a ira do primeiro-ministro israelense? Como afirmou um desconcertado funcionário do Departamento de Estado, o discurso de Obama foi “bom para Israel e certamente bom para a visão que Netanyahu tem de Israel”.
Diretamente, Obama rechaçou os esforços em marcha para que a Assembleia Geral da Organização das Nações Unidas reconheça a Palestina como Estado independente em sua sessão de setembro. Além disso, exigiu dos palestinos que expliquem o acordo de reconciliação alcançado semanas atrás entre o partido secular Fatah e o Hamás (Movimento de Resistência Islâmica), e cobrou uma “resposta crível” para as “dúvidas legítimas” que surgem diante da negativa de a organização muçulmana reconhecer o Estado de Israel.
Obama também adotou a doutrina de segurança de Netanyahu para uma Palestina “não militarizada” e a ideia de uma “uma retirada progressiva” dos territórios ocupados. Como se não bastasse, o que o presidente não disse foi bom para o líder israelense. Não exigiu um novo congelamento na construção de colônias judias na Cisjordânia, apesar de Israel acabar de aprovar oficialmente a construção de 1.500 novas unidades habitacionais em Jerusalém oriental.
Também, nem mesmo mencionou a Iniciativa de Paz Árabe de 2002, defendida especialmente pela esquerda israelense, que propõe a retirada de Israel de todos os territórios ocupados, o reconhecimento do Estado palestino independente com Jerusalém oriental como capital, e uma “justa solução” para a situação dos refugiados palestinos. Então, o que indignou tanto Netanyahu?, perguntam alguns israelenses, assustados pela possibilidade de um crescente afastamento de Washington.
O primeiro-ministro parece que quis criar uma disputa artificial, rechaçando totalmente o princípio de “intercâmbio de terras” e o conceito de “Estado judeu”, manejados por Obama. O presidente havia alertado que se o governo de Netanyahu continuasse expandindo suas colônias teria pela frente “milhões de árabes” e custaria a Israel continuar sendo um verdadeiro “Estado judeu, a menos que houvesse um acordo de paz”.
Mas, em última instância, fixar as fronteiras sobre as existentes antes da Guerra dos Seis Dias, de 1967, com um “intercâmbio de terras”, permitiria a Israel em um futuro acordo reter grandes áreas de assentamentos que ocupou nas Cisjordânia nas últimas quatro décadas. E se Israel é reconhecido “Estado judeu e pátria do povo judeu” significa que todos os palestinos em seu território teriam de se mudar para zonas palestinas, uma demanda-chave israelense. “Não creio que Obama dissesse ser necessário regressar às fronteiras de 1967, mas sim que devemos iniciar a discussão com base nesses limites”, disse Barak.
Na realidade, o verdadeiro problema de Netanyahu está na sincronização dos elementos de um eventual acordo de paz. Obama sugeriu que as futuras negociações deveriam lidar inicialmente com os temas de segurança e a dimensão territorial do conflito. Outros assuntos, como “o futuro de Jerusalém e o destino dos refugiados palestinos”, seriam tratados em uma etapa posterior. Os israelenses temem que esta ordem crie nos fatos um acordo interino que nunca resolva os pontos. Enrolado com a bandeira nacional e com a direita apoiando, Netanyahu tenta desarticular este enfoque de Obama, procurando demonstrar sua pouca efetividade.
Afirma-se que um bom ataque é a melhor defesa, e Netanyahu implementou este célebre ditado. Sua quase ofensiva conduta na Casa Branca teve o objetivo de neutralizar a ampla visão norte-americana do direito de autodeterminação dos povos no Oriente Médio, com a esperança de reduzir a aspiração palestina à sua independência. (Envolverde/IPS)
ISRAELIS SEE NETANYAHU TRIP AS DIPLOMATIC FAILURE
25 may 2011, The New York Times (USA)
by Ethan Bronner
Jerusalem — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel returned from Washington on Wednesday to a nearly unanimous assessment among Israelis that despite his forceful defense of Israel’s security interests, hopes were dashed that his visit might advance Palestinian peace negotiations.
