The other side to the settlement issue — Palestinian death penalty for selling to Jews

by Robin Shepherd

There’s an interesting story in today’s Jerusalem Post which reminds us of a side to the settlement issue that rarely makes it into the western press:

“One day after the Palestinian Authority reaffirmed the death penalty for Palestinians who sell land to Israelis,” the paper reports, “one of the most prominent Arab land dealers called on the Israeli authorities to help him and other Palestinians whose lives are at risk”.

If you deconstruct that one single paragraph, unpack all the assumptions contained within it and lay it out in the open for all to see, you can explain pretty much everything one needs to know about guilt and innocence in the entire Israel-Palestine conflict. That, of course, is precisely why the likes of the BBC and the Guardian are so quiet on such matters. So then, what exactly does it tell us?

The central point is the depth of the anti-Semitism in Palestinian culture, and its shamelessness. The Jew has become such an object of hatred that to sell to him awakens the urge to kill. More than that, the official Palestinian leadership, the moderate Palestinian leadership does not feel constrained to carry through such a policy in secret, via death squads or assassins — though it does that as well. It proudly hoists its flag of oppression and waves it to the world — a world which it knows will either applaud it for doing so or give it a free pass by ignoring it.

Let us repeat the point: the Palestinians under Mahmoud Abbas have the death penalty for selling land to Jews. Really, is there anything else one needs to know?

Robin Shepherd

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Mideast Strategic Perversity

by P. David Hornik

At a time when Israel’s security environment is worsening, in no small part because of the Obama administration’s strategic weakness, Israel is being pushed hard by that same administration into making its security environment even worse.


Russia has decided to sell Syria P-800 Yakhont supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles despite heavy Israeli and American protests.

Last month Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally asked Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to call off the sale. The U.S. is also described as putting up “stiff opposition” to it. Yet over the weekend, Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov announced the sale in Washington during talks with U.S. Defense Minister Robert Gates.

Both the U.S. and Israel fear that the Yakhont, a difficult-to-intercept missile that cruises just above sea level at twice the speed of sound, could threaten their naval vessels in the Mediterranean. They are also concerned that Syria could transfer the missiles to Hezbollah. In the 2006 Second Lebanon War, Hezbollah hit an Israeli missile boat with a Chinese-made missile, killing four crew members. The missile had been smuggled into Lebanon through Syria.

That not even Israel’s superpower ally could dissuade Russia from taking this aggressive, dangerous step is unfortunately part of a pattern. Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz have noted in the Wall Street Journal that, even at a time when the major European states and Japan are cutting business ties with Iran, Russia (along with China) is stepping in to fill the void.

Russia’s energy conglomerate Gazprom, in particular, “continues to explore whether to expand Iran’s oil and gas pipelines, a critical development” that could offset Europe’s ban on the transfer of liquefied-gas technology to Tehran.

It was only last June that the Obama administration was hailing Russia’s (and China’s) aye vote on UN Security Council Resolution 1929, which imposed stiffer sanctions on Iran, as a triumph of unity. More generally, Russia — along with Iran itself — is one of those countries inimical to the West with which Obama has earnestly sought to make friends.

Gerecht and Dubowitz now warn that U.S. failure to act against Russian and Chinese trade with Iran “will probably crack European resolve, collapsing our Iran policy.” So far there is no sign that Washington is heeding the warning.

Meanwhile outspoken Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has said the U.S. is applying “massive” pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to extend Israel’s settlement moratorium beyond its rapidly approaching expiration date on September 26.

In other words, at a time when Israel’s security environment is worsening, in no small part because of the Obama administration’s strategic weakness, Israel is being pushed hard by that same administration into making its security environment even worse.

Israel’s moratorium on building in the West Bank settlements began in November of last year. It was aimed at demonstrating Israeli willingness to compromise and enticing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas into peace talks, as fervently desired by Obama. The moratorium was a major and precarious concession because the West Bank is disputed territory to which both the Israeli and Palestinian sides stake a claim. Halting Israeli construction there while Palestinian construction continued apace gave a message that was prejudicial and possibly harmful to Israel.

Nevertheless, Abbas continued to stonewall talks until finally — by all accounts — being “dragged” into them a few weeks ago by relentless U.S. and European pressure. He now, though, vows to bolt them — unless Israel extends the building freeze. And now the Obama administration’s pressure is on Israel, to comply with Abbas’s wishes, even though the moratorium was a gratuitous concession in the first place and its extension would rock Netanyahu’s coalition and threaten its breakup.

As Iran keeps advancing toward nuclear weapons despite sanctions, Syria keeps arming with Russian backing, and their proxies Hezbollah and Hamas keep building their power in southern Lebanon and Gaza, respectively. Jerusalem should be focusing on these threats instead of facing what is in effect a U.S.-orchestrated power play to make it give up — in the name of “peace” — West Bank territory that is even more strategic. But the Obama administration’s penchant for being soft toward foes and tough on friends continues, and Israel is bearing the brunt of it.

In another development, Israel’s ostensible peace partner, the Palestinian Authority, has reaffirmed the death penalty for the misdeed of selling land to Israelis. Although a lower court had ruled that such sales were a “minor offense,” the PA’s prosecutor-general appealed to a higher court, which ruled that the original sentence of death was appropriate for such acts.

As noted by the Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh:

In 1997, the PA announced that it would seek the death penalty for any Palestinian convicted of selling land to Jews or Israelis. … Although the PA has thus far refrained from executing those convicted of selling land to Jews, there have been many extrajudicial killings of Palestinian suspects over the past decades.

Why would a U.S. administration regard turning this political entity — along with Gaza, even more barbaric under Hamas — into a sovereign state as a cardinal interest? Why would it pursue this goal obsessively to the point of relentlessly undermining a democratic ally, while showing weakness and passivity toward real threats and adversaries? These are indeed difficult questions.

P. David Hornik

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Why Not A New - But Different - Moratorium?

by Yisrael Medad

The bad good news is

Senior Palestinian Authority negotiator Nabil Shaath has announced that the PA will never accept Israel as a Jewish state...Shaath said that recognizing Israel as Jewish state would undermine the PA's demand for the “right of return,” which would grant Israeli citizenship to the millions of descendants of Arab who fled Israel during its War of Independence...

My advice to Prime Minister Netanyahu is to announce a new moratorium.

No, not on construction in Yesha communities.

And no, not on construction in Jerusalem's new neighborhoods.

Rather a moratorium of "peace" negotiations.

If this is the Arab position, we don't need this. In fact, it's an existential attack on Israel.

Let's have a 10-month suspension on talks.

Yisrael Medad

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

PA affirms death penalty for land sales to Israelis

by Khaled Abu Toameh

The Palestinian Authority on Sunday reaffirmed the death penalty for any Palestinian found guilty of selling land to Israelis.

The decision came in response to a ruling by a Palestinian court according to which such acts were only a “minor offense.”

PA Prosecutor-General Ahmed al-Mughni appealed against the ruling to a higher court, arguing that the sale of land to Israelis was a “major offense” punishable by death.

The appeal was accepted.

That verdict considering such offenses a major offense is aimed at reminding Palestinians of the PA law that prohibits selling land to Jews, Mughni said.

The land law, which was originally put in force by Jordan between 1948 and 1967, carries the death sentence.

The PA says the law is necessary to prevent the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

In 1997, the PA announced that it would seek the death penalty for any Palestinian convicted of selling land to Jews or Israelis, in accordance with the Jordanian “Law for Preventing the Sale of Real Estate to the Enemy.”

According to the 1973 legislation, the sale of property to Jews or Israelis constitutes a crime against state security and well-being, punishable by death and the confiscation of the culprit’s possessions.

The PA later drafted its own law to replace the Jordanian statute. The law is called the “Property Law for Foreigners.”

It describes the sale of land to “occupiers” as an act of “national treason.” Although the PA has thus far refrained from executing those convicted of selling land to Jews, there have been many extrajudicial killings of Palestinian suspects over the past decades.

Khaled Abu Toameh

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

September Daze: The Washington Post’s Peculiar Israeli-Palestinian Commentary

by Eric Rozenman

The Washington Post’s skewed sense of what’s newsworthy about Israel and Jews, displayed just before and after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, also afflicted the newspaper’s commentary pages. The Post ran four Op-Ed columns by outside contributors between September 2 and 7. One was from a chronic Israel basher, two by Palestinian apologists of selective veracity, and one that, being factual and experience-based was essentially pro-Israel. (CAMERA has documented The Post’s Op-Ed page tilt before, including "Study: On Nation’s Op-Ed Pages, Israel’s Voice is Stilled," Feb. 5, 2008.)

A string of falsehoods

The most dishonest of the three anti-Israel and/or pro-Palestinian outside commentaries was George Bisharat’s "A true one-state solution" (September 3). Bisharat, an obsessive anti-Israel Op-Ed writer, is a law professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law in San Francisco when he isn’t posturing at the Institute for Palestinian Studies. In The Post he again presents a series of falsehoods as facts. Among them:

* "More than 35 laws" discriminate against "Palestinian citizens of Israel."

There are no "Palestinian citizens" of Israel. There are Jewish, Arab (Muslim, Christian and Druze), Circassian and other Israeli citizens of Israel. Aside from the fact that military service is voluntary, not mandatory, for Israeli Arabs, all Israelis enjoy equal civil rights. Israel’s supreme court includes an Arab justice, 12 of the 120 members of parliament are Arabs, Arabs serve in the cabinet, diplomatic corps and hold senior ranks in the military. Some years ago an Israeli Arab was Miss Israel.

* "A de facto one-state reality has emerged with Israel effectively ruling virtually all of the former Palestine." Except during British Mandatory Palestine (1920 - 1948) there was no "former Palestine," no country or province by that name. Jordan, created by Great Britain in 1921, rules 77 percent of former mandatory Palestine, Israel about 16 percent.

Aside from Israeli security roadblocks and occasional, targeted counter-terrorism operations, most of the West Bank Arab population is effectively administered by the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority and all of it in the Gaza Strip by the Iranian-supported Hamas.