One of the widely articulated goals of his trip, where he met with President Obama and addressed Congress, was to find a way to lure the Palestinians back to direct negotiations, thereby preempting their plan to approach the United Nations in September for recognition of statehood within the pre-1967 lines.
Instead, the Palestinians now say, Mr. Netanyahu’s speeches convinced them that they have no negotiating partner. They plan to intensify their United Nations efforts, leaving Israelis worried about increasing international isolation and pressure, especially in light of the popular uprisings across the Arab world.
A cartoon in the centrist Yediot Aharonot newspaper summarized the concern. It showed Mr. Netanyahu’s returning plane flying near a volcano. Inside the plane someone says, “All in all, it was a very successful visit.” From the volcano, smoke rises that spells out “S-E-P-T-E-M-B-E-R.”
Newspapers and airwaves were filled with similar commentary.
Avi Dichter, a former head of the Shin Bet internal security service and a parliamentarian from the centrist Kadima party, said on Israel Radio, “My fear is that this round of speeches in the United States may leave us and the Palestinians with a closed door.” He added, “It is impossible that in the present reality in the Middle East and here between the sea and the Jordan River we have no next step. I very much hope that the prime minister is returning with a plan.”
The praise here for Mr. Netanyahu’s oratory skill on Wednesday in Congress was overwhelming, even from his enemies. Disputes about his performance were limited to how many times he brought the senators and representatives to their feet (from 26 to 34).
Ben Caspit, a commentator at Maariv Newspaper who spends much of his time attacking the prime minister, wrote, “This was a good speech, brilliantly delivered, with all the tricks and shticks and highlights in the right places.” He said Mr. Netanyahu was “focused, charismatic and self-confident” and called his address to Congress “a sweeping personal victory.”
But Mr. Caspit asked whether it was also a national victory. His reply: “Okay, it depends whom you ask, from what angle you look, and what you’re scared of. Those who are scared of peace yesterday got their wish. Those who are scared of war will be a lot more scared today.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s trip to Washington, at the invitation of the House speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, had been planned before Fatah, the party that dominates the Palestinian Authority, announced a surprise unity accord with Hamas, the Islamist party that rules in Gaza and that has refused to accept Israel’s right to exist.
The original idea was that he might announce a new way forward for Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza. But once the Palestinian agreement was revealed, Mr. Netanyahu felt less compelled to offer a plan because Hamas is labeled a terrorist group by both Israel and the United States and he believes its affiliation with any government to be dangerous and illegitimate.
The day before Mr. Netanyahu arrived in Washington, he had an additional surprise. President Obama announced that peace should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps. Mr. Netanyahu, who says that formula would render Israel too vulnerable, spent much of his visit shooting down that approach and laying out other elements he considers essential for a lasting peace.
Among those were his contentions that Israel would have to leave certain settlements and would be “generous” in determining the size of the Palestinian state. These angered the right. But he also put forward conditions.
They include a long-term Israeli military presence along the Jordan River to protect Israel’s eastern border from countries like Iran or Iraq; Jerusalem united under Israeli rule; a rejection of any return of Palestinian refugees or their descendants to Israel itself; a rejection of the deal with Hamas; and Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.
Nahum Barnea, a widely-read columnist for Yediot Aharonot, who accompanied Mr. Netanyahu to Washington, wrote that while the prime minister spoke well, the visit’s results were worrying. He listed them as “a president whom the Israelis suspect and the Arab world scorns for having yielded to the dictate of the Israelis; negotiations that had a slim chance of being renewed before the visit and now have no chance at all; a Palestinian Authority and an Arab League that are more determined than in the past to reach a resolution in the United Nations General Assembly on a state within the 1967 borders, which is a resolution that has quite dangerous consequences for Israel.”
While Palestinians consider the peace demands by Mr. Netanyahu unacceptable, most are matters of consensus here. The right in Israel is composed of those who oppose giving up the West Bank for a Palestinian state because they consider it the land of the Jews and those who oppose doing so now because they do not trust the Palestinians and fear for Israel’s security.
A poll commissioned by Maariv newspaper found Mr. Netanyahu’s popularity up slightly after his Washington visit. Asked who was best suited to be prime minister of Israel, he took 36.9 percent. Second place went to Tzipi Livni, head of the centrist Kadima party, with 28.3 percent, followed by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, head of the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, with 9.2 percent.
As many commentators noted, the question is what happens next in the Palestinian areas..
The Palestinian leadership on Wednesday said it would be consulting with Arab foreign ministers this weekend to decide how to proceed. President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority said negotiations were still his preference but not on the conditions enunciated by Mr. Netanyahu. Israelis are looking ahead with worry.
Itamar Rabinovich, a former ambassador to Washington and president of Tel Aviv University, wrote on the online news site Walla that both Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu are fine speakers who gave good speeches. But, “September and the United Nations General Assembly are around the corner, and without a resumption of negotiations or another substantive step, we face a serious challenge.” He summed up his concern this way: “What will we do tomorrow morning?”
by Ethan Bronner
Jerusalem — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel returned from Washington on Wednesday to a nearly unanimous assessment among Israelis that despite his forceful defense of Israel’s security interests, hopes were dashed that his visit might advance Palestinian peace negotiations.
One of the widely articulated goals of his trip, where he met with President Obama and addressed Congress, was to find a way to lure the Palestinians back to direct negotiations, thereby preempting their plan to approach the United Nations in September for recognition of statehood within the pre-1967 lines.
Instead, the Palestinians now say, Mr. Netanyahu’s speeches convinced them that they have no negotiating partner. They plan to intensify their United Nations efforts, leaving Israelis worried about increasing international isolation and pressure, especially in light of the popular uprisings across the Arab world.
A cartoon in the centrist Yediot Aharonot newspaper summarized the concern. It showed Mr. Netanyahu’s returning plane flying near a volcano. Inside the plane someone says, “All in all, it was a very successful visit.” From the volcano, smoke rises that spells out “S-E-P-T-E-M-B-E-R.”
Newspapers and airwaves were filled with similar commentary.
Avi Dichter, a former head of the Shin Bet internal security service and a parliamentarian from the centrist Kadima party, said on Israel Radio, “My fear is that this round of speeches in the United States may leave us and the Palestinians with a closed door.” He added, “It is impossible that in the present reality in the Middle East and here between the sea and the Jordan River we have no next step. I very much hope that the prime minister is returning with a plan.”
The praise here for Mr. Netanyahu’s oratory skill on Wednesday in Congress was overwhelming, even from his enemies. Disputes about his performance were limited to how many times he brought the senators and representatives to their feet (from 26 to 34).
Ben Caspit, a commentator at Maariv Newspaper who spends much of his time attacking the prime minister, wrote, “This was a good speech, brilliantly delivered, with all the tricks and shticks and highlights in the right places.” He said Mr. Netanyahu was “focused, charismatic and self-confident” and called his address to Congress “a sweeping personal victory.”
But Mr. Caspit asked whether it was also a national victory. His reply: “Okay, it depends whom you ask, from what angle you look, and what you’re scared of. Those who are scared of peace yesterday got their wish. Those who are scared of war will be a lot more scared today.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s trip to Washington, at the invitation of the House speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, had been planned before Fatah, the party that dominates the Palestinian Authority, announced a surprise unity accord with Hamas, the Islamist party that rules in Gaza and that has refused to accept Israel’s right to exist.
The original idea was that he might announce a new way forward for Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza. But once the Palestinian agreement was revealed, Mr. Netanyahu felt less compelled to offer a plan because Hamas is labeled a terrorist group by both Israel and the United States and he believes its affiliation with any government to be dangerous and illegitimate.