* "By settling roughly 500,000 Jews in East Jerusalem and the West Bank," Israel has been "eliminating the land base for a viable Palestinian state."

Since Israel reunified Jerusalem as a result of the 1967 Six-Day War, the Arab population has grown faster than the Jewish sector. In 2005, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip. Its security barrier puts 9.5 percent of the West Bank on the Israeli side; post-’67 Jewish communities comprise much less. At Camp David in 2000, Taba in 2001, and after the 2007 Annapolis summit, the Palestinian leadership rejected statehood on more than 95 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in exchange for peace with Israel.

* "Palestinian refugees have lived in exile for 62 years, their right to return to their homes denied, while Jews from anywhere can freely immigrate to Israel."

There is no "right to return" for Palestinian Arab refugees. All Arab states voted against U.N General Assembly Resolution 194 (1948) because it did not require the return of Arab refugees from what became Israel after the 1948-’49 War of Independence. Neither did General Assembly resolutions 393 and 394 (1950) or 513 (1952), all of which concerned themselves with the war’s aftermath. These resolutions did suggest either repatriation when practicable, under conditions of Arab-Israeli peace, or reintegration of Arab refugees by resettlement in neighboring Arab states.

* "A state based on principles of equality and inclusion would be more morally compelling than two states based on narrow ethnic nationalism."

Twenty-one states — 22 if Israeli-Palestinian negotiations lead to a West Bank/Gaza Strip country — define themselves as Arab, are generally Muslim and sometimes invoke Islam or the Koran as the foundation of their law. They include often persecuted non-Arab and/or non-Muslim Berber, Copt or other Christian, and Kurdish minorities. The "narrow ethnic nationalism" of the Jewish state, the region’s one Western-style democracy — to which nearly three-quarters of the 815,000 Jewish refugees from Arab states fled in the 1940s and ’50s — is the closest thing in the Middle East to an egalitarian "multiethnic society" Bisharat pretends to envision in place of Israel.

Bisharat’s goal, as his dishonest attempts to link Israel to "Jim Crow laws and South African apartheid" make clear, (including, prior to his Post appearance, in USA Today on June 4, rebutted by CAMERA’s June 18 letter) is to promote the "Zionism-is-racism" canard. If The Washington Post had fact-checked his submission, it never would have been published.

Reasonable sounding unreliability

Bisharat’s screed was preceded by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley’s "At Mideast peace talks, a lopsided table". More measured in tone, this September 2 Op-Ed was no more reliable.

Malley is a former mid-level Clinton administration White House staffer on Arab-Israeli affairs who’s argued that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was right to reject the 2000 Israeli-U.S. offer at Camp David of a West Bank and Gaza Strip state in exchange for peace with Israel. Agha, a faculty member at Oxford University, has been a Palestinian Arab advocate for decades. They claim that "staggering asymmetries between the two sides could seriously imperil the talks," but falsely describe or evasively allude to them. For example:

* "Palestinians have no robust central authority." Why not? Because Arafat’s thuggish Fatah kleptocracy and repeated subversion of the Oslo "peace process" by mixing talks and terrorism prevented its development? Because the weakness of his successor, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, obstructs both reform of Fatah and suppression of Hamas, the Iranian-backed Islamic Resistance Movement that rules the Gaza Strip? Agha and Malley don’t say. But their implication is that Israel, which "controls all material assets," should somehow compensate the Palestinian Arabs for their own failures.

* "Abbas is being dragged there [to the current U.S.-mediated Isareli-Palestinian talks] without any of his preconditions having been met." Yes, and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu welcomed talks even though Palestinian leadership so far rejects his insistence that it recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

In true negotiations, each party begins with opening positions, understanding that it may, through good-faith discussion, end by compromising. This most Arab countries and the Palestinian leadership have refused to accept. Otherwise the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli and 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace treaties would not be exceptions. Perhaps Abbas had to be "dragged" to direct talks with Israel by the United States, and repeatedly threatens to walk out, because compromise is not his intention? Agha and Malley don’t say.

* "Because Israelis have a suitable alternative, they lack a sense of urgency [in reaching an agreement]. The Palestinians, by contrast have limited options and desperately need an agreement," the writers claim. They assert that "neither Israel’s mounting isolation nor its considerable reliance on U.S. assistance has jeopardized its ability to make autonomous choices." Should negotiations fail, "the status quo, though sub-optimal, presents no imminent danger to Israel" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/01/AR2010090105656.html .

In fact, Israel’s "mounting isolation" threatens it diplomatically and economically, may contribute to relatively high emigration rates by Israeli Jews, and strengthens Palestinian intransigence over negotiating a comprise settlement. It’s the Palestinian Arabs who, simply by avoiding peace with Israel, can instigate further international condemnation and isolation of the Jewish state. Palestinian leadership has chosen the "sub-optimal status quo" for the people it claims to represent since it rejected partition in 1947, supported terrorism and war until 1993, and undermined the peace commitments it made then. Its optimal strategy has been to play the victim, resist peace and watch pressure on Israel grow.