The day before Mr. Netanyahu arrived in Washington, he had an additional surprise. President Obama announced that peace should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps. Mr. Netanyahu, who says that formula would render Israel too vulnerable, spent much of his visit shooting down that approach and laying out other elements he considers essential for a lasting peace.
Among those were his contentions that Israel would have to leave certain settlements and would be “generous” in determining the size of the Palestinian state. These angered the right. But he also put forward conditions.
They include a long-term Israeli military presence along the Jordan River to protect Israel’s eastern border from countries like Iran or Iraq; Jerusalem united under Israeli rule; a rejection of any return of Palestinian refugees or their descendants to Israel itself; a rejection of the deal with Hamas; and Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.
Nahum Barnea, a widely-read columnist for Yediot Aharonot, who accompanied Mr. Netanyahu to Washington, wrote that while the prime minister spoke well, the visit’s results were worrying. He listed them as “a president whom the Israelis suspect and the Arab world scorns for having yielded to the dictate of the Israelis; negotiations that had a slim chance of being renewed before the visit and now have no chance at all; a Palestinian Authority and an Arab League that are more determined than in the past to reach a resolution in the United Nations General Assembly on a state within the 1967 borders, which is a resolution that has quite dangerous consequences for Israel.”
While Palestinians consider the peace demands by Mr. Netanyahu unacceptable, most are matters of consensus here. The right in Israel is composed of those who oppose giving up the West Bank for a Palestinian state because they consider it the land of the Jews and those who oppose doing so now because they do not trust the Palestinians and fear for Israel’s security.
A poll commissioned by Maariv newspaper found Mr. Netanyahu’s popularity up slightly after his Washington visit. Asked who was best suited to be prime minister of Israel, he took 36.9 percent. Second place went to Tzipi Livni, head of the centrist Kadima party, with 28.3 percent, followed by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, head of the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, with 9.2 percent.
As many commentators noted, the question is what happens next in the Palestinian areas..
The Palestinian leadership on Wednesday said it would be consulting with Arab foreign ministers this weekend to decide how to proceed. President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority said negotiations were still his preference but not on the conditions enunciated by Mr. Netanyahu. Israelis are looking ahead with worry.
Itamar Rabinovich, a former ambassador to Washington and president of Tel Aviv University, wrote on the online news site Walla that both Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu are fine speakers who gave good speeches. But, “September and the United Nations General Assembly are around the corner, and without a resumption of negotiations or another substantive step, we face a serious challenge.” He summed up his concern this way: “What will we do tomorrow morning?”
terça-feira, 24 de maio de 2011
THROWING A SHOE AT OBAMA’S BETRAYAL
24 May 2011, Electronic Intifada http://electronicintifada.net USA
by Ilan Pappe*
At 4:17pm GMT on Sunday, I threw a shoe at my television screen, aimed at US President Barack Obama, precisely at the moment he began to explain that the reference in his Thursday speech at the State Department to the 1967 borders was in accordance with the Israeli interpretation of these borders.
Not that I was thrilled with that speech either but it was at least as meaningless as his previous speeches on the topic. But at 4:17 he said there will be “no return to the borders of June 4, 1967” and the thousands who attended the AIPAC convention cheered wildly. Annexation of Israeli settlement blocs built illegally in the occupied West Bank and the creation of a small Palestinian bantustan in the spaces in between was the essence of Obama’s real vision for peace.
It was a soft shoe and all it did was to bounce off the screen. Being such a harmless weapon it was also directed at my Palestinian friends who since Friday explained, publicly, how unusual and important was Obama’s speech at the State Department.
It is tough enough to know that in the White House sits someone who betrayed not only the Palestinians, but all the oppressed people in the world and in the US he promised to engage and represent.
But I have turned on my TV set and moved to Puerta del Sol in Madrid — there where thousands of young people were reformulating the powerful message that came from Tahrir Square in Cairo and which was also heard on the borders of Palestine on Nakba Day and in London’s Trafalgar Square during recent student demonstrations.