Exception to the rule

A day after it published Bisharat’s piece, The Post ran the one pro-Israel — or better, non anti-Israel — outside commentary for this period. "Three errors that threaten Mideast talks," by Elliott Abrams, appeared on the paper’s September 4 Op-Ed page — a Saturday, typically the edition with the smallest circulation of the week.

Abrams, a deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush and now a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, warns the Obama administration to avoid actions that would disrupt U.S. mediation. These, he asserts, include intruding in a way that transforms direct, bilateral talks into a trilateral affair, and seeking a "framework" agreement within the president one-year deadline. "All this cannot possibly happen," Abrams says, "until a final-status agreement is signed and implemented. Asking the parties to announce their ‘fundamental compromises’ on the core issues when a final-status agreement is years away is asking them to commit political suicide." Read here.

Arab-Israeli revisionism

As if to strengthen its pro-Palestinian or anti-Israeli tilt, The Post Op-Ed page countered Abrams’ piece with "Palestine’s inevitable independence; Even if peace talks fail, a state must be formed," by Daoud Kuttab, on September 7. Kuttab, journalist, predictable voice of Palestinian "moderation" and frequent guest of Post Op-Ed pages, offers a revisionist history of Palestinian-Israeli talks.

* He claims that "history is a witness to the lack of Palestinian accomplishments in incremental negotiations." Actually, the history of Oslo-era Israeli-Palestinian talks bears witness to repeated Palestinian agreement to end anti-Israel terrorism, end anti-Israeli incitement, and resolve outstanding issues through negotiations — and repeated violations of those primary commitments. Kuttab acknowledges that "the Palestine Liberation Organization long pursued a dual strategy of military resistance [terrorism] and politics ...." but won’t say that this duplicity destroyed the considerable Palestinian economic progress of the early Oslo period.

* Kuttab claims that "... today’s Palestinian leaders have clearly opposed any form of violence." He mentions neither Hamas, which rules that half of the Palestinian Arab population that lives in the Gaza Strip, nor the numerous statements by PA leaders in the West Bank to the effect that anti-Israel violence is not wrong but simply inopportune. And he refers misleadingly to the "international divestment campaign," simply as non-violent rather than as part of PA-supported effort to delegitimize the Jewish state.

* Kuttab, continuing his transparent attempt at anti-Israel judo, claims "Palestinians have good reason to be skeptical about Israel’s sincerity when it comes to peace. Chief among them: Israel’s heavy-handedness in Gaza and its continued violations of international law by building Jewish-only buildings in occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank." Read here.

Except that Israel is not heavy-handed in Gaza, Hamas is. It has both imposed increasingly strict Islamist rule on residents and resumed anti-Israel terrorism. Israeli actions regarding the Strip have included the 2008 - 2009 "Operation Cast Lead," with its generally successful efforts to limit non-combatant casualties, and a blockade that always permitted large-scale humanitarian assistance and is increasingly flexible.

Israeli construction in the disputed West Bank and in Jerusalem is, regardless of wide-spread political opinion, legal under relevant international law, particularly the League of Nations Palestine Mandate, article 6; the U.N. Charter, article 80; and, by implication, U.N. Security Council Resolution 242.

Editorial on target

It’s not that the staff of the editorial pages doesn’t know better. The September 8 lead editorial, "The Hamas murders: How can Palestinian extremists be stopped from disrupting peace negotiations?" noted correctly that "violence by Hamas in the West Bank serves to underscore one of the central Israeli concerns about a peace settlement: that under Palestinian rule the West Bank could become another base for attacks on Israel, as Gaza is."

The editors opined that "Abbas has been convincing in his renunciation of violence and in his opposition to Hamas. He has promised repeatedly to fight terrorism. But if the talks are to succeed, it is essential that he match intentions with actions."

Why isn’t the factual accuracy and analytical logic shown in The Post editorial required of its pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel outside Op-Ed contributors? It’s an old question, and still unanswered.

Eric Rozenman

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Fighting Hamas with cars

by Avi Trengo

In recent weeks, a somewhat different aspect of the war against Hamas in Gaza had been revealed to us – the economic aspect. Simultaneously, we saw oscillating rocket attacks, which came to a complete halt in recent days, granting us a peaceful Yom Kippur. What’s the connection between all of this? The surprising answer: Cars.

In June, upon the lifting of the Gaza siege in the wake of the Marmara fiasco, Israel opened Gaza to Israeli exports. After all, Gazans are excellent customers: They pay in advance using all the aid money poured into the Strip by the world.

Every grain of rice, egg, apple, or veal transferred to the Strip from Israel sees someone gaining a commission. The world clears its conscience via donations, so that there’s no shortage of money in Gaza. In fact, the Strip is a “world champion” in per capita donation receipts, by far outpacing states like Congo, Malawi, Pakistan, and Haiti.

Upon the official declaration of the lifting of what was known as “the Israeli siege,” Israeli sales to Gaza grew tenfold. If up until a year ago, about 40-60 trucks entered Gaza every week with fruit and vegetables, by early August of this year the number rose to 563 trucks of fresh food.

Meanwhile, Israel announced that it will allow new cars into Gaza, for the first time since Hamas took over the Strip. Of course, that announcement was not directly conveyed to Hamas authorities – the official Israel prefers to pretend that Ramallah’s Palestinian Authority still rules the Strip.

Everyone, all across the military and economic establishment, plays along with this pretension, highlighted by the shekels used by Hamas to pay Gaza salaries – shekels transferred to Gaza by the Bank of Israel and seemingly handed over only to authorized banks. Similarly, messages about car imports are also conveyed via a game of pretend: Only to representatives of the official Palestinian Authority. Yet this time we were in for a surprise.

An old trick

Maher Abu-Aluf, the PA official in charge of coordination with Gaza, quickly approved the move. However, the transportation ministry’s director general on behalf of Hamas in Gaza, Hassan Ukasha, announced that he will not allow the vehicles to enter the Strip.

Ukasha explained his decision to the stunned Gaza press as follows: The Palestinian Authority has a financial interest in bringing vehicles into Gaza. Israel imposes high taxes on each vehicle (a 50% sales tax and a 14% value added tax) – these funds are directly transferred from Israel’s Treasury to the PA’s accounts in Israeli banks. The PA doesn’t have to make any effort to collect the money from the importers – Israel does everything.

Ukasha made it clear that he does not wish to undermine importers and impose more taxes on vehicles entering Gaza. Hence, he proposed a simple solution: Let’s establish a joint committee with the PA that would discuss the distribution of funds received from Israel.

Officials in Salam Fayyad’s government realized that they’re about to lose millions and rushed to convey a message to Ukasha suggesting that he shut up: There is no reason for Israel to be aware of the nature of financial ties between Hamastan and the PA, to the tune of billions of shekels annually.

Ukasha got the hint, and proposed a joint committee about a wholly different issue. Within less than a week, a committee was set up, seemingly for the sole purpose of discussing “a shared transportation vision for Palestine and connecting Gaza to the West Bank.”

And so, with discussions about vision not arousing suspicion of money transfers to Hamas, the committee completed its work. Officially, the PA informed Israel about a week ago that it managed to convince Hamas authorities to lift their objection to the entry of vehicles into Gaza. Meanwhile, Hamas announced that it is no longer interested in vehicle tax revenues, as long as the Fayyad government earmarks more funds to Gaza municipalities.

Everyone was pleased and the convey was ready to depart, in line with an Israeli agreement to bring 60 cars into Gaza every week – yet at the same time, the rocket fired directed at southern Israeli communities intensified. And then, some Israeli security official recalled an old trick that used to work before Operation Cast Lead. They used to call it, with a wink, “sealing off the crossings.” Today we can no longer use this tactic, yet it doesn’t mean we should grant rewards to Hamas in the form of cars and customs revenues.
And so, unexpectedly, Israel stopped the transfer of cars and spare parts to Gaza. Hamas again quickly got the message, and we therefore enjoyed a quiet weekend.

The question is whether the security establishment finally got the hint about its ability to undermine Hamas’ thriving businesses, thereby securing quiet for southern Israel residents without being accused of war crimes. As it turns out, vehicles are a weapon too.

Avi Trengo

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Washington’s West Bank Pyromania

by Evelyn Gordon

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a stunning admission last week that has garnered far too little attention. After a de rigueur assertion that the Israeli-Palestinian “status quo is unsustainable,” she added, “That doesn’t mean it can’t be sustained for a year, or a decade, or two or three.”

But if so, why the rush to solve the conflict now, when all signs indicate that a deal is unachievable and another round of failed talks could greatly worsen the situation?

One could simply say she’s wrong; the status quo is intolerable for suffering Palestinians. But the facts are on her side.

First, the territories are experiencing unprecedented economic growth. The World Bank reported last week that the West Bank economy grew 9 percent in the first half of this year, while Gaza (you remember — that giant Israeli prison locked in hopeless poverty and misery?) grew an incredible 16 percent. For the West Bank, this represents a second year of strong growth; last year’s was 8.5 percent.

The World Bank hastened to declare that we should never mind the facts; growth under occupation is unsustainable. And growth in Gaza (which isn’t occupied) might well be: it was artificially boosted by reconstruction after last year’s war and the abrupt easing of Israel’s blockade in May. But the West Bank’s two-year surge shows that economic reforms like those instituted by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, coupled with a sharp drop in terror that has let Israel greatly ease its restrictions on Palestinian movement, make long-term growth quite feasible.

Second, West Bankers have evidently learned a lesson from the second intifada: support for terror there is very low, making a resurgence that would upset the current calm unlikely. Indeed, during a visit this month to the Balata refugee camp, once “a hotbed of extremism,” a Haaretz reporter “was hard-pressed to find any passersby who were willing to express support for it.” As resident Imad Hassan explained, “What good did this [terror] do us?”