It was a call of defiance against such political discourse and its poisonous effects. Yes, they say in Madrid as they did on Palestine’s borders, our lives are ruled and affected by smug, cynical and indifferent Western politicians who hold immense power to maintain the unjust world for years to come, but we have had enough of this and will resist it.
Wherever one is affected by this political and economic Western elite, one faces two options. Either to accept fatalistically that the only thing one can do is retire to small, personal gardens of Eden and try to ignore them as much as one can and sustain oneself without them, within the limits of what is possible. Or if one does not possess this inclination or luxury, one can instead join all those who are unwilling to succumb and are telling this elite that its world and agenda is not theirs.
In some places the authorities shoot at massive demonstrations carrying such a message; in others they just ignore them. These are early days to judge the failure or success of such endeavours but it is clear that so far the protest is expanding. It defies the hegemonic political dictates of governments and it displays growing impatience with, and resentment toward, the manipulative corporate games and macro-economic ploys.
The people of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip were a victim of such politics and economics under the guise of the so-called peace process. However, recently, in Palestine, the local politicians have at last heeded the popular demand for unity and assertiveness after years of ignoring it.
As a result, the support for the people’s effort in commencing a new phase in the popular resistance against the Israeli occupation is galvanizing the global Palestine solidarity movement with the similar energy generated before by the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
The regaining of the initiative by the common people in the Arab world and Europe should help us to avoid sinking too deeply into paralysis and inaction in the face of such cynicism. So much can still be done, in total disregard of the hegemonic discourse and inaction of western political elites on Palestine. So much has already been done in the continued resistance against the Israeli destruction of the land and its people.
One can continue to boycott Israeli goods and cultural representatives in France, even if there is a new law against it. If Palestinians in Israel can defy Israeli laws against Nakba commemoration, insidious European laws and regulations should be ignored as well. One can curb any academic institutional connection between British universities and Israel despite the embarrassed Foreign Office’s and official academia’s position on it. And finally, one can continue to spread through the alternative media the truthful and expanded picture despite the shameful way in which “liberal” American and European media is portraying the reality on the ground.
The world after Obama’s two speeches is a bizarre place. The gap between Obama, Berlusconi, Netanyahu, Cameron, Merkel and their ilk has disappeared. For a while there was a danger that one could count some Palestinian leaders within this undignified group of western leaders. But hopefully this danger has waned.
Very much as in the case of Israel, so it is in the case of the western political systems, the option of change from within the political systems is doubtful and vesting too much energy in it may be useless. But everything which is not there — churches, mosques, progressive synagogues, ashrams with a worldview, community centers, social networks and the world of nongovernmental organizations — indicate the existence of an alternative.
A relentless struggle against the ethnic cleansing of Palestine will continue outside the realm of the western corridors of power. What we learned from Egypt and Tunisia, even if we are not sure what would be the endgame there, is that struggles outside corridors of power do not wait for leaders, well-oiled organizations and people who speak in other people’s names.
If you are part of that struggle be counted today and do what you can regardless of the unfortunate Obamafication of our world.
*Ilan Pappe is Professor of History and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and with Noam Chomsky Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians. His most recent book is Out of the Frame: The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Israel (Pluto Press, 2010).
by Ilan Pappe*
At 4:17pm GMT on Sunday, I threw a shoe at my television screen, aimed at US President Barack Obama, precisely at the moment he began to explain that the reference in his Thursday speech at the State Department to the 1967 borders was in accordance with the Israeli interpretation of these borders.
Not that I was thrilled with that speech either but it was at least as meaningless as his previous speeches on the topic. But at 4:17 he said there will be “no return to the borders of June 4, 1967” and the thousands who attended the AIPAC convention cheered wildly. Annexation of Israeli settlement blocs built illegally in the occupied West Bank and the creation of a small Palestinian bantustan in the spaces in between was the essence of Obama’s real vision for peace.
It was a soft shoe and all it did was to bounce off the screen. Being such a harmless weapon it was also directed at my Palestinian friends who since Friday explained, publicly, how unusual and important was Obama’s speech at the State Department.
It is tough enough to know that in the White House sits someone who betrayed not only the Palestinians, but all the oppressed people in the world and in the US he promised to engage and represent.
But I have turned on my TV set and moved to Puerta del Sol in Madrid — there where thousands of young people were reformulating the powerful message that came from Tahrir Square in Cairo and which was also heard on the borders of Palestine on Nakba Day and in London’s Trafalgar Square during recent student demonstrations.
It was a call of defiance against such political discourse and its poisonous effects. Yes, they say in Madrid as they did on Palestine’s borders, our lives are ruled and affected by smug, cynical and indifferent Western politicians who hold immense power to maintain the unjust world for years to come, but we have had enough of this and will resist it.
Wherever one is affected by this political and economic Western elite, one faces two options. Either to accept fatalistically that the only thing one can do is retire to small, personal gardens of Eden and try to ignore them as much as one can and sustain oneself without them, within the limits of what is possible. Or if one does not possess this inclination or luxury, one can instead join all those who are unwilling to succumb and are telling this elite that its world and agenda is not theirs.
In some places the authorities shoot at massive demonstrations carrying such a message; in others they just ignore them. These are early days to judge the failure or success of such endeavours but it is clear that so far the protest is expanding. It defies the hegemonic political dictates of governments and it displays growing impatience with, and resentment toward, the manipulative corporate games and macro-economic ploys.
The people of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip were a victim of such politics and economics under the guise of the so-called peace process. However, recently, in Palestine, the local politicians have at last heeded the popular demand for unity and assertiveness after years of ignoring it.
As a result, the support for the people’s effort in commencing a new phase in the popular resistance against the Israeli occupation is galvanizing the global Palestine solidarity movement with the similar energy generated before by the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
The regaining of the initiative by the common people in the Arab world and Europe should help us to avoid sinking too deeply into paralysis and inaction in the face of such cynicism. So much can still be done, in total disregard of the hegemonic discourse and inaction of western political elites on Palestine. So much has already been done in the continued resistance against the Israeli destruction of the land and its people.
One can continue to boycott Israeli goods and cultural representatives in France, even if there is a new law against it. If Palestinians in Israel can defy Israeli laws against Nakba commemoration, insidious European laws and regulations should be ignored as well. One can curb any academic institutional connection between British universities and Israel despite the embarrassed Foreign Office’s and official academia’s position on it. And finally, one can continue to spread through the alternative media the truthful and expanded picture despite the shameful way in which “liberal” American and European media is portraying the reality on the ground.
The world after Obama’s two speeches is a bizarre place. The gap between Obama, Berlusconi, Netanyahu, Cameron, Merkel and their ilk has disappeared. For a while there was a danger that one could count some Palestinian leaders within this undignified group of western leaders. But hopefully this danger has waned.
Very much as in the case of Israel, so it is in the case of the western political systems, the option of change from within the political systems is doubtful and vesting too much energy in it may be useless. But everything which is not there — churches, mosques, progressive synagogues, ashrams with a worldview, community centers, social networks and the world of nongovernmental organizations — indicate the existence of an alternative.
A relentless struggle against the ethnic cleansing of Palestine will continue outside the realm of the western corridors of power. What we learned from Egypt and Tunisia, even if we are not sure what would be the endgame there, is that struggles outside corridors of power do not wait for leaders, well-oiled organizations and people who speak in other people’s names.
If you are part of that struggle be counted today and do what you can regardless of the unfortunate Obamafication of our world.
*Ilan Pappe is Professor of History and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and with Noam Chomsky Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians. His most recent book is Out of the Frame: The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Israel (Pluto Press, 2010).
Assinar:
Postagens (Atom)