By contrast, the current calm is doing West Bankers a lot of good, and they’re clearly savoring it. As Haaretz reported following a Ramadan visit to Ramallah last month:

The one phrase not on the lips of local shoppers in their conversations with this Israeli reporter on Wednesday was “the occupation” — unlike during prior visits, when the occupation and the conflict with the Jews were regularly raised. These days, the hot topic is business. Peace negotiations, and even the Gaza Strip, are irrelevant.

In short, West Bankers, too, consider the status quo tolerable; they’re more concerned with business than “the occupation.”

One thing, however, could yet disrupt this status quo: as several CONTENTIONS contributors have noted, negotiations that collapse amid mutual recriminations have triggered violent explosions in the past, and could well do so again.

So to try to achieve an agreement that overwhelming majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians believe is currently unachievable, the Obama administration is risking the violent implosion of a status quo that it admits is sustainable for decades. That isn’t “smart diplomacy”; it’s the irresponsibility of a pyromaniac near a barrel of gunpowder.

Evelyn Gordon

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Flotilla funds meeting flounders

by Henry Benjamin


A public meeting to raise funds and support for the Kia Ora Gaza group’s flotilla campaign has ended in a debacle.

The meeting was sponsored by the Muslim Club at Hamilton’s Waikato University. The invitation was accompanied by material stating that “Israel is the most powerful state in the Middle East and has being doing as it pleases. So we haven’t been able to do much while hundreds of children, women, men and the elderly get killed, raped and violated on a daily basis”. [The full text is below]

One non-Jewish student at the university described the statement as “hate-preaching”.

Hamilton-based Kirsty Walker published a counter Kia Ora Gaza leaflet entitled “Why I Cannot Support Kia Ora Gaza” in which outlines the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the construction of shopping malls and luxury hotels in spite of a perceived shortage of building materials, the recent murder of four Israelis, the Hamas policy towards Israel and the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Her statement is also published below.

Four members of the Kia Ora Gaza group made the six hour drive from Wellington to Hamilton for the information and fund-raising meeting….and walked into a barrage of criticism.

At the emotionally-charged meeting they were told by Iraqi and Iranian students that they “were playing straight into Hamas’s hands.”

Californian Elaine Bliss has worked in the university’s geography department for 15 years and attended the meeting.

She told J-Wire: “It is the first time I have seen a positive side to this type of meeting at which about 50 people attended. After a twenty minute presentation, the Kia Ora Gaza group threw the meeting open for questions. Middle Eastern students told them that the flotillas were making the situation worse for the Palestinians and that aid was being traded by Hamas for arms. When questioned, none of the group admitted to having ever visited Israel.”

She said that the group’s attitude was very arrogant. “They called for questions from ‘non-Zionists who had not been trained by Mossad’ and claimed to have received a list of necessary medical items directly from the people of Gaza”.

The four members of the Kia Ora Gaza group included one South-African born New Zealander who played the Israeli apartheid card to the meeting.

Bliss said that the meeting had been scheduled for two hours, but halfway through, the Kia Ora Gaza group requested a tea break from which they did not return.

Fundraising? Bliss said: “I saw three people at the meeting drop money into a bucket placed in the room for that purpose…no-one else gave that I am aware of.”

There were less than 10 Jewish attendees.

The current convoy has set sail from London on its way to Gaza with six New Zealanders on board.

The full text of the email produced is reproduced below

THE INVITATION

The Waikato University Muslim Club has organised a few events to raise awareness of the Gaza situation and fund-raise to support the Kia Ora Gaza crew.

We would like to invite you and your friends, family and contacts to come and listen to the unheard voices of the people of Palestine. Please forward this to all your Contacts.

Please check out the rest of the email for details. Refreshments will be provided. Hope to see you there!

KIA ORA GAZA’S STATEMENT

We bring you… Kia Ora Gaza!

How would you feel if you didn’t feel safe because of your neighbors? Would you consider shifting to a safer place? I thought so too! What if you were trapped in your house and your neighbors kept harassing you and none of the people around you bothered to help? Then you would definitely feel scared, bullied… well basically pretty STINK wouldn’t you!!!

Are you aware that the people of Palestine have been bullied by the state of Israel for over 40 years now? And most of the world didn’t bother to get involved. I mean, come on! Israel is the most powerful military state in the Middle East, and has been doing as it pleases. So we haven’t been able to do much while hundreds of children, women, men and the elderly get killed, raped and violated on a daily basis. They are driven out of their homes and left with nothing.

My question to you is: “Would you sit back and watch if your family and your neighbours were getting bombarded and shot on daily basis?” Well, I certainly hope not!

The people of Gaza in Palestine have been suffering the most. Gaza is under blockade by Israel and its treaty partner Egypt. That means Israel restricts Gaza’s imports of vital goods, especially medical equipment and building supplies, while blocking virtually all Gaza’s exports and banning its people from crossing their border. The 1.5 million people of Gaza are in the world’s biggest prison camp. Currently 77.2 percent of Palestinians in Gaza either face hunger or are vulnerable to it [1].

Following the murderous hijack of the Freedom Flotilla on 31st May 2010, when nine civilian aid workers were shot to death by Israeli commandos on the open sea, there has been a sea change in world public opinion. Now the majority of people on all continents understand that the state of Israel has imprisoned all Palestinians in Gaza after stealing their homeland [2] .

New Zealanders have a proud history of standing up for social justice. Following this tradition, Kia Ora Gaza was publicly launched on 7th July 2010 to send six Kiwi volunteers, along with aid and vehicles, to join the international land-sea convoy to Gaza this September. It will be the biggest aid convoy since the Second World War, staffed by over 1,000 volunteers from scores of different countries. With that level of planetary support, there is every chance the Israeli siege of Gaza can be broken forever, or at least fatally weakened.

Kia Ora Gaza has a donations target of $100,000. “We are well on the way to reaching this target,” says Kia Ora Gaza co-organiser Grant Morgan. “But we must continue our fund-raising drive until the end of September so that our six-member Kiwi Team have the money they need to do a good job for the people of Gaza.” [3]

Waikato University Muslim Club will hold events on Campus on 8th September to raise awareness about Gaza and to support Kia Ora Gaza. Please refer to the poster for event details. We invite everyone to attend these awareness-raising events and to contribute towards our fellow Kiwis traveling to the other side of the world to help the suffering people of Gaza.

Kirsty Walker’s statement:

WHY I CANNOT SUPPORT KIA ORA GAZA

By vilifying Israel, Kia Ora Gaza, like George Galloway’s Viva Palestina, effectively lends support to the Hamas regime in Gaza, despite this regime’s stated aim of destroying a neighbouring sovereign state, it’s use of terror against Israelis and Palestinians who do not support its political agenda and its misuse of international aid that was intended for the benefit of all the people of Gaza.

I remember the past

In a hope for peace, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, displacing entire Israeli settler communities. They left intact the infrastructure the settlers had built and donated entire horticultural business complexes to the Palestinian people to help establish the new Palestinian economy. Within weeks of the Israeli withdrawal, these businesses had been looted and destroyed and the infrastructure broken down. When Hamas consolidated its control of the new Gaza government, the focus for Gaza’s future became the destruction of the Jewish state, rather than the establishment of a prosperous Palestinian state in Gaza. Hamas’ active support for thousands of rocket attacks against Israeli towns and refusal to end these attacks led to the Cast Lead operation. Hamas’ policy of using civilians as ‘human shields’ through out this conflict led to the loss of thousands of lives and the destruction of large sections of Gaza city.

I don’t support Hamas propaganda

A lot is said about a lack of building supplies in Gaza, yet there were enough building materials available in Gaza to construct a recently opened shopping mall, an Olympic swimming pool complex and a luxury hotel. If building materials are so scarce in Gaza, why were these materials not used to build hospitals and homes?

Israel contributes aid to Gaza and allows more goods through its “blockade” every week than was contained on the entire Gaza flotilla. If Hamas used these goods to provide for daily needs of the Palestinian people, rather than focusing its efforts on attempting to destroy Israel, there would be no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

I don’t support murderers

Hamas’ charter condones the use of terror to achieve its aims. On 31 August, as Middle East peace talks were opening, Hamas operatives murdered four Israelis, including a husband and his pregnant wife and two others, as they drove long a shared Arab-Israeli road in the West Bank. 3000 Palestinians in Gaza gathered to hand out candy and celebrate the ‘success’ of this murderous ‘operation’.

I don’t support a racist regime

Like New Zealand, Israel gives equal status under law to its all its citizens, regardless of their ethnicity. Hamas, which controls Gaza, is committed to the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and the establishment of an Islamic state in its place. Jews would not be afforded equal rights with Arab Muslims in such a state. If Hamas is to be believed, Jews would not even be allowed to live in such a state.

I don’t support kidnappers

Hamas operatives kidnapped Israeli Gilad Shalit from within Israel in June 2006 and continue to hold him captive in a secret location. Hamas has never allowed Gilad Shalit to have any visits from Red Cross or any other international humanitarian agency. He has not been allowed to have any contact with his family or anyone else from the outside world. This is inhumane. Although the Rd Cross offer help to Palestinians in Jerusalem, they have given none to Gilad Shalit.

Charity begins at home

There are numerous aid organisations already established and working in Gaza. The UN is already on site in Gaza to administer the distribution of international aid to the people of Gaza. Supplies flow freely into Gaza through its border with Israel, and also through the smuggling tunnels on the Gaza-Egyptian border. Many of the “essential” humanitarian supplies that the Gaza flotilla brought to Gaza were rejected by the Hamas leadership, and did not reach the Palestinian people in Gaza. It is a hugely inefficient and wasteful use of money and resources to send activists from New Zealand half way across the world to make a political statement against Israel and to ‘deliver’ goods that may be rejected or merely added to the stockpile of aid already in UN’s Gaza storehouses. It would be better to give help to the flood victims of Pakistan or the earthquake stricken people of Haiti … or perhaps even to the Canterbury earthquake victims.

Kirsty Walker

Henry Benjamin

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Two Constant Mistakes of the Mass Media: Dictatorships Don't Dictate; Almost Everyone's a Moderate

by Barry Rubin


I don't know about you but it always makes me feel better to be reminded that folly didn't start recently. In my view, the quality of reporting in the mass media has become far more politicized, biased, and ideological in recent years. Yet, of course, there are many prior examples.

Another reason why it is important to study such cases is that common patterns tell you just where things went wrong. The case of Harrison Salisbury's reports from Moscow in the early 1950s provide a good example.

Covering dictator Joseph Stalin's funeral in 1953, Salsbury wrote:

"Mr. Georgi Malenkov [the new leader, soon to be supplanted by Nikita Krushchev] and his comrades at arms appeared to have the support and enthusiasm of Soviet citizens of all walks of life....The words of Mr. Malenkov seemed to have sent a surge of hope through the Soviet listeners."

This quotation shows some common characteristics of American or Western journalists and analysts to this day:

--The belief that in a dictatorship the masses really do believe what their rulers tell them and love the dictator, moreover that one can adduce what they believe from official sources. A good recent example of this is the Western journalists who went into Iraq when Saddam Hussein was dictator and reported on how popular and benevolent the government was.

--The systematic reinterpretation of radical statements into moderate ones, simply refusing to believe that anyone could really be an extremist and mean it.

--The failure to report at all on extremist statements and inciting rhetoric. Why? Because the reporter or analyst assumes that all ideology is just meaningless words since everyone is essentially pragmatic. (Wrong!)

In addition, the journalist (or politician, or academic) believes that if he reports extremist statements on the other side he will thus inspire or give backing to "hardliners" at home. Thus, to speak honestly is interpreted as contributing to conflict and the victory of "bad guys." And what "bad guys" is he most concerned about? Those who are conservative in his own country or who merely believe that there is a big threat to be combated.

This is what I call the concept of "lying for peace" and it always fails, as in the whitewashing of Palestinian behavior in the belief that doing so will make it easier to resolve the conflict. The truth, of course, is that the reality of underlying ideology, tactics, goals, and politics will come back to bite those who ignore them.

Contrary to Salisbury's soothing account, here is the actual key theme of what Malenkov said:

"We must train the Communists and all working people in the spirit of high political vigilance, of intolerance and firmness in the struggle against internal, inner and the foreign enemies."

Bertram Wolfe, himself a former Communist and a leading expert on the USSR at the time, gave his own interpretation of this sentence:

"That means to the Soviet people that the new government is determined to continue its war on its own people [`the struggle against internal, inner...enemies'] and on other peoples [`the foreign enemies']. What reason for hope can the Soviet people take from such an address?"

From that, how can today's officials, journalists, and analysts do any less for Hamas, Hizballah, Iran, Muslim Brotherhoods, Syria, parts of the Taliban, and various other Islamist radicals disguised as moderates? That's also partly true in the way they view Fatah and the Palestinian Authority.

Want to get along with Iran or Syria? Allegedly, be nice to the Iranian and Syrian regimes if at all possible, praise and flatter them. How to interpret their deeds and statements? Always find that nugget of moderation in a sea of gravel.

Nothing should be more obvious than the following: The job of reporters and scholars is to report accurately, not twist things to fit their own views or what they think is beneficial for his society to know. The task for political leaders is to get the most accurate possible data even if it doesn't fit their preferences. Otherwise, their adversaries will make Salisbury Steak out of them.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Palestine: Gaining Currency?

by Jonathan Schanzer


The Palestinians are putting money on notion that they will have a state next year.

This month's edition of The Monocle, a London based magazine on politics and culture reveals that the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is planning to roll out a currency—the Palestinian pound.

In a one-on-one interview, Palestine Monetary Authority Chairman Jihadal-Wazir, son of Fatah founder and PLO terrorist Khalil al-Wazir, insists that the step is "not necessarily immediate." However, based on the interview with this sharply dressed–Marquette University graduate, it is also clear that a great deal of planning has already gone into the currency.

For example, The Monocle reports that a photo of the late Yasir Arafat "is almost certain" to appear on the currency, and that the design of the currency will likely be decided by competition. Reserves of the currency would also be held in the Palestinian Central Bank, which is currently under construction in Ramallah.

The currency has deep historical meaning. In short, because the Palestinians have never been a nation, they've never had a currency of their own. The Pound was the currency of the British Mandate of Palestine from 1927 until the creation of Israel in 1948. From 1948 until 1967, when the West Bank was under Jordanian occupation, citizens there were forced to do business in Jordanian dinars. Similarly, thanks to the Egyptian occupation of the Gaza Strip, citizens there had little choice but to trade in Egyptian pounds. Since 1967, the Palestinians in both territories have primarily done business in Israeli currency—the Lira until 1980, and the shekel since that time.

The Palestinians still don't have a state. But they now have reason to think that it's just a matter of time. U.S. President Barack Obama has jumpstarted the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, with a deadline of next fall to solve all of the outstanding issues, and set final borders. To that end, he is pushing the Israelis to relinquish lands conquered in previous Arab-Israeli wars so that Palestinians can inhabit them. Numerous reports indicate that the President is ready to back the establishment of an independent Palestinian state before the end of his first term.

Jonathan Schanzer

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.